Books
Montgomery's mistake
Max Hastings
military operations can fail for two reasons: because they are flawed in conception, or because they come unstuck in execution. In the dash for the bridge at Arnhem between September 17th and 25th 1944, plenty of Allied mistakes were made, and, as usual in battle against the Germans, each of them had to be paid for. But the overwhelming cause of that failure was misconception. The wrong leaders de- vised the wrong plan based upon the wrong assumptions. The very moderate Allied airborne commander, General Lewis Brereton, together with his British subordinate Browning, arranged to land airborne forces between four and nine miles from their objectives, despite their lack of heavy weapons and chronic lack of mobility. Along with Montgomery, they chose to discount the known presence of refitting SS Panzer elements, partly be- cause of their passionate anxiety to make use of the parachute divisions available, and even more because they cherished the illusion that Hitler's armies were at their last gasp. More tragic and fundamental yet for survivors and historians, few now be- lieve that even if XXX Corps had reached Arnhem and established a bridgehead across the Rhine, a decisive thrust into Germany could have been launched from it. Arnhem was a cock-up which fascinates posterity because it has become a byword for heroic sacrifice.
So what is left to bring to the battle, 40 years on? The answer, to judge from Geoffrey Powell's excellent short book, is a sharp sense of perspective and a wealth of military common sense. A few years ago, under the pseudonym of Tom Argus, Major Powell wrote a brilliant account of his own Arnhem experience as a company commander under Shan Hackett. Now the author has put aside reminiscence, side- stepped the sort of first-hand eye-witness accounts of smoke and flame that other authors, notably Cornelius Ryan, have collected in such numbers. He has set himself simply to collate and assess all the information that we now possess about Arnhem. He has created the best analysis of the battle to be published thus far.
First, the context: popular legend views Arnhem either in isolation, or as one of the early battles for the Low Countries and for Germany. Instead, it is essential to recall that the drop began less than a month after Falaise. For ten weeks following D-Day, the Allies battered Hitler's armies in Nor- mandy. At last, the German line broke and only 20,000 almost destitute survivors escaped across the Seine. It was one of the most terrible military defeats of modern times, and it was succeeded by the Allies' headlong, exhilarating race across France amid negligible opposition to seize Brus- sels and Antwerp in the first days of September. Ultra decrypts confirmed the enemy's despair and apparent bankruptcy of resources. After the weeks of acute tension in Normandy, a dangerous light- headedness overtook the Allied high com- mand. It was this loss of concentration that caused Horrocks and Montgomery to fail to perceive, in the days after gaining Antwerp, the urgency of hastening on to clear the banks of the Scheldt. This lapse, and their consequent inability to use the port, had far more serious consequences for the Allied armies in the winter of 1944 than defeat at Arnhem.
But it was amid a mood of release, excitement, optimism and serious mis- judgment of German resistance that the drop was conceived. It was not an unique inspiration by Montgomery. Since D-Day, he had planned a succession of 'vertical envelopments' to make use of the huge resources committed to First Airborne Army. Each in turn was either made redundant by events on the ground, or cancelled for operational reasons. Those who regard Arnhem as a wholly uncharac- teristic spasm of boldness by the Field- Marshal forget the context in which he approved it: he knew that he had lost the first round of his battle with Eisenhower for resources to support the 'single thrust' by 21st Army Group towards the heart of Germany. The Arnhem operation, if it succeeded, would offer him the best, perhaps the only chance of forcing the Supreme Commander's hand and regaining effective strategic control of the campaign.
