History of the Netherlands of Normandy ended in August 1944. German resistance collapsed in Western Europe and the allied armies advanced quickly towards the Dutch border. The First Canadian Army and the Second British Army conducted operations on Dutch soil from September onwards. On 17 September, a daring operation, Operation Market Garden; was executed with the goal of capturing bridges across three major rivers in the southern Netherlands. Despite desperate fighting by American, British and Polish forces, the bridge at Arnhem, across the Neder Rijn, could not be captured. Areas south of the Rhine river were liberated in the period September–December 1944, including the
Airborne forces and were rarely used as parachute troops afterward. On 6 December 1944, a 750-strong detachment from "Teishin Shudan" ("Raiding Division") and the "Takachiho" special forces unit, attacked U.S. airbases in the Burauen area on Leyte, in The Philippines. The force destroyed some planes and inflicted casualties, but was eventually wiped out. Japan built a combat strike force of 825 gliders but never committed it to battle. Ironically, the battle that ended Germany's paratrooper operations had the opposite effect on the Allies. Convinced of the effectiveness of airborne assaults after Crete, the Allies hurried to train and organize their own airborne