(
September 17,
1944–
September 25,
1944) was an
Allied military operation in
World War II in the Netherlands and Germany. Through large-scale use of
airborne forces, its
tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the
German-occupied
Netherlands to allow rapid advance by armored units. The strategic purpose was to allow an Allied crossing of the
Rhine river, the last major natural barrier to an advance into
Germany. The planned rapid advance from the Dutch-Belgian border into northern Germany, across the Maas (
Meuse) and two arms of the Rhine (the
Waal and the
Lower Rhine), would have outflanked the
Siegfried Line and made possible an encirclement of the
Ruhr Area, Germany's industrial heartland.
The operation was initially successful with the capture of the Waal bridge at
Nijmegen on
September 20. But it was a failure overall since the planned Allied advance across the Rhine at
Arnhem had to be abandoned. The
British 1st Airborne Division did not secure the bridge at Arnhem, and although they managed to hold out near the bridge far longer than planned, the
British XXX Corps failed to relieve them. The Rhine remained a barrier to the Allied advance until the offensives at
Remagen,
Oppenheim,
Rees and Wesel in March 1945. Due to the Allied defeat at Arnhem, the north of the Netherlands could not be liberated before winter and the
Hongerwinter ('Hungerwinter') took tens of thousands of lives, particularly in the cities of the
Randstad area.