Market Garden

Why did Operation Market Garden fail?

Was it always doomed to failure?

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Bongs were in charge

I'm sorry?

>fail
Operation Market Garden was 90% successful

browning please

It was a Bridge too Far

Poor intel somehow missed a Panzer division hanging out a few blocks from one of the bridges they had to capture which put heavy casualties on the British forces, and the Americans couldn't hold their bridge.
To be fair, even though it was Monty's plan, Eisenhower as supreme commander still had to give it his stamp of approval, which he did.

because the gamble to end the war by christmas was too lucrative. The plan to clear out the Schelt estuary so supplies could come in through Antwerp was postponed for Market Garden. This plan would have given the forces better supply lines that would have made Market Garden more successful (arguably). Monty gambled for a quick win and got shat on.

They sent a British autist to do a Southern autist's job.

The poles let us down

FPBP

lol how?

>ignore suggestions to send in a commando unit ahead of the main force to seize the bridge like in Normandy
>won't let the Poles drop until the 4th day
>ignore protests of Polish commander
>won't bother doing overflights of the LZ to make sure it's not swarming with Krauts
>pull their air support to bomb the shit out of Nijmegen
>sit on your ass after capturing the Nijmegen bridge rather than moving on to Arnhem immediately
>be surprised when half of the C-47s get blown out of the sky
>have the gall to blame Operation's failure on the Poles

>weaponized autism
That's a pretty good description of your posts

DO IT AGAIN, NBF!

...

Don't forget
>after the war, don't let the Poles march in the Victory Parade
>Try to send the Polish soldiers back to Poland
>Which is in Soviet hands because of Churchill at Yalta

...and they have the nerve to call it Perfidious Albion.

Market Garden was a success.

t. Lindy

It's regarded as a success here in Eindhoven

Seriously, if you had too choose between a bong commander or a kraut commander to lead your troops, which would you choose?

Right.

Not hard to see the historical problem here, is it?

It didn’t work as intended but due to the scattering of soldiers the germans thought they were way WAY outnumbered and surrounded instead of just regular outnumbered

Churchill tried his best to give Poland back to the Poles but Stalin had already occupied it, allowed the resistance to get murdered and later on rigged elections there to get Brits off his back.

There wasn't anything they could do other than start WW3

>success
>bridge at Veghel gets blown up
>Eindhoven gets vaporized by the Luftwaffe a week later

You Dutch have pretty low standards for victory.

This. A panzer division just happened to be in the Arnhem area for refitting. A Bridge too Far is a book you can read.

>Soviet hands because of Churchill at Yalta
But Churchill was the one most against Stalin? Blame Roosevelt if anything

niemand vraagt je mening walli g waar is het uitkering

FDR was literally dying at Yalta and just wanted to go home as soon as possible, and he also realized later on that Stalin was a backstabbing bastard that couldn't be trusted but died before openly saying something about it.

>paradrop in the day
>radios fucked
>dont properly act on intel beforehand which indicated a much larger enemy force
>bongs in charge

A lot went wrong

>Churchill tried his best to give Poland back to the Poles
Anglos please.
Churchill sold Poland for a Greece. He was only interesting in Poland as much as they can trouble Soviets.
Not even mention that he probably stand behind Sikorsky death.

>Stalin backstabbing bastard
>implying that allies were any better, especially Bongs

Churchill would have gladly taken Poland over Greece since it means an extra meat shield between Western Europe and the Soviets.

A healthy kek and digits check'd.

And yet he sold Poland for Stalin no supporting Greek communist in civil war.

No, he sold Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania for Greece. Stalin promised that he would allow free elections in Poland but just rigged them anyway.

>Following Yalta, in Russia, when Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov expressed worry that the Yalta Agreement's wording might impede Stalin's plans, Stalin responded "Never mind. We'll do it our own way later."

