Customer Reviews

Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (Essays in American History)

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This is a short book about why Ike did not use the opportunity to capture Berlin in 1945. This is an earlier book before Ambrose became widely known, and to be honest more scholorly and less reader friendly. It is a short read.

Ike did not sanction the capture of Berlin for a number of reasons. First, Berlin was in the Soviet sphere in Germany, and second because his troops were not in as good a position as the Russians of taking the Nazi capital. The cost in human lives would also be great, especially if the city would have to be handed back to the Russians. For these reasons, Ike decided that Berlin was not worth the risk, and sent his forces toward Leipzig. Ike made a sound military decision.

I am a hugh fan of Stephen Ambrose. However, this very small book was a great disappointment. First of all its only about 100 pages plus appendices. It is more like reading a college history report. Stephen Ambrose is my favorite history author but, he seems to have a blind spot when it comes to Eisenhower. In Ambroses eyes he can do no wrong. If you want a much more detailed viewpoint of the battle for Berlin read The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan.

After reading Citizen Soldiers, D-Day, and Band of Brothers, I came to one conclusion. Ambrose is great at interviewing veterans and taking those interviews and making pretty good books out of them. However, he should not attempt to analyze the strategy of several generals in World War 2. Ambrose is ignorant to the fact that even though our allies in the east were communists, they still bled alot more than the Western Allies did and suffered far more from the wrath of the Third Reich. Ambrose is a fool for criticizing Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle. Ryan was able to interview hundreds from BOTH sides of the war. While Ambrose just interviews Americans, Ryan interviewed Americans, British, Russians, and Germans. Also don't forget that Ryan was able to interview all the key players of the Battle of Berlin; Ike, Bradley, Chuikov, Rokossovskii, Heinrici, and too many more for me to list here. If you want a great account of the Battle of Berlin and the decision of the West not to attack the capital, read Ryan's The Last Battle. Take it from a guy who was with our troops and interviewed ALL of the major players in the battle.

I think there is a great deal that is not known about Eisenhower's halt at the Elbe, and gift of what became East Germany to the Russians. Surely he had some inkling of what was to come. The consequences are widely known and tragic.

That is not all that defies explanation. Herr Udo Pfleghar search long in the National Archives for an answer to this question, and I highly recommend his book (in German) of 1998. Moreover, it took high reprimand from Truman to move Eisenhower to do anything about the tragic conditions of displaced persons and concentration camp survivors after the war (see Hilliard's "Surviving the Americans").

I admire Ambrose for trying to figure out an answer to this question, however insufficient, and I don't think interviews with higher-ups in other regimes would have helped answer the questions....the answers are still classified, probably never to see the light of day despite massive recent declassifications, due to the "Catch-22s" of the Freedom of Information Act and questions of national security. A hundred years hence, there will be few who really know. Of course, that's just one man's opinion.