Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:35 pm Post subject: A Bridge Not Far, Monty's Operation Market Garden sabotaged?
Why did the relieving force of tanks from the Guards' Armoured Division halt for 18 hours after crossing the Nijmegen bridge, giving Heinz Harmel's Germans time to move anti tank guns and armour to block the road to Arnhem?
Did Lord Carrington & Brian Horrocks scupper or merely botch Operation Market Garden?
Review of the book: Arnhem by John Nichol and Tony Rennel
Dave Barnby wrote:
The book (Arnhem) has singularly failed to describe the events on the day before the British paratroopers were forced to surrender and give up their shrinking foothold in Arnhem.
The Grenadier Guards tanks led by Peter Smith's (now Lord Carrington) troop failed to follow up the success of the American's who, paddled the Waal river in their canvas canoes (scene in 'A Bridge too far') eliminated the German forces on the other side.
If Carrington who was at the head of XXX (30) Corps effort, had done what was required of him, Arnhem would surely have been a success, instead of the failure it became.
Read these brief accounts:
Peter Smith, born in 1919, became Lord Carrington on the death of his father round about 1939 went to Eton and by his own account as not very academic, but seems to have transferred naturally as a matter of course gone to the royal Academy Sandhurst in 1937.
American account of Nijmegen
At the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, British tankers [Grenadiers with Carrington in command] blast the last remaining obstacles—two 88-millimeter guns—and the road to Arnhem, on only 11 miles away, now seems open. It is now 1915 hours [20th].
But the British tanks [Grenadier Guards – with Carrington] do not advance. The 82nd Airborne's officers and men consider the 1st Airborne their brothers, and the All American's paratroopers are exasperated at the delay. Colonel Reuben Tucker, commander of the 504th Regiment berates a British officer [Carrington]: "Your boys are hurting up there at Arnhem. You'd better go. It's only 11 miles."
German Account of Nijmegen
To Schwappacher's relief in Oosterhout, 'the enemy remained quiet all night'. After the war, Harmel (General involved with Nijmegen Bridge defence) was to be more explicit: The English drank too much tea . . !', in contrast to the feverish activity that was to characterise German attempts to formulate counter-measures that night. Both sides were exhausted.
Nevertheless, as Harmel later remarked:
"The four panzers [Carrington's tank troop] who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.'
I cannot belive that you have exonerated these tankers on the grounds that it was probably the safe thing to do.
And you have failed to identify Carrington as the cause of this failure - why? Do you not know of these events, or have you been too cowardly to mention them???
I have much more detail than this comment section allows - please contact me if you are interested.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:25 pm Post subject:
Battle for Arnhem from the German perspective
Evening of 20th September (remaining British parachute troops were finally forced to capitulate on the morning of 21st September)
From Page 215
After a short fire fight conducted on its southern perimeter, Allied tanks broke into Lent and eliminated the last resistance by remnants of the 1st Company 10SS Engineer Battalion, and the flotsam of reservists and others from the now dis¬persed Kampfgruppe Henke. Harmel, the commander of the Frundsberg, left Lent dismayed. Despite all his efforts, both bridges were still standing. Allied tanks were now mixed in amongst the fleeing German survivors of the Nijmegen garri¬son. All appeared lost.
Closely monitoring the advance, and seeking solutions to the unsolvable, Harmel noticed that the Allies were 'moving more cautiously, hindered by their own smoke; delays were slowing the advance'.10 He drove on to Bemmel, where the command post of the Kampfgruppe Reinhold - co¬ordinating the defence of Nijmegen - was now located. There may yet be a chance to salvage something from this catastrophe.
To Schwappacher's relief in Oosterhout, 'the enemy remained quiet all night'. After the war, Harmel was to be more explicit: The English drank too much tea . . !', in contrast to the feverish activity that was to characterise German attempts to formulate counter-measures that night. Both sides were exhausted. Nevertheless, as Harmel later remarked:
‘The four panzers [he means tanks of course] who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.' [and Arnhem would have been relieved. These were, of course Peter Smith’s, (later Lord Carrington) tanks]
CHAPTER XIX
The Missed Opportunity
Why did they not drive on to Elst instead of staying in Lent? At this instant there were no German armoured forces available to block Elst.
Commander, 10SS Panzer Division
Plugging the gap. Betuwe, 'the Island'...
Karl-Heinz Kracht, the young tank gunner moving with Knaust's armoured column, used a golden opportunity to take photo¬graphs as his Mark III panzer, grinding through its gears, began its ascent to the high point of the Arnhem road bridge. His lens began to take objective stock of all around him. Silhouetted against the sky ahead was the majestic span of the bridge's superstructure. To the left and right, burnt-out vehicles had been bulldozed or towed to the side of the road, the debris of Graeb-ner's failed attack. As they passed the rudi¬mentary barrier erected by Frost's men, they observed curious SS soldiers sifting through the tangled wreckage. On the main span the wind, whistling through the gir¬ders, brought some of the stench of burning from the battle now raging in the west towards Oosterbeek. Kracht took a shot of the ruined church by the market place, whose towers were now burnt out. With the 50mm tank barrel pointing down the road toward Elden he took another picture of the southern ramp of the bridge. This showed the built-up area where Graebner had formed up and rushed to the high point of the bridge before coming under fire from the north bank. There was no wreckage here. This had been a blind spot. Coming towards Kracht's vehicle was a simple horse-drawn cart, carrying refugees back
toward the wasted city centre. The focus of German activity appeared now to be moving south towards Nijmegen. Many of these villagers wanted to be spared the horrors that had already engulfed the citizens of Arnhem. In the far distance, separated from the tanks, were marching columns of infan¬try. Kracht later wrote:
‘We were well aware of the significance of the bridge because we had been informed of the pincer movement planned by the British and American forces, and of the attack to the north of the Ruhr area. We crossed the bridge towards Nijmegen on the day when it was evacuated, or a day later. I can't remember exactly.'
SS-Colonel Heinz Harmel, the commander of the Frundsberg does remember, and with some alacrity. Knaust's Kampfgruppe, 'reinforced with 8 "Panther" and assault guns, crossed the Arnhem bridge shortly after midday [21 September]; he was ordered by the 10SS to quickly occupy Elst.'2 Harmel had spent an anxious night. Knaust's arrival offered a degree of relief to a problem that had appeared for the moment insoluble.
Harmel wondered, even after the war, why the tanks that had rushed the Nijmegen bridge with such elan had not continued further. The Allies had certainly missed an opportunity. They might possibly have pushed a battle group into Arnhem itself. 'Why did they not drive on to Elst instead of staying in Lent?' he asked; 'at this instant there were no German armoured forces available to block Elst.'3 It was a lost chance:
‘lt gave us time to get Knaust down there. It was ironic really, at the same time we lost the Nijmegen bridge, we were just about over the Arnhem bridge. The Allied infantry were too late supporting their tanks.'
The capitulation of the bridges, so hard fought and costly, was to prove a hollow victory for both sides. Frost's obstinate resistance was instrumental in forcing IISS Corps to depend upon the Pannerden ferry to get its reinforcements to the Waal. In the event the 10SS were unable to reinforce sufficiently quickly to reverse the outcome at Nijmegen. Likewise, the Allies were unable to capitalise on their seizure of the Waal bridges.
Crucial in tipping the scales for both engagements was the ferrying operation conducted by the Frundsberg at Panner¬den. SS-Captain Brandt, the 10SS Engineer Battalion Commander, achieved much in difficult circumstances. Badly battered in Normandy, his force was weak in both manpower and equipment. After sending his only motorised ad hoc company to Nijmegen under SS-2/Lieutenant Baum-gaertel to assist in its defence, he was left with a hastily reorganised company under SS-Lieutenant Munski to assist around Pan¬nerden. Brandt recalls that 'much work had to be done at the ferry sites as we only had map references indicating the location of existing sites'.5 Throughout the operation he remembers they were harassed by Allied 'Jabo' attacks and artillery fire. Utilising rafts and commandeered motor boats the ferrying operation painstakingly trans¬ported units that had by-passed Arnhem
across the lower Rhine and canal. By the evening of 18 September BaumgaertePs engineers and the Kampfgruppe Reinhold had crossed. During the night the depleted 10SS Panzer Regiment was ferried over, so that by 19 September four assault guns had reached Nijmegen, and a further 16 Mark IV panzers and SPs were available for opera-tions on the north bank of the Waal. The process continued during daylight hours when the Kampfgruppe 'Hartung' - a Wehrmacht reservist battalion - and one and a half battalions from the SS-Panzer-grenadier Regiment 22, also got across, Included among these were both forward command posts of the 10SS and IISS Corps. Progress was slow, marred by inadequate transport and repeated air attacks. Units after assembly were faced with a 15-kilometre march to Nijmegen, much of it across exposed dyke roads. Consequently, few were available for effective operations until late on 20 September. When the Nij¬megen bridge was captured, the one and a half battalions of Panzer-grenadier Regi¬ment 22 and the tanks were either in the process of re-forming after the river cross¬ing, or still laboriously on the move in well-dispersed formations to avoid attracting air attacks.
The only forces on the 'Island', or Betuwe, able to oppose a breakthrough were the survivors of Graebner's Reconnaissance Battalion 9. This decimated group was deployed with one weak company on picket duty on the southern bank of the lower Rhine, opposite Arnhem's western suburbs and the bridge, and the remnants of another in Elst. As the first Sherman tanks, scattering escapees from the Nijme¬gen garrison, surged into Lent, the road ahead was open. All that stood in the way of XXX Corps and Arnhem during much of the night of 20-21 September were a few security pickets.
Improvisation .. pB
Arriving at Reinhold's command post in Bemmel during the evening of 20 Septem¬ber, Harmel frantically tried to retrieve the situation. Those parts of Panzer-grenadier Regiment 22 and the tanks that had already crossed the ferry were ordered to counter-attack immediately from the east. But these elements of the reconstituted Kampfgruppe Reinhold lacked heavy weapons. Only one light battery of field howitzers had been brought across the ferry so far, and they were positioned east of Flieren. The counter-attack, therefore, lacked punch. By darkness a rudimentary line had been estab¬lished one kilometre north of Lent, and this gradually thickened into linked outposts as more units, including the Kampfgruppe 'Hartung', became available to Reinhold. By first light German blocking positions occupied the crossroads one kilometre south-west of Ressen, south of the village itself and south of Bemmel down to the Waal river.6
Bittrich, the IISS Corps Commander, instructed Harmel to counter-attack at first light on 21 September to forestall and spoil the anticipated Allied thrust on Elst, and thence to Arnhem. 'All the forces available from Pannerden,' ordered the General, 'are to be collected and attack the eastern flank of the enemy vanguards, overwhelm them, and throw the enemy back over the Waal river.
SS-Captain Schwappacher's 21 Artillery Battery, his regimental headquarters, and other collected units, were still holding on to the 'hedgehog' position around Oosterhout. Apart from imposing a degree of caution upon any projected Allied thrust to Arnhem, they provided an anchor to the right of the thin screen raised by the Kampfgruppe Reinhold to cover the approach to Arnhem. Early on 21 September, Knaust arrived for a preliminary reconnaissance and was briefed on the Oosterhout situation by Schwappacher. New battery positions were established south of Elst. Many of Schwap-pacher's personnel, gun crews and radio operators, currently manning trenches as infantry, were needed there. At 1200 the SS Artillery and Training Regiment V finally thinned out as more of Knaust's Kampf¬gruppe arrived. Flight was still in the minds of the soldiers. Schwappacher mentions three Wehrmacht batteries originally located north-east of Oosterhout which, 'despite appeals from me to hold their positions during the critical situation the day before, had already withdrawn their positions further back to the north-west'. The atmosphere of unease and alarm pre¬vailing since the bridges' loss remained.
Harmel's punch against the eastern flank of the breakthrough was eventually as¬sembled and mounted. Thinly spread over a four-kilometre front, a force of about three battalions, divided into three to four Kampfgruppen, supported by 16 Mark IV tanks, advanced westwards. Artillery resources were sparse: a light battery east of Flieren, and two more from the 10SS Artil¬lery Regiment firing from the east bank of the Pannerden canal. These were desperate measures. SS Panzer-grenadier Regiment 21's one and a half battalions could not be included, because they were delayed by the ferry crossing, and had only got as far as Haalderen, one and a half kilometres west of Bemmel. It was all that could be scraped together in the time allowed by General Bittrich. Even ferrying operations were interrupted to assist in the attack SS-Captain Brandt at Pannerden recalls:
‘Ja - and then there was a breakthrough somewhere, and we were taken out. Even during actual loading operations I had to take part in the defence of a wooded area with my headquarters company, and any other soldiers that could be found around, supported also by six tanks.'
These scant resources were flung against an ever-growing enemy lodgement. This, with the impact of Allied artillery, conspired to water down the decisive blow that Bittrich sought. His appreciation was, as ever, cor¬rect, but his means simply did not match the task. All that was achieved was a west¬ward adjustment of the line, which did have the effect of imposing a cautionary check on any thoughts of an Allied dash to Arnhem.
It is quite possible that the Allies might have been able to feed a battle group into Arnhem, before the road was finally blocked again. During the first night of 20-21 September there were only security pickets reinforced by one or two outposts in position. This situation continued until Knaust finally arrived in force during the afternoon of the 21st. For five hours between 1900 and midnight on the 20th the road was clear. Nothing of substance could close it effectively until Knaust began to drive south after midday on the 21st. It was truly a missed opportunity. Frost's forces were overwhelmed just as the window of opportunity closed again.
By 1600 Knaust's Kampfgruppe had reached Elst. He proceeded to block the road effectively with the armoured forces at his disposal. Liaison was established with the advancing flanking movement from the east. By the evening of 21 September the German line ran from the southern edge of Elst, held by the Kampfgruppe Knaust, via Aam north of Ressen, fortified by Hartung's reservists. It continued over the western edge of Bemmel, defended by the few tanks of the 10SS Panzer Regiment, then south to the Waal, manned by Panzer-grenadier 22. A firm line was at last emerging, able to block or, in the worst case, threaten any further Allied advance northwards to Arnhem. It was an amazing achievement. Harmel summed up the driving factor: 'It was astounding to see what could be achieved by improvisation.'
Allied superiority on the 'Island' meant very little in these low-lying polder marshes, criss-crossed with water-filled ditches and waterways. Cover was also sparse. There were only a few orchards and the villages. Harmel was able to exploit his few tanks covering the exposed and slightly raised dyke roads that traversed this terrain. 'This had an impact,' he remembers; 'the terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was the worst possible for tanks - for both sides.'10
'Improvisation' for the German soldier meant march and counter-march in an atmosphere of emergency and alarm. Sol¬diers in the line appeared aware only of the basic situation: there were British para¬troopers in Arnhem, and Americans coming up through Nijmegen trying to link up with them. Enemy airborne soldiers in the rear always unsettled the veterans. Their recol¬lections of this period are confused and uncertain; a few village names can be remembered, but little else other than the frantic nature of the activity characterising these operations. A breakthrough some¬where else always meant yet another town or village to be by-passed in order to reach their objective, often by night and with little or no warning. Scant knowledge of the overall situation generated unease.
Kampfgruppe Reinhold' s reconstituted units achieved little more than an advance in column, until they were ordered to con¬solidate and dig in on the line they had reached. Few units, apart from the tanks and grenadiers providing the vanguards, even made contact with the enemy. Allied artillery tended to dictate the speed and extent of progress.
The typical experience of the Landser (Wehrmacht equivalent to 'Tommies') and SS was for the most part unremarkable. Most had been delayed on the outskirts of Arnhem, aware that fighting was going on in the suburbs, but unable to gain an unimpeded passage to Nijmegen. This was resolved by forced marches through the night followed by further interminable delays around the Pannerden ferry sites. After crossing there were more tiring marches on exposed dyke roads, frequently harassed by 'Jabos' as daylight approached. Exhausted, they were required to change direction again, fan out, and advance in attack formation upon new objectives over boggy ground. Having clambered across water-filled ditches toward an enemy whose location was unknown, the order to stop and dig in was a relief. If the situation stabilised sufficiently, they might engender some form of front routine - and get some sleep.
