Solid and unstinting account of the failed Market-Garden operation in September, 1944. Beevor makes it fairly clear that the operation suffered from a number of very significant command flaws, not the least of which were Eisenhower not being able to control Montgomery, and Horrocks being too ill to command. In spite of great heroism and drive by the soldiers themselves, the operation failed. An interesting counterpart to "A Bridge Too Far," which I think glossed over some of these things. ( )

What an amazing presentation of the famous battle to take the Arnhem bridge during World War II. Antony Beevor’s book, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944 is packed full of detail. It introduced significant elements that Cornelius Ryan did not cover in A Bridge Too Far. If you are interested in WWII history, you need to read Arnhem. Read more ( )

Operation Market Garden ranks among the worst military blunders of the Second World War. The brainchild of British general Bernard Montgomery, it was a plan to open an invasion route into northern Germany through the Netherlands by sending in paratroopers to seize key bridges, then speeding armored forces over them to secure a position over the Rhine River. What was promised to bring a quick end to the war, however, quickly became a nightmare as tanks were soon bogged down on the only highway available, leaving the British 1st Airborne Division at the northernmost point of the operation unsupported and subject to devastating German counterattacks.

Ever since its failure historians and armchair pundits have speculated as to how the plan might have succeeded. Antony Beevor is having none of it, however, making plain early in his history of the campaign that “[i]t was quite simply a very bad plan right from the start and right from the top. Every other problem stemmed from that.” The extent of this is made plain over the course of the book, as he details the unsupportably optimistic assumptions, unrealistic expectations, and botched execution that defined the disaster. What unfolds is a tragedy both for the soldiers involved and for the Dutch civilians, who were punished for their support for the Allied advance with a “famine winter” that is an often-unaddressed legacy of the campaign.

With its sharp analysis, evenhanded coverage of both sides, and incorporation of the civilian experience Beevor’s book embodies all of the qualities of his work as a military historian. Yet the nature of the battle complicates his efforts to provide a clear narrative, as too often events were characterized by small-unit actions independent from one another. Beevor captures them admirably, but it does force him to bounce the reader from one end of the campaign to the other. This makes for a disjointed account, though one that helps to underscore the futile nature of the campaign and one of the many reasons for its failure. ( )

In many ways the updated and expanded version of 'A Bridge too Far', with the story being told in a series of vivid vignettes and personal anecdotes. It is superior to A Bridge too Far, as Beevor doesn't focus as much to the race to the bridge at Arnhem, but gives due attention to the problems of the US airborne down the corridor, the German reactions and above all, the Dutch, who -rightly- figure largely in this book. The failed attempt at Arnhem did a lot to make the last war winter particularly miserable for the Dutch, something Beevor points out explicitly. None of the British upper echelon commanders come out very well in this book. Market Garden was a last attempt by the British to take the lead in conduct of the war, and was a grand failure.

As Bornanalog mentioned in his review on this site, Beevor doesn't go for the 'heroic failure' angle. We get the story of a lot of people getting killed because of overoptimistic and shoddy planning and command decisions. ( )