Operation Market-Garden: behind the enemy lines

1. Introduction
2. The german situation in France
   in june 1944
3. The II° SS
   Panzerkorps
4. The
   Kampfgruppe von Tettau
5. The
   battle of Holland
6. The
   Epilogue
7. Final
   commentaries
9. Bibliography

1. Arnhem's Battle, or since like also it is known, the
   Operation Market-Garden, it was probably the major and last
   defeat of the allies in Europe. Market-Garden, thinked for
   the Marshall Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, was foreseeing the
   conquest of Holland occupying and protecting her bridges, by
   means of a massive airborn assault, the forces Garden, while
   the armoured vehicles of the British XXX Army Corps, the
   forces Market, these bridges were spinning one after other
   one up to coming to Arnhem's city, in the north Holland. From
   there, Montgomery was trying to turn eastward and burst in
   the industrial zone of the Ruhr, giving of this form a mortal
   blow to the German Reich.

   This gigantic airborn operation had two principal
   characteristics: first, it was the parachutists' operation
   and troops transported in gliders bigger that is realized in
   the History, and second, the landing of such force was going
   to be realized in broad daylight, something that had never
   been tried before. Nevertheless, the faults of the allied
   intelligence and the successive lacks of esteem of reports
   provenientes of the occupied zone, specially from the Dutch
   Resistance, which they were informing about the presence in
   the zone of at least two german panzer divisions, provoked
   that the assault turns into a slaughter.

   The existing information brings over of the
   preparations and the assault allied is abundant and of very
   good quality. Nevertheless, little or nothing is known on
   what was happening "behind the enemy lines ", this is, brings
   over of the exhausted German troops that had been moved from
   the front of battle to the rear in the north of Holland, a
   place, they were saying, calm and adapted for the
   rest.

2. INTRODUCTION

   To understand better the battle for Holland, from
   the German point of view, we have to obliged carry ourselves
   back in the time approximately four months before, to the
   days before the invasion of Normandy. The situation of the
   German army in France at the end of May and beginning of June
   it was totally precarious and unstable. The best German
   troops were commited to the eastern front, fighting against a
   Russian army who was becoming increasingly powerful. The
   doublings troops were increasingly habitual and the Russian
   cities were falling one after other one.

   The immense industrial Soviet device after the
   mounts Urals, supported by the allied supplies, was producing
   more tanks T-38 of that the Germans could destroy. Meanwhile,
   in France, the theory of the field marshall Erwin Rommel, who
   was affirming that the allies had to be destroyed during the
   landing, it was facing that of the marshall Gerd von Rundsted
   who was insisting on a complete retreat towards the Northwest
   of France, to regroup the forces and to face the enemy in the
   wide plains of the Galia. Rommel was dissenting harshly from
   this thesis. If the allies were landing and consolidating
   they beachead, he was thinking, the immense industrial
   structure of the United States would take charge supplying it
   continues and abundant to his troops and allies, something
   that Germany was not, for distant view, in conditions to do.
   The time and the facts would give him the reason. Constant,
   day after day, the allied aviation, Americans in the daytime)
   and British by night, were demolish the heavy German industry
   and sowing the terror in the civil population. The German
   cities were being reduced to ashes, even those that the
   Germans had declared " free cities ", since it was the
   saddest episode of the slaughter of Dresden.

   The Germans were having in France, in June, 1944,
   approximately 50 divisions that only existed like such in the
   maps of situation of the Oberbefehlshaber West (Headquarter
   of the Western Front). Of these 50 divisions, only 2 were in
   complete preparation for the battle,2° Waffen SS "Das
   Reich", 12 ° Waffen SS "Hitlerjügend", 17
   ° Waffen SS "Götz von Berlichingen", the XV
   Armee of the general Gustav von Zangen, and some other
   units panzer of the German army. The rest they were
   formations with elements recruited rapidly and in the main
   they were lacking military instruction and up to even
   guns.

