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Review by Harwell Wells
Hitler never thought the Americans would win. The United States was a democracy, and democracies were decadent. Surely men raised in such a society would be no match for troops who had grown up under the Nazi regime! On June 6, 1944, Hitler began to learn he'd made a mistake.
In "Citizen Soldiers," a sequel to his excellent "D-Day," Stephen Ambrose tells the story of the "GIs, junior officers and enlisted men" who, in 1944 and 1945, proved Hitler wrong by driving his Wehrmacht back from the beaches of Normandy to the heart of Germany. We all know what the Americans and their allies did; what Ambrose shows us is how hard it was. Most of the soldiers who landed in Normandy had never seen battle, and as they later recalled, "there was no way training could have prepared them for combat." Too many died before learning the rules of the battlefield -- how to distinguish between incoming and outgoing artillery, or the best way to overcome a fortified position. They thought it would be over in a few months; instead, they found themselves at Christmas 1944 not warm at home, but freezing on the German border, locked in combat with determined German troops and facing conditions that made Washington's troops at Valley Forge look lucky. Yet they did not give up, and five months later Germany was defeated. I finished this book amazed not only at the power of American arms, but also at the determination of the American fighting man. Particularly striking is Ambrose's use of dozens of interviews with soldiers from both sides.
Ambrose is not only one of the most popular historians writing today, he is also one of the most wide-ranging, having written on topics ranging from Nixon to the Lewis and Clark expedition. His talents are on display in "Americans at War" (University Press of Mississippi, $28, 1578060265), a new collection of his essays, where Ambrose applies his historical judgment and keen eye for detail to subjects ranging from the siege of Vicksburg, to the uneasy friendship of Eisenhower and Patton, to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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