On the morning of March 24, 1945, more than two thousand Allied aircraft took off, carrying 17,000 troops to be dropped via parachute and glider on the German side of the Rhine. After hours of brutal fighting against the Reich's desperate defenders, the Allies' major objectives had all been seized. The invasion broke Germany's last line of defense and gutted Hitler's war machine; the end of the war in Europe was now in sight. James Fenelon follows the 17th Airborne Division as they prepare for Operation Varsity, a campaign that would rival Normandy in scale and become one of the most successful of World War II, yet oddly is little known today.