On September 17, 1944, three Allied airborne divisions dropped into the Netherlands in the largest airborne operation ever attempted, and XXX Corps started up a single road toward them. The plan was to seize a corridor of bridges over the Maas, the Waal and the Rhine, ending at Arnhem, and to have British armour across all of them within two or three days.
Montgomery had been pushing for a single thrust into the Ruhr since the breakout from Normandy, and the argument for it was that the German army in the west was in retreat and a bold stroke could end the war before winter. The argument against it, which was not heard, was that the road to Arnhem was one road, raised above flat polder, with no room to bypass a blocked bridge. Two SS Panzer divisions were refitting near Arnhem, and Dutch resistance and aerial reconnaissance both said so. The planners dropped the 1st Airborne eight miles from its objective and put the rest of the division behind the first brigade, so that only one brigade could be at the bridge at a time.
Day one went to plan. Son and Veghel fell, and the Americans took the Waal bridge at Nijmegen intact on the 20th after a costly river crossing. Arnhem bridge was never held. About 740 men of the 2nd Battalion under John Frost got to the north end and held it for four days against armour and infantry they could not hurt, with no radios that worked and no ammunition left, while the rest of the division fought to reach them and failed.
The corps never arrived. German demolition of a bridge at Son cost a day, the counterattacks on the corridor cost more, and the road was cut repeatedly behind the leading troops. By September 25 the survivors at Arnhem were evacuated in Operation Berlin; about 1,900 got out of some 10,000 who had gone in.
The result was a salient 60 miles long that had to be defended through the winter and produced no crossing of the Rhine. The Netherlands stayed occupied until May 1945, and the fighting, the German reprisals and the food blockade that followed killed tens of thousands of Dutch civilians. Arnhem was finally taken by Canadian and British troops in April 1945, and the town has been rebuilt.