The Last German Victory: Combat Doctrine and Tactical Performance in Operation Market Garden, September 1944
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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020-01-30 The Last German Victory: Combat Doctrine and Tactical Performance in Operation Market Garden, September 1944 Bates, Aaron Christopher Bates, A. C. (2020). The Last German Victory: Combat Doctrine and Tactical Performance in Operation Market Garden, September 1944 (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111595 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY The Last German Victory: Combat Doctrine and Tactical Performance in Operation Market Garden, September 1944 by Aaron Christopher Bates A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY CALGARY, ALBERTA JANUARY, 2020 © Aaron Christopher Bates 2020 Abstract This thesis reevaluates Operation Market Garden, the failed Allied airborne invasion of German-occupied Holland in September 1944 by comparing the combat doctrines and practices of the British and German forces that engaged in the campaign, particularly with regards to command and control and the employment of firepower, and seeks to assess the degree to which each force was actually suited to the circumstances that they faced during the operation. The study concludes that German combat doctrine and training, based around a highly decentralized and proactive command ethos and a high level of small-unit tactical proficiency, was a major factor in their ability to effectively cope with the unexpected Allied attack and the confused combat situation it created. Conversely, the British forces were hampered by the fact that their own doctrine, based around rigid centralized control, cautious set-piece battle planning and the maximal use of artillery and aerial firepower, proved itself ineffective in adapting to the confused and fast moving situation that their own surprise offensive created, ensuring that they were unable to achieve their objectives. i Acknowledgments I would like to express my appreciation for the efforts of some of the people who made this work possible. Most notably, I would like to thank my supervisor and mentor Dr. Alexander Hill, whose advice, patience, and encouragement has not only helped make this thesis a reality, but to make me a better scholar. He has been a constant guiding presence throughout my university career, and I only hope I can live up to his expectations and example in the future. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Ms. Barbara Kiesow at the German Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv in Freiburg, who provided invaluable guidance and assistance to a first time archival researcher (with a sometimes spotty grasp of spoken German!) and always made me feel welcome at her facility. I would also like recognize Justin Pyke for his always stimulating conversations on the finer points of World War Two history that never failed to help inspire or test new ideas. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, who provided support throughout the prolonged writing process and never failed to lend a sympathetic ear. ii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….…………ii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………….….………..iii Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………........................................................................1 Chapter 2: The Origins and Nature of German Tactical and Command Doctrine ……………………....24 Chapter 3: The Role of German Tactical and Command Doctrine in Operation Market Garden ……….37 Chapter 4: The Origins and Nature of British Tactical and Command Doctrine and Its Role In Operation Garden……………………………………………………………65 Chapter 5: The Role of British Tactical and Command Doctrine in Operation Market………………….86 Chapter 6: The Role of British Firepower Doctrine in Operation Market Garden………………………102 Chapter 7: The Role of German Firepower Doctrine in Operation Market Garden……………………..132 Chapter 8: Conclusion: …………………………………………………………………………………..154 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………...163 iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Early in the afternoon of the 17th of September, 1944, just after the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, the skies over south-eastern Holland were filled with a massive armada of over 4,300 aircraft belonging to both Great Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF). At the heart of this air fleet, protected and supported by 1,240 fighters and 1,113 bombers, were 1,534 transport aircraft and 491 cargo gliders carrying approximately 16,500 men of the 1st Allied Airborne Army. This was the largest single force of airborne soldiers ever to be deployed in combat – a force that would be dropped and landed shortly after 1300 that day near the Dutch towns of Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Arnhem, in pursuit of the Western Allies’ latest offensive effort against the forces of Nazi Germany, Operation “Market Garden.”1 The operation was sent off with high hopes and expectations from the Allied leadership, particularly the operation’s chief architect, the newly promoted Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of the British 21st Army Group, to which the 1st Allied Airborne Army was attached. The primary purpose behind Montgomery’s plan was to breach the barrier of the Rhine River, the last major geographical obstacle between the Allied forces and an invasion of Germany itself in the wake of their victory over the German Westheer (Western Army) in France the previous month. The forces of the airborne army were to capture and secure key bridges and other crossing points over all the water obstacles along the main road leading north from the southern Dutch border to the city of Arnhem on the far side of Lower Rhine (the northernmost tributary of the Rhine proper). This landing was to provide a secure “carpet” of occupied territory that would allow the forces of the British 2nd Army, led by the XXX Corps, to quickly rush through to the banks of the Zuider Zee in northern Holland and establish a bridgehead behind the line of both the Rhine and the defences of the Westwall fortifications along the German border.2 From this bridgehead, Montgomery hoped to launch a final, decisive, advance into 1 WO 205/873 Report on Operations “Market” and “Garden,” September to October 1944, pp. 2-3. 2 WO 171/366 War Diary HQ 1st Airborne Corps – Operation Market Operation Instruction No. 1, pp. 1-6. 1 German’s primary industrial region, the Ruhr, the loss of which would cripple German war production and bring about a swift end to the prolonged conflict in Europe.3 Market Garden developed out of the promising, but difficult situation that the Allies found themselves in during the early autumn of 1944. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France via Normandy, had, after months of hard fighting against a skilled and determined foe, finally overcome the forces of the German 7th Armee and 5th Panzerarmee by the middle of August, with Allied forces breaking out of their beachhead south of St. Lo on the 25th of July, sweeping into the German rear and eventually achieving a partial encirclement of the remaining German forces around the town of Falaise. Though the trap closed too slowly, allowing large numbers of German troops to escape, the Allied victory still effectively reduced the great bulk of German forces in Western Europe to a tattered and panicked mass of fugitives fleeing back towards the German border in a near complete rout.4 Though the Allies quickly followed up the German retreat, liberating virtually the whole of France and pushing through Belgium to the borders of Holland and Germany itself, they soon found themselves victims of their own success.5 With most of the French ports along the Atlantic Coast either demolished by the retreating Germans or still occupied by stay-behind garrisons, the Normandy beaches and the Norman port of Cherbourg remained the Allies only available facilities on the continent for unloading supplies shipped over from Great Britain. Thus, with their main supply points over 300 miles behind the front lines by the beginning of September, and with the French rail networks still largely out of action from the Allies’ pre-landing air interdiction campaign, Allied forces all along the line began to grind to a halt in the face of severe shortages of the fuel , ammunition, and other supplies needed to continue their offensive.6 3 WO 205/873 Report on Operations “Market” and “Garden,” September to October 1944, pp. 1-2; Field-Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, El Alamein to the River Sangro/Normandy to the Baltic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1948), pp. 312-14. 4 Montgomery, El Alamein to the River Sangro/Normandy to the Baltic, p. 281. 5 Sir Brian Horrocks, A Full Life (London: Collins, 1960), pp. 195, 203. 6 Montgomery, El Alamein to the River Sangro/Normandy to the Baltic, pp. 303-4; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Garden City Books, 1952), p. 326; Horrocks, A Full Life, pp. 203-4; A.D. Harvey, Arnhem (London: