Amazon.com The Victors
is like a compilation of Stephen E. Ambrose's greatest hits, drawing
heavily from his biography of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and several
military histories that recount the events of the Allied push across
the European continent in 1944 and 1945 from the frontline trooper's
perspective. The narrative is vintage Ambrose, full of engaging yet
workmanlike prose that conveys the epic scope of its subject while
paying careful attention to the details of the often inglorious lives
of the GIs. Eisenhower looms large over this book, but it's the
ordinary soldiers and their experiences who give the story real life.
Readers who have already dipped into the Ambrose library may find
sections of The Victors redundant, but for those who want an adept overview of what Ike and his men accomplished, this is a great place to start. --John J. Miller
From Publishers Weekly Ambrose has
established himself as both a major biographer of Dwight Eisenhower and
the definitive chronicler of America's combat soldiers in the D-Day
campaign of 1944-45. But after Citizen Soldiers, he'd sworn off war and
given away his WWII books. Then his editor convinced him to do "a book
on Ike and the GIs, drawing on my previous writings"Asuch as Citizen
Soldiers, D-Day and The Supreme Commander. "Alice Mayhew made me do
it," Ambrose writes here. Readers familiar with Ambrose's work will
find familiar set pieces, familiar anecdotes, even familiar phrases,
but this is more than a clip job. It stands on its own as the story of
the GIs who fought their way from Normandy's beaches and hedgerows
across Europe. Few were prepared for combat against a Wehrmacht that
was dangerous even in decline, and both enlisted men and officers
learned through hard-earned experience. While admiring Eisenhower's
character and generally affirming his performance as supreme Allied
commander, Ambrose is sharply critical of such costly slugging matches
as the one in the Huertgen Forest, which continued during the fall and
winter of 1944 on orders from senior officers unaware of conditions in
the front lines and unable to develop an alternative to frontal
assault. But by the final thrust into Germany in the spring of 1945,
the U.S. Army's fighting power was second to none. Once more, Ambrose
does what few others do as wellAvividly portray the sacrifices and
achievements of democracy's army. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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No one has been more prolific or entertaining
in his efforts to bring the gritty, unit-level personal experiences of
the Allied drive from Normandy into Germany to the public's attention
than Stephen Ambrose. In his series of books including "D-Day: June 6,
1944: The Climactic Battle of World War Two", "Citizen Soldiers", "Band
Of Brothers", and the present book, "The Victors", he has masterfully
employed a little-known treasure trove of personal interviews with
thousands of Allied soldiers to marshal an absolutely absorbing,
captivating, and insightful treatise on the nature of combat as
experienced by the men and women in the forefront of action as it
transpired all along the front.
In this volume he uses vignettes
and stories told in the other books mentioned above to weave an overall
summary of the American soldier's experience in the eleven-month
struggle to liberate Europe. He includes stories of individual battles,
personal privations, acts of individual sacrifice and surprising
courage, and in doing so with these true accounts of men in battle
weaves a tale depicting the unbelievable human cost of the war. This
book, as with the others, brings the life of a soldier into bold
relief, and relates the spellbinding story of men in combat in a way
made more vivid, vital, and personal than is possible in any other way.
By filling the pages with men we comes to know better than in his other
books, we watch with amazement as they moved into free fire zones where
anything that moves dies, and in the process Ambrose paints an
indelible portrait of the unbelievable madness of war.
This is
a story that should be told again and again, so we never forget what it
took to take back Europe from the beasts who first stole it so
savagely, of the men who died on the beaches, who fell for freedom in
the surrounding countryside, all to prepare for those like this company
of ordinary men who relentlessly pushed deeper and deeper into the
interior of France, finally pushing the battered and beaten Germans all
the way back to Berlin. This was the single greatest adventure of the
20th century, an epic struggle in which millions of Brits, Canadians,
Australians, Frenchmen, and Americans took back by force of arms the
liberty and freedom that had been wrested away from the mainland so
cruelly four years before. This, then, is the story of how that crusade
to liberate Europe unfolded through the personal experiences of a small
group of American soldiers.
Mr. Ambrose has become a virtual
cottage industry in the World War Two section of your local bookstore,
while he has also published works such as his recent best seller on
explorers Lewis and Clark. Meanwhile, he has become phenomenally
successful because many of his books have captured the public's
imagination by being so readable, entertaining, and informative. While
popular success doesn't always equate to critical worthiness, in his
case it consistently seems to. This is a wonderfully worthwhile,
eminently researched, exhaustively documented, and superbly narrated
book on the most historic struggle in the long and painful struggle to
finally liberate Europe. Enjoy!
