I have to say that I’ve always thought that WWII’s Operation Market Garden was actually a very successful military campaign, and not the horrible failure as it’s been painted. And this guy agrees with me:
In fact, the operation succeeded at six of its seven principal objectives, a rate of achievement that would be considered remarkable in almost any other military context. The American 82nd Airborne Division, under Brigadier General James Gavin, faced the daunting task of seizing the great road bridge at Nijmegen across the Waal River, one of the widest river crossings in Western Europe. They did so after brutal urban combat and a daylight assault river crossing in canvas boats under direct enemy fire, one of the most audacious tactical actions of the entire war.7 The bridge was taken intact even after the Germans tried to blow it up. The 101st Airborne Division, led by Major General Maxwell Taylor, seized the majority of its assigned bridges and canal crossings in the southern portion of the corridor and held the vital road that the operation depended on, quickly dubbed “Hell’s Highway” by the soldiers who fought along it, against repeated and determined German counterattacks. British armored units of XXX Corps advanced deeper into occupied territory in a shorter period than in any previous operation in the Western campaign. The scale of what was accomplished tends to disappear in the shadow of Arnhem, but it was genuinely extraordinary, representing the successful coordination of tens of thousands of men, hundreds of aircraft, and an armored column driving north along a single road through hostile country.
I have read a ton of history on the topic — WWII is very much a period of history near to my heart — and I think that too often Market Garden is used a lot by American historians to have a go at Brit Field Marshal Montgomery. (He’s too often caricatured instead of appreciated. Not that I have a problem with that, in general terms, because he set himself up for it pretty much all the way through the war. But we tend to forget that the reason Monty was so cautious a military commander was that he was faced with the stark fact that British and Commonwealth manpower’s losses were, to use the modern term, quite unsustainable.)
Going back to Market Garden: it may well have been a bridge too far (Arnhem), but its only real failure was that even if it had been a total success, it’s doubtful that it would have been the war-ender that Montgomery believed it would be.
I await Reader Sage Grouch’s informed opinion on this.
I left a comment on the post, which I’ll repost below, in which I largely agree with your assessment. Even if M-G had succeeded, its impact would have been severely limited by logistical concerns.
“The one criticism this essay doesn’t really address is the opportunity cost of Market Garden: what could those forces have been used for instead?
The generally agreed upon wisest move would have been to clear the Scheldt estuary to enable the use of the port of Antwerp to supply the Allied armies.
Because even if Market Garden had succeeded, yes they would have had a bridgehead over the Rhein, but that bridgehead is still at the end of an extremely long supply line, one whose ability to supply the troops at the front decreased with every mile they advanced away from Normandy. (And this supply line was dependent mostly on less efficient trucks, because the Allied air forces had so thoroughly smashed the French rail system prior to D-Day.) It is highly questionable whether Allied logisticians could have pushed enough supplies all the way from Normandy, and then down that single, narrow road to Arnhem, to enable a strategically or even operationally significant breakout from the Arnhem bridgehead until the Scheldt was cleared and cargo being unloaded at Antwerp. And in the meantime, a significant number of troops would still be stuck holding that long, narrow road open, or fighting slogging infantry attacks across the polders to widen it, thus reducing the ability to build up reserves to conduct a larger offensive.”
To expand further, in military doctrinal terms, the Western Allied armies in September 1944 were at or near their culminating point – “the critical juncture in an offensive operation where an attacking force attains its peak of relative superiority over the defender before momentum inevitably wanes due to attrition, logistical strain, friction, and other inherent challenges of warfare, rendering further advances hazardous and likely to provoke a damaging enemy counterreaction.” It is the job of the commanders – in this case, Ike, Monty, and Bradley – to recognize where they are relative to that point, and stop before they go past it, so that they can regroup, resupply, and reorganize to prepare for the next phase of operations. Doing so would have been greatly facilitated by, you guessed it, having the use of the port facilities of Antwerp.