Planning for the drop was hasty — seven days against almost as many months for the D-Day operations. It was hampered by the lack of understanding between soldiers and airmen which dogged the whole campaign. The air forces refused to accept the notion of a coup de main by men dropped directly onto the objectives, as urged by Urquhart, • First Airborne Division's commander, among others. The decision to go for open Dropping Zones at a distance from the objectives was the single most disastrous error in the plan, which an abler man than Brereton would never have allowed to stand. Ridgway, an outstanding leader, was denied the operational command that he expected, in view of American predomi- nance of numbers, in favour of Browning. 'Boy' Browning was one of those outstand- ing British military gentlemen, quite numerous in high command throughout the 20th century, who inspire such personal affection and respect that it seems churlish to cast aspersions upon their intel- lects. Forty years later, to those upon whom Browning never wove a personal spell, he seems to embody most of the virtues and vices of Guards officers of his period. He does not carry conviction as a planner, or as a commander with the ruthless ability to 'grip' a battle. Indeed, once Market Garden was launched, Powell notes how little influence Browning ex- erted upon its progress. The author cuts sharply through the 40-year-old legend of the two unsus- pected Panzer divisions at Arnhem, and the young intelligence officer whom Browning sent on sick leave after he made an unwelcome fuss about identifying tanks near the Dropping Zone. Through Ultra, 21st Army Group knew about the Panzers. However, far from being in divisional strength, they amounted to only weak brigade groups with barely 40 tanks between them. In the mood of the moment at 21st Army Group, even to those in the know they did not seem a critical menace. Montgomery and his staff should have known better, after seeing the huge diffi- culties that even the shattered remains of SS Panzer formations had caused to un- broken British corps in Normandy.
A great mistake was made in briefing the unblooded British parachute units of First Airborne Division. They were conditioned to regard their enemy lightly. Every Allied formation that had fought in Normandy knew how very, very good the Germans were, above all in defence and in quick reaction with makeshift forces. It was particularly unfortunate that the green British units were given the most difficult task, rather than the highly experienced Americans, the finest US fighting forma- tions of the war. But since this was pre-eminently a British operation to serve an offensive on the British flank, it seemed unacceptable politically to allot the most distant bridge to the US 82nd or 101st divisions.
British inexperience revealed itself rapidly after the landings; with the excep- tion of the superb drive and determination shown by Frost's 2 Para, most units made painfully slow progress towards their objectives, advancing deliberately, failing to match the shrewd American use of Dutch civilian help and information, even halting their movements at nightfall on the first day. The Germans, meanwhile, re- sponded with all their usual speed and ruthlessness: gathering battle groups from any rag-tag of forces to hand, thrusting the reconnaissance unit of 9SS Panzer towards Nijmegen across the Arnhem bridge be- fore even Frost had reached it. Paralysis of Communications overtook First Airborne Division immediately. This crippling lapse, says Powell, must be blamed squarely upon Browning and Urquhart. They had had months of training in which to discover the shortcomings of their signallers and equip- ment. A signals officer capable of such Massive failure could and should have been found out and sacked long before reaching the battlefield.
The Americans had to fight hard for their own objectives, and did so with exceptional skill and determination, in- sufficiently recognised in past British accounts of the battle. XXX Corps' adv- ance to meet the paratroops was spearheaded by Guards Armoured Divi- sion. Many critics have suggested during and since the war that it was a mistake ever tO place the finest infantry in the world in tanks. Adair's men earned a great reputa- tion for courage, but also for acting with measured deliberation, by the book. The difficulties on that one narrow road north became a legend. Yet, as Powell says, if, XXX Corps commander Brian Horrocks understood the urgency of getting to Arnhem, it is difficult to escape the feeling that he failed to instil this in his command.
