Crossing the Rhine: Breaking into Nazi Germany 1944 and 1945—The Greatest Airborne Battles in History (review)

Arnhem, the afternoon of 17 September 1944. Wehrmacht artillery officer Lieutenant Joseph Enthammer gazes up to the clear skies, hardly believing what he sees. The next moment 'snowflakes' appear to hang in the air. He is then quoted by Robert J. Kershaw as thinking: 'That cannot be! It never snows in September! They must be parachutists!' Enthammer was indeed correct, as he witnessed the first wave of the British airborne attack on Arnhem. Operation Market Garden, Montgomery's bold but overly ambitious plan to seize key bridges across the Rhine by dropping parachutists deep into enemy-held territory and thus opening the way to a swift end to World War Two, had just begun in earnest.

As Lloyd Clark correctly notes in this thoroughly researched book, the battle for Arnhem and the resulting Allied defeat—and as a consequence last German victory of the war—has received a lot of attention from military historians and even Hollywood. Perhaps that explains why Arnhem is one of the most famous battles of World War Two, because if one takes some distance, one notices it is dwarfed by other operations, especially on the Eastern Front, and it is moreover highly debatable if an Allied success at Arnhem would have indeed brought the war to an earlier end.

Much less attention has been paid to operation Plunder Varsity, the Allied airborne landings in Germany in March 1945. Or, as Clark writes: 'When compared to Market Garden it has attracted scant attention from authors, its commemorations are muted and far less well attended by the public, and battlefield tours to its important sites are rarities' (p. xix). This is remarkable, as Plunder Varsity was the largest single airborne lift operation in history. In his book, Clark tries to bring more balance into the coverage of Market Garden and Plunder Varsity, and he does so very convincingly. With regard to Arnhem there's not much new information, but Clark's style is gripping and his extensive use of eyewitness accounts—both Allied and German—makes for a thrilling read.

The same goes for the author's coverage of Plunder Varsity. The US XVIII Airborne Corps—consisting of the US 17th Airborne Division and the British 6th Airborne Division—was to play an integral part in the Allied crossing of the Rhine, the last natural defensive barrier in Germany. It was not just to seize and hold ground: it was to resist enemy counterattacks against the bridgehead that was being established, take key ground objectives and bridges and facilitate the advance inland. In this Plunder Varsity succeeded splendidly. Clark deservedly devotes considerable attention to this operation, and recounts the often underestimated viciousness of the ensuing fighting.

To many, Montgomery's plan for crossing the Rhine was overly cautious and conservative. However, Clark states Monty's approach was justified given the circumstances: he wanted to prevent casualties and, according to Clark, it was 'a supreme example of risk management, because by this stage in the war the Germans were as good as beaten, great political objectives such as the taking of Berlin had been ceded to the Soviets, and there was a distinct lack of British manpower' (p. 335). This is debatable, however. Although Clark is absolutely right when he writes Plunder Varsity was by no means a foregone conclusion, to compare it with Market Garden in this respect seems unjustified, be it alone for the fact that German resistance in March 1945 was totally different from that of the autumn of 1944. The huge success of Plunder Varsity may also explain why it has received far less attention than Market Garden. The latter was a costly failure, the former an overwhelming success in which the lessons of Normandy and Arnhem were put to good use. There was, to put it bluntly...