Operation Market Garden

[zack1234]

Montgomery was not liked by the British establishment during the war and after the war, as has been stated in his Memoirs using cricket as a euphemism "The Gentlemen are out and the Players are in".

He also got accused of damaging a French property by shooting a pig that was running around his HQ, by someone in Whitehall. (During a battle)

He was informed that a replacement officer was good at golf and he replied we are not playing golf, this was the state of the British Army at the time.

British Arrogance?

How many people adding to this thread are from those countries fighing the Allies during the war? (They must be laughing their spuds off).

Disrespecting a country that fought by your side to defend democracy then and now, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

[nrshida]

Well, it is a true account from the Guy on the Tank Fender, he is still alive to tell the tale..
Not for long tho!

'Band of Brothers' is a fictional dramatisation loosely based on factual events, not a documentary. You can verify this easily. Even if this anecdote is absolutely true and unaltered (and somehow I doubt that), how does it generalise to make a commentary about the British Army or the British people as a whole? You look for evidence to support your prejudice and furthermore seem very easily satisfied.

I agree with Zack, that you can be so disrespectful to a national hero of one of your most steadfast and reliable allies is beyond my comprehension and certainly beyond good taste and common decency.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

'Band of Brothers' is a fictional dramatisation loosely based on factual events, not a documentary. You can verify this easily. Even if this anecdote is absolutely true and unaltered (and somehow I doubt that), how does it generalise to make a commentary about the British Army or the British people as a whole? You look for evidence to support your prejudice and furthermore seem very easily satisfied.

I agree with Zack, that you can be so disrespectful to a national hero of one of your most steadfast and reliable allies is beyond my comprehension and certainly beyond good taste and common decency.

So far, the only truly inaccurate thing I've found in "Band of Brothers", after reading dozens of books related to the 101st, is the segment regarding Albert Blythe. Albert Blythe saw the sniper, but did not shoot him. The sniper shot Blythe in the collar bone, not the neck. Albert Blythe did not die in 1947, but in fact died nearly 20 years later of a heart attack. He was a decorated sergeant at the time of his death, having served with distinction for more than 20 years, including a tour in Korea.

Montgomery, and the British, have earned the scathing comments. They've made plenty of their own, especially those by Montgomery himself. Before you offer up your sermon about how we should hold our allies in such high regard, you might give it to the British first.

[LCADolby]

It was a sound plan. Monty's goal was to force an entry into Germany and over the Rhine. He wanted to dodge the northern end of the Siegfried Line and this required the operation to seize the bridges across the Meuse. This would ultimately allow the Allies to encircle Germany's industrial heartland in the Ruhr from the north. Initially, the operation was successful and several bridges between Eindhoven and Nijmegen being captured. Until XXX corps got delayed at a canal outside Eindhoven that is.

At Arnhem, the British Airborne Division encountered far stronger resistance than anticipated, Dutch resistance intel couldn't be 100% trusted due to cases of compromise, and photo recon was not sufficient or definitive to back up any Dutch resistance claims, but did trouble planners (just not enough to delay the operation any further). In the Arnhem battle, only a small force managed to hold one end of the road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them, they were overrun eventually. The rest of the division, trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, were evacuated. So the Allies had failed to cross the Rhine.

One can't ever put it down to Arrogance of any sort unless you happen to be an absolute moron playing that anti-British propaganda that seems to be in circulation of late.

Every side every General has failures; Maisy Battery, Defence of the Philippines, Pearl Harbor to name but 3 US failures (2 of them down to intel). Would they be filed under American Arrogance in jest?

[nrshida]

So far, the only truly inaccurate thing I've found in "Band of Brothers", after reading dozens of books related to the 101st, is the segment regarding Albert Blythe.

So you are proposing The Band of Brothers should be considered a body of historical record and not a piece of dramatised entertainment using artistic license and based on the research and selected interviews of one man?

Montgomery, and the British, have earned the scathing comments. They've made plenty of their own, especially those by Montgomery himself. Before you offer up your sermon about how we should hold our allies in such high regard, you might give it to the British first.

It would be unrealistic to ask for 'high regard', let's face it, you can't even achieve a basic level of mutual respect.

[zack1234]

 Montgomery, and the British, have earned the scathing comments. They've made plenty of their own, especially those by Montgomery himself. Before you offer up your sermon about how we should hold our allies in such high regard, you might give it to the British first.
[/quote]

Arrogant British is racist

Its akin to saying Americans are loud

[Rino]

It was a sound plan. Monty's goal was to force an entry into Germany and over the Rhine. He wanted to dodge the northern end of the Siegfried Line and this required the operation to seize the bridges across the Meuse. This would ultimately allow the Allies to encircle Germany's industrial heartland in the Ruhr from the north. Initially, the operation was successful and several bridges between Eindhoven and Nijmegen being captured. Until XXX corps got delayed at a canal outside Eindhoven that is.

