U.S. Army Air Force transports and gliders prepared for Operation Varsity
In March of 1945, the long war against Hitler’s Nazi Germany was entering its final chapter. As Russian Red Army formations began closing in on the country’s eastern frontier, American, British, and Canadian troops continued their offensive toward Germany’s western border along the Rhine River. Hoping to support ground troops in their amphibious river crossings, the Allies devised a massive airborne operation that would drop paratroops behind German lines to disrupt the defenders. The result was Operation Varsity, the largest single-day airborne operation in history. It mobilized some 16,000 troops and thousands of aircraft in the final major airborne assault of World War II and was among the last of the airborne operations of its scale in American history.
It was not without difficulties. As was common in World War II airborne operations, confusion and pilot error caused some planes to miss their drop zones, and paratroopers initially found themselves out of position. But Operation Varsity stands as an Allied success. The airborne troops captured bridges and towns that otherwise would have been used by the German military to slow the advance of Allied forces on the ground and took 3,500 prisoners. The drop, part of the larger Operation Plunder intended to get Allied forces across the Rhine to begin operations aimed at the heart of Germany, resulted in significant Allied gains. By March 27 the bridgehead across the northern Rhine was already 35 miles wide and 20 miles deep.
Christopher Hamner, associate professor of history at George Mason University, draws on primary sources to explore the development of airborne doctrine (still a new operational approach in the Second World War), Allied strategy in the West in the spring of 1945, and the implications of Operation Varsity for the war’s final weeks and the post-war settlement.
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