Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany

In this volume he concentrates on the drive from Normandy all the way into the heart of Germany, and covering as much ground as the Allies conquered in that fateful year is a considerable accomplishment. This makes for fascinating and entertaining reading. A great deal of ground is covered, from the consolidation of the beachheads in Normandy to the relatively quick liberation of Paris, from the ill-fated Operation Market-Garden assault into Holland in September to the disastrous bloodbath in Omar Bradley's catastrophic excursion into the Hurtigen Forest, from the desperate clashes around Bastogne in the wintry Battle of the Bulge to the long, costly drive that unusually cold and snowy winter into Germany itself. As a result, we don't find the level of detail or strict chronology he employed in "D-Day", for example, or the kind of comprehensive coverage of specific events like the Battle of the Bulge that one finds in books like John Toland's "Battle".

This does not mean one doesn't learn a great deal about all these events transpiring during that fateful year; on the contrary, there is much in the way of provocative information and startling perspective offered here on each of these events. Yet it is unfair to expect a book addressing itself to the totality of the Allied campaign to do so comprehensively in less than 500 pages. Certainly anyone reading the corpus of all the Ambrose works on the year 1944-45 as is represented by the books mentioned above gets a very comprehensive feel for the progress of the war effort in Europe. Still, to gain the kind of comprehensive and strictly chronological information a complete history requires, one must look elsewhere, to tomes such as "A World At Arms", or "A War To Be Won", or even the comfortable, veritable, and well-worn "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich", my own personal favorite.

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 critical last year of the war in Europe. Enjoy!


Worthy of All the Praise It Has Garnered   April 12, 1999
29 out of 30 found this review helpful

Ambrose is a master of well-documented historical non-fiction. His portrait of foot soldiers in WWII Europe is loaded with details about combat that only those who have been there can know. These details describing the terror, misery, and unexpected aspects of war gleaned from hundreds of interviews of ordinary soldiers give the book a depth and breadth not found in any other WWII account I've ever read. Ambrose artfully entwines these many short firsthand stories around the larger historical narrative of the allied liberation of Western Europe from D-Day to VE-Day.

I'm sure this book, because of its faithful portrayal of reality, will appeal to those who were there as well as those who were not. For me it brought to life the adventure as well as the overwhelming fear and hardships that my own father must have lived through as a soldier in Patton's army in North Africa and post D-Day Europe. I imagine the stories he never told would have been much like the hundreds of stories in this outstanding book. I cannot recommend it highly enough, especially when comparing it to Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation." Brokaw's book is interesting and enjoyable but shallow compared to Ambrose's far more thorough account. Both books are good reading, but if I could only choose one of them, "Citizen Soldiers" wins hands down. It will give you an deep and abiding appreciation of what the WWII generation did for our nation and the world at great cost to themselves.


Ambrose's historical view is heavily biased   July 9, 1999
21 out of 33 found this review helpful

This is a typical Ambrose collection of highly personable and entertaining stories that have unfortunatley been wrapped up into a misguided and subjective analysis of american armed forces during WWII. Ambrose consistently and erroneously concludes that the pluck and spirit of individual soldiers, along with "democratized" military culture and superior leadership, was the sole factor contributing to Nazi Germany's defeat in the ETO during WWII. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The average 1944 German army infantry company, with no tactical or strategic air support, little or no mechanization, inadequate supplies and being undermanned was still able to outfight its American couterpart on a consistent basis. The Americans had inferior armour and anit-tank weapons. The quality of their commanders, particularly at the regimental and divisional level demonstrated a lack of imagination and boldness in the attack, rarely deviating from plans or following up initial tactical successes. They also lacked the ability to operate large scale combined arms formations with skill and flexibility, allowing the germans to mount defensive actions and counter-attacks with a shocking degree of success. So how did the Germans lose? Simple. The stupidity of Hitler and the diminished capacity of the German general staff to resist him was foremost. Had Hitler allowed Rundstedt and Rommel to engage the panzer divisions from the 15th Army in the early hours of the invasion as his generals had begged him to, the American and all other allied beachheads would have been crushed, period! We would be talking today about the great defeat at Normandy. There are numerous others examples of Hitler's stupidity that lead to irreparable german military disasters in the ETO after the beahhead was secured, such as Falaise. Secondly, the massive allied tactical air superiority played a a huge role in defeating German forces, along with the degraded state of German army manpower (especially noncommisioned officer leadership) after four brutally long years of war with the Soviet Union. If the American armies in Normandy in 1944 had to face the German armies from the eastern front circa 1942 or 1943 when the Luftwaffe was still a force to be reckoned with, the Americans would have been slaughtered piece meal. We should thank the Russians every Memorial day for their sacrifice of 25-30 million casualties and the destruction of Germany's best units and most of their tactical airpower before we had to face them. Finally, the Americans employed the strategy of blunt force attrition to defeat the Germans. We had such an enormous quantity of materiale which could be expended without threat of scarcity that we simply overwhelmed superior German military skills by throwing massive amounts of equipment into battle without consideration for losses. All of this information is plainly documented in most of the more objectively researched and written historical accounts of the WWII ETO, so I'm not quite sure why Ambrose chooses to ignore these facts. Anyways, enjoy the individual soldier stories, and look to other books if you're intersted in accurate accounts of military history.


