Operation Market Garden - Was it a Tactical Disaster?

Mark Conley

Mark Conley

Active member
There has been some talk about the Operation known as Market Garden-a plan conceived by General Montgomery that if it had been sucessful, surely would have shortened the war. As it stands, it has been batted around as the worst or at least a canidate for one of the worst World War II tactical disasters.

http://www.arnhemarchive.org/depth.htm

This link will take the reader to a good site dealing with the entire operation. Not only is it informative, but it contains pictures dealing with the battle sites, and maps.

I would like the reader, once they have at least read the site, and to have done a little research on their own, to decide and post their opinion on Operation Market Garden.

questions to consider: Was it really a disaster or not? What were the main tactical blunders committed? Would you hold any one party to blame? If not one, are there two or more people you think should take the blame? Should anyone get the blame at all? if so why?

Remember, everyone is intitled to an opinion. However, no flamming or disrespect for a posters opinion, when presented properly by the forum rules, will be tolerated.

Good hunting gentlemen and ladies: :D
 
I will say that it was a good plan , but do to failure to heed the Dutch intel , and to no small degree the weather the plan wasn't TOTALLY a success. I do think that 90% of the objectives were obtained , but as the movies' title states they went a bridge too far. The greatest failure of the operation IMO is that it gave the jerrys a psychological edge in knowing they had turned back the Allied 'death blow' as one would put it , and this opened the door for the jerrys to take the offensive , instead of taking away their will to fight.
 
Well, from my understanding of the operation, it was a tactical success. Success in that it caught the Germans off-guard and the paratroopers were able to obtain a good number of their objectives despite the disparity in planning.

But from there a few of the tidbits from planning come to unravel the plan.

For starters, there was the fact that they dropped the paratroopers miles away from their objectives, having them rely on jeeps which were on gliders. However, many of the gliders got wrecked and they had to march it from there, horribly screwed up with the fatigue and timing of the attack.

Also there was the inability to drop all of the paratroopers in one swoop. There was an insufficient number of planes required to do it all at once. What surprises me more is that it, being Monty's plan, was put forward anyways considering his temperament. So the paratroopers were severely hampered in their mobility and range, which are the two obvious weakpoints of Airborne Infantry which must be compensated for in daring with planning.

The other flaw was the speed in which the armored relief came to reinforce the paratroopers. Paratroopers are light infantry and can't be expected to hold off against heavy forces for long on their own, so time is of the essence in such operations.

Aside from those planned flaws, there were the misfortunes of war. There's the Panzer division which was unaccounted for in reconnaisance, which was able to overrun the assault troops. And then there's the downed officer who had the complete Allied plans for the operation taken by the Germans. That allowed the Germans to utilize the considerable forces they had at hand to counter the operation.

So in my opinion, it was a daring strike, the sort of objective that Airborne was made for. But it tapered off from there. The planning failed to compensate enough for the weaknesses of paratroopers and that critical element really cinched it. It was only due to tenacity of paratroopers in the first place were they able to avoid complete losses.
 
Operation Market Garden Was only seen as a failure because it failed (and yes I am well aware of what I just said) There where many other operations that were porly conceived eg Hetzen forest, battle of the Ruhr pocket etc but came out as victories due to supperior forces. Market Garden would have succeded if the US had given the airsupport it needed to achieve final victory. Quote " Market Garden would have succeded inspite my mistakes if it had have been give the air support it deserved" Montgomery. I am not pro monty or anti Eisenhower. But at that stage of the war the British -US relationship was poor and i think many US generals wanted it to fail because then it would take away the lime light from them. The Generals on both sides were glory hunting with the lives of their men
 
Lots of British bias in that article, but the information is good. Yes it was a failed operation but the primary difference in the casualties for the whole thing appears to be the POW's taken by the Germans. Outside of that, neither side comes out as an overwhelming victor. Germany wins because the operation failed, but the numbers involved are a meer pinprick in the overall scheme of things. Both sides were effectively blinded and neither had the the initiative throughout. The operation COULD HAVE BEEN a much greater success if it hadn't been quite so thrown together and rushed. 1 Airborne got their wish in a bad way, they saw some serious action. More than they bargained for obviously.

As the brainchild of Montgomery, it's failure is yet another strike against him being a "great military leader". The author of the article throws out a lot of if only's and what if's. Irrelevant because the whole thing came together the way that it did because Monty was Monty. He wasn't that good at planning offensives.
 
