Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "TIKhistory"
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@trickylifts
Zaloga reinforces what I wrote. What I wrote was clear...
There were no combat troops in Nijmegen on the jump day, the 17th. There was none, besides Flak in the city at that time. There were HQ units in Nijmegen, who evacuated immediately - the Dutch HQ of the SS-Polizei, the equivalent to a divisional HQ. The figure of 19 men guarding the bridge came from the Dutch underground. That figure may have included the 11 manning an 88mm Flak gun north of Nijmegen bridge. The gun was taken out by the first British tank over the bridge - the tank took it out when it was half way across the bridge, firing on the move.
The few 82nd men who reached the bridge late, stayed near the southern approach road all night before Gavin ordered men out of Nijmegen completely, de-prioritising the bridge. That was a mixture of SS men who came down from Arnhem, and non-combat personnel. The German troops in Nijmegen on the 17th were non-combat being no match for the highly trained 82nd men. Once the Germans had secured the Nijmegen bridge German troops came over via the ferry. They manned the rubble in the town centre (the US air force bombed the town months earlier by mistake), making it more difficult to seize when XXX Corps arrived.
Zaloga states: Lieutenant-Colonel Warren and the Co. A of 1/508th PIR did not set out for Nijmegen until 2100hrs. That is 6.5 hours after landing. If they had gone to the bridge immediately they would have walked on it. Not only that one of the 82nd companies got lost.
Compare the 82nd men moving to Nijmegen bridge to the British First Airborne paras who got to Arnhem bridge. They landed after the 82nd men, getting to their bridge before the 82nd men got to the Nijmegen bridge, with further to go. The British paras, not to be detected, moved along the river bank, in and out of houses, over back yard walls, carrying all with them. They reached the undefended north end of Arnhem bridge, taking control of that end.
The Germans were so disorganised initially both bridges could have been seized by walking on them. The British walked on theirs the 82nd were so slow, the Germans had 8 hours to reinforce their bridge.
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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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@suppo6092
"But I still don't understand how a man like Churchill would like an alliance with the bolsheviks. He seems so smart otherwise. "
In a special radio address to the British nation on the evening of 22 June 1941, Churchill said, “No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, its tragedies, flashes away.… The Russian danger is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for hearth and house is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.”
Churchill then announced that Britain would provide all possible military aid to the USSR in its battle against Germany. Britain provide 40% of the tanks used in the vital battle of Moscow. Britain was fighting the Japanese in Malaya/Singapore. The Japanese had tanks, the British troops never. Just one convoy destined for the USSR, diverted to Singapore would have meant British victory.
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Christian Noll
No armour was near Arnhem.
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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@jdsaldivar5606
In fact the 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders the day after capture. Only 5 tanks crossed the bridge with two being knocked out, and one got operational again by a lone sergeant who met up with the rest of the tanks in the village of Lent 1 km north of the bridge.
So, only four operational tanks were available on the north side of the bridge. Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end, taking no boats with him. The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Capt Cook) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing.
Sgt Robinson again....
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender""Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carington's (in the 5th tank over the bridge) own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it."
When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay.
The first meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Guards infantry got there first from the south. Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen. a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge and seized that bridge. The railway bridge was not suitable for running tanks over of course.
The 82nd men moved along the railway embankment north to where the embankment meets the road approach to the road bridge at Lent.
Only five British tanks were able to cross the bridge that night, and two of them were damaged. 4 tanks initially went across then Carrington's lone tank followed, guarding the northern end of the bridge by itself for nearly an hour before he was relieved.
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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 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 already had the Canadians clear it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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John Cornell
Neillands is clear that Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were siphoning off supplies from the US 1st army. Also clear it was to reduce Monty's power. A conspiracy theorist could go wild on Market Garden.
♦ A US general, Gavin, does not go for his prime target immediately.
♦ A US general, Taylor, does not seize one of his prime
targets immediately.
♦ US paras do not take boats in terrain full of rivers and canals.
♦ Gavin thinks there is a 1,000 tanks in a forest with no firm proof.
♦ Brereton, an American, comes up with odd landing zones.
♦ Brereton refuses to jump into the Scheldt.