Lance-Corporal Karl-Heinz Kracht's panzer Mark III, part of the Kampfgruppe 'Knaust', clattered southwards towards Elst. Nobody knew what lay ahead; they were watchful, nervous and expectant. The Arnhem experience had left them jittery.
'There was only one citizen left in Rijnwik a suburb north-east of the Arnhem bridge. He fired his pistol from the house, behind us, at the Grenadiers.'
The response was immediate.
'He was killed by a sub-machine gun burst. It was sheer nonsense! Otherwise, all the buildings and the butcher's shop were empty.'
Suddenly, contact was made with the leading elements of 1st Guards Armoured Division, whom Kracht assumed to be Americans:
‘The encounter we had with the Americans and Shermans on a railway embankment in Elst was quite characteristic in a way. Some German-speaking joker shouted "Don't shoot, we're Germans" as the first tanks appeared. And then they cut loose with everything they had. This cost us two of our tanks and quite a number of our grenadiers!'
This skirmish encapsulates the situation as it was occurring all along the irregular line being established in the Betuwe during 21 September. Kracht continued:
'Confusion reigned, with friend and foe not only in front, but also on the flanks and in the rear. A front line was not discernible, and I believe that some people fired on their own troops. Through a miracle our vehicle escaped destruction in the melee. Along with two other tanks, we were sent to Zeddam for refitting with reserves.'
The Germans were beginning to feel that the front in the south was at last beginning to stabilise. But at 1700 hours the roar of aeroplanes could be distinguished approaching from the south - louder and louder. Squadrons of Spitfires appeared out of the clouds. Circling German positions in the Driel area they swept down and engaged identified emplacements with a murderous strafing fire. Machine gun fire was returned, and flak artillery began to bark out, attempt¬ing to register on these new targets. A new tumultuous roar of aircraft, stronger than before, pervaded the scene. Dakotas now followed up behind the Spitfires. The roar changed pitch as aircraft reduced speed, flying low. Below the first Dakota one para¬chute, then another, and then a third opened up - the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade was jumping. As far as the Germans were con¬cerned this scene, repeated again and again until countless black shapes filled the sky, was a harbinger of doom. It was more reinforcements. Fighting paused momen¬tarily in Oosterbeek as every gun barrel swung to meet the new threat of another airborne attack.
'IT NEVER SNOWS IN SEPTEMBER' The German View of Market-Garden and The Battle of Arnhem, Sept. 1944 by Robert J. Kershaw
Exhaustive research of the few remaining German archival documents, corroborated by numerous eye-witness and diary accounts, including much previously unpublished material, means that this new book is certain to stimulate renewed debate concerning one of the most controversial engagements in World War II. HC, 364pp, illus., pub. 1999, Ian Allan, mint in dust jacket. Price: $40.00
Subj: Alternative version
Date: 31/01/2006
To: kr.clark@virgin.net
Ken,
It is interesting that the book on Arnhem by a senior lecturer of war studies at Sandhurst has written a somewhat different account of what our friend Carrington did after the 504th Parachute Regiment (part of US 82nd Parachute Division – All American) crossed the Waal:
............the opposite bank in preparation, while two squadrons of British tanks and approximately one hundred artillery pieces opened up with ten minutes of high explosives followed by five of phosphorous. Although a dense smoke screen was not achieved due to the strength of the wind, the Americans did not wait for more favourable conditions; at
1500 hr Cook's men took to the water in twenty-six dangerously overloaded canvas boats each containing three engineers. Battling against the Waal's eight-knot current, the men used their rifles as paddles to keep their boats on course, moving as quickly as possible across the 400-yd stretch of water. As the crossing began the Germans opened up with a barrage of fire that immediately sank a number of the frail nineteen-foot long craft. The British guns returned fire with high explosive rounds and the reserve battalion of the 504th did the same with their mortars, but the Germans knew that their lives depended on the Americans not setting foot on the north bank, so their fire hardly slackened. Approximately half of the boats made it safely across the river, and without a pause the engineers turned them round in order to pick up the rest of the battalion and then the follow-up force provided by the first battalion.
Cook's men, meanwhile, stormed across 500 yd of flat polder and an embankment that separated them from the enemy, and then engaged them at close quarters with bayonets and grenades. Few prisoners were taken as eleven of the assault craft returned with the next wave of parachutists. Thoughts then turned to the two bridges. Using fire and manoeuvre in small unit actions, the Americans made rapid progress towards their objectives, and by 1700 hr had secured the northern end of the railway bridge as their comrades continued their advance in an easterly direction. As these men approached the northern end of the road bridge, the Grenadier Guards and men of the 505th closed in on its southern end after a successful attack on the roundabout. Here, with many buildings on fire and the infantry doing all that they could to break through the German defences, including advances across the roof tops, a final charge took them up to the bridge itself. Without hesitation, despite the threat of the bridge being demolished as they advanced, the first four British tanks began to cross the Nijmegen road bridge, their guns and machine guns blazing - and the crossing remained intact. Why the Germans did not destroy the bridges remains something of a mystery. It is true that Model did not sanction the destruction of the bridge in time (his permission was not received until midnight), but Harmel did take a unilateral decision from his bunker in Lent to destroy the crossing, but although this was attempted, no explosion occurred. Whether this was due to human or mechanical error, the Dutch resistance having sabotaged the German charges or the fast work of sappers who immediately clambered over the bridge to disconnect explosives that they found, is not known, but what is certain is that all four tanks made it across safely just in time to link up with three privates from the 504th. It was 1910hrs on Wednesday 20th September…………..
…………Of the four Grenadier Guards tanks that had crossed the bridge, two were hit almost [Carrington confirms this in his autobiography, but say that they were not seriously damaged]
as soon as they reached the north bank by a pair of anti-tank guns, and although the two remaining tanks [not true Carrington confirms that all four tanks were serviceable] were joined by two companies of Irish Guards which quickly established defensive perimeter, any forward momentum was immediately lost [why was this momentum lost? Germans themselves confirm that the way to Arnhem was open until 1200hrs – it was the Irish Guards who eventually pushed forward the next day – but no more is heard of Carrington].
dave
Peter Smith (updated)
Peter Smith, born in 1919, became Lord Carrington on the death of his father round about 1939 went to Eton and by his own account was not very academic, but seems to have transferred naturally as a matter of course gone to the royal Academy Sandhurst in 1937.
American account of Nijmegen
At the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, British tankers [Grenadiers with Carrington, presumably?] blast the last remaining obstacles—two 88-millimeter guns—and the road to Arnhem, only 11 miles away, now seems open. It is now 1915 hours [20th].
But the British tanks [Grenadier Guards – with Carrington] do not advance. The 82nd Airborne’s officers and men consider the 1st Airborne their brothers, and the All American’s paratroopers are exasperated at the delay. Colonel Reuben Tucker, commander of the 504th Regiment berates a British officer [Carrington]: “Your boys are hurting up there at Arnhem. You’d better go. It’s only 11 miles.”
German Account of Nijmegen
To Schwappacher's relief in Oosterhout, 'the enemy remained quiet all night'. After the war, Harmel (General involved with Nijmegen Bridge defence) was to be more explicit: The English drank too much tea . . !', in contrast to the feverish activity that was to characterise German attempts to formulate counter-measures that night. Both sides were exhausted. Nevertheless, as Harmel later remarked:
‘The four panzers who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they
stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.'
But from then on (1971), the leader of NATO has become a Bilderberg appointment.
They are:
• Joseph Luns (1971-1984) Bilderberg Group
• Lord Carrington (1984-1988) Bilderberg Group, chairman 1991-1998).
• Manfred Wörner (1988-1994) Bilderberg Group
• Willy Claes (1994-1995) Bilderberg Group
• Javier Solana (1995-1999) Bilderberg Group
• Lord Robertson (1999- ) Bilderberg Group
Arnhem - Nijmegan Bridge from Carrington’s biography
The first major water obstacle we crossed - bridge success¬fully captured by the Americans - was the Maas at Grave. On the bridge was standing the well-remembered figure of my first Commanding Officer in the 2nd Grenadiers, Boy Brown¬ing, now commanding the Airborne Corps. As ever, he looked immaculate, gleaming boots and belt, trim, confident and formidable. The leading squadron commander, Alex Gregory-Hood, had also served as a subaltern in his battalion before the war. He dismounted and, unrecognizably covered with dust, approached the General and saluted. This was the begin¬ning, it seemed, of the link-up. This was a dramatic moment.
'Sir!'
'Who are you?'
'Sir, it's Alex!'
Boy Browning looked astonished.
'Good God,' he remarked, 'I always said it was cleaner to come by air!'
Later that day we drove into the outskirts of Nijmegen, discovered it was still full of Germans, tried to rush the bridge in the evening, lost tanks and men and realized the
unpalat¬able fact that the place would have to be cleared - methodi¬cally. That takes time. It also demands daylight unless it’s to go very, very slowly indeed.
Next dawn, therefore, we quartered the city and worked through it, clearing it of its German defenders. At the same time assault boats were brought forward - up that same narrow, congested road - and troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division, with enormous bravery, began crossing the Waal west of the town. The boats were unfamiliar, the casualties high, but a significant number of Americans got across and began working their way eastward along the north bank. At half past three in the afternoon our own squadrons and companies of the Grenadier group began their attack on the hard core of the German defence - the approaches to the bridge, and the buildings dominating them. Some public gar¬dens on a hill immediately above the south end of the bridge were strongly garrisoned and were eventually taken by the Grenadiers just after six o'clock.
At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his ac¬tion. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine. A film represen¬tation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken -probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay.
The pursuit had ground to a halt. The war was clearly going on. We spent the winter of 1944 in Holland, first near Nijmegen where the Germans had flooded the land between the two great rivers, and there was little activity. There were some comic Incidents; we discovered ……………
5 • NIJMEGEN 17-20 SEPTEMBER
………….Things were now hotting-up on the Reichswald front. This suddenly came to life with the arrival of the first units of the German II Parachute Corps, seven under strength infantry battlions, amounting to some 2,000 men in all. These put in a strong attack on the Allied line near around Mook and Reithorst, their assault supported by 88, mortars and mufli-barrelled nebelwerfers. This attack made some progress until the early afternoon, when it was halted and driven back by the Coldstream Guards Group which as related, had now been detached from XXX Corps to form part of the 82nd's divisional reserve.
As this attack petered out on the evening of D plus 3 [20th September], the 3rd Battalion, 504th PIR put in a gallant assault across the Waal, an action the US History rightly describes as 'one of the most daring and heroic in all the Market Garden fighting’. This assault, across 400 yards of fast-flowing river, was supported by fire from two squadrons of British tanks part of another 504th battalion and around 100 American and British guns [other accounts talk of support by typhoon aircraft].
The flimsy assault boats did not arrive until twenty minutes before H-Hour, and according to Gavin there were only twenty-six of them, not the expected thirty three. Undaunted the first wave of paratroopers scambled aboard, picked up the paddles or deployed their rifle butts, and set out for the north bank. Under fire all the way, the water lashed with machine gun fire and mortar bombs, the first wave got across - or rather about half of them did. Those who landed scrambled up the bank and dashed for the shelter of a bank some distance away, while the sappers who had crossed with the US paratroopers paddled the boats back for the next lift. In all, these boats - the eleven that survived the first two crossings - made six crossings of the river that afternoon, taking across the 3rd and 1st batallions of the 504th PIR in the face of enemy fire. It was a superb example of what well trained, aggressive infantry can do. Once on the north bank the 504th proceeded to attack the enemy positions defending the road and rail bridges.
It might be mentioned that, contrary to most popular accounts, this assault was not an exclusively US affair. The paratroopers were accompanied by British sappers of the 6l5 Field Squadron and 11th Field Company, Royal Engineer, who made five river crossings in all, taking heavy equipment and ammunition across before a small bridgehead was established on the north bank.
Nor was the 504th the only Allied unit attacking the Nijmegen bridge. On the 'both end at once' principle, tanks of the Grenadier Guards Group were mounting an assault on the south end of the bridge, where Colonel Vander-voort's battalion of the 505th PIR, supported by Guards' tanks and infantry, was wearing down the resistance in the town. By 1700hrs British tanks and American infantry had driven the Germans back to the bridge, but the bridge was a bastion. When it fell, it was discovered that thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun and two 20mm cannon were mounted on the bridge, with plenty of sniper and machine-gunners deployed on the girders. As the enemy were pushed out of Nijmegen, they were able to cross the bridge and reinforce the SS troops fighting with the 504th paratroopers on the north bank, who now stood in urgent need of tank support.
This was a difficult moment, but cometh the hour, cometh the man. With a good chance that the bridge would be blown at any time, a troop of Guards' tanks, led by Sergeant Robinson of the Grenadier Guards, crossed the Nijmegen bridge under fire, arriving at the far end just as the paratroopers of the 504th PlR ran to meet them. And so, at 1900hrs on D plus 3, the US 82nd Airbourne - and the Guards Armoured Division - took the Nijmegen bridge.
Sergeant Peter Robinson gives his account of the crossing at Nijmegen bridge:
The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing.
Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was ‘I have to surrender’
Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks [Carrington in his autobiography said four tanks were intact although thre was slight damage to two of them] but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it’ He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again.
Lord Carrington joined us about two or three hours after because he had been sitting on the north end of the road bridge protecting that.
The first British officer across the bridge was Captain Lord Carrington, then -second-in-command of a tank squadron, later to become - Foreign Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Government:
During the day - D plus 3 - I had been told that my task was to rush the bridge and we spent most of the day waiting to be ordered forward; the waiting in a park just south of the bridge went on for hours. When the order come the first tank across was commanded by Sergeant Robinson followed by three others, and off they went. This was in the early evening, just before dark and I went after them; mine was the fifth tank across the bridge and there were still Germans in the superstructure.
When I got across there was no sign of Sergeant Robinson or indeed anyone else [not surprising when you consider that Sergeant Robinson had said that Carrington joined them two or three hours later], so I halted my tank tank at the north end of the bridge and wirelessed back that the bridge was open. I was there for a short while; about ten minutes, and then more tanks started coming across and I went forward to find Sergeant Robinson. He was stopped about a mile up the road, talking to some US paratroopers, who were very pleased to see us.
Andrew Gibson-Watt was with the Welsh Guards;
My own complaint is the acceptance of the thesis (which has been pro-pounded by other historians) that the Guards Armoured Division should have gone on to Arnhem on the night they captured the Nijmegen bridge. The Division, 'off-balance' and still heavily embroiled in Nijmegen town, could not have done so. There was nothing to go on with: the main preoccupation was now to defend the bridge against the expected counter-attack. Any element which had gone on would have found it very hard to get over the Arnhem bridge which was not and never had been held by John Frost's gallant force; if it had got over it would have been met by the greatly superior German Forces in that part of Arnhem. An advance that night was 'not on' and general military historians have erred greatly in assuming that it would hava been possible and should have been done.
We have always been fed the story about fired-up American paratroopers railing at the British tankers for not going straight on; but Sargeant Peter Robinson's memoir tells a very different tale.
It is time for this accusation, which does not stand up to detailed examination, to be finally refuted.
The credit for this joint Allied operation in taking the Nijmegen bridge has gone to the troopers of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment whose courage and tenacity in pressing their river asault home is beyond all praise. Nevertheless, there is a question here.
Why was a parachute unit, expensively trained lo cross obstacles like river bridges by air on D-Day, reduced to making a frontal assault in borrowed boats three days later? This is not to question the gallantry and professional skill of the 504th PIR - far from it - but it remains a valid question and one that reflects on General Gavin. Had the 82nd landed a parachute force north of the bridge on D-Day or moved at once to lake the bridge from the south, this costly river assault would not have been necessary and the Guards Armoured could have pushed on to Arnhem on D plus 2.
