Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48455 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
From the author of "D-Day" and "Band of Brothers" comes the story of the ordinary soldiers in Northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bittersweet days of the war. It opens at 00:01 hours, June 7, 1944 on the Normandy Beaches and ends at 02:45 hours, May 7, 1945. In between comes the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy; the breakout of Saint-Lo, the Falaise gap; Patton tearing through France; the liberation of Paris; the attempt to leap the Rhine in operation Market-Garden; the near-miraculous German recovery; the battles around Metz and in the Huertgen Forest; the Battle of the Bulge; the capture of the bridge at Remagen; and ends with the overunning of Germany. From the enlisted men and junior officers, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from those on both sides of the war. The experience of these citizen soldiers reveals the ordinary sufferings and hardships of war. They overcame their fear and inexperience, the mistakes of their high command and their enemy, to win the war.

Customer Reviews

The war according to Ambrose.
Stephen Ambrose starts to grate after a while, no doubt about it. There are some interesting nuggets of info here, thou some of Ambrose's 'facts' have been proven to be anything but recently. If you want a US biased and false view of WW2, read Ambrose's books. If you want good history and military facts read Beevor, Hastings or Ryan.

The Best Ambrose Offering.
This is the best book Ambrose has put out there. 'Band Of Brothers' is about one very small part of the allied effort and the Ambrose style of hero-worship soon becomes very sickly, 'D-Day' is totally mis-titled, riddled with errors and insulting to the non-US allies, but 'Citizen Soldiers' sets out to be a sweeping look at the men who fought in the US army in NW Europe and the result is very well worth while. Don't let the books mentioned above put you off reading this one.

There is nothing in this book about the Pacific or Mediterranean Theatre of operations except the odd passing reference, usually to compare statistics.

What Ambrose does is take quotes from written first hand accounts, quotes from oral histories at the Eisenhower Centre and then quotes from his own research and conversation with veterans. This book puts them all together in a largely chronological order to give the reader a very good idea of conditions and attitudes of GIs from D-Day to victory in Europe. The finished product is very readable and skips along at a good pace despite the almost 500 page length.

My main criticisms of the book are these:
* The maps are disappointing in both ease of reading and level of detail. Several pages are set aside for good quality glossy prints of photographs which would have been better used for quality map reproduction in my opinion.
* Although Ambrose keeps his own opinions to himself more than in his other books, they are still present from time to time and it is fair to say that his selection of quotes often seems to have been made to back-up his own beliefs.
* Ambrose's knowledge of the air war in Europe is certainly lacking and the book is weak in this area.
* While the book is about American GIs, on occasion the lack of mention of other allied actions can leave the reader confronted with obvious questions going unanswered.

Having said all that, I would recommend this book to those interested in the European theatre with the simple caveat that you must never take any Ambrose book as your single source of information about any single aspect of that war.

Great Book
This book was wriiten well as Steven E. Ambrose does this has not been writen with just one troops in mind but with all. yes most of the memouirs of soilders are from the Amercain GIs. Also Ambrose was writting this book for the Amercain people so they will not forget the soliders that died not just European Theater of War but in all theateres of war this has to be the best war writer ever. this book and all books are coming from the people that were on the ground and in the airand also there making the decisions. Great book like all books he has wrote.