   On the invasion having been produced on June 6,
   these hurriedly formed units fell down in panic, and if
   commanders had not intervened with great experience in the
   managing troop in combat, the disbandment had been a general.
   To have an idea of the commanding situation in France those
   days, it is advisable to mention the same chiefs who
   contained these terrified men. It is the case of the general
   Kurt Meyer, chief of 12°Waffen SS
   Hitlerjügend, who was saying:

   " I had made one short inspection for the rear,
   when before me, for Caén-Falaisse's highway, in untid
   riot, the soldiers of 89° Division appeared, prey of the
   panic. I realized that it was necessary to do something in
   order that they were returning to the first line and were
   fighting. I ignited a cigar,I peeped stood firm in the middle
   of the highway and in voice in shout, asked them if they were
   going to make me alone in order that I was fixing them up
   with the enemy. On having seen a chief of division going to
   them in those terms, they stopped, hesitated a moment and
   returned to them positions ".

   The landing in Normandy had been of such a violence,
   which only moderate well men and with wide experience in
   battle there might resist the furious knock of the allied
   forces and of his aviation hammering everything what moving
   in land. The statement of the SS Untersturmführer
   Herbert Walther, during the battle of Caen, it gives a
   complete idea of the terrible clashes in the occupied
   France:

   " My driver was burning as a torch. A bullet had
   crossed the arm, I came to the routes of the railroad, and
   began to run. Down below, in a terrace, they began to shoot
   me. A bullet reached me in the leg, I traversed approximately
   hundred meters, and then it was as if they had given me a
   blow in the nape. It had entered a bullet below the ear and
   had gone out for the cheek. The blood was suffocating me. I
   saw two Americans who were speaking of finishing off me…
   "

   But Walther was not finished off. On the contrary, a
   North American soldier bandaged the leg to him and
   transported it on gelded from a jeep to a hospital of
   campaign. From his injured body the surgeons extracted 13
   bullets.

   Statements like this sound abundant, in both
   decrees. Once landed, the allied troops continued them
   advance for France almost without interruption. The excessive
   confidence in the victory had increased. Between the official
   allied high places, more that in the soldiers of the
   trenches, the unusual idea of that them forces were
   invincible. One began to scorn valuable reports of the chiefs
   of the local Resistances and one started thinking that the
   Germans were disorganized, in retired and that already had
   lost the war. The facts of September, 1944 would demonstrate
   the opposite.

3. THE GERMAN
   SITUATION IN FRANCE IN JUNE 1944

4. THE II° SS
   PANZERKORPS

The principal German forces that they were finding in
the zone "Market-Garden", were fitted in the IInd SS Panzerkorp,
supervised by the Obergruppenführer (SS Lieutenant General)
Wilhem Bittrich, and there was constituted by 9 °
Panzerdivision SS "Hohenstauffen" and by 10 °
Panzerdivision "Frundsberg", both of finished experience
in combat, specially achieved in the Russian front.

On the contrary, to what commonly a lot of Historiers
thinks, the units SS were not created to operate on neither
fields of concentration or anything similar. Still when SS's
quantity assigned to these fields (SS totenkopfverbande)
was exiguous, some commanders were criticizing openly the orders
that were giving the orders to destine part of the troops
soldiers to monitor
prisoners' fields, when these soldiers had been trained
specifically for the combat.

They were men recruited by the Nazi party, formed
politically and endowed with a such military training that there
were extracting expressions of amazement of their enemies. The
units SS that they were finding in the so called fields of
concentration, only were taking charge of the external alertness
of the same ones, and little they had to see with the Waffen
called SS, or, units of combat organized as an army parallel to
the German army in strict sense. Their divisions men were
integrating it of more than 20 nationalities and etnias
different, from Spanish up to even Ottoman, and from Finns to
Hindues. These units were so aroused fanaticism and so well
organized, that were the last men who would give up themselves in
Berlin, after a tenacious resistance against the red army who had triumphed
with the German capital.

Both units SS that took part in the Battle for Arnhem's
bridge were coming fighting from soon after the invasion in
Normandy, and after suffering serious losses, they were withdrawn
from the front and parked in the sure rear, without knowing,
certainly, that this sure rear was going to turn soon into a
bloody field of battle.

