There is whole host of proposed airborne operations between landing in Normandy and crossing the Rhine, that were cancelled, but none divides historians as the plan named Market Garden. Some accuse Montgomery of missing the chance to end the war early with his caution, while others see his focus on clearing Scheldt as a sound strategic decision. In your opinion, what course would history take if the proponents of the airborne offensive got their way?
DBWI: Market Garden Instead Of Scheldt Battle
- Thread starter Court Jester
- Start date
There no way that the Tanks could have move as fast as the plan called for going up a single road.
I would not want to be the guys at Arnhem , since they would have had to hold out far more then the 48 hours that the plan called for.
And I thought I read that a Panzer unit was resting at Arnhem?
That would have made for a bad day for the Troop who jumped in there.
Nonsense
The SS 'Panzer' units at Arnhem was 2 Divisions in name only - both units having been shattered over the summer battles in Normandy and 'resting' in order to absorb reinforcements and new equipment a process only just started
The airborne units were quite capable of grabbing the 8 odd Bridges within hours of dropping and 1st Airborne was quite capable of holding Arnhem Bridge for 3 days (if indeed it needed to hold it for that length of time)
These are Elite paratroopers FFS and by Sept 44 veterans of several campaigns.
The operation is so obvious what stuns me is that it was not attempted
Turn the main defences on the Franco-German border and threaten the Ruhr Valley while liberating much of the Netherlands in the process
The very success of the operation would have cut off most of the Heer's 15th Army from Germany and allowed it to wither on the vine or to flee in a 'small dunkirk' abandoning all its heavy equipment, artillery and M/T - it would also have forced the Germans to extend their front line by well over 100 miles and this would very likely have prevented the Battle of the Bulge from being attempted in the first place as the German commanders would be obliged to move those formations and their equipment , supplies etc to cover this new frontage.
While it might not have ended WW2 by Christmas it would have forced the Germans to dance to the Western Allies tune and certainly allowed for a better jumping off point once the Western Allied Logistics were sorted out and perhaps importantly given the Western Allies a better set of seats at the Yalta Conference.
One bridge blown and the whole thing's pointless. They get to liberate southern Holland--OK, good for them, but Amsterdam and Rotterdam remain in German hands, and if the Arnhem bridge is lost, they have to mount a whole other major offensive to cross the Rhine.
And given Prince Bernhard's thoughts on the proposal in his memoir, specifically his pointing out that Dutch wargames had discussed the approach to Arnhem before the war and concluded that it would be functionally impossible to advance to Arnhem along the raised highways without getting annihilated by antitank fire, I am skeptical that it would take less than a week to reach Arnhem.
Besides, something's gotta give--if Monty has 30 Corps prepare for the strike into Holland, he has to abort the Scheldt clearance. If he does, the German troops there can continue their withdrawal in better order--right into Holland and the path of the paratroopers.
Opening the ports and freeing up trucks to support the American offensive was a very sound decision on Monty's part, and shows a great deal more dedication to the alliance than Patton did. I can see that asshole launching Market-Garden.
And given Prince Bernhard's thoughts on the proposal in his memoir, specifically his pointing out that Dutch wargames had discussed the approach to Arnhem before the war and concluded that it would be functionally impossible to advance to Arnhem along the raised highways without getting annihilated by antitank fire, I am skeptical that it would take less than a week to reach Arnhem.
Besides, something's gotta give--if Monty has 30 Corps prepare for the strike into Holland, he has to abort the Scheldt clearance. If he does, the German troops there can continue their withdrawal in better order--right into Holland and the path of the paratroopers.
Opening the ports and freeing up trucks to support the American offensive was a very sound decision on Monty's part, and shows a great deal more dedication to the alliance than Patton did. I can see that asshole launching Market-Garden.
Even "Shattered" panzer units can be nasty for Airborne units to deal with.
What anti tank gear did the British jump with?
The big issue would have been the ground assault.
The Germans had some of those Bridges wired to explode .
The plan for Market Garden assumed that the Airborne unit would take all those bridges .
But if just one of them were blown , that would have delay that advance big time.
And what happens if one of those bridges is not taken immediately?
Yes if it work, it would have had a major effect on the war.
But It would have been risky .
I still think Ike was right in focusing on the Battle of the Scheldt.
Given the British advance in 1945 being held up because they ignored Dutch Army units warnings about not using the roads allowing for columns to be shot up easily?
The airborne units would've been lucky to hold out on enough to hear the distant artillery of their relief as they surrendered.
Edit: Monty was a even bigger dick than Patton in many respects and his plan was only written that way so he could get his way after Patton took his toy in Sicily and France.
The airborne units would've been lucky to hold out on enough to hear the distant artillery of their relief as they surrendered.