The answers to that question have been obscured by myth and on the evening of D plus 3 the myths were joined by controversy - and some very unpleasant and unjustified accusations. As related the first four tanks across the Nijmegen bridge were quickly joined by the 1st Squadron Second-in-command. Captain Lord Carrington.
Carington recalls meeting – ‘a perfectly civil American officer who was very pleased to see us.' If so, this pleasure did not last. This American officer was later to castigate the Guards as 'yellow-bellied cowards' and alleged that he felt 'betrayed' when these five Guards tanks did not immeadiately set out down the road to Arnhem to relieve its; beleaguered 1st Airborne Division. He was told that there were German anti tank guns and armour up ahead to which he replieed, again allegedly, that his men would mount the tanks, come with the Guards and clear the guns out of the way,
Lord Carrington again:
My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead [this objective of sitting around to form a bridgehead sounds ridiculous when you consider the strategic objective of Market Garden, to get across the Rhine ready to invade the Rhur – I wonde rif such an order was ever issued?]. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place.
Gavin 's memoirs tend to confirm Lord Carrington's point:
The tanks of the Grenadier Guards engaged two 88mms dug in on the northern shore, destroyed them and continued across the bridge. The first people to greet them were the paratroopers of the 504th. So enthusiastic were they that one of them actually kissed the leading British tank.
This alleged incident between Peter Carrington and an American officer, widely reported and probably exagerated, still leaves a bad taste. The first allegation is unfair- 'yellow-bellied cowards' do not cross a river bridge in tanks, knowing that it might blow up beneath them at any moment [Carrington of course crossed some two or three hours after the first four tanks had crossed – he was busy ‘defending’ the southern end of the bridge from which they had all come]. Nor does a mere captain - even a captain of His Majesty’s Foot Guards -take it on himself to rush off into enemy territory, especially when the current task is to aid the American forces on the north bank hold their bridgehead in the face, of counter-attacks [Wouldn’t the first across rush on and follow up troops take on the task of defending the bridge from any counter attack?].
Gavin is far from blameless in this matter. In his memoirs, published in 1978, he records a meeting on the following morning with Colonel Tucker of the 504th, who, says Gavin, was livid..…. I had never seen him so angry.' Tucker' had expected that when he had seized his end of the bridge the British armour would race on to Arnhem and link up wilh Urquhart. Tucker then asks Gavin: '"What the hell are they doing? Why in the hell don't they get to Arnhem?”. “I did not have an answer for him,' says Gavin,"
This lack of an answer is curious. The Guards Armoured Division had been helping Gavin's division for the last two days and it seems surprising that Gavin did not know this. In recent hours the Coldstream Guards Group were helping to head off a belated attack on the Groesbeek position, the Irish Guards Group had gone back down the road to Eindhoven to deal with another enemy incursion and the Grenadier Guards Group had just taken part in the river crossing at the bridge - yet Gavin claims he did not know what the Guards Division was doing. Very curious.
Let us therefore, provide an answer to Colonel Tucker's question. The Guards Armoured Division were not ready to advance up the road to Arnhem on the evening at D plus 3 because for the last two days they had been scattered all over Nijmegen and the south bank of the Waal, an area of some twenty-five square miles, assisting the 82nd Airborne Division carry out a task. General Gavin had neglected to complete on D-Day.
Only five Guards tanks - part of Carrington's squadron were north of the bridge and they were engaged supporting Tucker's men; it is surprising that Colonel Tucker did not know this. The bridge fell to the Guards at around 1900hrs, when dusk was falling. Before pressing on to Arnhem the Guards Division tanks must be collected overnight, reformed, rearmed, refuelled and their crews briefed for the next phase of the advance [sounds all a bit lame in the overall strategy] - always assuming they could be spared from the fighting that was still going on south of the river, and defending the narrow Allied bridgehead on the north bank.
Let us be frank the 82nd should have taken the "Nijmegen bridge on D-Day, September 17. By failing to do so Gavin made a major contribution to the failure to entire Arnhem operation and it will not do to pass the blame for that failure on to the British or to Captain Lord Carrington. Colonel Tucker bitterly complains about a delay of twelve hours but Gavin never provided the slightest explanation of the delay of thirty-six hours after his failure to take the Nijmegen bridge imposed on the entire Market garden operation [counter attack which does not excuse the situation as Carrington found it on D
plus 3].
Gavin never expressed one word of apology for not taking the Nijmegen bridge on D-Day or the slightest acknowledgement of the help given to his division by the sappers of XXX Corps and the tank crews of the Guards Armoured Division. All the credit was down to him, any blame went to the British:
However, following the 82nd's action in Holland, Lt. Gen. Sir Miles C. Dempsey, British Second Army Commander, paid this tribute to Gen. Gavin:
"I'm proud to meet the Commanding General of the greatest division in the world today."
In my opinion, the capure of the bridges intact, like the other bridges, was in the area, was the result of careful study and planning on the part of the parachutists of the 82nd Airborne Division and careful carrying out of these plans by everyone, regardless of his rank or position, who was associated with this task.
It seems a pity that this ‘carefull study and planning' did not extend to how the 82nd were to avoid a frontal assault on the Nijmegen bridge and when they were to carry if out. A more perceptive analysis comes from Major-General (then Lt Col) John Frost, commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge;
The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to the capturing of the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walk over on D-Day; yet the 82nd Division could spare only one battalion as they must at all costs secure the Groesbeek heights where the Corp HQ was to be sited.
These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful…. and highly successfull. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the pubic mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commander’s chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainty might have been better if some effort had been made made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night, That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance.
Another problem seems to have been an abundance of chiefs in Nijmegen. By the Evening of D plus 3 Nijmegen contained the XXX Corps commander, Lieutenant General Horrocks, the Airborne Corps commander, Lieutenant General Browning, the Guards Armoured commander, Major-General Adair, and the 82nd Airborne commander, Major-General Gavin, all debating what to do - mop up in the town, secure the bridgehead north of the Waal, beat off attacks now threatening Groesbeek and down the road from Eindhoven, and whether to bring up the infantry of the 43rd Division for the push to Arnhem.
The senior commander was General Horrocks, so the finger of decision points at him, but someone could have rounded up some tanks and guns, loaded a baltalion or two of that enthusiastic US infantry into trucks and sent them up the road to Arnhem. How for they would have got is a matter of speculation – not very far in this author's opinion –
[However, the Germans who were in the vicinity and were quite clear that a good opportunity was missed by the Allies:
‘The only German force able to defend the ‘Island’ is what remains of SS Capt. Victor Graebner's Reconnaissance Battalion, a few armored cars and halftracks with 20- and 37-millimeter guns.
‘However, for five hours (between 1900 hours and midnight [20th Spt]) there is no German force blocking the road to Arnhem. Harmel's scramble pays off, by 1200 hours on September 21st, a defensive line begins to form at Elst. The Allies last and best hope of a successful finish to Operation Market-Garden disappears in the growing light of a September morning.]
- but it would have given evidence of effort and spiked an unpleasant and unjust controversy that has rumbled on from that day to this.
It is not hard to understand the immediate reaction of that US officer who allegedly spoke to Lord Carrington or of Colonel Tucker to Gavin: their unit had just pulled off a great feat-of-arms and they wanted to see this success exploited by the rescue of their British brother-paratroopers at Arnhern. However, once passions have cooled, it is hard to see how this stident position could be main¬tained, as it still is maintained in some quarters, sixty years after the battle. The US Official History makes the point that even after the Nijmegen bridge had finally been taken:
The Guards Armoured's Coldsteam Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the the Airborne Division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal. Even those did not make if until next day, D plus 4,
21st September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings. Once on the north bank, much of the British armour ond infontry hod to be used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute
had forged. By the time the Nijmegen bridge fell on D plus 3, it was early evening and it would be dark before an armoured column could be assembled to march on Arnhem. North of Nijmegen the enemy had tanks and guns and infantry of two SS Panzer divisions, in unknown but growing strength, established in country ideal defence.
This account adds that:
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, tha German had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinorced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
American readers should note that the above comment come From the US Official Histrory, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 - even supposing such a move was ever suggested - is revealed as a delusion.
Besides, it was already TOO late to save the men holding the Amhem bridge: by 20 September, Colonel Frost’s force had run out of everything but courage. On the morning of D plus 3, in a radio message to General Urquhart, Colonel Frost called for ammunition, medical supplies, food and a surgical team. Later that day, Frost was wounded and the shrinking Battalion perimeter was under attack from tanks and infantry; most of ihe buildings around the bridge were under fire
The stand of the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment and other remn¬ants of 1ST Airborne at the Arnhem Bridge ended at 0900 hrs un. Thursday, 21 September - D plus 4. The 2nd Battalion did not surrender: with only 150 men left and many of them wounded. Frost's force was overrun by the SS Panzer Grenadiers. Had the Guards Armoured been able to drive directly across the Nijmegen bridge when they arrived in the town on the morning of 19th September, it might all have been very different.
Lord Carrington’s account from his autobiography: Reflect on Things Past’.
………ordered to a 'rest area' which was comparatively unscarred and appeared to have no Germans nearby and were told that we would be unlikely to move for several days. We could sleep, clean ourselves and our kit, write letters, visit the neighbouring squadrons. The days extended to a week or more. Then we learned that far to the west the Americans were advancing southward and eastward, moving fast. We had not, of course, realized the extent to which the German defence had been stretched, the ceaseless attrition of their line by small-scale encounters but by hugely superior forces. It was hard to believe this really was the breakout the momenl of victory for 'Overlord', the end of the battle of Normandy. While we were digesting this, largely hoping that we would nevertheless get a good period of inactivity and respite, individuals were encouraged to take a few days off, to go lo the Normandy coast to swim or something of the kind, to enjoy a change. It was a generous concession. Three friends and I managed to borrow a second staff car which our Commanding Officer had acquired, I am uncertain how. We drove out of the battalion area, ostensibly to the coast. In the back were jerrycans of petrol, bedding rolls, a tank cooker and some boxed ration. We also took a jeep and two Guardsmen. When our little column was clear of the view of authority we stopped and had a quick conference. That morning the radio had reported the Americans advancing on Paris, entering Chartres. 'To hell with bathing,’ we said. 'History is being made! IT has to be Paris!'
The roads were packed with huge columns of Americans. We never saw another British vehicle. Somehow we passed up the columns, mingled with them, pointed to the Union Jack on our vehicles to bamboozle our way past outraged, white-helmeted American military police. We stuck in main toads -one had no idea of the situation of the Germans, and certainly a good many small German columns were moving by minor roads in the same direction as ourselves. It was anybody's guess how far we'd get. Of fighting there was no sign. At five o'clock in the afternoon we drove into Chartres. For four years France had been beyond an impenetrable curtain of war, its enchantments recollected by those of us lucky enough to be aware of them, its people being plundered and oppressed, we supposed, by the occupying power. It was startling, on that drive, to find how normal everything and everybody appeared. Chartres, its streets filled by throngs of American soldiers, was not in the least unlike one's pictures or recollections: Normandy, with its destruction, squalor and death was miles behind us - this didn't feel like war at all. We even found a table in a Chartres cafe and were able to have something to eat and drink that we hadn't cooked ourselves on a tank cooker. It was an extraordinary contrast. We drove out after half an hour, on the Paris road.
At seven o'clock we drove into Versailles. Here the great, broad avenue in front of the chateau was filled with milling crowds of the inhabitants, all in highly festive mood and mostly waving small tricolor flags. Our Union Jack was recognised and greeted everywhere with huge enthusiasm. Military traffic had thinned out but it was hard to believe we were near any sort of front line, and we pushed on towards Paris.
Shortly before eight o'clock we drove down ihe Champs Elysees. The tanks of General Leclerc's Free French Armoured Division were parked under the great avenue's trees, between the Arc de Triomphe and the Rond Point. An abandoned German Panther tank was in the Place de la Concorde, near the Jeu de Paume Gallery. Otherwise, of the enemy there was little trace.
When we had left our bivouac area that morning we had slept few nights except in a slit trench or under a tank since landing in France. We had assumed that wherever we found ourselves that night something of the same would apply - shovels were in car and jeep. We were, we imagined, moving towards the front, after all. When we reached the Place de la Concorde, however – crowds large but not overwhelming, traffic minimal - it was unclear what to do next. A slit trench and bivouac cover in the Tuileries Gardens seemed inappropri¬ate. One of us, David Fraser, knew Paris quite well - his father had been Military Attache until after the outbreak of war. 'I know where the Rilz is he said. 'Let's go there.' We did. And - contrast of all contrasts from the battlefields we had just quitted - sitting in the Ritz were a number of well-dressed people, elegant ladies perched on bar stools chatting, sipping cocktails, looking unconcerned and some¬what indifferent to the dramatic scenes of war and peace, occupation and liberation in which we supposed we were playing a part. The impression given was that the war was a distraction, an intrusion in somewhat bad taste.
In evidence at the Ritz, however, were a good many Amer¬icans already - and a good many journalists. Another of our party was Neville Berry, a son of Lord Kemsley and himself a newspaperman in peacetime. A moment's thought convinced him that Kemsley Newspapers should open a Paris office; that the office would need a Paris bank account; and that a leasonable first charge on it would be to keep a small party of Grenadier liberators for two nights at the Ritz.
'We'd better have rooms here,’ he said, 'Leave it to me.' Half an hour and several bottles of Perrier Jouet later we sat down to a perfectly tolerable dinner, interrupted by an air-raid warning which caused disproportionate alarm, we thought. I had started to order the dinner, an order being acknowledged by the suave head waiter in perfect English, Facetiously and rather foolishly I smiled at him and said, 'Did you talk English when the Germans were here?'
He was busy writing and didn't look up us he said politely, 'No. I talked German when the Germans were here.
It put us in our place. We gathered the last Germany had left by the back door not long belore our arrival at the front. A campaign is only a campaign but the Ritz is the Ritz.
Next day we went to the British Embassy, where David Fraser was keen to discover whether anything was known of his family's flat and possessions, abandoned when the Ger¬mans had conquered all in 1940. We banged on the closed gates of the huge entrance in the Rue St Honore. After an interval a wicket gate was cautiously opened. One of the splendid tribe of expatriate porters who had been there throughout the German occupation looked at us, astonished. On our battledress jackets was the shoulder flash 'Grenadier Guards'.
'Good heavens!' he said, 'Good heavens''
We were the first he had seen. He told us with pride that Goering had attempted to lake over the Embassy his his Paris residence.
"'You can go away," I told them”, he said. '"You can go away! This is the British Embassy."'
It was a lovely reunion. David Fraser learned that his parents' furniture had beens moved into the Embassy and was safe. We signed the visitors' book, the first compatriots to do so since 1940. A little later an elderly English lady. Lady Westmacott, approached me as I was returning to the Ritz.
'Young man, are you from The Times?
'
'No, as a matter of fact I'm in the Grenadiers’
She seemed most disappointed. No doubt she had some tales to tell. I think she had been living in the hotel throughout.
As we drove westwards the next day to rejoin our battalion in Normandy………
Carrington’s account of his battle at Nejmegan bridge:
………….The first major water obstacle we crossed - bridge success¬fully captured by the Americans - was the Maas at Grave. On the bridge was standing the well-remembered figure of my first Commanding Officer in the 2nd Grenadiers, Boy Brown-ing, now commanding the Airborne Corps. As ever, he looked immaculate, gleaming boots and belt, trim, confident and formidable. The leading squadron commander, Alex Gregory-Hood, had also served as a subaltern in his battalion before the war. He dismounted and, unrecognizably covered with dust, approached the General and saluted. This was the begin¬ning, it seemed, of the link-up. This was a dramatic moment.
'Sir!'
'Who are you?'
'Sir, it's Alex!'
Boy Browning looked astonished.
'Good God,' he remarked, 'I always said it was cleaner to come by air!'
Later that day we drove into the outskirts of Nijmegen, discovered it was still full of Germans, tried to rush the bridge in the evening, lost tanks and men and realized the
unpalat¬able fact that the place would have to be cleared - methodi¬cally. That takes time. It also demands daylight unless it’s to go very, very slowly indeed.
