Comments by "TheVilla Aston" (@thevillaaston7811) on "Britain's Worst Airborne Disaster: Battle of Arnhem | Animated History" video.
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@asmodeus0454
But what does Max Hastings bring to the subject?
All the key information has been in the public domain for decades. All the key people involved had had their say, and are long since dead, there must be virtually no one alive now who was at Arnhem. How many documents and facts are quoted that have not appeared before? How many one on one interviews did Hastings conduct?
As far as the troops at Arnhem are concerned, Martin Middlebrook built his 1994 work: 'Arnhem 1944 The Airborne Battle' around the testimony of those that were there. He interviewed 500 veterans. Even then, nearly thirty ago it was probably almost too late.
Beevor, Buckingham, Barr, Hastings, and so on, have all churned out stuff about MARKET GARDEN. Each in turn is hailed as difinitive, or the last word, or some such . The subject just gets raked over, again and again and again. There is always a dig at Montgomery, Brererton, Browning, Gavin, and so on, with none of them now able to answer back. In many cases these writers state opinion as if it is fact.
Antony bloody Beevor justified his effort by claiming to have unearthed evidence about the suffering of the Dutch people in the Winter of 1944-45. Yea...its only been known about since the newsreels and press coverage in May 1945 of OPERATION MANNA.
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Its a definite no.
Britain (and France), went to war on behalf of Poland, in spite of multiple offers of a peace deal by Hitler. The treaty with Poland only covered an attack on Poland by Germany, not an attack by any other country. The British Government went into this undertaking in 1939 despite being aware that the country could not be ready for a general war until 1941.
2,936 Fighter Command pilots took part in the Battle of Britain, 145 of them were Polish. The Polish squadrons only took part in the second half of the battle. The idea that Polish saved our ‘butts’ in the Battle of Britain is absurd.
The governments of Britain and the USA were no position to be able to condemn the massacre of Polish soldiers at Katyn by the Russians, when he news came out in 1943. Such a condemnation would have meant agreeing with the Nazis at a time when Russia was bearing the brunt of the war on land.
There is no evidence that Władysław Sikorski was murdered. Why would anyone risk trying to murder him in a plane crash? He was not important enough to warrant such treatment.
General Sosabowski was not blamed for the failure at Arnhem. Rightly or wrongly he was criticized from his performance, and the performance of his troops at Arnhem. But that is quite a different matter from blame for overall operation.
Churchill tried repeatedly to get help from Russia and the USA for assistance in airlifting supplies to the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw up-rising, without success until the very end.
Poland was not betrayed at the Yalta conference. By the time of the conference, Poland was almost wholly in Russian hands, and Britain and the USA had zero leverage on Russian actions.
The omission of a Polish squadron from the 1946 victory parade in London, while other Polish military units were invited to take part was a regrettable mis-judgement on the part of the government of the day, but this was more than made up for the 1947 Polish Resettlement Act.
Britain fed, clothed, and housed many thousands of Polish people during the war. It is surely not unreasonable that those Poles that were able should have joined in with the fighting where they could.
WINSTON S CHURCHILL.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
CASSELL & CO LTD
VOLUME VI TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY
1954.
P563
The burden lay on British shoulders. When their homeland had been overrun and they had been driven from France many Poles had sheltered upon our shores. There was no worth-while property belonging to the Polish Government in London. I said I believed there was about .£20,000,000 in gold in London and Canada. This had been frozen by us, since it was an asset of the Central Bank of Poland. Unfreezing and moving it to a Central Polish Bank must follow the normal channels for such transfers. It was not the property of the Polish Government in London and they had no power to draw upon it. There was of course the Polish Embassy in London, which was open and available for a Polish Ambassador as soon as the new Polish Government cared to send one—and the sooner the better.
In view of this one might well ask how the Polish Government had been financed during its five and a half years in the United Kingdom. The answer was that it had been supported by the British Government; we had paid the Poles about .£120,000,000 to finance their Army and diplomatic service, and to enable them to look after Poles who had sought refuge on our shores from the
German scourge. When we had disavowed the Polish Government in London and recognised the new Provisional Polish Government it was arranged that three months' salary should be paid to all employees and that they should then be dismissed. It would have been improper to have dismissed them without this payment, and the expense had fallen upon Great Britain.
All clear now?..
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CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD.
1954
P509
‘On the day after the fall of Paris, [25th August 1944] the SHAEF Intelligence Summary, reviewing the situation in the West, declared: " Two and a half months of bitter fighting, culminating for the Germans in a blood-bath big enough even for their extravagant tastes, have brought the end of the war in Europe within sight, almost within reach. The strength of the German Armies in the West has been shattered, Paris belongs to France again, and the Allied Armies are streaming towards the frontiers of the Reich.”
THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT
THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1944-1945
Rick Atkinson
LITTLE BROWN 2013.
This paperback edition published in 2013.
P260
‘A SHAEF intelligence summary issued September 16 reported that “the enemy has now suffered , in the West alone, losses in men and equipment that can never be repaired in this war….No force can, then, be built up in the West sufficient for a counteroffensive or even a successful defensive.” German strength facing the 100,000-man XXX Corps directly across the Dutch border was estimated at six infantry battalions backed by twenty armored vehicles and a dozen field guns; scant enemy activity had been detected in the last two days.’
FYI. SHAEF was Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
For British, Canadian and US forces.
And the purely Britisg arrogance is where?..
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@bessarion1771
'Literally in the letter you posted he said " this brigade performed very badly here and the men showed no keenness to fight if it meant risking their own lives (.) " Which was a bold faced lie and Montgomery KNEW it was a lie. What a filthy gutless way to assault the allies.' Your words.
Literally, what Montgomery stated may have been a lie, it may have been the
truth. Wh can know? I don't. It was definately an opinion. He was entitled to his opinion, especially in a private letter to a colleague.
Montgomery's opinion would seem to be in line with one Geoffrey Powell, who, in his memoir of Arnhem stated of Polish troops put under his command in the Oosterbeek perimeter:
MEN AT ARNHEM
GEOFFREY POWELL
Pen and Sword Books 2004
P164
'At irregular intervals from the late evening onwards, clusters of mortar bombs had fallen among and around us, harming no one but preventing sleep, at least for me. Others, between spells of sentry duty, had collapsed exhausted into oblivion. Four times enemy patrols had roused them from their stupor as the night exploded into noise and light, with red tracer whipping the trees and white flares blossoming overhead. No one had been hit, but losses there had been. On stand-to rounds I had found the Polish trenches empty except for Peter, their corporal, crouched grimly behind his Bren. The rest of the party had vanished in the early hours, sensing perhaps that they had attached themselves to an unlucky unit. Peter explained nothing, but his embarrassment was clear; it was both unfair and pointless to press him for details when either pride or sense of duty had kept him there to fight on among strangers.
The thought of what would have happened if the enemy had attacked from this direction against a position held by the one solitary man was chilling. It was a mistake to trust strangers. I had learned yet another lesson: rely only on those you knew.'
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@bessarion1771
Your post:
"Like Browning, Montgomery, despite his postwar admissions, outrageously made the Poles the scapegoat. In a scathing letter to the chief of the imperial general staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, he characterized them as gutless. “I do not want this brigade here again,” he said, and suggested they be sent to join their comrades in Italy. To this day, the unfortunate stain upon the honor of these brave men has yet to be officially erased."
How is this Montgomery's words?
This is quote I have seen from Montgomery:
`Polish Para Brigade fought very badly and the men showed no keenness to fight if it meant risking their own lives. I do not want this brigade here and possibly you may like to send them to join other Poles in Italy.’
as far I can see those words might also have been written by Montgomery if Arnhem had succeeded, but Montgomery considered that this or that unit had perfomed badly.
For Montgomery to have scapegoated the Poles for Arnhem, I would need to see quote of proven provenace, to read something like:
'Arnhem failed because of the performance of the Poles'
Do you have such a quote?
As it happens, it is on record that Montgomery blamed the weather, a lack of backing from Eisenhower, and Montgomery's own mistakes, for Arnhem not being taken.
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Gel Syk
Montgomery [Bernard] scared...
MONTY
The Field-Marshal
1944-1976
NIGEL HAMILTON
HAMISH HAMILTON
LONDON
1986
P259 - 260
'Monty's own fearlessness was legendary. Standing on the beaches of Dunkirk he had berated his ADC for not wearing a helmet after a shell had landed almost beside them. 'But sir, nor are you,' the helpless young officer had complained. Landing in Sicily, Monty had toured the bridge-head in a DUKW with Lord Louis Mountbatten, C-in-C Combined Operations. When a German aircraft screamed very low over their heads Mountbatten had wisely thrown himself to the floor of the vehicle. 'Get up, get up,' Monty had chided him impatiently. Though he was conscious and careful of his health, with a near-
fetish for pullovers worn one on top of the other, he seemed to feel no fear of enemy sniper, artillery or aircraft fire. Indeed so oblivious did he seem to the danger of snipers in Normandy that the War Office had sent a special cable pleading with him to wear less conspicuous 'uniform', lest like Nelson he fall needless victim to an enemy sharp-shooter—a cable that amused Monty since it so patently ignored the dictates of great leadership in battle, that a commander must be seen by his men and recognized.'
P.S. Big Woody also goes by the name of Para Dave on YouTube comments.
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