Edit: Monty was a even bigger dick than Patton in many respects and his plan was only written that way so he could get his way after Patton took his toy in Sicily and France.
Last edited:
Ive gamed this out several times, the plan such as it was as written, & with assumed improvements.
1. The attack is limited to the airborne and British XXX Corps. The adjacent 21 AG corps were not ready to follow and cover the XXX Corps flanks. I've not found and logistics magic that gets them to this.
2. The same sort of ability to form effective ad hoc units applies here as anywhere else. Consistently the Germans were able to form up emergency combat units in just a few days. This repeatedly stalled the Allied advances at critical moments on all fronts. There is clear evidence such a reorganization of the German 'refugees' in the proposed Market-Garden area of operations were reformed into a effective defense.
3. There a assumption the airborne carpet would have been placed in a afternoon. The reality its it would have taken up to four lifts to place the complete airborne force from the south to Nijemegan, Arnhem, and Appledorn.
4. A look at the proposed operation reveals some sloppy thinking in placement of drop zones and timing. ie: the plan of the 82d ABD to capture the Grosbeak Heights first, the then the assigned bridges. Their proposed DZ do not support a early capture of the bridges. Same for the Brit 1st ABD at Arnhem. The proposed DZ were several KM from the critical bridge. Further north the valuable Appledorn airfield had no initial air assault. It was to be capture last by XXX Corps, the the 51st Inf Div flown in. Theres a lot of other features, but its a complex plan that as written sacrificed mass and speed for a lot of complex efforts of uncertain reasoning.
The usual result on the game board is the XXX Corps advancing slower than required, and a number of forward air borne units cut off & destroyed. Even where the XXX Corps advances to all objectives, including Appledorns airfield it is so exhausted and busy covering its flanks its a poor operational and worse strategic result.
1. The attack is limited to the airborne and British XXX Corps. The adjacent 21 AG corps were not ready to follow and cover the XXX Corps flanks. I've not found and logistics magic that gets them to this.
2. The same sort of ability to form effective ad hoc units applies here as anywhere else. Consistently the Germans were able to form up emergency combat units in just a few days. This repeatedly stalled the Allied advances at critical moments on all fronts. There is clear evidence such a reorganization of the German 'refugees' in the proposed Market-Garden area of operations were reformed into a effective defense.
3. There a assumption the airborne carpet would have been placed in a afternoon. The reality its it would have taken up to four lifts to place the complete airborne force from the south to Nijemegan, Arnhem, and Appledorn.
4. A look at the proposed operation reveals some sloppy thinking in placement of drop zones and timing. ie: the plan of the 82d ABD to capture the Grosbeak Heights first, the then the assigned bridges. Their proposed DZ do not support a early capture of the bridges. Same for the Brit 1st ABD at Arnhem. The proposed DZ were several KM from the critical bridge. Further north the valuable Appledorn airfield had no initial air assault. It was to be capture last by XXX Corps, the the 51st Inf Div flown in. Theres a lot of other features, but its a complex plan that as written sacrificed mass and speed for a lot of complex efforts of uncertain reasoning.
The usual result on the game board is the XXX Corps advancing slower than required, and a number of forward air borne units cut off & destroyed. Even where the XXX Corps advances to all objectives, including Appledorns airfield it is so exhausted and busy covering its flanks its a poor operational and worse strategic result.
A lot of the gazing at this MARKET-GARDEN comes from the difficulties of the Schedule campaign. Historians have picked that one apart, & its been gamed out a lot, including a joint NATO exercise back in the 1970s.
1. The priority for XXX Corps to seize Antwerp deprived the 1st Canadian army of a few few critical fuel deliveries. Its difficult to see a way round this. It requires a crystal ball to see on 1 Sept the Canadians getting to the Scheldt crossings are the key, not Antwerp. I doubt that could have changed.
2. Allowing the retreating 15th Army to reach the Scheldt guarantees a viable defense of Beveland and Walchern islands. It is possible to substitute a airborne op to seize the Scheldt crossings and adjacent road net. But, again that requires near magical prescience seven to ten days previous. 1 September only the gun crews of the naval coastal defenses were manned, and backed by part of a category III infantry division on Walhern island. Beveled had a few companies of military police and infantry detached from regiments near Antwerp. The other 95% of the 15th Army was still struggling up the coastal routes in its attempt to out run the Canadians. A lot of them were trapped in coastal enclaves, but not enough.
3. The Canadians operation to seize Beveland & Walchern operations were classic 21st AG methodical Colossal Crack doctrine. Speed was needed to prevent 15th Army from consolidating a defense. With Montgomery at the helm that was not to be.
