Operation Market Garden E-Book

Tim Lynch

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 485

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

On 20 September 1944, a force of US paratroopers launched a desperate, near suicidal river crossing in an effort to reach their airborne brethren trapped at Arnhem, only to see their efforts squandered by British tank crews who, instead of racing ahead, sat down to drink tea. The story of the Waal crossing – as told by American veterans of the operation – has become a part of the Arnhem legend, a legend of airborne heroism set against the timidity of the armoured forces sent to relieve them; of American professionalism wasted by British incompetence. But what really happened? Why was the operation even necessary? Using first-hand accounts and official records, Operation Market Garden examines the legend of the Waal Crossing and the truth behind it, revealing how a culture of elitism mixed with national and personal rivalries led to arguably the greatest western Allied defeat of the war.

Leseprobe

OPERATION MARKET GARDEN

THE LEGEND OF THE WAAL CROSSING

TIM LYNCH

A great deal has been written and said about Operation Market Garden and there are many experts out there. I have been fortunate enough to be able to draw on both their work and their generosity. In particular I would like to thank Jan Bos for his kindness in providing photographs and material that I would otherwise have missed and which help to fill out the story. Readers with an interest in the subject will recognise the debt owed to Robin Neillands, whose ‘myth busting’ approach to history sparked my own interest in the myths that have emerged from the campaign in Europe in 1944-45. Thanks also to Jon Cooksey, who first suggested I write about the crossing and to Shaun Barrington and the team at Spellmount who took up the idea.

As always, a special thank you to my wife Jacqueline and to Beth and Josh. They held the high ground so that ultimately I crossed the bridge and got the job done.

Author Tim Lynch served with the Army Air Corps in the Falkands and Northern Irleand, after which he returned to university. His studies led to his work in the development of responses to combat-related psychological readjustment problems among veterans. He is the author of numerous articles for magazines such as Military Illustrated, Armourer and Skirmish and the books Battlefield Archaeology (2007), Silent Skies (2008) and Dunkirk 1940: Whereabouts Unknown (2010).

First published in 2011 by Spellmount,

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

‘A Storm in a Teacup’

Chapter One

Over There

Chapter Two

From Breaking Out to Breaking Down

Chapter Three

From Comet to Market Garden

Chapter Four

Classless Killers and Yard Long Pedigrees

Chapter Five

The Operation: ‘Best Possible Speed’

Chapter Six

A Change of Plan

Chapter Seven

‘A Very Iffy Situation’

Chapter Eight

‘Hail Mary, Full of Grace …’

Chapter Nine

A Legend is Born

Chapter Ten

Aftermath

Chapter Eleven

Stories and Histories

Chapter Twelve

The Myth of False Gods

Bibliography

Preface

In the September 2009 edition of the US magazine World War II, an angry reader wrote to complain about its recent review of a ten-volume history of Germany’s role in the Second World War. ‘I have not read the 12,000 pages,’ he admitted, ‘but I am guessing they did not even come close to the truth. I am guessing they left out the part where …’ before going on to list various atrocities and concluding ‘I am tired of people trying to rewrite history the way they see it.’ With a patience and diplomacy one can only admire, the reviewer pointed out that it was ‘unnecessary to guess about its contents. The review includes several specific references to volumes in the series that present the Reich’s atrocities in context and in detail.’ There are, unfortunately, many people out there searching for a reason to take offence. This book will be a critical goldmine for those readers who enjoy being upset when long cherished ‘facts’ are challenged and who would rather assume a knowledge of history than acquire one.

History is a commodity like any other to be sold in books, documentaries and films to an audience who want to hear a story they can relate to. Fifty years after the end of the Second World War and at a time when America’s use of military might to enforce its foreign policy cast it on more questionable moral ground in the eyes of the international community, harking back to a time when it had fought a ‘good’ war against an identifiably ‘evil’ regime was a comfort. In an exchange in Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo, the character of Andrea claims, ‘Unhappy the land that has no heroes’, to which Galileo replies, ‘No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.’ Whether America at that time needed heroes is a debate to be conducted elsewhere but whatever the truth, broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw provided a new form of hero worship when he coined the term The Greatest Generation (1998) to describe

America’s citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values – duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself … At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world.1

Modestly proclaiming this group of Americans to be ‘the greatest generation any society has ever produced,’ Brokaw’s approach proved immensely popular and celebrated a nostalgia for a time when national self esteem was high and the world was divided more easily into good and bad. His view of the isolationist stance many of that generation favoured and their reluctance to oppose the Nazi regime, or of the hundreds of thousands of American men who were investigated for dodging the draft is less clear but the popularity of the notion of the greatest generation quickly caught on. The book was followed almost immediately by Gerald Astor’s The Greatest War: Americans in Combat, 1941–1945 (1999) and an outpouring of veteran memoirs which escalated still further with the success of Steven Spielberg’s television series Band of Brothers (2001). Based on Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name, the series triggered an entire industry devoted to the memory of the 101st Airborne Division. Although never quite reaching the same mass audience, veterans of the 82nd Airborne followed suit. Soon, the paradigm spawned a mass market for military history aimed at the general reader that is now heavily slanted towards hagiographies lacking the will to question or analyse wisdom passed down from the exalted position of veteran status. In doing so, the war has become mythologized into a great moral crusade. As historian Michael C.C. Adams puts it:

