A Bridge Too Far (movie)

Title: A Bridge Too Far

Year, production: 1977, USA/UK

Directed by: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Krüger, Ryan O'Neal, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, ...

Runtime: 176 min

This is a historic story. Allied soldiers wanted to get bridges in Holland to be able to go easily to Germany in World War II. They failed in that. This campaign was called Operation Market-Garden.

The American, Polish and British soldiers were parachuted in Holland. That campaing was planned to crash German forces but it failed.

Because of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two German panzer divisions the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) failed.

Polish forces in command of general Stanislaw Sosabowski were created in Enagland to be used as a help for polish freedom forces that uprised in Warsaw. They never been used there, a lot of polish soldiers died in operation market garden in Holland close to Arnhem. The other thing is that british after failed battle ujustly made Sosabowski a scapegoat for the failure of Operation Market Garden. He was accused of criticizing Field Marshal Montgomery and the Polish General Staff was forced to remove him as the commanding officer of his brigade. This year I saw in tv that british soldiers which fought with polish soldiers in Holland thanked polish soldiers and specially general Sosabowski who died in London in 1967 for their help in those terrible battles. Because of communistic goverment he was not able to go back to Poland... In movie Gene Hackman plays general Stanislaw Sosabowski.