Field Marshal Montgomery's plan to get Second British Army behind the fortifications of the German Siegfried Line in 1944 led to the hugely ambitions Operation Market-Garden. Part of this plan called for a rapid advance from Belgium through Holland up to and across the lower Rhine by the British XXX Corps along a single road already dominated by airborne troops. Their objective along this road was the bridge at Arnhem, the target of British and Polish airborne troops. Once XXX Corps had reached this bridge it would then make for the German industrial area of the Ruhr. The operation was bold in outlook but risky in concept. Using specially commissioned artwork and detailed analysis, Ken Ford completes this trilogy on Operation Market-Garden by examining this attack which, if successful, could have shortened the war in the west considerably. Yet it turned out to be a bridge too far.

Overshadowed by the dramatic British failure at Arnhem, the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were a vital component of Operation Market-Garden and succeeded in capturing their objectives at Eindhoven and Nijmegen. In the summer of 1944, plans began for a complex operation to seize a Rhine river bridge at Arnhem in the Netherlands. The American portion of the airborne mission was to employ two divisions of the US XVIII Airborne Corps to seize key terrain features that otherwise might delay the advance of British tanks towards the bridge. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions succeeded in their tasks of capturing the vital bridges at Eindhoven at Nijmegen in the face of fierce German resistance. However, the delays caused to the British armored advance, combined with stronger than expected fighting at Arnhem led to the withdrawal of the remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division in one of the Western Allies' most costly defeats of World War II. Contemporary photographs, maps and detailed color artwork complement extensive archival research that reveals the successes of those American airborne missions, largely overshadowed by the failure of the operation as a whole.

“Reveals much of what history has tended to gloss over . . . should be a must read for all who have an interest in this operation” (Airborne Quarterly). After Normandy, the most spectacular Allied offensive of World War II was Operation Market Garden, which planned to join three divisions of paratroopers dropped behind German lines with massive armored columns breaking through the front. The object was to seize a crossing over the Rhine to outflank the heartland of the Third Reich and force a quick end to the war. The operation utterly failed, of course, as the 1st British Airborne was practically wiped out, the American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions became tied down in vicious combat for months, and the vaunted armored columns were foiled at every turn by improvisational German defenses. Some have called the battle “Hitler’s last victory.” In this work, many years in the making, David Bennett puts forward a balanced and comprehensive account of the British, American, Polish, Canadian, and German actions, as well as the strategic background of the operation, in a way not yet done. He shows, for example, that rather than a bridgehead over the Rhine, Montgomery’s ultimate aim was to flank the Ruhr industrial area from the north. The book also deals as never before with the key role of all three Corps of British Second Army, not just Brian Horrocks’ central XXX Corps. For the first time, we learn the dramatic untold story of how a single company of Canadian engineers achieved the evacuation of 1st Airborne’s survivors back across the Rhine when all other efforts had failed. Also revealed is the scandal of how Polish Gen. Sosabowski was treated by the British military authorities, and how the operation would have failed at the outset but for the brilliant soldiery of the two American airborne divisions. Respectfully nodding to A Bridge Too Far and other excellent works on Market Garden, the author has interviewed survivors, walked the ground, and performed prodigious archival research to increase our understanding of the battle, from the actions of the lowliest soldier to the highest commander, Allied and German.

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain's Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad 'Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard ______________ On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch, who risked everything to help. German reprisals were pitiless and cruel, and lasted until the end of the war. The British fascination with heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths. Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student himself called 'The Last German Victory'. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single, dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war. ______________ 'In Beevor's hands, Arnhem becomes a study of national character' - Ben Macintyre, The Times 'Superb book, tirelessly researched and beautifully written' - Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'Complete mastery of both the story and the sources' - Keith Lowe, Literary Review

Having fought their way up fifty miles of Hell's Highway and through Nijmegen, XXX Corps was just ten miles from Arnhem and the 1st British Airborne Division. Here it found itself on an island of flat land between the Waal at Nijmegen and the Rhine at Arnhem. The situation was increasingly bad with the remainder of II SS Panzer Corps in the area and German counter attacks on Hell's Highway preventing the Allies applying their material superiority. The Guards Armoured and then 43rd Wessex Infantry Division took turns to lead before reaching the Rhine opposite the paratroopers in the Oosterbeek Perimeter. Attempts to cross the Rhine by the Polish Paras and the Dorset Regiment had little success, but meanwhile, the guns of XXX Corps ensured the survival of the Perimeter. After some desperate fighting on the island, 43rd Wessex Division evacuated just two thousand members of the elite Airborne Division who had landed eight days earlier.

Explore this gripping day-by-day combat narrative of the infamous battle for a bridgehead over the Rhine.

In September 1944 the Western Allies mounted an attempt to seize a crossing over the Rhine into Germany in a bid to end the Second World War. Yet despite the deployment of thousands airborne troops, in conjunction with the efforts of ground forces to link up with them, the plan failed spectacularly and the war continued well into 1945. Famously dep