21st Army Group - Operation Market Garden

Operation Market Garden

After the break-out from Normandy, there were high hopes that the war could be ended in 1944. In order to do so, the last great natural defensive barrier of Germany in the west, the Rhine River had to be crossed. Operation Market Garden was orchestrated to attempt just this. It was staged in the Netherlands with two American and one British airborne divisions and a Polish parachute brigade being dropped to capture bridges over the lower Rhine before they were blown by the Germans. The airborne formations were then to be relieved by armored forces advancing rapidly northwards through Eindhoven and Nijmegen to Arnhem, opening the north German plains, and the industrial Ruhr Valley, to the Allies.

However, the British armored forces had only one main highway to operate on, and crucial information about the German forces in the operational area was either missing or ignored. The scratch forces remaining after the retreat from France were much stronger than expected, thus giving the armored units of the XXX Corps a much tougher fight than had been anticipated, slowing the advance. The American divisions and the Polish parachute brigade that had fought south of the Rhine were relieved but the British 1st Airborne Division in Arnhem was practically destroyed.