Customer Reviews

THE VICTORS: Eisenhower and his boys, the men of WW II.

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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."

Stephen Ambrose's "The Victors" is mainly a showcase for the reminiscences of those involved in D-Day and the campaigns which followed, ending finally with the taking of Berlin. As a historian, Ambrose's voice and expertise are most apparent in detailing the early stages of the assault's planning, as he provides insights into the personalities (and distinct styles) of Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, et al. The telling is most poignant when it reveals -- in tired, frightened messages composed in the fields of battle -- the plain truths of war for the loved ones back home. My single complaint about this book is its lack of maps; only two are provided, with the second one being an impossible hodge-podge of all the Allied movements between D-Day and VE Day.

I agree that this book was composed of some of his other great pieces, but it is definately still a great book. Ambrose follows operation OVERLORD with wonderful description. He not only gives us the facts(once again)but he continues with his great style of writing by taking us into the lives of many young soldiers who were there. Once again, I had the feeling that I knew these people. There were quite a few of them that Ambrose paints a picture of so well that I feel like they were my buddies in high school. Being honest though the author does show some biased sides and every piece of information offered may not be EXACTLY how things were done but I know of not one author that was not there that can paint us a perfectly accurate picture of what happened. Even the men and women that will tell stories that were there seem to sometimes exaggerate or forget things. Overall, Ambrose does a great job with this one though it was mainly bits and pieces from his other books. If you are new to Stephen Ambrose, then this is a good overview book before diving deeper into his realm of writing. Remember in school when they had those 100 level classes that were bits and pieces of the higher level classes? That's what this book is. It's a great intro to his better works. I spent six buck for it and it was definately worth it!!!

Being familiar with Ambrose's body of work, it is easy to understand why this book is taking up space on bargain racks from sea to shining sea, as well as space on Amazon's bargain shelves. There is simply little new here to recommend for anyone who has read Ambrose's biography of Ike, or his "Citizen Soldiers" book about the soldiers who fought and won the war. And if you haven't read those books, go read them -they're better than this work, which is mostly a rehash of earlier material.

Ambrose doesn't hide his enthusuiasm for the marines who tumbled out of those landing craft on Omaha Beach and endured murderous fire from the well-entrenched German defenses. This was like Fredericksburg and Pickett's Charge rolled into one, except the suicidal attacking army attained their objectives in 1944.

Ambrose also is unabashed in his admiration for Eisenhower, and at times one has to wonder why. Clearly Ike had a take charge personality and valiantly offered to take all of the blame if bad weather, low tides, or any other factor defeated his grand mission at Normandy. But was Eisenhower a brilliant tactition? Even Ambrose admits his first combat experience as a general, in North Africa, was a disaster. I think more than anything, Ambrose senses and admires Ike's dislike of war, his strength of character, and his genuine regard for the infantry that he was ordering to slaughter on those Normandy beaches.

I must say that while accounts of battles often fascinate me, the painstaking detail of much of this book left me a little overwhelmed with minutae. I know that every one of these soldiers represent actual men who risked (and in many cases gave)their lives for their country, but I question the wisdom of telling us names, companies, nicknames, etc. of soldiers who jumped off the boats and were immediately killed. I think the author's aim was to personalize the conflict with information about the soldiers, to make them more than statistics. Even so, the information at times just becomes difficult to truly comprehend and absorb. Ambrose's heart is in the right place, but I think this one misses the mark.

If you own or have read Citizen Soldiers and D-Day by StephenAmbrose you do not need to read this book. It contains pages andentire chapters lifted right out of those two books ... I felt duped and unsatisfied.

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.

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!

My 4 star rating of Victors is highly provisional, as this is one of those books for which a numerical rating system is inadequate. If you have not read any of Stephen Ambrose's World War II books, this volume will be an excellent read and will deserve 4 stars for reasons set out below. If you have read any one of Ambrose's other World War II books, you will recognize a lot of the material. If you have read two or more of Ambrose's World War II books, you will feel quite ripped off.