All societies to some degree reinvent their pasts … Sometimes we conjure up the past in such a way that it appears better than it really was. We forget ugly things we did and magnify the good things. This is wishful thinking, the desire to retell our past not as it was but as we would like it to have been. If the past is remoulded too drastically, it ceases to be real history … Then, through repetition, people come to believe that this partial portrait is the whole landscape of history, and what is forgotten will be thought never to have existed. Such a process happened with World War II, which has been converted over time from a complex, problematic event, full of nuance and debatable meaning, to a simple, shining legend of the Good War. For many, including a majority of survivors from the era, the war years have become America’s golden age, a peak in the life of society when everything worked out and the good guys definitely got a happy ending. It was a great war. For Americans it was the best war ever.2

It is not, of course, a uniquely American phenomenon; Britain too is guilty of sanitising its past. Peter Fleming, writing about the events of 1940, speaks of how, in terms of the way the British view that time,

legend plays a large part in their memories of that tense and strangely exhilarating summer, and their experiences, like those of early childhood, are sharply rather than accurately etched upon their minds. The stories they tell of the period have become better, but not more veracious, with the passage of time. Rumours are remembered as facts, and … the sequence of events is blurred.

Excluded from the decision making process and denied access to detailed information,

the average citizen knew less than usual about what was happening and why it happened. Like a child who is excluded from the confidence of the grown-ups, he accepted the existence of a sphere of knowledge into which he could not be admitted, even though within it his own destinies were being decided; and like a child he tended afterwards to remember events without a full understanding of their significance.3

As one veteran put it, his view of the war was limited to ‘what I could see through my rifle sights’ and anyone who has experienced frontline service is all too aware that the world of the combat soldier is a very small one bounded by his immediate vicinity and governed by the dictum that a sensible soldier should believe nothing of what he hears and only half of what he sees. Few in the frontlines either know or care what the grand strategy might be, nor do they have the time or opportunity to record details. Yet over time, some come to believe that they, and only they, really know what happened in their battle based on their own small part of it. Those not in their direct sight are always suspect. Those further behind the lines are always slackers. Their memories, often recorded decades later, reflect what they have come to believe about their experiences as much as what actually happened.

For a mass market audience, seeking only an exciting story, the ‘greatest generation’ paradigm is not necessarily a problem. For the serious student of military history, it becomes a significant barrier to understanding. In keeping with the ‘greatest generation’ myth Phil Nordyke, for example, opens his finely researched and detailed 776-page account of the experiences of the 82nd Airborne Division during the war with the unequivocal assertion that

The World War II 82nd Airborne Division has legendary status in the honoured fraternity of great American military units … The veterans of the World War II 82nd Airborne Division are held in awe not only by other members of the airborne fraternity, but by countless others in the US and British armies who fought beside them; the citizens of Sicily, Italy, France, Holland and Belgium who were liberated by them; and the German soldiers who fought against them. Having the 82nd fighting alongside of your unit instilled confidence … It is through the words of these veterans that the reader will come to know incredible bravery under fire, an undying devotion to duty and comrades, and some of the most incredible feats of arms ever achieved by any military unit.4

Unsurprisingly he finds nothing to fault in any aspect of the 82nd’s behaviour during the war – although to his great credit, in memoirs published shortly after the war 82nd veteran Ross Carter freely admitted that whilst their performance in combat was highly efficient, out of action and in dealings with people outside the unit the paratroopers of the 82nd could be arrogant and boorish to a degree he found hard to justify.

As we shall see, the belief that the US servicemen were an elite lay at the very heart of the problems that emerged between the Allies in the European campaign of 1944–45. Over the years the unquestioning acceptance of the notion of the ‘greatest generation’ has created the impression that US units were universally excellent and filled with highly motivated and skilled soldiers who were needed to balance the ineptitude and timidity of the British in order to free the world. In 1985, for example, US historian Colonel Trevor Dupuy published a study of the relative fighting capabilities of Allied and German troops in which British performance scored badly. However, as Professor David French has shown, Dupuy’s criticism of the poor performance by the British 7th and 50th Infantry Divisions is perhaps best explained by the fact that the 7th existed only on paper as part of a deception campaign whilst the 50th’s reported poor performance at the Battle of Monte Grande on 16/17 October was affected by their never having landed in Italy and being in transit back to the UK at the time.5

Any attempt to challenge received wisdom will inevitably be criticised by some as ‘rewriting history’, although those who condemn ‘revisionist’ history seem at a loss to explain why history must be carved in stone and why new information should be ignored. In going against the idolising of the ‘greatest generation’, no doubt this book will also be condemned as ‘anti-American’ by those who use the term as a synonym for ‘wrong’. It is not my intent to be anti-American – a term which, in itself is frequently criticised as being the product of a totalitarian mindset and the antithesis of the American value of free speech – but I do challenge some of the more offensive attitudes and behaviour of people who happen to be American. Those two things are very different. The more astute reader will recognise that no attempt is made to spare the blushes of my own countrymen in describing their often equally petty and self-serving actions.

