連合軍のノルマンディ上陸作戦から3カ月後の1944年9月5日、ドイツ軍はオランダからの撤退を開始した。9月10日、ロンドンのブラウニング中将の司令室に司令官たちが集まり、オランダからドイツにかけての5つの橋を占拠するための話し合いが行われた。それはオランダのアーンエム付近に空からのマーケット、陸からのガーデン両作戦を遂行し、ネーデル・ライン河からベルリンへ進撃路を開くための史上空前の大作戦だった。
Screen superstars Clark Gable ("Gone With The Wind," "It Happened One Night") and sultry bombshell Lana Turner ("Peyton Place," "The Postman Always Rings Twice") team-up in this intriguing WWII drama. Suspected of being a Nazi spy, Dutch-resistance member Turner is given a last chance mission to redeem herself. Gable is an intelligence agent of the exiled Dutch government, who falls in love with her. Co-starring Victor Mature ("My Darling Clementine") and Oscar-nominee Louis Calhern ("The Asphalt Jungle").
With 2 Para isolated at the Arnhem Bridge and both 1 and 4 Para Brigades thwarted in their attempts to fight their way into Arnhem and falling back, what became the Oosterbeek Perimeter started to form around Divisional HQ at the Hartenstein Hotel. Beaten but not defeated, the remnants of 1st Airborne Division fought a grim battle with the SS supported by reinforcements and armour rushed to Oosterbeek from all over the West. Veterans and experienced battlefield guides vividly relate their experiences and take the viewer to the scene of the action. The seven days of grim and bloody fighting in the Oosterbeek Perimeter was amongst the hardest fought of all the battles in the West. It was one that the SS veterans of the Eastern Front in the Hohenstaufen Division christened the Hexenkessel or “Witches Cauldron”. All the while the the airborne soldiers were waiting for XXX Corps to arrive from the south, with the enemy pressing ever closer.
For OPERATION MARKET GARDEN to work it was vital for the Allies to secure a road to Arnhem up which vital supplies and reinforcements could move to support the beleaguered men of the Airborne Forces, especially the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. This is the story of the heroic struggle waged by the men of the British XXX Corps and the US 101st Airborne Division as they struggle to open the road to Arnhem against everything the Germans could throw against the corridor. Even though the men of the Grenadier Guards manged 30 miles in 3 hrs to reach the 82nd Airborne in Nijmegen the story was not over. The men of 101st Airborne faced incredible odds as the kept the route open, it was indeed Hell's Highway.
September 1944. The Battle of Arnhem was one of the most audacious but ultimately controversial battles of the Second World War. Airborne drops in Holland were to secure important bridges on the route to be taken by ground forces racing to gain a foothold across the Rhine. Had it succeeded it might have ended the war by Christmas 1944.