Saw it on the big screen & at home at least 10 times. They still had a lot of the real planes back in 1976-77. The entire sequence of them taking off.. that amazing shot of the ropes as each plane starts off - just stunning. To think the man went on to direct "Gandhi" after this. Just wow.
The Netherlands have these BEAUTIFUL tulip fields, and as a thank you gift to Canada they send them THOUSANDS of tulips a year. When world war 2 broke out the Dutch royalty went into exile to Canada, and when the princess was going to be born the Canadian government made the hospital room the princess was born into “Netherlands territory” so she could remain a Dutch citizen. This episode always reminds me of that when I see the netherlands.
I really think this series should be shown in high school when learning about ww2. I think it would give kids a real general knowledge and respect for what was fought for and what they went through. This series is just so well done. I said before the commentary in the beginning with the real soldiers breaks me. I have watched this series five or six times myself and I still catch new things everytime. Glad you guys watch it with the respect it deserves. ❤❤
The scene with the little boy and the chocolate bar is one of my favorite moments in the series. It's a reminder that at this point in the war, the Netherlands had been under German occupation for more than 4 years. A child of 4 or 5 years old had never known a time without war. Also, the Germans were actually pretty good about not shooting medics and (for the most part) obeying the Geneva Conventions. The Japanese... well... not so much.
Even more ironic, the dutch are known for their chocolate. A kid born in a country known for its chocolate had never known chocolate, and when he did taste it, it was from another country.
That being said, the Germans only really followed the Geneva conventions when fighting the western allies. The eastern front was a much, much different story. Unlike the western front, where the fighting got more intense and more brutal at the end, the eastern front was brutal from the start and never died down until the war ended.
@@ScarriorIII i think you might have conflated belgium with the netherlands. belgium, switzerland and austria are the premium chocolate countries. being a dutchman, dutch chocolate has never been exceptional
that was a D BAR Webster gives the kid it would be hard as a rock and taste bitter as it was intended as an emergency ration , that kid wouldn't have been able to bite it
The lieutenant they were talking about as being surprised he survived being shot in the neck (the one in the middle of the road with the binoculars), Robert Brewer, was shot in the neck but the bullet managed to miss everything important. Literally, the bullet passed through the fleshy part of his neck that's under his jawbone and in front of his trachea and windpipe. It looked really messy, and was no doubt amazingly painful, but even with a gaping hole in his throat he could still breathe fully and could even talk with the medics who was bandaging him up. He eventually returned to Easy Company after a full recovery.
i was born in geldrop, lived in son, oosterbeek and arnhem. All places where operation market garden took place. All these towns have memorials to the US and British airborne. in oosterbeek is a british cemetery and arnhem holds an anniversary on the dates of the operation
There is a new bridge named De Oversteek in Nijmegen. The bridge incorporates 48 pairs of street lights, one for each American soldier who died in the crossing. Every sunset the pairs of lights on the bridge illuminate at the pace of a slow march from the South bank to the North. The same direction the soldiers frantically paddled in canvas dinghies Since Oct. 19, 2014, a Dutch veteran has walked across the bridge, starting at a memorial on the south bank ending on the opposite bank. When the Dutch military veterans started the Sunset March, a veteran would walk alone across the bridge at first. Word spread and locals would join the lone marcher. People from all over the world learned about this and contacted the organizers of the march, asking if they could walk in silence alongside the veteran. It still goes on today.
24:33 Thank you for going back for a brief moment, and investing a small amount of time to read in full. The slightest of actions can mean the most. My grandfather would be happy. ❤
Enjoying your reactions to this Tremendous series. Definitely recommend reacting to the movie A BRIDGE TOO FAR(1977) to see more of the events of Operation Market Garden . Great movie, lots of characters to follow, mainly in the British Paratrooper Division. You get to follow other characters in the British Armory Division, 101st Airborne, German Army, and Allied Spies. Lots of Great actors you may recognize when they were younger. Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Elliott Gould, James Caan, and Gene Hackman all star in the movie 👍 Yall also need to watch MIDWAY(2019) Very important true WWII event that turned the tide of the Pacific theater of war.
Great series! Buckle up.......the intensity ratchets up as it goes along. They aren't called the "Greatest Generation" for nothing. We could never repay them.....ever
The overall idea of Market Garden (which was the brainchild of famous British general Montgomery) was that airborne troops would be dropped into a whole bunch of cities and towns along that road. The paratroops would capture all the bridges over the rivers at once, and then the armored divisions would "race" up the road and link up with all of them. This would then give the allies a rapidly secured route through a lot of occupied territory and right into Germany. But there were many problems, in both planning and execution, as well as just unlucky circumstances. The Germans didn't just crumble but fought back very effectively in many places, German reinforcements were present that hadn't been properly accounted for in planning, communications collapsed due to issues with equipment, the Son bridge was destroyed and a temporary bridge had to be built delaying progress of the armored reinforcement column, though the lost time was somewhat made up there had also been initial failure to take the Nijmegan bridge which delayed progress again by another day and a half. Everywhere things that were intended to only take a matter of hours ended up taking DAYS at much higher cost than planned. Even the sheer size of the operation meant there weren't enough planes and gliders to get all the men and equipment flown in at once, and then bad weather prevented later drops from being launched. In the case of the final bridge at Arnhem crossing the Rhine river they weren't able to take the bridge at all and despite incredible tenacity of British troops in holding on and waiting for their relief, the incredible losses and no way to get them reinforcement as originally planned meant they eventually had to retreat, with most of the remaining wounded surrendering. It's a battle that's often forgotten or overlooked now because it WAS such a costly failure. Instead of being over by Christmas 1944 (the operation was mid- to late-September) it wasn't until April of the following year that Soviet troops took Berlin - another 7 months.
Plus the terrain wasn't advantageous for tanks so the roads had dikes and canals on both sides. So if the lead tank got hit, the others became sitting ducks until the lead tank was pushed out of the way.
Max Brazil Montgomery was the most successful Western Allied ground commander of WW2 by some way. He took more ground through more countries while facing more quality German opposition than any other Western Allied ground commander in WW2. Nobody did more to help win the ground war in the west than Bernard Montgomery. The Americans even had to turn to him for help when they found themselves in retreat in the Ardennes. Even Market Garden was actually the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period. 100km of German held ground taken in just 3 days. The Hurtgen Forest and Lorraine campaigns at the same time were far bigger and more costly failures that barely achieved anything of note. No. Movies are made about of them however, and they tend to be swept under the carpet. Under Montgomery dictating ground strategy, the allies moved 600km in 3 months from the Normandy beaches to Belgium June to September 1944. Then Eisenhower took over ground strategy and the allies barely moved 100km in 6 months September 1944 to March 1945.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Wait! Didn't take the allies take a month to break out from parts of Normandy almost 3 months to fully break out of Normandy? The Bocage! Also, Ramel wasn't so hot either in North Africa after the British finally convinced the American liaison to update their codes. They feared the Germans had broken the US code after an embassy break-in. They were right and a handful of Americans were stubborn and slow to make the change.
@@hillsane9262 Montgomery gave 3 months as the timeline from the D-Day beaches to Paris. He expected a 3 month fight for Normandy. He was ahead of schedule. 3 months to get through the best part of a million German troops and 10 panzer divisions was good going. Montgomery's Normandy campaign caused 400,000 German casualties and nearly 2,500 German tank, tank destroyers and assault gun losses. In 3 months the allies had moved from the Normandy beaches to near the border of Germany. British 2nd Army was already in Brussels, Belgium on September 3rd.
There is so much controversy about Market-Garden. After D-Day there were discussions about how to go forward. D-Day was a success but… we didn’t capture a major port quickly enough. The German commander at Cherbourg did an excellent job of delaying the capture of the port and destroying the port facilities. So supplies were slow to get to the front. Modern armies run on gasoline and it was very hard to get enough. I don’t know a good movie about the Red Ball Express, the Black troops that drove the supply trucks. It was difficult work, sometimes heroic, and absolutely essential. Should the Allies liberate Paris? Many people said no because the necessity of feeding Paris would strain supplies even more. See or read Is Paris Burning about this event, good story. It might help to look at a map for this. After D-Day the Allied armies began to slowly spread out over France, the British and Canadians up along the Channel coast, the Americans toward Paris and the east. Eisenhower’s idea was a broad front. Everyone should slowly, evenly advance. This way no one would get ahead of the supplies. Unfortunately two of the Allied commanders were egotistical jerks. Montgomery thought he should be given the almost nonexistent supplies to advance north to the Ruhr. Patton thought he should be given the gas and ammo to go East to the Saar. Montgomery won the argument and Market-Garden was the plan. The plan was bold. Montgomery wasn’t. The plan hinged on a whole series of things, a narrow road, vulnerable bridges, weather for air ops… Any one thing could throw the whole thing off. Almost every thing went wrong. American historians, Cornelius Ryan, tend to blame the Brits and Canadians. The Brits put blame on the Americans. If you want to start a fight go to a pub in England and express the wrong opinion. The section of the road the 101st had charge of got the nickname “Hell’s Highway.”
Eisenhower's broad front strategy was a complete failure. He dispersed the allied forces all across a 500km front with the result it was decisively strong nowhere. It failed to push into Germany for 6 months. Under Montgomery in charge of ground strategy the allies moved 600km in 3 months June to September 1944. Under Eisenhower they barely moved 100km in 6 months September 1944 to March 1945. Basic military doctrine when the enemy is reeling is to concentrate your forces and hit the enemy hard. Eisenhower did not understand this. Well, perhaps he did but for political reasons he wanted all American armies to be involved thus spread the effort across the entire front. Montgomery, being more experienced and strategically savvy than Eisenhower, argued for a concentrated northern thrust, aimed firstly at the Ruhr. This would still have involved the Americans. Montgomery's concept was a 40 division advance with 4 armies (1 British, 1 Canadian and 2 American) all sticking together as one massive force which the Germans would have been powerless to resist. This concentrated northern thrust would also have been easier to supply. Instead, Eisenhower's broad front wasted huge numbers of men and material in the Lorraine, Hurtgen Forest and Alsace, then the Americans got pushed back into a retreat in the Ardennes. This was a direct result of the losses suffered in the Hurtgen Forest and Operation Queen. Patton was in the wrong area to deliver a death blow to Germany. Little of importance in the Saar and southern Germany. The Ruhr was the logical target. After Market Garden, the US 1st Army was given the priority to try and move towards the Ruhr, but failed to get much beyond Aachen.
