Original subtitles

September, 1944.

Allied forces launch an all-out attack in the Netherlands with an ambitious aim.

To bring World War II to an end by Christmas.

To succeed, they must engage in fierce combat

with Nazi tanks and infantry far behind the enemy front line.

Capture key bridges across the Dutch countryside and seize a corridor into Germany.

The epic mission pits the elite battalions

of the Allied Army against Nazi military might

in the largest airborne assault in history.

In this series, we investigate the most extraordinary events

of World War II from a brand new perspective.

Matching rarely seen archive film,

photography from the front line, and declassified aerial

reconnaissance images to their original locations.

We reconstruct the crucial battles, daring bombing raids, and

deadly terror weapons, which change the course of history.

Soaring over the battlefields, we reveal the secrets of World War II from above.

September, 1944.

An Allied aircraft flies over the German-occupied

Netherlands, photographing landscapes and bridges.

The images are taken in aid of an audacious

plan to cut right through the Nazi front lines,

invade Germany, and bring World War II to a swift end.

This targeted offensive strike is named Operation Market Garden.

The focus of the attack will be the Dutch town of Arnhem on the River Rhine.

In 1944, a huge steel bridge crosses the river here.

It sits around 19 kilometers from the German border.

If the Allies can capture the bridge, Germany is practically in sight.

Five years after the start of the war,

the Allies finally have the Nazis on the ropes.

They have driven them out of France and are poised to push right into Germany.

But in their way is the Siegfried Line,

a 600-kilometer-long defensive chain of bunkers, tank traps, and barbed wire

that runs all the way along the western edge of Germany.

To get round this formidable obstacle with their armies,

the Allies must secure the river crossing in Arnhem.

Then they can flood into Germany and attack the

Nazis' industrial heartland, the Rohr Valley.

Military historian Lynette Nussbacher

investigates the strategy behind the Allied command.

There is a certain sentiment in senior Allied

circles that if they give the German armed forces

a mighty great whack, stab through into Germany,

it will be possible to end the war in weeks.

Operation Market Garden is the brainchild of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

He develops his plan in just a few weeks.

The Allies must get their forces through the Netherlands

and around the German defenses on the Siegfried Line.

So Montgomery plans an airborne assault on an unprecedented scale,

dropping tens of thousands of troops into enemy territory.

The first British soldiers on the ground

must capture a critical bridge in Arnhem from the Germans.

Only then can the bulk of the Allied troops in armor

advance and take the fight to the Nazis' home turf.

For his scheme to succeed, Montgomery needs to move thousands of troops

and hundreds of tons of equipment onto the ground.

To do this, he plans to use gliders and fly multiple

missions over consecutive days to drop soldiers and kit.

Not only can gliders land battle-ready troops together,

they can carry jeeps and armored vehicles, crucial hardware if

the Allies are to mount an effective attack behind enemy lines.

The glider has another critical advantage.

By 1944, the Allies are burning through reserves

of metal to build tanks, ships, and weapons.

This aircraft is made of wood.

The Second World War is a war of resource, and non-ferrous metals are precious.

If you can make your gliders out of plywood,

then you are saving metal to go somewhere else.

On the morning of the 17th of September, the first

gliders deployed in Operation Market Garden take off.

Gliders don't have engines to power them into the air.

Instead, they are towed behind fighter planes.

A long cord tethers the two aircraft together.

Pilots cut the cord when they want the gliders to descend and land.

Built out of cheap materials, they are made to be abandoned.

The flight experience for the 30-odd troops

crammed into the bare wooden fuselage could be terrifying.

The soldiers feel an eerie silence.

They are in something with no engine, so the only noise comes from the wind

and the jet stream buffeting these gliders from the tug aircraft.

It's like being in turbulence on an airline

or only worse, and some of the soldiers panic.

Over the entire operation, 34,000 troops will make

the flight into the German-occupied Netherlands.

On the first day of Operation Market Garden, the aircraft create a colossal convoy,

almost five kilometers wide and over 150 kilometers long.

As the pilots cut the cords, gliders descend

and fill the fields with soldiers and equipment as they land.

Hundreds of elite paratroopers fall from the sky to join them.

Former Royal Marine Arthur Williams

explores what happens when airborne troops

touch down in the fields just outside of Arnhem.

The sight would have been awe-inspiring.

It was the largest airborne operation ever conceived by man up until that point.

Once they're on the ground, the troops must run an over 10 kilometer long gauntlet

of German fire to reach their ultimate target,

the bridge that crosses the Lower Rhine in Arnhem.

The landings go to plan, but the soldiers' real test lies ahead.

