The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II. Antony Beevor. London, UK: Penguin Books, 2019.
The Battle of Arnhem has a unique place in the history of war. Better known by its codename, Market Garden, the Battle of Arnhem occupies a place alongside other great battles whose names came to signify something larger than what they were. Waterloo, for example, came to mean final and lasting defeat. And Normandy became synonymous with war at its most extreme. In the world of strategic and military studies, the name Market Garden has come to signify something of its own: poor planning and confusion, roughly similar to what those on the battlefield describe as FUBAR. While such associations can sometimes provide historical reference points, they short-change the human character of battle when they supplant deeper understandings of war. University of London professor and longtime military historian Sir Antony Beevor's The Battle of Arnhem pushes back on this phenomenon.[1]
In The Battle of Arnhem, readers parachute headlong into the operation that took place in and around the Dutch town of Arnhem in September of 1944. Many who study World War II history already have a rough outline of Field Marshall Montgomery’s disastrous operation. Ground and air forces were hastily gathered to capture bridges considered crucial in hastening the war’s conclusion. Bad weather, bad planning, bad radios, and worse luck would pit the undersized allied force at Market Garden against a German enemy that—far from being at its breaking point as previously believed—proved willing to challenge allied efforts for every house, street, and bridgehead. Allied troops fought savagely for days, capturing two of the target bridges before exhausting their supplies and fighting capability. As the German war machine channeled reinforcements to Arnhem with unanticipated speed, the depleted allied force failed to secure the final bridge over the Neder Rijn river, causing the operation to collapse in disarray. The Market Garden calamity then gave rise to Operation Berlin, a modestly successful rescue effort that ferried more than 2,000 soldiers back across the Neder Rijn to safety. Still, the human toll of Market Garden was staggering: thousands died and many thousands more were taken as prisoners of the Reich. Some battalions returned at only one tenth their original strength.[2] Montgomery’s gamble to end the war early had devolved into what Brigadier General Philip H.W. Hicks called “another Dunkirk.”[3]
The Battle of Arnhem may be among the most intricate accounts of Market Garden since Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far, upon which the 1977 film was based.[4] On the spectrum’s opposite end is Gerhard L. Weinberg’s A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II.[5] Weinberg’s book is a herculean work of history, dedicating a scant three paragraphs to Market Garden despite its more than 1000 pages.[6] The success of Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far meanwhile may offer hints as to why the bulk of Market Garden-related literature was published only after the release of the 1977 film.
While many of those post-1977 accounts limit their narration to the middle and upper echelons of military command Beevor moves around the battlefield while also zooming in and out to different command levels. By doing that, he shows readers the reality of Market Garden's failure. There were failures at multiple levels and at multiple periods of the operation. There were also some isolated successes. The detail and completeness of Beevor's work show readers how complicated it actually was and how useless the usual Market Garden buzz-phrases really are. The understanding such phrases promote offers scholars clear waters in which to swim, but Beevor’s deep dive reveals a lesson learned by the men of Market Garden in 1944: the truth is in the mud.
The detail and completeness of Beevor's work show readers how complicated it actually was and how useless the usual Market Garden buzz-phrases really are.
Beevor therefore pays greatest attention to the gaps in these summary depictions. Relying on primary source accounts that include the diaries of local civilians, Allied, and German troops, Beevor drags the reader through the streets and living rooms of Arnhem and Oosterbeek to demonstrate the fearsome combat reality of hasty planning. The results can be quite personal: in basements with frightened families, readers hope for the sun to rise. As the final boats cross back over the Neder Rijn, readers stand with stranded soldiers to surrender, swim, or die.[7]
German forces in Oosterbeek. (German Federal Archives/Wikimedia)
It is in these details, however, that Beevor can sometimes risk losing the reader. The author’s attempts to organize the work in a clear and logical way (typically chaptering events around days of the week and/or sectors of the battle) sometimes result in the reader careening from one firefight to another. These scene changes continue throughout Beevor’s work, perhaps leaving readers unsure of where on the battlefield the author has taken them. This isn’t entirely Beevor’s fault; relating the sheer volume of action taking place throughout the Battle of Arnhem would challenge any historian. One wonders if the author may have made a conscious choice in this regard. Market Garden was a fiasco characterized by confusion and chaos. By overwhelming the reader with scene changes and details, Beevor at times pushes the reader to a state of disorientation that in some ways mirrors that of the battle’s actors. Though jarring, the reader can find value in this experience. Through it, readers finish the book with a better sense of the hopeless confusion that so stymied Allied soldiers during Operation Market Garden.
The Battle of Arnhem isn’t about radios, weather, drop zones or bridges but about courage, fear, sacrifice, and ego.
This can be a particularly rewarding experience for those who have grown exasperated by the catch-all phrases used to group their own wartime experiences. Just as Market Garden came to symbolize something other than the human toll it claimed, so too have more recent American sacrifices been lost amid a tangle of cover-all expressions. In Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom for example, some deployed early and some deployed late. Some flew and some patrolled. Some benefited by the troop surge, and others died demonstrating its necessity. The term “Market Garden” no more represents one simple association or meaning than “the war in Iraq” represents any single time, location, or experience. In the era of forever wars, categorizing service members in such unilateral terms betrays the unique nature of their experiences and disconnects us all from their meaning; one person’s experience in Afghanistan was not the same as another’s. In the case of Operation Market Garden, The Battle of Arnhem reconnects the reader with many of the unique strands that wove its tangled threads: the glider pilots flying desperately to resupply the ground, the Polish paratroopers waiting days on British airfields for a chance to avenge their cities, the stretcher-bound wounded realizing that their hospitals were becoming more dangerous than the fields.[8] In Beevor’s work, all connect together and upward to the actions of a general whose famous ego was large enough to start the battle, but not strong enough to finish it.[9] In this way, The Battle of Arnhem isn’t about radios, weather, drop zones or bridges but about courage, fear, sacrifice, and ego.
Although much is written about victory in war, relatively little memorializes the lives lost for lost causes. Even after the mission fell to pieces, the men who fought in Arnhem showed remarkable determination, grit, bravery and sacrifice. The Allied defeat at Arnhem was as honorable as any victory, and Sir Beevor pays it a worthy tribute while weaving a human story about defeat and the inhumanity of war.
Brandon C. Patrick was an Arabic Linguist in the U.S. Air Force before graduating from the University of Arizona with degrees in Arabic and Middle Eastern/North African Studies. He is now a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins SAIS where his research focuses on Iranian military innovation.
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Header Image: Aerial view of the bridge over the Neder Rijn, Arnhem; British troops and destroyed German armoured vehicles are visible at the north end of the bridge. (Imperial War Museum/Wikimedia)
Notes:
[1] Antony Beevor, The Battle Of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II. (London: Penguin Books, 2019).
[2] Ibid., 332.
[3] Ibid., 325.
[4] Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
[5] Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, 1. Hardcover ed., reprinted (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 701-702.
[6] A sincere thanks to Strategy Bridge community member Patrick Reilly for his contribution to this area of the piece. Mr. Reilly’s correction regarding Market Garden’s place in the official U.S. Army history of WWII made this a better and more accurate review.
[7] Beevor, Battle of Arnhem, 331.
[8] Ibid., 245.
[9] Ibid., 365.