Historically High - Operation: Market Garden

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

After the success of the D-Day landings in France and the break out from the Normandy area, momentum was on the side of the Allies. The German Army was being pushed back across a wide front and had yet to put up a resistance capable of halting the advance. Confidence was sky-high and the Allies thought ending the war by Christmas of 1945 was a real possibility. All that was needed was a corridor into Germany itself. The Siegfried Line limited the routes available to move armor so any and all options were being considered. Bernard Montgomery had an idea to Uno reverse card Hitler and march back along the route through Belgium the Nazi's had used to invade France. The problem with this plan's success was completely contingent on the capture of 8 or 9 bridges along the route...all currently in enemy hands. The two most crucial bridges across the largest waterways just happened to be the furthest behind enemy lines. You'd think with so many things that could go wrong this plan would be scrapped right....right? Well instead more than 41,000 airborne troops were dropped via plane or glider behind enemy lines to capture key bridges while a ground forces would race to through the area those men captured. Everything relied on timing. Towns had to be captured and secured before the armored convoy could pass through so any delays meant that Allied troops dropped further away would be on their own against what turned out to be a much stronger German force than anticipated. Market Garden was not destined to succeed but that didn't stop the men of the Airborne from giving everything they had trying to make it.  Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We're taking a field trip, folks. We're going to market. Not the farmer's market. Although some artisan, cold pressed, crafted goat milk soaps would probably be pretty delightful. No, we're talking market garden. This was anything, anything but a farmer's market. It did get pretty stinky pretty quick. Yeah.

After D-Day, shit was going pretty good. Good. Things were rolling pretty well. After the breakout happens, after we get Operation Cobra, we got two divisions, two armies that are screaming towards the Siegfried line. Now, things are going well. They're going technically too well. Because the supply line situation is being basically supported by the Red Ball Express. And we did an episode over on the Patreon for that. So if you haven't subscribed, go over and do that. but it is able to basically just it's right in that fine line of it's only keeping up with what's going on right now it's keeping it moving forward but not at the pace you would want to and that's simply because d-day happens we start spreading out across france like you said things are going really well that also builds up a false sense of confidence, I think, that future operations can go just as well. Operation Market Garden was a heat check.

Yes. And had it worked out, this is going to be just doing the boards for this operation, if only or whatever. That's what it is. It's pretty much a situation where you could say in a million different ways, well, if this happened differently, or if this happened the way we hoped it happen, this would have been a success. Yes. Because the plan for operation, or for Market Garden was to end the war by Christmas. In the war in 44.

We're talking August. I think at this point is when kind of the breakout from Normandy happens, Market Garden itself takes place between September 17th and the 25th. So you have this audacious plan, and we have, fret, the theme music, we'll get to it. You get this audacious plan that says, hey, if we're able to make this successful, and kind of, you know, the key component, or I'm sorry, the key objective of the operation is to basically get us into Germany. That's when it boils down to it. It's getting access into Germany via a, remember the game Mousetrap when you had to set everything up just perfectly through an assortment of victories, taking bridges, things like that. But had we got into Germany, it would have been around the Sigfried line. It would have dumped us out right into what's called the Ruhr Valley, which is basically like the industrial heart of Germany.

So taking that away from them would severely decrease their ability to make war. But in order to do that, again, you have to create this. I don't even know how to describe it. Like the parts of this plan are, they're dominoes, but on a table that isn't exactly level. And not to mention, they're almost like reverse dominoes. Yeah. Yeah. Before we jump into it, we love all the reviews that we're getting.

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We get to play with these different kind of episodes to where they are going to be shorter, but we can focus in on one thing and just explain it. It fills in the gaps. We have a lot of episodes that we're going to cover on Patreon. They're going to bridge the gap or fill in little questions about episodes that we did previously. So that's going to be a good place to kind of help answer some of those questions that we didn't really have time to delve into during a regular episode. Absolutely. All right.

Well, without further ado, let's get into operation if only or what if. Mark a Garden. This is, we get to talk about Monty. Monty has done a gall for me. Like, I didn't like Monty to start out with. And then we got a taste of him in North Africa. And it kind of brought me back. North African Monty was a wild character.

You get, that's early Monty. Now that we're up back to proper European Monty, Monty has his full ass on display. And we'll get to it, but he's such a mercurial person. and for him to suggest market garden the way that he did blows everybody away because Monty's a very defensive kind of cagey leader

Monty thought that he should be where Eisenhower was yeah he was given a raise and rank of promotion to field general or field marshal Bernard Montgomery but after the or the North African campaign Eisenhower gets made the supreme commander of all allied forces.

Of all the forces. So Monty's given the rank of top guy in Europe. And then immediately is given the rank of second top guy in Europe to an American. And it's not only like he's second. There are other seconds. So he's now on par with General Omar Bradley, who Patton actually serves under Omar Bradley. And they're going to just butt heads in regards to this. to basically see who can get to Eisenhower

and make the best pitch or has the best PowerPoint presentation in order to get their operation approved for how they think they should be pushing into Germany. It does become a pissing master of sorts, except for his Patton and Omar are using the trough, Bernard Montgomery is using Eisenhower's shoes. Yeah, pretty much. So August 44 sees this breakout of Normandy.

It begins with Operation Cobra, and it sends the German forces into this retreat back into France. And this isn't just like a small salient that gets pushed through. This is a broad front that gets pushed back. They're getting rolled back in large numbers. And Eisenhower like that. He saw how successful it was, which is why when these plans get brought to him for Market Garden

or Bradley and patents, you know, I don't know what they would have called theirs. He's kind of like, you know what we've been doing has been working with the whole broad front we're pushing it. It's a little bit safer, but he ends up having to kind of go with one of these things. Well, and we know this broad front approach to fighting the Nazis is great because it's pushing them back in mass very quickly.

But the reason we needed Red Ball Express to deliver all of these supplies to the front were because for the D-Day preparations, we blew up every bridge, every train rails, station, everything possible for them to bring Nazis into Normandy. Now, that's awesome to keep them out of Normandy. It was great until we needed to then spread out past that area. Yeah.

Yeah, it turns out that we were crawling over the remnants of our own creation, basically. Which had to be expected, right? Yeah, I would assume so. It's a great problem to have because it means that you're in Europe. And I guess the other thing, too, is if you have a wide front and you have this Red Ball Express, which is basically these two roadways that are getting to the front, you're having to then spread those supplies even further across that wider front as you go further east, I guess, toward the German border and toward the Siegfried line.

And the supply problems, supply train is the lifeblood of an army. It's just how it always has to be. So you have Omar Bradley's First Army and George Patton's Third Army that are just pushing to central for Omar, southern most for Patton. Field Marshal Monty was kind of I don't know.

He was, I'm going to say this because I feel like I have a pretty good read on Monty. He was attempting to wrestle away some of the shine that the Allies were giving the American forces. Partially because he's Bernard Montgomery and partially because Great Britain is looking at maybe how the writings on the banner going to go. And Great Britain wants to make sure that their font is almost the size of the United

States font at this point. I mean, rightfully so. We've done enough episodes on this to be like, they were, and again, they're not fighting by themselves. I know sometimes we say that. I know there were, you know, the Canadians and Australians and New Zealanders and all that kind of stuff fighting there, too. What I'm simply stating is that the country and its colonies are its holdings or whatever you want to call it. Commonwealths, yeah. They were putting in the work, before America got to Europe. Now again, 41, Pearl Harbor, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we're fighting with Japan before 44 and everything.

But Monty was kind of the guy until Ike showed up. Ike showed up and the reason he got the Supreme Allied, you know, commander ship, whatever you want to call it, is because again, Len Lease, we were providing a lot of troops. It was kind of the allies way of saying like, hey, you're going to come in. We're going to keep some of our guys in upper positions. But sure, Eisenhower, go for it.

Monty was a 29-year-old stripper. Eisenhower was a 19-year-old stripper. That was, Monty was still great on the pole. He could still work it pretty well. He was still making money. 19-year-old's just going to sell better. Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah, it's not really my bad.

I don't know, it depends on the 29-year-old. I like showmanship. Yeah, experience. Experience always helps. So, field marshal Monty is, trying to figure out what we're going to do here. Forces keep pushing towards this big goal of pushing them to the French-German border. Unfortunately, past the German border, you have the Siegfried line. The Siegfried line was essentially Germany's answer to the Maginot line that the

French had put in there. Yeah. I'm sure Monty was probably going through and reviewing how the Germans got into France because they're trying to figure out how to get from France into France. to Germany. Both times, he's looking at it. He's like, well, shit. The Germans snuck around into Belgium, bypass the Maginot Line to get here for World War II. What if we could just bypass the Siegfried line that's pretty well fortified and huge and is going to cost a lot of lives? If we can skirt it. Yeah, there's so many things that go into why somebody thought their plan was the best. I do understand And from, this should be called Operation Weekend at Bernies, because Bernard, yeah. From his position, he was in command of more of the northern forces.

So those were already where he, where he had command there. You're also talking about an area where Red Ball Express is trying to keep everything going, but you got to capture a port. Yeah. And he actually, Montgomery's forces captured Antwerp, I want to say it was like the 4th of September. but and most of it was intact it was really the Germans that evacuated didn't do a great job of disbandling stuff or sabotaging but with antwerp which we talked about during the diamond highest episode and the bulge yeah maybe weren't they trying wasn't Hitler trying to break through

and recapture antwerp yep yep yep so antwerp is has access to the english channel and the North scene, everything, but it's through essentially a estuary. So you've got to kind of come down a little bit of a river, and then that leads you into Antwerp, but the river. So why, the port facilities are huge and everything? That little estuary was still controlled by the Germans. So they had guns set up on each side of it, probably had mined it and everything. So even though we capture the port facilities, you can't start using them until you get there. So you push out the Germans and figure out what they did. Correct. The line that they've pushed to is already past Antwerp. But I also think that Montgomery was like, the further we push them away from

Antwerp, the less likely it's going to be that they can attack. We're taking also away their support system for being able to reinforce those positions on each side of the estuary by cutting them off. I just want to make, you know, I just want to make a little 65 mile thrust and get us across a few canals. We can get across the Rhine River. And as soon as we get across the Rhine River, that lets us, we're going to be in Germany at that point, lets us again loop around and head south where we can take out the rur. Also while we're up there, those V1 and V2 rocket sites that are sitting in, you know, Belgium and the Netherlands have kind of been hit in London quite a bit.

So while we're on our way up, if you're able to essentially just make a 65-mile thrust, you can then spread your way north to the coast based upon that, encircle some guys, whatever. Well, shut off those pesky little V1 and V2 rockets. That's what it was. And I think there was pressure, and rightfully so, from the British side of it, that was also telling Eisenhower, hey, man, London is getting hit by these fucking rockets. Like, if there's a plan on the table that can maybe get these things off the chessboard a little faster, maybe consider that. I know you guys weren't here for this, but we did this whole thing called the Battle of Britain where they just laid.

siege to our country. Listen, our people are tired to get into their shit bombed. We had two years after the Battle of Britain to kind of put our lives back together while still at war and then they just started rain in V1 and V2s on us. So I

can definitely see that from the British side of things thinking we gotta lay off of us for a little bit. Not to mention we get to the rur, we can shut down rockets even if we're not, or we can shut down manufacture, even if we're not getting there to stop them completely, we can cut off their supply.

Yeah. Also, at the same time, to get into the rur means you can basically choke them off from being able to resupply any front. And not in the good way. No, no. It's a way to kind of soften every other resistance force that the Germans have, because if you're cutting off artillery shells and artillery guns to all other installations, they're going to retreat. The Germans, that's the thing that I always miscalculate with the Germans. The Germans were great fighters. They had pretty sufficient commanders, but it was just the top 1% that couldn't keep his finger out of the pie.

You've literally had guys that have four plus years of actual command experience on the ground in Europe that have figured shit out. have figured out the best ways to fight here. And one of the things, this whole thing is kind of a series of blunders. It's easy for us to sit here, armchair quarterbacking this thing, after people have looked into the operation, picked apart everything. But that's kind of what this is. It's the allies kind of being like, yeah, this is really complex and technical,

but I mean, we just pulled off D-Day. Like we can totally make this, make this thing happen. And kind of with the two competing plans, just to talk about Bradley's and Patins for a second because this one doesn't happen or anything like that. So after we talk about it, we can just put it to the side. Bradley and Patton come in, he's like, listen, we want to do this thrust.

We're going to actually do it to the south of the Sigfried line. We're already down here. And Patton basically tells him, listen, you give me 400,000 gallons of gas and I'll be in Germany in two days. Which is, couldn't be further from the truth after we did the Red Ball Express and figured out how much gas they were burning up a day.

Yeah. That's going to get you one more day. And the other thing, too, is then that makes you question, like, well, how much armor and how many tanks are you taking in there? If you can, you're only going to need 400. I mean, it sounds like a lot. Yeah. But when you learn about how much, again, like you said, was being used today, it's like,

oh, okay, so that's two days worth. So you're bringing half the amount of tanks to do this? That doesn't make any sense. Well, how did, how did Monty, the diplomat, go about finally getting this thing, approved. He went down and he had multiple meetings with Eisenhower and he got to the point to where he was so just angry that they were getting shut down that he ends up meeting Eisenhower. I believe it was on his plane when they were back in Brussels. Yeah. Walked onto his plate on the roadway. grabs, I don't know if it was a potential battle plan or what and just rips it up in front of Eisenhower

and starts calling him every name in the book and Eisenhower walks over and he puts his hand on his shoulder and he goes, I'm your superior son. You're not going to talk to me that way. Monty, old boy, you need to relax. You can't talk to me like that. I'm your boss. Go have a spot of tea and a crumpet and then come back and we'll talk like two adults. You want to be civil. But apparently Eisenhower, I think it was a combination of him getting pressure from Washington, which in turn was communicating with Britain being like, if this is a viable option, there's enough pros that can come of this with, you know, securing poor facilities and also getting rid of the V2s. It's still getting us into Germany.

We should probably do this. There's also this weird push to use the airborne. So the first time that, this is the first time in history. There's been actual airborne divisions because it's the first time in history that airplanes like this could be used to drop people behind enemy lines. World War II the first time. Correct, yes. So you have D-Day where you drop a ton of airborne troops behind enemy lines, back behind the beaches, and their job is to basically capture key bridges, keep any of the occupying forces busy until the beachhead can be established and try to hold up any type of reinforcements

that might try to make their way to the beach. It was very successful the way the airborne did this. It was a little trickier because they were doing this. at night. And so there had been this rule, and they'd done other airborne operations. There were some down in, like, Sicily or like, down in... Prior to D-Day, we had Sicily invasion, which was airborne goes in. And then...

Was Husky Airborne? Yeah, I believe it was Husky. And then you have them, again, establishing the beachhead in Sicily. Prior to that, you had the North Africa... Sicily, fairly successful. It worked. You go down to the North African... campaign where it was the first time the United States had done it.

I believe they were trying to get into, I'm going to get it wrong and say Libya, somewhere down in there. And we're extremely unsuccessful because they had missed the drop point. So all of the paratroopers had to basically walk back to where the Allied line was and be like, hey guys, we missed. Sorry. So you've been able to see it happen. At the same time, every single one of these times before this was paratroopers

go in and drop behind enemy lines. We're establishing beach heads on boats where we're trying to take a beach, which is ultimately going to be faster because you can see the people in front of you. You know what the stopping point is from the ground infantry, getting up to the paratroopers.

When you're doing this on land, it's going to be a little bit different because if you drop paratroopers behind enemy lines and then you're trying to just push a force on land, you're going to get ambushed. You're going to get slowed down. So that amount of time for that infantry to catch up to those paratroopers is going to be a lot more hit or miss.