Airborne forces have the ability to land and secure somewhere

very quickly, take advantage of the element of surprise,

move quickly because they're lightly armored, but what

they don't have is the ability to survive for very long.

In the days before the operation, sources report that Nazi troop numbers

increase around Arnhem, but they are ignored.

Two divisions of German troops

equipped with heavily armored cars are stationed in the area.

Alongside emergency Nazi formations, they quickly rally to repel the Allied attack.

Of the soldiers who land in Arnhem on the first day of Operation Market Garden,

the 2nd Parachute Battalion make it to the bridge.

Their commanding officer is Lieutenant Colonel of the British Army, John Frost.

Around 745 men arrive at the bridge's northern

ramp on the afternoon of September the 17th.

They dig in, ready for a fight.

One of the measures we took was to bring one of the anti-tank guns,

two of them I think we had, so they were then put quickly into position

so as to cover the main road, and if any enemy

opened up, we fired at them with the anti-tank guns.

The following day, on the 18th of September, German soldiers launched their attack.

22 armored cars of the 9th SS Panzer Division crossed the bridge towards Frost.

But as the Nazi convoy reaches the northern

end, the elite British paratroopers open fire

with anti-tank guns from their hidden positions.

It's total carnage for the Panzer Division,

and the northern end of the bridge remains in Allied hands.

Frost and his men repel the Nazi attack, but their battle is not won yet.

German troops circle around them, and more are on their way.

The paratroopers are cut off from the rest of the airborne soldiers and under siege.

Now their only hope is to hold on long enough for Allied heavy firepower to arrive.

The troops that had managed to seize Arnhem Bridge will be elated.

They've done their job.

All they need to do now is wait for the other

elements to do their job too and relieve them.

If they do that, Market Garden's a success.

Salvation is on its way.

But almost 100 kilometers of Nazi-occupied territory

lies between backup forces and the bridge at Arnhem.

The Allied plan to invade Germany and end World War II

relies on reinforcing the men besieged by Nazi troops

at the northern end of the bridge in Arnhem.

But the route they must take from Allied territory

through German-occupied Netherlands is fraught with danger.

It's a road that becomes known as Hell's Highway.

On the first day of Operation Market Garden,

tens of thousands of British ground troops and armor

set out north from the Dutch-Belgian border.

Their task is to reach Arnhem in just four days.

Hell's Highway is extremely narrow.

Close to 20,000 vehicles, including 200 tanks,

funnel into a column that stretches 112 kilometers long.

They act as an artery, channeling supplies

and delivering military might towards the troops in Arnhem.

Former tank commander, Matt Winters,

examines the American-made tank that leads the charge.

It's amazing to be up close to a Sherman.

It's one of the most iconic tanks from World War II

on the Allied side.

It's what you always picture when you see sort of tanks from World War II.

Sherman tanks are a crucial weapon in the Allied war arsenal.

Many are built on American factory lines previously used for mass-producing cars.

The Allies deploy thousands of Sherman tanks to every battlefront.

They outnumber German tanks almost three to one.

Sherman tanks are fast.

They reach top speeds of around 42 kilometers per hour.

Their relatively light armor makes them maneuverable

and gives them a tactical advantage in the small towns of Western Europe.

But in the Dutch terrain, they're vulnerable.

Allied commanders believe that the Dutch ground is too soft for tank operations.

So they advance forward along a single narrow highway.

For the crew inside the Sherman, it could be a claustrophobic experience.

I'm sitting here in the gunner's seat.

Behind me, I'd have the commander sitting right up next to me, probably standing.

You've got five different people all talking at once, all

with their own jobs to do, trying to make the tank work.

The light battle armor of the Sherman tank suddenly becomes an Achilles heel

as the machines travel end to end through Nazi territory.

To save weight, the distribution of the armor on the Sherman was uneven.

So at the front, where you were most likely

to get hit by the enemy, it was a lot thicker compared to

on the side, where you're unlikely to receive any fire.

The Allied tanks are hemmed in along Hell's Highway.

Their thinner flanks are vulnerable to attack.

Your worst nightmare would be to be going along in a column in one straight line

where your sides were exposed and you weren't able to move one way or the other.

Within minutes of entering German-held territory,

Nazi firepower decimates nine Allied tanks.

On such a narrow highway, destroyed tanks quickly block the road

and Allied troops find themselves stuck in a traffic jam.

By the end of day one of Operation Market Garden,

the ground troops and tanks have advanced

only 11 kilometers towards the siege at Arnhem.

But as the tanks that survive slowly crawl through Dutch towns and villages,

the battered crews are greeted with crowds

and spontaneous celebrations fill the streets.

