Arnhem - 10 Days in the Cauldron - Operation Market Garden
Vložit
- čas přidán 16. 09. 2021
- Arnhem - 10 Days in the Cauldron - Operation Market Garden
With Iain Ballantyne
Part of Arnhem Week on WW2TV
More Operation Market Garden and Arnhem content on WW2TV
• Operation Market Garde...
More Airborne Forces content on WW2TV
• Airborne Forces
To start off the week Iain Ballantyne joins me to talk about the battle and how he approached it for his brilliant book 10 Days in the Cauldron. Operation Market Garden is often looked at from the Operational level and with an eye for identifying flaws with the plan and finding fault with some of the leaders and key players. However in this show we focus on the individuals in action on the DZs, in the town and later in the Oosterbeek perimeter and we consider the battle as a series of "stages". We also talk about the impact on the Dutch civilians and what happened to some of the paratroopers after the battle.
This show was pre-recorded, but Iain and Paul will respond to your comments.
iainballantyne.com/
Arnhem: Ten Days in The Cauldron by Iain Ballantyne
UK uk.bookshop.org/a/5843/978191...
www.agorabooks.co/out-now-arn...
Other Arnhem Shows on WW2TV:
Western Arnhem - An Area Too far • Western Arnhem - An Ar...
Red Berets and Red Crosses • Red Berets and Red Cro...
Ambush at Wolfheze (Arnhem) • Ambush at Wolfheze (Ar...
10 Days in the Cauldron - Operation Market Garden • Arnhem - 10 Days in th...
Flightpath to Murder - an RAF fighter pilot shot down near Arnhem • Flightpath to Murder -...
The Human Tragedy of the Bridge Too Far • Arnhem - 10 Days in th...
Dirk Bogarde - Normandy, Arnhem and Belsen • Dirk Bogarde - Normand...
Operation Pegasus - Escape across the Lower Rhine • Operation Pegasus - Es...
Audrey Hepburn in WWII • Audrey Hepburn in WWII...
You can become a CZcams Member and support us here / @ww2tv
You can become a Patron here / ww2tv
Please click subscribe for updates
Social Media links -
/ ww2tv
/ ww2tv
/ ww2tv
WW2TV Bookshop - where you can purchase copies of books featured in my CZcams shows. Any book listed here comes with the personal recommendation of Paul Woodadge, the host of WW2TV. For full disclosure, if you do buy a book through a link from this page WW2TV will earn a commission.
UK - uk.bookshop.org/shop/WW2TV
USA - bookshop.org/shop/WW2TV
Books by Paul Woodadge:
World War II Battlefields: Battle Sites Today
UK uk.bookshop.org/a/5843/978183...
USA bookshop.org/a/21029/97818388...
Angels of Mercy
USA bookshop.org/a/21029/97814819...
Iain is a super guest. If you have enjoyed this show, please don't forget to click like, leave a comment for other viewers and if you have not done so already please SUSBSCRIBE so you don't miss our next streams. You can also become a member of this channel and support me financially here czcams.com/channels/UC1nmJGHmiKtlkpA6SJMeA.html.
Links to any books discussed, WW2TV merchandise, our social media pages and other WW2TV shows to watch can all be found in the full CZcams description. Lastly, my own book Angels of Mercy is always available online - more info here www.ddayhistorian.com/angels-of-mercy.html
I also agree with Iain, the arbiters if this was a failure or not, are the residents of Arnhem. Their respects every year show that the soldiers sacrifice was not in vain and will be remembered.
I had what was for me the unique opportunity of visiting the Hartenstein Airborne Museum at Oosterbeek and the rebuilt Arnhem bridge about ten years ago. It was a day to remember.
ust rewatching this one now and I very much appreciate the attention to the civilians.
We truly should have more history on their sufferings and monuments to them in my mind. I had a conversation regarding it with my step grand dad who was with the 101. And my take away was that it's much better to be a well trained soldier with your friends and comrades all armed and prepared to have your back. As a civilian you're facing random overwhelming force and just trying to stay alive and keep your family safe. Having his wife and kids back home in the US was a comfort to him.
This is an excellent show … it honors the British airborne and civilians who were subjected to this horrible cauldron. They were brave & stood strong for good in the very face of evil. Iain’s book is top notch. And this show had me on the edge of my seat. A+. Thank you Paul, for bringing such superb content to CZcams.