At Arnhem, the British Airborne Division encountered far stronger resistance than anticipated, Dutch resistance intel couldn't be 100% trusted due to cases of compromise, and photo recon was not sufficient or definitive to back up any Dutch resistance claims, but did trouble planners (just not enough to delay the operation any further). In the Arnhem battle, only a small force managed to hold one end of the road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them, they were overrun eventually. The rest of the division, trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, were evacuated. So the Allies had failed to cross the Rhine.

One can't ever put it down to Arrogance of any sort unless you happen to be an absolute moron playing that anti-British propaganda that seems to be in circulation of late.

Every side every General has failures; Maisy Battery, Defence of the Philippines, Pearl Harbor to name but 3 US failures (2 of them down to intel). Would they be filed under American Arrogance in jest?

     Forcing XXX Corps to advance up a single axis isn't really the soundest plan.  Both Brits and Germans proved to be VERY
tenacious on the defensive. 

[zack1234]

Germany lost the war.

[Butcher]

Germany lost the war.

[LCADolby]

    Forcing XXX Corps to advance up a single axis isn't really the soundest plan.  

Not ideal in Shermans I admit.

[zack1234]

(Image removed from quote.)

They like sausage as well

[Butcher]

So far, the only truly inaccurate thing I've found in "Band of Brothers", after reading dozens of books related to the 101st, is the segment regarding Albert Blythe.

hate to tell you this, I seen a website written by another historian who wrote down the events from the show and what really happened. Each Episode had about half a dozen up to a dozen mistakes.
Example:
* At the beginning of the ninth episode, "Why We Fight", the date says April 11, 1945 as the episode opens with the paratroopers overlooking German civilians cleaning up their streets. At the end of the episode, the show returns to this scene, at which point Captain Nixon tells the others that Hitler had killed himself. However Hitler did not kill himself until April 30, 1945. Nixon wasn't told hitler committed suicide until May 3rd, Winters knew but said it could be speculations or rumors.

* At the end of the final episode, "Points," it is stated that Technician Fifth Class Joseph Liebgott became a San Francisco taxi driver after the war, but most accounts, including that of his son, state that Joseph Liebgott in fact became a barber after returning home from the war.
bill guarnere said this on a youtube video, nobody actually knew what he did, but during one of the meetings in 1980s he said to of been a barber.

* In the final episode, "Points," Major Winters accepts the surrender of a German Colonel, who offers him an ornate Luger pistol. In the scene, Winters tells him to keep his sidearm, but in the Bonus Features DVD, the real Winters recalls the incident and shows the pistol (a Walther PP) he accepted. In Ambrose's book of the same title, he describes how when Winters examined the firearm, he found it had never been fired, and he hasn't fired it since. He shows this firearm in the HBO documentary We Stand Alone Together. Also in book Beyond Band of Brothers : The war memoirs of Major Dick Winters written by Cole. C. Kingseed with Major Dick Winters it is said that the pistol was accepted but the rank of the German soldier was a Major not Colonel.

These are just the beginning, I haven't found the website - but the historian had a ton of information on the 501st, compares the show to ambrose's book and found quite a few errors in it.

[DaveJ]

Not ideal in Shermans I admit.

Mate, it's not ideal in any circumstance. When is it generally sound logic and good tactical sense to advance an entire Corps along what was, essentially, a two lane, elevated, road?

[LCADolby]

Mate, it's not ideal in any circumstance. When is it generally sound logic and good tactical sense to advance an entire Corps along what was, essentially, a two lane, elevated, road?

When you have the enemy on the run, have available air support and wish to keep the enemy under immense pressure I suppose.

[DaveJ]

When you have the enemy on the run, have available air support and wish to keep the enemy under immense pressure I suppose.

It might be used if the enemy was in a headlong, panicked retreat in order to keep the "scare on" them, but that isn't a sound tactical disposition when you are trying to close with and destroy the enemy by using the impressive mass and firepower of XXX Corps.

You can just imagine how much of your firepower you take away by advancing 2 abreast along a highway, with the rest of the corps strung out for miles behind you absolutely helpless to bring their weapons to bear and vulnerable to ambush from three sides. There was absolutely no room to maneuver against the enemy and the strength of XXX Corps could not be utilized properly while it was sitting idle of hours  while the few regiments at the head of the column came under assault.

I would argue that MARKET-GARDEN violated most of the 9 Principles of War, and if you actually analyze the battle, it's no big surprise that it failed.