A very well written book by a very mediocre historian.   January 11, 2000
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

Whether you loved the film "Saving Private Ryan" or hated it, there is no doubt that it had a major cultural impact in reviving public interest in WWII. As a huge military history buff, I have not seen such a wonderful cornucopia of new and re-released books on a single subject, WWII, since the big Civil War craze that followed the success of Ken Burns' documentary.

Like that Civil War craze, the current popular interest in WWII has seen the release of some truly great books, some mediocre ones, and just plain wasted pulp. "Citizen Soldiers" fits somewhere in between great and mediocre. It is well-written, has some terrific stories, and provides a nice introduction to people who are new to the field of military history.

The problem with the book is Ambrose. Ambrose has become the unofficial "WWII expert" in American popular culture. His name will be seen on the forwards of new WWII books. His face and pleasant voice used for documentaries or interviews. He has, in fact, become the WWII equivilent to the Civil War craze's Shelby Foote. Ambrose is a good writer; but an average historian. "Citizen Soldiers" is nothing more than a collection of secondary source material and the recollections of old veterans. Interesting reading to be sure; but lazily researched history. Also Ambrose's jingoism and hero worship(especially of Eisenhower which is seen in virtually all of his WWII books) can get a little tiresome, especially knowing that he is a professional historian and not a novelist turned amateur historian like Foote. If a reader really wants to know what it was like to be a combat soldier in the ETO check out "Company Commander" by Charles MacDonald or "The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo" by Glover Johns. Both of these books were written by combat veterans less than five years after the war. Also both were used heavily as source material for "Citizen Soldiers." Johns' book is, unfortunatly, out of print, but available through many libraries. MacDonald's book, though, was just recently reprinted- thank you, Steven Speilberg.


A Survey of the World War Two GI   March 23, 2001
R. A Forczyk (Laurel, MD USA)
18 out of 28 found this review helpful

Stephen Ambrose uses the not-very original (although he suggests to the naive that it is) technique of using a first-person survey of US soldiers in combat from Normandy to VE Day to illuminate the Second World War GI; this is basically old wine in a new bottle. The book is very anecdotal in nature with little analysis, but Ambrose keeps interest with a readable style. There are no new thesis here, but Ambrose is critical of the US higher command in continuing the "broad front" campaign during bad weather and supply difficulties of October-November 1944. As Ambrose sees it, the Allies should have paused to allow their supplies to catch up and weather to improve. The actual result was heavy casualties for minimal gain and giving the Germans an opportunity to rip through the front against tired, worn-out divisions. Ambrose may have a point here, but he minimizes the feeling in October 1944 that German collapse was imminent with one more push. Just like the Germans felt in Russia in October-November 1941. Also in war, one does not surrender the initiative lightly. Ambrose does not always have his facts straight, like claiming that the Panther tank had an 88mm gun or that the Luftwaffe did not challenge the Allied airborne drops in Holland (in fact, they shot down 33 C-47s on the first day - 3% of the total). Maps adequate, but large scale.