The Battle of Arnhem was a battle of the Second World War at the vanguard of the Allied Operation Market Garden. It was fought in and around the Dutch city of Arnhem, the town of Oosterbeek, the villages Wolfheze and Driel and the vicinity from 17 to 26 September 1944. The Allies were poised to enter the Netherlands after sweeping through France and Belgium in the summer of 1944, after the Battle of Normandy. Operation Market Garden was proposed by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, who favoured a single push northwards over the branches of the Lower Rhine River, allowing the British Second Army to bypass the Siegfried Line and attack the Ruhr. US Airborne troops were dropped in the Netherlands to secure bridges and towns along the line of the Allied advance. Farthest north, the British 1st Airborne Division landed at Arnhem to capture bridges across the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine), supported by men of the Glider Pilot Regiment and the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade. The British XXX Corps were expected to reach the British airborne forces in two to three days.
The 1st Airborne Division landed some distance from its objectives and was hampered by unexpected resistance, especially from elements of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions. Only a small force was able to reach the Arnhem road bridge while the advance of the main body of the division was stopped on the outskirts of the town. XXX Corps was unable to advance north from Nijmegen in the Battle of Nijmegen as quickly as planned and the British airborne troops were not relieved according to schedule. After four days, the small British force at the bridge was overwhelmed and the rest of the division trapped in a small pocket north of the river. The paratroops could not be sufficiently reinforced by the Poles or XXX Corps when they arrived on the southern bank, nor by Royal Air Force supply flights. After nine days of fighting, the remnants of the division were withdrawn in Operation Berlin. The Allies were unable to advance further with no secure bridges over the Nederrijn and the front line stabilised south of Arnhem.
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The Allied invasion of Sicily, also known as the Battle of Sicily and Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II in which the Allied forces invaded the island of Sicily in July 1943 and took it from the Axis powers (Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany). It began with a large amphibious and airborne operation, followed by a six-week land campaign, and initiated the Italian campaign. To divert some of the Axis forces to other areas, the Allies engaged in several deception operations, the most famous and successful of which was Operation Mincemeat.
Arnhem (ˈɑrnɛm or ˈɑr(ə)nɦɛm; Arnheim; South Guelderish: Èrnem) is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland, located on both banks of the rivers Nederrijn and Sint-Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem had a population of 163,972 on 1 December 2021, which made it one of the larger cities of the Netherlands. The municipality is part of the Arnhem–Nijmegen metropolitan area, which has a combined number of 774,506 inhabitants on 31 January 2022.
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the Kingdom of Italy. Its principal members by the end of 1941 were the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China. Membership in the Allies varied during the course of the war. When the conflict broke out on 1 September 1939, the Allied coalition consisted of the United Kingdom, France, and Poland, as well as their respective dependencies, such as British India.