Posted on 09/15/2004 9:44:54 AM PDT by Lukasz
AMSTERDAM — Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands has launched a blistering attack on Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery on the eve of the 60th commemoration of the costly failure of the Battle of Arnhem in 1944.
Speaking on Dutch television on Tuesday, the 93-year-old German-born father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands said Montgomery had ignored warnings that his plan, Operation Market Garden, was doomed to failure.
Bernhard also said the British had tried to pin the blame on the commander of the Polish forces who took part in the operation. He said he was convinced the British exerted pressure on the Dutch government after the war not to award medals to the 1,700 Polish soldiers.
The prince called on the Dutch government to honour the Polish contribution now. "Complete with medal, because the Netherlands has been unbelievably negligent in not rewarding these people," he said.
In reaction, Dutch Defence Minister Henk Kamp has said that a mark of honour should be awarded to the Polish, but said an actual medal could not be given 60 years after the fact.
"I think that it is very appropriate that the military attaché in Poland presents them (the veterans) with a token of appreciation," Kamp said.
Meanwhile, Bernard's comments are bound to cause embarrassment as Britain's Prince Charles will attend a special service at the British Military Cemetery in Oosterbeek near Arnhem on Sunday 19 September.
Thousands of veterans are also expected to attend a series of events, including mass parachute drops, in and around Arnhem to commemorate the battle which ran from 17 to 23 September.
Montgomery's plan was to use the largest airborne drop ever to overwhelm the light German forces guarding bridges leading to Germany and end the war in Europe by Christmas 1944.
A force of 10,000 lightly-armed troops was assigned to Arnhem, but the assault was plagued by bad luck and poor communications. Instead of the light resistance anticipated, the Germans were able to call upon two Panzer divisions that were in the area to re-equip.
An estimated 1,130 Allied paratroopers were killed and a further 6,450 captured during the failed attempt to capture the key bridge at Arnhem.
Bernhard said the Polish commander, Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski, had expressed his misgivings during the planning stage.
"That is the reason he (Sosabowski) was blamed by the British after the war for the failure of the battle. It is a typical trait of the British military brass that they find it totally unacceptable when someone shows they have got it wrong."
Bernhard was a member of the Nazi SS before he married the future Dutch Queen Juliana in 1937.
Armed with a machinegun, he helped lead the Dutch Royal Family to safety in London after the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940.
He was appointed commander of the Dutch military in 1944, but has been plagued by rumours that he tipped off the Germans about Market Garden.
Bernhard again denied the allegation and several others about his character in an open letter in February of this year.
Anyway, God bless the veterans!
"I always thought it was a bridge too far..."
Gee, I always thought that was typically human behavior.
"Shut up and sing." Oops, wrong Prince.
A real Cock up.
BTW why did Eisnehower let this renegade general continual on after this major lose of an army and try to reign in Patton, answer it was PC to keep the cautious Montie in place to grind up and waste troops, instead of letting a fighting general surround and destroy armies of the enemy.
Of course Andy rooney wouldn't agree with this.
It's bad form to embarrass a former dignitary such as Prince Charles, before an official visit to your homeland.
I'm no Montgomery-fan, but I've got the opposite take on this. Name me a major military operation, success or failure, in which you can't find somebody warning beforehand about impending doom. Fact is, if Horrock's XXX Corps had been pushed harder, the plan might have succeeded. It was an audacious plan with the wrong commander, period.
As to the Polish "medal", I'm a bit confused. Are we basically talking about a unit citation? Might be a problem if the unit doesn't exist anymore...
Oops, I meant to say "It's bad form to embarrass an official dignitary such as Prince Charles." (I'm watching Fox News as I type, got distracted.)
Right but during and after WWII, they were the leaders. Even now so hard is say that those Poles did something important, better to say that all documents were destroyed…
Yep. I've always compared Monty's Market Garden plan to McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. Both were bold, innovative, daring, thinking-outside-the-box plans.
Unfortunately the generals who came up with them were paradoxically the anti-thesis of boldness, innovation, daring and thinking outside the box. Market Garden might have worked under Slim or Mountbatten. The Peninsula Campaign might have worked under Sherman or Sheridan. Neither had a chance under Monty and McClellan.
The truly sad thing about General Sosabowski is that he could not return to Poland after the war (the Russians would have killed him), so he stayed in England, where he worked as a common laborer.
Good analogy. Here's another: Fred Franks' (VIIth Corps) failure to envelop the Iraqi Republican Guard in Desert Storm I. No amount of cajoling from Schwarzkopf could get Franks to move any faster. Schwarzkopf's dilema was whether another commander could takeover without missing a beat. He concluded that it was not possible. Still, I wonder if the post-war coups against Saddam might have had a better chance if we'd bagged a larger proportion of his most loyal troops -- and held them while the Shia uprising took hold?
Truth is, Monty's fate was not in Eisenhower's hands. Firing Montgomery was Churchill's call.
How do they blame the Poles?
The Polish jump was delayed from day 3 to day 8. Their force was the smallest of all dropped units. They were dropped on the opposite side of the river from where the few remaining British troops in Arnhem were holed up, and many of them were massacred trying to get across the river by raft.
Maybe not killed but in fact made his life harder. He wasn’t alone, few thousands of polish troops stayed in exile after the war in UK and USA mostly.
Because they stayed in the other side of iron curtain and they cannot defend themselves. Easy target.
Hindsight reveals several problems with the plans for Operation Market Garden. The overall concept was very good, and successful execution would have been a catastrophic blow to the Hitler's defense plans. It was worth the risks involved to make the attempt.
First, the British plan to drop the 1st Airborne Division several miles from their objective to allow them to organize and consolidate dropzones before advancing on their bridge objectives was a mistake. Only one battalion was able to make the advance to the objective, and they held it for several days. If they had dropped closer and had more troops to defend the bridge and its approaches the operation could have been successful.
Second, XXX Corps did not advance aggressively enough given successes of the airborne operations. This should have come as little surprise as the British excelled at set piece battles, but showed little skill or desire to mount aggressive pursuit type operations. The reluctance of the British commanders to risk their dwindling manpower was never more in evidence than in Horrocks' handling of XXX Corps during the drive to Arnhem. I've always wondered what could have been achieved if the advance was spearheaded by I.D. White or Creighton Ahbrams.
Third, the plans and forces for exploiting success were inadequate. Montgomery's plans to overrun the Ruhr region were unrealistic given the forces available and the skill with which the German generals executed the defense of Germany. Hitler's grand plan would have been blown, but the German generals were very good at having contingency plans that they executed very effectively.
This is the inherent weakness of classic airborne operations. Do you:
1. Drop your troops on top of a heavily defended objective and hope that they can deal with the defenders and the inevitable scattering of combat units (Normandy), or
2. Do you drop them at a 'safe', but reasonably close-by, drop-zone & let them hump to the objective? (Market Garden)
I think the invention of the helicopter & air assault tactics prevented a definitive tactical solution. And anyhow, you don't see any division-size air drops today.
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