What exactly was the rationale behind introducing references in c++?

Question

From the discussion that has happened in my recent question (Why is a c++ reference considered safer than a pointer?), it raises another question in my mind: What exactly wa

Answer 1

You need them for operator overloading (of course we can now go down the rabbit hole of "what was the rationale for introducing operator overloading?")

How would you type std::auto_ptr::operator*() without references? Or std::vector::operator[]?