Fun Fact The lead singer from ABBA Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad was born in Norway, her father was a German soldier named Alfred Haase. Her mother had to move them to Sweden because they feared reprisels by the locals for sleeping with a German soldier during the occupation (like the Dutch women in Band of Brothers). The rest is musical history.
Some of the women you saw having their hair cut were actually spies for the allies to gain important information, while others just slept with German officers to have easier life. My Daddy fought in WW2. He was stationed in many countries fighting the Germans...I can't even imagine what he went through 😢 he passed away when I was 6 years old 💔 😢 I still miss and love him terribly. I love the series of Band of Brothers ❤❤❤❤
The rest of Operation Market Garden is the subject of another great movie called "A Bridge Too Far". You'll find out why the British 1st Airborne lost so many. It will answer a lot of your questions about what was going on about it.
Largely because the air planners wouldn't drop them closer to Arnhem and wouldn't fly double missions on day one. Brereton, Williams and Hollinghurst are the reasons.
“They gotta jump again?” …LOL. That’s the job of a paratrooper. They drop in behind enemy lines, and are either surrounded by the enemy or on the front line. You guys are doing great with this series…love seeing you react ❤
Asia said that it was almost like the Germans were waiting for them. They were. Nine days before Market Garden, the Government code station at Bletchley Park in England decrypted an Enigma message showing that two SS panzer divisions (12000 men and equipment) were moving into Arnhem area, where the British were.
This was near the village where my granddad (and later dad) lived. Bloody tough times. So thank you Amerika, Canada, Britain (Commonwealth) and Poland for liberating us. Without you I would probably not exist.
Asia nailed it on the head at the end when she commented that she felt it was easier to wait for the fight to come to you. It's a generally understood truism within courses of strategic and tactical instruction that the defender always has the advantage. If you set up an effective defensive position you can do a lot more with fewer personnel, and you don't have to worry about how you're going to assault your opponent's forces. The risk lays primarily with the one doing the assaulting. The only times settling into a defensive posture is a bad idea, is when your opponent surrounds you, and has the logistical support and the will to lay siege to your position (effectively waiting you out), or when you have time-sensitive objectives/conditions that need to be considered, which make going on the offensive imperative.
Excellent reaction. Asia, you're the first person to rewind and read all that info about the number of lives lost. Pretty much everyone misses the fact that the Brits lost 8000 men.
My Grandfathers were both emigrants that fought in WWII and told me so vivid stories like these fighting for their new US citizenship and on the right side, IMHO. One in Africa and Italy and the other in the Battle of the Bulge.That one encountered Easy, even have bad pics. So great. Love this show. Made my familiy cried, like SPR.
Quick fact: Shifty Powers is from my area and before this series came out nobody had a clue about his part in this story. He never went around talking or bragging about anything associated with the war but I'm sure he didn't want to relive it.
The Victoria cross for valour is a magnificent documentary about Major Cain who fought in operation Market Garden. It's one of those stories where real life is crazier than fiction, well worth a watch and give loads more background to whats going on in this episode.
Market Garden was a huge operation. The US and Brits had to take I want to say 4 bridges in a very short span. If I recall correctly the Germans blew the Son bridge which the 101st was trying to capture. They had to wait until the engineers came to rebuild a bridge to cross and by that time the Germans had fully mobilized. The British got the absolute worst of it getting cut off in the town of Arnhem. The movie “A bridge too far” does a great job summing up the entire operation.
So glad y’all are doing this series (given any thought about shortening the time between episodes. I think it would help with continuity & getting to know the men) & really appreciate the respect you show to these guys. Means a lot.
At 9:56 when Talbert is told to keep moving, , the gentlemen with the little hat, waving a flag in bottom left corner is an Easy Company vet who has a little cameo in this episode.
So 7:32 mark that is when sobel took back the motorcycle Malarky & Moore had "Found ' in Normandy made a deal with the navy crew and brought the bike back to England and used on base and on leave. 9:56 mark that old man is XXX from E co. him and a few others were visiting the set during filming, they gave him a flag to wave and a beer to drink lol after this aired him and XX were visiting the unit during a liviing history event and XXX would give him grief saying "OOH here come's MR. Hollywood!! , make way!!" among some other colorful comments to which he would smile and lift his beer and start to sing his little ditty's. 11:26 mark that was a D BAR Webster gives the kid it would be hard as a rock and taste bitter as it was intended as an emergency ration , that kid wouldn't have been able to bite it. This was a big operation with alot going on deff worth watch "A Bridge too Far" it will give you a better understanding of it.
My favorite part in this episode was when Nixon got hit and he's like "I'm alright, I'm alright! Am I alright?" Almost every soldier I know has had a similar reaction. When I got hit, I kept telling the medic that I was okay, just leave me alone and he was yelling at me saying "Sergeant, YOU'RE BLEEDING." I can laugh at it now, but I'm sure it was the shock.
I went through my father's belongings after he died and came across a Detroit Free Press front page that read "7,500 Sky Troops cut to ribbons". The story was about the losses mentioned at the end of this episode. I wish I could have talked with him about that before he died and found out what it meant to him and why he kept it.
Hey Kerry, Thanks so much for sharing this. Our condolences to you, it’s truly hard. But we think maybe your Father made sure you found that front page since taking about it may have been difficult and was pleased when you found it and knew what it meant to you. Much love Fam!
Part of this miniseries is based on the writings of Private Webster, the solider who gives the kid chocolate. He gets a full POV episode from his perspective later on in the series.
10:14 The women being dragged through the streets and having their heads shaved were women who collaborated with the German occupiers, ie slept with them, snitched on Dutch people who hid Jews and had other Dutchmen turned into the Gestapo for food and other privileges.
This is sooo intense and emotional😥Hard to watch some parts! Another good war story/movie is "The Deer Hunter" with Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep about the Vietnam War. Thanks again guys for reacting to this🍂
The biggest problem with “Market Garden” was that the plans had been discovered by the German army after a courier’s plane had crashed. The Germans knew the Allies were coming. The people in Eindhoven were celebrating because they they were liberated from the German occupation
Just to clarify, the Army's hierarchy can be a little crazy, but having an understanding of it will help you follow the series and the various players coming and going. Easy Company is part of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which apparently consists of nine companies, identified by letters A through I. They use a phonetic alphabet to make it easier to avoid misunderstanding, with A=Able, B=Baker, C=Charlie, D=Dog, E=Easy, etc. The 506th Regiment is commanded by Colonel Sink and has several officers supporting him, many with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or Major (you've already met some of them, like Major Horton, Major Strayer, etc.). For administrative reasons, three companies each are bundled into a "battalion", so companies A, B, and C are called "1st Battalion", companies D, E, and F are called "2nd Battalion", and companies G, H, and I are called "3rd Battalion". Each Battalion has its own commander (CO) and executive officer (XO), usually with ranks of Major or Lieutenant Colonel. And then, of course, at the company level, there's a CO and XO (the first episode CO was Sobel (who was a 1st Lieutenant when the episode began, until he was promoted to Captain). He then made Winters his XO after Winters was promoted from 2nd Lt. to 1st Lt. After Sobel was transferred to a different unit, Lt. Meehan was placed in command of Easy Company. He was killed when his plane was destroyed on D-Day, and at that point, Winters was in command of Easy Company temporarily until that change was made permanent. Each company contains several platoons, which are usually led by 1st or 2nd Lts (the lowest officer rank). You've met some of these already, too (Lt. Buck Compton, Lt. Harry Welsh, etc). Each platoon is made up of usually 30-50 men (but of course, you're never shown all of these at once on screen), all enlisted men except for the one or two officers. The head enlisted man of each platoon is usually the rank of Staff Sergeant. The entire company usually has a top enlisted man called First Sergeant. For Easy Company it was initially 1st Sergeant Bill Evans, but he must have been killed/wounded in action (you see his package on the shelf in the 3rd episode next to Pvt. Blythe's package), but you've just seen Carwood Lipton get promoted to that position. The officer ranks are, starting with the lowest rank: 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, and then the four ranks of General (Brigadier, Major, Lieutenant, and General). The majority of soldiers are enlisted, with ranks named things like Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, etc. The lowest-ranking officer outranks the highest-ranking enlisted men. If you put several Regiments together, you get a Division (the 506th is part of the 101st Airborne Division), and Divisions are headed up usually by a Brigadier or Major General. There's an even higher classification made up of several Divisions called an "Army". Like you might see a reference to the "1st US Army", and these are usually headed up by the highest-ranking Generals.
Asia & BJ Those women who messed around or collaborated with Germans during occupation of Netherlands (Holland) were outcasted by their people. As the men who collab with the Germans were not so lucky as man stated to Winters and Lipton. During this war, there were a lot of citizens were outcasted or killed by their people where Germans occupied their countries. There were Nazi Sympathizers in this country. They were monitored by FBI (it was newly created to stop the Mob) and War Dept (Pentagon) plus other law enforcement agencies.
Actually the practice of shaving women's heads began with the germans who in the late 1930's would do it to women who got involved with jews or any of the Slavic peoples that they considered untermensch, sub-human. The same happened in France, although they made no distinction between the ones who were forced (rape, to avoid starvation) and those who would sleep with a german for a pair of stockings it was well deserved for the ones who did it as a choice not to face hard times. The girl with the german baby by the side of the road knew nobody would help her.They would tell on their neighbors just to be on the germans' good side.
