WWII Friday Five
Today marks the anniversary of the German defeat of British paratroopers at the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands, part of Operation Market Garden. This is actually a battle with which many people are familiar though they may not realize it. Cornelius Ryan wrote an excellent book on the subject entitled, A Bridge Too Far, that was subsequently made into a film with an all-star cast.
The plan was bold and daring, send in thousands of paratroopers behind enemy lines to secure the main bridges across the rivers into Holland to make a path for the advancing Allied Armies to turn into the lowlands of Germany avoiding the defenses of the Siegfried Line. Had it worked, the war would have been over by Christmas 1944. Sadly, Arnhem was that “bridge too far.”
I’m going to let the above link to the book (a non-affiliate Amazon link) as one of our five for the day because there are some seventy reader reviews of the book that I thoroughly enjoyed going through. It’s an excellent cross section of the ideas of “every day” historians, people who delve deeply into a subject for the pure joy of it. (And some of them do a pretty darn good job of summarizing the battle action.)
- A Bridge Too Far: This is the Internet Movie Database entry for the film. If you haven’t seen the movie and you’re looking for a war film to rent, go for it. I’ve seen it many times and get sucked into watching it again every time I run across it while channel surfing.
- RememberSeptember1944.com - An exhaustive treatment of Operation Market Garden that is also a tribute to the men who participated in the mission.
- Results of a flickr search for the phrase “Operation Market Garden.”
- Results of a YouTube search for the phrase “Operation Market Garden.” (I watched several of these videos and couldn’t single one out.)
Try AutomotiveBlogger or WatchingTheView.
WWII, Operation Market Garden, Arnheim
October 5th, 2007 at 10:14 am
[...] last week’s Friday Five, click here and for Sept. 21, click [...]
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