Next dawn, therefore, we quartered the city and worked through it, clearing it of its German defenders. At the same time assault boats were brought forward - up that same narrow, congested road - and troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division, with enormous bravery, began crossing the Waal west of the town. The boats were unfamiliar, the casualties high, but a significant number of Americans got across and began working their way eastward along the north bank. At half past three in the afternoon our own squadrons and companies of the Grenadier group began their attack on the hard core of the German defence - the approaches to the bridge, and the buildings dominating them. Some public gar¬dens on a hill immediately above the south end of the bridge were strongly garrisoned and were eventually taken by the Grenadiers just after six o'clock.
At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his ac¬tion. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine. A film represen¬tation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken -probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay.
The pursuit had ground to a halt. The war was clearly going on. We spent the winter of 1944 in Holland, first near Nijmegen where the Germans had flooded the land between the two great rivers, and there was little activity. There were some comic Incidents; we discovered ……………
End of Lord Carrington’s account from his autobiography: Reflect on Things Past’.
5 • NIJMEGEN 17-20 SEPTEMBER
from: The battle for the Rhine 1944
by Robin Neillands 2005
………….Things were now hotting-up on the Reichswald front. This suddenly came to life with the arrival of the first units of the German II Parachute Corps, seven under strength infantry battlions, amounting to some 2,000 men in all. These put in a strong attack on the Allied line near around Mook and Reithorst, their assault supported by 88, mortars and mufli-barrelled nebelwerfers. This attack made some progress until the early afternoon, when it was halted and driven back by the Coldstream Guards Group which as related, had now been detached from XXX Corps to form part of the 82nd's divisional reserve.
As this attack petered out on the evening of D plus 3 [20th September], the 3rd Battalion, 504th PIR put in a gallant assault across the Waal, an action the US History rightly describes as 'one of the most daring and heroic in all the Market Garden fighting’. This assault, across 400 yards of fast-flowing river, was supported by fire from two squadrons of British tanks part of another 504th battalion and around 100 American and British guns [other accounts talk of support by typhoon aircraft].
In fairness to Lord Carrington, I wouldn't have fancied pushing up a single road, at night without lots of support.
As I understand it, the infantry support who usually operated with his tank squadron was still fighting pockets of resistance on the southern side of the Waal. It is suicidal for tanks to operate at night without integral infantry support. Although their were US airbourne forces on the north side, it is very difficult to condict combined arms operations with troops unfamiliar with your units SOPs.
It is easy with hindsight to say that a troop of tanks could have changed the whole outcome of the operation but it is unfair to level that criticism.
Nijmegen
Brigadier General Harmel can see British tanks rolling onto the Nijmegen bridge. Harmel knows that Model has ordered the bridge not be destroyed, but he knows that Bittrich, his immediate superior, has ordered the bridge wired for demolition. Harmel decides to destroy the Nijmegen bridge.
When he sees two British tanks cross the bridge, he gives the order for the bridge to be destroyed—but nothing happens. Again, he gives the order for the bridge to be destroyed—again nothing happens. As Harmel and his staff start to retreat before the onrushing tanks, he orders every available gun moved and sited on the Nijmegen-Arnhem road. He then radios headquarters: “They’re over the Waal.”
At the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, British tankers blast the last remaining obstacles—two 88-millimeter guns—and the road to Arnhem, only 11 miles away, now seems open. It is now 1915 hours.
But the British tanks do not advance. The 82nd Airborne’s officers and men consider the 1st Airborne their brothers, and the All American’s paratroopers are exasperated at the delay. Colonel Reuben Tucker, commander of the 504th Regiment berates a British officer: “Your boys are hurting up there at Arnhem. You’d better go. It’s only 11 miles.”
But the British commanders—Horrocks, Browning, and others—want to wait for more fuel, ammunition, and infantry support. They will wait almost 18 hours.
As XXX Corps settles in for the night, Col. Heinz Harmel scrambles to find forces to defend "the Island" - the stretch of elevated road between Nijmegen and Arnhem. He said,
The four tanks who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us. ... Why did they not drive on to Elst instead of staying in Lent? ... [A]t this instant there were no German armored forces available to block Elst. ... [The pause] gave us time to get [Kampfgruppe] Knaust down there. It was ironic really, at the same time we lost the Nijmegen bridge, we were just about over the Arnhem bridge. The Allied infantry were too late supporting their tanks.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:50 am Post subject:
the Germans were now in full retreat and the tanks were shooting at everything that moved. So when they saw some figures emerge from a ditch on the northern bank of the Waal, they assumed they were Germans and even began firing. In fact it was Burriss and his men, who had survived the crossing and fought their way up the dike to the northern end of the bridge. They in turn could not yet see if the tanks were German or British and began firing back. Finally the two sides recognized each other.
His fatigues still wet from the river crossing and covered in blood from his shrapnel wound, Burriss approached Guardsman Leslie Johnson, the gunner of a Sherman tank as it reached the northern bank.
“You guys are the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in a long time,” Burriss remembers saying.
“You’re a bloody mess, old chap,” Johnson replied.
Why the Germans did not blow the bridge before the tanks had a chance to get across remains a mystery to this day. SS Brigadier-General Heinz Harmel of the 10th SS “Frundsberg” Panzer Division had carefully laid charges, manufactured precisely to fit the girders on the bridge. Watching from an old Fort, the Hof van Holland, a few hundred years inland on the northern bank, he waited until the tanks were at the exact middle of the bridge and then ordered an engineer to blow the charges. Nothing happened. (Many Dutch people believe that the cables to the explosives had been cut by Jan van Hoof, a 22 year-old Dutch underground worker, who had been used as a guide by the 82nd Airborne. Whether this was enough to save the bridge is still unclear, even after a Dutch commission investigated the story after the war.)
Burriss and his men had done their job, albeit at a high price. But now, to his horror, as his men formed a perimeter at the north end of the bridge, the tanks stopped. Burriss could not believe it. Lt. General Brian Horrocks, the commander of XXX Corps, had told him at the briefing in the power station that, once across, the tanks would “go like hell” to Arnhem – only 11 miles away – where John Frost’s men were still desperately holding out three days after arriving. He expected them to go full throttle to reach them before darkness. Instead they seemed to be settling in for the night.
Burriss asked one of the tank drivers who was in the charge. The driver pointed him to the Sherman of Captain Peter Carrington (later Lord Carrington, British foreign secretary and NATO Secretary-General) of the 2d Armoured Battalion, the Grenadier Guards. Burriss approached Carrington and insisted he advance towards Arnhem with his tanks. Carrington explained he had no orders to advance.
“OK, I’m giving you an order,” said Burriss, an officer of equal rank in a different army.
“That went down like a lead balloon,” he laughs. Carrington refused to move.
“You yellow son-of-a-bitch,” Burriss remembers saying. With that, he cocked his Tommy gun and said, “If you don’t move I’m going to blow your * head off.”
Carrington withdrew into his tank and closed the hatch. “We felt betrayed,” Burriss explains sixty years later. (Carrington denies this exchange with Burriss ever took place. “They were delighted to see us,” he says. “I thought we did bloody well to get across the bridge.”) Shortly afterwards, Major Cook arrived and remonstrated with the British as Burriss had done, followed by Colonel Tucker, the commander of the 504th, but to no avail. “They were fighting the war by the book,” Tucker would later say.
Battle for Arnhem from the German perspective
The only forces on the 'Island', or Betuwe, able to oppose a breakthrough were the survivors of Graebner's Reconnaissance Battalion 9. This decimated group was deployed with one weak company on picket duty on the southern bank of the lower Rhine, opposite Arnhem's western suburbs and the bridge, and the remnants of another in Elst. As the first Sherman tanks, scattering escapees from the Nijmegen garrison, surged into Lent, the road ahead was open. All that stood in the way of XXX Corps and Arnhem during much of the night of 20-21 September were a few security pickets.
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Then the first Bilderberg meeting took place 10 years later in the Oosterbeek hotel the former SS Prince owned
The exact same location of the 1st Airborne HQ during the doomed battle for Arnhem
There are also serious questions over why XXX corps sherman tanks halted at 19:00 on the night of 20th Setember with potentially a clear run to Arnhem less than 30 minutes away.
A pistol was pulled by the americans who were aware that just up the road the 1st airborne were only just hanging on and desperately needed the tank firepower
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:39 am Post subject:
I just had a chat with Moffat T Burris on the phone from South Carolina
He says after the 4 sherman tanks of the Grenadier Guards rolled over the Nijmegen bridge & stopped he told them to get moving toward Arnhem - when the lead tank commander refused - he stuck the muzzle of his tommy gun to the side of Carrington's head and told him to set off in the tanks imediately to Arnhem or he'd 'blow his ****ing head off'.
Theirs is the Glory (1946) Gaumont British Picture Corporation
"Re-enactment of World War 2 Battle of Arnhem. Later lavishly remade as A Bridge Too Far." Part of Operation Market Garden, the Battle of Arnhem was a failed attempt to capture the a bridge in the city of Arnhem in Holland. This remarkable docu-drama was shot 1 year after the battle, with the actual soldiers and civillians re-creating their experiences, and it features captured German armor.
http://www.archive.org/details/TheirsIsTheGlory1946
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:48 am Post subject:
Tonight's show has a couple of Bilderberg references September 1944's Operation Market Garden has several bizarre Bilderberg connections.
Firstly former SS officer and likely Nazi spy Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was actually with Monty, Browning etc. in Whitehall war planning in the run up to Market Garden in September 1944. Sir Brian Urquhart makes reference to it in the second clip.
Also a later chair of Bilderberg Lord Peter Carrington was a Grenadier Guards captain in one of the early tanks over the Nijmegen bridge and because he would not go on to Arnhem he was confronted at gunpoint by Captain T. Moffat Burriss of 82nd Airborne who had just lost half his company seizing the north end of the Nijmegen bridge.
Then the little town of Oosterbeek, which was where the Bristish 1st airborne were headquartered in the Hartenstein hotel, was surrounded by Germans. They called the perimeter "Der Hexenkessel" which means "Witches Cauldron" because 10,000 paratroopers went into Arnhem, only 1,000 managed to get back to the allied lines alive. This was of course the venue, ten years later, for the first Bilderberg meeting at Prince Bernhard's Bilderberg hotel in Oosterbeek.
http://bcfm.org.uk/2012/03/16/17/friday-drivetime-62/15420
The Battle For Arnhem – A Bridge Not Far – recent
revelations that show General Montgomery’s
Operation Market Garden, in September 1944, aimed
at severing German supply lines on the Western
Front. It was early morning in Holland on Sunday
17th September 1944 and as the gliders and
paratroopers poured down along a sixty mile
corridor to hold the bridges. The furthest bridge
from the front line at Arnhem became the focus of
attention as and the biggest airborne operation
in history unfolded. Was it really ‘A Bridge Too
Far’ as the title of Cornelius Ryan’s book and
Robert E. Levine’s famous film imply? Or could
the tanks and ground troops of XXX corps have
gotten through to relieve the surrounded British
paratroopers? With Arnhem only 10 kilometres, a
20 minute drive away and a virtually clear road
ahead – the M4 Sherman tanks inexplicably halted
for 17 hours. By the time the tanks started
rolling at lunchtime the next day British
paratroopers had run out of ammunition, been
forced to surrender and German panzer
reinforcements had arrived to block the way. The
Nijmegen bridgehead was established around
19:00hrs, 3 hours later, at 22:00hrs that evening
the British were forced to surrender at the
Arnhem bridge. So paratroopers of the 1st
Airborne division at Arnhem bridge may have been
relieved in the nick of time and war in Europe
could have been over six months earlier, by
Christmas 1944. We look at Cornelius Ryan’s book
‘A Bridge Too Far’ as well as Joseph E. Levine’s
film of the same name. Interviews with: Captain
T. Moffatt Burriss, author of ‘Strike and Hold’
who was commander of i-company, 504th regiment,
82nd Airborne division during the legendary Waal
river crossing; Robert Kershaw author of ‘It
Never Snows In September’ who interviewed 10th SS
Panzer Division Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel,
commander of the German defence of the Nijmegen
and Arnhem bridges; Major Tony Hibbert who was a
senior officer of 2nd batallion 1st brigade,
British 1st Airborne division at the Arnhem
bridge; Tim Lynch author of ‘Operation Market
Garden: The Legend of the Waal Crossing’; Sir
Brian Urquhart, army intelligence officer in the
run-up to the operation he was critical of it and
transferred before it began… but later became
Secretary General of the newly formed United Nations.
There’ll be a special ‘new Betuwe scenario’ event
at noon on Saturday 17th March at Cut And Thrust
Wargames on Old Market. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 8:49 pm Post subject:
Friday's post a bit rushed - this much more comprehensive
Not one, not two but THREE bizarre connections between Bilderberg and the biggest Airborne Operation the world has ever seen
Friday's show about Operation Market Garden has several Bilderberg references
Sunday 17th September 1944's Operation Market Garden and Bilderberg
Horrocks, Monty with Bilderberg founder & former SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands
1) Firstly Despite being a former SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was actually with Field Marshal Montgomery, General Brian Horrocks etc. in Whitehall influencing planning intelligence at the highest level in the run up to Market Garden in September 1944. The Royal Navy and RAF did not trust Bernhard but it seems King George VI insisted he had to be trusted by the Army as he could liase with the Dutch resistance. Trouble with that was he knew very little about Holland, he was a German, brought up in Bavaria who married into the Dutch royal family in 1937. Sir Brian Urquhart makes reference to Bernhard's presence too in the second clip toward the end of the show. Bernhard was chair of the top secret Bilderberg conference from 1954 to 1975.
2) A later chairman of the Bilderberg Lord Peter Carrington was a young Grenadier Guards captain and radio operator in the second squadron of tanks to cross the Nijmegen road bridge. Because he would not go on to Arnhem after the bridge was taken at 18:30hrs on the evening of Wednesday 20th September he was threatened at gunpoint by Captain T. Moffat Burriss of 82nd Airborne who ordered Carrington to get moving. Confronted by Burriss' tommy gun pointing at his head Carrington pulled the lid down on his tank and stayed in there all night. Burriss had just lost half his company seizing the north end of the Nijmegen bridge and now the advance had ground to a halt right at the crucial moment.
At that point evidence suggests the road to Nijmegen was clear of any force that could stop a tank - this we know because of an artillery map passed to parachute regiment liason officer and historian Robert Kershaw by CO of the 10th SS Panzer Division Heinz Harmel before he died. Artillery maps are very reliable because they show exact dispositions of friendly forces so the German artillery does not fire on their own people.
There is also the fact that Harmel was expecting to be able to dramatically blow up the Nijmegen Road bridge that evening when the first British tanks crossed it. When he tried to do this around 18:30hrs the charges failed to go off and this necessitated bringing his forces down from Arnhem to contain the forces he expected to be pouring over the captured Nijmegen bridge at any moment. Trouble was the Arnhem bridge was still being denied to him by Colonel Frost's regiment who held the Arnhem bridge until their defences collapsed around 22:00hrs that evening.
You may have noticed from the timings here that the mighty British Guards Armoured division had precisely 3 hours to make the 9km drive to Arnhem where Frost's men were hanging on by their fingernails. That would have taken Lord Carrington's M4 Sherman about 30 minutes to get there. By 22:00hrs Frost's position was being overrun so why did Peter Carrington, Allan Adair and Brian Horrocks not send one or two battle-groups of tanks through the security pickets which were half way to Arnhem in Elst to relieve the beleagured paratroopers in the nick of time?
Harmel was later to say "The four tanks who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us. ... Why did they not drive on to Elst instead of staying in Lent? ... At this instant there were no German armored forces available to block Elst. This gave us time to get Kampfgruppe Knaust down there." The time Horrocks gave them was in fact over seventeen hours, XXX corps did not move out until 12:30hrs the next day by which time the road was utterly impassable, it had been heavily fortified with anti-tank guns, dug-in tank destroyers and of course the notorious Tiger tanks.