That was one of the reasons, too, I think, a selling point that Montgomery had was, think of every engagement we've had at this point, pushing, you know, the Germans back across Europe. So by the time that I want to say it was, I have some numbers here. Do to do to do. Okay. by the time operation market garden is going to pop off the allies had inflicted 23,000 killed inaction on the Germans 198, 616 missing inaction or taken prisoner, 67,000 plus wounded in engagements. So we're looking at how easily we've been pushing across France.

And the only place, because of also Patton and Bradley, because they were a little bit further south, really the only place that you can get a lot of these German forces and armor and stuff back quickly over into Germany is going to be kind of going up around the Sigre line back through Belgium and everything like that. Well, if those are the forces that you've been fighting against and depleting their numbers and taking out equipment and stuff like that, you're going to be like, well, if those are the guys that are heading back that direction, those are the guys we want to fight. they've already been depleted as far as resources and things like that. So yeah, those are the people that we want to fight. It'll be a little bit easier for us. And so there's this assumption that all of the forces there are either units that are going to have to be like thrown together because they're, you know.

Shattered. Because they're shattered. They're going to have to try to reconstitute armor, all that kind of stuff. If they're going to bring up, you know, reinforcements, they're going to be like the old men and like the young kids and everything like they. that because that's who they're having to like throw in there to try to fill some of the gaps. What was the German Dutch selling point that he had said? We will be fighting old men on bicycles. Something like that. Which also Dutch SS, did you look into that at all?

I saw it and I mean it's it had to have been people that were conscious of the cause. 25 to 30,000. These were people that had joined the. Dutch National Socialist movement that like, because again, this shit spreads across borders, because again, remember the rights and knots party was on a quick thing. It's just fucking slow burn. Yeah, we can just call it the Dutch fascist movement. We don't have to keep playing under the assumptions that Hitler created a fake name to try to get people to vote for them. So you have this portion of the Dutch SS that are there also fighting in the Netherlands against you in the Netherlands, which is occupied where the majority of people also Dutch

resistance and everything, want to see you out. Man, what happened to these guys after the war? We're going to have to do a Patreon on that. Yeah, the Netherlands had to have a reckoning. A pretty deep reckoning with beating of wooden shoes. Is that Netherlands? Yeah, oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, they're tying people to windmills and just fucking spinning them around in the air. They're going out there and just shoving tulips in their ass. Is anything that they can do to these guys, I'm sure. So a usually calculated, very defensive Monty, kind of is ready to put his on the table to try to, again, save future lives, not going through the Seafried line, in the war early. Also, I'm sure it looks pretty good for the relationship between the British and the Netherlands

if the Brits are the ones that go up and free the Netherlands from occupation. If your idea could be like, you know, D-Day was planned by a whole bunch of people. A lot of people could hang their head on D-Day. But if you're the guy that creates the plan that literally ends the war, by Christmas. Oh man, imagine that. It's worth, well, no, it's not worth it, but to somebody's ego, it can be worth overlooking a lot of information that's going to be received that's going to contradict what you think the actual situation in that area of the Netherlands is when it comes to kind of the opposition. So Market Garden is basically going to have two phases. It's going to have

the market phase, which is American, British, and Polish airborne forces are going to drop in behind enemy lines. Their objective is to capture like nine bridges of various sizes. Some of them are across canals.

The last two, the furthest ones away, the furthest one is at a place called Arnhem. It's a huge bridge. And the river is large enough because that's a part of the Rhine. Yep. That Army engineers can't just actually just build a bridge going across.

A lot of these can just be like, oh, we're prepared for this. We have the, you know, the engineers. And they're building bridges across these things like in a crazy short amount of time. We can span a canal. We can span a creek. We can span a small river. But we can't build a military bridge across the Rhine. So we're going to work.

Yes. So we're going to precision drop you guys in here, capture these nine bridges. Well, this all comes about. because of plans that weren't chosen. There were like, between D-Day, there were like 16 different plans, like 13 to 16 different plans that involved using the airborne. That reminds me what I was getting at earlier. So with the airborne, these people, the entire way that they're trained is specific to fighting tactics where they can be dropped in with the intention of being surrounded and be able to fight and hold a few days. to essentially allow than a larger force to actually move in.

That's, again, that's the point of the airborne. They're specifically trained to where they don't operate like normal infantry, where they're moving and using like actual artillery and things like that. The largest things they usually have are going to be like mortars or maybe some smaller field guns if they're able to use gliders. If they're just full on parachuting in, it's mortars being the largest type of like explosive that these guys have. Largest gun that they have is called a backpack howitzer, because it's able to be

deconstructed, moved on to another area. Believe it broke up into five parts. So five guys had to carry it down. They could then be moved to different locations. And this is something where it's, it's artillery, but it's on the lightest. I mean, it's called a backpack howitzer. You're also having to carry the ammunition for that, which is even heavier. So you have these airborne units that you use during D-Day.

you can't just move those guys into normal infantry because the way that they're already equipped with all of their guns and their support stuff is not made to operate with infantry. They're made for a very specific thing and they've been specially trained for a very specific thing. So there is some pressure to use this. I think it's newly constituted like Allied First Airborne or whatever that encompasses like the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles that are American, the 82nd Airborne. I want to say that are also all-American. And then you have the first airborne that's also going to operate with like the Polish first independent parachute brigade or something like that. People that made it out of Poland that are coming back to fight.

If there's anybody I want fighting next to my side, it's a country that's been occupied for give or take four years and been exiled and very, very angry at the Germans. Who do you pick? out of all the countries and episodes that we've done, who do you pick that you want to fight beside? Polish for sure. Really? Oh, everybody or just occupied countries?

Well, I mean occupied countries, because there were a lot of them. Are you fighting with the French resistance? Are you fighting? I don't think they're ruthless enough. I think it would be more fun to work with the French resistance. But if I have a German standing over me ready to bayonet me, I would rather have a Polish guy standing there that's looking at that guy like.

No, respectable. I'm talking like, think of Norway. The stuff that we've done about the guys in Norway. Oh, the snipers.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I want to be fighting with people from Norway. And maybe that's a benefit for me because I'm shit at skiing so I could maybe just like tie a rope around them and let them go

and they're just going to pull me. There you go. Little sled style, little dogs that's out. So did you see the other, the anti-tank gun, the piaat that they had? Mm-mm.

This was basically like a shoulder mounted, it was almost like a mortar tube, except for it fired kind of a shape that was almost more... Was it a bazooka? No, no, no. It's, that's what it looks like. Okay. So it kind of looks like, I guess the best thing I could equate that to is like a low-grade stinger missile that you see in movies that's got like the screen on front of it. Yeah. But it doesn't have the computer screen. But it's like, yeah, it looks like you have to set it on the ground or set it on something in front of you. That thing could take out a tank. Well, certain tanks. And that's

going to be the crux of some of these. Yeah, not the tiger tanks, but other German tanks. This thing, you would set it up and you would fire it and the explosive round that would come out of it was kind of bell shaped. And then it had a cylindrical tail that came back. These were very, very effective. The only

problem was you had to get so close that when you fired it, the explosive nature and everything coming back would come back out of the tube towards where you fired it. So it's basically like buckshot coming back towards you after you fired it. So they would have to pull the trigger and then basically roll away and duck and cover because of everything coming back. Could you imagine just you're, you fire it and you roll off and you're just waiting to hear an explosion and then just praying that nothing kills you.

Yeah, you don't stop rolling. It's a very dangerous weapon to be using. Even if you're not going to get up to be like, did I hit the tank? You're getting the fuck out of it. Yeah. At the same time, though, if you're one man on the ground is a person. paratrooper and you can get a tank kill under your belt? I get what you're saying there, but just think what you're saying.

One of the most effective things they have against tanks isn't another tank. It's not a long-range artillery. It is a shoulder-mounted tank buster that you have to get close enough. And again, these tanks don't just have their main gun. They have some machine guns all around them to mow down infantry. You got snipers that are sitting around watching these tank installation. That's what also tells you how crazy some of these airborne guys, were, is there like, oh, you're going to drop us in behind enemy lines and the most we have to fight against with the tanks that we know these guys have?

Are these things? Cool. Where are we landing? Is there anything that's going to give you more of an invincible feeling to go out and fight than jumping out of an airplane and living? Your adrenaline has to be so ready by the time you hit the ground to just go kill anybody. Yeah. You're not going to be denied. You feel like a superhero as soon as you hit the ground.

I noticed something watching the guys jump out where they're going as quick as possible. If that's me, that's not me getting out as quickly as possible as like my guys going, go, go, go. That's me looking at the guy in front of me and being like, the closer I get to you, the closer I land next to you and I'm not by myself out here. I'm going to try to fucking land on you or right in your pocket. Get a cushion the blow. Yeah. And I'm not going to lose you.

I'm not going to get caught up in a truck. or something like that alone. All right. So how are they going to go about this? What's going to end up being the plan here? Well, yeah. So Comet, actually, that was scheduled to start the 2nd of September was just the British and the Polish airborne that would go through and capture these bridges along the Rhine.

Comet ends up getting postponed because of bad weather. And there were just larger troop numbers of Germans than they were expecting, which is pretty ironic considering the thought of what's going to happen with Market Garden. It was also a size thing too because Comet kind of was missing the main component, which is Garden, correct? Where it's like the armored forces and everything they're going to be kind of moving up as the airborne is taking control of these areas. So with Comet, that ended up not going.

But they basically took a few different plans that they had out of these 16 other plans. And they're just pulling stuff out of it. And what's crazy about this is you think of something like D-Day, that the planning was years in the making and the organization was years in the making. And now you're thinking, okay, so we have to get all of these airborne forces together because we're going to do a jump into the Netherlands. We also have to think of how we're going to get these guys to the Netherlands, which means we have to constitute and get with the RAF and the Air Force. force and we have to have enough planes to get enough guys in there to be able to hold the positions. And they run into an issue where this is essentially the operation itself is the largest airborne operation of World War II. I think it might still be ever. I think it's ever.

So Operation Varsity that took place later, that was the highest one day. And I think they learned their lesson because of Market Garden. But even by even getting, a total of 1,438 C-47. So that's kind of, if you've watched Banda Brothers or you've seen any World War II movie where they're jumping out of a plane. It's the twin engine. It kind of looks like it would be a passenger airplane that they're all jumping back out by the tail. I know you love Bander Brothers, so this is probably going to sound sacrilegious when I say it. Was it easy company or real company?

Yes, 100%. So all these guys that were there were in all of these things. That's why the company is so fucking nuts is because they jumped in on D-Day. They were in on market. And there were other companies, of course, that did the exact same thing. But I guess the guys that wrote about the story, they did some crazy things. They were part of the Battle of the Bulge. They just seemed to be one of those companies or one of those units that was at so many of these major battles.

Okay. You can see my skepticism onto one. No, no, 100%. It sounds like, hey, if I wanted to make a conglomeration of a unit that serves. kind of like a Forrest Gump situation. Of course was part of the police. No, no, but flat out, easy company, all the guys in there. Watch, please, for the love of God, if you care about me at all, please watch Band of Brothers.

It's such a time commitment. I, buddy, take a break from the Korean Street vendor videos, and please just watch this. Those are nine minutes. Please, I'm just asking, please. Consider it my birthday present. I have seen the parts that you showed me at the Bulge. I mean, that was pretty cool. Okay.

It's just so heavy. Again, it takes you all the way through the war. But anyway, okay, so 1,438 C-47s, 320 converted R.EF bombers. So that's like Lancaster's and things like that that are going to be dropping guys out of them. Interestingly enough, weren't the C-47s all American? Weren't they all U.S. C-47s? Because they called them the Dakotas as well. Correct, yeah.

That's what the British called them. I'm not sure, actually. I want to say that I saw that somewhere. I can't believe. Most of them were Americas. Like, I think total, it was like 1,100 of them were the U.S. Air Forces, which makes me think that, yes, they were built in America, if that's how many, because there was only like 200 and some that were being used by the R.A.F. And you know when we say America, we're just talking about the United States, it's just so much easier and it sounds so much cleaner than saying the U.S. every single time. What blows me away even more than that, that's a hell of a lot of transports.

And it's a hell of a lot of conversions. How in the world are we building 3,240 gliders for the total in this mission? That's right. Yes. That includes the ones. Gliders aren't one of those planes that you reuse. No. They are meant to be towed in.

They land. Most of the time, very rough. And guess what? At this point in the war, there is no thought about reusing shit. It's just like if it's on the ground, we can't use it. Move, move, move. They have to be light. So they're all made of.

wood. Now, if you told me you're going to jump out of a World War II plane or you can ride in a glider, I'm jumping out of that plane 10 times of 10. You're not getting me in a glider. Not even an option. Not even going to look on the ground. Every time we've talked about gliders has been crashing into the side of a fucking mountain.

So, for this operation, they're using about 500 of the gliders, which the gliders carry troops, jeeps, and the artillery that they're going to be bringing in, in addition to like command staff. So like one glider would be holding like the regimental command that's going to be coming and to run things on the ground. Because it's not just stuff coming from back behind, you know,

on the other side of enemy lines. You have to have people there commanding. Even though this is only a what, like 65 yard plunge into this, you still have a vast distance of communication that you have to cover. 65 miles? 65 miles? I'm going to say yards. Yeah, miles. Yeah. All the way back. miles. The thing about the gliders that just makes so much sense to me besides being able to carry in the heavy stuff is when you're launching paratroopers out of the back of a plane, you're not going very fast when you're dropping them off, but if it takes you 30 seconds to unload that entire plane of paratroopers, that's going to be a matter of them landing maybe, I don't know, 500 yards apart, if not further, maybe a half mile apart. Whereas if you're landing a glider and you have,

have a similar amount of paratroopers in there. Your power's already right there. Yeah, they're already together. Everybody's got their shit together. They don't have to worry about cutting parachutes and doing whatever in the hell they did with them. What do they do with them? They just left them there?

Oh, yeah. So they weren't burying them like French resistance style. I think during like the operation, you were supposed to ball up your shoot everything, but I think maybe you just kind of kept it in a ball and then I don't know what you did with it. But it wasn't like burying it under something because again, you're not going to take time to do that unless a lot of these guys, I think, because the areas that they're landing in are these huge fields.

Because they have to be because you have to land all your guys on flat level ground that they can then gather back on and get together. The gliders especially need fields that are wide open like this to be able to land. They don't take as much area to land as something, but they still have the weight of a Jeep in it or a gun. It takes a little bit to slow down. So the planes couldn't really do both. because if you think about it, you got a plane full of guys,

and then you also have a glider that you're towing that could have a Jeep in it, a bunch of dudes. So there was this plan to basically the first drop or airlift that they were going to do on the kind of the opening day of Market Garden was going to be just dropping pretty much paratroopers in there to start securing these beaches. Mistake number one, because it wasn't all the paratroopers. Correct, because they didn't, even with all of these planes, they weren't able to drop enough of the guys that they had for this operation.

The actual drop over the course of the operation ends up totaling 3,000, oh, sorry, not 3,000, Jesus, 34,600 troops, 14,590-ish of them were by glider, and 20,000, a hair over 20,000 were by parachute. You also have the gliders carrying in 17136 vehicles, 263 artillery pieces. And most of the ammo drops, sometimes gliders carried in about 3,300 tons of ammunition. You only can use. You don't have a tie yet back to your supply line. If you don't have it there to use it, you don't have it.

