Arnhem: Britain’s Infamous Airborne Assault Of WWII

The plan - Operation Market Garden. A furious Allied air and land invasion through Holland. It was meant to end the war by Christmas, 1944. The objective - To seize the bridges over the Lower Rhine by airborne assault, allowing an Allied invasion of the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Hitler's Germany. The toughest bridge was assigned to the 1st British Airborne Division - Arnhem, 64 miles deep into Nazi occupied Holland. What went wrong? - For the British paratroopers, almost everything. Bad weather and delayed reinforcements. Faulty radio communications and no air-ground support. But worst of all, British Intelligence failed to report that two SS Panzer Divisions were in the woods outside Arnhem. A first-hand account by the Major-General who led the British assault, this is the story of one of the most bloody battles of WWII, a daring operation that should have proven successful, had it not tried to go a bridge too far.