Although I do not subscribe to the belief that we should idolise the ‘greatest generation’, this does not mean that I do not hold their achievements in the highest regard. I would argue that by creating a myth that the Second World War generation were somehow more noble, courageous and patriotic than those who followed after, their achievements are actually diminished. They achieved great things, we might say, because they were more capable of great things than their children or grandchildren’s generation. For a generation of John Wayne-style heroes, storming the Normandy beaches might be all in a day’s work. For an ordinary young man, terrified to the point of soiling himself but going ahead anyway because he was determined to do his duty, it was – and is – an awe-inspiring accomplishment. Perhaps, as Max Hastings has suggested, we should consider them more appropriately as the generation to whom the greatest things happened.

I am very much aware, as I sit in my safe, warm office, that we owe a great deal to that generation. Having experienced war on a small scale, I thank God daily that I was never called upon to experience what the soldiers I am writing about endured. My aim in writing this book is not to pass judgement or to score political points. It is to explain, not excuse, the factors that contributed to the failure of Operation Market Garden and the decisions made by ordinary human beings, no matter what uniform they wore.

Tim Lynch

Notes

1 Brokaw, T. The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House 1998)

2 Adams, M.C.C. ‘Postwar Mythmaking About World War II’ in Stoler and Gustafson, ed. Major Problems in the History of World War II (Cengage Learning 2002) p.432, pp.428–437

3 Fleming, P. Invasion 1940 (London: Rupert Hart Davies 1957) pp.9–10

4 Nordyke, P. All American, All the Way (Zenith Press 2005) pp.1-2

5 Dupuy, T.N. Numbers, Predictions and War: The use of history to evaluate and predict the outcome of armed conflict (Fairfax VA:1985) quoted in French, D. Raising Churchill’s Army (Oxford University Press 2000) pp.8–9

Introduction: ‘A Storm in a Teacup’

No American veteran’s account of his experiences in Europe during the Second World War seems complete without reference to the fact that his British allies drank tea. Almost invariably at some point in the narrative the author will encounter a group of British soldiers serenely brewing a cuppa – sometimes using china cups and serving freshly toasted crumpets no matter how remote the position – as all around them chaos reigns. Whilst some might regard the ability to hold a tea party under fire as an example of admirable sang froid, the reactions described by their American counterparts many years after the event still range from bemused tolerance of British eccentricity to, more commonly, outright hostility. The overwhelming impression one is left with is that the average American GI was annoyed that the British just weren’t taking the war seriously enough.

Bud Warneke, a soldier of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the US 82nd Airborne Division, was typical. Fifty years later he would recall his first time working with British troops; ‘They were good soldiers, but compared to us I thought they had a nonchalant attitude about the war. They would stop whatever they were doing, brew some tea with crumpets but then again I did not work with them much.’1 By the standards of many veteran memoirs, Warnecke’s implied criticism of the British attitude is mild; wildly exaggerated stories of British troops breaking off fire fights to toast crumpets are not unknown.2 By contrast, it was this same casual approach that so impressed Warnecke’s commander, General James Gavin. Gavin was to write that these British troops were ‘the best soldiers that I saw on either side in the war – not only because of their soldierly qualities, but because of their nonchalance and style; they seemed to enjoy what they were doing, and I shall always remember some of the teas they gave after things had quietened down.’3

American soldiers, of course, preferred coffee. Although adequate supplies could be sent from the United States pre-prepared in sealed tins, 32 US Army mobile trailer-mounted coffee roasting and grinding units attached to field bakeries and each operated by six specially trained men began operations in France on 25 July 1944, to ensure a theatre-wide supply of freshly ground coffee. Together with another 37 such units based in the UK, throughout the campaign in northwest Europe the units produced around 90,000lbs per day, every day.4 Clearly, the Americans were not averse to hot beverages themselves, so why the preoccupation with tea?

Throughout the war in Europe the US generals, or so the story goes, took risks and suffered enormous casualties to get the job done but the British response was slower, more hesitant and timid almost to the point of cowardice. In short, it was left to American boys to save the world at enormous cost to themselves whilst their ‘allies’ sat back. The image of British troops on their tea break came to symbolise this belief. The more objective US commanders recognised the simple economics of it all. America could still afford casualties, Britain could not. From its 1939 population of 46 million, the UK had mobilised 4,758,000 men and 559,390 women totalling just under one in nine of Britons serving in the military. Of these, 264,443 were killed – more than 1 in 20 of those mobilised.5 The United States mobilised 16,112,566 of its 142,164,569 population (about the same proportion as Britain) of whom 405,399 or about 1 in 40 were killed. During the Second World War, the US Navy suffered a total of 36,950 battle deaths, the US Marine Corps some 19,733. By contrast, British civilian casualties alone reached 67,073 – over 60,000 of them by the time the first US troops entered Britain.6 Having fought the war alone for two years and suffered heavily in doing so, it was perhaps not surprising that British forces were becoming war weary.

British leaders were also aware of the economic cost. Every ship, tank, jeep and bullet supplied by the US would have to be paid for once the war was over – and Britain was almost bankrupt. As the US Army tripled in size yet still retained huge reserves, the British were forced to disband some units to provide reinforcements for others. Montgomery had no reserves to replace his losses. Every casualty weakened his army, every loss had to count. The response was a slower, more measured approach. US commanders, aware that any losses could easily be replaced, could afford to take chances. To the average American, however, the story that the British were sitting back, drinking tea and letting them do all the work was attractive. ‘In my mind’, wrote Lieutenant ‘Maggie’ Magellas of the US 82nd Airborne Division, ‘tea and the deliberate British approach in combat became synonymous.’7 Almost 70 years on, the legend of US troops fighting heroically whilst their British counterparts brought out their teapots has evolved into accepted fact, nowhere more so than in the story of the failure of the British attempt in September 1944 to race armoured forces over an ‘airborne carpet’ across the Dutch countryside to cross the Rhine into Germany at the bridge of Arnhem – Operation Market Garden.