And that's a, just thinking about it from the perspective of like 700 plus vehicles brought in just by glider. that's nuts right I think it was 1700 because obviously they kept through the next couple days of doing airdrops they were still bringing in gliders I think it was just 500 on that first day oh really I think they just kept using them

which you have to think if there's well the gliders didn't come until day two remember I thought they were they were toad in what day one because some of them were because there were different instances where they ended up snapping some of the lines and they lost them early then it was a mix I think that's where I'm getting

confused. I think on each day it was a mix of gliders. I think one day was just more glider heavy. The converted RAF bombers were the ones that were dragging them, I believe. Okay. Because the transports were already, I think, pretty much pushed to the max. Yeah. To look at this whole thing,

to push off of Comet, you have to grow these forces. So you're involving, did you, you talked about the American groups that were in there too? So yeah, so the American groups were going to be comprised of the 101st airborne and the 82nd airborne. The British were constituted as the first airborne. And it was a comet that was just going to be the first airborne with

the Brits and the polls. Correct. And then I think just it may have had a part of it that was also kind of essentially what the plan is, you're going to drop all these guys behind enemy lines. They're going to snag these bridges. At the same time or roughly kind of coordinated with it, you're basically just going to take a bunch of your infantry and armor, and you're going to move that across and start pushing along the same line that you're dropping all these airborne guys. 30th Corps. So it's going to be along this main road, too, that's going to be known to the Americans as Hells Highway, but also then known to the Brits as like the Cab Run.

But it killed me for this episode, because I want to call it Hell's Highway the whole way. You know what the highway actually was? Highway 69. Yeah, Highway 69's awesome. Yeah. That's what we're rolling in on. So capturing these bridges, which means you're going to be able to push in, and as soon as these bridges are captured, which they already would be by the time the armor and everything

gets up, there's no delay. They're simply just crossing that. And the whole plan was to, I believe, make it to Arnhem within three days. By like day three, the armor was supposed to be in Arnhem, where that bridge would be secured to be held by the paratroopers and everyone that came in. and then all the armor would then just be able to move in and establish essentially a beachhead on the other side of the Rhine in Germany. Well, to do this, the 101st is pushed to secure five bridges north of this town called Einhoven.

The Edis Gerson, Vengel, Best, St. Odin Road, and the Eindhoven Bridge. The 82nd is tasked with bridge at Grove and Nymegan. Yeah. The J gets me every time. Nymegan. I was looking down to see if I was like, oh, my God, how do you pronounce it? And the order in which they're going to go is the closest. Essentially, the jumping off point is this place called, was it Joe's Bridge?

Mm-hmm. Okay. So Joe's Bridge was basically this bridge that was across the first of the canals or something like that. It was the first bridge into Holland because. the 30th started in Belgium or in the Netherlands. Yeah. So this is where all the armor is going to basically be at the starting line for this thing. The 101st is the closest to that starting point.

The next furthest away is going to be the 82nd. And then the furthest away at the tail end of that 65 miles is going to be the British, the first, first airborne. And they're tasked with capturing the main bridges into Arnhem. So your two biggest bridges, the two most important bridges that you're going to have to get to are going to be Nymegan and Arnhem because those are the two that span the areas of the Rhine. Correct. Those are like arched metal bridges and everything. Not easily repairable if they completely get destroyed. And again, the water is just two, or the span of the water, the river, Jesus, why can I think, is too large to just do a barge bridge or something like that?

Yeah, and you have Garden, as you were just talking about, they're going to be spearheaded by the Guards Armored Division, the 43rd Wessex, the 50th North Umbrian Infantry. There are Canadians that are in this battle. There's Irish that are in this battle. There is a wonderful general, and I hope that I wrote, or a wonderful commander, I hope I wrote his name down here. At some point, he was Australian and I believe he was Scottish. So you have a conglomeration of kind of full European forces for these ground troops coming in. The only part that the U.S. really plays in this is going to be the 101st and the 80s. They're going to be the bulk of the airborne forces because the bulk of the infantry and armored forces are down there with Bradley.

So Garden's expected arrival at the end of the first day is going to be the south end of where the, the 101st, the first group of paratroopers is going to be. Yeah. So by the end of the first day, they're expected to push all the way up to the first grouping of paratroopers that are there. Which is closer, I think, to Eindhoven. Yep. So basically, they're like, well, we're going to push up here.

You're going to have the bridge is secured. And so when we start the next day, we're just going to cruise right through into 82nd territory. And so one of, when this thing's going to go. through its planning phases. There's information that's coming back to Monty in several different ways that's letting him know that there's going to be issues with this that he's not really foreseeing. I want to say this guy, Miles Dempsey, he was the British Second Army Commander. He's looking at this plan and looking at what it takes to make the plan work. Because here's the thing. Market Garden, like Adam has kind of stated, it is completely content.

on keeping those last two bridges intact. The two bridges that are furthest away into enemy territory are the ones that you need the most that are going to take you the longest to get to and are going to be the first once hit when the Germans try to counterattack. Now, this isn't them dropping paratroopers into areas that are unoccupied.

Very much occupied. Eindhoven, all the areas between and in these cities and where these. bridges do have German forces there. There's just not a ton of them. And the whole point is a shock and awe surprise attack. You can get enough boots on the ground. You can take these. And then by the time there's any type of organized counterattack, the armor's already in. It's already has a chance to get in. The German addition to Operation Market Garden is right around 100,000 soldiers, which is compared to the, what, 33,000, I think.

think we were talking about, we're coming in. 34,600 were dropped. On the airline side. Whoever came in with the armored divisions. There's a discrepancy there in those numbers. Oh, yes. By quite a bit. So they are these positions that are going to be held.

But supposedly, the belief is that these are all going to be older troops or younger inexperienced troops that are coming from shattered battalions. Or the shattered battalions themselves that they had been chasing since Normandy. Yeah. So best case scenario. time dependent is so important on this. Best case scenario, by the end of day two, they're to reach where the 82nd Airborne is.

So you're talking about Nymegan, which is just a hop-skip and a jump away to get to the next two towns into this last Arnhem Bridge crossing. Where the third set was dropped, so where the first position is, is actually on the opposite side of the Rhine to where they're going to have to come back

can secure the bridge. So as the 30th core is coming up, the bridge is open for them. If the bridge isn't open for them, the 30th is still sitting on the opposite side of the Rhine from where the first is. And all they're going to be able to do is fire some artillery support over the river. They're not going to be able to do a whole lot to protect the guys on the ground. They had the Dutch resistance feeding them information, troop movements, armor, things like that. Allied intelligence had determined that the 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer divisions were in the area.

I brought it up to Monty or sent one of his guys to be like, hey, Allied intelligence, you know, the guys back in London that are telling us about all the information that's coming in. They were talking to the Dutch resistance who saw these guys. Yeah, there's some concerns here. Well, Monty kind of just dismissed the concerns and refused to alter the plan at that point. Again, Dutch resistance reports supported the presence of German tanks. Allied Air Recon also confirmed that there was more armor in the area than they had originally anticipated. This was the second Panzer Division that was up north of Arnhem that was limping back, but also had tigers. Yes.

And then the first airborne intel officer. So this guy was the Intel officer. Gee, I can't talk right now. The Intel officer for the British portion, the first airborne. He goes and gives the information to this guy that's kind of with Monty name, Lieutenant General Browning. He was the Lieutenant General of the first airborne. Asshole.

Yes. Basically dismiss this guy and sent him home on sick leave. So he kind of wouldn't be able to interfere with this. So, I mean, there's a lot of information coming in that says, hey, I don't think you know what you're going to be running into. And there's so many factors that go along with that. Time contingency means that they have to be to the first position no later than day four. That's what I'm saying.

Here, the whole plan is contingent on so many things that have to fall into line along a certain schedule. You have to capture like nine bridges. There are some of the bridges that are closer actually to like Joe's Bridge or the jumping off point that because they're across canals, they're smaller and they've already got setups for getting across these. they're coming in here with the intention and the equipment that these things are going to be blown. So they're prepared for any of those situations. They don't want them to be. An engineer core that's coming to. Yep, exactly.

So again, nine bridges. That's a lot. Yeah, they can lose some of them. But again, the furthest ones are completely crucial. The plan completely falls apart without these. You have to hope that you can get enough guys in there to secure all the bridges to then be able to hold the bridge. is knowing that the furthest guys away, according to if your plan to move the armor goes correctly, have to hold out for a minimum of three days. Three to four, I think, is what they even said.

So, hey. No later than day four, yeah. You need to hold not only the side of the bridge that's on our side technically. You need to hold it on the other side because we need that open for when we get all the tanks there. So you got to hold that for four days. And this hell's highway Most of the soil around the area They consider too soft for heavy artillery to move in

So you have one highway That's the direct route Through occupied territory Where you're going to be able to spot barracks installations Flatguns that kind of thing From using your air superiority Yeah But it's all of the artillery

That's buried in these forests that you're not seeing that are lining the highway, that are lining Hell's Highway, that are going to be firing on you as you're moving. Here's the thing. Maybe they don't inflict a ton of damage. Maybe it's not a force that's able to actually hold you back. It just has to delay you.

Again, your plan is so contingent on timing of being to that furthest point in three days, hoping that they can hold out for three days. But any delay you get in having to hold up, hold up because a small, you know, battery of four guns is firing at you and you can't move anyone forward. This is a matter of hours where that can be, you know, minutes can determine if this thing is going to be successful or not. And it's not like any of these tanks are moving fast. This might be the first time in watching where it's like, oh, God, these guys are moving at a snail's pace.

Like, they're not cruising too quickly in this group. Because they didn't know where stuff was. So if you have, say, six different batteries of artillery that are firing on you that hold you up for a matter of four hours at a time, you've already lost a day just getting through those six areas. You've lost one third of the time to get to the first. One other thing, too, is so they had artillery back further and everything that they could launch long range artillery. The area between Nymegan and Arnhem, that stretch, there was no plan. for the first airborne, the Brits, to come back and try to support or hook back up with the 82nd, that were the closest ones to them.

Basically, it was like, you need to keep that area clear because that's where we can drop a bunch of artillery to try to keep kind of pinned down movements. Because, again, this isn't just like the Germans are coming from the other side of Arnhem and coming in. They're already all in that area. So you're fighting the entire way through. And like you said, if something holds you up, a lot of these positions are hidden.

It's not like, you know, before this actually kicks off, they send in a huge bombing raid to do this. I think during the one raid, it's all REF and another one. It's a ton of like B-17s or something to go in and try to bomb all of like airfields that are close, artillery positions, flack positions, things like that. It's a matter of hours before the drop happens. But that's not super accurate. No, because you only have a certain amount of time before they start dropping troopers in. So when those guys are dropping in, anything that didn't get hit, they have to go out and try to find it to take it out to make sure the armor can get through. So not only is their job to take these bridges, it's basically to land on the ground and they're like, okay, listen, do we hear any artillery going off?

Okay, we got to send some guys over to take out those guns because they're going to be firing on the road or whatnot. So quite literally, your plan is dropping into the unknown. You already have been told that the situation is hairier than you believe it is. And you're on this time. That's what I'm saying. I don't know how it was approved and how it sounded. That's why I feel like the confidence level that just anything could be done by the Allies at this point really allowed a lot of red flags to be missed. You have a German commander that's in the area.

I believe he was staying in arm. His name was Walter Model. And Model was a very capable commander. Model was very good at what he did. He was actually, I believe, the head of the Vermecht for a number of days because I looked it up. I don't remember his name. It's a three-name name. But he was the head of the Vermecht until Hitler made him step down.

And Model moved into that position. and he was there for like eight weeks before Hitler calls the old man back to go there. Was it Ronstead, wasn't it? Runsted? Von Rundsted? Maybe. Could have been. Could have been von Rundsted.

So MOTL was in the top position of the Vermox before this. He was somebody who was considered a pretty great military mind. And he had intelligence that they were coming. He didn't have the full on plan quite yet until a glider. falls and crashes to the ground and then the plans are actually taken. Yeah. But he knows that something's going on. There has to be a buildup of forces.

The Allies at this point have pretty decent air superiority over this section just because any of the airfields also back in France they can use at this point. And they can very easily cover this area because it's still so close in France to Britain and everything. So, I mean, you're not going to have a lot of Luftwaffe presence. but it doesn't take many of these surveillance flights to be like, they're putting a lot of vehicles and a lot of tanks up to this point. Well, where is it they could be heading? Well, kind of probably where all these bridges are.

So your element of surprise is basically it doesn't start with the landing. It doesn't start with the airplanes coming over. It starts when you start to have that build up. And then at that point, you've got to hope everything is fast enough that they don't have a reaction time adequate enough to then repel whatever you're going to be sending at them. You can tell ground troops till you're blue in the face

that you have air superiority. You can tell them that that's not going to be an issue. All it takes is three Luftwaffe aircraft to just get through. You don't know that they're Luftwaffe planes and then all of a sudden you're getting strafed because you're out in the open believing that those doors. Your troop transports and everything,

like especially during that time where, I mean, there was a lot of flak guns in the Netherlands. That was one of the reasons they sent the bombers over. But you're flying in, at 1,500 feet, I think they said. And because you have to fly at a lower speed so you don't kill these guys when they jump out of the plane, you're just sitting there. Like I think they said one of the saving graces is that they were so not used to having planes fly that low.

Yeah. That there was this weird confusion about like, how do we, like the flat guns, like we got to try to fire to where they're only 500 feet or like 1,500 feet? The German troops are just holding their rifles in the air And trying to fire and hit them with their rifles I'm not shitting did you watch some of the footage? Yeah Where actually when there were some drops that like these units would roll up on

And they would literally just be firing up into the air They would have crates out stacked and be able to have the machine guns sitting on them Trying to fire up at an angle at the like guys dropping in Pretty vulnerable position being dropped out of the air Machine gun on the ground It's not like you're holding your rifle and pointing down and trying to hit them. You're helpless for whatever that duration of that fall takes you. Yeah. Beyond this plan, Montgomery has eyes to basically lay out the entire way to the rur.

Eisenhower at this point kind of pats Monty on the head and he says, let's reconvene once he get on him. If you can do this, then we can talk about the rur later on. Monty also had this plan that once they were able to do this, he was so confident. this was going to work. He was like, I think we should just, I'm going to make a run. I can make a run right at Berlin, which is like 500 miles away. Pretty far away. And Eisenhower just looked at him and he's like, no, like 500 miles in just a line.

Like, you're going to be fighting every division surrounding you on your flank. Like, Jesus, focus back. Maybe Monty said that to make it sound so audacious and so crazy that when they went back and looked at Market Garden, he was like, I mean, compared to that other plan, this plan is very sane. He was overselling it to try to get him to cut it down to what he just wanted. It kind of feels like that a little bit. Possibly. All right. Are we ready to actually get into the battle itself? Just a little quick cleanup with this stuff. We have Dutch resistance groups that are formed

as you're talking about the Dutch SS. Yes. That are there. You also have... Not Dutch resistance. Dutch SS. Well, I guess Dutch against the Allied resistance. So Dutch SS. Yeah, okay. Yeah, the Dutch SS, you also have just regular SS formations that are down there that are being put together that were from shattered divisions that again are still SS soldiers. They're pretty dangerous.

When Antwerp got evacuated, they didn't head around the south side of the Siegfried line. They went back the easiest way, which was through the Netherlands. So any of those, you know, divisions, armor, whatever was in Antwerp, that's also kind of there. The way they made it sound also was that area was kind of like, remember when we were talking about the Battle of the Bulge, that whole region was supposed to be like an R&R region. They kind of made it sound like that's how the Germans looked at the Netherlands at that point. It was a nice place where you could kind of sit there and be calm.

But also at the same time, you still have artillery battalions, you have anti-aircraft tanks. They were called the 88. These guns were nasty. Oh, yeah. And they were big. It was like they're bread and butter for anti-air, and also they would have them on some of the tanks, they actually, and they would have them as like field artillery. There was something stupid about it.

I don't remember the exact depth, but I think they said that they could fire an armor piercing round that would go through like 29 centimeters of steel. That was how deep these things could bury around into a tank. Only like the largest tank, I think, had that on it. You also, again, had the seventh panthers of core. that's sitting above Arnhem that's coming back that direction. They were believed, they knew about it. They were believed that they were just, they were coming in to try to be refit, re-engineered, build back up.