As a historian of World war II, Stephen Ambrose has two great accomplishments. First, there was his superb biography of Eisenhower, based in large part on extensive interviews with Ike. Second, there is the vast number of interviews he has conducted with ordinary GIs. Those interviews were the basis of Citizen Soldiers, D Day, and Band of Brothers.

Victors consists almost entirely of material recycled from Ambrose's earlier works. Having read all of those books (I am a big fan), nothing in Victors stuck out as new. Instead, this is at least the fourth time I've heard the story of Easy Company. Having bought the book in an airport bookstore (sorry Mr. Bezos), I spent the plane ride getting madder and madder as I realized how redundant this book is. The publisher really needs a less misleading cover. So if you've read two or more of Ambrose's World War II books, don't waste your time or money.

If you only want to read one Ambrose book, I would recommend Victors. Unlike his Eisenhower biography, Victors gives you a real sense of what life was like for GIs. Unlike Citizen Soldiers, you get a better sense of what Eisenhower was like. Best of both worlds.

Some quibbles: First, if we think of the Allied Armies in Europe as a large bureaucracy (as Ambrose does in spots), Victors gives you a distorted picture. You get a lot of information about Eisenhower and lot of information about GIs and junior officers. But we learn almost nothing about the middle of the bureaucracy--the generals and colonels. Imagine somebody who wrote a book about General Motors that talked about the CEO and the factory workers, but never said a peep about the middle management. Would that make sense?

Second, the Eisenhower--Montgomery conflict gets less attention than it deserves. In part this may be because Ambrose spends so little time on Bradley and Patton, who also fought with Montgomery. But given that the alliance almost fell apart because of the American commanders' conflicts with Montgomery, it is a major omission.

Third, the important contributions of the Russian Army to victory in Europe are ignored. You could make a plausible case that any book called "The Victors" ought to be subtitled Zhukov and his Boys. It would not denigrate the great accomplishments of Eisenhower and the soldiers who served under him to recognize that the Red Army both took and inflicted more casualties than the U.S. army. indeed, Eisenhower himself reportedly said that D Day could not have occured if the Russians hadn't tied down 5 million german troops.

I read this book looking forward to the same level of scholarship, detail, and analysis that I had found in his earlier book on the British coup de main on the Orne River Bridges. Sadly, it wasn't there.

Ambrose is at this best with anecdotal history. His personal accounts of what individual troops said and did are truly at the level of Eric Hammel and other historians of that genre. However, when he gets to the analysis level of warfare, he is out ofhis depth.

It is only a matter of opinion, of course, but his overly reverent attitude towards Eisenhower shadows commanders of more worth, and who actually kept Eisenhower out of trouble. He doesn't like Patton, who was the only American general the Germans were scared of (and who remarked that every time Eisenhower and Bradley got together they turned timid). He isn't rel keen on Montgomery either.

Eisenhower was in a war he couldn't lose. The main contention was how well he would win it. Never having been in combat was a major hindrance, and he missed opportunities that he saw as potential failures, that were worth taking the risk to win big and early. Refusing to take Berlin and ordering Patton out of Prague were two mistakes that led, in my opinion, to the prolonged mess of the Cold War. Never an audaucious combat leader, he was more concerned with not losing than winning. He was surprised and nearly defeated in the Bulge, and gave no credit at all for Patton saving both his reputation and the battle. This the author misses, which hurts him greatly as a military historian.

Blind hero worship we don't need, but good analysis. This keeps this, and his other recent works, in the third tier of reliable military history.

Having not read a history book since the time that I had to, this was a great way to get reintroduced. I had heard good things about Stephen Ambrose, and I was not disappointed. This was a book that taught me a great deal about war, and the price that was paid by so many.

I enjoyed seeing things from the perspective of the soldier, through the pen of Ambrose. I also appreciated the way that Ike was portrayed as one who was a good leader, but also made mistakes that were costly. This has served to whet my appetite for further history genre reading - maybe!!