On 20 September 1944, as part of that operation, men of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the US 82nd Airborne Division made a bold and valiant daylight crossing of the river Waal in flimsy boats under heavy fire to secure the Nijmegen bridge and open the route to the besieged British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Once the paratroopers had established control of the northern end of the bridge, tanks of the Guards Armoured Brigade dashed over the span from the south – fully expecting the bridge to be blown beneath them and with no room to even attempt to evade the heavy fire directed at them all the way across.

After their link up with the paratroopers, the British tanks pushed forward, only to be stopped on the single narrow route open to them by anti-tank fire from a German roadblock north of Lent. Without infantry support to neutralise the hidden gun, they pulled back. According to Captain T. Moffatt Burriss, an American company commander of the 504th, ‘That’s when the British tank crews brought out their teapots. I was furious.’ In a dramatic, colourful and vehemently anti-British memoir, he describes meeting a tank commander:

‘I can’t go on without orders,’ he said. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m giving you orders.’ He was a British captain. I was an American captain. He wasn’t about to recognise my authority. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have to have orders from my British commander …’ I looked him straight in the eye. ‘You yellow-bellied son of a bitch. I’ve just sacrificed half my company in the face of dozens of guns, and you won’t move because of one gun.’ Then I cocked my tommy gun, put it to his head, and said, ‘You get this tank moving, or I’ll blow your damn head off.’8

In the mythology of American veterans who took part in the campaign, this was the moment that doomed Market Garden to failure and proved that the US alone had the drive, professionalism and courage to win the war. Even today, there remains a widely held belief that where Montgomery failed, Patton would surely have succeeded and, if evidence is needed, the memories of veterans of the Waal crossing are invoked as irrefutable evidence of British incompetence and timidity holding back their allies. But how true is the legend of the Waal?

A British tank crewman, kettle in hand, struggles through the mud to find water for tea.

The story of Operation Market Garden has been told and retold many times by writers with far greater tactical experience than this author. It has also, thanks to the internet, received the attention of a great many individuals with no tactical knowledge whatsoever (or often, it seems, even a passing acquaintance to factual information about the subject). With what Gregory Blaxland once termed ‘the fraudulent benefit of hindsight’ and the wealth of information now in the public domain that was not available to decision makers at the time, pointing the finger of blame has become a popular pastime. The debate usually takes the lines of highly partisan arguments fuelled by national pride and/or inter-service rivalry between British and US armies and air forces and, perhaps most of all, between airborne and ground troops. Arguments rage as to whether it was a British defeat caused by incompetence or a German victory brought about by a superbly improvised and rapid response or whether Patton would, as one overexcited contributor to an internet forum claimed ‘have been stood in Arnhem watching the British land and asking what had kept them.’ In such forums one quickly gains the impression that Patton would not have needed the bridges but could simply walked over the various waterways, parting the waves behind him for his unstoppable tanks to follow. In discussing Market Garden, emotions run high and it will be some considerable time before objective discussions become the norm. In the meantime, whatever the reader’s preferred conclusion, ample evidence exists to support it. It is not the intention of this book to tread that well worn path by rehashing the decisions made at command level using the benefit of hindsight to show how failure was inevitable.

Instead, this book adopts an approach first put forward 140 years ago by the French officer and military theorist Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq. Until his death at the Battle of Metz on 15 August 1870, du Picq studied closely the ‘moral and psychological’ aspects of battle at the small unit level and his ideas would prove highly influential for the generation who fought the First World War. Essentially, his argument was that whatever technological or tactical advances might be made, human nature remains the same and that an understanding of psychology was vital to the successful management of troops in battle. In Battle Studies, published posthumously in 1870, du Picq claimed that

The smallest detail taken from an actual incident in war is more instructive to me, a soldier, than all the Thiers and Jominis in the world. They speak for the heads of states and armies, but they never show me what I wish to know – a battalion, company or platoon in action … The man is the first weapon of battle. Let us study the soldier for it is he who brings reality to it.9

Military histories have tended to describe how objective X was taken by Y Battalion. As a description of events it is a valid approach but in reality, the objective was not taken by an anonymous, homogenous mass called Y Battalion, rather it was taken by the men serving in it – by Tom, Dick and Harry. In contrast, Bill, Fred and George in Z Battalion might have failed. In a series of lectures on military psychology delivered a century ago, Captain LeRoy Eltinge observed that ‘on successive days, even, the same body of men will break the first day with a loss of 5 per cent and the next, fight its way to victory, in spite of a loss of 40 per cent’ and concluded that ‘A leader’s knowledge of war is incomplete, if in addition to his skill in conceiving technical combinations he does not possess a knowledge of the human heart, if he have not the power of gauging the momentary temper of his own troops.’10