Turns out they were still pretty frisky. They were still pretty nasty because they had those tiger tanks. Yeah. So we're going to jump in early morning, September 17th. Again, seven days after the plans for this were started. Okay. Before we had to the bathroom break, think on this. D-Day again, there was so much practice.

Guys were jumping out of the planes to practice where they were going to be landing, how they're going to be finding each other. Because of the time frame, there was no training or exercises that were done. And all these guys were staying sharp on what they were doing because of these 16 other plans. But they can only be as sharp once they're on the ground. The pilots have to be sharp in actually getting them to the right location. And I know that sounds ominous. That's going to work out actually insanely well.

Yeah, well, the first couple days until they start losing drop zones. That's also due to the Pathfinders that were dropped in there earlier that actually marked the fields and everything with like the radio beacons and shit. So, all right, take a bathroom break and we'll get back into it. Well, hello. Listen, while we head to the restroom and get ourselves something to drink, why don't you do something nice for yourselves? Head on over to patreon.com slash historically high and get signed up for a little bonus content. I mean, come on, you deserve it. If you want to keep up with this, our main source of social media is going to be our Instagram, which is historically high pod, P-O-D.

You can also head over to, it's Twitter, it's X, it's Twitter, come on, at historically high, and that's high, H-I-like, hi. If you have any recommendations, you want to get to us, just want to reach out and say hello, you can hit us up on our email at Historically High Podcast, H-I-G-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H. podcast at gmail.com. All right. And with that said, let's get back to the good stuff. All right. So we come to the actual date of the start of the operation, September 17th, 1944. This is always my first, like my favorite thing that happens. I love a good opening bombardment or an opening bombing. Just salvo.

Yeah, it's a nice way to just soften everything up. Well, buddy, we get a creeping barrage, don't we? Uh, yeah, when the 30th starts. You get the creeping barrage, but these are the body blows. We're not going for knockouts. We're just going to try to weaken that core enough to where they're not protecting their face and they got to protect the ribs. And that's when you go straight for that big old German schnaz. Um, they end up taking off.

The bombers end up taking off, uh, from the UK at about 9.45 in the morning. Keep these times in mind because after we talk about the landings or the paratrooper drops, then we can get into this. 9.45 in the morning, first planes take off from the UK. Right around 1130, 1140, bombers first strike German positions near Wolfies to support the first airborne. So this is them dropping on flak positions along the barracks. They're engaging Luftwaffe at the airfields

to try to stop them from coming up and causing any sort of problem because this is the first sweep before you start to see the carriers and the gliders come in. When these things come in day one, it is a column, and I'm not saying they're like right on top of each other, but it is a column 93 miles long

and three miles wide. There were two of them, weren't they? Yeah. So not quite blacking out the sky, but pretty ominous. To see, them consistently come over you for that long.

You have the paratroopers and the gliders that begin landing between 1.30 and 2.30 in the afternoon. First Airborne is going to land at Einhoven, Son, and then Vinghel. The 80 seconds going to land at Grove and Nymegan. And then you're going to have the first British that are dropping in Arnhem. Do you, I didn't look this up, but would it make sense to you that the first planes are not the 101st. Yeah, I think you roll over the top of each other. Yes, I, well, what I'm saying is

I believe that the first planes strategically should be the first, the Brits. The first? Correct. Because if they're last, you want to get them there to their spot the very quickest. Yeah.

Also, at the same time, though, you don't want to be sending the first planes over. So if there is any flack left, seeing them and be like, okay, they're going to go by. This column's going to continue. They're going to start dropping guys out of the end of the column. They're going to be the first ones getting it the worst. Yeah, I wonder how they worked that then.

I would have to think that the 101st was dropped first just because it was the safest way to. So dropping like a rolling barrage. Yeah. Okay. I would think so. A human barrage. Pretty much. So I was shocked by this number.

The 82nd lands about 90% of their troops. within a thousand meters of their drop zones. Within 3,300 feet. Pretty accurate. That's insanely accurate, man. Half mile sounds really far, but to think what they're doing and the amount of men that they're dropping,

that's really good. All of the guys that they're dropping out of the entire 82nd. And, okay, so it was, they landed 89 to 90 of their troops and also 84% of their gliders within that landing zone as well. It's such a big number, but God, bad luck to be the other 16% right?

Oh, yeah. Knowing that everyone else has already grouped up together. And what this basically allows them to do is one of the things with D-Day is they were spread way, way out. You can't go take a German position if you're just like three guys. The whole point is you have to take them in force. So if there's a large period of time when you first hit the ground that you have to then gather up your strength, that's time that you're not going to your objectives and every minute that you wait is the minute lost of surprise

for those objectives to then be reinforced by the enemy. Glad you said that. Because now we have to talk about the first airborne's drop zones. First airborne's drop zones. Tough to argue anything beyond the first airborne being the most important part of this. The drop zones were located about seven to eight miles. west of Arnhem Bridge. And this was done because they were concerned about an artillery battery that was sitting

close to Arnhem, so they basically wanted to get them past being shot at and then dropped in a field behind some trees. Were they also dropped that way kind of in Naimegan? I don't know if it was the distance wise, but they were also dropped a little ways away because the thing with Arnhem and Nymegan is they're not just like a bridge across a river. It's like a town. The town kind of sprung up around the bridge So there can be a town on the other side of it

There can be a town on that side And in order to get to the bridge You got to get through the town Which is occupied So there's street to street fighting and everything So it's not just like rolling up It's a country road that rolls up to a bridge It might be like that on a canal or something like that

But these places are already occupied Which means you have to land guys far enough out That they're not immediately discovered Or can't be seen where they're landing And then the kicker with this whole drop of two days or the, you know, more guys getting brought in the second day, they got to land near the same areas, which means that any of those landing sites where all the paratroopers landed where all the gliders landed, those have to be the same areas that they're going to use again, which means you have to defend those areas as well to make sure when the guys land, they're not instantly under fire. Do you have the other town that's right next to Ornham? Oh, it starts with an O. Yeah, we'll get to it here in a second.

But they're basically landing. The first is landing kind of west of where Arnhem is. And this other town that Chris is looking up that we'll talk about is a position that they basically have to end up holding after they can't get into Arnhem. But you are on the other side of the Rhine. coming into Nymegan, you're landing before the bridge with Nymegan being on the other side. So if you have German troops sitting in Nymegan, they're going to be able to defend the bridge coming from the opposite side. Whereas at Arnhem, you are basically having to go through two of these cities to get to the bridge in Arnhem to allow the 30th. In theory, if they are to get there ever.

Osterbeck. Osterbeck, that's right. Osterbeck. Osterbeck was like a little kind of, like, a little kind of, like, I guess what they would consider more of a high, high class little city that was kind of out separated from, um, Arnhem, right? A little fancy, yeah. Um, but seven to eight miles is going to be a really, really big issue.

How did they solve that? What's the plan to solve that? And it's, it's pretty fucking cool. The jeeps? Yeah. So you land all these gliders in. They're all carrying these jeeps. Think of like when we did the, um, North Africa campaign.

And we talked about like the SAS, how they would just. roll around and terrorize and like these jeeps that just had machine guns and stuff. That's kind of what they're rolling with. They're going to have these groups of guys in Jeeps that their job is, they're like the something reconnaissance team. They're going to just race

through Arnhem basically and their job is to basically secure and kind of form a pocket around the bridge. They're going to try to get on each side of it and then just hunker down and have that controlled. And then the other guys will

that aren't driving the jeeps will then slowly work their way into the city, clearing out some areas, but also then trying to reinforce them as well. It'd be cool as hell if you could do that with your entire force, right? Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, you still have to defend these other drop zones that are sitting back there. So only half the amount of, I believe it was the 60% that they dropped at Ornum because they were going to do two other drops the next two consecutive days. I think that the Polish got a backhanded compliment. They were going to be the very last ones in.

Yeah. They got a backhanded compliment because the British thought that they weren't as superior, so they were going to drop them second. Monty wanted the credit, man. That's, I mean, also. That's why he put his guys, I mean, there's more danger to it as well. But to be like, yeah, it was the Brits that got the last bridge, Arnhem and got us into Germany. There's, yeah.

The polls are going to drop into chaos. Yeah. So you only have half of your fighting force that's going to be able to go forward into Arnhem in these jeeps. While this other two, or while this other half is going to have to sit back and defend these drop zones. And the second Panzer SS is going to be coming down from north of Arnhem. So they are going to have kind of a B-line. Once you drop in a drop zone, it's pretty well established that that's going to be where you're going to be coming in for any other drops. So kind of in a nutshell, how this happens in Arnhem on the first. stay. And if you have any information, fill it in. Yeah, but we got to get to the 30th rolling into.

Okay. So the 30th core is going to start there, as Chris said earlier, because I fucking love this word. Their opening salvo begins at 2.15 in the afternoon is when this ground assault happens from Belgium. They end up firing around 350 of their heavy guns at these German lines, just unloading this rolling barrage to start their push into the Netherlands. So basically it's like this weird sandwich. So you have the allies and you have the armor and you know the army getting ready to go. You then have an area that is just German occupied area. Then you have the area with the hundred and first because they're dropped behind enemy lines. Then you would have more German area. Then you have the

82nd. Then you would have more German area than you would have the first. So they're using the salvo to basically just clear that little area in front of them between the armored stuff and the 101st at this point. And then after that, it's just trying to make a run as quickly as you can. Stupid, one could say, to fire the opening salvo at 2.15 in the afternoon. 2.15 in the afternoon, we're talking what this is September. So you're still going to have a a little bit, I'm assuming it works the same way in Europe where they have longer days in the summertime. But if you're starting at 215, best case scenario, you're going to have seven hours

of daylight to move. And I don't know if it's like you're not trying to give away the start of the operation until you've given the guy's time to get on the ground, which I get that. But try to move back the whole timetable of the operation. Bomb them as early as you can. I'm not saying it has to be night, but guess what? You can be flying over your target area as daylight's happening and be dropping that. You then bring your guys in in the parachutes or to parachute in and with the gliders a little bit earlier in the day. And then as soon as you're sure that they're landed, you then start the salvo and you start moving in to where you can maximize the amount of time because it doesn't matter if it's nighttime. They're not taking

time off. So it's not like, hey, we only fight from eight to five on these days. So these three days are only going to be technically 24 hours of fighting. No. Any time that you're wasting, even an extra night allows more reinforcements from the Germans to come in, a position to get overrun, someone to get ambushed or something like that. You're increasing the time when you can't have a plan. You can't have this thing succeed when stuff goes wrong. But stuff is going to go wrong. at a higher likelihood the more time it takes. And you're sitting there saying, well, there's this chunk of time that we're going to waste

because we're supposed to be to that first stage by the end of day one. Isn't day one technically the next day that they start the timer on it? I believe day, it's going to have to be midnight, but you're moving at night is going to be pretty impossible for the 30th because you're going to have to have light. Yeah. And if you're this big shining beacon rolling down hell's highway, You don't want your lights on when there's still flat guns and other artillery around.

You're not going to see it coming. So if you're just to give them even three hours, call them, you start this rolling barrage at 1115. That's three more hours that they have the opportunity to get to the 101st. Yeah. You need to give them that. There's this stupid military doctor. And I don't even know if it's true of this was just something that the British came up with, that they didn't run any night attacks during times when there was a new moon because there just wasn't a moon.

because there just wasn't a moon in the sky to be able to give them any extra light. So they had to start it at daytime. I can launch those first planes at seven. I know the sun's going to be coming up by seven to where they can make that happen. Especially, that's prime meridians right there. God damn Greenwich time is right there.

Send that thing immediately that you can as soon as you get first light. Give them as much time to give them an opportunity to do this the right way. And even despite kind of setting themselves back, the first day for most goes pretty well. The 101st capture four out of the five bridges that were assigned to them. There was a bridge at this place called Saan that was actually blown up as they were

approaching it. The Germans were able to blow that up, but that was over an area in which they could, they had alternate routes, but then they could also just simply have the engineers bridge that. They were able to take control of the location and be able to have that ready for the engineers when they showed up. get a little sloppy and I'm sure it was a protection thing, but most of the engineers were towards the back of the train.

So it's not like you can just pull everything off to the side of the road and send the engineers up. Put them in the middle. I get you can't have them out there getting, you know, hit first. Put them in the middle so that way when they get something, they can get their quick. Again, time is the fucking key thing here. So the first thing that ends up stopping the 101st on their way to this bridge over the saun is one single man that's sitting on a machine gun post that pins these guys down for long enough to where the 88s can get focused in and start firing on them. And where someone has a chance

to actually set a few years or detonate something. This machine gun post bought about an hour's worth of time for these 88s to move in and start firing. And they just realized it was one guy firing one machine gun and just lob something over there. Yeah. They could have taken the song before it exploded. Pretty insane. Luckily with the song, the nice thing was, was the center piling in the middle

actually still stood. Yeah. So it gave them something to bridge halfway through to be able to lay a bridge faster. Yep. The 82nd captured a bridge at, it's pronounced grove.

Is that how they pronounce it? Yeah, grove. Grove. And also this place called a human. The 82nd was also responsible, though, for capturing that key second bridge at Nymegan. So these two other bridges that they captured, they got those.

But Nymegan is the priority. And the armor is supposed to be in Nymegan, or at least up to the point of where the 82nd is, on that second day, by the end of that second day. So there's this place that was near Nijmegen called the Grosbeck Heights. And the Netherlands are apparently pretty freaking flat. They're rolling through the lowlands. Yes, exactly. Well, that's exactly why the Germans did that way. but basically the heights are like an elevated position.

Did they say 30 feet? But it gave, because everything else is so flat, it gives like a commanding view. I guess 30 feet's elevated. So it's slightly. Correct. But this allows any position, if the Germans control this, they're able to use that to dial in their artillery on any position that they see where the 80 second or the Americans are. So once they get on the ground, and there's going to be kind of a common theme about this, a lot of the radios aren't working like they should.

Communication becomes a huge issue almost from the get-go. There were operations that were canceled so often that, like the radios, sometimes were not like the batteries changed out between prepping for one operation or another. There were issues with them being keyed to the wrong frequency that was chosen as the one to be used in the previous mission, but not this mission. And because there are separate groups that are having to work in conjunction to get these objectives, if they're not communicating correctly or setting up the timing correctly, it makes things a lot harder.

And so one of the decisions that was made kind of on the fly was the commander of the 82nd was like, we need to control the heights because regardless if, you know, the bridge, we go and take the bridge. If they get this, they're just going to fire on us on the bridge or across the bridge. There's no battle that's ever taken place in history where you didn't want to take the high ground. Exactly. It's always advantageous in every position. A big issue with these radios is not only like group to group while you're on the ground, but to get back to allied high command to be able to explain to them what's going on. And this comes into effect because when we get into talking about

day two, which is coming. It's a situation where high command's not telling them, we got fog in London, and in England, so all of our first flights out of the day are going to be pushed back a number of hours. Yeah, they have no

idea. Their communication is basically limited to the area where they're at and stuff is then having to get relayed. The reason why you have these guys dropping in with their command staff is to basically set up a command post to be able to control the activity that's going along and you know around in their

area so when you're trying to radio back to wherever that command post has been set up at you're describing what's going on with your unit and if you need help it's their job to radio another unit to reposition them and move them in to help you if you're not able to communicate your status or the things that need to get done it kind of gets left up to and they prepare for this stuff the the unit commanders that are there with the actual forces on the ground so this guy makes a judgment call and he says we need to control this as soon as we get enough guys that I feel is sufficient to actually control this area while we're at it let's not try to take the you know I'm making the main bridge because there's a road bridge and a rail bridge there's two separate and

they're separated by like half a mile yeah or something rail bridge is going to be important and it'll do in a pinch but you want the road bridge yeah you don't want to have to drive your armor across railroad tracks especially if the road bridge is additional lanes it's wider it's easier you to get stuff that way. Biggest problem with the Nymegan road bridge was there was an SS unit that was patrolling it

and basically stopped a battalion that was headed for them or headed for the Nymegan bridge in the tracks. Well, it's because of the delay. So the delay was... That was the delay. Well, the Grosbeck Heights.

