The Battle of Arnhem with James Holland

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode features interviews with two leading historians of the Second World War, James Holland and Paul Reed. They tell the story of the Battle of Arnhem, giving poignant and occasionally lurid accounts of the battle. Both also comment on the plans for Operation Market Garden, and whether the battle should be considered a failure.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the history hit World Wars podcast. I'm James Rogers and you join me as I sit with my morning coffee in Salano, Italy.
0:08.0	It's a beautiful day, perfect blue skies, it's a hard life, but I am here working because 77 years ago this month
0:16.3	Salano was the stage for Operation Avalanche. That ferocious battle on the beaches between
0:21.9	Allied and Axis powers during the evasion of Italy that almost turned into catastrophe.
0:27.0	Yet a year later Allied forces would be faced with another catastrophe at Operation Garden, which took place in Arnham in the Netherlands.
0:36.0	In this podcast, first recorded for Dan Snow's history hit, Dan is in Arnham, talking about the UK's pre-eminent historians of the Second World War, James
0:44.1	Holland, along with author, historian, and battlefield guide Paul Reed.
0:48.0	And between them they discussed the ferocious battle that was faced at Arnhem as
0:52.3	Allied forces parachuted in to the town to
0:55.5	take that vital bridgehead known as the bridge too far to secure the crossing at
1:00.4	the Rhine. Of course that battle ends up being known as one of the greatest
1:04.9	military failures, a catastrophe of the Second World War and this
1:09.0	podcast really does show you what can go wrong, will go wrong in front of the bridge that proved to be the bridge too far.
1:32.4	What was tell me what was the intention behind this operation?
1:36.0	Why were the Allies so fixated on this bridge?
1:39.0	Well, this is the upper Rhine, and the point is if you can get across the Rhine that is your kind of entry
1:45.2	point into northern Germany and the feeling was that if you can get into that northern part of
1:49.2	Germany then the route to Berlin is just going to be a whole load easier than if you were fighting
1:52.4	away through the sort of western part of Central to Berlin is just going to be a whole load easier than if you were fighting away
1:52.6	through the sort of Western part of Central Germany and through the Ruhr and all the
1:56.7	rest of it. So that's the point. It's this kind of sort of opportunity that's just
2:00.4	sitting there saying if you can get through here you can have a much easier
	...

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