Yet ahead of the convoy lies an obstacle

which could bring their progress to an abrupt halt.

Lieutenant Colonel John Frost and his elite airborne troops

have taken control of the bridge crossing the Rhine in Arnhem.

To reach them, Allied ground reinforcements must overcome a series of challenges.

One of the most difficult lies just south of the Dutch village of Son.

Today, a 70-foot wide lift bridge

crosses the Wilhelmina Canal in the south of the village.

But before the Second World War, another bridge stood in its place.

This crossing marks a crucial stepping stone on the route north.

Capturing the bridge is vital if the Allied tanks are to reach the troops at Arnhem.

To successfully negotiate 100 kilometers of Hell's Highway,

British ground troops must cross multiple bridges that are in German hands.

To prevent the Nazis from blowing up those bridges,

Allied commanders plan to land troops nearby.

The Americans mobilize two entire airborne divisions to seize the critical crossings.

They must capture the bridges intact

so British infantry and artillery can quickly

advance towards the beleaguered men at Arnhem.

At Son, the Allies' carefully laid plans look set to unravel.

As the troops approach the Wilhelmina Canal,

German defenders detonate explosives and blow up the crossing.

With the help of locals, the American soldiers

quickly assemble a rickety timber footbridge.

But they must build something far stronger to get heavy tanks across.

At the nearby Overloan War Museum,

engineer Zainab Adegan investigates the Allies' solution to this problem.

It's called a bailey bridge.

The purpose of the bailey bridge is to be able to carry very heavy machinery.

So the importance it had during the war

is absolutely immense.

A bailey bridge can carry the weight of heavy artillery.

But the Allies need to be able to build it

in the middle of a combat zone for it to serve its purpose.

With a traditional bridge, you need very heavy materials

and heavy machinery, heavy cranes.

But with the bailey bridge, you don't need any of that.

You're literally relying on human power to be able to put it into place.

70 kilometers north in Arnhem, Allied soldiers are facing increasingly heavy fire.

Back at sun, on the 18th of September, engineers work

through the night to piece together a bailey bridge by hand.

Using material brought in by trucks in the Allied ground convoy.

They use pieces of steel, light enough to be carried by soldiers,

to build a platform strong enough to support the convoy of tanks.

Thinking about six men having to carry this section, it is still quite heavy,

but just light enough for them to carry and to be able to put this into place.

And it really demonstrates the modularity of the design.

A bailey bridge has distinctive diamond-shaped trusses,

which reinforce side panels.

These help to stop the bridge from twisting under heavy weights.

Simple pins and clamps hold each section together.

The bailey bridge is a fantastic triumph in engineering, to be very honest.

It comes together as a set of pieces, almost like a big jigsaw.

This design means that building a bailey bridge

long enough to span a crossing as wide as the Vilhelmina Canal,

can take less than 24 hours.

But in Operation Market Garden, every second counts.

As the first Allied tanks roll towards sun on the 19th of September,

time is running out for the men at the bridge in Arnhem.

And further east, Allied airborne units are in the midst of another epic struggle.

As Lieutenant Colonel John Frost's battalion struggles to hold the bridge at Arnhem,

other Allied units fight to capture the Nazi-held route through the Netherlands.

Another of their key targets is close to the Dutch city of Grave.

More than 20 kilometers south of Arnhem, the American 82nd Division

dropped their troops into five zones.

Their mission is to secure a corridor that will give

the Allied reinforcements a clear run to the north.

One of the most critical strategic locations

they must capture is a crossing in Grave.

The bridge spans the powerful Maas River and is close to half a kilometer long.

Historian Guy Walters investigates the challenge the Allied commanders face.

That bridge is an absolutely vital link in

the chain that is Operation Market Garden.

You've got to take every single bridge if you're gonna get all the way to Arnhem.

If German soldiers destroy this crossing,

it will be almost impossible to build a bailey bridge

quickly enough to reach the troops at Arnhem.

It's crucial that the Allies take it intact.

It isn't going to be easy.

German troops stand guard and two defensive fortifications called case mates

on the southern side of the bridge help to defend it.

The southern most structure is heavily armed.

On the roof, the Nazis place a 20 millimeter flat gun that can fire in any direction.

On the top level, they aim machine guns east towards the bridge.

They pack explosives on the floor below and store ammunition underground.

Allied fighter planes have already targeted the fortifications guarding the bridge.

These are from a Mustang, probably flying from somewhere

over where there shoulder, seeing this and thinking, you know what?

I'm gonna have a go at that and unleashing this hail of lead, pa, pa, pa, pa pa, all the way along.

But these aerial attacks have failed to take out the German guns.

This place is so well defended.