Yeah. Because essentially they didn't feel they had enough people. The decision was either we rushed to the Nymegan bridge and leave this potentially exposed or we secure this, the high ground for a little bit

and then we make the run. I think they split the difference and just sent a smaller force to Nymegan. Correct. But it still delayed them because they had to wait for at least enough people to take up their spots. So by the time, again, even a small delay, it was the difference between a 12-man guard that's normally on the bridge

or like a smaller but still a pretty sizable like SS unit that's there to defend it. We're on the first airborne? the 508, which was, I believe, part of the 82nd, they were, this was a situation kind of along the same thing in Arnhem, is because of it being a city, they did have to drop a little bit away. So the ones responsible for the bridge itself being dropped at a distance caused additional delays. And by the time, I think they'd captured two other smaller, like canal bridges kind of in the area, but nothing like. like, you know, as crucial as Nymegan itself.

They, oh, yeah, I don't have them. They did get grove, though, pretty quickly. Yes. So Grove was the other one that they took. They grabbed bridges, that's what it was. Over the Moss Valle Canal, they ended up grabbing two other bridges there. So you get Grosbeck, you get the grove, you get these two other smaller bridges that are spanning the canal. all in all, you don't get Nymeag and you don't get the crown jewel, but you've established a presence in the area.

Day one, if you were to look at this, because maybe you didn't plan on, I mean, you'd hope that they would get taken that first day, at least have some presence there. But at the same time, if you're like day one, what are we looking like? Well, we have everything open up to the areas that you're supposed to be at at the end of day one. We have the whole next day to try to take, you know, whatever. and by the time the armor gets up to that next point, we'll have had time to capture that bridge. But again, because it's not taken initially, you're having to change plans,

changing plans without adequate communication between some of these units. And so this is where stuff is going to start to kind of break down and where the delays that you can't afford to have happen are going to start kind of piling up. I'm not trying to kiss any ass on a bad plan, but if you are going to have one failure for the 82nd, it's a good failure to have that the bridge furthest away

from where the 30th needs to get to is the last one that you need to take the next day. It's not back at Grove where they're going to be showing up and having the weight or anything like that. They're going to be able to, in theory, advance through everywhere that you took to back you up at Nymegan, which hopefully at that point you've freed up to get across.

You're also counting on the guys that are up even further ahead of you. So the first, in your head you're thinking, all we have to do is take on the guys that are here in Nymegan and that are possibly between the first and us. And maybe it's a situation where they don't know we're here and the guys that are going to be between us are heading toward Arnhem. For all we know, they probably secured the Ornum Bridge. Correct. And we're not, so we're not the tip of the spear at this point. We have some time to get this problem resolved. Yeah, we're in that nice little fact.

section in the middle. First landed fine. Everything went pretty well. And pretty much after that, all the previous mentioned problems that we had said began pretty quickly. Units were forced to stay behind to guard the drop zones, as we talked about for all these future troop drops, half strength. There was this group that you were talking about that the recon team took off in the

Jeeps. They did not make it. Well, they took off in the Jeeps. The other units were starting to mrs. March eastward. So you're marching seven or eight miles is going to take forever. And you have those backpack busters on your back, those backpack. Not everyone.

But you're also taking mortars. You're also taking machine guns. Again, the paratroopers have to carry everything. You have the guys that are racing that probably have machine guns on the jeeps. But when these guys get into Arnhem, they meet resistance that they didn't think they were going to meet. And they get shot down pretty quickly. they're held up before they get really kind of anywhere close to the bridge or to where they can establish a position. But you do, like you said, have those groups that are now on the march that are heading in different, on different routes.

Yeah. Because you're not just going to march them right behind the other in case something happened. It's contingencies. So you have one group that's heading around one direction. And then there's also a group that's heading closer that's going to kind of try to split the difference between the Rhine and Arnhem. And these guys actually get pretty lucky because they find. that the way that they're heading happens to be unguarded, which might also lend into the fact that if they saw them come in with a bunch of jeeps, they reposition troops, there's something

like that. But this, I believe it's the second division. And the lead guy is last name of Frost, right? Yep. So they end up getting to the bridge itself. So they're on, it would be the northern side of the bridge, which is essentially the one that the allies are the closest to. they take control of that side of the bridge, but that's only half of it. They need to take control the other. So they spend pretty much that first day or whatever time they get there, kind of creating a fortified position to where they can defend their rear, but then also making probing attacks and trying to see if they can get across this bridge.

Because again, that's the only way to get across. They don't have boats or anything like that. You have to get across a flat expanse of this bridge to try to take an entrenched position. on the other side. So it took me about two days into studying to realize that they had landed north of the Rhine and I thought the whole entire time for those first two days that they were able to cross

the span of the bridge and then take the north side to block from Arnhem. It's a Panama Canal situation. Panama Canal, the one section is actually facing this direction which you don't think it should be east to west and it's north to south. Yeah, it's confusing. So the side of the Rhine they are actually on.

is the north, but the side that goes into Germany is the south. Which is awesome. It's good, but at the same time, all the 30th and everything has to advance to the bridge that they don't have security to get through that bridge. But again, this is day. They're blocking everybody from Arnhem coming down to meet the 30th. Correct.

At the same time, the 30th doesn't have the ability to cross into there, if they get there. Buddy, that's a day three or four situation. We still got to hit day two. So yeah, Lieutenant Curl. Because what are they banking on? They're not just banking on it being Frost's, you know, second division down there. They're banking on second day troops coming in.

But at the same time, once other troops are constituted, they're going to be sending them toward. And if they had radios and they were working, I'm sure I think there was some communication with Frost. He would say, hey, go between, you know, Arnhem and the and the Rhine. We got here, start sending troops. unfortunately there happens to be a larger presence in arnim itself of german forces and as soon as this jeep situation happens and they're trying to get in they start locking down routes like leading into the city that they could potentially be used by the allies to to get in there yeah and it's if you're the the second group uh lieutenant colonel john frost is the guy we're just going to call it

Frost Group because two, three, one, there's just too many of them. But you're there under the assumption that you're waiting for one and three to show up to help you grow those numbers to be able to control the bridge. It's not a situation where you're like, okay, I know that they're coming. They were right behind me. They're pretty much in the dark once they get in there, just hoping that they get reinforced. There's a quote, Embandered Brothers that's so fucking badass. But basically they are getting ready to, I believe, to march into Bastone.

and someone says to Dick Winters, they're like, it looks like you guys are going to be surrounded. And he just looks like that and he goes, we're airborne. We're supposed to be surrounded. But there's a difference between knowing your, how surrounded you are, and still having that hope that the situation is not that bad.

So what you basically have is Frost guys make it in there. And as they make it in there, all of a sudden the door closes behind. them. And they're not of the understanding that the door is completely closed behind him. They know their mission is to take the bridge, but they're expecting more guys to continue to show up. Yeah. Well, also bad news for the 80 second before Frost men get there. The Ninth Panzer ends up crossing the Arnhem Bridge, and they're heading down to Nymegan. So they're going to reinforce Nymegan. Eventually when they get there, they realize that Nymegan supposedly has enough of a hold to

take care of it so they come back. which is also very, very bad for Frostman because now you have a Panzer division that's coming back towards the bridge. On your side of the river, yeah. Well, they're coming from the south. So you're holding the north side because you swept in underneath Arnhem to take it.

Correct, but when they came across to go to Nymegan, then they're on the same side of the river you are because they have to be on that same side to get to Nymegan. That was on the south side of the bridge. They took the north side of the bridge. bridge. Correct. The north side, the bridge itself, north is still the area they're coming from. South is going into Germany. South was going down in a Neiman. No. You're thinking about it on a map like that. The bridge itself, think of like you go into town. It may be going this way, but what if the bridge

goes this way? The river can turn. And so the bridge, when they're saying the north and the south side, the bridge just simply faces a different direction. But the north side of the bridge is still the Arnhem side, which is on the north's bank, right? Correct, but getting across the bridge is what gets you into Germany. So like, if it was like this and you were coming from this direction, the bridge just goes like this. You're still coming from this direction. I'm drawing right now. But they're on the north side, but the north is still the side, the same side of that rhyme,

that Nymegan is on it that all the other guys are on. They're not across the bridge. But for the 30th to get into Arnhem, they have to cross the bridge to get into Arnhem. Correct. But they get in there prior to frost guys getting in position to stop them. Yeah, the ninth does down into the south.

The ninth goes to the north and then circles back around and kind of heads south toward Nymegan. All right. So instead of saying, you would say just say the north side of the Rhine, and that would be essentially Nymec, or that would be Arnhem. Correct.

Which I feel like would have to be the north side of the bridge. It is, but what I'm trying to get at is no one's, that Panzer Group comes from Germany, the German side of the Rhine, gets across into Arnhem. They left Arnhem to go to Nymeag. They came into Arnhem first, across the bridge, and then Arnhem to Nightmaregant. The reason that it makes sense is because...

I feel like we're working on different maps here. Okay, I'll look it up. Okay. You have Frostmen digging in, and in the beginning it's fine, because they're taking ground troops against ground troops being fired on as far as being able to handle that. They're in holding a part of the road,

which makes it tougher because when you're firing, is it the six-pounders that they were using? Yeah, that was like one of the biggest, um, artillery guns that they could have on like a glider. And normally that would be sufficient to, I think pretty much take out any of the tanks that they thought they had,

which they did have some of those, but they also had tanks that the armor was thick enough that those weren't enough to, to penetrate it unless you had like a rear shot or something like that. And how are you going to reposition or try to get around a tank, when you are being towed by a person or moved by a person. Well, not to mention if you're on asphalt, too, you're not going to be able to dig in the base to keep it in the same area.

Yeah, they said the shooting was pretty fucking unruly. It was kicking back pretty hard. So two of the three, this first parachute battalion, so one and three, both end up getting stopped by this 16th SS group. They were just a training battalion that was there and was able to keep one and three from getting. into Arnhem to be able to help them secure the bridge. Paratroopers were largely stopped in position by the end of day one.

Soon as night falls, they're not going to be moving a whole lot. But the 30th Corps' creeping barrage was pretty effective. It didn't hurt that they had hawkers overhead that were firing rockets from the air on German positions. It always helps to have something in the air raining down. But the problem kind of quickly becomes these previously unseen anti-tank 80s that are hanging out in the forest on either side of hell's highway are stopping them and then they'll move a little bit further after they get those taken care of

and then they'll stop them uh to capture the germans some of the german troops that they actually captured began to just willingly start pointing out these installations alongside of the road and america's like what do you do it like well strategy i mean You guys got us. You got the jump on us, I guess. So we're just going to go ahead and do this. Don't kill us. We'll help you out.

Just make sure not to kill us. The U.S. troops, like, do you even want me to, like, twist your arm? So when you go back and explain to them how you gave up all these different installments, you can... No, no, just take me back to Jolio, London. I'm cool with that. I'll go back there. Take me back to Zilondon, please. I will answer no questions.

So they believed Horrocks, the guy that was really... running the 30th, was expected the 30th to move 13 miles within the first three hours of the day. Pretty fast. I mean, it's a real fast clip for as fast as this whole group was moving. They actually ended up covering seven miles in the first three hours. So you're not even halfway in the first three hours to what you expect on day one of something that you started way too late in the day. So if you say the first three hours, that they do this from Oh shit.

What did they start at like? 2.15 I believe. 515, you're halfway to the goal that you were trying to achieve. That's not making good time if you're supposed to be linking up with the airborne no later than three days in.

Yeah. It's really starting to change the thoughts, but how is this radio communication going on? You're just sitting blind is these three airborne groups. without being able to lay eyes on the 30th and just expecting them to be rolling down the road. Even though you know that they're probably running into some adversaries,

you're still expecting them to show up when they're supposed to show up or pretty close to theirabouts. Yes. Okay, so Arnhem is on the north side of the Rhine. Yes. So that's where they were. Yes. So that's what I was, sorry if I was being confused about that,

where that tank position was coming from the cross the Rhine, they came from the south Nymegan was in the south though right? No, no, no. So like the way that the river flows, the river that they were crossing doesn't flow north to south. It flows east to west.

And then as it goes into Nymegan, it dips and goes south. So the Rhine was, Nymegan was on the northern side of the Rhine, but south of Arnhem. So it's snakes around. Yes, yes. Yeah.

But if the Panzer Group was coming from where I thought it was up in Arnhem, it would have had to cross to go down to Nightmarek. It came from the other side of the river from Arnhem and then came into Arnhem. And that's where the Brits, they fought over the northern side of the bridge, which was the side that was in Arnhem. Between Arnhem and the bridge is the northern side. The bridge goes into Arnhem. Yeah. Yes. So they were fighting in the south of Arnhem, but to the northern.

of the river. Correct. Yes. South Arnhem, north of the right. We did it. Glad we got that figured out. Don't give me this.

You did it. Shit. I'm still pretty sure that I was... I didn't say you did. I said we did it. Okay, we did it. The engineers constructed this Bailey Bridge

over stream. That was completed pretty quickly within about 12 hours. But they still had this massive repair to do with the saun, and they're not at the saun yet. They're supposed to be getting pretty close.

to the saun. Not there. Not going to be something that you can just run up on and get it done in a day because again, you're moving these engineers up to get to it, but it's taking forever for them to get through the columns to get up there. Not to mention, you just, I don't remember the other episode that we talked about this, but you're just bringing these large sections of bridge with you in this supply train to then just ferry up and do it. Not to mention, part of the labor force that you're using or just capture Germans. I know. Yeah. So the way it looks like the trucks or the tanks that they would have these things, basically the bridge like equipment on, they would have sections of bridge that spanned like

20 or 30 feet that they would just try to slide out to get to that middle point. And then rest it, then engineers would go out there and get it secured. And then they could run the tank that's holding the next portion across that. And then bridge up from that. point to the next. And I don't know if it worked exactly like that for all of them, but the ones that it showed some images of, that's kind of how it looked like they were doing it. A little bit of a go-go gadget bridge situation. Yes.

Day two. We're already into day two. The 30th isn't even to the, or isn't even over the son yet. And it starts with these big fog delays in England. It causes paratrooper drops to delay. the first remaining units are sitting there trying to defend these drop zones and they're looking over their shoulder.

They're waiting to hear the war of these aircraft coming in to drop these guys. It's just not happening. And the delays don't just mess up the beginning. Every single drop after that is either canceled or it's showing up at a time when they don't know. It would have been real great to have a radio

just to get through, be like, hey guys. It's constant, yeah. Because even if they were in communication, with like the various HQs, if they're not able to disseminate the information out, it's no good. You also have this, you know, with the whole My Megan situation,

how they haven't taken the other side of those bridges yet, it finally gets to the point where the kind of the armor catches up. They lose that whole like grace period of being like, well, they're not here yet. We still have a chance. It gets to the point where, Nymagin becomes what is actually going to be holding up the operation.

