Arnhem

Arnhem

The Battle for the Bridges, 1944: The Sunday Times No 1 Bestseller

Summary

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER

The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain's Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad

'Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard
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On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power.

Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch, who risked everything to help. German reprisals were pitiless and cruel, and lasted until the end of the war.

The British fascination with heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths. Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student himself called 'The Last German Victory'. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single, dramatic battle.

It looks into the very heart of war.
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'In Beevor's hands, Arnhem becomes a study of national character' - Ben Macintyre, The Times

'Superb book, tirelessly researched and beautifully written' - Saul David, Daily Telegraph

'Complete mastery of both the story and the sources' - Keith Lowe, Literary Review

Reviews

  • Masterly...illuminated by a host of hitherto unpublished anecdotes and quotations, together with the fruits of his own labors in Dutch archives. A meticulous, wonderfully vivid, and justly angry account of one of the great cock-ups of World War II
    Max Hastings

About the author

Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor is the author of Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (Runciman Prize), Stalingrad (Samuel Johnson Prize, Wolfson Prize for History and Hawthornden Prize), Berlin: The Downfall, The Battle for Spain (Premio La Vanguardia), D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (Prix Henry Malherbe and the RUSI Westminster Medal), The Second World War, Ardennes 1944 (Prix Médicis shortlist) and Arnhem. The number one bestselling historian in Britain, Beevor's books have appeared in thirty-three languages and have sold over eight million copies. A former chairman of the Society of Authors, he has received a number of honorary doctorates. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Kent and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London. He was knighted in 2017.
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