Yeah, the thickness of the walls

it makes you feel almost invincible.

You're gonna be sitting in here thinking, machine gun fire all around me.

You know what?

The walls are about a meter thick.

Whoever attacks me, I'm gonna be absolutely fine.

The first Allied feet on the ground belong to Lieutenant John Samuel Thompson.

He leads a squad of just 16 men.

They drop from the sky and land a few hundred yards from the bridge

and the defensive casemates.

The paratroopers risk taking on the formidable fortifications at once,

making the most of the element of surprise.

Thompson, to his credit, says, you know what, guys?

There's the bridge.

We can get this.

The troops must cross drainage ditches to reach the bridge's defenses.

They advance under fire.

What they do is they wade into the water.

You can imagine how vulnerable they're gonna be.

They're gonna be carrying their weapons above their heads to keep them dry.

All the time, fire can be put on them.

The small platoon dodge enemy bullets to reach the other side of the ditches

and eventually take aim at the southern casemate.

It's a miracle that not one of those American troops gets hit.

Thompson says to his man with the bazooka,

you know what, you've gotta take out that

anti-aircraft gun, otherwise we're in trouble.

He comes to what I guess would be about here, because the

anti-aircraft gun now can't suppress down enough to shoot.

He lets off three rounds.

With the German gunner taken out, the Allies take control of the casemate's

still functioning flat gun and swiftly capture the bridge.

From your standing here, you realize how incredible this operation was.

You know, what a really resourceful,

redoubtable leader Lieutenant Thompson must have been

to have just sat there on the other side of this canal

with just 15 men thinking, you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna take that bridge before any help arrives.

I mean, it is brilliant.

It is absolutely brilliant.

The rapid offensive clears the road north in a matter of hours.

On the 19th of September, the giant Allied convoy of tanks and armored cars

cross the bridge, pushing ever closer to John Frost's embattled battalion at Arnhem.

But to get there, the ground troops must cross

their greatest obstacle yet, the mighty Val River.

By the 19th of September, 1944,

the Allies holding Arnhem Bridge are three days into a siege.

Help is coming.

It is south of the Dutch city of Nijmegen.

The British soldiers at Arnhem Bridge are isolated, deep in Nazi-occupied territory.

The Allied force sent to relieve them is less than 20 kilometers away.

The last major obstacle standing in the way

of Allied tanks and infantry is the Val River.

The road bridge crossing the Val

is the final step in the Allied plan to get to Arnhem

and finish the job John Frost's battalion has started.

But taking the bridge in Nijmegen is easier said than done.

Nazi troops know that if they surrender this

crossing, Arnhem is within the Allies' sights.

Battlefield expert, Joris Niewendt,

investigates exactly what's at stake for the two sides.

For the Nazis in Nijmegen, it's do or die.

If they are able to keep Nijmegen in German hands,

then the guys at Arnhem will never be reached and that means the operation will fail.

So they will do anything to stop the Allies at Nijmegen.

At the beginning of Operation Market Garden,

an advanced party of Allied troops arrive at Nijmegen.

The Americans don't expect any serious resistance,

so they assume that when they get to the bridge, it'll be a matter of just taking it

and then wait for the British tanks to arrive.

The strength of the German defense around

Nijmegen catches the US troops by surprise.

Under sustained attack and unable to reach

the bridge, the soldiers decide to pull back.

They are forced to sit tight and wait for reinforcements.

Allied commanders know that the Germans could decide

to destroy the road bridge crossing the Val at any moment.

The convoy of tanks and heavy artillery

making its way up Hells Highway can't come soon enough.

But even with reinforcements, the Germans holding the Nijmegen bridge

will be hard to overpower.

So the Allies get creative with a daredevil assault.

They send American troops to cross the river downstream

from the bridge and gain control over its northern end.

British troops attack the bridge from the southern side,

hoping to crush the Germans in a deadly pincer move.

Every second counts for the troops besieged in Arnhem,

so the soldiers must cross the Val in daylight.

All they have at their disposal are flimsy wood and canvas vessels.

Army chaplain Delbert Kiel is among the first to board.

The British engineers brought the boats.

We almost fainted.

They were flattened by wood boats with pegs to hold the sides up.

We all looked at each other and said, "We've never seen a suicide mission.

"This is it.

" I thought, "Oh, if they ever need me, "they're gonna need me now.

" So I decided I'd cross with an assault wave.

The troops don't have enough oars.

This forces some men to use rifle butts to propel the boats.

This is not a normal operation.

I mean, you're under the nose of the enemy.

The enemy is looking down your throat and you're crossing

this incredibly wide, fast-flowing river in broad daylight.

