Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "TIKhistory"
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TIK, from Neillands in 2005, when all information had been revealed. ....
"The Comet plan [preceded Market Garden] stuck to the basic airborne rule — land as close to the objective as possible — and to the basic rule for capturing any bridge — take both ends at once."
"The choice of drop zones was in the gift of the US Air Force commanders, not the airborne commanders — and the factor that governed the Air Force commanders’ choice of parachute drop zones ( DZs) or glider landing zones (LZs) was the presence, actual or feared, of anti-aircraft batteries around the bridges. Since the US Air Force commanders considered that these bridges would be surrounded by flak guns, they selected landing zones that were, in the main, well away from the bridges."
"Nor was this the only error committed by the air planners. Another was their decision that ground-attack fighters were not to be sent over the battlefield while escort fighters were in the air protecting supply drops. This decision denied the airborne units the vital assistance that these ground-attack aircraft had been giving to the troops in Normandy just a month before"
- Neillands
"The enemy was able to bring reinforcements into Arnhem in broad daylight, with impunity, a move which would have been fraught with risk in Normandy a few weeks earlier.’"
- Neillands
TIK, the element of surprise was lost at Arnhem. Neillands says it was the USAAF who chose the landing zones not the RAF and also insisted on no fighter-bombers and also a protracted drop over 3 days.
"‘To the Americans Browning appeared too dapper and Brereton did not trust him; neither did Gavin. Browning in turn detested Brereton, who was disliked by many of his fellow-countrymen."
- Neillands
"The British transport commander, Air Vice Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst of No. 38 Group, RAF Transport Command, wanted to solve the aircraft shortage by flying-in two lifts on D-Day. His colleague of the US IX Troop Carrier Command, Major-General Paul L. Williams, did not agree, believing that time was needed to service the aircraft and rest the crews — and this view prevailed at Allied Airborne HQ where Brereton supported it. Since the principal asset of an airborne operation is surprise, the two- to three-day deployment — an attack by instalments — was throwing this vital asset away."
- Neillands
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@cavscout888
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
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 – Operation Tractable – 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.”
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Major-General Sir Francis De Guingand:
‘It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by 30th Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.'
What the Germans thought of Market Garden...
MONTY The Field-Marshal 1944-1976 by Nigel Hamilton:
‘General Student, in a statement after the war, considered the ‘Market Garden’ operation to have ‘proved a great success. At one stroke it brought the British 2nd Army into the possession of vital bridges and valuable territory. The conquest of the Nijmegen area meant that the creation of a good jumping board for the offensive which contributed to the end of war.’ Student was expressing the professional admiration of an airborne commander - ‘those who had planned and inaugurated with complete the first airborne operations of military history, had not now even thought of such a possible action by the enemy… the Allied Airborne action completely surprised us. The operation hit my army nearly in the centre and split it into two parts… In spite of all precautions, all bridges fell intact into the hands of the Allied airborne forces—another proof of the paralysing effect of surprise by airborne forces!’ As for hindsight, the only part of that would interest me would be to judge the actions of those people at that time in the situation that they found themselves in. As far as MARKET GARDEN was concerned, the German V-2 rockets on London alone justified the attempt, even without the other, good reasons for making the attempt.
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Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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Eisenhower was named Supreme Commander for Overlord, with British professionals in place to run the land campaign (Montgomery), the naval campaign (Ramsay), and the air campaign (Leigh- Mallory). Meanwhile, Eisenhower could go off and do broadcasts, meet and greet with politicians etc, at various Chateaux, and so on.
The problems started when he added another job to his onerous workload, running the land campaign instead of Montgomery, a job he was unsuited for. As the enormity of Montgomery’s victory in France became apparent, decisions needed to be made about how the campaign would be carried forward as the German forces all but disintegrated after Falaise. Montgomery approached Bradley on the 17th August, and then Eisenhower on the 23rd August about the plan to move forward in the North. The need being to make best use of allied resources available at that time and keep the campaign moving forward.The Germans knew that Montgomery's plan was the best way forward for the allies at that time:
'I am in full agreement with Montgomery. I believe General Eisenhower's insistence on spreading the Allied forces out for a broader advance was wrong. The acceptance of Montgomery's plan would have shortened the war considerably. Above all, tens of thousands of lives - on both sides -would have been saved'
- Hasso von Manteuffel.
‘The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.’
- Gunther Blumentritt.
Eisenhower ducked the sensible way forward, citing US public opinion in support of his decision to disperse allied resources. The result, the whole advance ground to a halt.Eisenhower’s lack of military expertise was made worse by his failure to keep up with the allied armies, and the communications problems that resulted from him being so far from the front. Examples: His letter to Montgomery of the 4th September 1944 from Ranville in Normandy outlining his plans for 21st Army Group in the weeks ahead took until 9th September to finish arriving at Montgomery’s headquarters. In mid-November, Eisenhower had to get his chauffeur, Mrs Summersby to find out if Bradley’s attack on the Rhine had gone ahead. When the Ardennes crisis unfolded, Eisenhower took five days to go see Montgomery after he had placed him in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, arriving at the nearest railway station to Montgomery’s head in a special train.
Eisenhower should have resigned after Market Garden. The undertaking should be set against allied failures in the same period at Aachen, the Hurtgen Forest, Metz, Lorraine and the Ardennes (Bulge) debacle. All were victims of Eisenhower’s failure of command in the early autumn of 1944.
And the Germans: MONTY The Field-Marshal 1944-1976, NIGEL HAMILTON, P 98
‘General Student, in a statement after the war, considered the ‘Market Garden’ operation to have ‘proved a great success. At one stroke it brought the British 2nd Army into the possession of vital bridges and valuable territory. The conquest of the Nijmegen area meant that the creation of a good jumping board for the offensive which contributed to the end of war.’
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"on 18 September, the 82nd’s next lift arrived from the UK, 450 gliders bringing in three fresh battalions, one parachute and two glider, and a quantity of artillery."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Knowing 3 battalions were to come, with artillery, Gavin could have still sent a large force to seize the bridge.
"The US History points out that there was ‘no incentive for urgency over taking the Nijmegen bridge as XXX Corps were not yet in Eindhoven’ and it might be some time before they arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. In fact, XXX Corps had already passed Eindhoven and were waiting to cross the Bailey bridge at Zon. The US Official Historian, Charles B. MacDonald, dismisses this casual approach to the question of taking the Nijmegen bridge, stating that: ‘According to this theory, General Gavin had another full day to tackle the Germans at Nijmegen.’ This theory also assumes that one day would be sufficient for Gavin to take the bridge — from one side only — having already sacrificed the advantage of surprise and with German strength increasing."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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"A more perceptive analysis comes from Major-General John Frost, commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge:
The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to capturing the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walkover on D-Day, yet the 82nd Division could spare only one battalion as they must at all costs secure the Groesbeek heights where the Corps HQ was to be sited.
These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful... and highly successful. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the public mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commanders’ chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainly might have been better if some effort had been made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night.
That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Monty never suffered a reverse moving thousands of miles through nine countries from Egypt to Denmark taking all in his path. He was a general over generals. Montgomery was by far most successful western allied commander of WW2. Monty fought more battles, took more ground and engaged more elite German divisions than any other general. Monty commanded all the Normandy ground forces, being the man the Americans ran to in the Ardennes offensive. No other general in the western allied armies possessed his experience in dealing with the Germans or his expertise.
Monty stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him.
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies, including US armies under his control, pushed back into a retreat by the Germans.
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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