The Polish 'border changes' were agreed at Tehran, German occupation zones were discussed at Yalta, but the final zones weren't decided until Potsdam. Only Tehran was before Market-Garden.
AHC: Operation Market Garden is a success
- Thread starter Vingilótë
- Start date
The Polish 'border changes' were agreed at Tehran, German occupation zones were discussed at Yalta, but the final zones weren't decided until Potsdam. Only Tehran was before Market-Garden.
BlairWitch749
Banned
its asb, because even if the operation advanced farther there were several long term problems that make the breakout precarious
1. 30th corps would be at the end of an extremely tenuous supply line, leaving all of their spear heads vulnerable to counter attacks and being cutoff (perhaps with troops assembling for wacht on rhine being diverted)
2. The Germans in western holland wouldn't surrender, making the allied left flank vulnerable and limiting room to manuever or advance
3. The Germans would open the sluices and dynamite the dykes north and south of the allied penetration, trapping the allies in a cream cheese mess, and creating a massive food humanitarian crises in Holland's cities. The advancing troops, trapped amongst water obstacles may have to withdraw for fear of being cut off
As Mac says in Brother's in Arms, a foolhardy plan by a foolhardy general
1. 30th corps would be at the end of an extremely tenuous supply line, leaving all of their spear heads vulnerable to counter attacks and being cutoff (perhaps with troops assembling for wacht on rhine being diverted)
2. The Germans in western holland wouldn't surrender, making the allied left flank vulnerable and limiting room to manuever or advance
3. The Germans would open the sluices and dynamite the dykes north and south of the allied penetration, trapping the allies in a cream cheese mess, and creating a massive food humanitarian crises in Holland's cities. The advancing troops, trapped amongst water obstacles may have to withdraw for fear of being cut off
As Mac says in Brother's in Arms, a foolhardy plan by a foolhardy general
- The idea was the other corps of the British and Canadian Armies would advance too, once Market Garden cut the German defenders in Holland off from their supplies. XXX Corps was not supposed to win the war on their own. Even in OTL XII and VIII Corps advanced, just not as fast as they should have, due to lack of supplies mostly.
- The troops used in OTL for Wacht on Rhine may well be employed against the spearhead, but they would probably be fed in piecemeal. No one claims XXX Corps was going to motor all the way to Berlin once they got over the Lower Rhine, there was plenty of fighting ahead.
- I can't see the German forces in Holland (except perhaps for some well-supplied garrisons in ports) not retreating once their supplies are cut off. Troops retreat when their supplies food and ammunition are cut off, particularly when they've barely stabilised from the last rout.
- The stuff about dams etc is no different to OTL and didn't cause the advance into Holland to collapse.
And I've got to say, Montgomery is normally criticised as too slow, careful and unimaginative, not as foolhardy.
BlairWitch749
Banned
the general advance wasn't sustainable due to lack of supplies, and the british army being completely spent; they desperately needed replacements advancing even farther from their actually operating supply ports would make the situation even worse
the troops over the lower rhine would be vulernable to the germans attacking from the south or being marooned by flooding, it would be a bad position to try and hold for winter
swinging far enough north to actually cut the supply lines was well beyond the spearhead capabilities and they would have run out of fuel and ammo well before then and been ripe for counter attack
apparantly Model was reluctant to dynamite everything because the territory would be recaptured in the next offensive and would limit german routes of advance; with the allies across the lower rhine, all of the dykes will be blown, the stuff to the north in particular would flood everything and put hells highway underwater in some places
monty in this particular plan was foolhardy... the only successful strategy the west had employed to that point was large scale general assault to prevent the germans from concentrating their reserves; every single allied narrow thrust attack of the past had been defeated with heavy losses, if the supply lines were too weak to support a general offensive (which they were give JCH Lee's incompetence in sorting out the supply network) then no offensive should have been launched, period
I think you are exaggerating a little.
- Once you have Arnhem you are 15 miles from the sea and you've already cut all but one east-west railway line. German troops in Holland are at best very, very close to being cut off. They just got cut off at Falaise. They aren't going to sit there like lemons and wait for it to happen again IMO.
- I know the supply situation was poor, but the whole idea was to keep the Germans routing back to Germany so we could capture the Dutch ports and solve the supply problem.
- British forces were getting weaker, but they were far from 'completely spent'. They put on Operations Veritable and Plunder after Market Garden.
- I agree it was a risky plan, or more accurately a plan that relied on momentum. Interesting though how Monty is dammed as a slow and unimaginative when he proceeds cautiously and foolhardy and incompetent when he doesn't.