And up in the north, you have the first and the third parachutes, again, trying to fight their way to this Arnhem Bridge. And they're running into the exact same problems again. Germans, as they're coming up in these long columns, the Germans aren't hitting them as soon as they're walking up. They're kind of pulling a Hannibal-like move where they're letting them move back. and then when you get to the fat, meaty portion of these columns, you just start attacking and pushing back. And you can only do so to a certain degree because, yeah, I believe Frost guys were able to get some like six-pounders and stuff like that in,

but you're not going to hold off like a heavily advancing column or tanks that are coming through. At certain points, too, you are going to lose enough guys or burn through the ammunition that you have. So you have to be very strategic like you're saying, hey, we just can't pound the front of this column. If we want maximum damage and cause chaos, maybe we can hit the middle of this thing and try to clog up the bridge or something like that. And then if we have them trapped on one side,

it's a smaller group of guys that we have to fight. Yeah, the Germans aren't trying to wipe them out. They're just trying to diminish their numbers enough so they can wipe them out later. And I mean, they're holding position like right on the other side of the bridge. Was it a schoolhouse or was that a little bit later? The schoolhouse is, this blew me away to find out. They actually brought a hospital unit that had a doctor.

We had like filled surgeons. They were working out of the schoolhouse where they, it was basically like a hospital that was put up. And they had that secured, but they were also digging into kind of these houses around the area because it gave them just enough protection, which if you're fighting a bunch of ground troops, that's awesome. It's really, really bad news when that ninth panzer group comes back. They get mean. Urban warfare in World War II sounds like the most fucking stressful shit you can ever do, because you're splitting guys up to be in houses. Also, there's still a civilian population here.

Some of the houses you're going into are just people possibly having dinner, as soon as they hear shit start popping off, they're probably down in the cellars and everything. But you're also coming in and trying to set up positions that are in second stories to be able to shoot down onto roads and stuff like that. And technically, you also don't know if there's Germans in certain houses and things like that. We did forget to mention it. When they're dropping these paratroopers initially, the Dutch people are so pumped that they all leave their houses and go. running out towards these drop zones. So that's,

there's a scene. Okay, so Market Garden actually takes place during the Band of Brothers. Yeah, because Easy Company's a part of this. Correct, yes. So it actually shows Eindhoven when they end up coming in. And the streets are clogged people, are waving Dutch flags, they're swarming

them. And what they're trying to do is they're just trying to move through the city. They're talking to Dutch resistance. They're telling them, hey, there's enemy forces out here. We've secured a couple bridges ahead of you. You know, they're wanting, they're basically being like move forward. You have soldiers that are sitting down and trying to eat like croissants and stuff like that or some food. You have women that are coming up and throwing themselves around these soldiers' necks and kissing them for liberation, everything.

And then at the same time, you have the officers that are walking through town that are like hiding their ranking insignias that are on their necks and everything. because there could still 100% be German snipers sitting in this city just waiting to crack off a couple officers. This is their first time coming into the city trying to move through. They haven't cleared this place, but they're trying to move through it because they have a schedule to keep.

Exactly. Yeah, it's great. It's cool. One of the guys is standing up just going, keep moving. We got to keep going. can keep heaping praise on us because it makes us feel good as we're walking but we got to we got to walk in love at the same time we we need to if you want to stay liberated like we're trying to do here you're

going to have to let us through and looking at because we can look at the whole thing as we can look at the whole operation see the scope see everywhere that they were at at certain times when you're these units and you're dropping in you have no clue how anybody else is doing the place that you're supposed to You may have secured your place and that's your job. But you're just simply kind of like you secure it and then the army keeps moving through, but you're kind of staying there to make sure that the area stays secured so this column of vehicles that's going to be coming through doesn't get attacked. Last thing that you need is for the 30th Corps to move along past you going north.

And then you get a German attack that then cuts off the 30th. And all of a sudden you just have one giant pocket that you're supposed to be. Just to be just screening in front of them until they get into a certain area where then they link up with, you know, whoever is next in line. But you still got to hold everything behind, too. Yes. And the later days of this is just it's attrition. And at the same time, it's just them playing volleyball with this hell's highway back and forth. Because you're eventually going to, spoiler, they're going to need a way out.

And it's not through Ornum. Arnhem becomes a bridge too far. Nice. See what I did there? I like that. That's fantastic. By the end of day two, and we still got plenty of cover today through by day two. The first and the third were a little over a mile away from the bridge.

That was how close they were getting to it by the end of day two. Unfortunately, that came at a cost to where they had about one sixth of their original fighting strength. There were 200 of these guys left. That was the hell that they took to get within a mile of the bridge at Arnhem. Yeah. And it becomes a pretty vulnerable situation as you were talking about knowing that paratroopers are always surrounded when you're cut down to 200 guys. Yeah. You're digging in, you're hoping that there's some sort of relief coming.

And in the back of your mind, you have to tell yourself all the time that the 30th is just on the doorstep about to come up and save you, knowing that you still probably have a day, but you can hold out a day. It's the whole Gandalf Helms deep thing when he's like on the third day, look to the east. Yeah. So by September 19th, which I believe is considered day two on this. That's bloody Tuesday. Because they flew in on the 17th. The 18th would be day two, correct? Okay.

So contact between the Guards Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne doesn't even occur until the 19th. Which, again, that was supposed to be the end of day two. The big problem, though. That's them making contact. That's not them in nine. Megan. The contact is miles back. They're supposed to have control of Myanmar. But they're, you know, it's, it's the handoff situation like, hey, we're, we just shot this gap between the 101st and the 82nd. Now we're moving into this area. And then it's supposed to be safe rolling all the way to the bridge. And then on the other side of the bridge as well. And good news is 80 seconds holding on to grove. They're repelling these Germans. They're keeping the Germans off of those heights. They're doing everything that they have to. Bad news is the Germans end up taking a landing zone in the 82nd, and they're basically just sitting underneath trying to wait for these drops to happen

because we're at a point in the day when these drops are happening. Yeah, it's like open fields and then lines of trees and open fields. It kind of feels like a golf course. A little bit, yeah. And so where these open fields are, you have these German positions that are just pulling them back into the trees until the moment when they're the most vulnerable, you know, falling through the air and landing,

and then they just pop out of the trees and start firing. You got troops on the ground that are, because they don't have radio to get up to these planes, are trying to tell them, keep going. Don't drop your payload because everybody's going to get shot. And I believe they said that there were multiple guys on the ground that ended up getting killed, because they were out in the open that were awarded Victoria Crosses posthumously

because they were saving groups of these guys and gliders that were being let go basically to their deaths. Or if they're coming down, they see them, at least, think of it this way. If you're a glider and you can give yourself an extra thousand yards. That's huge. And then you can form up and you can defend yourself and everything like that. So basically being on the signal someone, even if they're getting close to landing and being like, oh, no, we're pulling up a little bit,

and we'll just hit the next field. Luckily, they cleared it out within about an hour of this happening. Kind of nice, they take 149 prisoners. They took 16 flak pieces off the board for the Germans, and anytime you take one of these down, it's good. Yeah. So 16's pretty nice.

The 101st attempt to capture this bridge close to the Saun, they're blocked at best. They were trying to figure out a way to get around Saan because Saan hasn't been constructed, yet for the 30th to get across, so they go down to best where they experience more fighting along there. The 30th Irish Guard recon

reaches Einhoven finally by 6 p.m. on the second day. Very much behind schedule. They end up reaching this blown bridge at the Saan by 7. The 30th Corps takes about 10 hours to build this bridge across the canal. Which is still crazy, like a bridge capable of supporting all this armor, but at the same time where we're sitting in day two, stuff is not going well.

And now you're like, oh, by the way, we're already behind schedule. We just need another 10 hours. Everyone will be okay, right? To build a bridge in 10 hours is incredible. It is. But on this timeline, it's unacceptable. Yes. It would be amazing in any time but this.

Day three, the first in remnants of the third parachute brigade. attack at Arnhem Bridge. They were within a mile. They were able to move in before first light. And day three becomes a day that is known as Bloody Tuesday. Part of the issue that kicks off with this first airborne, this furthest that's up around Arnhem. The Brits. The Brits. There was this colonel named Urquhart. Erkart was in charge. He was in command of the entire first. and for some reason, I don't know.

I heard many different reasons. All of them didn't make much sense to me. He goes ahead and wanders off with the second command. And they end up going into Arnhem and kind of exploring some areas in there, and they end up getting trapped by Germans. So at the beginning of day three, you have the commander of the Brits go missing. He ends up getting trapped. wrapped in the attic of a house being held under German fire.

He's with a few guys, right? It's not just him in the second, but it's him in a small group. But still, those two guys, one of them ends up getting shot and paralyzed by machine gun fire. They get him into a house where there is a Dutch family already. They then realize that they don't need, they don't want to be in that house. So they leave the paralyzed guy with the Dutch family, go a few houses down and get up in the attic. and as they're sitting there in the attic waiting for an opportunity to kind of make a run back to, you know, the unit or whatever, a German, I don't know if it was a half track or a piece of mobile artillery or something literally ends up parking right in front of the house. Like, I don't know if your asshole could ever get tighter than when you're just sitting in that attic and you start to hear that fucking squeak that the fucking tracks on those things make.

And you're just like, what can, and they're kind of trying to lean out, but not be seeing me like, oh my God, it's fucking coming down the street. It's coming down. It's slowing down. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. You see the guys get off and walk over to the house where you left the dude that got shot in his bag. God, I'm glad I didn't stay over there. No, because then you're praying to God it doesn't happen because again, guess what they know now? There's guys in the area. You're there.

Yeah. So he ends up hiding in the attic, which creates this succession crisis. back at first HQ, where before they had even gotten on to the planes and the gliders to come over, he had basically laid out what the chain of command looks like. It was him. His second command was the guy that got shot in the back that he took with him. Don't know why you would do that. If you understand the succession plan and that guy wants to come with you, you just tell him no, just in case on the off chance.

Yeah, but if you're not thinking there's a lot of risk, I don't know. Again, hindsight's. dude that was third in command on this chain of command hadn't been dropped yet so it ends up falling to the fourth on this chain of command that he had really told none of these guys what it was he had just told the superior is what it was so they end up giving it to the guy that was fourth in command

and Urquhart for day three is just trapped in this house so you have chaos going on because you don't have trapped in the closet I can't imagine already how tough this is to do without a whole lot of sure radio communication. And now you just have the guys that's in charge of everything being handed off to the fourth guy that he ends up naming. They said one of the things that, and I think they called it a penny pack. And basically a penny pack was something to be avoided at all costs. Basically a penny pack is when you had these small individual singular units of just very few guys.

that were very easy to defeat, basically. And it was like death by a thousand cuts. So one of the biggest things with the whole communication issue is you start to kind of get these little penny pack areas where troops are, you know, if they got dropped a little bit further away, they're still not able to kind of make their way to you in a timely manner. Yeah. Does hearing about how bad these radios failed give you more respect

for the Pacific War and the wind talkers? because we're talking about 44 and you have those wind talkers over there that are on these radio sets. I get what you're getting at. It makes me respect the fact that they took care of their shit and they were much more thorough.

Like that's, I mean, this thing is just, again, it's fucking, it's the week at Bernice. And, I mean, how important is the communication between these guys? guys, how is there not a person? And I realize this thing was rushed and put together, but how are they're not a dozen guys whose job it is to just go through and test every radio? You don't need

that many guys doing it to put fresh batteries in the radio or just to make sure that they'll work. Like to just, it seems so cavalier to just be like, oh sure, it'll all work. And then just to expect when it doesn't, that someone will find a way around it to make it work. Hey, you have instances too where some of these radios had rechargeable batteries. You know what the hardest part about a rechargeable battery is? Finding a place to recharge it. Exactly. So you have to go somewhere where you're probably looking for generators.

They would have to have brought generators, right? I don't know. To go ahead and recharge these batteries. But if you can't get to one, you're just shit out of luck. You're not in the communication loop anymore. And that is if you're even on the current. channel. The whole entire time, you have the Germans intercepting any of these radio signals that are going through. So they're already pretty much understanding if you're talking, there's no code

that they're building up. What else did they intercept pretty early on? I believe it was the end of Bloody Tuesday where they intercepted Frost. Was it Frost Group? The guy that shouldn't have been carrying the plans with him. He'd gotten shot down in a glider or something like that. Oh, yes. Okay, I thought you were talking about the radio transmission. No, I want to say, I don't know if it was day one. It was day two.

Because this is when they were firing on the group near the 80 seconds. So guys should not have had it 100%. He had a map on him that just listed the entire order of the battle and where they were going. So day two, they're not even to Nymegan. And now they're just like, oh, so where they're there. heading, okay, so they obviously have guys in Arnhem, they got guys coming into Niagara if they're not already there, and they know the route that they're going to take. And again, with this Hells Highway, Highway 69, if you know the route that they're taking,

you're just going to concentrate trying to delay them or attack them there. It's already probably pretty obvious, considering it's like the main road through there, but now you're leaving no doubt about where you're also having landing areas, troop building, up or where they're all supposed to be meeting bridges they're supposed to be holding like if it it's fucking murphy's law with this shit like if something can go wrong the first day was the ultimate like just lull you to sleep like nothing's going wrong with this plan relax look at this we're taking everyone's taking their positions and then day two is just like gotcha bitch day day day you can feel like you're not on track but you're not that far off

track. Day two, things get bad. And then day three, it's just all completely off the rails. It's bloody Tuesday. Yeah. And it's not like, oh, bloody Tuesday. One of the things that is going well, to point out, was the second battalion is still in control of this northern side of the bridge. Bad part about that is that group that headed down to Nymegan, that Panzer Group ends up coming back. And as the Panzer Group is coming back, because Nymegan's not taken by the 30th yet, they begin just shelling the shit out of the seconds in installments. They're hunkered down in these houses.

And to show that these guys, I mean, the positivity was still at an all-time high. They said that they were thankful that the tanks were firing armor piercing rounds because they were just flying through the houses instead of exploding inside the houses. And causing them to collapse and all that kind. Yeah, when you have to be thankful that they're using

just something that'll shoot straight through the building instead of bringing down a wall. I mean, these guys, these guys end up, you know, getting pretty decimated and they're not getting supported. They're using what equipment they have. They do have, again, some of these six-pounder artillery pieces, but it's not like they're just sitting in spots because it would be a lot easier for the Germans just to determine where they are in concentrate fire. These guys don't have a way to replace these things. So they're... extremely valuable. So when they want to try to stop a German advance, attack a German position, it's like,

wheel the thing out, try to get it in position, try to make sure snipers aren't picking off the crews that are running these things, which is a huge thing that's happening. You don't want to hit too far outside the window, that's for sure. Exactly. They said there were positions that they made that were on the bridge, that were aiming down the bridge, that they had used armor piercing rounds to actually like cut out notches or they could actually just be firing through like the holes? At day three, Frost gets a visit from another British paratrooper that he didn't really know,

but he ends up walking up with a white flag and comes in and speaks to Frost, and he tells him, hey, the Germans want to negotiate a surrender. So I got captured, and they sent me to you to see if you guys wanted to go ahead and give up. And regardless, I told them I was going to go back. I mean, do you, what do you guys want to do? Frost tells him, no. If the Germans want to surrender, make them send out two officers with the white flag that we can negotiate the surrender.

And the prisoner goes, no, no, no. They don't want to surrender to you. They want you to surrender to them. and Frost goes, tell them to fuck themselves. You guys like, all right. And then Frost goes, but do you really want to go back? Would you rather stay with us or would you rather go back? He's like, I feel like you not going back is telling them to go fuck themselves in a way.

So yeah, you just hang out here. And the guy's like, cool, I guess. You think this was a little bit of an Alamo situation where instead of sending word back, they just fired the loud guns twice to let him know that it was a no. just held up a middle finger over the wall. So, as unnecessary as that

story sounds, what it does in the eyes of the Germans changes when it comes to Frost because ultimately, and we'll talk about it, it's insane. The way that Frost actually, I guess we'll wait for the surrender, but the Germans are building this respect for the

second battalion that's sitting there holding down the north end of the bridge in a way that I don't know if it really happens in war. I mean, there's mutual respect among a lot of people. We talk about a lot of nastiness that the Germans do. But then there's also these little instances where it's like game, recognized game, and they'll be able to come up and say it.