It's just off the scale.

They are directly in the crosshairs

of the German soldiers on the rail bridge to the east and on the northern bank.

From these positions, the Nazis unleash heavy fire.

Of the 26 boats in the first wave, only 13 make it to the other side.

Half of the soldiers that make the crossing are killed or wounded.

Despite heavy losses, the Allies storm the Nazi defenses

and capture the German soldiers.

With both ends of the bridge secure and the enemy overrun,

the Allies venture onto Nijmegen Bridge and defuse the German explosives.

Finally, with the bridge in Nijmegen in Allied hands,

the waiting convoy of tanks rolls across the Val River.

Crossing the Val in broad daylight here

was the most courageous thing that I've ever read about.

I mean, getting inside a flimsy canvas boat

which doesn't have enough paddles and cross a river

in daylight, get across and complete the mission, it's just incredible.

The bravery there is just beyond belief.

The heroic capture of Nijmegen Bridge is a triumph.

But three days on from seizing Arnhem Bridge, Lieutenant

Colonel John Frost's men are isolated and exhausted,

and their ammunition is running out.

The Allied captors of Arnhem Bridge are surrounded by German forces

who are intent on retaking the Rhine crossing.

The battle enters its end game.

Arthur Williams investigates John Frost

and his men's last stand on the 20th of September, 1944.

For the British troops that were fighting the

defense here it would have been incredibly hard.

They would have had little sleep, if any at all.

They're under constant attack.

Just think about how much adrenaline

would have been pumping through their bodies constantly.

You're alert all of the time, because in the

blink of an eye, it could be the end of your life.

Surrounded by German forces,

Frost's men hold merely the northern end of Arnhem Bridge

and need reinforcements badly.

At a hotel five kilometers to the west,

other airborne units are under siege from German soldiers and cannot help.

The main Allied force of tanks and armored vehicles is only 15 kilometers away,

but for Frost and his men, time is running out.

The pressure of the German attacks is relentless.

When you have a look around at the makeup

of this area, obviously it's urban fighting.

You know, that's really close quarter combat.

It's brutal.

Forget any romantic notion of daring do adventurous

battles and the liberation of Arnhem and all that.

This would have been horrendous for the men that were stationed here.

Supplies are running low.

Frost has been forced to ration not only food and water, but bullets.

When you're fighting at close quarters like that,

one thing that you have to have is ammunition.

And orders had to be given to the men only to fire

when one was absolutely certain of having a kill.

But that does allow your opponent to improve his position

to simply dare not scatter ammunition about.

As German Panzer tanks close in on the northern end of Arnhem Bridge,

they demolish British-held buildings one by one.

If you have a look at the buildings

around the northern side of the Arnhem Bridge

today, you'll notice that they're all brand new.

There aren't any old buildings around this area.

And I think that says a lot about how much firepower and

destruction was concentrated on this relatively small spot.

The only hope for the men at the bridge is the tanks

on Hells Highway, snaking up the Dutch countryside.

But their convoy is constantly fighting off

brutal counterattacks as Nazi reinforcements try to sabotage supply lines

and keep the Allied relief force at bay.

The armoured column moving up from the south

was the airborne forces' umbilical cord.

It was their lifeline.

If they couldn't reach them really fast,

the troops in the north just wouldn't survive.

As the hours pass, Frost's men finally accept that

the tanks are not going to reach them in time.

They're constantly being pressed on all sides.

And I'd imagine that optimism would have pretty quickly

been replaced by just utter fear of, "We've failed here.

" They just can't hold out.

By 21st September, Frost and his men have surrendered.

The bridge in Arnhem is in Nazi hands.

Other Allied troops fight on at a hotel nearby, but soon plans for evacuation begin.

Of the over 34,000 airborne troops deployed in Operation Market Garden,

more than 10,000 land around Arnhem.

Over 6,000 are captured.

Almost 1,500 British and Polish airborne troops are killed in combat.

Miraculously, over 2,000 troops withdraw to safety from the operation's headquarters,

retreating back across the River Rhine.

Operation Market Garden, when you look at it on paper, it's a good idea.

It makes sense and it can have the possibility of ending the war by Christmas.

The problem is, as is the same with any military operation,

you don't want to have too many moving parts.

In brutal terms, it was a failure.

But there are many benefits to be taken from the operation.

For all of the towns and villages in Holland that were

liberated by the Allies, the war for them was over.

The new front line stabilises just north of Nijmegen.

One-fifth of the Netherlands has been clawed back from German hands.

Six months later, in March 1945, Allied forces finally cross the Rhine.

And the destruction of the Nazi war machine... ..is in sight.