3) Then there is the little town of Oosterbeek, which was where the Bristish 1st Airborne division were headquartered in the Hartenstein hotel, surrounded by Germans. The SS called the allied pocket "Der Hexenkessel" which means "Witches Cauldron" because, the lightly armed paratroopers in Oosterbeek who were short of ammunition were facing rockets, flamethrower tanks, Tiger and other heavy tanks as well as anti-aircraft guns. Only a tiny proportion of the British Paras. managed to get back to the allied lines alive. This Oosterbeek 'witches' cauldron' was the venue, ten years later, for the first ever secret Bilderberg meeting at Prince Bernhard's Bilderberg hotel in Oosterbeek.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:52 am Post subject:
Latest on this bizarre story is that the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek was called the Wolfheze Hotel in 1944 and was initially used by the British Kings Own Scottish Borderers then taken over by the German forces as a headquarters.
http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/frames.htm
If you look at ('From a Bridge too far'): http://www.ohiomotorpool.oldmv.com/htm-files/arnhem.htm
and scan down to the fourth map, you will see that the German blocking force (Battalion Krafft) shown as black line, waiting ready for 1st Airborne on that sunny afternoon on Sunday 17th September. The battalion obviously has its HQ right there in the Bilderberg Hotel (Wolfheze Hotel).
If you look at the Drop Zones and landing zones) on preceeding map the line was abreast 1st Brigade's route to Arnhem, at least some of the Brigade.
As you can see the Recce Squadron (yellow) ran straight into the line and had to double back quicktime. Only 2nd Battalion (Frost) and some of 1st Brigade HQ (with Brigade Major Hibbert, but without Lathbury, the Brigadier) made it through to Arnhem.
The 3rd Battalion (think they came from glider landing) got round the southern flank but failed to get anywhere near Arnhem and the 1st Battalion had to skirt round the block to the north and also failed to get to Arnhem.
How did this blocking force happen to be in the right place at the right time, and just a short while after landing?
So you can see that Bilderberg Hotel was where the 1st Airborne (and Market Garden) came unstuck (effectively) right after the Sunday 17th drop - a good place to celebrate 10 years later with 1st Bilderberg meeting perhaps?
Top German Hermann Abs (Chairman of Deutsche Bank), Hitler's banker and IG Farben guy was there (he must have thought it very appropriate venue). _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 10:15 pm Post subject:
Burriss asked one of the tank drivers who was in the charge. The driver pointed him to the Sherman of Captain Peter Carrington (later Lord Carrington, British foreign secretary and NATO Secretary-General) of the 2d Armoured Battalion, the Grenadier Guards. Burriss approached Carrington and insisted he advance towards Arnhem with his tanks. Carrington explained he had no orders to advance.
“OK, I’m giving you an order,” said Burriss, an officer of equal rank in a different army.
“That went down like a lead balloon,” he laughs. Carrington refused to move.
“You yellow son-of-a-bitch,” Burriss remembers saying. With that, he cocked his Tommy gun and said, “If you don’t move I’m going to blow your * head off.”
Carrington withdrew into his tank and closed the hatch. “We felt betrayed,” Burriss explains sixty years later. (Carrington denies this exchange with Burriss ever took place. “They were delighted to see us,” he says. “I thought we did bloody well to get across the bridge.”) Shortly afterwards, Major Cook arrived and remonstrated with the British as Burriss had done, followed by Colonel Tucker, the commander of the 504th, but to no avail. “They were fighting the war by the book,” Tucker would later say.
Much is always made of the squabbling between the British and the Americans in Operation Market Garden. In the movie A Bridge Too Far, based on Cornelius Ryan’s book of the same name, the British tank crews are shown making tea as a livid Major Cook, played by Robert Redford, urges them to advance. In fact, in this case, the divide was not so much between Brits and Yanks as between the do-or-die, risk-taking ethos of paratroopers and the more by-the-book, cautious mentality of the Guards. Nearly all the veterans of the 82nd talk about the camaraderie among paratroopers, whether British or American: Having lost half of his own company, their thoughts were now with the men of John Frost’s 2nd Battalion who were fighting even greater odds at the Arnhem bridge. “We knew what it was for paratroopers to go up against Tiger tanks with rifles and bazookas,” Burriss says. Carl Kappel, the commander of ‘H’ company, knew Frost personally.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 1:07 pm Post subject:
Inaugural Bilderberg meeting held in SS Field Marshal Model's wartime HQ
As we have already heard, TWO chairmen - former SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Lord Peter Carrington were both heavily involved in the Nijmegen/Arnhem Operation Market Garden debacle of September 1944 (see below).
For the background watch the fine film A Bridge Too Far
Model was the direct oposite equivalent to Bernard Montgomery who planned Market Garden
The plan was a failure but very nearly succeeded but for any one of three massive errors
1. The plans of MG were found by Germans in a crashed glider so the SS knew exactly what was planned (but was this a made-up story to cover for Bernhard's spying in Whitehall? how else did several German generals appear to have 'prior knowledge' of the attack)
2. Despite having up to 80 sherman tanks at their disposal - (The 40 tanks each of the Irish Guards and the Grenadier Guards regiments, WG & CG were tied up elsewhere) Carrington, Adaire, Horrocks and the Guards Armoured division failed to advance after sucessfully crossing the Nijmegen road bridge which the 10th SS panzer divsion commander had rigged to blow - but it did not blow up. Heinz Harmel was unprepared for the Nijmegen road bridge to fail to blow up so had to put together a blocking force in Elst that night, but before he had a chance to do that it looks almost certain that Carrington and the other tanks would have had almost no resistance, this is according to the German Artillery maps for that evening which show there were virtually no german forces between Lent and Arnhem.
3. Brigadier Lathbury of 1st Airborne Division failed to send several companies to the Arnhem bridge despite being given a clear route (Lion Route) to the main objective of Market Garden over the radio by Major Tony Hibbert who was at the bridge.
But most importantly -
It seems absolutely clear now that the first ever Bilderberg meeting was held in the same exact area of Arnhem exactly 10 years after operation Market Garden ... which Bernhard was spying in at the behest of the King George VI who put him in the planning job ... and Lord Carrington was the lead tank that 'stopped for tea' in the Bridge Too Far film.
T
food for thought Arnhem and Bernhardt – Dave B.
Posted on March 20, 2012 by Admin
If you look at (‘From a Bridge too far’):
http://inquiringminds.cc/food-for-thought-arnhem-and-bernhardt-dave-b http://www.ohiomotorpool.oldmv.com/htm-files/arnhem.htm
and scan down to the fourth map, you will see that the German blocking force (Battalion Krafft) shown as black line, waiting ready for 1st Airborne on that sunny afternoon on Sunday 17th September. The battalion obviously has its HQ right there in the Bilderberg Hotel (Wolfheze Hotel).
If you look at the Drop Zones 9and landing zones) on proceeding map the line was abreast 1st Brigade’s route to Arnhem, at least some of the Brigade.
As you can see the Recce Squadron (yellow) ran straight into the line and had to double back quicktime. Only 2nd Battalion (Frost) and some of 1st Brigade HQ (with Brigade Major Hibbert, but without Lathbury, the Brigadier) made it through to Arnhem.
The 3rd Battalion (think they came from glider landing) got round the southern flank but failed to get anywhere near Arnhem and the 1st Battalion had to skirt round the block to the north and also failed to get to Arnhem.
How did this blocking force happen to be in the right place at the right time??? and just a short while after landing.
So you can see that Bilderberg Hotel was where the 1st Airborne (and MG) came unstuck (effectively) right after the Sunday drop – a good place to celebrate 10 years later with 1st Bilderberg meeting.
Top German Hermann Abs (Chairman of Deutsche Bank), Hitler’s banker and IG Farben guy was there (he must have thought it very appropriate venue) along with another 8 or 9 Germans.
It would be good to know when name was changed and why (to disguise real name Wolfheze in case someone in the British contingent noticed?).
I wonder if the name (Bilderberg) has any particular meaning.
You say Bernhardt owned the hotel, did he acquire it after MG debacle?
I reckon Bernhardt (and Retinger) must have been laughing down his sleeve at getting all those Brits to gather at this notorious location.
dave
Credits: The Battle For Arnhem – A Bridge Quite Near
http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/58485 http://bcfm.org.uk/2012/03/16/17/friday-drivetime-62/15420
recent revelations that show Field Marshal Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden, in September 1944, aimed at severing German supply lines on the Western Front should have worked. It was early morning in Holland on Sunday 17th September 1944 and as the gliders and paratroopers poured down along a sixty mile corridor to hold the bridges. The furthest bridge from the front line at Arnhem became the focus of attention as and the biggest airborne operation in history unfolded. Was it really ‘A Bridge Too Far’ as the title of Cornelius Ryan’s book and Robert E. Levine’s famous film imply? Or could the tanks and ground troops of XXX corps have gotten through to relieve the surrounded British paratroopers? With Arnhem only 10 kilometres, a 30 minute drive away and a virtually clear road ahead – General Horrocks’ M4 Sherman tanks inexplicably halted for 17 hours. By the time the tanks started rolling at lunchtime the next day British paratroopers had run out of ammunition, been forced to surrender and German Panzer 5 & Tiger tank reinforcements had arrived to block the way. The Nijmegen bridgehead was established around 19:00hrs, 3 hours later, at 22:00hrs that evening the British were forced to surrender at the Arnhem bridge. So paratroopers of the 1st Airborne division at Arnhem bridge may have been relieved in the nick of time and war in Europe could have been over six months earlier, by Christmas 1944. We look at Cornelius Ryan’s book ‘A Bridge Too Far’ as well as Joseph E. Levine’s film of the same name. Interviews with: Captain T. Moffatt Burriss, author of ‘Strike and Hold’ who was commander of i-company, 504th regiment, 82nd Airborne division during the legendary Waal river crossing; Robert Kershaw author of ‘It Never Snows In September’ who interviewed 10th SS Panzer Division Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel, commander of the German defence of the Nijmegen and Arnhem bridges; Major Tony Hibbert who was a senior officer of 2nd batallion 1st brigade, British 1st Airborne division at the Arnhem bridge; Tim Lynch author of ‘Operation Market Garden: The Legend of the Waal Crossing’; Sir Brian Urquhart, army intelligence officer in the run-up to the operation he was critical of it and transferred before it began… but later became Secretary General of the newly formed United Nations. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Last edited by TonyGosling on Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:10 pm Post subject:
Got this wrong I'm afraid.
Due to being fed duff info that the Wolfheze hotel 'changed its name' to the Bilderberg hotel.
In fact the Wolfheze hotel has kept its name but was bought by the Bilderberg Hotel group and became one of their massive hotel chain.
Apologies.
TonyGosling wrote:
In September 1944 the Wolfheze Hotel in Oosterbeek was the HQ of the Nazis Army Group B - the HQ of Field Marshal Walther Model.
Sometime over the next decade the name of the Wolfheze Hotel was changed to Bilderberg Hotel which, from anecdotal evidence, seems to have been bought by Prince Bernhard himself during that time.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:10 pm Post subject:
More evidence that Bernhard passed the plans to his fellow Nazis before the op:
One of the best indiations of lies is multiple stories - more evidence that the 'Germans finding the Market Garden plans' story was a myth
In addition to the story that they were found in a crashed glider we have another version- that they were found on the dead body of a front line US 82nd or 101st Airborne division soldier
"The Germans also recovered a copy of the Market Garden plan from the corpse of an American officer who should not have been carrying it into combat." http://www.armchairgeneral.com/market-garden-65-years-on-reflections-o f-a-tragedy.htm
And yet another version of the 'How the Germans got the plans' story
I just read through this thread for the first time. I've read several books about airborne operations in WWII. Recently I read "Ridgway's Paratroopers," by Clay Blair. It was published circa 1985. It is a fine book, and very well documented.
He answered two points which were raised earlier in this thread.
The statement was that troops under the command of Gen. Kurt Student, who commanded German paratroopers who fought in Market-Garden, captured a complete copy of the Market-Garden plans. Cornelius Ryan reported this in "A Bridge Too Far." Clay Blair said that no other historian has been able to confirm this point. A member of the Arnhem Battle Research Group said that he had researched German records and had been unable to confirm it, either. The story may well be an "urban legend" of Market-Garden
http://forums.strikehold504th.com/index.php?/topic/39-operation-market -garden/page__st__60
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 11:44 pm Post subject:
Many have questioned why Eisenhower backed Monty's Operation Market Garden (MG) and failed to back US General Patton who, with hindsight, stood a better chance further south of dealing a decisive blow to the Nazis. Was indeed Eisenhower's choice to back Montgomery over Patton perversely exactly what the Nazis wanted?
Former SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was in Whitehall on the Market Garden planning team and quite possibly passing information back to FM Model/Adolf about exactly what was being planned.
King George VI (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) is also implicated as it was he no less who instructed MI6 officer Ian Fleming to approve Prince Bernhard's British army Whitehall security clearance.
George VI's brother Edward VIII was a known enthusiastic Nazi and married Nazi agent Wallace Simpson.
Royal Navy's Admiralty prohibited Bernhard from coming anywhere near them as he was believed to be a spy.
Bernhard contributed too to the fateful decision to get Airborne Army Intelligence Officer Sir Brian Urquhart kicked off the MG planning team because Urquhart was saying MG was going to be a disaster.
Meanwhile drops take place on Sunday 17th September 1944 with not to be confused with General Roy Urquhart commanding 1st Airborne Division. He bizarrely decides to go off on his own & gets lost in Arnhem and is hiding from Germans in a loft for most of the second and third day crucially leaving 1st Airborne without a leader.
All is going well however further down the road and XXX corps are heading for Arnhem now reaching the next town, Nijmegen. They are delayed but the Welsh Guards tanks are tied up at Grave Bridge and Coldstream Guards are fighting in Groosebeek Heights.
A young Lord Peter Carrington, later to chair Bildereberg, is sitting in his Grenadier Guards Sherman tank after just having crossed Nijmegen Bridge. As the last Arnhem bridge troops of John Frost's 2nd Batallion 1st Airborne Division were just about hanging on he gets out of his tank and brews up a cup of tea ... and it is 18 hours before he is ready to go.
Rest of Grenadier Guards and Irish Guards are back on the other side of Nijmegen bridge, thats up to 80 tanks, are then free to make armoured assault 20 minutes up the road to Arnhem at 7pm on Wednesday 20th September 1944 but they don't.
Moffat T Burris of 82nd Airborne points Tommy gun at Lord Carrington's head after losing half his men taking Nigmegen Bridge and orders Carrington to get in his ##### tank & get moving to Arnhem.
As portrayed loosely in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' in this excerpt
, Carrington battons down & stays put in his tank over night as last Brits are running low on ammunition at Arnhem bridge 10 miles away.
Lots of people wonder why as XXX corps commander of over 150 tanks General Brian Horrocks has halted the advance at 7pm, after all he is known to be the greatest preponent of the night tank assault in the Allied Armies.
10 miles up the road or a 20 minute Sherman tank drive away, in Arnhem, 3 Tiger tanks make their way through wreckage southwards across the Arnhem Bridge expecting to fight scores of Shermans which have not, in fact left Nijmegen. British 1st Airborne Colonel Frost & Major Hibbert can't stop them, they are hanging on by their finger nails at Arnhem bridge.
Carrington hides in his GG Sherman tank overnight at Nijmegen and eventually by the next morning in Arnhem, an injured Frost and Hibbert are out of amunition & have been forced to surrender.
This leaves only the Oosterbeek perimeter known as witches cauldron or HexenKessel. Here the remainder of 1st Airborne Div who never made it to Arnhem or the bridge despite being given a clear route, Lion, by Hibbert, have been encircled by German tanks, flamethrowers, rockets, artillery, anti tank guns, assault guns, mortars and being slowly massacred.
When Grenadier Guards and Irish Guards eventually start moving at 1pm on Thursday 21st September Harmel has a solid blocking force on the Nijmegen to Arnhem road - the chance to get the Arnhem bridgehead is lost.
Horrocks later writes a secret letter to Leo Cooper, who later married Jilly Cooper, to be opened after his death but Leo Cooper, now ill with parkinsons, loses the letter.
