Act in Haste, Disaster Awaits!

Beevor, Antony.  The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II.
           New York: Viking, 2018.  ISBN: 978-0-525-42982-1

How many books on Operation Market-Garden have you read?  Have you read Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far or seen the movie based on the book?  How many books do you need to read on about the heroic struggle by the British 1st Airborne and the American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions?  Well add another book to the pile.  Antony Beevor has turned his pen to this subject in The Battle of Arnhem.

 Antony Beevor opens the book with British and American forces in hot pursuit of the disorderly German army retreating east. Allied commanders were convinced that the Germans were on the ropes and one good jab would take them out for good.  Montgomery was ticked off at Eisenhower's decision to continue a broad front attack rather then let Montgomery attack in the north.   So Montgomery kept concocting schemes to use the Allied airborne forces to land behind German lines and dash forward to meet with them.  But the speed of Allied armies negated the need for airborne attacks until Montgomery came up with Operation Market-Garden which involved three airborne divisions seizing multiple bridges from German forces before they could be destroyed.  The XXX Corp of the British Army would then dash up a single highway over those bridges to relieve the British 1st Airborne at the Arnhem bridge over the Rhine River.  The whole operation was planned in haste.  The Netherlands's military academy would have given a failing grade to any student who had presented this plan to the the academy.  And Operation Market-Garden turned out to be a disaster dues to optimism, enemy quick reaction, and lack of resources.

While Antony Beevor adequately covers the whole of Operation Market-Garden, he focuses the book on the battle for Arnhem conducted by the British 1st Airborne Division.  He examines in detail the plan to take the Rhine Bridge, laying bare the flaws.  He follows the different units as they seek to execute the plan and improvise new plans as contact with the enemy keeps altering circumstances.  He also presents some of the events from the German point of view.  He ends the book not with the end of fighting, but with the final liberation of Arnhem in April 1945.

Overall, Antony Beevor has written an account of the British and Polish struggle for Arnhem that rewards the discerning readers.