The Traitor of Arnhem
Journalist Robert Verkaik offers the best description of his book The Traitor of Arnhem:
This book is not a military history, there are much
better-qualified historians for that job. The Traitor
of Arnhem is a spy story, an 80-year-old cold case
review of thousands of primary source documents,
many of them written and signed by the traitors.” (x)
Verkaik does not disappoint. The title of the cold case, is in fact, a misnomer. There was not “a” traitor of Arnhem. Verbaik hypothesizes that there were, in fact, two men who betrayed Operation Market Garden, the ambitious plan to create an invasion corridor through then German-occupied Netherlands.
The two, independent of each other, helped stall the drive of the Allied armies to end the war before Christmas 1944. In doing so, they thwarted the largest airborne assault up to that time and caused the deaths of more paratroopers than at any time before in history. In Verkaik’s book you get two traitors for the price of one.