9 ° Waffen SS "Hohenstauffen", supervised by
the colonel Walter Harzer, was transferred from the front of the
East to France by the middle of June, 1944, entering really
action on the 29th. Formidable in it constitution, it was spread
170 tanks, 21 self-propelled antitank cannons StuG III, 287
vehicles semicaterpillars for transport of troops
(Panzergrenadiere: Armored Grenadiers), 16 armored vehicles of
several types, 18 pieces of armored artillery, 3670 vehicles of
support and a whole of 18.000 men.

This division owed her name to Hohenstauffen of Suabia's
historical house, one of which relating maximums was Friedrich II
von Hohenstauffen, king who took part in the capture of
Jerusalem, during the Crusades.

The division was opened in the surroundings to Chambray,
without receiving either reinforcements or reprovisioning, for
more of two months, supporting bloody combats with the invaders,
air bombardments and actions of sabotage and ambushes of the
French Resistance.

Finally, it was withdrawn slowly from the front towards
Arnhem, Holland, where it arrived on September 6, only 3.500 men
having still had it reduced. Since it’s reprovisioning had
been foreseen in men and vehicles in Germany, many of these
elements were transferred to the Frundsberg, in order not to lose
them, since many commanders were not sure of returning to see to
their units again, since the division could be transferred to any
part after their provisioning. For September 17, 1944, the
division Hohenstauffen had been reduced practically to a
light brigade, with 2500 men approximately, divided in 19 groups
of action and prepared for an eventual airborn action, not
because the Germans were suspecting something, but because the
Hohenstauffen like and Frundsberg hads received
military instruction to be opposed to a virtual assault airlifted
in any front.

10 ° Division Panzer SS "Frundsberg" was
fighting in Kowel's surroundings, Russia, for June 11, 1944, when
an important operation was cancelled and an order was dealed in
order that this division was transferred to France. On the 16th,
the Führer himself, from Rastenburg's headquarters, in the
Eastern Prussia, ordered that 10 ° Waffen SS
"Frundsberg" was adding to the battle in the north of
France, which defenses were being annihilated.

Newly on June 23, 1944, the commander of the II SS
Panzerkorps, General Paul Hausser, informs to the Field marshall
Erwin Rommel, that the division is operative in France, coming to
the zone between Caen and Villers-Bocage, in Normandy, June 25,
1944, opening about 13.500 man and taking part of counterattacks
against the VIII Corps of British army.

During the so called Operation "Epsom", the division
face up to 2° British Army unites in furious combats for the
possession of the strategic hill 122, suffering strong
losses.

For July 15, 1944, the Frundsberg was attacking
against 15 ° Scotch Guards Division, to the north of
Evrecy's settlement, for the possession of the heights of the
hill 113, while tanks Tiger and Panzergrenadiere's battalion were
making move back to the British. Nevertheless, the losses of 10
° Waffen SS, belonged to approximately 2000 men.

On August 2, the division destroyed approximately 200
English armoured vehicles in the battle for the possession of the
hill 188, but because of the successive counterattacks of the
British infantry and of the intensive use of the allied aviation,
almost absolute owner of the French sky, the division was
withdrawn on August 6 to the north of Chenedolle, in order to
attack to the British forces that they were finding there.
Nevertheless, it was again a retreat towards Mortain to face to
the North American troops, reinforcing to the XLVIIth Panzerkorps
in Argentan's defense.

After diverse combats against the invading forces in
Domfront and Fromentel, on August 19 the division is pushed
inside so called Falaise's pocket, from where it can escape
almost destroyed. For August 22, 1944, the remains of the
division "Frundsberg", they are regrouped and sent to the
north, for it recovery. A report of the B Army Group was saying
that for this date, 10° Waffen SS was having only four
battalions of infantry and absolutely no tank. Among 22 and on
August 27, the division is withdrawn to the northwest of the
Seine river, and from there to the north towards the river Somme
where it begins defensive combats against the British advanced
troopers that were fighting to reach the Belgian
border.

Finally, on September 12, 1944, the Kampfgruppe
"Frundsberg" is put under the control of the
General Heinz Harmel, and parked in Aachen's surroundings, in
Holland, one of the points that was appearing like near to the
zones of landing of the allied parachutists.

This division owes it name to Georg von Frundsberg
(1473-1528), german general to the service of spanish king
Charles V, organizer and commander of the Landsknechte,
famous mercenary infantry in the wars of Italy.