There were at least four black soldiers with 1st Airborne for Market Garden:
Corporal Roland "Knocker" West, 156th Btn The Parachute Regiment
Trooper Cecil Charles Bolton, 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron
Sergeant Joseph Smith, 21st Independent Parachute Company
Private Kenneth Roberts, 21st Independent Parachute Company
It's interesting to note that the last three were in units where as well as being volunteers they were only accepted after interview with the CO (Gough for the recce, Wilson for the Independent Coy). Of the four, West was KIA on the 20th; Roberts died after swimming the Nederrijn in the evacuation; Bolton was taken POW when the bridge group surrendered; Smith made it across the Nederrijn and went on to become an officer.
One more book sale for Mr Ballantyne, an excellent discussion
What an amazing book! I’m about halfway through and it’s hard to put down. I really appreciate the veteran interviews. Almost makes you feel like you’re there. It’s clear that an amazing amount of research and work went into the book!
I agree.. ian’s book is captivating
I snuck into the movie as an 11 year old. Got kicked out! Ha ha. One of my favorite movies now.
Great show, very interesting presentation with lots to learn from it !
Great interview. Thank you! 👏👏👏
Went to Arnhem last summer to watch iron maiden. Prior to my visit I contacted Jan loos about a tour and he met me at the hartenstein and took me round oosterbeek for a battlefield tour,lovely bloke,think he was 94 at the time!!loved the tour. Was my 6th visit to Arnhem, love the place
Great conversation and book.Thank you.
This great account ( book) needs to be available on an audible download and deservedly would be well received).
Such an interesting and thought provoking presentation. And yes....another book to add to my collection!
Paul and Iain: Thank You both. Can't Wait to get the Book.
This is an interesting and in detail talk about some lesser known or discussed parts.
My grandfather was a part of the Recce. squadron at Arnhem, so any new information I can learn about the whole event is very welcome!
Phill, I now have a copy of Bob Hilton's book, Freddie Gough's Specials At Arnhem. If you have your grandfather's details, I could see if he's listed in the nominal roll in the book.
Brilliant insight
I read a Bridge too Far, I saw the movie too but I don't always trust movies
(or any individual book: there are at least 3 sides to every historical event - what I saw, what you saw, and what actually happened). I'll have to read this book. My opinion so far has been that there was an attempt for an airborne assault that was extremely ambitious to try to open a road into Germany and it didn't work. I am personally torn between admiration at the attempt, and horrified at the results. I give every man who took part my thanks, they did what they were assigned to do and if historians 75 years later still cant figure out what the best option would have been, I believe its its a reflection of overthinking after the fact. The operation itself may have had flaws, but its always easier to point flaws out after the fact. By the way, I'd never thought I'd say anything in defense of Montgomery but I just did.
The thing is, once an Allied Airborne Army had been created it was going to get used. So if not OMG then another op
@@WW2TV I absolutely agree! Having the asset of elite troops in such large quantities is guaranteed to elicit a desire to use them, you don't want them sitting idle and unproductive (from a military perspective). They were slated for several airborne operations before OMG (I forget the exact number) but none came to fruition. That was, to my understanding, part of the reason for the enthusiasm towards OMG, that they could finally use this force they had in reserve
@@WW2TV it is amazing to me that they didnt perform more airborne operations, although I will admit putting the 101st airborne at Bastogne was a stroke of genius even though it was probably incidental (using whatever reserves they had available). I know it's used as a trope but it is true that airborne units were trained to expect to be surrounded, granted only for limited periods of time.
On a related subject, I'm amazed at glider pilots and glider-borne troops survived their training, let alone their landing into combat.
A great show. I really liked Iain very comprehensive present of the battle, which I really only know from the film and a few documentaries.
Market Garden was an audacious throw of the dice.
PAUL …OMG ..sorry I'm not shouting but the officer by the name of Lieutenant Bingly actually came to the smugglers pub at Totness to tell us his story ,unfortunately the pub has now been long gone ,but an absolute tremendous story was told that had us all in total aw and disbelief ..incredible .
Ha, how fantastic
Yeah unreal mate, honest I couldn't make it up when we got the German with a very pistol he said he wasn't very well after that.. Lol. 👍
A very good and slightly different perspective. I think most books talk a little about the Dutch civilians and I agree the question of whether the operation should have been conducted is in the words of the Dutch boy at the end of Ians book and the continued support and friendship by the Dutch people to veterans of Arnhem. After all the books I've read for the last 46 years I refuse to think this operation was a failure. Were all objectives met, well No, but most were, and even at Arnhem it gave people some hope even if it was for just a few days. Remember some of the words written by little Anne Frank. Despite being so afraid of the bombings it gave them all hope that people were fighting and dying to liberate them. I am grateful to all the Allied soldiers, seamen, and flyers who participated and died to rid the world of the evil that if left unchecked might have continued for many years later. Thank you all.
