* A myth arose just after the war that the plan for Market Garden had been betrayed to the Germans by a traitor in the Dutch underground called Christiaan Antonius Lindemans, known as ‘King Kong’ because of his size. Lindemans, born in Rotterdam, worked in his father’s garage. During the war he helped an escape line of the Dutch underground. In March 1944, he was recruited by Major Hermann Giskes, the Abwehr counter-intelligence chief in the Netherlands. The suggestion that the whole plan had been betrayed was never convincing because all German sources admit that they were taken completely unawares. Sentenced to death by a Dutch court, Lindemans committed suicide in prison in 1946.

According to the end-of-war report by Hugh Trevor-Roper, the historian and wartime intelligence officer, SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, the head of the SD foreign intelligence department, received information in mid-September 1944 predicting an Allied airborne landing in Holland to seize a Rhine bridge, but he took no action in response.