Operation Market Garden

[Rising_Sun]

@The_Fiendish_Red_Bar

Yup thats him.

A good commander, he pushed through the Ploesti raids when others said they should not happen.

Here he was blindsided by worry of transport and pilot losses through flak. A sound concern.

Given our hindsight, its easy to criticise his decsion, but at the time, in his frame of mind, not expecting heavy resistance or poor weather, Im sure I would have made the same decision.

But with hindsight, that reluctance to take air crew and aircraft losses, led to the strategic failure of the operation.

Sometimes I find it easy to blame him, but then I wonder, if I had been in his position, if I would really have done anything different.

Im not sure I would.

I have the benefit of knowing what happened…

One of the problems with bureaucracies, of which the military is probably the most refined yet at heart the most brutal and primitive, is that successes aren’t rewarded in anything like the proportion that mistakes are punished.

And that politicians within the bureaucracy are more successful in advancing themselves than those who just do their jobs well, or even just satisfactorily.

MacArthur’s performance, or lack of it, on the first day of the war makes Pearl Harbor look like something approaching an American victory.

MacArthur’s treatment of Brereton was disgraceful.

Brereton was, of the few commanders in the Philippines at the time of Japan’s attack, the one who displayed the most initiative and commitment to carrying out the war orders, in which he was frustrated by the one who displayed no initiative and no commitment to carrying out the war orders, being MacArthur.

It’s one of the many joys of life that political arseholes like MacArthur manage to survive their failures while those who serve under them, like Brereton, are sacrificed to enable their bosses to survive.

[The_Fiendish_Red_Bar]

Yes… Im always glad about what happened to Major Urquhart, the man who pointed out the parked Krupp steel in the piccies from a Spit recce plane and confirmed by Dutch sources.

After being pushed off the op by the medical officer he went onto serve in T-Force, rounding up notable Nazi’s after the war, one of which was Wilhelm Groth. He also got a well deserved knighthood too as well as becoming Undersecretary-General of the UN… So occasionally, those trampled on do get their rewards.

Regarding Dutch intelligence, Im not surprised little was made of it… It was utterly broken by the SD and Gestapo and many Allied agents paid with their lives for it. By 1944 it was beginning to turn, after the Allied invasion in Normandy, but still was not a trusted source. Its a shame as one Dutch activist commented that had they been able to operate with 1st Airborne, they could have led the British troops to the bridge through the warren of back lanes and house gardens. Makes you wonder what could have been. Incidently, lets not forget that some of those fighting against 1st Airborne from the time of the drop were Dutch SS. Im guessing they had a better knowledge of the local area than the British.

But again, at the time, no real reliance was placed on Dutch Intel as its source was not trusted.

Trouble is this argument means nothing in regards the location of 9th and 10th SS. This was picked up from an ULTRA decrypt in early September. Given that Monty in all likelihood knew from where ULTRA decrypts originated (and most Allied commanders didnt as was seen with Freyburg in Crete), its worrying that he dismissed it so lightly in a meeting on 10th September 1944 with Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.

Im no lover, or hater, of Monty. But he dropped his usual cautious nature for Market-Garden. I honestly think he believed he had a way to end the war in 1944 and took the chance. Of course it was all powered by his ego to be the one who ‘won’ the war and I do wonder if the rising star of Patton had alot to do with it.

Ego… always a dodgy thing to have in a General.