Operation Market Garden has been recorded as a complete Allied failure in World War II, an overreach that resulted in an entire airborne division being destroyed at its apex.
This three-volume A-to-Z survey spans the recorded history of land warfare around the globe - from the biblical Battle of Jericho to the Russo-Chechen conflict. It not only records the art and science of war as it has been practiced through the ages, but also presents major leaders, planners, generals, heroes and innovators.
This book details how, instead of being relieved after 48 hours as expected, British paratroopers were cut off for nine days. Facing two unexpected SS Panzer divisions the Allies were eventually evacuated across the Rhine after putting up an incredible fight: of the 10,000 men involved less than 2,000 survived.
Exhaustive research of the few remaining German archival documents, corroborated by numerous eye-witness and diary accounts, including much previously unpublished material, means that this book is certain to stimulate renewed debate concerning one of the most controversial engagements of World War II.
Immortalized by the movie A Bridge Too Far, the parachute landings of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were the first part of an Allied breakthrough attempt. In the late summer of 1944, the First Allied Airborne Army began to plan a complex operation to seize a Rhine River Bridge at Arnhem in the Netherlands.