Aftermath

“Arnhem took a bit of everything – the bombs, then the occupation, and finally the Airborne.” – Audrey Hepburn

On the quiet morning of 26 September, the detritus of war clogged the streets of Arnhem and Oosterbeek. 

The local population, already distressed by the defeat of the British, were stunned when the Germans ordered all civilians out of the area – ostensibly on the claim that the British would launch a counterattack into the area.

The populace saw through this messaging, and recognized that it was mostly retaliatory for the Dutch having helped the airborne. Nevertheless, 90,000 to 170,000 civilians were forced to leave the Arnhem and Oosterbeek areas within 72 hours. (Kuiper, pg. 1) The mass of humanity snaked past Velp, towards Apeldoorn. 

Hepburn watched them go. “I still feel sick when I re­mem­ber the scenes,” she said later. “It was hu­man misery at its starkest—masses of refugees on the move, some car­ry­ing their dead, ba­bies born on the roadside, hun­dreds collapsing of hun­ger…. 80-90,000 people look­ing for a place to live.” (Paris, Ch. 1, 8%)

The van Heemstras took in 40 people but “there was nothing to eat,” Hepburn said. (Ibid.)

After the towns were emptied of people, the Germans proceeded to loot the homes and stores within. Brigadier “Shan” Hackett, commander of the 4th Parachute Brigade (who had been wounded on 24 September and left behind), was being transported to St. Elisabeth Hospital in a British jeep by a captive British medico. They came upon a group of SS troops engaged in looting. 

Hackett was appalled to see the SS jovial and roaring with mirth.

They were big, blond and “enormously unpleasant”, Hackett said, adding that everything about the SS men repelled him, their noses, their mouths, their tunics, their manners, the way they laughed. “I felt a deep and personal hatred for every one of them,” he said. (John Hackett, I Was A Stranger (Random House, 1999), Ch 1., loc. 247, 7%)

In unison with the forced evacuation, the Germans blocked food and coal supplies to the western Netherlands. A man-made famine erupted, snaring 4.5 million people out of the country’s total population of 9.1 million. The timing of the famine, occurring in the winter of 1944, which was the coldest winter in at least three years³⁴, also had egregious consequences.

At least 18,000 people are thought to have died during the “Hunger Winter.” (Buckingham, pg. 227) Millions of others were on the verge of starvation, among them Hepburn, who was afflicted with jaundice in the last six months of the war. 

“My mother and aunt and I ate very little,” she said later. “We ate a few turnips, we made flour from tulip bulbs, which is ac­tu­ally very fine flour. In the winter there was noth­ing; in the spring we picked any­thing we could in the coun­tryside….” (Rich­mond News Leader, 24 May 1991) The effects of the famine had lifelong ramifications for Hepburn. She developed “acute anemia, respiratory problems and edema,” she said later. (http://ahepburn.com/article6.html)

This wartime experience of starvation would later inform Hepburn’s humanitarian work with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in places such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Central and South Americas (Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala), Somalia, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam.

As the winter wore on, the Germans also began seizing goods from Dutch homes and stores in areas where the Dutch civilian population had not been forced out – bicycles, clothes, food, household items, even skates. (Hackett, Ch. 16, loc. 2181, 58%)

The dire situation of the Dutch would prompt a concerted Allied air supply operation in spring of 1945, codenamed Operation Manna. But that is another story.

Lessons from a Historic Failure

Market-Garden was a litany of British-enforced errors which caused the deaths of thousands of men and misery for the Dutch. Many of the surviving British airborne were embittered and they had every right to be. The airborne reserved particular rancor for XXX Corps.³⁵

Montgomery blamed the failure on the bad weather which delayed the arrival and deployment of the Polish Parachute Brigade, the lackadaisical air power, and the inability of XXX Corps to reach Arnhem on time. (Montgomery, pgs. 148-149) These were fair things to criticize, but Monty also ignored (officially at least) the more fundamental flaws which had led to disaster.

Market-Garden generated lessons which are applicable now for warfare as they are for business. The operation revealed how poor leadership, cronyism, flippant planning, and overconfidence could usher defeat from the grips of victory. 

The operation showed that Browning, who perhaps had a gift for administration, lacked the dexterity for corps-level, frontline command. 

Although a member of the Guards in World War I, Browning did not accumulate major combat experience until the penultimate year of the conflict, 1917. He was appointed 1st Airborne Division commander in 1941 and was key in the division’s formation, but never led it into combat. In 1944, he was handed command of the British I Airborne Corps on account of his seniority. His close relationship with Montgomery played a role in his appointment to command Market, with the more experienced Ridgeway sidelined.

So close was Browning to Montgomery that one of his daughters, Tessa, married Montgomery’s only son, David in 1970.

This is not the only suggestion of favoritism in Montgomery’s choice of commanders, which arguably was also a product of the clannish, tribal-like mindset that could be found in the corridors of senior leadership in the Imperial-era British Army. Horrocks, for one, was an acolyte of Montgomery’s from the early days of war. However, Horrocks was also a man of merit, an able, flamboyant leader.

Urquhart, a non-entity in airborne operations, also replaced the capable (if abrasive) Ernest “Eric” Downs as commander of the 1st Airborne Division in January 1944.³⁶ Urquhart was one of Montgomery’s proteges. (Buckingham, pg. 120)

The elevation of mediocrity through the ranks does not elevate standards. Instead, it weakens the unit. Browning and Urquhart should not have held apex leadership roles in the operation. When cronyism replaces merit, it also creates leaders who are unable or unwilling to accept reality as it unfolds. Narratives replace truth. 

The root cause of the failure of Market was the inability of Browning and many 1st Airborne senior leaders to anticipate or accurately perceive the challenges they would face, which compounded their later inability to control their circumstances.

Another flaw was a hesitancy to listen to external viewpoints, especially if they happen to be critical. For his abrasiveness and outspokenness, Sosabowski was shanghaied. 

Granted, Montgomery found the Polish commanders “difficult to manage owing to the inter-war politics of the Polish Officer Corps.” (Evan McGilvray, Black Devils’ March – A Doomed Odyssey (Helion, 2010), pg. 30). Sosabowski’s single-minded determination to preserve his brigade for the liberation of Poland was also folly. The thought that the Allies would be able to transport the brigade over Nazi Germany, to Poland was absurd. 

However, these were an aside to Sosabowski’s valid observations and criticisms during Market.

Guilt and Betrayal

On 1 December 1944, Sosabowski discovered that Browning had written to General Sir Ronald Weeks, Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), recommending Sosabowki’s removal from command of the Polish Parachute Brigade. The charge was that Sosabowski was “difficult to work with.” (Sosabowski, pg. 279)

The letter was remarkable, because Browning by this time, was on his way out as leader of the British I Airborne Corps. He had been replaced by General Richard Gale, the former commander of the British 6th Airborne Division.

Despite Browning’s role in the Allied defeat, Montgomery continued to speak highly of him. The tribal mindset again. Monty went so far as to write to CIGS asking to have Browning appointed as commander of another corps if a vacancy arose.³⁷

Gavin, however, cut right through the chaff.

Browning “lost three-quarters of his command and a battle. He returned home a hero and was personally decorated by the King,“ Gavin said. “There is no doubt that in our [US] system he would have been summarily relieved and sent home in disgrace.” (Gavin, pg. 232)

In the meantime, Browning’s letter ensured that Sosabowski’s war was over. He never commanded another frontline unit again. After the war, circumstances led him to a job as an ordinary factory worker in West London. To the end of his days, Sosabowski could never understand why Browning had done what he had.

So, the reputation of Sosabowski and his brigade, while redeemed by historians through the decades, has languished officially in no-man’s land. The Dutch, however, have tried to rehabilitate the brigade’s reputation. 

On 31 May 2006, the Dutch government conferred the brigade with the country’s highest military award for valor (the Military Order of William). Sosabowski (who had died in 1969) was posthumously awarded the second highest award for bravery (the Bronze Lion). This act was supported by several surviving 1st British Airborne veterans and officers.³⁸

Meanwhile, back in late 1944, Browning was posted to a job at South-East Asia Command (SEAC), in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). “I’ve got a pretty awful job,” Browning wrote in a letter to his wife. (Richard Mead, Ch 22, Ref 28.17, 57%) He would not officially wear the beret of the “Red Devils” again.³⁹

Over the years, Horrocks’ conscience reminded him of XXX Corps’ lethargic progress. He also realized, with retrospect that it had been folly to “fight an entire Corps off one road” (Highway 69). (See Brian Horrocks, A Full Life) 

The ambitious plan that was Market-Garden had all the ingredients of success: three divisions with battle-ready paratroopers, an independent Polish airborne brigade replete with highly motivated anti-Nazis, and massive (albeit improperly wielded) air support. But like an intricate Goldberg’s machine, the operation required constant precision to succeed, which explains why it did not.

Arnhem became an “Alamo” of sorts for Great Britain, and this reflects our peculiar human trait to take our defeats and try to elevate them into stories of triumph. Reams of paper have been written about military failures. Reels of film have portrayed the words in those pages: the 1959 US film, Pork Chop Hill, about devastating losses suffered by US troops on a hill in Korea; the 2021 Chinese film, The Battle at Lake Changjin which glosses over the inability of five Chinese divisions to destroy a single US Marine Corps division (again in Korea), and even 1998’s Black Hawk Down (a battle that can be defined as a failure as it did not succeed in its objectives and led to the premature US exit from Somalia).

Why do we seek to re-examine our defeats? To find something redemptive in the exercise, and to define the resilience of the human spirit even in failure.