41 Parachutes open overhead as waves of paratroops land in Holland during operations by the 1st Allied Airborne Army., Wiki Commons. operation market garden It was at this time that new priorities by the Allied high command would have profound implications for Canadian ground operations that fall and, indeed, until the end of the war. On the same day the Canadians assaulted Boulogne, Operation Market Garden was launched. This bold plan reflected the prevailing optimism that the war could be concluded rapidly. The operation called for British and US airborne forces to drop into German-occupied territory and seize nine bridge crossings over six major water obstacles between Eindhoven and Arnhem in the Netherlands. The objective of these Airborne operations was to establish a 100-kilometer corridor, or salient, deep into Germanoccupied territory in the Netherlands, to be followed up by a rapid advance by armour and infantry of the British Second Army. The strategic goal of Market Garden was to outflank the enemy’s primary defensive line in the west—the Siegfried line or West Wall—and thereby open an easier invasion route into northern Germany’s industrial heartland, the Ruhr. Conceived in the optimistic aftermath of Normandy, Market Garden was a daring and ambitious plan that remains the subject of debate to this day. Bypassing the formidableWest Wall was a logical strategy, particularly in September 1944, when the prospect of a rapid end to the war seemed within reach. The situation became more urgent in early September, when the Germans launched their new “Vengeance” weapon, the V-2 rocket—the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile—against targets in Belgium and the United Kingdom. However, a week later 17,000 British, Polish, and American airborne soldiers were dead, wounded, or missing with another 6500 captured. About 500 Dutch civilians were killed. British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, as the commander of the 21st Army Group responsible for the operation, intended Market Garden to be “one powerful and full-blooded thrust towards Berlin.”6 But how circumstances changed when the operation fell short of its objective due, in part, to stiffened and renewed German resistance. There would be no easy way to “bounce the Rhine” and go through Germany’s backdoor. The West Wall would have to be breached. Prospects for a rapid end to the war faded.
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