4. On both Beveland and Walchern the airborne were underused. There was a small brigade drop on the abandoned airfield on Walcheren & a smaller op to capture a bridge on Beveland. The reasoning was the Polder fields were unsuitable for any AB landing.
But this is all familiar ground. Any of a dozen books outline why the Scheldt seaway was not opened to Antwerp until mid October.
Oh totally - the mission would have been there for the Allied units to lose - but it would have to take a cascade of failures for the whole op to fail
And the reward of a successful op outweighs the risks IMO
To my mind the 'failure' to take this risk allowed the Heer to reinforce the Westwall, made the battles around Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest incredibly costly and the subsequent Wacht am Rhein battle possible
Allied forces astride the peel line (Edit: actually the IJSSELINE between Zwolle and Arnhem - the Peel line is further south) threatening the Ruhr would have stretched Model's forces to the limit and very likely have made those battles 'easier' for the US Army and the Wacht am Rhein battle impossible
Instead I suspect that any husbanded forces would have been used to 'restore' the safety of the Ruhr valley through either a counter attack or more likely a greater defence in depth.
The Battle of the Scheldt could take place anyway - many of the units used in the battle were not in a position to engage in it much before Oct anyway and I doubt many would have been involved in the proposed Op MG - and again the assault on Walcheren would always have to take place only when the necessary assault units were in place (namely the Commando units which had spent Sept and part of Oct 'rebuilding' and then training for the mission) which I doubt would be delayed had Op MG been conducted and having been cut off for longer (by being cut off from Germany) many of the 15th Army's units would have been out of supply for longer and the bloody battles to clear the Scheldt might have gone easier!?
And any delay IMO would have been worth it 'if the op was successful'
I am afraid while Ike's broad front strategy was 'safe' it cost the allies a lot of lives and casualties over the winter by allowing the Germans to regain some initiative to move reserves around and ultimately do the impossible, that is launch a surprise attack through the Ardennes, and possibly delayed the end of the war by a couple of months and I rue the fact that Op MG or a similar operation to turn the Westwall was not attempted (even if it failed!) - and a failed Op MG would not imperil the Western Allies - but a successful one would certainly more greatly imperil the Germans.
Last edited:
You pays your money and you takes your chance. Compared to what the German airborne forces pulled off in Holland in 1940, this one looks downright reasonable. On the one side we have the German front-line units, badly depleted and severely short of supplies, trying to hold back a concentrated armoured thrust, on the other we have ad-hoc and reserve German forces trying to mount an offensive against elite airborne formations who only have to hold on to win. And the Allies have air supremacy and lots of bombers.
That said, I still don't like it. The problem is the narrowness of the advance - basically a single road. It's not just the chance of a bridge being blown - if the Germans get a solid block in place anywhere on the road between Eindhoven and Arnhem the whole plan falls apart. A fast armoured breakthrough is best conducted by pressing on multiple axes, finding a weak spot, then busting through and exploiting, but here there are just too many chokepoints to make that viable, so you're reduced to playing sledgehammer. Plus the added risk of counterattacks against your very thin supply corridor, after the spearheads have passed.
Which brings up another point - to work, the plan really needs a Patton or Rommel leading the armoured column, screaming that logistics is for losers and his flanks are someone else's problem. Instead, it would get Montgomery and his team, and for all their undoubted abilities, none of them are hell-for-leather stormtroopers. I can easily see them pausing at point A for reconnaissance, then pausing at point B to let the support units catch up, then pausing at point C to rotate depleted units off point, then arriving at point D to find their chances of success have evaporated. And, as @Carl Schwamberger has pointed out, the outline plan they came up with was over-complicated and bizarrely cautious.
On top of that, I think the gains from a successful Market-Garden have been over-sold. Suppose it all works and XXX Corps gets a bridgehead over the Lower Rhine. It's now October, XXX Corps is fought out, its supply line is a single road and Antwerp hasn't been cleared behind them. By the time the Allies have sorted out their supplies and can consider a breakout, the Germans have had time to reposition, winter is coming on - and the winter of 1944-5 was a hard one. The most likely outcome is static fighting around the bridgehead, with the breakout not being achieved until February-March. Sure, it'll forestall Wacht am Rhein - but since the main practical effect of that was to eliminate the Germans' last aircraft and armour reserves, I'm not so sure it's a gain.
The German gamble at Dordrecht in 1940 was worth it because success put them inside Fortress Holland, leading to Dutch resistance collapsing in a matter of days. Success in Market-Garden puts the Allies in Arnhem - which is a nice strategic position, but still a long way from the Ruhr or Hamburg or anywhere really critical. It won't end the war by Christmas.