I don't think it's Frost's group, but there are other pockets of paratroopers and stuff in Arnhem. I want to say there's some that are held up in like a school. that have had to actually like kind of retreat back there and everything there's wounded there but they're still defending it and so there's these little pockets and little battles going on kind of in different spots in Arnhem

the main one just happens to be it's so insane to think about man because it's like these guys are just holding this section around the front of this bridge and there's buildings there and there's like a really long building that kind of sits level with the bridge or a little bit under it that's kind of their main area, but there's just this pocket and then completely surrounded on all sides. And they're still just holding out. And growing. Like, it's not the same amount of Germans that are there the day

before. It's getting bigger. Oh, I thought you meant that the Brits for it. I was like, no, no, that's going the other direction. It's, yeah. Yeah, they're shrinking in pretty hard at this point in time. 101st Attempts this capture Or attempted to capture A bridge close to the Saan As we were talking about it best That doesn't end up happening

On day two But on day three They do end up crossing the Sawn There's an attempt to break through the lines North of Osterbeak That other town that's to the west of Arnhem Yeah that's basically between Arnhem closer to Arnhem

But it's between Arnhem and Osterbeek. Correct. Osterbeek is between Arnhem and why can't I think of that? Why can I pronounce this name now? Naimagan. Naimagan. And if they can break out of Osterbeek,

they can start trying to relieve Arnhem again. They're basically trying to use Osterbeek as like a marshalling type area, I think, to try to like gather forces, because I believe that's where they have that area's command center set up. Mm-hmm. And. It ends up becoming the last holdout. Exactly.

And so they're kind of trying to use that as like a staging area where they can try to gather some forces and then go try to relieve these guys and help them hold this area. And this is, they take massive losses trying to break out and the remaining troops just end up falling back to Osterbeak where there kind of becomes this pocket that's being created of British troops that are trying to hold on. So now you have several pockets. Yeah. And their problem is their retreat left the landing zones wide open for the Germans. And on day three, the first beginnings of the Polish paratroopers start coming in. And they're just met by the Germans where they're just shooting them out of the air. Yeah, they're bringing gliders down and everything.

The supplies that are falling are falling into German hands. And there's nothing that they can do about it. the 30th finally ends up linking up with the 101st on day three that was supposed to be the 101st on day one in Eindhoven. They pushed towards Nymegan and Nymegan's heavily defended. They're repelling all of these attempted crossings. They realize that the only way that they're going to get to Nymegan is basically if they flank out, cross the river about a mile down, and then try to come up on the rear of Nymegan to put more pressure on the Germans, but also to draw more fire away from them firing across the bridge.

Yeah, because that's what the defense is right now. There's two ways they can get across the bridge. It's the rail bridge or it's the road bridge. Both of them, artillery on the other side, they know where they're having to approach from. So if they can try to cause some havoc on the other side of the river, just enough to draw the attention, possibly kind of thin the numbers out,

it's going to allow them to cross at least one of those bridges. Once they then do that, they can split off each side and then take whichever bridge they didn't take. So they end up bringing up, I want to say, and they're canvas boats. So they just kind of fold out their canvas. And what was the number on them?

It was like 50, somewhere between like 40 and 50 these things. Yeah, but they were only so big because there were these collapsible cloth boats. And it's daytime. Wow. So even though they're going a mile up, there are still positions near that area.

And plus, if you're looking a mile up river and you have reconnaissance or anything like that, you can take that artillery that's also on the other side of those bridges and start firing it on this crossing. Also, I mean, they don't end up, I believe, performing this until day four because these boats are again near the back of the column that they have to be found, which I'm sure they weren't looking at. They probably knew where the boats were, but it was going to take a while to get 40 to 50 boats up. But again, it's not like the entire column is all in one condensed area, haul and ass at 50 miles per hour into the city.

It's the tanks coming in to clear a certain area and secure it. Then it's just the rest of the stuff trying to catch up. Over that night, during day three into day four, there's a German bomber raid back in Einhoven. And the power has effectively been cut, which means any water pumps or anything like that effectively cut 9thhoven and they just

lay out these parachute flares and torch the town. Yeah. Just absolutely decimate the town to the point to where if you don't have any water to put it out you're not going to be able to save anything. You just have to wait till it burns to the ground. Into day four.

You on a day four? Frost crew this is hilarious. I don't know how this happens. Frost crew ends up using a landline to get in communication with the first on the outside of Ornum. Do you, are you in a house that might have like a phone book? And you're looking at the phone book for maybe a number that's back over in Osterbeak

to be able to call and be like, hey, put general so and so on. I don't know, dude. Like, how do you get a phone number for a landline back there? Maybe it's a situation where because there's a landline, maybe it's more of like they were able to tap into power and use one of the radios by using the power from the landline. Because I don't know any other way other than that how you're doing that.

I just, I don't get it. They find out through this communication that the 30th wasn't even close. And knowing that the 30th wasn't close, by the afternoon, they end up surrendering to the Germans. They basically give them this two-hour window to be able to move out any injured

or basically dying people. Like a little truce to do, yeah, to handle the wounded. Yeah, in turn with this surrender. And one of those guys that they had to move out that was wounded was Frost. He had taken a shot on day three and continued to try to lead this, I guess, holdout mission from the cot. That's, so he survives the war. But I'm just trying to kind of think of what that feeling has to be like where, man, it's a day four. they were supposed to be here day three day four is pushing it and you're still fighting and you're

thinking just another few hours it's only got to be another few hours right maybe another day and then the report comes in and it's like hey they made it to the town that's just it's the next town over but the bridge isn't open and they're working on it right now but you know it's going to take some more time. And you're looking at your men, you're looking at your wounded, and you're like, what realistic chance do we have? I think they said out of, what was it, 8,000? Like in total, like the ones that assaulted Arnhem and everything like that, there was a total of like 10,000. There were supposed to be assaulting Arnhem. And not all, of course, in Frost Division, because it's not that large. But they said it got down to where it was something like

2,000 were left that weren't casualties. And again, that's killed. wounded and unable to find anything, but still, or captured, which was an insane, realistic, you know, something that happened because you're behind enemy lines. Yeah. Capture is the best case scenario, which... Which is crazy because at a certain point, yeah. To be captured by the Germans is also, it sounds like the worst case scenario because there's a chance you're headed to a camp, but to know, like, that's, the best outcome at this

point in time is to be captured live to hopefully make it through the tail end. When you're thinking about that decision, you're getting captured at a point in the war where this operation isn't going very well, but previous things have you have your foothold in Europe, 100%. At that point, are you just doing the calculus in your head of thinking, I can surrender, I can get my guy's medical attention, how close are we, you know, maybe this thing, ends up working and it ends the war by Christmas. I mean, they have to have us as bargaining chips or they, you know, have to conduct and rules of warfare. We're British. You know, we're not on the Russian side so we know we're at least going to get some decent treatment. Yeah. And you're just

running that and you're heading like, okay, maybe six months max of being in a prisoner of war camp. I can do that for my men. All the while still not knowing about concentration camps. Yeah. All the while, that's still something that we have. And because you don't know about that it never enters your head that that's a thing yeah that's gotta be shocking once you get because if you knew about that it's gonna make you fucking reconsider that surrender and be like nope dying might be better i'll fight i'll fight till the last man yeah the commander of that panzer group that was laying siege on frost group ends up leaving his command and going down in finding frost personally it basically just saying respect you held out

longer than we would have. You were a great commander. You killed so many of my guys. Take pride in what you did. And that's what I mean. You don't always hear that exchange between Germans and allies of saying, tip of the cap. You held out longer than you should have.

We still ultimately won, but I can be gracious. I can be a gracious winner. There's a chance that we wouldn't have won if you guys didn't get dropped behind down the lines. You almost got me. After this, the Germans,

finally get control of this north side of the Arnhem Bridge, and they just would never lose it again. They pretty much have control of Arnhem completely, because you have these pockets of guys that are trying to hold out. At a certain point, you're going to have various units of guys that are left, simply trying to make a breakout to get back to Osterbeek or get somewhere where they can try to regroup and defend themselves. What you're basically trying to do is if the armor, the 30th, isn't going to get to you very quickly. You got to try to put yourself in a position to get closer to them.

And if them, if you getting and perhaps trying to go help at, why can't I remember the name, the pronunciation of this? Nightmegan. If you could try to start working your way back toward Nightmegan, that's kind of your option at that point.

They're not going to come to you. You've got to come to them. Yes. And if anything, you can go try to help and try to alleviate the pressure so they can get across the bridge. Some of these, groups that were still trapped in Arnhem trying to fight back to Osterbeek were down to just their bayonet charges to try to get back. Not even shooting back at these guys, just stick your bayonets out. If you don't have that, stick your knife out. We're just going to try to basically blitz through these guys. And this is also, you know, when, because the Germans are able to move

stuff across now without any type of hindrance, you have all of this artillery that's getting dialed in on Osterbeek and all these positions where the allies are, the Polish when they came in, they got fucking hammered, like you said. But some of them were able to get out and kind of establish a position, but they were across like the canal or across the river from Osterbeek. And so they're seeing this happening. They realized that their only hope is to try to join up with this other force. I think the first attempt they said they sent like 40 guys across the river. and a pretty decent portion of them actually made it. And then they went to go send a larger portion across the river.

And I guess the element of surprise had kind of run out because those guys got fucking hammered. Dialed the artillery in. Yes. Especially when there's a lot more boats than just the 40 dudes that are going across. A portion of them, I believe, did kind of make it to some of the Brits to help them out, but not a ton. Yeah. they were able to kind of begin this last stand at Osterbeek, and Osterbeek gives you a better shot to get back across the Rhine to try to get down.

You're further along. Yeah, if you don't have to go all the way back to Nijem, and you at least have a jumping off point where you can still try to get to, you know, Arnhem, you're going to want to stay as far up as you possibly can. Because guess what? I mean, Nymegan is right back there, and they're just, this, this getting across the river, thing is going to work, it's going to open up the bridges, and they're going to be able to get to us. I wonder if they're thinking about it up at the first, just wondering, like, how many bridges

did they have to build? Is that what's holding them up? Not knowing that Nymegan is so well fortified at these bridges that they're just stopped because of that. They were able to repulse some attacks at Nymegan, kind of leaving this escape line open to the south back across the Rhine. Back in Nymegan, The Bailey boats arrive finally in the afternoon. So we're not launching them at night. We're launching them in full daylight to where they are just bombarded. But do end up making it across the river. They do successfully attack these German lines from the rear.

They draw fire long enough for the first 30th tanks to begin moving across the bridge. There's more fighting that's going on the bridge. luckily the fighting that was going on the bridge was able to buy them enough time to where there were Brits that crawled down and were able to start cutting wires to explosive ordinances that were on the bridge There were guys in the rafters or the girders of the bridge dropping grenades down on the tanks as they were trying to get across there were German soldiers up there in the rafter or in the girders of the bridge of the brosping. the bridge, just tossing shit down. Somehow they do it. They make it across.

They get into... So they take the road bridge, I think, is the one they initially take. And then as soon as they get across the road bridge, they circle hard to the right and head straight for whatever defensive position it is that's holding onto the other side of the railway bridge. Just start trying to clear out everything. Yeah, we're going to go ahead and try to clear this path all the way. We got to figure out how much area we still.

they'll earn control of up there. And if it's even a possibility that Arnhem or if, again, it is a bridge too far. So by day five, approximately 3,500 troops were held up in Osterbeek. They were dug in. They were ready to try to hold this for as long as possible. They don't know that the 30th is finally broken through and are heading their direction. again with a river still between them. They're heavily attacked on all sides

because the salient that was created by the 30th hasn't reached them yet. So they're getting it from everywhere. Depleted ammo and supplies just see these troops down to, again, fighting with a bayonet. Everything in war, once you strip off all of the new technology, falls down to just the most basic forms of defense. The desperate, it's just the desperate feeling. you have to feel when they're like fixed bayonets.

They're like, we're strapping the knives to the rifles at this point. And we're just, we're, so we're at Spears. Yeah. We're down to Spears. Yeah. What's left after that? Is that just hand-to-hand combat?

That's when you then take the knife off the end of the rifle and then you're just fighting with just the knife. It's crazy. You get a real bad deal. Or geot chops. Yeah, that's, oh. If they went through SES training and they learned judo chops, I mean, one man can judo chop, I don't know, a dozen Nazis.

Oh, God, that would be a great story to get as you just have this judo chop assassin that has taken out an entire battalion of Germans. He got the, he got the Victoria Cross because he judo chopped a dozen. And he just gets it tattooed on the flat part of the bottom of his hand. He actually does the thing where, like, you know how the. planes, they would put a little swastika. Every time they went on a bombing mission, he just did that down that side where he did his judo chops.

The Luftwaffe end up intercepting the supply drops on day five pretty easily around autumn. This, real bad part about this is intermixed with those supply drops is the last of the Polish troops that are finally landing. So the Polish troops that were supposed to be all dropped by day three

were into day five and they're finally dropping them in. They're not really being dropped in in a fair time because Osterbeek is being held. Arnhem will never be touched again and they're landing in an area between those two that are being highly defended by the Germans. Yeah. It's a really, really bad situation for the Poles to get there.

They end up retreating back to the forest and there's a lot of fighting that's going on around Arnhem, but a big majority of the losses are happening in these forests that are around there because that's where the Germans are hiding. Yeah. So if you can't get into a lot of, Eustrabeak, Arnhem's not an option anymore. You have to head for some kind of protection, and you're walking into the forest where these Germans are just sitting there waiting to attack.

Especially when you're not operating in large numbers, because even if you're getting on the ground with these gliders or if you're parachuting in, you do need a reasonable amount of time to kind of gather your manpower. And if you're running into German patrols or anything like that, and they have any type of armor or anything like that, you're already outgunned. you're also something that I found very interesting you're not necessarily running out of gliders to bring things in on you're running out of glider pilots yeah because those pilots as soon as they hit and crash and aren't able to be taken out again they just become soldiers yeah you're just you're a guy that's trained to be a soldier you were good enough to fly a glider they said with this operation normally they would have a pilot and a co-pilot

in the gliders and there were i want to say say more, almost more gliders than pilot. So all the gliders just had one pilot. Bad news if you were in a troop carrier and you get shot down, not expecting to ever hit the ground. Yeah. And now you're thrown into this shit. You're in a different uniform.

You're wearing your leather jacket and stuff like that if you're flying the transports. You're in full gear if you're piloting a glider. There's another part of the problem with some of these Polish drops. And that was apparently Polish people, and Germans are pretty hard to distinguish.

I don't know why. Yeah. But there was some friendly fire that was going on as these poles were being dropped, and the Brits in the area weren't really privy to what was going on when they were running on. They're fucking jumpy, man. I mean, come on. And I don't know how much Polish sounds like German. I'm imagining it's probably the same kind of angry dialect.

You're so fried at that point that if it ain't English, if you're not hearing Pip-Pip Chirio or any of that stuff, it's a German to you. Look up the Polish guys, the commander of the Polish. I don't remember his name, but this guy was so hardened by battle that when he was asked about Operation Market Garden, he's like, I knew it wasn't going to work. This was never going to happen. Nothing ever goes this right.

He's got a badass name. Nothing ever goes this right in a situation like this. I knew that... Stanislavsci. Badass. Stanislav is an awesome name. But Stanislav pretty much knew this wasn't going to happen. It didn't stop him.

It didn't stop him from putting his guys in there because he knew that any chance they got an opportunity to lay siege to the Germans, they were going to do it. They were going to bring out all this anger of being exiled from their country while trying to fight it back. They want to Poland back back then.

