The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II

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.

Now admittedly and quite obviously this book covers much of what his other books, D-Day and Citizen Soldiers, covers. This may or may not be a good thing. One main difference is that in The Victors the book goes chronologically like the others; however, The Victors is not focused on the timeline of events. For example there is a section for each of the two American landing beaches at D-Day, and then there is a section for Hedgerows; neither of the sections are certain dates or times. I personally love reading WWII books so I do not believe that the repetitions are superfluous, as other casual readers may. In my opinion, it is a very well-written and truly great book.

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 r

This is the first book that I've read from Stephen Ambrose and I thought it was remarkable. Ambrose takes us from the battles in North Africa all the way to the German surrender on May 7th 1945. One thing that I truly enjoyed about this book is; Ambrose gives a complete picture of the war, from the orders made by Eisenhower and his staff, to the captains, sergeants and privates who had to carry out those orders. I'll end this review with a passage from the book, which most touched me."At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful."