The reconstructed cellar
The battle as civilians lived it underground.
Airborne Museum 'Hartenstein' — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Paul Hermans — CC BY-SA 4.0 · FaceMePLS — CC BY 2.0 · Pete14 — CC BY 3.0
After Arnhem failed, the northern Netherlands stayed occupied through the whole winter of 1944-45. The Germans cut food and fuel supplies in reprisal for a Dutch railway strike, and the canals froze so river transport stopped. Some twenty thousand people starved to death in the western cities, and people ate tulip bulbs. That period sits deep in Dutch memory, and it is the direct reason the failure at Arnhem is told here not merely as a lost battle but as a catastrophe that prolonged the occupation.
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The Airborne Museum occupies the Hartenstein villa in Oosterbeek near Arnhem, the very building the British 1st Airborne Division used as its headquarters during the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. The battle was part of Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation in history: an Allied plan to seize a chain of bridges across the Netherlands and enter Germany before the end of 1944. The earlier bridges were taken and the last one failed at Arnhem — a bridge too far, in the famous phrase. The paratroopers were surrounded for nine days and lost some eight thousand of ten thousand men. The museum tells this from within the villa itself: the command rooms, objects, weapons and photographs, and a wholly reconstructed cellar as a sound and light experience recreating the battle as civilians lived it underground. Directly around the building is the British war cemetery with more than 1,700 graves. A day trip from Utrecht.
The battle as civilians lived it underground.
Over 1,700 graves minutes from the museum.
Utrechtseweg 232, 6862 Oosterbeek