Main Reasons of Market-Garden Operation Failure Essay

Main Reasons of Market-Garden Operation Failure - Essay Example The Battle of Arnhem, known by its Allied codename of Operation ‘Market-Garden’, was the biggest airborne battle in the history, and the only attempt in the Second World War by the Allies to employ airborne troops in a strategic role in Europe. It was a battle of Army Groups numbering hundreds of thousands of men- 21st Army Group under Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery in opposition to Army Group B under General Field Marshall Walther Model- but constantly its outcome hinged on the actions of small forces and individual battalions at critical points (Hercelode 2000, 61). Rather than a set-piece battle with a orderly beginning and end, it began on 17 September 1944 from a perplexed and daily changing pattern of events, and ended ten days later as the only major defeat of Montgomery’s career, and the only Allied defeat in the campaign in North-West Europe (Hercelode 2000, 62). The direct starting point of the Battle of Arnhem was actually Montgomery’s greatest victory, the Battle of Normandy. The annihilation of the original Army Group B in the Falaise Pocket in August 1944 at the end of the battle was a tragedy for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Of 38 German divisions committed to Normandy, 25 were completely destroyed, with at least 240,000 men killed or wounded, and a further 200,000 taken prisoner. General Field Marshall Model, chosen on 18 August as both Commander-in-Chief West and commander of Army Group B, found himself organizing the disturbance of his shattered forces across northern France into Belgium and Holland (Hercelode 2000, 62).