This book, then, explores the reality of the Waal crossing, the myths that have grown around it and what the two between them tell us about the wider war in Europe in 1944–5. To paraphrase Epictetus, history is defined not by events, but by the view people take of them. By applying a forensic examination to the ‘smallest details’ of the testimonies of those who took part in the Waal crossing, we gain an insight into factors that become so very telling. Why, for example, did Captain Burris immediately assume that cowardice was the only reason for the tanks to fall back? Why did he assume he had any authority over a man of equal rank? Why do two of the most outspoken US veterans of the crossing complain of British delays repeatedly stalling the crossing from an original start at 0800hrs when another veteran, Captain Kappel, reports that the warning order was not issued until 0900hrs for a crossing ‘that afternoon’ or indeed when the after action report of the engineers assigned to operate the boats notes that they were specifically briefed at 0600hrs to be ready for a crossing at 1400hrs? Why is much made of the difficulties faced by the US troopers in handling the unfamiliar craft when Gavin himself had refused an offer to supply experienced British engineers to operate them? Was this a failure of the British to meet their obligations as the legend claims, or was it a problem amongst the men of the 504th?

The term ‘elite’ is widely used in military history but rarely defined. In examining the story of the Waal crossing, we will see that both the British and US units involved were considered, not least by themselves, to be elites, but by very different definitions of the term. Regardless of the (usually self-selected) criteria for defining oneself as part of an elite, the effect is the same. Outsiders are automatically inferior. In the following account we will explore the very different cultures that had developed in the two armies and how this influenced their attitudes to each other and the operation.

To do that, however, we need to first understand the wider context, not just of Operation Market Garden, but of the political and military climate in which the entire campaign took place. Both armies fought on behalf of democratic countries and political interference in military decision making was commonplace – indeed many of Britain’s early setbacks in the war can be traced to Churchill’s enthusiastic if incompetent directions to the General Staff. So, too, it is argued, Eisenhower’s contention that ‘public opinion wins wars’ created a situation in which journalists became, in his words, ‘quasi-staff officers’. By extension, editors of American newspapers came to heavily influence, if not directly determine, military strategy in what was a US election year.

Compounding the problem was the cult of personality surrounding the leading Allied generals and a competition for personal glory, whatever the cost to the men under their command. The intense loathing and rivalry between Montgomery and Patton was a decisive factor in the failure of Market Garden. Patton’s powerful influence on his senior, Bradley, and their boasting about actively having sabotaged at least one airborne operation, as we shall see, highlights their vested interest in an airborne failure in order to divert resources to their own ends. Patton’s drive for personal glory openly rewarded his men for stealing supplies from other American units to ensure that his army stayed ahead of the rest – even at the cost of leaving their countrymen at risk. Although the behaviour of the two men forms part of this account, the wider implications of their respective personalities have been discussed in far greater detail elsewhere than space permits here. It is important to recognise that Montgomery was a master of the logistical battle and a competent all-round general but was sometimes slow to exploit success. Patton was a superb cavalry leader but, like Rommel before him, was essentially a ‘one-trick pony’, good in pursuit warfare but, as the experience at Metz amply demonstrates, totally unable to cope with organised resistance. Both Patton and Rommel placed the taking of ground over the need to maintain lines of communication and both tank experts ultimately failed because each outran his supply chain – Rommel in North Africa, Patton in France.

Between them, Montgomery and Patton could have made a formidable team but whatever their individual abilities, both men actively sought to create celebrity status and exploited it to the maximum in order to get their own way in often childish displays, throwing tantrums and using national politics to browbeat the Supreme Commander, Eisenhower. Forced by his subordinates into a diplomatic rather than military command, Eisenhower’s strategy was determined primarily to appease the US media and became so reliant on finding compromises that it almost certainly prolonged the war by several months.

The crossing of the Waal during Operation Market Garden is rightly seen as a magnificent feat of arms but it was far from unprecedented. At the start of the war German assault pioneers had crossed the Albert Canal under the guns of Eben Emael in daylight on rafts improvised from doors and tables salvaged from nearby houses, with results every bit as spectacular as those achieved at Nijmegen. Like so many gallant actions throughout history, the crossing itself may have been a professional affair, but it was made necessary by earlier mistakes and was very probably avoidable. The vehemence with which British ground performance on Operation Market Garden is criticised by the stories of the 82nd Airborne and by many historians serves perfectly to deflect attention away from the simple fact that the plan called for the bridges to be taken ‘with thunderclap surprise’. The two Nijmegen bridges weren’t. On D-Day, 17 September, only one reinforced platoon was sent – over six hours after the landings were completed – to probe the area around the road bridge. No effort at all was made to capture the nearby rail bridge until D+3 (three days after the landings).

In his own account, General Gavin admits that his plan was, in effect, to leave the armoured force to take it themselves whilst his men remained in position around their own drop zones. It is telling that much is made in histories of the US airborne of the visit by General Dempsey of the British Second Army to the 82nd’s commander General James Gavin after the battle at Nijmegen. ‘He greeted me warmly,’ Gavin recalled, ‘with the statement, “I’m proud to meet the Commanding General of the finest division in the world today.”’ A staff officer nearby overheard the remark and it quickly became part of the 82nd’s mythology. Gavin, however, was not so sure. To his credit, in a tacit acknowledgement that the battle had been mishandled he continues; ‘I accepted it with reservations, believing that he was being too kind.’11 Gavin is widely viewed as a superb combat leader and his many admirers have chosen to interpret his remark as the modesty of a great man. His performance during the battle on the ground does him great credit but, as we shall see, Gavin’s reservations were not the product of false modesty. It is not too great an exaggeration to say that his confused orders to the 508th concerning the bridges lost the 82nd the element of surprise and thereby the opportunity for a quick and easy victory. If any one decision can be claimed to have fatally undermined Operation Market Garden, it was Gavin’s decision not to prioritise the crucial bridges at Nijmegen on D-Day.

