A BRIDGE TOO FAR Clip - "Five Miles" (1977) Gene Hackman - WWII Movie 

The Longest Day would be a definite contender. :)

Expendables 2?

@@Pikkabuu certainly a contender

@@whittpond8803 100% agreed.

The cast of this overblown movie was, is and always will be the most absurdly, epically over-cast movie in history. How many leading men do you need for an old fashioned war movie? 10? 15? 20? Watching Robert Redford running around like a Rambo sort of superman wannabe at the bridge at the end taking on the entire opposing army was laughable. He simply was an ill fit for the part he played. Many of the actors simply weren't a casting fit for the parts they played. The producers figured the largest epic cast ever will make a great movie - and will certainly sell tickets even if the movie flops. This stinker became a parody of itself and one for over-cast movies.

Patterns of human behavior in hierarchical societies are based upon maintaining the status quo... Political propaganda and agendas are routinely the same thing... The cronyism is the important thing in certain circles and thus things play out in accordance to whose pawn or puppet is in play... Rather than whatever the facts are... The political politics of the day often gets its way. However, historians and history are often very kind to the facts and realities as the truth usually gets out eventually.

@es loo That's stupidest defense of this egomaniac I've ever read.Operation Market Garden was ill planned .Still there was a chance to save outcome .Sosabowski (who was known specialist in logistic) have offered a good plan to do get out victorious from the mess caused by Montgomery's failed planning.Unfortunately,Montgomery didn't want to listen and his plan was continued .It caused catastrophic massacre of engaged troop.Polish troop helped in evacuation of Americans and were decimated in the process. Montgomery was buffoon who tried to lead operation according to rules from WW I era.It simply so sad that thousands troops lost lives because of one brainless egomaniac.

I think so, Montgomerry was d**khead. Both with Patton were egomaniacs. In Netflix remake Sosabowski will be player by Jeffrey Wright I think

I remember reading in the book Sosabowski stated he had grave misgivings about the plan. He said it went against everything he'd been taught at war academy. Gene Hackman requested to portray him as in Hackman's words "He's my kind of hero."

@es loo I've heard the theory that the plan was more a Churchill idea, like the invasion of Italy. It probably had a lot of whitehall clout to make Eisenhower back it. Hence the absolute rush. Monty was a more careful, methodical kind of guy.

the absolute frightening reality ... perhaps the most devastating travesty among many during the entire campaign !!!

Montgomery was sadly, a scapegoat. I thought too that it was Montgomery's fault, but looking deeper into it. Montgomery was more or less demanding Combined Allied command to get their logistics setup properly (there were real issues caused by terrible bureaucracy, which is often why Allied soldiers tended to take supplies by pointing guns at their own suppliers) Now imagine this operation being done more than a month earlier as Montgomery wanted it to be. The Germans had been running and had no time to dig in properly. That idea was unachievable because of the logistics issue. Allied preparation just took too much time. But Eisenhower wanted Zeeland to be taken to free up the Port of Antwerp, Market Garden would isolate the Western portion of the German army from Germany Proper, making resupply in men and material hard if not impossible. Sure Montgomery had an ambitious plan, but over the course of the campaign the situation changed so much that the plan was unfeasible. The fact that Allied High Command then just went with it anyway and blamed Montgomery for any faults is probably because Montgomery was kind of unpleasant. The Poles and Montgomery got the same treatment there from the Allies. They were simply politically undesired and were given the short end of the stick.

TheHyunwoo Its a definite no.

Out of 4(5) major bridges, only one was taken on Day 1. Plan was rather bordering on delusion rather than being too ambitious, since it utterly ignored how Germans would respond to such landings. Both British and Poles sent to Arnhem were lucky to begin with that explosives on Nijmegen bridge didn't went off.

@@ReichLife they went off they just didn’t blow the bridge

Some research was really bad - they could have taken Driel (4km Southwest) from Arnheim and still have a route to cross the Rhine. Why? There was a ferry service there that could have taken the troops and tanks across the Rhine. They could have covered the town with the British 1st and the ferry service amd the Germans would be hard to shift them.

@@ReichLife absolutely --- "delusion" almost as though the Germans would comply !!!

