[- Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944: The Sunday Times No 1 Bestseller -]

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The Sunday Times #1 Bestseller

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

Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War . . . his fans will love it' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard

The eye for telling detail which we have come to expect from Antony Beevor. . . this time, though, he turns his brilliance as a military historian to a subject not just of defeat, but dunderhead stupidity' Daily Mail

On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aero engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the vast air armada of Dakotas and gliders, carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions. He gazed up in envy at the greatest demonstration of paratroop power ever seen.

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

The British fascination for heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths, not least that victory was possible when in fact the plan imposed by Montgomery and General 'Boy' Browning was doomed from the start. Antony Beevor, using many overlooked and new sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of this epic clash. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war.

'In Beevor's hands, Arnhem becomes a study of national character' - Ben Macintyre, The Times

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

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

'Another masterwork from the most feted military historian of our time' - Jay Elwes, Prospect Magazine

'The analysis he has produced of the disaster is forensic' - Giles Milton, Sunday Times

'He is a master of his craft . . . we have here a definitive account' - Piers Paul Read, The Tablet


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