Horrocks had served as an infantry officer in the First World War, been taken prisoner, and after his release en- joyed some memorable experiences in the Russian campaign of 1919, which Philip Warner recounts in his very enjoyable short biography of the general. He made a superb reputation in the desert as a di- visional commander before being badly Wounded in Italy. It took him months to recover, and indeed he might never have returned to the battlefield had not Mont- gomery's need of him in north-west Europe been so great. Warner deals kindly With XXX Corps' difficulties on the road to nArnhem, and does not discuss the point Powell makes, that some witnesses in September 1944 still considered Horrocks a sick man. In the last resort, it is impossi- ble not to contrast the crippling losses endured by both American and British airborne forces ordered to seize the bridges With the mere 130 casualties taken by Guards Armoured between their start line and the capture of the Nijmegen bridge late on September 20th. Not for the first trine nor the last in north-west Europe, the Allies had failed to find a means to deploy their huge superiority of firepower and equipment in such a fashion as to over- whelm the Germans at the decisive points at least not nearly speedily enough. At every level, the German response to Mar- ket Garden was a masterpiece of impro- visation and tactical skill, marred only by their failure to demolish the Nijmegen bridges. , Powell's narrative provides further evi- uence of the extraordinarily poor ground- air liaison that still prevailed in 21st Army Group as late as the autumn of 1944. Even when the weather enabled them to do so, Allied fighter-bombers could not provide effective support for First Airborne Divi- sion for lack of Forward Air Control. They did not even achieve effective interdiction on the approaches to the battlefield. As late as Noveinber, staff officers at 21st Army Group were still lamenting the reluctance of the air forces to become closely involved in operational planning. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that senior airmen's obsession with their own independence from the ground forces pre- vented the Allies from gaining anything like the advantage they might have ex- pected of their absolute command of the sky.
Powell is a resolute defender of Roy Urquhart. Yet some critics have compared him unfavourably with Gale of Sixth Air- borne, and it was Urquhart who designated the notably uninspired Brigidier Hicks to succeed him in his absence, rather than the brilliant Hackett. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the American airborne leaders — Ridgway, Gavin of 82nd Air- borne and Taylor of 101st — were more imaginative, ruthless and quick-thinking officers than their British counterparts. But once the Germans had been granted time to interpose men and armour between the Arnhem bridge and the parachute battalions struggling to reach it on the second day, it is hard to imagine that any local command decision could have altered the outcome. The British were destroyed piecemeal, and although they declined to admit it, after the brilliantly courageous group at the north end of the bridge had been snuffed out the defence of the First Airborne perimeter around the Harten- stein Hotel became a mere matter of survival, no longer a feasible operation of war that could open the way into Ger- many.
In the last days of the operation, failure turned to tragedy as many more brave men were sacrificed in fumbled last-minute ac- tions that should never have taken place. The Polish Parachute Brigade, under- trained and so foolhardy they did not even dig before the shells began to kill them, elements of 43rd Division, many heroic aircrew flying futile supply missions, were thrown into the struggle. If Browning could achieve nothing else, he might have gained sufficient understanding of his own force's predicament to curtail the last days of slaughter. These were redeemed only by the startlingly honourable behaviour of the SS to British wounded and prisoners. In their perversion of chivalry which spared no pity for the weak, but saved its utmost tributes for the strong, the SS recognised the epic quality of First Airborne's per- formance.
In an admirably cool postscript for one of those who endured it all, Powell joins the armchair critics who have long argued that the creation of First Airborne Army was a mistake. Small air-dropped parties behind the lines could, and did, achieve a great deal. But the 'private armies' of the war, the elite forces that by 1944 had swelled to massive proportions, deprived the main armies of thousands of outstand- ing officers and NCOs who were sorely missed in north-west Europe. The huge. commitment of resources to airborne forces provoked a conscious search for suitable uses for them, a disastrous inver- sion of sensible planning.
It is striking to recall the debate before D-Day, when Marshall in Washington urged a massive drop near Evreux in the so-called 'Orleans Gap', to create a bridge- head in the German rear. Eisenhower defeated this proposal with a cogent recital of paratroops' immobility after dropping, lack of heavy weapons to fight armour, and immense problems in resupply. These arguments of April were no less valid in September. Yet the impatience of the airborne soldiers and the loss of concentra- tion by their higher commanders caused them to be wilfully disregarded. Powell writes in the closing pages of his book that he has no regrets for Arnhem, and knows no veteran of First Airborne who possesses them either. These are the only sane sentiments for men who saw so many others whom they knew, or loved, or commanded, die in the battle. Those of us who look back without memory, through the interval of a generation, can afford the indulgence of reflecting how much better if Arnhem had never been.
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