Another outstanding episode. You are at the top of my documentary list. Also, my bookshelf space may need expanding as I just ordered this book, after ordering the book on the Eastern Front the other day.
Could have done without the social justice soapboxing towards the end though. It was forced, and just nor appropriate to the subject at all.
I turned it off after that. I'll read the book.
Question for Iain .... the interviews with veterans you undertook, how far back was this and did you happen to speak with any from the Tenth?
I knew four people who were in Market Garden:
*1)* My uncle. Jimmy. He was with XXX Corps. He pulled out of the Waal river some of the bodies of the 82nd and British Sappers who rowed over the river in broad daylight. He mentioned that the Americans were big and heavy, appearing too big to be paras. He said they were _"big heavy country boys"._
*2)* Dick Smullens - an Irishman from Dublin. He was with the First Airborne at Arnhem, getting back over the Rhine. He said the Germans, _"f***ing pounded us"._
*3)* Johnny McKnight. He was with the First Airborne at Arnhem at the bridge. Nice man. He never spoke much about it. But never get on the wrong side of him or your life was in danger.
*4)* Bill Dixon. He was with XXX Corps. He told us they were going up the road into Nijmegen in trucks, when US 82nd men in a subsequent jump were dropping in the fields all around them to support their own men fighting in Nijmegen. He said many of them were running south away from Nijmegen, when seeing the fighting. He would imitate them in a comic fashion, in the side to side bending over walk, saying in his best American accent, _"I'm gettin' the hell outa here Mack"._ Billy said the film was correct in that wherever they went the Dutch turned out singing and waving flags. He said it was difficult to get past them.
My Grandad was II Para Platoon Sgt in Arnhem, told me his section was the first on the bridge. Always remover him saying that that they knew they were heading for kicking from the German Army before the Op got under way.
Would love to have known more about his military career before he passed, Robert Dennis, known as Sweed.
You should apply for his service records from the MoD
❤
👍
Great show. Totally clichéd, but the airbourne actions like Arnhem are great in the re-telling.
Are identities of the four Airborne soliders visible on that very famous photo of Market Garden, known?
Can you tell me which photo you're referring to? I know many of the photos that show up time and again in books and in some cases the names and unit are captioned.
Fascinating that Monty is characterised by some US military historians as outspoken, when you consider the truths about US leadership he could have disclosed but was decently reticent about. I suspect he knew that truth-telling would be counter-productive in the post-war political reality of a world divided between communism and consumerism.
Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower.[243] He was threatened with legal action by Field Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein.[244]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery#Opinions
@@nickdanger3802 my observation still stands.
When talking about the civilian sidethe Dutchman called Frans, 56:11 there is a photo shown illustrating the de devastation, remenants of a car. There is a interesting (civilian) story behind this photo. This car was used by 2 Dutchmen to collect supplies for the medical aid station in the house behind it, actually Hotel Schoonoord. At a certain point these two men were trying to collect water for the wounded. They used milk churns, two are visible in this photo. When they returned to Schoonoord, the Germans start to mortar the area and their car received a direct hit. One of them Samuel Swarts was later buried at the Airborne cemetary. When later discovered he was a Dutch civilian they wanted to remove him. His widow objected that. Considering that Mr Swarts had been serving in a Dutch volunteer "unit" Oranje battalion in aid of the British airborne it might be one of the considerations to leave his final resting place at the airborne cemetary. He is one of two Dutch civilians buried at the cemetary
Thanks for sharing
You always hear how ss are elite best soldier's in ww2, then tbe paras fought them tooth and nail
This loss still does not compare to our horrible loss in the Philippines. MacArthur abandones tens of thousands of allies to the Japanese who enslave them. In Korea this same General flobbels again and cannot supply our troops with winter gear, resulting in terrible loss of life. One of Americas worst Generals...
Always feel like the movie made tbe Americans did nothing wrong, the British was the reason for failure.
Indeed, and considering Americans played a prominent part in the planning of the battle (Brereton, Williams, Gavin and Taylor) this needs to stop.
All film drama has to be seen in the light of the filmmaker's intentions. If you lookup Based On A **True** True Story, it examines a number of films made in the 2010s for historical accuracy and finds the best is Selma (2014) at 100%, and the worst is The Imitation Game (2014) at 42.3%.
The reason for the Imitation Game's poor portrayal of how the German Enigma codes were broken is because the intent of the film was to rehabilitate the name of mathematician Alan Turing, who was prosecuted under the laws existing at the time for indecent behaviour. The 'Colossus' codebreaking machine was designed and built by engineers, not Turing himself as shown in the film - he only wrote the specifications for what the machine needed to do - admittedly not very dramatic on film.