Yes it was,even with the numerous setback X corps was just a few hour away before the brits at Arnhem were rekt
I wouldnt be so optimistic as saying itll end the war by the december holidays but it achieve most of its goals

Gee i guess Churchill should slammed his hand and pray Stalin to be intimidated and cowed immediatly and not retaliate by hampering war efforts or threats of conflict

>Was it always doomed to failure?

In a way, yes.

The Bongs (and Montgomery especially) were facing a lot of criticism from the other Western Allies for taking baby steps through France. See: Operation Goodwood.

Monty decided they needed a daring raid to bolster the Bong (and his) reputation, and those in charge of planning the operation ignored intel that a German Panzer division was using the target area for refits. The other Allies signed off on the plan because clearing the Rhine without entering Germany sounded like a crazy good deal.

Monty was an autistic retard

>he sold Poland for Stalin
Lmao no.
I'm sure stalin would have just been a nice guy and withdrew all his troops from Poland(where his soldiers had pushed the Germans out off), leaving a gap in his buffer zone and severing the land link between the Soviet Union and their occupation zone in Germany, just because Churchill asked him to.

>Monty was an autistic retard
Yes, he was. He was failing miserably in The Scheldt even while taking significant casualties, using up a massive amount of scarce resources, and all while accomplishing nothing of strategic value. The Scheldt campaign was to provide desperately needed marine facilities, and it failed miserably. Instead of redoubling their efforts in The Scheldt, Market Garden found the bongs turning elsewhere and once again flailing away to "regain our prestige", their common refrain.

Why does everyone blame the British?

It was the Poles and Yanks who shit the bed.

>Unironically blaming the Poles for monty's autism

Oh am I laffin

Very good video on Market Garden, which explains clearly who fucked up

youtu.be/vTUC79o4Kmc

It was never a viable plan. Too rigid, too prone to failure.

>blames the 82nd for guarding its flank instead of making what would have been a suicidal attack on a bridge that was about to be reinforced by a panzer division
>says XXX Corps did a good job only going 8 miles on the first day
heh

He goes on a bit of a rant trying to lay the blame for things on the American 82nd for focusing on the Groesbeek Heights first even though British General Browning was the one who ordered them to do so.

The whole think was a failure of Allied intelligence and British planning. The RAF wouldn't fly more than one load of troops a day, so everyone at half-strength. So if the 82nd had focused on Nijmegen the first day they might have taken the bridge... and then been hit by an SS Panzer division and supporting Heer units. Having not taken the Groesbeek Heights, the German counterattack out of the east would have taken them and overwhelmed the 82nd's landing zones while that division while battling panzer forces the British hadn't told them were in the area.

It's not their fault the plan was shit from the beginning. Ironically Browning's order may have saved the division from getting wrecked like the British 1st was.

>Frost holds only one end of the Arnhem bridge
>acts like this holding the whole bridge
This guy's bias is a little pathetic.

Britaboos blame affairs at Nijmegen because they don't want to admit Monty's plan was incredibly flawed and Browning as a subpar commander for the airborne operations.

>literally the XXX Corps Internet Defence Force

Limeys screwed up market garden, accept it angloboos

this guy comes off as a git

So let's see, according to Tik the 508th should have been concentrated on the Nijmegen bridge and I suppose the 505th as well? Hang the Groesbeck ridge?
So on the morning of 18 September let's say we have the 508th battling in Nijmegen - there is simply no reason really to suppose they would neccessarily have captured either end, let alone both ends, realistically the most force they could have brought would have been the two battalions available, the rest were helping the 504th seize bridges. The most likely scenario is then that the attack by 406. Division would go through the attenuated lines of the 505th like a knife through butter - as it was historically they got into Grosbeck and Mook and were only repulsed by having most of the battalion commited to Nijmegen withdrawn and thrown into the battle. That would have left the 508th trapped between KG Henke reinforced by the arriving elements of 10. SS and 406. Division. Then, since the LZs have now been overrun, the reinforcments of the 325th GIR get to land their gliders on top of the Germans. Bet it would have been exciting - for a short time.