Good analysis. The only problem is that the Germans saw it that way too, which is why clearing the Scheldt took months and an unconscionable number of casualties (mainly Canadian), all while giving said Germans sufficient time to completely reduce the port of Antwerp to unusable rubble. It took the Allies almost until the German surrender in April 1945 to open up Antwerp to handle a significant amount of shipping, by which time it was really just an economic gift to post-war Belgium.
“[On 5 Sept 1944], the 11th Armored Division reached Antwerp and to its astonishment captured the port in undamaged condition.” (Murray and Millett, 438) Gerhard Weinberg also states this in his work. (699) So, the port facilities were captured largely intact, but they were useless as long as the Germans controlled the Scheldt. (Cherbourg’s port facilities were thoroughly wrecked; this may be what you’re thinking of. Operation Dragoon had also captured Marseilles largely intact, but that was a long distance away, although I believe it was the main port supporting Devers’ army group.) However, Monty chose to put the Canadian First Army, tasked with clearing the Scheldt, low on the priority list for support until mid-October, despite being told by Ike that said clearing was a top priority, and even then mostly at the urging of the Royal Navy.
In September, the Germans along the Scheldt were not nearly as dug in as they would be 6 weeks later, after Market-Garden had been ended. Furthermore, had Monty continued toward the coast after capturing Antwerp in early September, 21st Army Group could have trapped the entire German 15th Army in a pocket along the Channel coast.
Instead, Monty turned his eyes to the Rhein, and quite uncharacteristically, a great sweeping, war-ending offensive drive.
Somewhat ironically, after the war Lidell-Hart argued in favor of Monty’s vision, but stated that Patton would have been the best general to lead it.
-Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Harvard University Press: 2000).
– Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge University Press: 1994).
Say what????
Antwerp was captured almost intact on 4 September by British 2nd Army after a lightning advance of 320 km in five days. Clearing the Scheldt came afterwards – a nasty business, done by the end of October (mine clearing lasted till 26 November).
At that time, “…of the 242 berths in the port 219 were completely cleared, all of the 600 cranes were in operating order, and all bridges needed for operations had been repaired.”
The first Liberty ship docked on 28 November, and “in the second week of December the port was already averaging 19,000 tons per day.”
Quotes from Logistical Support of the Armies, V. 2, “September 1944-May 1945”. US Army Center for Military History.
The problem with Market Garden is summed up in the first sentence of your quote, it achieved six of its seven major objectives. Success of the mission as a whole required success of all seven objectives. There’s no partial credit. Military plans must be both flexible and robust, meaning there needs to be a certain redundancy built in. If you require seven bridges for success, and failure to gain one bridge means failure of the whole operation, you’ve got a serious problem. One absolutey necessary objective is manageable, you put overwhelming force on that objective to make SURE you gain it. Seven necessary objectives is, as they say , a bridge too far.
This is without even considering maintaining that single supply line in the future. Be sure the Germans would have used whatever dwingling resources they had to disrupt it. The one good thing which may have come of Market Garden had it succeeded may have meant those resources wouldn’t have been available for destroying Antwerp, so perhaps that port would’ve been available earlier.
Mark D
Field Marshal Montgomery was not a good tactician. Market Garden failed. If it had succeeded it would have created other problems.
Monty did more than OK in the Battle of the Bulge. Although he enjoyed overwhelming material superiority in North Africa, he managed that very well too. Market Garden was a vanity project. Some military historians think that it extended the war by six months.
The Arnhem airborne operation was, as predicted, a fuckup deluxe.
MARKET-GARDEN did come close to complete success, and at the time seemed like a really good idea. The Germans were apparently in complete rout, and the airborne forces had been refitted after Normandy and were clamoring for action. Eisenhower wrote later “I not only approved the Arnhem operation, I insisted on it.”
In another life as a young LT in Germany we did a Market Garden staff ride. If memory serves me correctly we needed to seize 7/7 bridges intact to get it done. We got 6.
The plan was basically doomed to be a failure from the start.