Product Description

"It is the young men born into the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the Depression of the 1930s that this book is about. The literature they read as youngsters was anti-war and cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers and heroes. None of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not handgrenades; shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-1s at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought" (from the Prologue). On the basis of 1400 oral histories from the men who were there, this account reveals how the intricate plan for the invasion of France in June 1944 had to be abandoned before the first shot was fired. The true story of D-Day, as Stephen Ambrose relates it, is about the citizen soldiers - junior officers and enlisted men - taking the initiative to act on their own to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall when they realized that nothing was as they had been told it would be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93140 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, Stephen E. Ambrose's D-Day: June 6, 1944 relies on over 1,400 interviews with veterans, as well as prodigious research in military archives on both sides of the Atlantic. He provides a comprehensive history of the invasion which also eloquently testifies as to how common soldiers performed extraordinary feats. A major theme of the book, upon which Ambrose would later expand in Citizen Soldiers, is how the soldiers from the democratic Allied nations rose to the occasion and outperformed German troops thought to be invincible. The many small stories that Ambrose collected from paratroopers, sailors, infantrymen, and civilians make the excitement, confusion, and sheer terror of D-day come alive on the page. --Robert McNamara

About the Author
Stephen E. Ambrose is the author of numerous books on history including BAND OF BROTHERS and CITIZEN SOLDIERS and definitive biographies on EISENHOWER and NIXON. He is founder of the Eisenhower Centre and the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans.

Customer Reviews

gripping yet badly biased
I found reading this book a strange experience. It's a gripping read, very thorough in terms of detail and research, and it brings the realities of war into sharp focus. I couldn't put it down, despite the fact that I was on holiday and should have been out sightseeing.
Despite getting great enjoyment out of the book, it also left a rather sour taste in my mouth. The author is primarily concerned with the American contribution to the D-Day operations - fair enough, since I take it he's American. However, he is openly contemptuous of the role of the non-American forces involved. The Canadians get a slightly condescending, brief mention. The most offputing factor was his treatment of the British soldiers though - according to Ambrose, the British took on the 'easy' beaches, wandered ashore, had a cup of tea then packed it in for the day. Not only did we not do much on D-Day, but we scuppered the American soldiers by providing them with our amateurish, ad-hoc kit. I found this kind of stuff slightly offensive and disappointing. The one plus point in this regard is that he keeps his mention of British troops to a minimum, so you aren't reminded of his bias too frequently.
The book is a flawed yet entertaining read, and it has motivated me to do some further reading on the role of the British troops in the D-Day landings.

Putting the Record Straight
Ambrose described an alleged incident on Omaha Beach in which a Captain Zappacosta threatened the British coxswain of his landing craft with a pistol in order to make him move closer inshore. Private Robert Sales, the only survivor of that landing craft has since stated that this was a complete invention. It never happened. Sales, who was angered by the allegation, challenged Ambrose in person and asked him to correct it but the writer just brushed it off. There is much more in this vein - Ambrose rarely missed an opportunity to disparage the British individually and collectively. If this is representative of the standard of his research, then this book should be treated with extreme caution. His sections on the Anglo-Canadian contribution to D-Day are in any case lamentably brief. This is just bad history. There are many excellent works about D-Day, but this isn't one of them.

D-Day The Battle for (Two of) the Normandy Beaches
I'll start by admitting I'm not a big fan of Ambrose, and put off reading this for a long time. I shouldn't have bothered, this is a real disappointment, and unfortunately is Ambrose at both his best and worst.

As always Ambrose does a magnificent job in relating the first hand experiences (although I feel there has only been one source of information used - the Eisenhower Centre) and this is where he really excels, and produces the best aspects of the book. On a serious historical level however this is Ambrose's usual distorted, light weight fluff.

The Omaha section just goes on and on, and really needs edited down, Utah comes a close second, and as for the British and Canadian efforts why did he bother? According to this book the Canadian contribution was negligible, and there are some startling omissions - despite the Royal Navy contributing the largest part of the fleet it gets scant mention at all, apparently only providing bumbling, cowardly Landing Craft crews - an insult to all those involved. All naval bombardment apparently came from US warships, apart from a few stray rounds from RN cruisers which fell on US troops. Ambrose's comments regarding the 8th Army in the Western Desert are simply offensive, and are made worse in that no substantiation or explanation is offered.

If you are looking for any meaningful comment on contribution from French, Polish, Norwegian, Greek, Dutch or any other allied nations don't waste your time. As for the Germans, they are reduced to the status of faceless targets.

Most disappointing is that there is no setting of political or strategic context, the real how and why behind the whole operation.

This would have been better presented in a "Forgotten Voices" style. If you know your Normandy history read this for the first hand accounts, if can stand the "America Won The War" irritation factor. If you want a good first reader go for Cornelius Ryan, Carlo D'Este, David Howarth, Max Hastings or Robin Neillands - anything but this.