Yes, Market Garden was Monty’s doing. It was an audacious plan but it completely hinged 100% on ONE avenue of approach being available. HELL-O! The scene where the Brits are having tea while the 1st was in the Alamo at Arnhem actually happened, according to Ryan.
Best scene: Where the Germans ask Anthony Hopkins to surrender and his toadie tells the German “Sorry, we don’t have enough room in here for all of you” or something like that.
Worst scene: Elliot Gould’s cartoonish performance. I was hoping his character would take an 88 round.
Funniest scene: Toss up between Connery shooting the German through the window and the SS Superman who rides into battle on a command car exposed from the waist up in the initial assault on Arnhem and gets cooked almost immediately.
The Allies had plenty of intelligence. They just choose to ignore it or at the least minimalize the parts that did not fit the plan. The Allies were desperate to get the war over by Christmas and were seriously under estimating the German army’s ability to pull itself together after the Falaise disaster. Monty had a plan for a Northern offensive and Patton had one for the South. Sadly the Allies did not have the logistics for both and Monty had the clout at the time. The German high command just got lucky by placing two SS Panzer Divisions to rest & rebuild themselves in the perfect spot to disrupt the offensive. Not to mention their famous ability of throwing ad hoc groups of troops in various battle groups and making them very combat effective. Very few armies are capable of doing this.
Being bold & audacious is great, but it takes sound planning. Unfortunately this plan was a failure and cost many men their lives.
It still makes for a great movie. The directors seemed to have gone to great lengths to make it historically accurate. That’s a big plus in my book.
A few years ago, I was watching one of those History Channels deals, where they show the movie and have comentary buy the actual participants. This one was on " A Bridge too Far".
When it came to the scene, where the 82nd was making the daylight river crossing, which some historians called the bravest act by a unit in WW2, they asked one of the Paratroopers what made them do something like that.
His reply…" There were Paratroopers down the road, that needed our help, didn’t matter if they were American, British, or Polish, they were Paratroopers, that needed help." I was never so proud to have been a part of the 82nd, andthe Airborne tradition.
Should’ve heard his explanation as to what really happended, when he confronted the British tank commander, that would not move down the road, after they took the bridge.
The Germans also had the benefit of a battle plan captured in the first wave, detailing follow-on drop zones, times, objectives, complete order of battle, etc. While maybe not THE deciding factor in the battle, it did help a fair bit.