Highway to the Reich: Operation Market Garden and the Battle for the Low Countries 1944: Seventy Years On

Conference held 10-11 September 2014

In September 1944 the Western Allies mounted an audacious attempt to seize a crossing over the Rhine into Germany in a bid to end the Second World War quickly. Yet despite the deployment of thousands of American, British and Polish airborne troops, in conjunction with the efforts of ground forces to link up with them, ultimately at Arnhem in the Netherlands, the plan failed spectacularly and the war continued well into 1945.

Famously depicted in the blockbuster film ‘A Bridge Too Far’ (1977) the operation, codenamed Market Garden, has attained iconic status and is the subject of countless books, documentaries and articles, and is subjected to more speculation than almost any other Allied operation of the war.

After seventy years it is time to re-evaluate the importance, impact and outcome of Market Garden, alongside a wider reappraisal of the fighting in the Low Countries in the autumn of 1944.

• Why did Market Garden take place?
• Why did it fail?
• What were the consequences of the operation?
• How did it impact on the experience of war in the Low Countries in 1944?
• How and why has it been depicted, studies and commemorated in the years since 1944?

Such questions and issues form the basis of this major international conference to be held at the University of Wolverhampton in September 2014, hosted by the University’s Department of History, Politics and War Studies.

The conference will lead to an edited collection to be published by Helion.

Conference details