Ambrose
squeaked this one out in my opinion. It is essentially a cut and paste
compilation of "Citizen Soldiers" and "Eisenhower" and "Band of
Brothers". If this is your first Ambrose book, you will find it
enjoyable. If this is the ONLY book you read about WWII, it is a fair
choice, however, if you have read any of Ambroses other work, then I
wouldn't bother.
Ambrose clearly has fallen under Ike's cult of
personality, and although Ike was a great politician and a
compassionate man, he was not a master strategist and many of his
decisions cost unnecessary lives in my opinion.
This book trys
to capture the sweep of the US involvement in W.W.II. European Theater
in one text of similar length to Ambrose's other works. It may be that
books thicker than this don't sell well and that is why Ambrose only
included the limited material that he did because this book leaves you
wanting. It is rich in details about details, but misses other large
happenings. In my opinion, it is better to read "D-Day", "Citizen
Soldiers", "Band of Brothers" and "A Bridge too Far" and to skip this
book altogether.
From
the very beginning of the book I was enticed. I thought it was very
well written and an enjoyable read. It includes stories and things I
would have never expected. I thought the relationship between Marshall
and Eisenhower was most interesting. I had not learned much about
Marshall and Eisenhower's personalities. They were opposites yet worked
very well together. Their relationship was based on trust. It is
inspirational to hear of all that our soldiers went through during
World War II. As someone looking back it helped me to better understand
what went on and what the soldiers experienced first hand. I thought
"The Victors" was a wonderful book and spanned over a good period of
time. I would highly recommend it to others as a World War II
informative book.
This covers the European theater from D day to the end. The
futile battles of the Hurtgen forest are documented. A waste of men for
nothing. We gave up our advantages of air power and tanks to fight in
an impenatrable forest. What struck me over and over, was what the men fighting endured. The
supply situation was what is was always in the military. Those in the
rear get the gear. Those doing the fighting get the remains. In the
battle of the Hurtgen forest, during a visit by Ike, a company of
Rangers complained to Ike about the lack of cold weather gear. He got
the Rangers cold weather gear, but not the other thousands of men doing
the fighting. The same applied in the battle of the Bulge. The
people in the rear out of the line of fire had waterproof, warm boots,
and huge overcoats to keep warm. Those doing the fighting had summer
uniforms, leather boots, and had to fight without benefit of fire to
keep them warm, or get their food warm. The result was thousands of men
with trench foot. The men went hungry a lot of the time due to
impassible roads, so food supplies could not be brought up. The men who endured this were heros. Ike
was the first to realize what Hitler was up to when the Battle of the
Bulge started, and got Patton moving on a counterattack plan
immediately, which succeeded. Thanks to Steve Ambrose, the suffering of the men who did the fighting is documented.
I have read most of the books by Ambrose and
the material in The Victors is covered better in his other works. It
isn;t bad, but the only reader who might find it interesting is someone
who was looking to get into Ambrose's WWII works. Anyone else but the
completists will probably not enjoy this book.
Stephen
Ambrose has crafted a wonderful popular history of a tale that should,
and must, be told to every generation of Americans and Europeans. This
story must remain in our hearts and witness that there is such a thing
as objective evil and that we, all of us, have an obligation to stand
up for the good.
To that end, Stephen Ambrose, has marvelously
depicted the lives of Eisenhower's men in battle. This book is a
complilation of several other books written by Ambrose. Therefore, if
you have read the others, you may be disappointed by this book.
Nonetheless, for the first time reader of an Ambrose book, I can say
that this book needed to be written.
The book ends with the
following: "What I think of the GIs more than a half century after
their victory was best said by Sgt. Mike Ranney of the 101st: 'In
thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to
a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' No, I
answered, but I served in a company of heroes.' So far as I am
concerned, so did they all."
Ambrose has compiled quite a
compendium of oral histories and preserved the memories of these
soldiers in print. The reader will not be disappointed by Ambrose's
casual style because it conveys a sense of brotherhood, of victory.
This is no stale tome of history which recites dates and facts ad
nauseum. Rather, it is a story of boys becoming men for the defeat of
evil. One soldier remarked as he entered a concentration camp and saw
the harm and hate down to innocents that "Now I know why I am here."
We should also know why this war was fought. Therefore, read this book, treasure it and pass it on to your children.
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based on 53 reviews. (
Wonderful Overview of Americans Helping Liberate Europe!, October 1, 2000
Good intro, not for the well read however!, December 28, 2000