OC 10th SS Panzer Division Heinz Harmel says to author of 'It Never Snows In September' Robert Kershaw after war there were only a few security pickets between Nijmegen and Arnhem at the time as he was expecting to be able to blow up Nijmegen bridge.
Stories are rife that the Germans found a copy of the MG plans in a crashed glider also that a US soldier was captured with MG plans in his posession, several different stories but no proof, suggesting it's just a myth to cover for Bernhard's spying in the run up to the op.
Ten years later Bilderberg meeting takes place in the former Hexenkessel in Oosterbeek with former SS officer Prince Bernhard sitting proudly in the Chair.
Was Operation Market Garden deliberately scuppered to delay the end of the war so as to allow Nazis to get all their loot out of Berlin and smuggle it through to Sweden and S America?
The question has always been what could the motive possibly have been for Horrocks to halt the Irish and Grenadier guards' advance at the crucial moment just as they crossed the Nijmegen Bridge at 7pm on Wednesday 20th September 1944. Now we have a possible motive. Something very secret and very big was afoot. The Nazi capital flight had just begun at the notorious Red House meeting of which Martin Bormann was in charge, it was going to take best part of a year to achieve and nothing could be allowed to stop it. Not even the combined forces of the British & American post D-Day armies.
COMMENT: Pop conspiracy theory has focused on the Bilderberg Group in recent years, mistakenly identifying this important element of the power elite as comprising a “Masters of the Universe” entity, subsuming all other considerations and elements beneath its mantle.
Analysis of the Bilderbergers fails to include the deep historical and economic foundation underlying their creation. In particular, the pop conspiracy crowd does not deal in depth with the background of Prince Bernhard, the founder of the group (named, not incidentally, after the hotel outside of Arnhem, Holland, in which the group first met and formed. The Battle of Arnhem in September of 1944 and Prince Bernhard’s probable role as “the Traitor of Arnhem” are discussed below.)
In turn, Prince Bernhard cannot be understood absent analysis of his background and the aristocratic, political and economic legacy he has left behind. In addition to the record of his service in the SS and an I.G. Farben espionage office, the available evidence suggests strongly that Bernhard was a double agent for the Axis.
Furthermore, the record of his family through the decades is suggestive of involvement with the Underground Reich and the Bormann capital network.
Emacs!
Fly in the Ointment: General Horrocks (left) Field Marshal Montgomery (center) and Prince Bernhard (right)
Prince Bernhard zu Lippe von Bisterfeld was a German noble, member of the SS and operative of the Berlin N.W. 7 office of I.G. Farben, the German chemical cartel. The latter comprised an international espionage office, operated under the I.G. mantle. (See links and excerpts at the bottom of this post.)
Many of the books available for download for free on this site will give interested readers/listeners a great deal of depth on the decisively important “IG.”
After marrying Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, Bernhard fled with Juliana to the United Kingdom following the Third Reich’s conquest of that country. Bernhard then became head of the Dutch military infrastructure in exile, including the Dutch resistance!
(Bernhard has been lionized as an Allied hero, a viewpoint we feel is badly mistaken. Evidence suggests Bernhard was, in fact, a double agent for the Axis, not exactly a difficult deduction in light of his background.)
In what passes for scholarship on the Second World War, military historians have ruminated about the possible reason for the devastating damage inflicted on the Dutch resistance by the Gestapo.
We would suggest that having a member of the SS and I.G. Farben spy as head of an anti-Nazi resistance cadre is a very poor formula for success!
Bernhard’s Handiwork? British paratrooper’s grave at Arnhem
Of particular interest to us is the story of the betrayal of Operation Market Garden, which resulted in the Battle of Arnhem, popularized in a major motion picture (based on a book by Cornelius Ryan) “A Bridge Too Far.”
British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery envisioned the operation as a way to quickly bring the war to a conclusion. By dropping large numbers of airborne forces behind German lines to seize key bridges and facilitating the Allied advance, the plan was seen as a way to avoid a great number of casualties.
In the event, the operation was a disaster, with German forces slaughtering the paratroopers, many of them before they even landed. Postwar analysis has featured the probable betrayal of the battle plan to the Germans, often pinned on a Dutch resistance fighter named Christian Lindemans, code-named “King Kong.”
In a book titled Betrayal at Arnhem, author Anne Laurens set forth information suggesting that King Kong was really “Lee Harvey Lindemans.” A celebrated resistance fighter, Lindemans was ordered to pose as a double agent, ostensibly betraying the resistance to the Germans, while retaining allegiance to the resistance as a “triple agent.”
Lindemans was then “left out in the cold” by his control structure, betrayed and labeled as a turncoat to the Gestapo and blamed for betraying the plans for Operation Market Garden to the enemy. He died in a psychiatric ward after the war.
Author Laurens points out that the German units that slaughtered the Allied forces were moving into position before Lindemans was ordered to ostensibly “go over to the enemy” and that he could not have been the agent of betrayal.
The actual “Traitor of Arnhem” had to have been someone else–in these quarters we feel that Bernhard is the most probable candidate.
In this context, we should note that the Third Reich plans for the postwar entailed continuing the war until the wealth of the Reich could be secreted abroad in the 750 corporate fronts set up by Martin Bormann after the war. Had Operation Market Garden succeeded, the Bormann flight capital plan would have been cut short!
EXCERPT: . . . . Three times, at least, [Dutch resistance fighter] Kas de Graaf summoned Krist [Lindemans] to the Prince’s headquarters for official questioning, which was merely presented as a rough precis after the event and which was held in a most irregular way. Offically, Christaan Lindemans was simply informed that he was only being asked to report on his past missions before new ones were assigned him. But one would hagve had to be made of stone not to sense the atmosphere of these sessions. The word, therefore, passed round rapidly that it was only a front, that they were trying to make Christiaan responsible for a certain number of disasters and “accidents,” the most important of which was the betrayal of Arnhem. . . (Betrayal at Arnhem by Anne Laurens; Charter Books [SC]; copyright 1969 by Anne Laurens; pp. 153–153.)
. . . . When he summoned Christaan to his office in Anvers, he was told by the Prince’s HQ that if his “suspect” was unable to come, it would be because he had left on a mission. [British intelligence officer Oreste] Pinto was furious. As he had rather strained relations with the headquarters of Prince Bernhard, he immediately held him responsible for this crime of “high treason,” stating that although he knew of the suspected treachery of Christaan Lindemans, Prince Bernhard preferred to shut his eyes to it, rather than admit that this war hero was really a hired enemy agent. After this, Pinto swore that he would not rest until he had proved the allegations that he had really only thrown at random under the influence of his jealous temper.
Unfortunately for Christaan, Pinto was not the only one who who felt vindictive towards him. At the Chateau Rubens, the HQ of Prince Bernhard (who later transferred his HQ to the Chateau Wittouck), where a conflict was developing among the members of the different Dutch information services, it was decided to sacrifice Christaan Lindemans. It was merely a question of waiting the right time. . . . (Ibid.; pp. 149–150.)
. . . . At the beginning of September, there had been only a few scattered units of German troops in Holland. On September 8, these were joined by four divisions equipped with tanks and mobile guns–some of these mounted on the undercarriages of Panther tanks. These forces included the 9th and 10th Divisions of the II SS Panzer Corps. Until diverted to Arnhem, one of these had been scheduled to return to Germany from France; the other was preparing to leave Denmark. On the day of the Arnhem drop, [General Wilhelm “Willi”] Bittrich was to command all these forces–with the backing of Berlin and over the opposition of Model and Student.
What had alerted Bittrich–long before Christaan Lindemans arrived at Abwehr headquarters in Dreibergen–to Allied plans when they must still have been in their infancy? How was he able to form a formidable armored force in Holland without the intelligence service of SHAEF–Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary forces–being alerted?
Of all the reasons for the debacle at Arnhem, the most important was the loss of the element of surprise. Somebody had betrayed the Allies’ plans to the Germans. But the betrayer could not have been Christaan Lindemans. By the time he had entered the picture, everything had been already set in motion.
Was it possible that he had been used as a scapegoat? Had Christaan Lindemans betrayed his country, or was he an innocent victim, sacrificed to cover up for the real traitor? . . . (Ibid.; p. 17.)
In Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile, Paul Manning discusses this strategic decision, arrived at during the afternoon conference in Strasbourg, 8/6/1944–just over a month before the Battle of Arnhem.
EXCERPT: “. . . A smaller conference in the afternoon was presided over by Dr. Bosse of the German Armaments Ministry. It was attended only by representatives of Hecko, Krupp, and Rochling. Dr. Bosse restated Bormann’s belief that the war was all but lost, but that it would be continued by Germany until certain goals to insure the economic resurgence of Germany after the war had been achieved. He added that German industrialists must be prepared to finance the continuation of the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go underground, just as had the Maquis in France. . . .” (Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; Lyle Stuart [HC]; Copyright 1981 by Paul Manning; p.26.)
COMMENT: There is reason to suspect Bernhard of actively aiding the Nazi flight capital program and obscuring the Western corporate links to the Third Reich. Author John Loftus has fingered Prince Bernhard for his role in helping to obscure the link between the Bush family and the Thyssens. (That relationship is discussed at length in numerous For The Record programs, including FTR #‘s 361, 370, 435.)
EXCERPT: “. . . . According to Gowen’s source, Prince Bernhard commanded a unit of Dutch intelligence, which dug up the incriminating corporate papers in 1945 and brought them back to the “neutral” bank in Rotterdam. The pretext was that the Nazis had stolen the crown jewels of his wife, Princess Juliana, and the Russians gave the Dutch permission to dig up the vault and retrieve them. Operation Juliana was a Dutch fraud on the Allies who searched high and low for the missing pieces of the Thyssen fortune. . . ” (The Dutch Connection: How a Famous American Family Made its Fortune from the Nazis by John Loftus.)
COMMENT: Worth noting in this context is the goal of the Bilderbergers–the economic unification of Europe. Essentially, this is what the Third Reich envisioned as a goal of their military campaign, now realized in the form of the EU/EMU! Fiat’s Gianni Agnelli articulated these goals. Agnelli belonged to the Knights of Malta and was also very close to the P-2 milieu of Licio Gelli.
EXCERPT: . . . European integration is our goal and where the politicians have failed, we industrialists hope to succeed. . . . (Bilderberg; Sourcewatch)
Prince Bernhard’s descendants and and in-laws appear to have maintained his political lineage, with curricula vitae suggestive of Underground Reich activities and affiliations. Some thoughts and reflections in this regard:
Bernhard’s daughter Beatrix married a German Third Reich veteran, Claus von Amsberg. NB: Most sources are apologetic for Claus’s Third Reich activities. In The Nazis Go Underground (available for download for free on this website and written before the 1944 Normandy landings), author Kurt Riess notes that those tabbed for postwar underground work would have their backgrounds deliberately represented in such a way as to make them “acceptable.”
EXCERPT from Claus’s linked Wikipedia entry: ”. . . .The future prince was a member of such Nazi youth organisations as Deutsches Jungvolk and the Hitler Youth (membership in the latter was mandatory for all fit members of his generation) [1]. From 1938 until 1942, he attended the Baltenschule Misdroy. . . “In 1944, he was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht, becoming a soldier in the German 90th Panzergrenadier Division in Italy in March, 1945, but taken as a prisoner of war by the American forces at Meran before taking part in any fighting. . . .
Prince Friso–Claus and Beatrix’s son–was the chief financial officer of URENCO, the uranium enrichment company that was deeply involved with the smuggling of nuclear weapons technology to the A.Q. Khan network and to Saddam Hussein. (Friso moved to URENCO after a stint at Goldman Sachs.)
In FTR #‘s 384, 395, 447, 450, we set forth the URENCO links to nuclear smuggling. Note that the Dutch facility was deeply involved with the smuggling. One of the principals in the nuclear smuggling was Karl Heinz Schaab, a protege of Gernot Zippe, who helped to pioneer the uranium centrifuges and worked for the Third Reich’s nuclear development program. This is set forth in FTR #395.
In FTR #155 , we examined the last written contribution from the late, heroic Paul Manning, in which he detailed the Bormann network’s role in helping Saddam acquire nukes and the Condor missile technology with which to develop them.
Prince Friso’s wife Mabel Smits has been an active supporter of Islamist causes (operating under the rubric of humanitarian aid). Specifically, she has been active on behalf of Bosnia and Chechnya.
In FTR #456, among other programs, we’ve noted that Alija Izetbegovic, first head of state of independent Bosnia, recruited Bosnian Muslims for the 13th Waffen SS Division during World War II, supported Osama bin Laden and recreated the 13th Waffen SS Divison (Hanjar) as the primary elite unit of the Bosnian army.
In FTR #583, we noted that Kazbek Soobzokov, son of SS officer and later CIA operative Tscherim Soobzokov heads the American branch of an Islamic charity that is actively supporting the Islamist combatants in Chechnya. The Chechnyan rebels are, in turn, following in the footsteps of the Waffengruppe der SS Krim, as we saw in FTR #414.
Mabel Smits is a protege of George Soros, the so-called leftist, who in reality gives every indication of being a “Bormann Jew,” having gotten his start in business aiding the Nazis with the “Aryanization” of Jewish property during the Holocaust in Hungary. Her charitable outlet in Chechnya may well have been lending support to the Islamist combatants in Chechnya, which has led to the suspension of that chapter of the organization.
EXCERPT of linked article: . . . She was the chairwoman of the EU branch of George Soros’ Open Society Institute and also chaired a charity called ‘War Child’.”….the ‘charity’ (whose Dutch branch founder Mabel Wisse Smit (employed by George Soros), went from being the lover of jailed Bosnian foreign minister Muhammed Sacirbey, to the wife of Prince Friso of Holland,has announced they ‘have decided to stop all support to their partner organisation in Chechnya ...euphemistically saying that they ‘could no longer guarantee the effective and controlled managing of War Child project activities’ .Translation: the money was ‘finding it’s way’ into the hands of terrorists.” . . .
Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, son of Prince Claus and Queen Beatrix and heir apparent to the throne, married Maxima Zorreguita, the daughter of the Argentine Minister of Agriculture during the murderous reign of the “dirty war” junta of 1976–1983. Her mother also had ties to the Argentine right wing which, of course, has the most profound links to the Bormann capital network and ODESSA Nazis.
EXCERPT of linked Los Angeles Times article: Whether love conquers all will be decided by the Dutch parliament soon when it is asked to approve the marriage plans of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Maxima Zorreguieta, the daughter of an Argentine official who served under his country’s “dirty war” junta. . . .. . . After national newspapers last year unearthed details of Jorge Zorreguieta’s allegiance to the 1976–83 Argentine dictatorship of Jorge Videla, Prime Minister Wim Kok stepped in to ascertain the extent of the father’s involvement and to allay fears of right-wing influence on the royal house. [Sure wouldn’t want that to happen!–D.E.]
Kok deployed University of Amsterdam professor Michiel Baud, a Latin America specialist. After an investigation, Baud concluded that the elder Zorreguieta, who served as agriculture minister during the Videla regime, was “morally culpable” for some of the crimes of that era when thousands of government opponents were killed, tortured or disappeared.
Just ahead of the March 30 engagement announcement, Kok sent former Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel to meet with the elder Zorreguieta and explain “that his presence at the wedding would be impossible,” recounts a source close to the royal family who declined to be identified.
The would-be bride’s father has consented to stay away from the royal wedding, expected early next year, and her mother–also linked to right-wing politics in Argentina–has signaled that she too will skip the state affair to spare the couple any risk of being barred from the throne. . . .
An idle thought: In his book Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler, author Peter Levenda maintains that Hitler escaped the war, ultimately going to ground in Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. Might Fifth Columnists there have played a role in this gambit? NB:We have yet to read Levenda’s account.
“Cabinet Knew of Prince Bernhard’s SS Past”; Radio Netherlands Worldwide; 1/23/2010.
EXCERPT: The Dutch government knew of the SS membership of the late Prince Bernhard as early as 1944, according to NRC Handelsblad.
