Armageddon - Max Hastings [48]
American parachute units were much better commanded than most of their British counterparts. Browning, Urquhart, Hicks and several British battalion COs performed inadequately. After the operation, Browning received one of the least deserved knighthoods awarded to a wartime general, and spitefully insisted upon the sacking of Sosabowski, the Polish Parachute Brigade’s commander. Given the indifferent British leadership, it is likely that the U.S. 82nd or 101st Airborne Divisions would have made a better showing if either had been given responsibility for Arnhem, though it is hard to see how any unilateral achievement on the north bank of the Rhine could have been decisive for the overall outcome. Chester Wilmot, who witnessed the battle as a war correspondent, as well as becoming one of the greatest post-war historians of the campaign, was contemptuous of the lame performance of 43rd (Wessex) Division beyond Nijmegen: “There was considerable truth in the criticism the Germans had made in Normandy that British infantry sought ‘to occupy ground rather than to fight over it’.” Yet 43rd Division’s alleged poor showing, to which Wilmot alludes, took place on 22 September, by which time Market Garden had already irretrievably failed.
The drive to Arnhem was thwarted by the startling achievement of the Germans in mustering an assortment of depleted units into battle groups which held at bay the best of the British Army. The Allies possessed overwhelming superiority, yet were unable to exploit this in the flatlands of Holland. Lack of effective ground control, as well as indifferent weather, marginalized the value of air support. It is sometimes argued that the British would have fared better had they adopted the plan initially favoured by the army, but vetoed by airmen alarmed by the threat of flak, to seize a crossing higher up the Rhine towards Wesel. It is hard to see why a drive to Wesel should have succeeded when one to Arnhem failed.
There is a further question. Even if the Allies had been able to capture a Rhine bridge, would they have been able to use this effectively to launch a drive to the Ruhr? Given the energy displayed by the Germans, and the reinforcements rushing to the Western Front in late September 1944, it seems unlikely that the British could have exploited their narrow corridor to achieve a swift German collapse, even if they had got across the river. Hitler’s commanders would have thrown everything into frustrating the Allied purpose. It is highly improbable that Montgomery’s cherished forty-division thrust at the Ruhr, or even his more modest sixteen-division plan, could have been fuelled, ammunitioned and provisioned without the use of Antwerp.
A hero of the Arnhem battle, and one of its shrewdest post-war chroniclers, Major Geoffrey Powell of 156 Para, became a prominent critic of the “Airborne Army” concept. It made sense, he suggested, for the Allies to possess small parachute forces capable of coup-de-main operations, but “it is arguable that Eisenhower would have been better served in the autumn of 1944 by another half-dozen infantry or armoured divisions . . . than by First Airborne Army . . . It is not easy to justify the scarce resources which the Americans and British devoted to their fine airborne troops, and to the aircraft which flew them into battle.” Here, from a parachute officer, was a fundamental criticism of the Arnhem fiasco. Paratroopers achieved a glamour in the Second World