Selma is a biopic of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and although I haven't seen the film myself, the 100% score would suggest to me that historical accuracy was probably the motive behind the film and not something else.
Director Richard Attenborough's motive for making A Bridge Too Far he declared was to make an "anti-war film", and he probably settled on Cornelius Ryan's book because it already appears to have an anti-British bias. Ryan was born in Dublin, worked for the Daily Telegraph in London, and was embedded as a war correspondent with Patton's US 3rd Army during the NW European campaign. After the war he emigrated to the United States, where he wrote his three books. The scriptwriter was the very talented William Goldman, who has 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to his credit, and I always thought Ryan O'Neal and Robert Redford's performances almost recreate Paul Newman and Redford in the earlier film. Hollywood producer Joseph Levine is quoted as responding to charges of historical inaccuracy in the film by saying "I pay to make entertainment, not history."
I conducted my own study of A Bridge Too Far a few years ago by timing each scene and breaking them down into true, untrue, or a bit iffy, and came up with a figure of 50.2% true, which looks (to an old cynic like me) almost like a deliberate attempt to make it 'mostly' accurate, especially as the longest scenes are the ones with troops boarding aircraft and glider tow ropes being unfurled on the runways. Much of the manipulation to the true story in the film is used to serve Attenborough's view that British officers were from an inherently incompetent class (and Americans are from a classless society of course), and the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge almost single-handed by the Sundance Kid himself is a total unashamed fiction.
Despite this, the film did badly at the US box office, only two years after the fall of Saigon and showing another Allied defeat, so American audiences were voting with their feet in the Summer of 1977 by lining up around the block to watch Star Wars again.
We are amateur historians, Paul. You can change our minds if you produce evidence and give us your interpretation.
This stinks of Monty...
Could you elaborate?
Actually, Brereton, Williams and Hollinghurst made the big decisions that proved costly. To a lesser extent, so did Gavin, Browning and Taylor. Urquhart was probably not the best choice.
Monty's general outline idea was sound. Unfortunately it was planned by others, and that's where it went wrong.
Actually the lyndon library is full of shit yet again - that inferiority complex and mythology bleeding thru
HQ blaming Montgomery
Alan Brooke's own words
*"Triumph in the West, by Arthur Bryant, From the diary of Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke* entry for 5 October 1944:Page 219" During the whole discussion one fact stood out clearly, that access to Antwerp must be captured with the least possible delay. *I feel that Monty's strategy for once is at fault, Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place*
*Admiral Ramsay brought this out as well in the discussion and criticized Monty freely....."The mistake lay with Monty for not having made the capture of Antwerp the immediate objective at highest priority & I let fly with all my guns at the faulty strategy we had allowed Montgomery. Our large forces were now grounded for lack of supply. Had we got Antwerp instead of the corridor we should be in a far better position for launching a knock out blow."*
Monty admitting it after the war???
*The Guns at Last Light, by Rick Atkinson, p.303 Montgomery would acknowledge as much after the war, conceding "And here I must admit a bad mistake on my part -I underestimated the difficulties of opening up the approaches to Antwerp so that we could get free use of the port."*
*(Montgomery’s memoirs, p297)*
*A Magnificent Disaster, by David Bennett, p. 198* Montgomery attributes the lack of full success to the fact that the II SS Panzer Corps was refitting in the area. *"We knew it was there.....we were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively."* Here, Montgomery was at the very least being economical with the truth.
*How about Air Marshall Tedder???*
*With Prejudice, by Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander AEF, Page 599"* *Eisenhower assumed, as he and I had done all along, that whatever happened Montgomery would concentrate on opening up Antwerp. No one could say that we had not emphasized the point sufficiently by conversation and signal*
*How Allied HQ Chief of Staff Bedell-Smith*
*Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany,1944-45* The release of the files from German Signals by Bletchley Park conclusively showed that the 9th & 10th Panzer Divisions were re-fitting in the Arnhem area. With their Recon Battalions intact. *Yet when Bedel-Smith(SHAEF) brought this to Monty's attention "he ridiculed the idea and waved my objections airly aside"*
*Max Hastings,Armageddon:The Battle for Germany,1944-45 Freddie de Guingand Monty's Chief of Staff* telephoned him saying the operation would be launched too late to exploit German disarray. That XXX Corps push to Arnhem would being made on a narrow front along one road, *Monty ignored him. Montgomery’s own staff was opposed to the plan, as was his own chief of staff*