In the weeks following D-Day, German troops began retreating en masse, as Allied forces advanced across France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. By September 1944, however, the overstretched Allies were approaching formidable German defenses along the Siegfried Line, which had held strong since World War II began.
British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery came up with a daring plan to bypass the Siegfried Line by crossing the lower part of the Rhine River, liberating and driving into the industrial heartland of northern Germany.
Code-named Market Garden, the offensive called for three Allied airborne divisions (the “Market” part of the operation) to drop by parachute and glider into the Netherlands, seizing key territory and bridges so that ground forces (the “Garden”) could cross the Rhine.
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