ilovefootball's alternate account Operation Market Garden (September 17, 1944–September 25, 1944) was an Allied military operation. It was fought in the Netherlands and Germany in World War II. It made large-scale use of airborne forces. Its tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands to allow rapid advance by armored units. The strategic purpose was to allow an Allied crossing of the Rhine river, the last major natural barrier to an advance into Germany. The planned rapid advance from the Dutch-Belgian border into northern Germany, across the Maas (Meuse) and two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine), would have outflanked the Siegfried Line and made possible an encirclement of the Ruhr Area, Germany's industrial heartland. The operation was initially successful with the capture of the Waal bridge at Nijmegen on September 20. But it was a failure overall since the planned Allied advance across the Rhine a