@@MrTech226 Your comment is correct collaborators were set aside by their countrymen, people who starved and risked their lives in the Resistance could not abide the ones who took the easy road.
Wasn’t that Arnheim being bombed in the scene with Winters, Arnheim was “the bridge too far” where the British 2 Para (the Red Berets that appear again later with Easy Company) lost 8,000 troops.
it would have been very difficult to deal with that 1 tank that was hidden, the Tiger tank is known to take out 10 US tanks before going down, they were unstoppable at the beginning before more powerful tanks were brought in later to deal with it.
Only the tank destroyer Hellcat and the P-47 could take him down at that time in the US army and the British tank Firefly and the Hurricane hawker plane could also take him down, in the USSR side it was the IS-2 heavy tank one of the few that could destroy him easily
Market Garden.....well to make it as a German short : while Allied Forces thought that only the Volkssturm ( Kids & Grandpas with Rifles & Panzerfaust) were in the Netherlands and that they could take 4 Bridges to get over all the Rivers into Germany. The Germans replaced those Volkssturm Units/Divisons with SS-Divions and other Wehrmachts-Division to give them some Rest. Which means that the Allied Forces jumped onto the Heads of Veterans with Tanks , Artillery , aso...and Market Garden went on for nearly a week. I dont wnat to spoil to much but it has a meaning if people say "A Bridge too far" .
9:35 - oh! such tiny details! the officers are turning their shirt collars inside out, hiding their insignia in case of possible german snipers in the area! but, hey! no bother if you have the Bull!
Reel talk! Army fun facts. Unit awards are worn if you are assigned to the unit. Once a unit wins an award it's worn by all who belong. You have to take it off when you get assigned to a different unit UNLESS you were there when the unit was awarded the citation. That looked like a Presidential Unit Citation the replacement was dogged on. The PUC I think is the highest unit award. Also, First Sergeant Lipton. 1SG, the rank to the Germans was considered the "mother" of the Company. It's the senior enlisted advisor to the Commander so the CDR is yo daddy. In our Army the 1SG is referred to as TOP. Many say it's bc you are the top Noncommissioned officer in the Company. Considered to be all knowing and usually hard and crusty. TOP actually stands for Trainer of Personnel. Training Soldiers is primary function in life. And that is all.
Operation Market Garden is one of the most controversial operations of the 2nd World War. General Montgomery who was the primary champion of the plan said it was to gain access over the Rhine River. General Eisenhower stated it was to cut the Germans off in Holland so the allies could get a deep water port. Eisenhower's version of events are the true reason for Operation Market Garden but Montgomery's account is sadly the version most historians used. So now everyone today thinks the battle was to Cross the Rhine, when in actuality it was to cut the Germans off in the Netherlands and trap a large chunk of the German Army, and hopefully gain access to at least one coastal port city. Up to this time the Germans had successfully destroyed or turned most coastal cities into Fortress. Even the famed Dunkirk held out till war's end, with the German defenders finally surrendering after VE Day.
It was actually both. The objective of Market Garden was firstly to get a bridgehead across the the Rhine, and of that was achieved then the immediate next phase was to move north to the sea to cut off the western Netherlands. No advance into Germany was to be made until the US 1st Army could move up in tandem via Aachen then both US 1st Army in the south and British 2nd Army in the north would advance together on the Ruhr in a pincer movement. Even had Arnhem been taken it wouldn't have mattered much for a move on the Ruhr because the US 1st Army failed to get much beyond Aachen and stalled in the Hurtgen Forest.
British Field Marshal Montgomery thought up the disaster called "Market Garden". And they took the gasoline away from Gen Patton who actually was driving forward with great success. It was a political move by Gen. Eisenhower. Monty really thought he was a military genius. The actuality of it was that Monty "Peter Principled" out at Lt. General, and never should have been raised TWO ranks to Field Marshall. Field Marshall is the equivalent of the US five star General of the Army, which is why they raised Gen Eisenhower to Five Star, so he wasn't outranked by subordinates.
Hollywood version of history. Montgomery was by some way the most successful Western Allied ground commander of WW2. He took more ground through more countries while facing more quality German opposition than any other Western Allied ground commander in WW2. Market Garden was nowhere near as bad as the disasters in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Ardennes. Eisenhower had to turn to Montgomery in the Ardennes when the US 1st Army was retreating and asked him to come down to take over command of it from Bradley, who was dithering, and Hodges who had a nervous breakdown and fled his command HQ in Spa. Patton of course kept failing and failing against Metz and couldn't get out of the Lorraine and through the Siegfried Line in nearly 4 months and 55,000 casualties. I'll give the last word to Rommels second in command at El Alamein, German general Friedrich von Mellenthin : "That Montgomery was probably the best tactician if not the best strategist of the war is undoubted. we knew his methods well, his ability to move a division across our front in 1940 fighting by day and moving through the night was because of his adherence to training his men. His arrival in the desert changed the 8th army, he was ruthless in his will to win and impressed this on others. He was a very good army trainer and he changed the battle into an infantry battle supported by artillery. The devastation of his attacks with artillery shocked us. When the Americans stalled in 1944 (Ardennes), we knew without being told that Montgomery was in the region, he was very good at realising when a battlefield had become confused, we talked of his 'tidying up the battlefield' and reorganising lines of communication.Montgomery was a master of logistics, in the desert we in the staff warned Rommel that our recce had seen fuel and ammo dumps forward of the battle. Rommel shrugged and said not important we will deal with 'another British general here'. That Montgomery did this meant that he believed where he would be in the weeks to come"" From Von Mellenthin: Panzer Battles, Chapter IX Farewell To Africa, pages 137/138. I prefer real history vs Hollywood history. Cheers.
Im certainly not an American who gets his history from Hollywood. Patton had already stalled in the Lorraine BEFORE Market Garden was even thought of nevermind decided on. Patton started his attack on Metz on September 6th. He kept failing into November. Market Garden wasn't even decided until September 10th and didn't start until September 17th. No supplies were taken from Patton for Market Garden. The supplies were from British allocated stocks. Nor was the First Allied Airborne Army earmarked for any Patton objectives. Patton wasn't planning on using paratroopers in September 1944. The US 1st Army attacks into the Hurtgen Forest and Aachen immediately after Market Garden were far larger with more men and resources. These attacks failed with even more casualties and serious ramifications.... leading to the retreat in the Ardennes. I will repeat. British 21st Army Group did not take supplies from Patton's 3rd Army within the US 12th Army Group. It was Hodges US 1st Army within US 12th Army Group which was given priority over Patton. Not that Patton could even get out of the Lorraine and through the Siegfried Line in November when he was well supplied with 9 divisions, 3 of them armoured. Patton was mediocre when he had to face German defences. 3 months to take Metz? Yikes.
I think a big reason why Market Garden failed was because the Nazis figured out too quickly what the aim of the operation was and the surprise was lost. As stated on Wikipedia; "On the German side, it was soon clear what was happening. Model (Walter Model, the German Field Marshall) was staying at the Tafelberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, a village to the west of Arnhem, when the British began to land in the countryside to the west of Oosterbeek. He rapidly deduced the likely focus of the attack and after evacuating his headquarters, organized a defense. Bittrich sent a reconnaissance company of the 9th SS Panzer Division to Nijmegen to reinforce the bridge defenses. By midnight, Model had gained a clear picture of the situation and had organized the defense of Arnhem. The confusion usually caused by airborne operations was absent at Arnhem and the advantage of surprise was lost."
Market garden was good on paper but in reality, and it sounds like a cliche, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. Airborne units aren't really equipped to deal with tanks and mechanized units they are good for taking a position fast surprising the enemy and then holding it until relieved they usually only carry bazookas and those aren't going to help that much against tanks especially if you shoot them at the front of the tank. In the next episode no spoilers but you'll see what they're really good at these were elite soldiers after all.
Others have mentioned "A Bridge Too Far", it is a great movie, and it doesn't have many reactions to it. The celebrations did slow dow the advance of the land forces a good deal. Some of the units actually seemed to have stopped to partake of the food and spirits being offered. There didn't seem to be the necessary sense of urgency with a lot of them. The Germans didn't make it easy either. They blew a few bridges, defended some key location, and launched counterattacks that disrupted the advance and supply lines. On a few occasions, they very nearly cut the supply lines. It is interesting that even though the Germans won the battle, some of them considered it a negative in that it delayed the Western Allies getting into Germany thus causing the war to continue and the Russians to gain much more ground. Market Garden did not have a lot of support at the high command. Patton was making good progress further south. He and the forces coming up from the south of France were chasing broken German units and were nearing the main German defense lines near Germany. Had Patton been given the fuel and supplies to attack, it is likely they could have breeched the defenses and reached the Rhine River, and maybe crossed it. But Monty raged and fussed and so forth, so they went with Market Garden.
That's an old myth. In fact Patton had already been halted in the Lorraine before Market Garden was even planned. Patton had also been trying and failing to get to Metz since September 6th. Market Garden wasn't even decided on until September 10th and didn't start until September 17th. Patton kept failing to take Metz in the meantime and didn't take Metz until November. Patton's Lorraine campaign was a failure. He never got out of it and through the Siegfried Line in 4 months of trying. That was nothing to do with Market Garden or Montgomery hundreds of miles to the north and everything to do with Patton's poor tactics and failing to concentrate his forces properly. When faced with actual German defences, Patton proved less capable than other allied commanders. Patton's strength was in exploiting space, and manoeuvre. When he didn't have that opportunity he had no plan b. His boss Bradley said Patton was a shallow commander who had no other tactics beyond bulling ahead. Patton's Lorraine campaign was the biggest and most costly allied failure of autumn 1944. 55,000 casualties and objective not achieved.