As du Picq claimed, an analysis of the seemingly trivial details that emerge from the story of a military action tells us more about the men involved than any amount of tactical description ever could. The angry abuse heaped by veterans of the 82nd on their allies, understandable enough at the time, is less so repeated over half a century later. But by exploring the political, military and social context in which the operation took place we will see how the story of an American force let down by Montgomery’s men suited the mythology that had developed within the alliance and allowed his arch-rival Patton to enhance his own reputation accordingly.

From the outset it was not in US interests for Operation Market Garden to succeed. If it had, Montgomery would be proved right and Patton et al would have been forced to suffer supply shortages that would have effectively brought them to a halt. That was a scenario totally unacceptable to them or to the American public so it is interesting to speculate on how a success might have been received at SHAEF and whether the will really existed to follow up a British-led entry into Germany. Certainly historian Major-General Julian Thompson has questioned whether, had Patton been assigned the northerly route instead of Montgomery, Operation Market Garden might have turned out very differently – not because of greater generalship but because the will to halt the secondary advance in order to pour resources into one strong thrust would have been far more evident if it had been for an American-led offensive. As it was, resources were not fully diverted to Montgomery because the Supreme Commander wanted to appease Patton. As a result, the planned advances by VIII and XII Corps on either flank of XXX Corps were limited expeditions unable to provide the protection that might have allowed the main thrust to concentrate on reaching Arnhem rather than fighting one battle to keep its supply lines open, another to take the Nijmegen bridges and a third to complete its primary task.

There is, of course, no evidence to suggest that the plan was deliberately sabotaged – it hardly needed to be. There were a great many factors that could go wrong and most of them did. Responsibility lies with the British for the failure of the operation. But if one mistake alone can be said to have doomed the entire operation, it was the failure to capture the Waal bridges when the opportunity arose on D-Day. Given the powerfully anti-British sentiments expressed in their memoirs, the question is: did the men of the 82nd assume that British failure was a foregone conclusion and plan their own defensive battle accordingly?

The disastrous outcome for Montgomery’s men served another purpose. Then, as now, the heavy losses at Arnhem drew attention away from Patton’s own mismanagement of operations around Metz. Although the fortifications could have been sidestepped, Patton’s openly stated belief that he was the reincarnation of a long line of expert warriors blinded him to any other course of action than to be the first in 1000 years to reduce the fortifications and to take Metz by force – the fact that in 1944 the French forts were filled with Germans suggests that a frontal assault using brute force and ignorance was not the only way to take them but that does not seem to have been considered. Claiming the need to ‘blood’ his new reinforcements, Patton pushed his men into a largely pointless battle that served primarily to delay the US advance and allow the Germans time to build up forces in preparation for the counter blow that would fall in the Ardennes that winter. With attention firmly focused on the British failure at Arnhem, no-one in the outside world noticed.

‘Years later,’ wrote Gavin, ‘when new cadet barracks were built at the United States Military Academy at West Point, American victories in World War II were commemorated by having granite sally ports through the barracks named after them. The name of the battle was etched above the passageway. Strangely, Arnhem was one of those selected, thus perpetuating the myth that Arnhem was a great victory, but this time an American victory.’12 Who could regard Arnhem as a victory?

However many times the logistical and tactical problems of the operation are re-examined, the outcome can never be changed. What is perhaps more important to an understanding of why things went wrong comes in an understanding of the attitudes, beliefs and motivation of the men taking part. In a new age of coalition warfare, the way we choose to interpret the events of the past and apply the lessons they teach today assumes a vital significance.

Notes

1 Astor, G. The Greatest War: Americans in Combat, 1941–1945 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1999) p.681

2 From US accounts we could conclude that British soldiers seem remarkably resourceful in finding crumpets in the front line and there may be an element of jealousy as no GI appears to have carried a stock of doughnuts in his kit.

3 Horrocks, Gen Sir B. Corps Commander (London: Magnum Books 1977) p.102

4 US War Department. Operational Study No.17 Bakery and Coffee Roasting Operations. (1 November 1945)

5 Corrigan, G. Blood, Sweat and Arrogance and the Myths of Churchill’s War (London: Phoenix 2007) p.472

6 US Statistics based on ‘American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics’ prepared by Ann Leland and MJ Oboroceanu of the Congressional Research Service on 26 February 2010. Figures for total numbers of British forces are difficult to obtain since they could include Commonwealth and attached forces. Those given here are taken from official statistics quoted in Howlett, P. Fighting with Figures: A Statistical Digest of the Second World War (London: HMSO 1995). Civilian casualty figures from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The figure of 60,000 civilian casualties is taken from ‘Instructions for US Servicemen in Britain’ issued by the War Department, Washington 1942

7 Magellas, J. All the Way to Berlin (New York: Ballantyne Books 2003) p.198

8 Burriss, T.M. Strike and Hold (Dulles:Brassey’s 2000) pp.123–4

9 du Picq, Colonel A. Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle translated from the 8th Edition by Colonel JN. Greeley and Major R.C. Cotton, US Army 1921. Accessed via Project Gutenburg at: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=7294

10 Eltinge, Captain LeRoy. Psychology of War Department of Military Art. The Army Service Schools Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 1911

11 Gavin, J. On to Berlin (New York: Bantam 1979) p.204

12 Ibid p207

Chapter One

Over There

‘We won’t be over till it’s over over there.’