Hm

Excellent plan well conceived by Monty, one of the greatest generals of WW2.
However, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Weather, comm, intelligence, choice of landing zones, OC getting lost at a critical phase, Patton stealing fuel when ordered by Eisenhower not to, German reserves reacting quicker than the British could move etc I could go on
It led to a salient leading 60 miles nowhere even though Monty claimed it was 90% successful
It was a bold operation, flawed but well worth a try.
Read any of the books by Urquhart, Frost, Hacket, Powell et al - all participants and they will all say it was worth a bash
 
You can call it a tactical disaster due to the fact that it was a defeat and that the British 1st Airborne Division paid for it with many lives. I do think that it was a defeat, but I also think that in the scope of WW 2, it was not a disaster. The victories that the Americans and Brits won by taking the bridges at Nijmegen (sp?) and Eindvoven were rendered useless by the fact that the Germans held the bridge at Arnhem. As the plan had called for the creation of a corridor that the Allies could use to cross the Rhine into Germany, the loss at Arnhem rendered the other victories useless. The allies ended up with a corridor that led nowhere.
It was a good idea, but I think that there were too many variables to try to control. The plan called for taking and holding one or two highways, and six bridges, creating a single easy to cut corridor. While the German forces in the immediate area were inadequate to deal with the planned attak, the resting German Panzer division changed the equation of forces in the Arnhem area. Personally, I believe that even if the Panzers had not been there, the corridor would have been cut sooner rather than later by other formations. Would it have shortened the war? Personally, I doubt it, but that's another thread.

Dean.
 
Within the context of WW2 military capabilities, it exposed the inherent flaws of prevailing offensive theory.
 
Operation market garden failed for 2 reasons. Lack of backing from up above. I know I will cop a heap of shit for this however I am not pro British or anti american but the fact remains the British polish and american paratroops were given little or no aircover and there was so much in fighting and glory hunting going on by Generals to make 1 last push for glory or fame. They played politics with mens lives. Many US generals I believe wanted the plan to fail to give them that bit more power during surrender. Only 7 to 10 % of available allied airpower was given to such major which could have ended the war in 1944 (maybe) It was worth the risk but not supported correctly. Even Monty said the this operation would have succeded dispite my mistakes if it had been given the air support it diserved. That and General Alexander refusing to believe that photo recon showed german tanks in the area. Proof of my theory battle of the ruhr pocket useless waste of life Hetrzen forest just to name a few after Market garden
 
This is one of those things that is full of ifs and buts, had the attack taken place ten days earlier then there would not have been an SS Division from the Eastern Front there for reequipping and it would have been a walk over. If they decided to drop the troops closer to the Arnhem bridge rather than ten miles away they would have got there before the Germans would have been able to concentrate their forces. If the relief force had kept to the schedule then it would have been different story. If is only little word but has such big connotations
 
Re: Hm

spymaster said:
Excellent plan well conceived by Monty, one of the greatest generals of WW2.
However, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Weather, comm, intelligence, choice of landing zones, OC getting lost at a critical phase, Patton stealing fuel when ordered by Eisenhower not to, German reserves reacting quicker than the British could move etc I could go on
It led to a salient leading 60 miles nowhere even though Monty claimed it was 90% successful
It was a bold operation, flawed but well worth a try.
Read any of the books by Urquhart, Frost, Hacket, Powell et al - all participants and they will all say it was worth a bash
Click to expand...

Can you give me a source on where it says Patton "stole fuel"?
 
I guess I am going to necro this thread because I have a question about Market Garden, was Market Gardens failure Montgomery's planning or was it 30 Corps failure for being too cautious in its relief efforts?
 
I'd say planning, not poor planning or lack of planning but incomplete planning.

Market Garden was hastily planned and executed, there were factors that were not well thought out such as communication.

30 Corps was slow but I think this traces back to planning. The route used by 30 Corps was only useable on the improved roads had 30 Corps tried to go overland it would have bogged down , the surrounding area being close to the water table and unable to sustain massive armor formations. So they were stuck following roads, which slowed them and telegraphed their movement.
 
Except for cities, typical Dutch terrain looks like:
018.jpg


456989599mZMrdj_fs.jpg
 
Agreed, the Dutch terrain doesnt lend itself easily to fast armoured movement. Any defender with an inch of determination can make life very hard for the attacker. 30 corps might not get a commendation for the most determined and well executed offensive of the war, but I doubt any formation would had done a heck of a lot better.

The plan was a bit too ambitious and hastily executed with many "doh" moments like the failure to get proper communications set up, or the lack of interest in the reports of german armour near Arnhem.

Yet had it been done quicker, say some 10 days as LeeEnfield suggested earlier, it might have worked, German forces in the area were in quite a disarray even then. The real ****-up behind all this might be failure to catch von Zangens 15:th army in its escape from Pas de Calais in earlier phase of operations. The German ability to rebuild a good defense even from forces thought battered & dead made a good show of itself in Market Garden.
 
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