I forgot how great this episode is. Market Garden could have succeeded, if it weren't for bad reconnaissance that underestimated the strength of the panzer armored division that was occupying Holland. "old men and young boys" in an armored division still know how to cause destruction, and can overpower any incoming force. and yes, A Bridge Too Far, is one of the greatest WW2 movies depicting the failure of Operation Market Garden. definitely one of my favorite war movies ever.
The US lost nearly 450,000 in both theaters of operation during WWII. Europe and Pacific. The Soviet Union lost 27,000,000 and was almost solely responsible for defeating the bulk of the Nazi war machine. More than 50 years of hindsight shows us that the USSR won WWII. And what was perceived as brutal Soviet expansion, was merely creating a mass buffer zone between them & Germany, looking forward to a time when Germany would be reunified and possibly rearmed once again at their borders.
Absolutely. In 2001 i was like "who are those people playing there"? And now? Oh look it is Bronson/Bane/Tommy Conlon or " hey Magneto and Xavier were in this series " :)
My neighbour used to tell us the sky was glowing red the night Eindhoven got bombed, we live 25 miles north east of Eindhoven. PS: they people were celebrating because they thought they were liberated seeing British, Canadian, Polish and American troops were marching through the streets.
There's a few people rambling about the Tiger in the comments. They're... mostly relying on a book called Death Traps which is to put it bluntly, hot trash. The guy was an avowed German tank fanatic who only saw the Shermans that were recovered from the battlefield after they'd been knocked out and lit up. Standard practice of pretty much all sides was to shoot a tank until it caught fire so it couldn't be recovered. The early Shermans had issues with ammo storage that pretty much everyone had. Later models with wet storage resolved most of those issues and lead to the tank having an 80%+ crew survival rate which far outstripped the majority of armor throughout all theaters. The 75 was more than capable of dealing with the majority of armor encountered and it wasn't until the Panther started showing up in larger numbers that the 75 was swapped with the 76. The comments on the 'The Tiger could kill 10 Shermans per 1" and so on are largely just a gross misunderstanding of... damn near everything. Most armor died to infantry or field gear. Whitman, the famous German tanker bought it because he was a notorious gloryhound, outran his infantry and armor support and got popped by a Scottish field cannon for example. As for the Tiger itself? We ran into 4 of them. 2 of them were operational. It was a mess of a tank with some interesting properties and a massive strain on their logistics because none of the parts could be swapped between most tanks. The German's best armor were the StuG III and the PzIV up until they over-armored it trying to keep it from getting turned inside out by allied armor. Realistically? Whoever got the first shot off tended to win in these engagements. This is a lot of tl;dr for 'German armor wasn't what it's portrayed as, nor are American or Brit armor portrayed particularly well.'. You can find some neat stuff like a Soviet lend-lease commander loving the Shermans for a myriad of weird reasons (The leather seats frequently got repurposed to boots) and just generally being a workhorse tank. Post war reports, examinations of events and digging apart what got reported and what actually happened was... a bit of a mess. History Visualized actually pulled Austrian records talking about the 'Heavy' American tank being a problem for example and you'll hear all sides whining about their armor. (The PzIII or IV, I forget, got dubbed Redbeard because of a German shaving commercial about a guy whose skin broke as soon as he tried to shave with anything.) Chasing all of this down is a gigantic pain in the backside and it's why every time I've sat down to try and do videos about history on a new channel, I've given up because you end up spending two hours talking about weird tangents with 40 different sources. Edit: Hell I can talk for hours about some of the weirdness that popped up from post-war propaganda to boot. Also with the Dutch resistance shaving the collaborators, they snagged a few double agents and popped them too. Guys who did everything for the Netherlands got caught up in that backlash. Have a Dutch friend that knows a bit more about that side of it though.
Actually the complaints about the Sherman, and other equipment, predate Belton Cooper. During 1944 Eisenhower got wind of this. It got worse in winter 1944/45 when the Americans suffered heavy tank losses and so Eisenhower commissioned special reports. One such report landed on his desk in March 1945. It came from US 2nd Armored Division, the most heavily engaged US armoured division. This report did not make good reading for Sherman aficionados. Full of complaints. The US 6th Armored Division in February 1945 cited the Sherman as ineffective. Its revisionism to blame Belton Cooper's book. By the way, the Tiger had the highest kill ratio of any tank in WW2 and it's overall operation average was 65-70% in 1944/45 which was pretty good for such a heavy tank. Unless overly exerted by careless drivers it wasn't as mechanically unreliable as the modern myth claims.
In this episode when Sergeant Floyd Talbert was sitting at a table with a woman in a pink dress sitting on his lap, the older man seen is the real Edward James "Babe" Heffron.
Two issues with Operation Market Garden, the advance was planned up a single highway, and the off-road terrain (polder) was too soft to support Allied Tanks; equally bad, there were VERY strong German forces very close to the drop zones, especially the British 1st Airborne, that the Allies did not plan on being available, the expectation was that the area was lightly held. (Allied Intelligence did see evidence of the stronger German units late into the planning for the Operation, but it was dismissed, with catastrophic results.)
Actually most of the German forces that fought in Market Garden were not there before the paratroopers dropped. They came on from Germany in the days that followed, for example Kompanie Mielke, Kompanie Hummel (Tigers), Brigade 280 (Stugs), Brigade 107 (Panthers), Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 (King Tigers). Impossible to identify units that are literally hundreds of km away.
If I remember correctly the German tanks were sent there for like R&R, or training or something. Like, they were not expecting an attack, but they also well enough armed in case one happened.
The German tank unit here was Panzer Brigade 107. It was not in Germany when the paras dropped on 17th September. It was not in the Netherlands. It was quickly sent to the Netherlands, arriving on the 19th. This battle for Nuenen took place on 20th September and Panzer Brigade 107 was forced to withdraw from Nuenen later that day after pressure from British armour. The British tank unit was the 44th Royal Tank Regiment, which was a vastly more experienced unit than the 101st Airborne, with 2 years combat behind it including El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and all through Normandy.
Can I surgest A Bridge Too Far (film).A Bridge Too Far is a 1977 epic war film depicting Operation Market Garden, a failed Allied operation in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.If you have the time check out The Real Easy Company Left These Objects Behind! | Digging Band Of Brothers.All the best from England.
The citizens of that city were celebrating that way because they believed that now that the Allies had arrived and the Germans had fallen back, that they were finally out from under the Germans' boot. They had been under German occupation for a very long time and treated horribly so they viewed the Allied arrival as their salvation. Sadly, as soon as the Allied forces were pushed back, the city was bombed and the Germans returned, leading to more brutal fighting and hardships for the Dutch.
Hey BJ, just to clarify the expression, it's "Yippee ki yay", not Kippee ki yay. Loving how quick you are to get what's going on in all these movies. Keep 'em coming!
In a PC WW2 video game, one of the scenarios was operation market garden. When the difficulty level was cranked up, it was almost impossible to win. If they were trying to be accurate, they seem to have succeeded, because after playing it through several times, I was left wondering at the bravery of these men for even attempting this mission.
It’s amazing what the brain watches. I am almost 35 and saw this when I am out 25 but certain episodes like this are still so vivid and easily recalled
This is really hard to watch but I think everyone should. The young people don't know about know much about this part of history. My husband's uncle didn't return from Normandy. He was KIA.
This is still the best miniseries I have ever seen. It upsets me to see people act the way they act, and then I think about what those men went through and lost, so we can be here now.
A Bridge Too Far (1977) is an extremally well done movie depicting Operation Market Garden. Star studded cast, well written, and produced.
I live in Arnhem!
Fantastic film with anyone and everyone who was a star in the 70's.
Saw it on the big screen & at home at least 10 times. They still had a lot of the real planes back in 1976-77. The entire sequence of them taking off.. that amazing shot of the ropes as each plane starts off - just stunning. To think the man went on to direct "Gandhi" after this. Just wow.
Saw this movie for the first time last year and it blew me away.
Also, it shows things from all sides including the resistance.
Obligatory "Ya gotta watch A Bridge Too Far" comment here.
Damn right!! "The Longest Day" + "A Bridge Too Far" is a fantastic one-two punch to while away a weekend.
Most definitely
@@stephendavis6267 I used to watch all the war movies with dad!
Battlenif the Bulge. Devils Brigade.., etc
A Bridge to Far needs to be remade. Great movie.
@@bobbyowen5879 no it doesn't, you'd end up with women and Pakistani paratroopers and possibly crossdressers thrown into the mix
The Netherlands have these BEAUTIFUL tulip fields, and as a thank you gift to Canada they send them THOUSANDS of tulips a year. When world war 2 broke out the Dutch royalty went into exile to Canada, and when the princess was going to be born the Canadian government made the hospital room the princess was born into “Netherlands territory” so she could remain a Dutch citizen.
This episode always reminds me of that when I see the netherlands.
I really think this series should be shown in high school when learning about ww2. I think it would give kids a real general knowledge and respect for what was fought for and what they went through. This series is just so well done. I said before the commentary in the beginning with the real soldiers breaks me. I have watched this series five or six times myself and I still catch new things everytime. Glad you guys watch it with the respect it deserves. ❤❤
The scene with the little boy and the chocolate bar is one of my favorite moments in the series. It's a reminder that at this point in the war, the Netherlands had been under German occupation for more than 4 years. A child of 4 or 5 years old had never known a time without war.
Also, the Germans were actually pretty good about not shooting medics and (for the most part) obeying the Geneva Conventions. The Japanese... well... not so much.
And ironically and poetically the first time that child tasted chocolate was in the middle of war.
Even more ironic, the dutch are known for their chocolate. A kid born in a country known for its chocolate had never known chocolate, and when he did taste it, it was from another country.
That being said, the Germans only really followed the Geneva conventions when fighting the western allies. The eastern front was a much, much different story. Unlike the western front, where the fighting got more intense and more brutal at the end, the eastern front was brutal from the start and never died down until the war ended.
