Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Elon Musket"
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@skibbideeskitch9894
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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On page 47 of Max Hasting's, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45, he makes the point that confusion in the orders from German General Bittrich saved it for the Germans. Bittrich wanted the 9th SS to secure the north and south sides of Arnhem bridge, as he saw this bridge as vital as it was over the Rhine. But, the part of the 9th SS that were supposed to stay on the south side of the Arnhem bridge, by mistake went south to Nijmegen bridge preventing the US 82nd, who dawdled, from seizing that bridge. If the 9th SS did stay at Arnhem on the south side to Bittrich's orders, it would have been probable that XXX Corps would have wiped them out on the south side of the Rhine at Arnhem on the 19th - D-Day plus 2.
After the 9th SS had moved to Nijmegen with the Arnhem bridge pretty well uncontested on the south side, the Germans were pointing fingers at each other.
A screw up won it for the Germans, while a screw up for the allies lost it (Gavin not moving onto Nijmegen bridge immediately). This German error proved decisive in the allies not winning 100%. Nevertheless this German error does not detract from the point that the allies should have won, if Gavin had done his job properly. If Gavin had seized Nijmegen bridge immediately, the allies would have won irrespective of what the 9th SS did.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@renaisabitch
Cain? Do you mean Caen?
He certainly did at Caen.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks in the British/Canadian Caen sector, including Tigers and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat debuts around Caen in July.
Caen had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a few miles 8 Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2. These were pitted against British armour. At Kursk the Panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisors in the Caen area by the end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti tank-guns. The Germans kept sending more and more Panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July.
Panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area:
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs)
♦ Panzer Lehr Division (101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers)
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers)
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 panthers)
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers)
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 29 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 29 Panzer IVs)
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers)
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers)
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Source:
- Bernages Panzers and Battle for Normandy;
- Zetterling’s Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
The Americans who were not equipped or experienced to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery. the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn’t face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
‘Montgomery’s tactical handling of the British and Canadians on the Eastward flank and his co-ordination of these operations with those of the Americans to the westward involved the kind of work in which he excelled.'
- CRUSADE IN EUROPE, EISENHOWER, 1948, Page 288
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@kebabtank
Firstly bare in mind the overall plan. The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had, XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
Now, the 101st failing to seize the Zon bridge put XXX Corps back 12 hours. XXX Corps errected a Bailey bridge then raced up to Nijmegen unopposed. The Britsh 1st Airborne still held the north of the Arnhem bridge seven miles away. If they had raced over the Nijmegen bridge 1st Airborne would have been relieved. Operation complete.
101st could fail and the 82nd succeed, the operation is a success.
If the 101st succeed with 82nd failing, it is then touch and go if XXX Corps could relieve the 1st Airborne.
As it turned out, both failed.
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@Will More
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@brucewallace6282
The small city of Caen was strategically unimportant, ports were important. At the 11th hour Montgomery switched a US 82nd parachute drop into Caen to the Cotentin peninsula to aid US forces in seizing the port of Cherbourg. Montgomery's plan was to draw in then destroy the German army, not gain territory.
The Caen sector had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so right Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2, pitted against British armour. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were certainly not right panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen area by end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti-tank guns. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July. These were the panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area.
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
♦ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Source. Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy and Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces, and so this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June (any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines). Unfortunately, unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers and closed the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions through the rest of June and early July, with the Germans having excellent defensive country (fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere) with which to utilise to their advantage.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks and assault guns in the British/Canadian sector, including Tiger and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat débuts around Caen in July.
The Americans who were not equipped, or experienced, to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery - the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn't face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
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@Trebor74
“The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them into their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen we were to make our break on the long roundabout road to a Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for which while we trampled around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans.Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded.”
- General Bradley
Monty’s alacrity in accepting the disappointing results of ‘Goodwood’ caused consternation at Eisenhower’s headquarters- and particularly among the Air Force commanders. ‘In order to get proper air support for the attack, de Guingard had to exaggerate the importance of the attack,’ Dempsey later explained in an effort to make clear the real purpose of ‘Goodwood’ to the American Official Historian. ‘He kept telling the air people this attack is absolutely essential to the war and will be the turning point. Because of this statement, it has been difficult to convince people that we had not intended to do more than strengthen our line. Monty realised that this attack was open to exaggeration and for this reason gave me one of the first written orders I ever received, in which the limited nature of the attack was made clear.’
Not only had Monty to deceive the reluctant barons of the Allied air forces; it was essential that the Germans be made to believe that ‘Goodwood’ was serious, and that unless all reserves were committed to the eastern flank, a British break-out towards Paris would result. ‘Both Bradley and I agreed we could not possibly tell the Press the true strategy which formed the basis of all our plans,’ Monty recalled; he therefore gave a press conference, in the midst of the ‘Goodwood’ battle, to give the impression that the decisive moment in the Normandy campaign had come. As Chester Wilmington, the BBC correspondent, noted in his diary after the true break-out in the west ‘the military offensive did not fail, but the propaganda offensive did’…
- Monty Master of the Battlefield by Nigel Hamilton
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@Federer935
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans, that failed, while Garden mainly the British, which succeed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@hillsane9262
Yes, Frosts men were largely unopposed as they went along the riverbank to the bridge, jumping, with their equipment, in and out of backyards and gardens to keep away from the Germans.
Comet called for the 1st Airborne Division and Sosabowski’s 1st Polish to seize the Grave, Nijmegen and Arnhem bridges, using gliders for coup de main attacks, landing close to the bridges, as at Pegasus Bridge at Benouville had been taken by the 6th Airborne Division on D-Day.
Monty could be overruled by the air men - and was. Beyond the initial broad outline from a previously planned operation, Monty didn’t plan the operation and nor did he have any jurisdiction over the air forces. He can consult and discuss but he cannot give them orders. Monty’s aides tried to persuade Brereton to fly double missions on the 17th but Brereton refused. The RAF offered that RAF men man and service the transport planes for second mission, again he refused.
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@Soldiereasy
Despite being a bad plan by Brereton and Williams, the operation only failed by a whisker.
The situation on the 17th at H hour, d-day, was:
♦ Heavy German forces on the Dutch-Belgian border - naturally as it was their front line
♦ A few German infantry north of Eindhoven.
♦ About 600 older men of a training unit, and HQs, at Nijmegen, who were moving north to safety on hearing of the para drops.
♦ Some scattered German infantry at Arnhem.
♦ The road from north of Eindhoven to Arnhem was pretty well totally free.
♦ The bridges were not heavily defended with no barbed wire or anti-tank ditches.
XXX Corps brushed aside the heavy German resistance on the Dutch-Belgian border, with "remarkable" progress as the US Official history states. They now have a clear road to run up.
The longer the delay, the more time for the Germans to pour in troops and armour. Time was vital to a successful operation. All it needed was the three para units to secure their assigned bridges immediately, then XXX would have run up the empty road to Arnhem, crossing the Rhine on d-day plus 1 with a successful operation.
The British First Airborne secured their crossing in denying it to the Germans, the other two US units failed. The 82nd in particular failed miserably.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardley put a foot wrong.
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@brucewallace6282
It is clear you did not understand what was written. Read it again. Move your lips when reading, it will make it better for you.
Patton what a laugh! What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@brucewallace6282
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.__Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@flyoptimum
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@flyoptimum
The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had, XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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