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Operation Market-Garden was an attempt by combined Allied airborne and ground assault troops to capture bridges over Dutch waterways in order to open a rapid northern route for the Allied advance into Germany. It was the largest Allied airborne operation of the war and the most costly. The third of the airborne landings, at Arnhem, proved to be a complete failure as British troops landed too far from the Arnhem bridges and the Germans quickly recovered from the surprise of the aerial assault. Of 10,000 British troops at Arnhem, 1,400 were killed while over 6,000 were taken prisoner.
As mentioned, within Holland the Germans had positioned their troops in a very strong position. Dislodging them would be a most difficult operation. British Field Marshall Montgomery decided that the Allies would have to undertake a bold military strategy if they were going to have any chances of vanquishing German forces in Holland. What he devised was something which would be called Operation Market Garden. Had it worked Holland would have been liberated in weeks and the European war would have been over by 1944. But Operation Market Garden failed. Through bad luck, bad weather, bad planning. It is not in the scope of this lecture to go into the details and those interested in it, are recommend to seek out Cornelius Ryan's famous book on the subject: A Bridge
On 17 September 1944 thousands of paratroopers descended from the sky by parachute or glider up to 150 km behind enemy lines. Their goal: to secure to bridges across the rivers in Holland so that the Allied army could advance rapidly northwards and turn left into the lowlands of Germany, hereby skirting around the Siegfried line, the German defence line. If all carried out as planned it should have ended the war by Christmas 1944.
Unfortunately this daring plan, named Operation Market Garden, didn't have the expected outcome. The bridge at Arnhem proved to be 'a bridge too far'. After 10 days of bitter fighting the operation...