@@ScarriorIII i think you might have conflated belgium with the netherlands. belgium, switzerland and austria are the premium chocolate countries. being a dutchman, dutch chocolate has never been exceptional
that was a D BAR Webster gives the kid it would be hard as a rock and taste bitter as it was intended as an emergency ration , that kid wouldn't have been able to bite it
The lieutenant they were talking about as being surprised he survived being shot in the neck (the one in the middle of the road with the binoculars), Robert Brewer, was shot in the neck but the bullet managed to miss everything important. Literally, the bullet passed through the fleshy part of his neck that's under his jawbone and in front of his trachea and windpipe. It looked really messy, and was no doubt amazingly painful, but even with a gaping hole in his throat he could still breathe fully and could even talk with the medics who was bandaging him up. He eventually returned to Easy Company after a full recovery.
i was born in geldrop, lived in son, oosterbeek and arnhem. All places where operation market garden took place. All these towns have memorials to the US and British airborne. in oosterbeek is a british cemetery and arnhem holds an anniversary on the dates of the operation
There is a new bridge named De Oversteek in Nijmegen.
The bridge incorporates 48 pairs of street lights, one for each American soldier who died in the crossing.
Every sunset the pairs of lights on the bridge illuminate at the pace of a slow march from the South bank to the North.
The same direction the soldiers frantically paddled in canvas dinghies
Since Oct. 19, 2014, a Dutch veteran has walked across the bridge, starting at a memorial on the south bank ending on the opposite bank.
When the Dutch military veterans started the Sunset March, a veteran would walk alone across the bridge at first.
Word spread and locals would join the lone marcher.
People from all over the world learned about this and contacted the organizers of the march, asking if they could walk in silence alongside the veteran.
It still goes on today.
24:33 Thank you for going back for a brief moment, and investing a small amount of time to read in full. The slightest of actions can mean the most. My grandfather would be happy. ❤
Enjoying your reactions to this Tremendous series. Definitely recommend reacting to the movie A BRIDGE TOO FAR(1977) to see more of the events of Operation Market Garden . Great movie, lots of characters to follow, mainly in the British Paratrooper Division. You get to follow other characters in the British Armory Division, 101st Airborne, German Army, and Allied Spies. Lots of Great actors you may recognize when they were younger. Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Elliott Gould, James Caan, and Gene Hackman all star in the movie 👍
Yall also need to watch MIDWAY(2019) Very important true WWII event that turned the tide of the Pacific theater of war.
Great series! Buckle up.......the intensity ratchets up as it goes along. They aren't called the "Greatest Generation" for nothing. We could never repay them.....ever
The overall idea of Market Garden (which was the brainchild of famous British general Montgomery) was that airborne troops would be dropped into a whole bunch of cities and towns along that road. The paratroops would capture all the bridges over the rivers at once, and then the armored divisions would "race" up the road and link up with all of them. This would then give the allies a rapidly secured route through a lot of occupied territory and right into Germany. But there were many problems, in both planning and execution, as well as just unlucky circumstances. The Germans didn't just crumble but fought back very effectively in many places, German reinforcements were present that hadn't been properly accounted for in planning, communications collapsed due to issues with equipment, the Son bridge was destroyed and a temporary bridge had to be built delaying progress of the armored reinforcement column, though the lost time was somewhat made up there had also been initial failure to take the Nijmegan bridge which delayed progress again by another day and a half. Everywhere things that were intended to only take a matter of hours ended up taking DAYS at much higher cost than planned. Even the sheer size of the operation meant there weren't enough planes and gliders to get all the men and equipment flown in at once, and then bad weather prevented later drops from being launched. In the case of the final bridge at Arnhem crossing the Rhine river they weren't able to take the bridge at all and despite incredible tenacity of British troops in holding on and waiting for their relief, the incredible losses and no way to get them reinforcement as originally planned meant they eventually had to retreat, with most of the remaining wounded surrendering.
It's a battle that's often forgotten or overlooked now because it WAS such a costly failure. Instead of being over by Christmas 1944 (the operation was mid- to late-September) it wasn't until April of the following year that Soviet troops took Berlin - another 7 months.
Montgomery was an overrated schlub. If the Allies hadn't broken some German codes Monty would have been buried in North Africa.
Plus the terrain wasn't advantageous for tanks so the roads had dikes and canals on both sides. So if the lead tank got hit, the others became sitting ducks until the lead tank was pushed out of the way.
Max Brazil
Montgomery was the most successful Western Allied ground commander of WW2 by some way. He took more ground through more countries while facing more quality German opposition than any other Western Allied ground commander in WW2. Nobody did more to help win the ground war in the west than Bernard Montgomery. The Americans even had to turn to him for help when they found themselves in retreat in the Ardennes. Even Market Garden was actually the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period. 100km of German held ground taken in just 3 days. The Hurtgen Forest and Lorraine campaigns at the same time were far bigger and more costly failures that barely achieved anything of note. No. Movies are made about of them however, and they tend to be swept under the carpet.
Under Montgomery dictating ground strategy, the allies moved 600km in 3 months from the Normandy beaches to Belgium June to September 1944. Then Eisenhower took over ground strategy and the allies barely moved 100km in 6 months September 1944 to March 1945.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Wait! Didn't take the allies take a month to break out from parts of Normandy almost 3 months to fully break out of Normandy? The Bocage!
Also, Ramel wasn't so hot either in North Africa after the British finally convinced the American liaison to update their codes. They feared the Germans had broken the US code after an embassy break-in. They were right and a handful of Americans were stubborn and slow to make the change.
@@hillsane9262
Montgomery gave 3 months as the timeline from the D-Day beaches to Paris. He expected a 3 month fight for Normandy. He was ahead of schedule.
3 months to get through the best part of a million German troops and 10 panzer divisions was good going.
Montgomery's Normandy campaign caused 400,000 German casualties and nearly 2,500 German tank, tank destroyers and assault gun losses.
In 3 months the allies had moved from the Normandy beaches to near the border of Germany. British 2nd Army was already in Brussels, Belgium on September 3rd.
There is so much controversy about Market-Garden.
After D-Day there were discussions about how to go forward. D-Day was a success but… we didn’t capture a major port quickly enough. The German commander at Cherbourg did an excellent job of delaying the capture of the port and destroying the port facilities. So supplies were slow to get to the front. Modern armies run on gasoline and it was very hard to get enough. I don’t know a good movie about the Red Ball Express, the Black troops that drove the supply trucks. It was difficult work, sometimes heroic, and absolutely essential. Should the Allies liberate Paris? Many people said no because the necessity of feeding Paris would strain supplies even more. See or read Is Paris Burning about this event, good story.
It might help to look at a map for this. After D-Day the Allied armies began to slowly spread out over France, the British and Canadians up along the Channel coast, the Americans toward Paris and the east. Eisenhower’s idea was a broad front. Everyone should slowly, evenly advance. This way no one would get ahead of the supplies. Unfortunately two of the Allied commanders were egotistical jerks. Montgomery thought he should be given the almost nonexistent supplies to advance north to the Ruhr. Patton thought he should be given the gas and ammo to go East to the Saar. Montgomery won the argument and Market-Garden was the plan. The plan was bold. Montgomery wasn’t. The plan hinged on a whole series of things, a narrow road, vulnerable bridges, weather for air ops… Any one thing could throw the whole thing off. Almost every thing went wrong.
American historians, Cornelius Ryan, tend to blame the Brits and Canadians. The Brits put blame on the Americans. If you want to start a fight go to a pub in England and express the wrong opinion.
The section of the road the 101st had charge of got the nickname “Hell’s Highway.”
Eisenhower's broad front strategy was a complete failure. He dispersed the allied forces all across a 500km front with the result it was decisively strong nowhere. It failed to push into Germany for 6 months.
Under Montgomery in charge of ground strategy the allies moved 600km in 3 months June to September 1944. Under Eisenhower they barely moved 100km in 6 months September 1944 to March 1945.
Basic military doctrine when the enemy is reeling is to concentrate your forces and hit the enemy hard. Eisenhower did not understand this. Well, perhaps he did but for political reasons he wanted all American armies to be involved thus spread the effort across the entire front.
Montgomery, being more experienced and strategically savvy than Eisenhower, argued for a concentrated northern thrust, aimed firstly at the Ruhr. This would still have involved the Americans. Montgomery's concept was a 40 division advance with 4 armies (1 British, 1 Canadian and 2 American) all sticking together as one massive force which the Germans would have been powerless to resist.
This concentrated northern thrust would also have been easier to supply. Instead, Eisenhower's broad front wasted huge numbers of men and material in the Lorraine, Hurtgen Forest and Alsace, then the Americans got pushed back into a retreat in the Ardennes. This was a direct result of the losses suffered in the Hurtgen Forest and Operation Queen.
Patton was in the wrong area to deliver a death blow to Germany. Little of importance in the Saar and southern Germany. The Ruhr was the logical target. After Market Garden, the US 1st Army was given the priority to try and move towards the Ruhr, but failed to get much beyond Aachen.
Fun Fact
The lead singer from ABBA Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad was born in Norway, her father was a German soldier named Alfred Haase. Her mother had to move them to Sweden because they feared reprisels by the locals for sleeping with a German soldier during the occupation (like the Dutch women in Band of Brothers).
The rest is musical history.
Some of the women you saw having their hair cut were actually spies for the allies to gain important information, while others just slept with German officers to have easier life. My Daddy fought in WW2. He was stationed in many countries fighting the Germans...I can't even imagine what he went through 😢 he passed away when I was 6 years old 💔 😢 I still miss and love him terribly. I love the series of Band of Brothers ❤❤❤❤
Hi Anna, Thanks so much for sharing this and we’re sending you our condolences w/ much love
@@ReelinwithAsiaandBJ oh thank you so much 💖 I love watching you guys and your wonderful reactions ❤ God you both
9:55 The old guy wearing the cap in the lower left of the frame is the real Babe Heffron.
The term "A bridge too far" came from this battle (Operation Market Garden).
The rest of Operation Market Garden is the subject of another great movie called "A Bridge Too Far".
