Arnhem - I think we may be going one bridge too far ...

The Battle of Arnhem was the result of what was described at the time as by far the biggest and most ambitious airborne operation ever carried out by any nation or nations.' In the late summer of 1944 two US and one British airborne divisions were landed, by parachute and glider, behind the German lines with orders to seize all the canal and river crossings between Eindhoven and Arnhem. Though most of the bridges were secured, the Allied plan was too ambitious. At Arnhem, the bridge too far', the British 1st Airborne Division was surrounded, cut off from all reinforcements and supply, and subjected to a week of artillery bombardment and infantry assaults spearheaded by tanks. Of over 10,000 airborne troops landed north of the Rhine in the Arnhem sector, fewer than a quarter made it back to the Allied lines.

In this new interpretation of the battle, A.D. Harvey uses German as well as British sources to show how the flaws in Allied planning combined with the unexpected vigour of German countermeasures to defeat an operation that many believed could have shortened the war by several months.