The newspaper bases its finding on documents released by the National Archive in The Hague earlier this year. One of the documents refers to a coded telegram, dated September 1944, from Foreign Minister Eelco van Kleffens. The telegram reveals the cabinet knew Prince Bernhard had briefly joined the SS. . . . In the telegram, the foreign minister instructs the Dutch ambassador in the United States not to refute claims, made by American media as of 1941, that Prince Bernhard had been a member of the SS. . . .
. . . For many years Prince Bernhard remained evasive on his links with the Nazi NSDAP party and related organisations. In an interview with De Volkskrant, published shortly after his death in December 2004, the prince admitted to his SS membership for the first time. . . .
“Chapter Two: The Empire of I.G. Farben” [Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Anthony Sutton]; reformed-theology.org.
EXCERPT:
. . . The Berlin N.W. 7 office of I.G. Farben was the key Nazi overseas espionage center. The unit operated under Farben director Max Ilgner, nephew of I.G. Farben president Hermann Schmitz. Max Ilgner and Hermann Schmitz were on the board of American I.G., with fellow directors Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company, Paul Warburg of Bank of Manhattan, and Charles E. Mitchell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
At the outbreak o£ war in 1939 VOWI employees were ordered into the Wehrmacht but in fact continued to perform the same work as when nominally under I.G. Farben. One of the more prominent of these Farben intelligence workers in N.W. 7 was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who joined Farben in the early 1930s after completion of an 18-month period of service in the black-uniformed S.S.8
The U.S. arm of the VOWI intelligence network was Chemnyco, Inc. According to the War Department,
Utilizing normal business contacts Chemnyco was able to transmit to Germany tremendous amounts of material ranging from photographs and blueprints to detailed descriptions of whole industrial plants.9
Chemnyco’s vice president in New York was Rudolph Ilgner, an American citizen and brother of American I, G. Farben director Max Ilgner. In brief, Farben operated VOWI, the Nazi foreign intelligence operation, before World War II and the VOWI operation was associated with prominent members of the Wall Street Establishment through American I.G. and Chemnyco. . .
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 10:38 pm Post subject:
These clips have now been removed from YouTube so you'l have to buy or borrow A Bridge Too Far to watch the scene of WW2 being deliberately delayed for 6 months so the Nazis could get their loot out of Germany. Amazing stuff!
Moffat T Burris of 82nd Airborne points Tommy gun at Lord Carrington's head after losing half his men taking Nigmegen Bridge and orders Carrington to get in his ##### tank & get moving to Arnhem.
As portrayed loosely in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' in this excerpt
, Carrington battons down & stays put in his tank over night as last Brits are running low on ammunition at Arnhem bridge 10 miles away.
Lots of people wonder why as XXX corps commander of over 150 tanks General Brian Horrocks has halted the advance at 7pm, after all he is known to be the greatest preponent of the night tank assault in the Allied Armies.
...U-234 returned to the Germaniawerft yard at Kiel on 5 September 1944, to be refitted as a transport. ... her keel was loaded with cargo, thought to be optical-grade glass and mercury, and her four upper-deck torpedo storage compartments (two on each side) were also occupied by cargo containers.[5]
The cargo to be carried was determined by a special commission, the Marine Sonderdienst Ausland, established towards the end of 1944, at which time the submarine's officers were informed that they were to make a special voyage to Japan. When loading was completed, the submarine's officers estimated that they were carrying 240 tons of cargo plus sufficient diesel fuel and provisions for a six- to nine-month voyage.[5]
The cargo included technical drawings, examples of the newest electric torpedoes, one crated Me 262 jet aircraft, a Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb and what was listed on the US Unloading Manifest as 560 kg of uranium oxide. As evidenced by Hirschfeld and Brooks in the 1997 book Hirschfeld, Wolfgang Hirschfeld reportedly watched the loading into the boat's cylindrical mine shafts of about 50 lead cubes with nine inch (230 mm) sides, with "U-235" painted on each. According to cable messages sent from the dockyard, these containers held "U-powder". Author and historian Joseph M. Scalia, stated that he discovered a formerly secret cable at Portsmouth Navy Yard, the uranium oxide had been stored in gold-lined cylinders; this document is discussed in Hitler's Terror Weapons. The exact characteristics of the uranium remain unknown; it has been suggested by Scalia, and historians Carl Boyd and Akihiko Yoshida that it may not have been weapons-grade material and was instead intended for use as a catalyst in the production of synthetic methanol for aviation fuel.[6][7] When the cargo had been loaded, U-234 carried out additional trials near Kiel, then returned to the northern German city where her passengers came aboard.
U-234 was carrying twelve passengers, including a German general, four German naval officers, civilian engineers and scientists and two Japanese naval officers. The German personnel included General Ulrich Kessler of the Luftwaffe, who was to take over Luftwaffe liaison duties in Tokyo; Kai Nieschling, a Naval Fleet Judge Advocate who was to rid the German diplomatic corps in Japan of the remnants of the Richard Sorge spy ring; Dr. Heinz Schlicke, a specialist in radar, infra-red, and countermeasures and director of the Naval Test Fields in Kiel (later recruited by the USA in Operation Paperclip); and August Bringewalde, who was in charge of Me 262 production at Messerschmitt.[7]
The Japanese passengers were Lieutenant Commander Hideo Tomonaga of the Imperial Japanese Navy, a naval architect and submarine designer who had come to Germany in 1943 on the Japanese submarine I-29, and Lieutenant Commander Shoji Genzo, an aircraft specialist and former naval attaché.[8]
U-234 sailed from Kiel for Kristiansand in Norway on the evening of 25 March 1945, accompanied by escort vessels and three Type XXIII coastal U-boats, arriving in Horten two days later. The submersible spent the next eight days carrying out trials on her snorkel, during which she accidentally collided with a Type VIIC U-boat performing similar trials. Damage to both submarines was minor, and despite a diving and fuel oil tank being holed, U-234 was able to complete her trials. She then proceeded to Kristiansand, arriving on about 5 April, where she underwent repairs and topped up her provisions and fuel.
U-234 departed Kristiansand for Japan on 15 April 1945, running submerged at snorkel depth for the first 16 days, and surfacing after that only because her commander Kapitänleutnant Johann-Heinrich Fehler, considered he was safe from attack on the surface in the prevailing severe storm. From then on, she spent two hours running on the surface by night, and the remainder of the time submerged. The voyage proceeded without incident; the first sign that world affairs were overtaking the voyage was when the German Navy's Goliath transmitter stopped transmitting, followed shortly after by the Nauen station. Fehler did not know it, but Germany's naval HQ had fallen into Allied hands.
Then, on 4 May, U-234 received a fragment of a broadcast from British and American radio stations announcing that Admiral Karl Dönitz had become Germany's head of state following the death of Adolf Hitler. U-234 surfaced on 10 May in the interests of better radio reception and received Dönitz's last order to the submarine force, ordering all U-boats to surface, hoist black flags and surrender to Allied forces. Fehler suspected a trick and managed to contact another U-boat (U-873), whose captain convinced him that the message was authentic.
At this point, Fehler was practically equidistant from British, Canadian and American ports. He decided not to continue his journey, and instead headed for the east coast of the United States. Fehler thought it likely that if they surrendered to Canadian or British forces, they would be imprisoned and it could be years before they were returned to Germany; he believed that the US, on the other hand, would probably just send them home.
Fehler consequently decided that he would surrender to US forces, but radioed on 12 May that he intended to sail to Halifax, Nova Scotia to surrender to ensure Canadian units would not reach him first. U-234 then set course for Newport News, Virginia; Fehler taking care to dispose of his Tunis radar detector, the new Kurier radio communication system, and all Enigma related documents and other classified papers. On learning that the U-boat was to surrender, the two Japanese passengers committed suicide by taking an overdose of Luminal (a barbiturate sleeping pill). They were buried at sea.[8]
The difference between Fehler's reported course to Halifax and his true course was soon realized by US authorities who dispatched two destroyers to intercept U-234. On 14 May 1945 she was encountered south of the Grand Banks, Newfoundland by the USS Sutton. Members of the Sutton's crew took command of the U-boat and sailed her to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where U-805, U-873, and U-1228 had already surrendered.
News of U-234's surrender with her high-ranking German passengers made it a major news event. Reporters swarmed over the Navy Yard and went to sea in a small boat for a look at the submarine. The fact that she had a half ton of uranium oxide on board was covered up and remained classified for the duration of the Cold War;[9] a classified US intelligence summary of 19 May merely listed U-234's cargo as including "a/c [aircraft], drawings, arms, medical supplies, instruments, lead, mercury, caffeine, steels, optical glass and brass."[10] The uranium subsequently disappeared, most likely finding its way to the Manhattan Project's Oak Ridge diffusion plant. It has been calculated that it would have yielded approximately 7.7 pounds (3.5 kg) of U-235 after processing, around 20% of what would have been required to arm a contemporary fission weapon.[11]
Dr. Velma Hunt, a retired Penn State University environmental health professor, has suggested U-234 may have put into two ports between her surrender and her arrival at the Portsmouth Navy Yard: once in Newfoundland, to land an American sailor who had been accidentally shot in the buttocks, and again at Casco Bay, Maine.[12] The US Navy reportedly unloaded about 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of uranium oxide from U-234 at Portsmouth
As she was unneeded by the US Navy, U-234 was sunk off Cape Cod as a torpedo target by the USS Greenfish (SS-351) on 20 November 1947.
Part 3 of a New Thought-Provoking Series on the Battle for Arnhem in 1944 asks the question, WHERE WERE THE FOLDING BIKES when the British Army needed them to reinforce LTC John Frost's 2nd Battalion of the 1st British Airborne Division holding the north end of Arnhem bridge over the Rhine river?
German Cavalry bicycle-troops (Radfarhtruppen) silently infiltrated over 20 miles behind enemy lines to seize the Mt. St. Pere bridge from the unsuspecting French in 1914, blowing it up and then withdrawing with hundreds of prisoners (Bicycles in War, pages 69-80). Montgomery was a WW1 veteran and certainly knew that bridges could be taken by coup de main using stealthy bicycle-troops:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o44BvtQxOV4 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 1:24 pm Post subject:
Colonel John Frost - what did he think of Captain Peter Carrington and Guards Armoured division waiting for 17 hours in Nijmegen?
Extract from
'By Tank into Normandy' by Stuart Hills
First published 2002.
ISBN: 0304366404
page 175
The lead for XXX Corps was to be taken by the Guards Armoured Division, who made good progress to start with. They joined up with the Americans at Eindhoven and then drove through to Nijmegen. Here they became part of the epic operation of the US 82nd Airborne to capture the Nijmegen bridge, so vividly portrayed in the film A Bridge Too Far. This involved an assault across the river by an American battalion to hit the bridge from the far side and prevent the Germans from blowing it. General Dempsey described the assault as one of the great feats of arms of the whole war, and it opened up the bridge and the road beyond to the British tanks, with Arnhem just nine miles away.
For one reason or another, however, the tanks of Guards Armoured failed to press on, setting up defensive positions for the night just beyond Nijmegen while Colonel Frost and his beleaguered forces grimly held on at Arnhem Bridge. When the tanks finally moved out next morning, they were stopped about halfway to Arnhem by enemy forces and that afternoon the defenders of Arnhem were finally overwhelmed and the whole operation failed.
Colonel Frost later put the blame firmly on the lack of drive by Guards Armoured, comparing their relatively light casualties with those suffered by the British 1st Airborne and US 82nd.
Forty years later, he stood on the bridge at a reunion, shook his fist and roared a question into the air for the Guards: 'Do you call that fighting?'
It may have been an unfair judgement born of frustration, but the arguments about who was to blame for Arnhem have reverberated loudly down the years.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2013 11:05 am Post subject:
THE “RED HOUSE” MEETING
It is self evident that the same behind-the-scenes banking and industrial forces who financed Hitler’s rise to power, as well as his subsequent military build-up, would also take all necessary steps to protect their hard investments once it became clear Hitler and Germany were doomed to defeat. Clarity arrived with the devastating defeat of Field Marshall von Paulus 6th Army Group at Stalingrad in January 1943. Any lingering doubts were erased with the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6th June 1944. Unable to repulse the Allied D-day invasion forces back into the sea, it was clear for all to see that Hitler’s days were numbered.
Two months after the D-day landings, a secret meeting was held in an elegant hotel in Strasbourg that was aimed at securing and protecting the wealth of nazi Germany and its loyal bankers and industrialists. On the morning of 10th August 1944, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Scheid, a lieutenant-general in the Waffen SS – as well as a director of the industrial company Hermansdorff & Schenburg - arrived at the Hotel Maison Rouge set in Strasbourg’s rue des France-Bourgeois. Dr. Scheid had been sent to host the meeting by none other than Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, by then the second most powerful man in nazi Germany, after Hitler.
Bormann’s rise to power followed on from the ill-fated flight of Rudolf Hess in 1941, when he parachuted to land in Scotland to secretly meet with the Duke of Hamilton. With the loss of his friend, and his plans for creating a secret alliance with Britain to fight Russia in tatters, Hitler had heaped all of Hess’ duties and responsibilities on to the broad bull-like shoulders of Bormann – with the exception of the office of deputy fuehrer, which Hitler abolished. This included Bormann taking over control of the AO.
In sending Dr. Scheid to Strasbourg, Bormann had confided in him that:
“the steps to be taken as a result of this meeting will determine the post-war future of Germany,” adding that the plan was to insure an eventual “economic resurgence of Germany.”17
Present at the meeting, in addition to Dr. Scheid, were representatives of Krupp, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Bussing, Volkswagenwerk, engineers representing various factories in Posen, Poland – including Brown-Boveri – an important part of the German electrical industry that was part owned by two American companies – General Electric and International Telephone & Telegraph. Today, Brown Boveri has grown into a massive multinational corporation employing almost 200,000 staff worldwide and still maintains it close contacts with the US. Prior to his appointment as George W Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld was on its board of directors.18
Bormann’s direction was that the industrialists should forge new contacts and alliances with foreign firms, as well as strengthening those already established. This should be done without attracting suspicion. Equally important was the capital flight programme of state and corporate assets to safe havens through the world, which Bormann ordered. Thus began Operation Eagle’s Flight. Critically, Bormann believed he needed nine months to fully complete the planned capital flight programme.19 This meant that German forces must resist the Allies advance throughout the winter of 1944 and on until early mid May 1945. By a remarkable twist of fate, the war in Europe ended on 8th May 1945, two days short of Bormann’s estimate.
WHOOPSIDAISY
Less than a month later, however, English Field Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, laid out a daring plan that, were it to succeed, would have completely wrecked Bormann’s critical nine-month programme. When, on 23rd August 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, visited Montgomery’s HQ for lunch, followed by a private conference, Montgomery argued that German forces were in complete disarray and that a decisive thrust into the Ruhr would result in the end of the war before Christmas 1944. At Montgomery’s insistence, Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, General Walter Bedell Smith was excluded from the meeting, causing rancour.20 Eisenhower left Montgomery’s HQ unconvinced and wavering.
With the closing of the Falaise gap, Montgomery was determined not to let Eisenhower waste a golden opportunity to bring the war to a close in 1944. On 4th September, Montgomery sent a coded signal “Personal for General Eisenhower Eyes Only,” laying out in detail an audacious plan to seize strategic bridges in the Netherlands followed by a full-blooded armoured thrust into Germany through the back door of the Ruhr – the very heartland of German industry and, coincidentally home to many of those industrialists Dr. Scheid’s capital flight conference had addressed less than a month earlier.
The plan, which would become known as Operation Comet, was rejected by Eisenhower. Montgomery strenuously objected and a revised plan called Operation Market Garden, that would muster considerably more forces than the original Operation Comet, was eventually agreed on 10th September 1944 by Eisenhower. The final bridge to be captured by British airborne forces and held until the arrival of the armoured forces was located at Arnhem.