You'll find out why the British 1st Airborne lost so many.
It will answer a lot of your questions about what was going on about it.
Largely because the air planners wouldn't drop them closer to Arnhem and wouldn't fly double missions on day one. Brereton, Williams and Hollinghurst are the reasons.
I'm glad to see your newfound respect to the numbers lost. More of the younger folks need to see this reaction.
“They gotta jump again?” …LOL. That’s the job of a paratrooper. They drop in behind enemy lines, and are either surrounded by the enemy or on the front line. You guys are doing great with this series…love seeing you react ❤
Asia said that it was almost like the Germans were waiting for them. They were. Nine days before Market Garden, the Government code station at Bletchley Park in England decrypted an Enigma message showing that two SS panzer divisions (12000 men and equipment) were moving into Arnhem area, where the British were.
This was near the village where my granddad (and later dad) lived. Bloody tough times. So thank you Amerika, Canada, Britain (Commonwealth) and Poland for liberating us. Without you I would probably not exist.
Asia nailed it on the head at the end when she commented that she felt it was easier to wait for the fight to come to you. It's a generally understood truism within courses of strategic and tactical instruction that the defender always has the advantage. If you set up an effective defensive position you can do a lot more with fewer personnel, and you don't have to worry about how you're going to assault your opponent's forces. The risk lays primarily with the one doing the assaulting. The only times settling into a defensive posture is a bad idea, is when your opponent surrounds you, and has the logistical support and the will to lay siege to your position (effectively waiting you out), or when you have time-sensitive objectives/conditions that need to be considered, which make going on the offensive imperative.
Four uncles fought in WWII, that generation was something else. This episode is so heavy
4 for America 4 fighting for UK one prison camp escaped twice
@@Rogers_Ranger bless them!
A great movie to watch about Operation Market Garden is A Bridge To Far .
Dick Winters once made the remark that Bull Randleman was one of the best soldiers he ever commanded.
Excellent reaction. Asia, you're the first person to rewind and read all that info about the number of lives lost. Pretty much everyone misses the fact that the Brits lost 8000 men.
My Grandfathers were both emigrants that fought in WWII and told me so vivid stories like these fighting for their new US citizenship and on the right side, IMHO. One in Africa and Italy and the other in the Battle of the Bulge.That one encountered Easy, even have bad pics. So great. Love this show. Made my familiy cried, like SPR.
Quick fact: Shifty Powers is from my area and before this series came out nobody had a clue about his part in this story. He never went around talking or bragging about anything associated with the war but I'm sure he didn't want to relive it.
The Victoria cross for valour is a magnificent documentary about Major Cain who fought in operation Market Garden.
It's one of those stories where real life is crazier than fiction, well worth a watch and give loads more background to whats going on in this episode.
Market Garden was a huge operation. The US and Brits had to take I want to say 4 bridges in a very short span. If I recall correctly the Germans blew the Son bridge which the 101st was trying to capture. They had to wait until the engineers came to rebuild a bridge to cross and by that time the Germans had fully mobilized. The British got the absolute worst of it getting cut off in the town of Arnhem. The movie “A bridge too far” does a great job summing up the entire operation.
So glad y’all are doing this series (given any thought about shortening the time between episodes. I think it would help with continuity & getting to know the men) & really appreciate the respect you show to these guys. Means a lot.
At 9:56 when Talbert is told to keep moving, , the gentlemen with the little hat, waving a flag in bottom left corner is an Easy Company vet who has a little cameo in this episode.
So 7:32 mark that is when sobel took back the motorcycle Malarky & Moore had "Found ' in Normandy made a deal with the navy crew and brought the bike back to England and used on base and on leave.
9:56 mark that old man is XXX from E co. him and a few others were visiting the set during filming, they gave him a flag to wave and a beer to drink lol after this aired him and XX were visiting the unit during a liviing history event and XXX would give him grief saying "OOH here come's MR. Hollywood!! , make way!!" among some other colorful comments to which he would smile and lift his beer and start to sing his little ditty's.
11:26 mark that was a D BAR Webster gives the kid it would be hard as a rock and taste bitter as it was intended as an emergency ration , that kid wouldn't have been able to bite it.
This was a big operation with alot going on deff worth watch "A Bridge too Far" it will give you a better understanding of it.
My favorite part in this episode was when Nixon got hit and he's like "I'm alright, I'm alright! Am I alright?" Almost every soldier I know has had a similar reaction. When I got hit, I kept telling the medic that I was okay, just leave me alone and he was yelling at me saying "Sergeant, YOU'RE BLEEDING." I can laugh at it now, but I'm sure it was the shock.
11:20 This was one of the best scenes in the entire Series. David Webster became a writer after the War.
Didn't he write a book about sharks, and one day he went sailing, and was never seen, or heard from again?
I joined the patreon so I could watch episodes 4-10 uncut and unfiltered. Couldn't wait any longer.
Hey Dan!! Yay, much love to you ❤️❤️
I went through my father's belongings after he died and came across a Detroit Free Press front page that read "7,500 Sky Troops cut to ribbons". The story was about the losses mentioned at the end of this episode. I wish I could have talked with him about that before he died and found out what it meant to him and why he kept it.
Hey Kerry, Thanks so much for sharing this. Our condolences to you, it’s truly hard. But we think maybe your Father made sure you found that front page since taking about it may have been difficult and was pleased when you found it and knew what it meant to you. Much love Fam!
That German tank in hiding is/was one of the most feared German tanks, the Tiger Tank.
Part of this miniseries is based on the writings of Private Webster, the solider who gives the kid chocolate. He gets a full POV episode from his perspective later on in the series.
10:14 The women being dragged through the streets and having their heads shaved were women who collaborated with the German occupiers, ie slept with them, snitched on Dutch people who hid Jews and had other Dutchmen turned into the Gestapo for food and other privileges.
This is sooo intense and emotional😥Hard to watch some parts! Another good war story/movie is "The Deer Hunter" with Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep about the Vietnam War. Thanks again guys for reacting to this🍂
The biggest problem with “Market Garden” was that the plans had been discovered by the German army after a courier’s plane had crashed. The Germans knew the Allies were coming. The people in Eindhoven were celebrating because they they were liberated from the German occupation
The Germans bombed the city after it was liberated as retribution against the Dutch for siding with the Allied forces. 😢
Just to clarify, the Army's hierarchy can be a little crazy, but having an understanding of it will help you follow the series and the various players coming and going. Easy Company is part of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which apparently consists of nine companies, identified by letters A through I. They use a phonetic alphabet to make it easier to avoid misunderstanding, with A=Able, B=Baker, C=Charlie, D=Dog, E=Easy, etc. The 506th Regiment is commanded by Colonel Sink and has several officers supporting him, many with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or Major (you've already met some of them, like Major Horton, Major Strayer, etc.). For administrative reasons, three companies each are bundled into a "battalion", so companies A, B, and C are called "1st Battalion", companies D, E, and F are called "2nd Battalion", and companies G, H, and I are called "3rd Battalion". Each Battalion has its own commander (CO) and executive officer (XO), usually with ranks of Major or Lieutenant Colonel.
And then, of course, at the company level, there's a CO and XO (the first episode CO was Sobel (who was a 1st Lieutenant when the episode began, until he was promoted to Captain). He then made Winters his XO after Winters was promoted from 2nd Lt. to 1st Lt. After Sobel was transferred to a different unit, Lt. Meehan was placed in command of Easy Company. He was killed when his plane was destroyed on D-Day, and at that point, Winters was in command of Easy Company temporarily until that change was made permanent. Each company contains several platoons, which are usually led by 1st or 2nd Lts (the lowest officer rank). You've met some of these already, too (Lt. Buck Compton, Lt. Harry Welsh, etc). Each platoon is made up of usually 30-50 men (but of course, you're never shown all of these at once on screen), all enlisted men except for the one or two officers. The head enlisted man of each platoon is usually the rank of Staff Sergeant. The entire company usually has a top enlisted man called First Sergeant. For Easy Company it was initially 1st Sergeant Bill Evans, but he must have been killed/wounded in action (you see his package on the shelf in the 3rd episode next to Pvt. Blythe's package), but you've just seen Carwood Lipton get promoted to that position.
The officer ranks are, starting with the lowest rank: 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, and then the four ranks of General (Brigadier, Major, Lieutenant, and General). The majority of soldiers are enlisted, with ranks named things like Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, etc. The lowest-ranking officer outranks the highest-ranking enlisted men. If you put several Regiments together, you get a Division (the 506th is part of the 101st Airborne Division), and Divisions are headed up usually by a Brigadier or Major General. There's an even higher classification made up of several Divisions called an "Army". Like you might see a reference to the "1st US Army", and these are usually headed up by the highest-ranking Generals.
1st Sergeant William Evans was in the company HQ plane on D-Day with Lt Meehan.
Asia & BJ
Those women who messed around or collaborated with Germans during occupation of Netherlands (Holland) were outcasted by their people. As the men who collab with the Germans were not so lucky as man stated to Winters and Lipton. During this war, there were a lot of citizens were outcasted or killed by their people where Germans occupied their countries. There were Nazi Sympathizers in this country. They were monitored by FBI (it was newly created to stop the Mob) and War Dept (Pentagon) plus other law enforcement agencies.
Actually the practice of shaving women's heads began with the germans who in the late 1930's would do it to women who got involved with jews or any of the Slavic peoples that they considered untermensch, sub-human. The same happened in France, although they made no distinction between the ones who were forced (rape, to avoid starvation) and those who would sleep with a german for a pair of stockings it was well deserved for the ones who did it as a choice not to face hard times. The girl with the german baby by the side of the road knew nobody would help her.They would tell on their neighbors just to be on the germans' good side.
@@isabelsilva62023 oh ok
@@MrTech226 Your comment is correct collaborators were set aside by their countrymen, people who starved and risked their lives in the Resistance could not abide the ones who took the easy road.
