The Bridport Literary Festival 2018

On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany’s parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. From his balcony above the flat landscape of Holland, he watched the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd divisions and witnessed the massive demonstration of paratroop power. Operation Market Garden was the bold concept of Field Marshall Montgomery to end the war by capturing bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous and, above all, for the Dutch who risked everything to help. The British fascination for heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths.
Award winning military historian Antony Beevor, with access to new sources, has reconstructed the terrible reality of what was to be known as ‘The Last German Victory’.