By coincidence too, it was the 4th of September, that Field Marshall Model directed Lt. General Bittrich’s badly mauled but veteran II SS Panzer corps to bivouac in the Arnhem area to refit and rest. Bittrich later stated that “there was no particular significance in Model choosing the Arnhem vicinity – except that it was a peaceful area where nothing was happening.”21 Now in hindsight when armed with Bormann’s vital need for a full nine months for his capital flight programme to reach fulfillment, one wonders if other more subterranean factors influenced Model’s decision? Was treachery involved?
THE FRATERNITY
What is known for a fact is that Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands had been appointed Commander in Chief of Dutch forces by Queen Wilhelmina. During the weeks following the D-day landings, Prince Bernhard had remained in constant contact with his Ministers, the US Ambassador-at-Large, Anthony Biddle, and General Bedell Smith.22 His close contact with these men was hardly the result of mere chance. As we shall see, nothing was to be left to chance by Bormann’s “Fraternity.”23
A member of the Biddle family, Thomas Bradish Biddle, had been amongst the very first members of the Order of the Skull and Bones, having been tapped in 1839, just six years after it founding in 1833. Anthony Biddle who’s full name was Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr., was not himself a member of the Order. Never the less, he was no innocent.
During the early months of WWII, Biddle was in Paris as the US Deputy Ambassador to France. It was here that he became close friends of the pro-nazi Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who spent a considerable period of time living in the home of Baron Eugene de Rothschild. However, Biddle’s greatest friend in Paris was Ambassador William Bullitt. Bullitt also held strong pro Hitler views and was responsible for introducing the American millionaire, Charles Bedaux, to the Windsor’s.
Bedaux was a good friend of I G Farben’s Hermann Schmitz, and had, in fact, been appointed as head of Farben’s commercial operations. His involvement with the Windsor’s wasn’t accidental, as he had been instructed by no less than SS Chief Heinrich Himmler to inveigle them to help in secret plans for a negotiated peace with England. A secret meeting held in the Hotel Meurice in Paris, between Bedaux, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann and Hollywood actor and nazi sympathiser Errol Flynn, the Duke of Windsor promised to help Hess contact the Duke of Hamilton, which “finally led to Hess’s dramatic landing on the Hamilton Estate in 1941.”24
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands also has a decidedly nazi past. German born as Prince Bernhard zur Lippe-Biesterfeld, he joined the nazi party in the early 1930’s, eventually donning the SS uniform. By 1935 he was gainfully employed in I G Farben’s intelligence department NW7. His match to Princess Juliana, the daughter of the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, was reportedly arranged by Farben director, Gerhard Fritze, a relative of NW7’s chief, Max Ilgner.25 At their marriage ceremony, the Prince’s closest friends struck up the old favourite, the Horst Wessel song, which was the anthem of the Nazis. Shortly after the marriage, the noble prince travelled to Berlin for a private meeting with Hitler, who had publicly intimated that the marriage represented an alliance between both nations - which was refuted by Queen Willhelmina.
More telling was the fact that when he arrived in England, after the outbreak of war, and asked to work in British intelligence, his offer was declined by the Admiralty, because they didn’t trust him. Nor did the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower who refused him access to sensitive intelligence information. However, with the intervention of King George on Prince Bernhard’s behalf, he was eventually allowed to work in war planning councils. Whoops.
Moving on quickly; to understand the very special relationship between Prince Bernhard and General Walter Bedell Smith – who most certainly had complete access general Eisenhower’s intelligence - we need to advance several years. After the war, Prince Bernhard is believed to have been profitably employed dealing in art stolen during the war. Gerben Sonderman, who Prince Bernhard described as the “best friend I ever had” (presumably Adolf had by then been forgotten?), acted as the prince’s private pilot for transporting stolen art, according to Ton Biesemaat, who has written an expose of the art ring called “The Correggio Mystery."26
In 1941, Sonderman, a Dutch Fokker pilot, developed contacts with Germans involved in plundering Dutch art works. A close contact of his was Alois Miedl, a “banker, spy and art dealer” who occasionally dressed in SS uniform.27 After the war, Miedl operated on behalf of the ODESSA, the SS escape network that transported nazi war criminals to safety in South America – particularly Argentina, where Bormann is believed to have escaped to. This also is a favourite destination for Prince Bernhard after the war, where he was usually accompanied by his best friend, Gerban Sonderman.
Another of those seemingly involved in this stolen art-trading ring was Hungarian nobleman, Prince Alfred zur Lippe-Weissenfeld, a relative of Prince Bernhard. By another of those remarkable coincidences, Prince Alfred’s daughter was the wife of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Karzon, son of Fritz Thyssen’s brother and heir to the Thyssen family fortune.
Walter Bedell Smith, who as we have seen above, was in close contact with the prince during the period that Montgomery was drawing up his initial plan to capture the Dutch bridges and then dash to Berlin via the Ruhr. Just how close this friendship to Prince Bernhard was can be judged by the fact that after the war both he and Prince Bernhard went into business together. One might describe it as an “import-export company” because it involved an art trading company called “Bernard Ltd” that uses military aircraft to fly between Soesterberg – a short distance away from Prince Bernhard’s palace Soestdijk – and the USA.
In addition to his close personal friendship with Prince Bernhard, in August 1945, Bedell Smith donated his private plane to secretly fly nazi master spy Reinhard Gehlen, and five of his general staff, to Washington for secret talks. This move was in complete contravention of prevailing American policy and, according to author Charles Higham, could have resulted in court martial proceedings against Bedell Smith.28
Prince Bernhard’s family relationship with that of the Thyssen’s may go some way to explain why, in 1945, together with a unit of Dutch intelligence, Prince Bernhard travelled to the Russian zone in Berlin to recover a batch of buried “incriminating corporate papers” belonging to Fritz Thyssen, that evidenced “secret Thyssen ownership.” This small favour was carried out under the pretext that the daring Prince was recovering the Dutch crown jewels stolen by the Nazis. The papers were returned to Holland and deposited in the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, in Rotterdam, which was secretly owned by Thyssen. Known as “Operation Juliana” this cunning scheme was a body blow to Allied investigators who were anxiously seeking the “missing pieces of the Thyssen fortune.”29 The US attorney to the Rotterdam bank was Allen Dulles, who had migrated from the OSS office in Bern, Switzerland, to become the US intelligence chief in post-war Germany.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 4:48 pm Post subject:
Sir Allan Adair, OC Guards Armoured Division
Adair was Colonel of the Grenadier Guards from 1961 to 1974 for he was a deeply respected and beloved figure. He had been president of the Grenadier Guards Association from 1947 to 1961. In 1986 he wrote his memoirs, entitled A Guards General, its success requiring reprinting.
He was an eminent Freemason and was Assistant Grand Master; he made a number of overseas visits as a delegate of Grand Lodge.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat May 03, 2014 11:24 pm Post subject:
Prince Bernhard's key Dutch resistance contact turns out to be an Abwehr agent - but - like King Kong - this Indie article seems to have been disappeared!
MI5 files reveal how 'King Kong' betrayed Allies
Philandering Dutch spy leaked details of Operation Market Garden which led to the deaths of thousands of troops at Arnhem
20th April 2000
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/mi5-files-reveal-how -king-kong-betrayed-allies-721235.html
New light has been shed on the treachery of a Dutch double agent, codenamed King Kong, in the disastrous Allied operation at Arnhem towards the end of the Second World War.
But the MI5 documents released by the Public Record Office yesterday fail to provide a conclusive answer to the extent of damage caused by Christian Lindemans' passing of information to the Germans.
Historians and espionage specialists have differed over Lindemans' role in the major reverse suffered by the Allies in Operation Market Garden in 1944, later depicted in the award-winning film A Bridge Too Far. Almost 10,000 British and Allied paratroops were dropped on the outskirts of Arnhem with orders to take the bridge and hold it until reinforcements arrived. There followed some of the fiercest close-quarter combat of the war as the lightly equipped paratroops came under attack from tanks and battle-hardened German regiments. Fewer than 2,000 Allied soldiers escaped from the city.
The intelligence reports show that Lindemans, a resistance fighter turned collaborator, gave the Germans specific warnings of an airborne attack on 17 September, the night of the Arnhem landings. But the target he identified was Eindhoven, 30 miles away.
This leads to the strong possibility that Lindemans had overblown his importance to the Germans. Although he could get hold of some intelligence, he did not have ready access to the latest battle plans through Allied Headquarters in Brussels as he had claimed.
Lindemans was an inveterate womaniser, and MI5 chronicled a series of sexual liaisons. One report stated censorioiusly: "King Kong is a woman hunter without morals or conscience." But it also noted that he was undoubtedly in love with his common-law wife, a French cabaret singer called Gilberte. Her imprisonment, along with that of his brother, was the lever by which German intelligence persuaded him to work for them, the files show.
But Lindemans' professed love for Gilberte did not reduce his sexual appetite. The MI5 files noted how he abused the trust of a wealthy Dutch grain merchant and his young daughter, who nursed him when he was shot in the chest. "This girl, though seduced by Lindemans and robbed by him of all she possessed under the pretence that he needed her money in order to keep his 'secret organisation' going, was at the moment still in love with the man," the British agent wrote.
The reports also spoke of other affairs, one in Brussels with a lover known only as Mia, another with a Swedish woman. The liaisons took place despite Lindemans' physical frailty - though tall and immensely broad he walked with a limp, had an almost paralysed arm and was prone to seizures.
While awaiting trial after the war - and an almost certain death sentence - Lindemans continued to exert his charm on women. After his suicide in July 1946, MI5 officers learnt that he had almost escaped from jail with the assistance of a nurse, who helped him cut through cell bars. When that failed, and Lindemans took a fatal overdose of sleeping pills, the nurse tried to follow suit, only to be revived.
Read more: http://www.histomil.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=2356#ixzz30hKEUvzy _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 6:04 pm Post subject:
'General 'Boy' Browning may as well have been a Nazi spy'
Quote:
I have just finished William Buckingham's book Arnhem 1944 which presents a scathing account of General Boy Browning's role as commander of British Airborne forces in WW2 and more specifically at Arnhem. Buckingham goes so far to suggest that if Browning were a German spy in an Alastair MacLean book it is hard to think of more things he could do to wilfully sabotage the outcome of Market-Garden. Buckingham charges him with:
- Approving the disasterous RAF plan to select DZ's and LZ's 8 miles from the target
- Acquiescing to RAF's preference to drop the 1 Airborne Divison in lifts over several days instead of two drops on a single day
- Deliberately suppressing intelligence reports indicating presence of SS Corps at Arnhem.
- Using badly needed glider transport (36 gliders) to take his personal staff to Holland when it was a questionable necessity
- Interfering in the 82nd operation almost resulting in the loss of Nijmegen bridge
- After 30 Corps arrived at the lower Rhine, washing his hands of 1 Abn Div as no longer his responsibility. He spent his time seeking comfortable quarters in Nijmegen as the perimeter at Oosterbeek shrank.
- Sleeping in bed in his now secured comfortable quarters as 1 Abn Div was evacuated.
- Slandering Gen Sosabowski in an effort to shift the blame for his own failures.
Although Buckingham states his career was finished after the failure, he was still knighted and is still regarded as father of the Airborne units and I believe at least one barracks is named after him.
Hi all, thought I'd toss in my twopennies worth as it's my book under discussion. Hitch, glad you enjoyed it. One point, my analysis of the battle isn't merely rational, it is properly researched and verifiable. that's what all those endnote thingies in the book are for - to show where I got the info and to prove I'm not making it all up! Consequently, I don't merely suggest that Gale told Browning that the plan was a disaster waiting to happen, it is a matter of historical record, with the relevant documents being held in the Airborne Forces Museum Archive.
Ref the rest, collective response to save bandwidth:
4(T), no fitting up of preconceived villains or taking a pop at dead folk who can't defend themselves, and I disagree that what happened at Arnhem is so steeped in myth etc that meaningful analysis is impossible. I also disagree with your inference that only folk who have served can get a handle on such things; that's why we have trained historians. Taking the second point first, it is quite possible to sort out the dross from the good stuff with a bit of research and critical thinking, and to add some objective analysis on the result. I was actually surprised at how little proper analysis had actually been done despite the sheer number of books on Arnhem, and how much pretty damning stuff had been hidden in plain sight without comment. IMO part of the problem lies with attitudes like that displayed by Archer above - someone is a good chap so no-one bothers to look any further. This is compounded by the fact that a lot of British military history is written by ex-officers who don't like to rock the boat for their brethren. As I see it that attitude not only obstructs getting to the bottom of what what happened and why (overall, not just with ref to Arnhem), but it is also disrespectful to the blokes that get caught up in the works too. This is especially rife with the history of British Airborne Forces - we have Browning and Urquhart at Arnhem, Hopkinson gets a free ride for the results of his appalling behaviour in Sicily and Italy, and H Jones provides a more recent example of the same thing.
Ref Browning, his record speaks for itself. He was selected to command the British airborne effort because his contacts as a Guards officer made him an ideal choice to fight the airborne corner in Whitehall, not because of any operational acumen or experience - AFAIK he had no operational command experience save as a company level officer during WW1. He turned his role into an operational one with an adroit bit of empire building. Having studied the establishment and initial development of British Airborne Forces for my PhD, I cannot really see what Browning did to merit the title of Father of that force; John Rock or Richard Gale have a far stronger claim to the title. By 1944 Browning had gotten himself the top Allied airborne job, but again I cannot see how he was really qualified for the post. He had no real airborne experience operationally or otherwise, whereas men like Gale and Ridgeway had both and plenty of it. I think that seeking to rectify that is the only logical explanation for his decision to take a forward HQ into the 82nd Airbornes area at Nijmegen, diverting 38 gliders and tugs that could have been much better employed elsewhere. Also, Browning had form for this, having interfered with the planning for the Bruneval Raid in 1942.
With ref to him sleeping while the remnants of 1st Airborne Div were being withdrawn across the Lower Rhine, I disagree this is a shallow snipe. He had played the major role in getting those blokes into the mess, the least he could have done was be up front as they came out. Note Browning wasn't just getting his head down, he was tucked up in a proper bed in silk PJs, so well that he kept Urquhart waiting for 20 minutes when the latter turned up at his HQ to report. Even Urquhart thought that was out of order with hindsight, according to his biography. FWIW I think Urquhart's behaviour was a bit off too in just taking a place in the queue for the boats and then running straight off like a schoolboy to see Browning leaving his men to fend for themselves. I thought British officers were supposed to put their men before self...
Without wishing to derail Hitch's thread, a couple of more general comments while I'm at it. PTP, ref blaming the RAF being easy, it comes as a surprise to most folk that the RAF had total control over airborne ops in WW2 until the troops were on the ground. It didn't make much difference before Arnhem because common sense prevailed but on that occasion the RAF simply stuck to its guns with the outcome predicted by some at the time. Also, with ref to the German flak, this is a bit of a red herring. The Arnhem landing areas were well west of the German home flak defences, and there was little to none when the op was launched; the Arnhem portion of the MARKET lift did not lose a single aircraft on the first day, and they only lost six on the second lift the next day. The suicidal stuff you refer to came later, after the op was supposed to have been over and the Germans had had time to drag light flak in from all over the shop and set it up all round the airborne perimeter.
W.Anchor, your first bit reflects the popular view of the battle, but there is a bit more to it than that. For example, there was nothing like an SS Panzer Div anywhere near Arnhem, and virtually nothing between 1st Parachute Brigade and Arnhem for the first 12 hours or so after landing. The key problem was an unrealistic and arguably unworkable plan and a lack of haste by 1st Para Brigade in that same 12 hour period. The command and general state of 1st Airborne Div doesn't do too well under close scrutiny, and some of the errors they made at Arnhem were repeats from Sicily.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
Hitch, glad you enjoyed it. One point, my analysis of the battle isn't merely rational, it is properly researched and verifiable. that's what all those endnote thingies in the book are for - to show where I got the info and to prove I'm not making it all up! Consequently, I don't merely suggest that Gale told Browning that the plan was a disaster waiting to happen, it is a matter of historical record, with the relevant documents being held in the Airborne Forces Museum Archive.