Wasn’t that Arnheim being bombed in the scene with Winters, Arnheim was “the bridge too far” where the British 2 Para (the Red Berets that appear again later with Easy Company) lost 8,000 troops.
it would have been very difficult to deal with that 1 tank that was hidden, the Tiger tank is known to take out 10 US tanks before going down, they were unstoppable at the beginning before more powerful tanks were brought in later to deal with it.
Only the tank destroyer Hellcat and the P-47 could take him down at that time in the US army and the British tank Firefly and the Hurricane hawker plane could also take him down, in the USSR side it was the IS-2 heavy tank one of the few that could destroy him easily
Best show of all time. Still stand by that till this day.
Let me tell ya, I’ve seen a lot of shows 😂.
And then you realize around 12,200 people died a day, for 169 days, during the Battle of Stalingrad - with over 2,000,000 combined combat casualties.
I was crazy thinking I could see 1 episode and go to bed. I'm on 4th already and it's 4 am😅
At 9:55 is the real Babe Heffron. The old man waving the flag. In front of the girl kissing Talbert.
Yes I'm early Love your reactions. I'm so happy to see you continue this series. My favourite true story of all time.
Market Garden.....well to make it as a German short : while Allied Forces thought that only the Volkssturm ( Kids & Grandpas with Rifles & Panzerfaust) were in the Netherlands and that they could take 4 Bridges to get over all the Rivers into Germany. The Germans replaced those Volkssturm Units/Divisons with SS-Divions and other Wehrmachts-Division to give them some Rest. Which means that the Allied Forces jumped onto the Heads of Veterans with Tanks , Artillery , aso...and Market Garden went on for nearly a week. I dont wnat to spoil to much but it has a meaning if people say "A Bridge too far" .
9:35 - oh! such tiny details! the officers are turning their shirt collars inside out, hiding their insignia in case of possible german snipers in the area! but, hey! no bother if you have the Bull!
Reel talk! Army fun facts. Unit awards are worn if you are assigned to the unit. Once a unit wins an award it's worn by all who belong. You have to take it off when you get assigned to a different unit UNLESS you were there when the unit was awarded the citation. That looked like a Presidential Unit Citation the replacement was dogged on. The PUC I think is the highest unit award. Also, First Sergeant Lipton. 1SG, the rank to the Germans was considered the "mother" of the Company. It's the senior enlisted advisor to the Commander so the CDR is yo daddy. In our Army the 1SG is referred to as TOP. Many say it's bc you are the top Noncommissioned officer in the Company. Considered to be all knowing and usually hard and crusty. TOP actually stands for Trainer of Personnel. Training Soldiers is primary function in life. And that is all.
Operation Market Garden is one of the most controversial operations of the 2nd World War. General Montgomery who was the primary champion of the plan said it was to gain access over the Rhine River. General Eisenhower stated it was to cut the Germans off in Holland so the allies could get a deep water port. Eisenhower's version of events are the true reason for Operation Market Garden but Montgomery's account is sadly the version most historians used. So now everyone today thinks the battle was to Cross the Rhine, when in actuality it was to cut the Germans off in the Netherlands and trap a large chunk of the German Army, and hopefully gain access to at least one coastal port city. Up to this time the Germans had successfully destroyed or turned most coastal cities into Fortress. Even the famed Dunkirk held out till war's end, with the German defenders finally surrendering after VE Day.
It was actually both. The objective of Market Garden was firstly to get a bridgehead across the the Rhine, and of that was achieved then the immediate next phase was to move north to the sea to cut off the western Netherlands.
No advance into Germany was to be made until the US 1st Army could move up in tandem via Aachen then both US 1st Army in the south and British 2nd Army in the north would advance together on the Ruhr in a pincer movement.
Even had Arnhem been taken it wouldn't have mattered much for a move on the Ruhr because the US 1st Army failed to get much beyond Aachen and stalled in the Hurtgen Forest.
The movie A Bridge Too Far was about this battle.
British Field Marshal Montgomery thought up the disaster called "Market Garden". And they took the gasoline away from Gen Patton who actually was driving forward with great success. It was a political move by Gen. Eisenhower. Monty really thought he was a military genius. The actuality of it was that Monty "Peter Principled" out at Lt. General, and never should have been raised TWO ranks to Field Marshall. Field Marshall is the equivalent of the US five star General of the Army, which is why they raised Gen Eisenhower to Five Star, so he wasn't outranked by subordinates.
Hollywood version of history. Montgomery was by some way the most successful Western Allied ground commander of WW2. He took more ground through more countries while facing more quality German opposition than any other Western Allied ground commander in WW2.
Market Garden was nowhere near as bad as the disasters in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Ardennes. Eisenhower had to turn to Montgomery in the Ardennes when the US 1st Army was retreating and asked him to come down to take over command of it from Bradley, who was dithering, and Hodges who had a nervous breakdown and fled his command HQ in Spa.
Patton of course kept failing and failing against Metz and couldn't get out of the Lorraine and through the Siegfried Line in nearly 4 months and 55,000 casualties.
I'll give the last word to Rommels second in command at El Alamein, German general Friedrich von Mellenthin :
"That Montgomery was probably the best tactician if not the best strategist of the war is undoubted. we knew his methods well, his ability to move a division across our front in 1940 fighting by day and moving through the night was because of his adherence to training his men. His arrival in the desert changed the 8th army, he was ruthless in his will to win and impressed this on others. He was a very good army trainer and he changed the battle into an infantry battle supported by artillery. The devastation of his attacks with artillery shocked us. When the Americans stalled in 1944 (Ardennes), we knew without being told that Montgomery was in the region, he was very good at realising when a battlefield had become confused, we talked of his 'tidying up the battlefield' and reorganising lines of communication.Montgomery was a master of logistics, in the desert we in the staff warned Rommel that our recce had seen fuel and ammo dumps forward of the battle. Rommel shrugged and said not important we will deal with 'another British general here'. That Montgomery did this meant that he believed where he would be in the weeks to come""
From Von Mellenthin: Panzer Battles, Chapter IX Farewell To Africa, pages 137/138.
I prefer real history vs Hollywood history.
Cheers.
@@lyndoncmp5751 You MUST be British.
Im certainly not an American who gets his history from Hollywood.
Patton had already stalled in the Lorraine BEFORE Market Garden was even thought of nevermind decided on. Patton started his attack on Metz on September 6th. He kept failing into November.
Market Garden wasn't even decided until September 10th and didn't start until September 17th.
No supplies were taken from Patton for Market Garden. The supplies were from British allocated stocks. Nor was the First Allied Airborne Army earmarked for any Patton objectives. Patton wasn't planning on using paratroopers in September 1944.
The US 1st Army attacks into the Hurtgen Forest and Aachen immediately after Market Garden were far larger with more men and resources. These attacks failed with even more casualties and serious ramifications....
leading to the retreat in the Ardennes.
I will repeat. British 21st Army Group did not take supplies from Patton's 3rd Army within the US 12th Army Group. It was Hodges US 1st Army within US 12th Army Group which was given priority over Patton.
Not that Patton could even get out of the Lorraine and through the Siegfried Line in November when he was well supplied with 9 divisions, 3 of them armoured.
Patton was mediocre when he had to face German defences. 3 months to take Metz? Yikes.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Definitely a Brit.
@@HemlockRidge
Great response. That told me. Sigh.
“Our Flag Does Not Fly Because the Wind Moves It, It Flies With the Last Breath of Each Soldier Who Died Protecting It.”
Orange was for the Royal House of Orange. Dutch royalty.
Real Easy Co survivor at 9:56
I think a big reason why Market Garden failed was because the Nazis figured out too quickly what the aim of the operation was and the surprise was lost.
As stated on Wikipedia; "On the German side, it was soon clear what was happening. Model (Walter Model, the German Field Marshall) was staying at the Tafelberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, a village to the west of Arnhem, when the British began to land in the countryside to the west of Oosterbeek. He rapidly deduced the likely focus of the attack and after evacuating his headquarters, organized a defense. Bittrich sent a reconnaissance company of the 9th SS Panzer Division to Nijmegen to reinforce the bridge defenses. By midnight, Model had gained a clear picture of the situation and had organized the defense of Arnhem. The confusion usually caused by airborne operations was absent at Arnhem and the advantage of surprise was lost."
Market garden was good on paper but in reality, and it sounds like a cliche, but no plan survives contact with the enemy.
Airborne units aren't really equipped to deal with tanks and mechanized units they are good for taking a position fast surprising the enemy and then holding it until relieved they usually only carry bazookas and those aren't going to help that much against tanks especially if you shoot them at the front of the tank.
In the next episode no spoilers but you'll see what they're really good at these were elite soldiers after all.
Already said but worth saying again.
For operation Market Garden see the 1977 film, A Bridge Too Far; many famous actors
5:40 - I believe he word you're looking for is "Beering".
Others have mentioned "A Bridge Too Far", it is a great movie, and it doesn't have many reactions to it.
The celebrations did slow dow the advance of the land forces a good deal. Some of the units actually seemed to have stopped to partake of the food and spirits being offered. There didn't seem to be the necessary sense of urgency with a lot of them.
The Germans didn't make it easy either. They blew a few bridges, defended some key location, and launched counterattacks that disrupted the advance and supply lines. On a few occasions, they very nearly cut the supply lines. It is interesting that even though the Germans won the battle, some of them considered it a negative in that it delayed the Western Allies getting into Germany thus causing the war to continue and the Russians to gain much more ground.
Market Garden did not have a lot of support at the high command. Patton was making good progress further south. He and the forces coming up from the south of France were chasing broken German units and were nearing the main German defense lines near Germany. Had Patton been given the fuel and supplies to attack, it is likely they could have breeched the defenses and reached the Rhine River, and maybe crossed it. But Monty raged and fussed and so forth, so they went with Market Garden.