So I suspect that on the morning of 19 September when Guards Armoured arrived in Graves they would probably be just in time to succor the 504th PIR, but likely would have quite a bit of time to figure out how they were going to take - or re-take - the Nijmegen bridge without the services of the 505th and 508th PIR, the 325th GIR, and the 376th PFA. Oh and with the Germans on the Grosbeck heights, nicely ensconced behind the Maas.

BTW, the reasons why the LZs were in front (east) of the Grosbeck ridge is because the ridge itself was fairly heavily wooded, while the pasture land in front of it was, well, pasture land. The only other alternative was to put the LZs west of the Maas, which wouldn't have worked, or northwest of the wooded area, which put them right on the edge of Nijmegen and pretty far away from the ridge.

To add, my opinion is that it wasn't any one thing that doomed the operation but a combination of poor intelligence, victory fever, some incompetence with British commanders (Monty, Browning, Horrocks), German skill in counterattacks, and the shit LZs causing errors with the American 82nd and the British 1st in their own sector operations.

IIRC Polacks fucked up.

>Try to send the Polish soldiers back to Poland

That's not really what they tried to do, by the time that was an issue something like the Polish Resettlement Act 1947 was already in the plans. The fuck up came a bit earlier. I recall it being interesting reading it from the British political perspective in the Hansard (if I find the relevant discussion bits I'll make another post, it might take a while).

Basically the Polish government-in-exile (in London) and the Soviets were on terrible terms for various reasons (but mostly the Katyn massacre, since the Poles wanting it investigated led to the Soviets breaking diplomatic relations in 1943) and in the aftermath of Yalta the British were trying to mend that they only way they could - by applying pressure on 'their' Poles to negotiate. Actually, you could say they've been trying to do that all throughout 1943 and 1944, but by early 1945 it became a pressing issue. So (by the Hansard discussions) the irate Brits basically told the Poles they were being too obstinate and will have to negotiate with the Soviets or else.

And so the Brits forced the Poles to send a Polish Underground State (which was subject to the London government-in-exile) delegation to Moscow, with their safety guaranteed by the British... and the Soviets kidnapped the whole delegation and put them on a brutal show trial.

The issue (regularly raised between 1943-1945) pretty much completely disappears from British political discourse from that moment. I'm not even sure the British government ever formally acknowledged that a delegation whose safety the British guaranteed got disappeared. They just quietly gave up on reconciling the Poles and Soviets, withdrew their own recognition of the Polish government-in-exile, and got to work on stuff like the Polish Resettlement Act.

*On that note I'd really recommend at least reading the Hansard of debates following significant events like the major conferences to anyone studying the period, it gave me a new appreciation for the perspectives of the age and the political processes involved.

e.g. here's the very heated. three-day post-Yalta debate in the House of Commons:

theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1945-02-27a.1267.0
theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1945-02-28a.1416.0
theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1945-03-01a.1579.0

A bit long but a very interesting read throughout.

>with their safety guaranteed by the British
You'd think Poland of all peoples would know that guarantee isn't worth anything.

They didn't exactly have a choice.

And to think, the widening of the war was ostensibly started in order to save Poland from Germany.

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't really know in detail what happened with the Poles, I had only read in one book about the victory parade thing and had a foggy memory of their post-war treatment

>Blame Roosevelt if anything
If you read Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle" he discusses how Roosevelt's personal goals for the post war occupation of Germany was to give the Soviets only a third of what it ended up being. But Roosevelt had a habit of being his own secretary of state, and didn't tell anyone but General Marshall his plan. After he died, the Generals passed around the map he drew up and it somehow got shelved and forgotten about. He was pretty hardline about the US occupying Berlin and the Northwest of Germany to give us the port cities, and the Soviet Zone being behind Berlin.

>Yalta

Every triumvirate needs a Caesar.

>Americans have to seize multiple bridges intact
>Brits have to seize just one
>Americans successfully capture all but one bridge intact
>Brits couldn't even take their one bridge

This

Also reminder that Market Garden and the Battle of Antietam took place on the exact same day 82 years apart