That said, I still don't like it. The problem is the narrowness of the advance - basically a single road. It's not just the chance of a bridge being blown - if the Germans get a solid block in place anywhere on the road between Eindhoven and Arnhem the whole plan falls apart. A fast armoured breakthrough is best conducted by pressing on multiple axes, finding a weak spot, then busting through and exploiting, but here there are just too many chokepoints to make that viable, so you're reduced to playing sledgehammer. Plus the added risk of counterattacks against your very thin supply corridor, after the spearheads have passed.
Which brings up another point - to work, the plan really needs a Patton or Rommel leading the armoured column, screaming that logistics is for losers and his flanks are someone else's problem. Instead, it would get Montgomery and his team, and for all their undoubted abilities, none of them are hell-for-leather stormtroopers. I can easily see them pausing at point A for reconnaissance, then pausing at point B to let the support units catch up, then pausing at point C to rotate depleted units off point, then arriving at point D to find their chances of success have evaporated. And, as @Carl Schwamberger has pointed out, the outline plan they came up with was over-complicated and bizarrely cautious.
On top of that, I think the gains from a successful Market-Garden have been over-sold. Suppose it all works and XXX Corps gets a bridgehead over the Lower Rhine. It's now October, XXX Corps is fought out, its supply line is a single road and Antwerp hasn't been cleared behind them. By the time the Allies have sorted out their supplies and can consider a breakout, the Germans have had time to reposition, winter is coming on - and the winter of 1944-5 was a hard one. The most likely outcome is static fighting around the bridgehead, with the breakout not being achieved until February-March. Sure, it'll forestall Wacht am Rhein - but since the main practical effect of that was to eliminate the Germans' last aircraft and armour reserves, I'm not so sure it's a gain.
The German gamble at Dordrecht in 1940 was worth it because success put them inside Fortress Holland, leading to Dutch resistance collapsing in a matter of days. Success in Market-Garden puts the Allies in Arnhem - which is a nice strategic position, but still a long way from the Ruhr or Hamburg or anywhere really critical. It won't end the war by Christmas.
The problem was getting fuel and ammunition to the Canadian Army, to lack of units. In September XXX Corps ha priority the first five days, until it was setting into Antwerp, then it went to the Canadians & is quantity for positioning a set piece attack across the Scheldt. There was not enough transport to supply two divergent attacks on dispersed axis.
This circles back to the criticism for not using the plentiful airborne more aggressively. Only four battalions were used in the assaults on Beveland & Walchern. Both badly demoralized the defenders in their immediate vicinity, really aiding the water crossing. Proposals for increasing those to four or eight brigades allows a faster concentration of elite infantry on the defenders, vs the extra time it took to make the single Commando brigade ready. The survivors of the 1th Army assembling on Walchern were still disorganized & with low morale 3-7 September. A robust para assault on both sides of the Scheldt to seize the ferry sites would make good use of the speed they could be deployed and speed up the attack to the period of greatest vulnerability.
The period 25 August to 5 September were for 21 Army group not the stereotype methodical battle. The 'Great Swan' from the Somme to Brussels, the frantic thrusts by the Canadians to cut off fragments of the 15th Army and seize the coastal ports before defenses consolidated were models of speed and urgency (and some admirable supply improvisation) that compared well with the 12th Army Groups rush across France & eastern Belgium. By urging the Canadians on with the priority of supply to them & a larger scale airborne operation its possible the exhausted and fragile remnant of the 15th Army would fall apart. Allowing Walchern & Beveland secured by Sept 30th.
The 15th Army was not immediately dependent on supply from Germany. There were material in the depots in the Netherlands for some four months defensive operations & some incoming material via barge during the autumn. So no cutting the Rhine barge traffic, or the railway through Appledorn would not leave 15th Army benefit of ammunition that week or month.
I don't disagree with what you point out - simply that a successful MG would have been worth the subtle delay and potential harder fights in the Beveland area with the pay off that the fighting would be easier elsewhere as a result and the entire 15th Army likely in the bag
While it would have access to local supplies it would be completely cut off from Germany
And Walchern would still need to be taken by sea born assault which would still take time to organise and plan and I don't think the Canadians could have reorganised any quicker than they did
They were still strung out around Dieppe on the 3rd Sept - indeed Monty and Crerar had a major falling out due to the 'Victory Parade' held on the 3rd to commemorate the Canadians who fell during the Dieppe raid.
Monty felt that this was a gross waste of time when he was prodding and pushing units hard to advance as rapidly as possible (he later apologised to the Canadian commander)
Remember the capture of Antwerp was way ahead of even the most optimistic schedule and the planning had assumed that the place would be a ruin
'Bouncing the Rhine' and threatening Germanys Ruhr however had become a serious possibility before the port was captured intact and it was a clear and obvious opportunity.
I think it would have been correct to have attempted it as it would have shortened the war significantly IMO (had it worked - and again worth the Risk IMO)