
Mothers would lose their sons, wives, their husbands, girls their lovers, children their fathers and thousands of gallant young men would perish fighting against impossible odds, for a mission that would change the meaning of the word courage for all time...and for a bridge. A lousy bridge.
Plot outline
Cast
- Siem Vroom
- Marlies van Alcmaer
- Erik van 't Wout
- Wolfgang Preiss
- Hans von Borsody
- Josephine Peeper
- Dirk Bogarde
- Paul Maxwell
- Sean Connery
- Ryan O'Neal
- Gene Hackman
- Walter Kohut
- Peter Faber
- Hartmut Becker
- Frank Grimes
- Jeremy Kemp
- Donald Pickering
- Donald Douglas
- Peter Settelen
- Stephen Moore
- Edward Fox
- Michael Caine
- Michael Byrne
- Anthony Hopkins
- Paul Copley
- Nicholas Campbell
- James Caan
- Gerald Sim
- Harry Ditson
- Erik Chitty
- Brian Hawksley
- Colin Farrell
- Christopher Good
- Norman Gregory
- Alun Armstrong
- Anthony Milner
- Barry McCarthy
- Lex van Delden
- Maximilian Schell
- Michael Wolf
- Hardy Krüger
- Sean Mathias
- Tim Beekman
- Edward Seckerson
- Liv Ullmann
- Tom van Beek
- Bertus Botterman
- Henny Alma
- Elliott Gould
- Ray Jewers
- Geoffrey Hinsliff
- Keith Drinkel
- Mary Smithuysen
- Hans Croiset
- Fred Williams
- John Peel
- John Judd
- Ben Cross
- Hilary Minster
- David English
- Ben Howard
- Michael Graham Cox
- Johan te Slaa
- Georgette Reyevski
- Pieter Groenier
- Adrienne Kleiweg
- Denholm Elliott
- Peter Gordon
- Arthur Hill
- Garrick Hagon
- Brian Gwaspari
- Stephen Rayment
- Timothy Morand
- James Wardroper
- Neil Kennedy
- John Salthouse
- Jonathan Hackett
- Stanley Lebor
- Jack Galloway
- Milton Cadman
- David Auker
- Laurence Olivier
- Richard Kane
- Toby Salaman
- Michael Bangerter
- Philip Raymond
- Myles Reithermann
- Robert Redford
- Anthony Pullen Shaw
- John Morton
- John Ratzenberger
- Patrick Ryecart
- Dick Rienstra
- Ian Liston
- Paul Rattee
- Mark Sheridan
- George Innes
- John Stride
- Niall Padden
- Michael Graves
- Simon Chandler
- Edward Kalinski
- Shaun Curry
- Sebastian Abineri
- Chris Williams
- Andrew Branch
- Anthony Garner
- Feliks Arons
- Stuart Blake
- Roy Boyd
- Stephen Churchett
- Jon Croft
- Patrick Dickson
- Adrian Gibbs
- Jason Gregory
- Stewart Guidotti
- Patrick Hannaway
- Brian Haughton
- Anthony Howden
- Frank Jarvis
- David Killick
- Dan Long
- Gerald Martin
- Edward McDermott
- Tony McHale
- Jack McKenzie
- Francis Mughan
- Richard Ommanney
- Peter Quince
- Robin Scobey
- Farrell Sheridan
- James Snell
- Michael Stock
- David Stockton
- Paul Vaughan-Teague
- Jason White
- Mark York
- Richard Attenborough
- Omar N. Bradley
- John Careless
- Winston Churchill
- Charles de Gaulle
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Gerard Franken
- Adolf Hitler
- Alfred Jodl
- Trafford Leigh-Mallory
- Bernard L. Montgomery
- George S. Patton
- Bertram Ramsay
- Anthony Robb
- Erwin Rommel
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Walter Bedell Smith
- Arthur Tedder
- Robert Wisepart
Plots
Operation Market Garden, September 1944: The Allies attempt to capture several strategically important bridges in the Netherlands in the hope of breaking the German lines.
The true story of Operation Market Garden, the Allies attempt, in September 1944, to hasten the end of World War II by driving through Belgium and Holland into Germany. The idea was for U.S. airborne divisions to take the towns of Eindhoven and Nijmegen and a British airborne division, reinforced by a Polish airborne brigade, to take the town of Arnhem. They would be reinforced, in due course and in turn, by the British XXX Corps, land-based and driving up from the British lines in the south. The key to the operation was the bridges, as if the Germans held or blew them, the paratroopers could not be relieved. Faulty intelligence, Allied high command hubris, and stubborn German resistance would ensure that Arnhem was a bridge too far.
It is near the end of World War II. The Germans have lost most of France, and the Allied forces decide to give them the final hit. They plan to drop thousands of paratroopers in the Netherlands and keep a few key positions there, until reenforcements arrive. The most important spot is the bridge of Arnhem. Once it's captured, it can block everything west of Germany.
Tells the story of Operation Market Garden. A failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of World War II to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in the Netherlands allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.