Sheet music by Earl Watters and Ken Bradshaw, Bloomington Illinois 1940

When Britain went to war with Germany in August 1914, the US declared its neutrality. There was little else President Woodrow Wilson could have done at the time but follow the long-established isolationist foreign policy set out by George Washington in 1796:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation … Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.1

The belief that the US stood apart from the problems of the old world was reinforced in 1823 by what became known as the Monroe Doctrine – President James Monroe’s declaration that America had no need to become part of any European war or to enter into alliances with the European powers. Its geographical position, it was argued, protected it from the threat of invasion and its immigrant population should owe no particular allegiance to their former homelands. ‘The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional,’ wrote the French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831,

… and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.2

In establishing itself as the model for world democracy, de Tocqueville argued, the ordinary people of the US had been given too much power to be prepared to defer to others and had chosen the acquisition of wealth over the development of talent and ability as the driving force behind their political actions. Their culture promoted equality, he claimed, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted what he termed a ‘middling mediocrity’. True power lay not in the hands of those best prepared for it, but rather decisions were made in the interests of the individual, not those of the greater society. Despite its criticism of democracy as practised in the US, de Tocqueville’s work firmly established the concept of ‘American exceptionalism’ and with it the belief still held that the United States were, and are, qualitatively different from other countries and therefore cannot be judged by the same standards as those applied elsewhere.

Alongside this notion of exceptionalism, in 1845 journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase ‘manifest destiny’ to describe what he saw as the divine right of the American people to occupy the whole of the North American continent, used as justification for the annexation of Texas. Later, it became the ideology behind the incorporations of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming from Mexico and for a series of boundary disputes with Canada. Having spread from sea to shining sea, America began to look overseas and by then, ‘manifest destiny’ had created ‘an almost mystical sense that America had a mission to spread freedom and democracy everywhere.’3 With an influx of immigration from Europe, establishing a national identity would be difficult. Instead, Americans came to define themselves by what they were not. They were not British.

In a letter to John Banister in 1778, Washington stated that the ‘injuries we have received from the British nation were so unprovoked, and have been so great and so many, that they can never be forgotten’. Later, another President, Thomas Jefferson, would claim ‘I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.’4 As the American sense of national identity became established, the tyranny of Britain and its empire became the yardstick by which foreign policy was judged. Whilst the British empire was exploitative and wrong, US expansion overseas in the late nineteenth century was openly portrayed as part of its divinely inspired ‘manifest destiny’, with President McKinley expressly using the term to justify the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 and claiming the territory to be even more important to the US than California had been. It also served to underline the need to intervene in the Philippines, which was explained in terms of needing to ‘protect’ Filipinos from exploitation by the colonial powers. The empires of the old world, it was argued, were ‘justified as a benevolent “white man’s burden”. And in the United States, empire does not even exist; “we” are merely protecting the causes of freedom, democracy, and justice worldwide.’5 (Ironically, the inherent racism of the ‘white man’s burden’ takes its name from a poem satirising American imperialism by British poet Rudyard Kipling and was written about the US intervention in the Philippines.) Throughout their shared history Anglo-American relations have been defined by antipathy toward Britain’s overseas empire. The declaration of war in 1914 offered a chance to finally bring it down.

At the start of the twentieth century, the United States had developed two distinct markets. Geographically, the east coast of America is closer to Europe than it is to its own west coast and many fortunes were based on trade and commerce with the old world. For centuries, the Royal Navy had dominated the seas, using blockades of shipping as its main weapon in times of war. The Atlantic was a gigantic moat isolating the US from the threat of invasion, but it was also British turf. If the Royal Navy chose to interfere with trade to virtually any nation, it could use its considerable strength to do so. For those in the west, China and the Far East offered the greater market and, as a result a rivalry sprang up between the US and Japan. Aware of the potential for Russian influence in the Pacific, Britain was concerned about the risks to its interests in Hong Kong and the Chinese markets and even to Singapore. In 1905, in the wake of the war between Russia and Japan, it signed a mutual protection treaty with the Japanese and renewed it in 1911. This relieved the pressure on the Royal Navy to maintain a presence in the Far East and in return Japanese ships were built in British yards and their officers trained with the Royal Navy.

The geographic isolation that meant the US did not have to rely on alliances with foreign powers also meant that its trade routes were now vulnerable. Worse still, according to H.W. Wilson, the presence of strategic British territories in Canada, the Caribbean and the Falkland Islands ‘interfered with the political plan of the plutocracy of the United States. That plan, as was explained by President Polk, Secretary Fish, Secretary Olney and other developers of the Monroe Doctrine, aimed at the absorption of both Northern and Southern America by the United States.’ As a result of comments made in 1895 by Robert Olney, the ‘ABC League’ was formed by three South American countries (Argentina, Brazil and Chile) specifically to unite against possible aggression by the United States. The three sought support from Britain and France in return for concessions on oil in their countries and their fears of a possible attack were raised further by the American intervention in Mexico. War was avoided by President Wilson’s refusal to allow the situation to escalate but still, many in the US military – particularly the navy – had their sights on complete domination of the western hemisphere and this meant challenging the Royal Navy. The underlying principle of US foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century therefore became inextricably linked with the aim of destroying Britain’s naval dominance.

