It Never Snows in September : The German View of Market-Garden and the Battle of Arnhem, September 1944

On the afternoon of 17th September 1944, Lieutenant Joseph Enthammer, a Wehrmacht artillery officer based in Arnhem, gazed up to the clear skies, hardly believing what he saw. White 'snowflakes' appeared to hang in the air. 'That cannot be,' he thought, 'it never snows in September! They must be parachutists!' They were. He was witnessing the first wave of the British parachute assault on Arnhem. The war had reached the Reich. The blow, moreover, had come as a total surprise. The Allies had expected Operation MARKET-GARDEN to bring the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the West and shorten World War 2, but the Germans resolved to fight...