Tigs,
I don't hold with conspiracy theories in general....I would suggest the Fiver thing is more than a bit far fetched....as are most conspiracy theories....God knows the past few years have been rife with them....as evidenced by some of the conjecture in this thread already.
One would have to assume there was complete folly at the highest levels of the SHAEF command in order to even remotely think the wager was the reason for the MG Op Plan.
I personally have other issues with that operation that would challenge why it was even considered viable....the intelligence reports of the two Panzer Divisions being in the area being ignored by Montgomery alone would give rise to some questions. The tactical plan to road march armor up a single road across six bridges without considering problems....also makes one wonder just what was in their teapot. Add in the fact the Air Lift assets required three days of drops to get all the Allied forces inserted....argues against the basic plan itself.
I would assert....the plan was fatally flawed from the start....the Allies had a huge investment in the Airborne Army.....and needed something for it to do and that was the real reason the plan was accepted....and why the Commander sold it so hard....and overlooked the shortcomings of the plan and ignored the intelligence data.
But that Montgomery sold the plan over a Fiver being at risk...no....that did not happen.
I also think if those assets had been alllocated to Patton's area....where he was advancing 50 miles a day.....and a break through had been done where we had highly mobile and aggressive armored forces that were already on the move....those Airborne resources could have been better utilized than on the MG Plan.
The lure of being in the Ruhr might have been the deciding factor for the MG plan....but I fear the politics of the time might have argued against Patton getting those assets. Montgomery was never know for his pace of advance as was Patton.
It might be argued the Broad front strategy of Eisenhower amongst other things ensured the political embarassment of one nations forces was avoided by getting all forces into Germany at one time....whereas throwing the majority of resources in one direction or the other would have set the stage for political problems amongst the Allies. We should also recall the US forces outnumbered the British by a 3:1 ratio at that point in the war....thus by sheer numbers our forces would be in a more advantagous position to capitalize on tactical successes due to unity of command if no other reason.