Review by Booklist Review
A continuation of D^-Day (1994), Ambrose's present saga sets its sights on the motivations and experiences of privates and noncoms who slogged across northwestern Europe in the war's last year. Higher ranks appear intermittently, as the remote orderers of an infantryman's, a tanker's, or an airman's contact with the enemy. For nearly half of the ground forces, the war was as lonely as life could possibly be, mainly because of the organizational plan dreamed up by the highest ranked soldier of them all, General George C. Marshall. He created the replacement system, which, instead of rotating whole units from the front line, fed raw individuals into the units. The result, as attested by the abundant memoir literature from which Ambrose liberally quotes, was that the replacements, anonymous and isolated, were deprived of any comradeship, and the veterans they joined despised them as incompetent and dangerous. Veterans didn't bother finding out the names of replacements because they didn't last long. Marshall was also responsible for the inferiority of American tanks to German models; he wanted more, not better, the basic principle that beat down the Wehrmacht. Still, men had to dig foxholes and duck during artillery barrages. Writing about the personal level of combat is Ambrose's forte and has contributed to his reputation as a celebrated military historian. Eschewing all gloss while including the atrocities, the casualties, the rear-area jerks, Jim Crow, the cold, the mud, and the fear, Ambrose solidly coheres disparate facts into a fully faceted story that is bound to be immensely popular. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The story of the front-line American combatants who took WWII to the Germans from Normandy to the Elbe River makes, in Ambrose's expert hands, for an outstanding sequel to his D-Day (1994). These men are frequently dismissed as winning victories by firepower rather than acknowledged for their individual fighting power. Using interviews and other personal accounts by both German and American participants, Ambrose tells instead the story of enlisted men and junior officers who not only mastered the battlefield but developed emotional resources that endured and transcended the shocks of modern combat. Ambrose's accounts of the fighting in Normandy, the breakout and the bitter autumn struggles for Aachen and the battles in the Huertgen Forest and around Metz depict an army depending not on generalship but on the courage, skill and adaptability of small-unit commanders and their men. The 1945 offensive into Germany was a triumph of a citizen army, but the price was high. One infantry company landed in Normandy on August 8 with 187 men and six officers. By V-E Day, 625 men had served in its ranks. Fifty-one had been killed, 183 wounded and 167 suffered frostbite or trench foot. Nor do statistics tell the whole story. Ambrose's reconstruction of "a night on the line" is a brilliant evocation of physical hardship and emotional isolation that left no foxhole veteran unscarred. It is good to be reminded of brave men's brave deeds with the eloquence and insight that the author brings to this splendid, generously illustrated and moving history. Photos. 250,000 first printing; BOMC and History Book Club main selections, QPB alternate; Reader's Digest Condensed Book. (Nov.) FYI: In an outpouring of Ambrosia, the author has two other books scheduled for fall publication. They are reviewed below. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Military historian and author Ambrose offers a sequel to his best seller, D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (LJ 5/1/94). A skillful blending of eyewitness accounts (gathered mostly from the oral history collection at the Univ. of New Orleans's Eisenhower Center and from personal interviews) gives the reader an intimate feel of what war was like for infantrymen in the European theater of operationsfrom the beaches of France to victory at the Elbe River. Additional chapters on the air war, medics, and prisoners of war offer firsthand accounts on topics rarely described in traditional histories. The book complements Paul Fussell's Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (LJ 8/96) and Michael Daubler's Closing with the Enemy: How G.I.'s Fought the War in Europe, 1944-45 (Univ. of Kansas, 1994). This well-written oral history would also make an excellent general text. Highly recommended for all library collections.Richard S. Nowicki, Emerson Vocational H.S., Buffalo, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A worthy sequel to Ambrose's 1994 D-Day. Bestselling historian Ambrose (Undaunted Courage, 1996) uses firsthand recollections of combat veterans on both sides to flesh out his well-researched narrative. He picks up the epic drama by following, almost step by step, various individuals and outfits among the tens of thousands of young Allied soldiers who broke away from the deadly beaches of Normandy and swept across France to the Ardennes, fought the Battle of the Bulge, captured the famed bridge at Remagen, and crossed the wide Rhine to final victory in Europe. Ambrose observes that the US broke the Nazi war machine with massive aerial bombing, artillery, and the great mobility of attacking tanks and infantry. But, he argues, it was not technology but the valor and character of the young GIs and their European counterparts that ultimately proved too much for the vaunted German forces. While generally approving of Allied military leadership, Ambrose faults Eisenhower and Bradley as too conservative and believes the great human and materiel cost of victory could have been reduced by adopting Patton's more innovative and bolder knockout movements. He deplores the sending of inadequately trained 18-year-olds as replacements on the front lines, where they suffered much higher casualty rates than the foxhole-wise GI veterans. The troops fought under the worst possible conditions in the Ardennes, during the worst winter in 40 years; Ambrose describes the long, freezing snowy nights; the wounds, frostbite, and trench foot; and the fatigue and the tensions of facing sudden death or maiming. The troops rallied to drive the enemy back to the Rhine and into Germany, but took some 80,000 casualties. With remarkable immediacy and clarity, as though he had trained a telescopic lens on the battlefields, Ambrose offers a stirring portrayal of the terror and courage experienced by men at war. (109 photos, 9 maps, not seen) (First printing of 250,000; Book-of-the-Month Club/History Book Club main selection; Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection)
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