An up-to-date view of Operation Market Garden making full use of modern research. With over 500 illustrations including many maps, aerial photography and then and now images. The battle of Normandy ended as the Allied armies crossed the Seine at the end of August 1944, a month after Operation Cobra had broken the stalemate. The Allies harried the retreating Germans, who left their tanks and heavy weapons south of the Seine, and by mid-September the Allies were coming up against the defenses of Germany itself, the impressive Westwall. As far as the Allies were concerned, the Germans were beaten. The scent of immediate victory was in the air, the only question was where to apply the coup de grace. Logistics demanded that this should be a single thrust rather than Eisenhower’s broad front approach. Montgomery - the architect of victory in Normandy - proposed a daring plan to circumvent the Westwall, thrust towards Berlin, and make use of the newly created 1st Allied Airborne Army. The plan was simple: use the Paratroopers to hold key bridges along a single route along which British XXX Corps would make an advance that would be rapid and violent, and without regard to what is happening on the flanks. US 101st Airborne would land north of Eindhoven; 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen; British 1st Airborne at Arnhem - the so-called bridge too far.
Unfortunately, the plan was flawed, the execution imperfect, and the Germans far from beaten. In spite of the audacious actions of the Paratroopers who would cover themselves with glory, Operation Market Garden showed that the German ground forces would still provide the Allies with stiff opposition in the West. AUTHOR: Simon Forty has been working in publishing as commissioning editor and author for 35 years. He has co-authored a series of highly-praised books on the Normandy Campaign and WWII in Europe, including The Normandy Battlefields: D-Day & the Bridgehead (2014), The Normandy Battlefields: Bocage to Breakout (2017), Hitler’s Atlantic Wall (2016), and The Ardennes Battlefields (2017). 500 colour and b/w photographs throughout