♦ USAAF forbid fighter-bombers.
♦ Bradley and Patton siphon off supplies, ensuring Market
Garden would be under resourced.
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Facts are wonderful things.......
♦ The Bolsheviks did not have to grant independence to the Finns in 1919, it was a part of Russia. Even the rail gauge was Russian not compatible with other adjacent countries.
♦ The borders of independent Finland (a country that had hardly ever been independent in its history) were too close to Leningrad for defense reasons. A mistake by the Bolshevik independence negotiators.
♦ Guns were available to hit Leningrad from the Finnish border, although none in Finland. Leningrad was too close, vulnerable to large easy air strikes from Finland. War technology had move on a lot quite quickly.
♦ The Soviets never wanted to take all of Finland, as they did with the three other Baltic states, just move borders back with a territory exchange for defense reasons. Finland would gain more territory in the deal.
♦ The Bolsheviks were not statesmen. The Soviets wanted to rectify a mistake on the independence agreement.
♦ Germany was expecting the USSR to take all of Finland back into Russia, reverting the situation as it was 20 years previously.
♦ Finland refused any territory exchange.
♦ In 1939 the USSR moves into Finland to move the border back.
♦ The Finns resist.
♦ The Soviets win.
♦ The Soviets in 1940 never took all of Finland, as they did with the other three Baltic states, just moved the border back, having no desires on all of Finland. This baffled the Germans.
♦ Peace is signed between Finland and the USSR in 1940.
♦ The USSR had no intention of occupying or attacking Finland once the border was moved back.
♦ The Finns allowed Germans onto their territory within months after the Soviets never incorporated Finland back into Russia, which they could easily have.
♦ The Soviets were naturally concerned with German troops in Finland, realising they made a mistake in not incorporating all of Finland back into Russia.
♦ Finland attacks the USSR along with Germany in June 1941, despite signing a peace treaty with the USSR in 1940.
♦ The USSR realises it made a mistake by not incorporating Finland back into Russia, having to fight on a front that need not have been there.
♦ Finland imprisons its leader after WW2 for attacking the USSR in 1941.
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"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men."
- Neillands
This was all on D-Day. Browning was expecting the bridge to have been taken immediately. So, Browning was guilty of believing Gavin about the 1,000 tanks, but not in failing to seize the bridge on the 1st day.
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1. Thousands of vehicles mustered around Eindhoven - they were continually arriving bumper to bumper - all this needed control and management. They could not all wonder off into the night, as there were too many of them. They needed support by infantry.
2. Horrocks got to Nijmegen ahead of schedule despite a 12 hour delay at Son. The aim was to secure the bridges and make a foothold over the Rhine. Supporting troops and armour would move up and flesh out the penetration, which happened, creating a 60 mile buffer in front of Antwerp. A buffer the Germans had to go around when later attacking the US armies in the Ardennes. If the buffer was not created, the shortest, and flat, route to Antwerp was through the buffer.
3. Cook's Waal crossing was to secure the north end of the bridge while XXX Corps secured the south. Then XXX Corps tanks and troops would roll over. The tanks did roll over, however no US troops secured the north end of the bridge. XXX Corps took all the bridge themselves. They met the US paras 1 km north of the bridge at Lent as they never managed to get to the bridge. Twenty percent of the Waal crossing troops were British Sappers.
The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not move to and seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day not moving to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march. The 82nd could have easily secured the bridge if they moved to it immediately. They never.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
_ Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@charlieboffin2432
Lord Carington, who was in the 5th tank across the bridge:
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
Lord Carrington again...
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
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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 from both ends simultaneously.
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. Taking the bridge easily 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, ahead of schedule, 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. 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.
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The bile from the USA that has been directed against Montgomery is just downright disgusting, showing a total lack of respect. Montgomery could have had a field day wiping the floor with them after the war highlighting their poor performance overall. He never. He was too professional. They have attempted to paper over their poor performance by diverting attention and just plain telling lies.
