We love to remember and celebrate our past military victories. But the most instructive lessons from history are often from our failures and defeats. We don't often hear about them - but should.
Just such an opportunity occurred eighty years ago ago, along the front lines of the Western Front in Europe. Since the success of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and the struggles in the hedgerow country, the allies were experiencing an unbroken string of successes. Progress came so quickly, that they began to believe that the Germans were on the verge of collapsing. But with this rapid success, as the Allies continuing east, new problems arose. Their progress began slowing, not just due to German resistance, but to to the incredibly difficult logistics of trucking supplies the increasing distance from Normandy and Brittany to the front lines. The search was on for a port closer to where the supplies would be needed.
In address this, and to accelerate the defeat of Germany, allied leaders developed a bold plan to leapfrog over the front, landing thousands of paratroops in Holland; closer to Rhine River, and Germany. Operation Market Garden was a highly complex attack; starting with the largest airborne drop in human history, followed by a coordinated assault from land forces to strengthen the bridgeheads.
The complexity and necessary coordination of the operation was such that any part that failed, or was even delayed, could cause the entire operation to fail. But such was the confidence of the Allies since D-Day (The Greek playwrights had a word for this kind of confidence - 'hubris', and it rarely worked out well for the protagonist), that they went forward with it anyway.
As it turned out, many key dependencies proved to be flawed, and elements of the plan began to fail very early on. But, because the first element of the operation was to strand thousands of paratroopers well behind enemy lines, there was no turning back.
Facebook is no place to discuss this in detail. This operation is well documented, including a book and movie, 'A Bridge Too Far', which are considered among the most historically accurate recreations of war ever committed to film.
As an interesting counterpoint to the failure of Market Garden, the German military developed a bit of hubris of their own, that led to their invitation of the Ardennes a couple months later, in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