The most important one

Hahahahahahahahahaha what a simple way too look at it. How about by these metrics. 1. The operation was to secure a bridgehead across the Rhine. They didn't. They instead lost a hundred vehicles and over 15000 men in a few days. Thus it's a failure. Then, the salient in the front they created was a weakness in the front line, hard AF to resupply, and couldn't be abandoned due to the loss of face and morale it would cause, so it even had a lasting negative effect beyond the scope of the operation. Losing over 10000 paratroops in a few days is a failure bro. A big one.

johngreen6783 A good post.

There were NOT 2 German Armoured divisions at Arnhem. Hohenstaufen had no tanks and around 3500 men. Frundsberg had 16 tanks and 4500 men, hardly an armoured division. Frundsberg was sent south to Nijmegen.

That last was the clincher. If Ike had supported this wholeheartedly, and had his close air support structure not been a complete disaster (from D-day to VE day), and had he called for diversionary ops by other parts of the front, the Germans would have been far too busy to realize the danger of the ambitious Market Garden plan. It was Ike's idiocy about committing to ANYTHING during the war that led to all their disasters, notably the Bulge later.

The big problem was that they were playing Big Arrow warfare with a single A/A and a bunch of low hold light infantrymen's lives thrown on the table like chips in high stakes poker, for ego's sake. Whose side were they on? And for what operationally significant objective? Opening a new front in the Denmark and Hamburg/Kiel area buys you nothing, long term. The entire area is sealed by the Kattegat so it's not like Doenitz' U-Boats, not already in Norway, are going to get out with super secrets. Meanwhile, the Scheldt Estuary and the port of Antwerp necessary to sustain that new avenue of advance were completely mined and suitable for ambush by the yard while fighting in conditions that could reasonably be called swamp like, if a swamp ever got that near freezing cold. It would all require months to clear with rogue German units mucking about, throwing wrenches into everything, and then the Heer flooded the east and that axis was shut down to everything, anyway. And that's what? Late November? If we had single-axis pressed, hard, Patton's third army would have been chasing German Armor all the way to the Moselle by early not late August and at the gates of Aachen by no later than September and being a smart fellah, he would have likely bypassed the festunged city, bombing it flat if need be, to suppress enemy artillery, but generally cutting Germany in half, at the waist. Berlin and the Reich's Redoubt with the Thuringia atomic test ranges across the border from Pilsen was the goal we could not afford to be second best in reaching and even by yielding the German Capital to the Soviets, we almost went hammer and tongs with them at Prague and DID get a bloody nose down in Berg or Tyrol I think it was, in Lower Austria. The truth will come out some day. Who had nukes first. Who paid off the SS who built them to get the triggers out of Austria and not mate them up and employ them. What Operation Clarion was about. And a few other 'odds and ends'. From which it will be clear how mind numbingly STUPID we were to play dice with fate like god doesn't give a few to the bad guys to keep them in the fight. With this in mind, sometimes, it is better to be blunt and press hard, with closed flanks and as much airpower as you can muster. No Hurtgen, no Bulge, just knock down the door and go for broke on a single thrustline. We had 2ATAF run security on our flanks and front and could have moved 50 miles a day if we needed to. End The War Soonest. Don't be fancy if the situation doesn't call for it.

@@jamesbutler8821 idiocy is most appropriate but what was the alternative please ???

How? The Soviets wouldn't allow it and the RAF didn't have the range.

@@ErwinHistoryAllies dropped supplies from brindisi/italy.

@BrinkmannDr last i checked Paratroopers don't fit in the bomb bays of Halifaxes and B-24s. Just because Halifax and B-24 Strategic bombers had the range to drop supplies doesn't mean that DC-3s had the range to drop paras.

@@ErwinHistorySo? They asked for being dropped over warsaw anyway. no matter what you are holding against it.

@BrinkmannDr they can ask all they want. If it's not physically possible it can't happen.

Well, I know you're having a bit of fun, but, actually, yes. Your comment reminded me of a line or two from the book The Man With the Golden Gun: "The expression in the dead brown eyes was faraway. He said, "Mister, there's something quite extra about the smell of death. Care to try it?" He held out the glittering gun as if he was offering James Bond a rose. ... Bond looked the man in the eye. He said, "Thanks. I've tried it. I recommend the Berlin vintage nineteen forty-five." He smiled a friendly, only slightly ironical smile. "But I expect you were too young to be at that tasting."

So what should Britain have done '5 years before.'