BlairWitch749
Banned
monty's cautious and overwhelming pressure won the war, and handily too, British wild charges in WW2 were almost always defeated in shocking fashion... see Rommel's rebound offensive at the end of Operation Crusader for the most glaring example... it was a small scale example of the dick in door slam the Russians walked into at Kharkov (twice)
the only time monty's cautiousness cost the british anything of value was in italy because there were literally no germans opposing the 8th army after baytown (a group of 20 war correspondants was able to drive unchecked all the way to napels from calabria without meeting any germans
a good amount of fighting could have been saved if he was faster there
Damn you Shimbo!
I've got a half written TL sitting on my laptop with a very similar premise.
Admittedly, Linnet II isn't quite my PoD, and (at present) the end result is not as good for the allies in general, or Britain in particular, but...
... It's far too close to be comfortable. STOP READING MY THOUGHTS!
usertron2020
Donor
Agreed.
Unfortunately for Monty and the history books, his own combat history of "never having lost a battle"
and how he did so compares very curiously with what he had been incessantly demanding of Eisenhower pretty much from the Normandy breakout. The man who'd made his career on the overwhelmingly attack on the broad front wanted the narrow front assault coming out of Normandy. His own memoirs say this time again and again: give 21st Army Group (including US 9th Army) nearly 100% of the resources coming out of Cherbourg and the artificial harbors and he would win the war, while the rest of the army (12th Army Group) would just sit in Normandy "guarding the beachhead".Apparently he really did believe, in spite of all the logistical and strategic evidence to the contrary, that Nazi Germany was going to completely collapse before the force of 21st AG alone, with a supply line tethered hundreds of miles away in NW France and no southern flank whatsoever. And Hitler was just going to do nothing to respond to Monty's actions. Market-Garden in many ways was just a delayed version of this very strategy. The results were merely a far less sorry version than the totally catastrophic results you would have seen had Monty had his way coming out of Normandy.
Some interesting reading in this thread! In It Never Snows in September it says that the Arhnem bridge could have been taken, the road was wide open to Allied armour that stopped for the night - the Germans couldn't understand why the allied troops had stopped advancing. It sounds like it might have been possible to succeed if Patton's army had been leading the armoured attack, or if the British troops had had it drummed into them more that they needed to keep going - no matter what.
By the way, if you haven't read that book, it's a real eye-opener that shows the terrible state of German troops at that stage of the war. It says that troops were thrown into the battle straight from the recruiting depots, without any training, and that anything that looked like a tank was used - including some Panzer IIIs. Any troops that could be scraped up, including naval troops and coastal artillery troops and the medical battalions, were thrown in.
Some other things that might have made a difference: better weather, so the drops can proceed as planned. Also if the plans for the entire operation hadn't been discovered so early on in a crashed glider it would have helped a lot.
By the way, if you haven't read that book, it's a real eye-opener that shows the terrible state of German troops at that stage of the war. It says that troops were thrown into the battle straight from the recruiting depots, without any training, and that anything that looked like a tank was used - including some Panzer IIIs. Any troops that could be scraped up, including naval troops and coastal artillery troops and the medical battalions, were thrown in.
Some other things that might have made a difference: better weather, so the drops can proceed as planned. Also if the plans for the entire operation hadn't been discovered so early on in a crashed glider it would have helped a lot.
I wonder if there had been better weather, more transports available, more coordination, as well as more fighter cover if there may have been better success? I still do not think that MG would have worked in full, but some of the goals could have been reached.
Having Patton as the driving force and not Monty... NOW that would have made for a movie.
Having Patton as the driving force and not Monty... NOW that would have made for a movie.
I'm generally in the it could have been done successfully if carried out a little differently but it probably wouldn't have made a massive strategic difference to things camp. It was launched on the assumption that the Germans were about to fall and one last push would see them go over which as we know now wasn't the case, plus considering the logistics chain they were at the end of I think they would have probably been able to dig in an armoured division and an infantry over the bridge but then have to stop to consolidate and reinforce the salient the supply route running through Nijmegen to Arnhem. Whether they would be enough to close off the coastal route from the northern Netherlands back to Germany is tricky, I think the German troops would probably try and do a Falaise to fight their way back east. Even if they sit tight their lines of communication are pretty much cut off.
Wacht am Rhein still happens, possibly even encouraged to happen by the success, which curtails future operations but once that's taken care of Operations Veritable and Grenade proceed to clear the way for the crossing of the Rhine. IIRC in our timeline when the Allies forced the Rhine the German defenders were able to move quite a few of their units backwards and forwards to counter individual attempts. The two divisions up at Arnhem force the Germans to keep a fair number of their troops up that way even if they don't move, if they start making noises timed to coincide with the crossings the Germans are spread even thinner. Market Garden is eventually seen as a tactical success that helped with the clearing of the Netherlands and crossing of the Rhine but not the strategic Allied masterstroke that was originally hoped for, it also helps dispel the view of Montgomery as a slow plodder somewhat. Historians and enthusiasts on message boards however still find other topics to argue over.
