*Although the Allies suffered a total of 10,000 casualties on D-Day,
this was
half what they feared they would lose, and taking the beaches at Normandy allowed one million
Allied
soldiers to land in France within a month.
*After
landing in Normandy in June 1944, the
Allies began to
move across France. Although
initially slowed
down by the bocage, American troops,
especially George Patton’s Third Army (which used tactics very similar
to those
of the German blitzkrieg) moved so fast that their biggest problem was
getting
so far ahead of their supply lines that they could not get fuel for
their
tanks.
*In Paris, the French
Resistance started an
uprising that threw the Germans out on 25 August, 1944. After over
four years of
occupation, Paris was free, and the
Allies prepared to advance
into the Low Countries
and into Germany itself.
*Even though most of
France had been
liberated, Germany still controlled many important deep water ports, so
many of
the Allied supplies had to come in through the beaches at Normandy or
through
Cherbourg, and important supplies, particularly fuel, were running low.
*Eventually, General
Montgomery captured the
Belgian port of Antwerp, but still needed to
clear the land around
the River Scheldt which led to it.He
also intended to swing around the main German defences by going through
Belgium and the Netherlands.He planned to do so by dropping airborne troops (including the 82nd
and 101st along with British and Polish forces) behind
German lines
into the Netherlands while pushing north
into Belgium with the British XXX
Corps.
*The result was
Operation MARKET GARDEN, the largest airborne attack
in history—over 35,000 men landed on 17 and 18 September, 1944 (21,000
parachute troops and 14,600 glider troops plus equipment and vehicles
transported by gliders); there were so many men to be landed that it
took two
days to transport them all.
*At first, everything
seemed to go according
to plan, with the British moving into Arnhem, the 82nd
into Nijmegen, and the 101st
into Eindhoven.However, XXX Corps was not able to move north as quickly as
possible
(although they did eventually link up with the airborne troops), and
the
airborne troops were cut off for days, and suffered terrible
casualties—the
British 1st Airborne Division had to be evacuated on 25
September,
1944.
*Ultimately, the
British paratroops were
unable to capture the bridge at Arnhem because they did not
have enough
support (because XXX Corps was not able to push through the Germans as
fast as
hoped) and so the allies did not get control of a bridge over the Rhine in 1944.Getting into Germany through the Netherlands and Belgium would not be as easy
as Montgomery thought.Furthermore, because most of the airborne
troops did achieve their objectives, they ended up in a potentially
vulnerable
salient thrust deep into German lines
*Although Montgomery viewed the operation
as 90%
successful, and blamed the 10% failure on inadequate support, others
viewed it
as a waste of effort and supplies that could have been spent pushing
into Germany itself.