The fact is the US performed poorly in Europe in WW2, especially at high level. They never had a good general, none. Vane Mark Clark disobeyed an order to complete an allied encirclement of the Germans finishing them off in Italy, so he could run off to Rome with his army for a photo shoot and glory. He even had the photographers taken photos of his good side and best facial angle. He allowed the Germans to get away, who went north and formed another line across Italy. So the allied forces had to do it all again. If he was German he would have been shot.
Eisenhower's broad front strategy was near a disaster, of which Montgomery was totally against. Monty wanted a 30-40 division thrust to the north, over the Rhine at multiple crossings, then east across the German plains chasing a disorganised retreating army right to Berlin, while seizing the vital Ruhr. Montgomery continually was on that he should be made ground forces commander again, especially after the "failure" at the Bulge. Anyone with sense would have given Monty the job again after the Bulge, but Eisenhower gave in to the deflated egos of his humiliated whining generals, who by now detested Monty for showing the world what they were like. The only reason why the allies got going again in Feb 1945 was because the Germans expended lots of men and equipment in the Ardennes at the Bulge. If not for the Bulge, under Eisenhower's broad front strategy the allies would not have been over the Rhine until summer 1945. The Americans just stumbled into one embarrassment after another. All because of poor generalship.
♦ Bradley refusing to use the Funnies at Omaha beach causing excessive,
needless casualties;
♦ Patton leaving Falaise on a triumphal parade to Paris instead of going to the Seine to cut
off the retreating Germans. Montgomery never went to the victory parade in Paris sending
one of his men, as he was too busy trying to win a war;
♦ Mark Clark, disobeying an order to encircle the Germans and finish them off in Italy so
he could run off to Rome with his army for a photo shoot;
♦ Pattons' Lorraine crawl. 10 miles in 3 months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties
for unimportant territory. Read American historian Harry Yeide on Patton;
♦ The Hurtgen Forest defeat with around 34,000 casualties. They could have just
gone around the forest, as Earnest Hemingway observed;
♦ Bradley and Patton stealing supplies destined for Hodges against Eisenhower's
orders, which cut down the Market Garden operation to ridiculously low levels of
one Rhine crossing and one corps above Eindhoven;
♦ The German Ardennes offensive (the Bulge), of which Bradley and Hodges ignored
the German build up - they were warned by British SHAEF officers 5 weeks prior
to the German attack. The British had noticed the German build up, who were not
even on that front. Montgomery had to take control of US armies to get a grip
of the shambles. Near 100,000 US casualties;
♦ Patton stalled at the Bulge continually. Patton had less than 20 km of German
held ground to cover during his move north to Bastogne, with the vast majority
of his drive through American held lines. It still took him five days to get
through to Bastogne. It took Patton almost three days just to get through
the village of Chaumont;
♦ The ordering of a retreat at the Vosges in south eastern France abandoning
the city of Strasbourg, which caused a huge row with French military leaders
who refused to retreat. The French held onto Strasbourg;
♦ Under Monty the allies moved 500 km in only three months from D-Day to
September 1944. Under Eisenhower they moved 100 km in seven months
from September 1944 to March 1945.
♦ etc;
US forces were running out of men at an alarming rate because of clear poor leadership. Men in the US destined for the Far East were diverted to Europe because of the excessive losses. Hence in the Far East the British had more boots on the ground than the USA.
The clearing the Scheldt, delayed by Eisenhower in favour of Market Garden, did not change anything for many months on the exceptionally long broad-front from Switzerland to the North Sea/Channel. The allies did not advance anywhere until Feb 1945. The Scheldt was cleared for many months with Antwerp's port fully operational. With the port fully operational with supplies plentiful, the US Army was even rammed back into a retreat at the Bulge.
Monty, was a proven army group leader being a success in North Africa and Normandy, which came in with 22% less than predicated casualties and ahead in territory taken at D-Day plus 90. Common sense dictates to keep Monty in charge of all ground operations, not give it to a political man like Eisenhower, who was only a colonel a few years previously and had never been in charge of any army directly, never mind three army groups. The longest advance in late 1944/early 1945 was the 60 mile lightening four day advance by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@billfix1150
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the 'air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th "for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT, THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954, P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare, by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page ... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
It ain't how Ben Affleck, Ronald Reagan, Steven Spielberg and John Wayne told it.
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