Wacht am Rhein still happens, possibly even encouraged to happen by the success, which curtails future operations but once that's taken care of Operations Veritable and Grenade proceed to clear the way for the crossing of the Rhine. IIRC in our timeline when the Allies forced the Rhine the German defenders were able to move quite a few of their units backwards and forwards to counter individual attempts. The two divisions up at Arnhem force the Germans to keep a fair number of their troops up that way even if they don't move, if they start making noises timed to coincide with the crossings the Germans are spread even thinner. Market Garden is eventually seen as a tactical success that helped with the clearing of the Netherlands and crossing of the Rhine but not the strategic Allied masterstroke that was originally hoped for, it also helps dispel the view of Montgomery as a slow plodder somewhat. Historians and enthusiasts on message boards however still find other topics to argue over.
One other improvement would have been to tell the RAF to wind their necks in and that they're just going to have to accept the consequences of doing two drops on the first day as there is a war on you know. I can't remember where I read it now but apparently the anti-aircraft defences were much lighter on the first day as opposed to the next or a couple of days afterwards once the Germans had realised what was going on and dragged every gun they could lay their hands on into range.
That's harsh on the RAF. The 'single drop per day' and 'no duel towing' decisions were made by USAAF Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton, head of 1st Allied Airborne Army (who was also in command of the parachute units, so it wasn't a 'political' decision) and most of the units involved were from IX Troop Carrier Command, USAAF.
Damn you Shimbo!
I've got a half written TL sitting on my laptop with a very similar premise.
Admittedly, Linnet II isn't quite my PoD, and (at present) the end result is not as good for the allies in general, or Britain in particular, but...
... It's far too close to be comfortable. STOP READING MY THOUGHTS!
I've been thinking of writing a story set in the ATL. It's an interesting PoD. Market Garden came pretty close to success anyway. It'd be interesting to work out a timeline where it did as background for a story.
Message me what you've produced if you like. I'm working on some maps.
I very much agree. A successful market garden won't change the overall situation that the Soviet Union had to do the main part of the fighting against Germany.
However, if a situation as sketched out leads to an earlier start for Anglo-American offensives into Germany proper, an earlier end to the war, a more easternly fronline from with British and American will later withdraw; less destruction raining upon Germany's cities. That's all a plus.
Stands to question how much this bottled up army can still accomplish.
I think you are a bit mistaken if you imagine that it is possible to inundate the whole Netherlands at will....
Arnhem is situated 14m above sea level. You might get it flooded just in case the Rhine runs high water.
The Dutch defense works, the traditional ones as well as the Grebbe line, run west of Arnheim. If the Germans wish to open these dykes, they trap themselves in the Randstad area.
So please elaborate which dykes the Germans are supposed to dynamite in case that the British stay in Arnhem. Perhaps I am just mistaken.
By the way, OTL, the Dutch suffered a huge humanitarian food crisis in 1944/45 anyways, due to the Germans cutting their supplies, favouring Germany proper (yes, when most of the Nazi empire is lost, you have to make your the Aryan brother nation suffer).
-for an army completely spent XXX advanced amazingly well;
-we have established earlier in this thread that some improvement of the port-situation is a "condition sine qua ASB"
I wouldn't expect that to happen over the course of the next days. But "far enough North" is little more than a couple of miles. Once the bridgehead is established, reinforced and supplies stocked up, it is not an ambitious operation to get to the Zuiderzee.
I agree that the original idea to get as far as Apeldoorn and beyond in the initial thrust, well, that really stretches it.
And: an Allied bridgehead in Arnheim will hurt.
It will hurt Münster, Wesel, Enschede, Wesel, Coesfeld, Dülmen, Dorsten, Bocholt, Rheine, Zwolle. Every halfway logistically noticeable city in the run-up for a counter-attack on Arnheim will be bombarded to a pulp a good deal more than in OTL.
But: GARDEN, the thrust attack,worked fine in this case, only MARKET, the airborne operation, went so spectacularly wrong, due to GARDEN being unable to cover the last 25 kilometres in time.
Which would allow the Germans to consolidate in the Southern Netherlands.
Again, we do not talk about "Hitler's Mediterranean Strategy" or the drive to Baku. We deal with several Kilometres more and we established that it would need the involvement of a supply-relevant POD.
Elucidate
If its from Monty's memoirs, never mind
Monty and Patton, two peas in a pod ego wise.
Best thing you could do is throw Monty under a subway train.
Clearing the Scheldt would be good, but wouldn't that make Market-Garden unnecessary?
And while I agree with almost everything suggested as improvements, I have to ask why nobody's addressed a key issue: moving an entire corps along one elevated road with polder on both sides.
Which idiot approved that?
Clearing the Scheldt would be good, but wouldn't that make Market-Garden unnecessary?
And while I agree with almost everything suggested as improvements, I have to ask why nobody's addressed a key issue: moving an entire corps along one elevated road with polder on both sides.
Which idiot approved that?