That's an old myth. In fact Patton had already been halted in the Lorraine before Market Garden was even planned. Patton had also been trying and failing to get to Metz since September 6th. Market Garden wasn't even decided on until September 10th and didn't start until September 17th. Patton kept failing to take Metz in the meantime and didn't take Metz until November. Patton's Lorraine campaign was a failure. He never got out of it and through the Siegfried Line in 4 months of trying. That was nothing to do with Market Garden or Montgomery hundreds of miles to the north and everything to do with Patton's poor tactics and failing to concentrate his forces properly. When faced with actual German defences, Patton proved less capable than other allied commanders. Patton's strength was in exploiting space, and manoeuvre. When he didn't have that opportunity he had no plan b. His boss Bradley said Patton was a shallow commander who had no other tactics beyond bulling ahead. Patton's Lorraine campaign was the biggest and most costly allied failure of autumn 1944. 55,000 casualties and objective not achieved.
I forgot how great this episode is. Market Garden could have succeeded, if it weren't for bad reconnaissance that underestimated the strength of the panzer armored division that was occupying Holland. "old men and young boys" in an armored division still know how to cause destruction, and can overpower any incoming force.
and yes, A Bridge Too Far, is one of the greatest WW2 movies depicting the failure of Operation Market Garden. definitely one of my favorite war movies ever.
An actual member of East Company was in this episode. He is the he old man sitting at a table waving a flag.
The US lost nearly 450,000 in both theaters of operation during WWII. Europe and Pacific.
The Soviet Union lost 27,000,000 and was almost solely responsible for defeating the bulk of the Nazi war machine.
More than 50 years of hindsight shows us that the USSR won WWII. And what was perceived as brutal Soviet expansion, was merely creating a mass buffer zone between them & Germany, looking forward to a time when Germany would be reunified and possibly rearmed once again at their borders.
It's always been fun to rewatch this series over the years. Noticing small roles by actors who were either already rather big, or would be later.
Absolutely. In 2001 i was like "who are those people playing there"? And now? Oh look it is Bronson/Bane/Tommy Conlon or " hey Magneto and Xavier were in this series " :)
My neighbour used to tell us the sky was glowing red the night Eindhoven got bombed, we live 25 miles north east of Eindhoven.
PS: they people were celebrating because they thought they were liberated seeing British, Canadian, Polish and American troops were marching through the streets.
There's a few people rambling about the Tiger in the comments. They're... mostly relying on a book called Death Traps which is to put it bluntly, hot trash. The guy was an avowed German tank fanatic who only saw the Shermans that were recovered from the battlefield after they'd been knocked out and lit up. Standard practice of pretty much all sides was to shoot a tank until it caught fire so it couldn't be recovered.
The early Shermans had issues with ammo storage that pretty much everyone had. Later models with wet storage resolved most of those issues and lead to the tank having an 80%+ crew survival rate which far outstripped the majority of armor throughout all theaters. The 75 was more than capable of dealing with the majority of armor encountered and it wasn't until the Panther started showing up in larger numbers that the 75 was swapped with the 76.
The comments on the 'The Tiger could kill 10 Shermans per 1" and so on are largely just a gross misunderstanding of... damn near everything. Most armor died to infantry or field gear. Whitman, the famous German tanker bought it because he was a notorious gloryhound, outran his infantry and armor support and got popped by a Scottish field cannon for example. As for the Tiger itself? We ran into 4 of them. 2 of them were operational. It was a mess of a tank with some interesting properties and a massive strain on their logistics because none of the parts could be swapped between most tanks. The German's best armor were the StuG III and the PzIV up until they over-armored it trying to keep it from getting turned inside out by allied armor. Realistically? Whoever got the first shot off tended to win in these engagements.
This is a lot of tl;dr for 'German armor wasn't what it's portrayed as, nor are American or Brit armor portrayed particularly well.'. You can find some neat stuff like a Soviet lend-lease commander loving the Shermans for a myriad of weird reasons (The leather seats frequently got repurposed to boots) and just generally being a workhorse tank. Post war reports, examinations of events and digging apart what got reported and what actually happened was... a bit of a mess. History Visualized actually pulled Austrian records talking about the 'Heavy' American tank being a problem for example and you'll hear all sides whining about their armor. (The PzIII or IV, I forget, got dubbed Redbeard because of a German shaving commercial about a guy whose skin broke as soon as he tried to shave with anything.)
Chasing all of this down is a gigantic pain in the backside and it's why every time I've sat down to try and do videos about history on a new channel, I've given up because you end up spending two hours talking about weird tangents with 40 different sources.
Edit: Hell I can talk for hours about some of the weirdness that popped up from post-war propaganda to boot. Also with the Dutch resistance shaving the collaborators, they snagged a few double agents and popped them too. Guys who did everything for the Netherlands got caught up in that backlash. Have a Dutch friend that knows a bit more about that side of it though.
Actually the complaints about the Sherman, and other equipment, predate Belton Cooper. During 1944 Eisenhower got wind of this. It got worse in winter 1944/45 when the Americans suffered heavy tank losses and so Eisenhower commissioned special reports. One such report landed on his desk in March 1945. It came from US 2nd Armored Division, the most heavily engaged US armoured division. This report did not make good reading for Sherman aficionados. Full of complaints.
The US 6th Armored Division in February 1945 cited the Sherman as ineffective.
Its revisionism to blame Belton Cooper's book.
By the way, the Tiger had the highest kill ratio of any tank in WW2 and it's overall operation average was 65-70% in 1944/45 which was pretty good for such a heavy tank. Unless overly exerted by careless drivers it wasn't as mechanically unreliable as the modern myth claims.
Watched this series a couple of times. One of the best things on tv.
With Memorial Day coming up and being a patriotic couple I recommend watching the movie TAKING CHANCE. It’s such a powerful movie.
Really good movie called "A Bridge Too Far" about Market Garden. It really depicts what happens to the British first airborne
Asia looking like a boxer during the combat scenes. Ultimate defense 😉
The private at the table in the beginning here is James McAvoy (Professor Xaviar in the newer X-Men films)
In this episode when Sergeant Floyd Talbert was sitting at a table with a woman in a pink dress sitting on his lap, the older man seen is the real Edward James "Babe" Heffron.
I love your reaction, but I really like your discussion after the episode is over. I can tell you are both enjoying this series. 👍
Thank you for watching what i consider the best mini-series ever made.
My Uncle Frank earned a Bronze star at Market Garden!
The Longest Day is also great. Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge too.
Young professor X should of used his mutant powers
Two issues with Operation Market Garden, the advance was planned up a single highway, and the off-road terrain (polder) was too soft to support Allied Tanks; equally bad, there were VERY strong German forces very close to the drop zones, especially the British 1st Airborne, that the Allies did not plan on being available, the expectation was that the area was lightly held. (Allied Intelligence did see evidence of the stronger German units late into the planning for the Operation, but it was dismissed, with catastrophic results.)
Actually most of the German forces that fought in Market Garden were not there before the paratroopers dropped. They came on from Germany in the days that followed, for example Kompanie Mielke, Kompanie Hummel (Tigers), Brigade 280 (Stugs), Brigade 107 (Panthers), Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 (King Tigers).
Impossible to identify units that are literally hundreds of km away.
Thanks! I’m repeating myself but I say it anyway:
- Best reaction channel on RUclips.
If I remember correctly the German tanks were sent there for like R&R, or training or something. Like, they were not expecting an attack, but they also well enough armed in case one happened.
The German tank unit here was Panzer Brigade 107. It was not in Germany when the paras dropped on 17th September. It was not in the Netherlands. It was quickly sent to the Netherlands, arriving on the 19th. This battle for Nuenen took place on 20th September and Panzer Brigade 107 was forced to withdraw from Nuenen later that day after pressure from British armour. The British tank unit was the 44th Royal Tank Regiment, which was a vastly more experienced unit than the 101st Airborne, with 2 years combat behind it including El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and all through Normandy.
Can I surgest A Bridge Too Far (film).A Bridge Too Far is a 1977 epic war film depicting Operation Market Garden, a failed Allied operation in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.If you have the time check out The Real Easy Company Left These Objects Behind! | Digging Band Of Brothers.All the best from England.
so glad were onto #4 , keep it rolling . love you guys💓🤘🏼
I'm enjoying your reactions to Band of Brothers and The Last of Us! Thank you for sharing them!
The citizens of that city were celebrating that way because they believed that now that the Allies had arrived and the Germans had fallen back, that they were finally out from under the Germans' boot. They had been under German occupation for a very long time and treated horribly so they viewed the Allied arrival as their salvation. Sadly, as soon as the Allied forces were pushed back, the city was bombed and the Germans returned, leading to more brutal fighting and hardships for the Dutch.
Wow good choice man one of the goats of series glad yall did this! Game changer! Much love from LA!
Hey BJ, just to clarify the expression, it's "Yippee ki yay", not Kippee ki yay. Loving how quick you are to get what's going on in all these movies. Keep 'em coming!
In a PC WW2 video game, one of the scenarios was operation market garden. When the difficulty level was cranked up, it was almost impossible to win. If they were trying to be accurate, they seem to have succeeded, because after playing it through several times, I was left wondering at the bravery of these men for even attempting this mission.
It’s amazing what the brain watches. I am almost 35 and saw this when I am out 25 but certain episodes like this are still so vivid and easily recalled
Always enjoy y'all's "Band of Brothers" reactions. I hope y'all do 'The Pacific" at some point in the future.
I have 7 1967 silver dollars or older from a original Navy Seal, said I was very industrious. Maybe it was my salute to the community?.
This is really hard to watch but I think everyone should. The young people don't know about know much about this part of history. My husband's uncle didn't return from Normandy. He was KIA.
BJ with the Band of Brothers camo jacket 💯
Y’all, i love ya. Thanks so much for tackling this incredible show. I can’t wait for more
This is still the best miniseries I have ever seen. It upsets me to see people act the way they act, and then I think about what those men went through and lost, so we can be here now.