When war broke out in 1914, the problems of Europe were remote and of little interest to Americans on the West Coast. The Midwest had been settled by large numbers of German immigrants fleeing the Junker regime in Prussia in the 1850s followed by a second wave of southern Germans in the 1870s. By 1907, the National German-American Alliance, according to an article in the New York Times of 2 March 1918, was

… working to awaken a sense of unity among the people of German origin in America; to ‘centralize’ their powers for the ‘energetic defense of such justified wishes and interests’ as are not contrary to the rights and duties of good citizens; to defend its class against ‘nativistic encroachments’; to ‘foster and assure good, friendly relations of America to the old German fatherland.

By then it had received a Federal charter and boasted a membership of around three million members.6

In the states where the alliance was most active, popular support for Germany was such that as late as January 1916, when America seemed likely to be drawn into the conflict, Republican Homer Mann from Missouri openly told Congress that if the United States went to war at all, it should be against Britain, not Germany.7

After German raiders shelled towns on the North Sea coast of Britain, Americans on the East Coast realised that whilst the Atlantic might be a barrier, modern ships could reach US waters easily enough and the problems of Europe seemed suddenly less remote. Here, the British and French were generally regarded positively as democratic powers against the German autocratic system exemplified by the rule of the Junkers that had seen so many Germans emigrate. Support, however, was far from universal. Media coverage in a country so vast was parochial and heavily influenced by the attitudes of the newspaper barons who controlled local media outlets and by the advertisers who provided their main source of income. The Hearst press empire, for example, was so strongly pro-German that at least one of its journalists, Albert A Sander, was actually a paid German agent working on behalf of German intelligence.8

What concerned everyone, however, was the effect of the war on trade. As always when Britain went to war, the Royal Navy had immediately put in place a blockade to prevent the importation of war materiel to Germany. During the American Civil War, the US Navy had blockaded Confederate ports and seized the cargoes of neutral ships as contraband if they suspected that the goods might be forwarded to the Confederate states. Amongst the goods classified as contraband was cotton on the sole basis that it formed the foundation of the Confederate economy. The impact on the Lancashire cotton industry was catastrophic for British workers and the national economy but, having expressed sympathy with the abolition of slavery, the British government did little to contest the practice. When the British now used a similar tactic against Germany, it provoked a storm of outrage from US industrialists unable to reach the German market. ‘The general opinion in Britain and in France,’ one British observer wrote, ‘was that the American wanted it both ways, with a special law for himself when he was at war, and a very different law for belligerents when he was a trading neutral.’9

Although Americans protested the blockade, it was legal under international law. Despite it, the US continued to trade with both sides but the blockade and the growing dependence of the Allies on the US for supplies of food, ammunition and weapons meant that by 1916, most of its dealings were with Britain and France. It was a very healthy trade, too. As Britain’s gold reserves fell by £42 million between 1914 and 1918, America’s grew by £278.5 million in the same period.10 However, trading with a belligerent is not the same as siding with them. During 1915 anecdotal stories began to circulate along the western front of American-made shells filled with sand and of men systematically weeding out US-made ammunition to prevent machine-gun stoppages caused by inferior charges. Irish militants and German-Americans were suspected of actively sabotaging the British war effort.

Throughout the blockade the British did not sink merchant ships or kill their crews, but increasingly German U-boats did both. From February 1915, the submarine war began in earnest with the start of unrestricted warfare against shipping crossing the Atlantic. Protests from the US brought it to a halt in September but it began again in 1916. Finally, in 1917, a telegram was intercepted by British intelligence from the German Foreign Minister, Zimmerman, to their embassy in Washington which described how attempts should be made to keep America neutral but to make approaches to Mexico to discuss a German-supported attack should President Wilson decide to enter the war. In return, Mexico would be given back its lost territory in Texas and Arizona. In March, a copy of the telegram was passed to the US ambassador in London and a political storm broke across America. Whilst many on the East Coast reacted with shock, Hearst-owned newspapers immediately declared it a British fake and Congress, choosing to believe the newspapers, refused to pass a bill to arm merchant ships for self defence against U-boats. Incredibly, soon afterwards at a press conference in Berlin, Zimmerman freely admitted that it was genuine. It was an open threat that could not be ignored. (For the remarkable story of the Zimmerman telegram see ‘Blinker’ Hall: Spymaster by David Ramsay.) By 1917, Britain and France were heavily in debt to US businesses. It was obvious that, should they fall, the chances of those debts being repaid were slim. Industrialists needed a return on their investment and the Zimmerman telegram clinched the deal. America would need to be in at the kill so that it could emerge as a world power but also so it could profit from the credit it had extended to the Allies. On 6 April 1917, America declared war on Germany.

At the time of its declaring war, the US Army was small. ‘Our army,’ one American observer noted, ‘was less than Field-Marshal French’s first seven divisions, and the sole powder plant owned by the War Department had a daily capacity of 11,000lbs – not enough to last the guns of New York harbor for one minute of firing.’11