In late 1944, with D-Day behind them, the Allies began pushing across France towards the Rhine River, the German border, but a problem had developed. The race across France depended on supplies of fuel, ammunition, and other accoutrements of war. The farther the advance, the longer the supply lines from the French coast until finally it was nearly impossible for the advance to continue.
Montgomery developed a logical strategic plan. Instead of both the British and American armies pushing ahead on a broad front, why not a sudden dash across the Netherlands and into the Ruhr, the heartland of German industry? The Germans were on the run, probably dispirited after their defeat at Normandy. The war could be over by Christmas, 1944. Montgomery usually gets the blame for what followed and indeed the plan was his, but it carried the imprimatur of Eisenhower, the man at the top.
The chief problem, obvious to anyone who looked at a map, was that northern Holland was sectioned by a number of waterways -- rivers and canals -- that could only be crossed on bridges. The solution was to drop paratroops near the bridges and quickly capture them so that the ground forces had a clear path to the final bridge at Arnhem.
Without going into too much detail, the airborne troops captured the half dozen or so bridges (or repaired those damaged) except for the ultimate bridge, the vital one at the village of Arnhem. There, the British paratroopers faced fierce resistance and were only able to occupy the northern end of the bridge.
Meanwhile the ground forces, which were to rush along on the single road available, also ran into difficulties. The Germans may have been defeated at Normandy but they were hardly dispirited. Resistance was quickly organized. The Allied advance along the road depended on motor vehicles and tanks. If one were knocked out, it would be impossible to go around it because the road was surrounded by swamp.
The battle lasted five days before the British and Polish paratroopers at Arnhem finally surrendered and the rest of the troops withdrew if they could. Operation Market Garden was not only a failure; it was a tragedy because if it had succeeded it might have shortened the war by several months.
The failure of the operation was due largely to hasty planning and on assumptions that turned out to be unsupported by fact. It was also affected by pure bad luck. Fog prevented the drop of the Polish paratroopers until the last day, by which time the fight was clearly lost and the drop was suicidal. On top of that, unmentioned in this brief film, a glider containing all the plans for the operation fell into German hands.
Seduced by the picture of gallant Allies striking quickly into the heart of Germany, the planners assumed that the Germans would scuttle away without being able or willing to fight back. The planners should have known better because their intelligence was painting a different portrait entirely. They chose to ignore it. They also chose to ignore topographical details, such as the fact that one road block could halt the entire column and prevent reinforcement of the lightly armed paratroopers. The film is completely candid about all this.