Arnhem

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain''s Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad ''Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War'' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard ______________ On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany''s parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The