"Why Arnhem? 2" Topic

"Operation Market-Garden, the largest airborne operation in history, is a well known failure because of the inability to capture a bridge over the Rhine River, and the resulting destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Many opinions of the Battle of Arnhem were established by Cornelius Ryan in his book A Bridge Too Far which became an epic 1977 movie by Joseph Levine and Richard Attenborough. These works provided readers and movie goers an understanding of the defeat that Allies suffered. However, these works fail in answering the basic question of how events on the Western Front influenced the decision of choosing Arnhem as the objective for such a daring and risky operation to force a crossing of the Rhine?

The ultimate decision to make Arnhem the objective, like so many decisions during war, is a complex and multifaceted process that often defy a simple explanation. The decision to attack Arnhem was no different. As the Western Allies were planning the invasion of France and the defeat of Germany they acknowledged they would need to cross the Rhine River, but could not foresee how events would unfold during their campaign. Allied planners, though not citing it, could appreciate the truths of Clausewitz and the role of "friction" in war would prevent that type of foresight in detailed planning. Only as the pursuit of August 1944 developed did the Allied commanders start contemplating specific battles on the German frontier, and how best to proceed with such an endeavor. This is when Arnhem was considered as part of a greater debate over strategy and command.

The first reason why Arnhem took on such importance was not the city itself, but the Allied objective of the Ruhr industrial region and its strategic importance to the German war effort. The directive of the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff, that ordered the invasion of the Continent, stated that the invasion's objective was the destruction of the enemy armed forces and to aim for the heart of Germany. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, interpreted this to include key areas of supply and communications as valid objectives of the Allied invasion…"
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Amicalement
Armand

It was a daring gamble to end the war early but failed because XXX Corps could not link up with the paras.

Thanks Fanatik, I've seen the whole Arnhem argument go round and round on here, with some bizarre theories and people who think that they're better than the general's of the day. But you have summed it up quite nicely.

Cornelius Ryan's book does a great job on the subject. I don't think the book fails at all, as the article suggests, to answer the question of why Arnhem was chosen.