Unleach the Fury Mitch. And also at the same time, they have to come to some sort of a reckoning and understanding that they're now fighting with the allied forces that are aligned with the Russians that took half of their country as well and a little backdoor dealing for Poland to begin with. One problem at a time. Yeah, yeah, I guess you exactly. You can only look at what's in front of you. After this ends up happening and the Polish are kind of spread out in the forest and trying to fight, they're cut off from Ostrabique. They hunker down in this village that's a little ways off.

and heavy German fire stops any retreat across the Rhine again. They're attempting to try to get back across the Rhine to try to get down to Nymegan to hopefully run into the 30th. By day six, the Germans have cut Hells Highway behind the 30th, and the Battle of Attrition is pretty much fully set in at this point. There's continued defense around Osterbeke perimeter. It's just growing weaker. Contact is reached finally between.

some of these Polish forces in the 30th. And there's another nighttime retreat across the Rhine that also comes under fire. Luckily, by the end of day three, Hell's Highway has been reestablished. Day six. Or, wow, day six, yeah. Hell's highway has been reestablished. So you're keeping that line of defense open. You're fighting this war of attrition.

Everybody at Osterbeek is getting weak. But at the same time, all of those paratroopers that are sitting back in Eindhoven and everywhere else back there are still being pushed on by the Germans. And if you know that the beginning or the end of your mission has failed, you're going to have to retreat to friendly areas. You have to have a corridor at an area. If you're retreating, the only thing worse than retreating is retreating back into an area where that's not controlled by you. Retreating back into battle. Yes, exactly. So yeah, you have to keep those guys there because there is still, you know, counter attacks and things like that. So you're having to keep that open. You're hoping you're keeping it open for the

operation to just keep proceeding. You're not expecting to see the 30th come back the other direction. Fuck, they're marching back this way. That's a bad sign. Fuck, do I hear them turning around? Day 7 is just another day of just heavy British casualties around Osterbeek. The highways lost and retaken again. Just further reinforcement as the 30th Corps is pushing closer to being still across the river from Osterbeek, but you have artillery that's pulling up to be able to kind of send some cover fire. Yeah, and if you keep getting cut off from behind,

you have to stop, deal with that before you can proceed again because you're not just going to be like, nah, the guy's behind doesn't take care of this. We're just going because then you're just extending, you know, extending yourself even further. I also wonder how effective the 30th is by this point, being that they were fighting in Nymegan. but also along the way they're having to drop off artillery pieces to everybody that has to hold hell's highway.

So you're shrinking as you're going further down this, what, 64-mile corridor. So by the time they get there, I'm betting that the 30th was- They're not at their full, yeah. You're not getting their best. You're getting better than you have, just, yeah. But at this point, what's- Your plan was to not have to fight for what we were a day, seven, day eight.

Yep, day seven. So day seven, you're already three days plus. Here's the other thing, too. When they drop the airborne guys, when they have an operation, they have a time frame, they're like, pack an extra day rations or something like that for them.

At this point, what are you doing for food? What are you doing for water? Like, it's not just about the ammo. It's about what you're actually running your soldiers on. If you're even lucky enough to get these supply drops coming in by day six, seven, eight,

and you're planning on being in Arnhem by day four? What are the supply drops looking like? They're not dropping the stuff that you need even if you can get a hold of it. It's just, it's not effective anymore. Day eight's pretty much the same. I understand that we're not giving you a lot here,

but it's because there's just not a lot going on. It's just them trying to keep alive. Yeah. Them trying to keep a hold. They're trying to salvage the operation. They're already, like you said, day eight, we're plus four days behind where we should have been

we should have been across the Rhine already and we are fighting just to get to Arnhem or even to get to this town before Arnhem to try to relieve these guys like you're half into this is definitely shit or get off the pot time and you're at the point now where getting off the pot is like a 90% probability

getting off the pot is coming out of life You've also given the Germans four days to reinforce ornament to bring all that stuff over. You have lost surprise by a week. And that's why I think that that's sort of when the number of 100,000 Germans comes more into focus. The fact that they had so long to reinforce. By the end of it, they had funneled in that many. By day eight, if everything goes right, an Operation Market Garden works, day eight's a celebration day. You're hanging out in autumn eating palm frieats and mushrooms.

and just enjoying your time in the Netherlands. You're doing everything that you should if you're a part of the Allied forces. You're getting that treatment that you got in 9-hoven. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. They again, it's a cat and mouse game along the highway. They're taking it, they're losing it in different areas along there.

There's not a whole lot. By day nine, the orders to withdraw, I'm sure, yes, why couldn't we have done this on day seven? Oh, because you assholes weren't here yet to receive us on the other side. it becomes very dangerous because this overnight withdrawal that's going to take place on day nine they're basically telling the people in Osterbeek that are coming, the soldiers that are coming over, you're going to have to swim across.

And what we're going to do is we're going to put two heavy guns out, and they're going to be firing tracer rounds. So this was Operation Pegasus, right? Yeah. No, this is Operation Berlin, ironically, that they name it Operation Berlin as they're trying to pull further away from Berlin. Gotcha, because there was an Operation Pegasus that takes part in this as well that rescues a whole bunch of Brits that were stranded on the other side of the river that had been sheltered by like the Dutch resistance and Easy Company is actually part of that. Easy Company and made it that far? Yeah.

Wow. I thought they were back in the 82nd. Weren't they? They were part of the 101st. So they were part of the first. Correct. So Pegasus would have had to happen. Think of this way.

If you have a unit that still has a significant portion of its strength and you need them for a mission, you're going to move them up. You're not moving the whole hundred first up, but you might pick specific units to take part in something. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have made it over to Osterbeak, though. No, there was actually a pretty famous battle that they took part in called the Battle of the Crossroads. And it was during Market Garden. And basically, like, I want to say it was like between 35 and 40 to 45 of Easy Company, of the troops and Easy Company. of the troops and easy company came upon this crossroads

that was on top of like a dyke and they ended up ambushing like two divisions of SS and were able to beat them and take a whole bunch of prisoners watch the fucking documentary or watch the series. Yeah, I need to.

You're right. I need to. But like you were saying, to get these guys across the river but to also cover them as well, they're just firing across the river so they can see the tracer rounds to locate where they should be crossing, right? They're saying, we're firing these tracer rounds.

Swim in between the tracer rounds because that's where we're going to be able to cover you the best. And all of our fire is going to be coming from outside of those tracer rounds. So we're not accidentally shooting you while you're going to be firing over your head, but you're going to be down in the water. But again, stay between the tracer rounds. There's a lot of hope and prayers that the high ground is where they're swimming from instead of. Yeah. that direction or where they're shooting from.

This is also bad though because the Germans notice where these tracer rounds are. That's again, you're trying to time it to where as soon as we start firing, you start swimming and hopefully we have enough of you ever went across by the time they dial in. Yeah. When they start dumping rounds in between our tracers, that's when things are going to get hairy. And it was really hairy. It was really, really bad. In total, these numbers, it's tough to put. in perspective for me because the whole idea of this besides getting to the rur and shutting them down

by Christmas is you don't want the loss of life at the Siegfried line. You have 34,000 allied troops that go in for Market Garden between 15 to 17,000 or either killed, wounded or captured. So potentially half of the guys that go in either killed wounded or either killed wounded or captured. That's a pretty big loss. The crazy thing here is market garden is a failure because

its success was 100% contingent on making it fully across the Rhine, having control of Arnhem and being able to just consistently then pump all of the allied forces across that and into the rur. Regardless of

that failure in that sense, they were still able to retain a six mile long, narrow but still a salient bulge out into the Netherlands that they then kind of were able to expand upon, but not in the way that they needed to to get across the Rhine. They were able to keep Eindhoven liberated. I believe they were able to keep Nijmegen liberated.

But other than that, that was pretty much their holding point was setting up on the other side of their... bridge between Arnhem and Nymegan and just probably slowly trying to because I was going to say Arnhem didn't end up getting taken to like late in the war right this hurts so much because as we're talking about all these Dutch that were able to be saved the winter that year is called like the winter of death because it's so cold and they're down to so many rations that these Dutch people aren't the ones that are the priority to be fed as they're over there. So there's people that are dying just on the other side of the Rhine River from not being able to have any supplies because the Germans are eating them up.

We're September, right? At this point of 44. Arnhem doesn't get liberated until April 12th of 1945. And we're talking, what, two handfuls of days almost between the Germans just finally surrendering? So it's you have to you have this shot at liberation and then you have to live through something that has like death in the winter coming up that it's so bad. You can look out your window and you're looking and maybe you can see Nymegan and you're like, oh fuck they're liberated over there. God, those guys are eating. They all look fat.

What does that also look like if you're in Arnhem, you know there's the allied line right there. It's not far. I mean, you got to imagine a shit ton of people. took that chance of trying to sneak past the Germans to try to get out of the occupied area and get over there, right? Unfortunately, it's a long swim across the Rhine to get there and then probably a ways. At the same time, you have to be Dutch looking over into Arnhem

and seeing that your people are over there still under occupation. Yeah. It's a two-way street to be talking to the allies that are in those parts in Nijmague and being like, hey, can you guys try again? And it's, and this isn't saying that there was just constant fighting over Arnhem between this time. We had the line. We would, you know, if we could make a push and take Arnhem, we would.

But after this happened, resources were essentially pulled since this operation failed. And other plans were looked into. Probably looked a little bit more over in Omar Bradley and Pat inside to see what they were cooking up and everything. This probably ruined a sudden thrust. type thing where they're like Monty just tried that. It didn't work. And then Bradley and Patterson would be like God damn fucking Monty.

Gave you a chance. We'll give you one chance. We'll talk about Monty here in a second because it's really really tickles me in a bad way. Between 6 to 13,000 of the 100,000 German troops were captured, killed, or wounded. Again, the

number is just not really comparable to the amount that the Allies lost of what they sent over there. Monty, even in his memoirs, doesn't claim that they lost, or the Market Garden failed. He said that what we took meant that we succeeded, even though we didn't take everything we set out to take. This man was in such deep denial and could not take a loss that he justified saying that he never lost an operation that he launched. Yeah, I don't think he has a reason to be able to say that. I can see somebody that is in Nymegan or I'd Hoferund or any of those other areas

that were liberated saying, oh yeah, this was 100% worth it. This thing totally worked. But from a standpoint of saying it didn't accomplish what it was supposed to, and it led to, like you said, between 15,000 and 17,000 killed and then captured just under 35,000 allied troops. that's insane 35,000 and what's even crazier is those were guys that were mostly dropped out of fucking planes or came in on gliders

it's a major loss and what you just did to your airborne capabilities that's nuts and I think that's why aside from varsity which takes place a little bit later maybe that's why you don't

you're not able to field I mean it was a huge single-day drop, I think it was like 16,000. But still, do you think you would have only done a single day 16,000 drop if you had a lot more guys available? It might be good, though, that you saw this. No, no, no, 100%. But what I'm saying is, you would have been throwing more guys at that

had you had the ability. For sure. You just might not have had the manpower because of this. Because, again, this is September of 44. It's going to be, you know, what, another eight or nine months before this thing is over, but still, that's not a very long amount of time. No, but it's just long enough to where it's going to be torture.

Yeah, and warden in by Christmas, so. It's going to be bad. Either way, when you look at it, we also kind of talked about this pre-episode to warm up. If they had taken the rur and we were looking at shutting this bitch down around Christmas and 44, on the Western Front, would that have stopped the Russians from making it to Berlin?

No, it won't stop them. But the time frame probably would have allowed us to get a lot closer to Berlin. And again, like we talked about before the episode, trying to kind of put yourself in the mind of Eisenhower, that's going to be a crazy interesting because not only did we get to talk about him during, you know, the war we get to talk about him as a president,

But I think Eisenhower's main thing was Germany being closer, or sorry, Russia being closer to Berlin, there had to just be that expectation that they were going to get there first. And that was probably how the war was going to end. Once you got a foothold in Europe and you were making some advances, you were doing your job of basically saying, they're having to pull all of these resources just to try to stop us, which is going to make it easier for the Russia. to actually make it to Berlin and then this thing. And Ike said, I kind of think it was a situation of, we just have to continue to be a threat. We don't necessarily have to make it to Berlin or make it deep into Germany.

We just have to keep doing what we're doing and keeping them occupied here. Yeah, and I think maybe there's also a little bit of a thought, too, of making it to Berlin's important, but if we can sweep up enough of Western Germany and keep that out of the hands of the Russians. We can figure out how to weasel our way in and take a part of West Berlin. But if we want a larger chunk of Germany than what the Russians are going to take.

We need to be in possession of a certain portion of it to actually have. You know, yeah, that makes sense. It's more of a cleanup crew. I just, there was nothing that was going to stop the Russians from getting retribution for what happened on the Eastern Front. I fully agree with that. And if we stepped in their way to try to stop them, we might not have seen an end of World War two, it might have just been a shifting of who's fighting who. It kind of feels like that was always a possibility.

And the Russians weren't ready to quit. Just let them, let them stake themselves. Yeah. Let them, listen, we'll let them at Berlin for a little bit. But then at a certain point, we're going to have to be like, oh, you guys have, okay, I think you're good. Not saying you guys are even, but at some point, we all got a pay to rebuild this shit. Yeah.

So let's try to leave some stuff standing. Leave a little meat on this bone. Let's see. It's going to be great. if we can be in control of Berlin, but if you've killed everybody inside of Berlin. Quit, you're bombing our half of what we want in Berlin. You want to destroy what's going to be your half. Go right ahead, but quit shelling the shit out of our side of Berlin.

Blow yours to hell, we don't care. We know you're not going to rebuild it. So just be nicer to us. All right, man. You got anything else? The only other thing that it makes me think is I wonder if kind of the, idea to wrap this up earlier, not only to get it done and to save lives, but we're still not done because the Pacific War is still raging. So I wonder if it's maybe the thought of if we can

wrap this up quicker, that's going to buy us X number of months for five extra months to start diverting resources to try to finish off the Japanese. That's got to be something that when Ike is going to his guys in Washington and being like, hey, what do you guys want me to do? They're saying, And okay, I mean, we can't just draw this thing out because we still got all this going on in the Pacific. And if it ends here quicker, then we can divert, you know, resources over the Pacific. But don't be reckless because we need the resources to be able to send over the Pacific. So do enough to where it's that balancing act. Like, what do we have to do to try to end this quicker versus like, but we do have to keep as many of our guys alive?

How much do we let Russia do out of this thing? and then you just try to kind of find the common, the best median in that, in that scenario. And there were definitely, by 44, we had eyes on a nuclear weapon. So that was always in our back pocket as far as needing it. But if the nuclear weapon is not prepared, we have to start amassing forces. We just still have to go with conventional war. Yeah, you can't count on that to be the thing that you need it to be. Because eventually, if we have to invade Japan, that's going to take a hell of a lot of resources.

And the less we can use in Europe, the better. And guess what we're going to need? Weirdly enough, we still do need because the British have told us that once this is over, they're going to help with Japan. Russia, we can't actually get into shit with Russia because they have a close area to Japan where they can also put some pressure. We're going to need everybody still on the same team when it comes to dealing with Japan. So there was also, you know, that balancing act too.

We're almost done, but just a thought. Do they send all of the extra troops to get to Japan through China? Is that the right move, you think, instead of pulling them out and bringing them through the oceans, just to keep them moving across land? Or you think that's too much of eating up the infrastructure to do that? Because you're sending them across probably what the Middle East, the Eurasian step, all that kinds of. Plus, you're sending them to China, but there's still a pretty decent portion of China, especially Cucing. Coastally that's controlled by Japan. It needs mopped up.

The Chinese would be pumped if you came through there, though. I think kind of the mindset would be, well, if the threat is primarily on the Japanese islands by us attacking it from that direction or Australia, then they're going to have to pull people from China, which at that point, then maybe we can establish some places there to attack from. Yeah, it's just an interesting thought, how it might go a different direction. All right, you got anything else? No, I think we're good. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed the episode on Monty's Folly, and we'll catch you guys with the next one.

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