Holland, September 1944
Eisenhower finally admits to Montgomery's daring plan:to rush through the Netherlands with his armored and airborne troops to outflank the German defences. But "Market Garden" was not equipped with all the necessary means. It was ultimately the failure in front of Arnhem that prevented the other successes from being exploited.
For lack of a sufficient number of transport planes, the British paratroopers were going to jump in small groups... in the very center of a gathering of enemy forces much larger than had been estimated. After reaching the key bridge over the Lower Rhine, these men would be annihilated and their sacrifice would spell the end of any hope of ending the war in Europe during the year 1944.
As the Allied armies slowly approached the Reich border, German resistance grew tougher. General Dempsey, who led the British Third Army, observed this hardening at every moment. Its leading elements now found themselves more and more seriously hooked by units of young Hitlerites, by groups made up of men taken from convalescent centers and services and even by Luftwaffe pilots whose squadrons were retained in the ground for lack of fuel. In small groups, in isolated houses, along the countless little streams that cut through the sandy moor or hidden in hard-to-reach swamps, these diehard patriots, well convinced that they were defending the threshold of the motherland, fought with desperate courage.
British intelligence reports ironically described poorly trained and hastily formed enemy units:"If one takes into account the quality as well as the diversity of the troops the enemy finds to oppose us today, we have the image of the efforts undertaken by the Reich to rectify the situation:we meet paratroopers, pilots, police officers and sailors, sixteen-year-old boys and men suffering from ulcers of the duodenum...”
Recruited almost everywhere, inexperienced, of course, they were... But it was these same men who were delaying the Allied advance!