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Where he comes unstuck is in spreading his net too wide - Citizen Soldiers was a reasonable stab at portraying the achievements across the European theatre 1944-45 by US conscripts and volunteers. The Victors, however, is nothing more than a mishmash of Citizen Soldiers, BoB and Eisenhower. It deals almost exclusively with the US soldiery (you feel the only reason that the other allies were mentioned at all was to ease that very criticism) and the title therefore suggests that it was the US involvement that actually won the war. (Historians of Britain's six-year struggle against Hitler on four continents and the astonishing sacrifice of 20 million Russians in four years of devastating, debilitating conflict with Nazi Germany may well beg to differ!)
Ambrose's rambling narrative covers too much ground to be incisive enough, and is annoyingly partisan towards US interests and decisions.
If Ambrose could just get his head out of the Eisenhower Library long enough (it appears to be his only source of information), he would seem to be an ideal author to tackle Douglas MacArthur's astonishing, all-American campaign against Japan from 1943-45, or even the Korean War.
Anthony Beevor and Max Hastings write painfully better history of the Second World War in Europe, on a massive scale, and manage to authoritatively boss their material at all times. Stephen E Ambrose, on this size of canvas, seems to be in awe of his subject and just can't seem to keep track of it all without falling back on the sentimentality of individual heroics.
On this performance, he should maybe re-evaluate his aims and stop rehashing old material to keep the royalties rolling in at the expense of his otherwise deserved reputation.
This book is best left alone, it's referred to as "a great historical account of WWII" on the back (don't have book to hand, but that's the general gist), which is laughable as it only really covers the ETO (European Theatre of War i.e. Western Europe) and most events pre D-Day (June 1944) and outside Western Europe (Russia, Pacific) are given the briefest of brief mentions.
It sort of pulls in bits from all his other books and doesn't really achieve what it sets out to do. It's not in depth enough for it to be more than a quick read, nor is it comprehensive enough to be considered any sort of "history of WWII", even if you specifically just looked at the events of D-Day onwards.
That said, it's well written and isn't a bad read as such, but if you're looking for something specifically about D-Day, get Ambrose's own book on D-Day or one of the countless other books written on D-Day, likewise if you want to read about Eisenhower, get Ambrose's book on Ike. If you want to read first hand accounts of action in the ETO, get Donald Burgett's series of books or read Ambrose's Citizen soliders or Band of Brothers.
If you want to read about someone other than the Americans winning WWII, don't read this (although he does pull in small sections from his own book, Pegasus Bridge). If you want to read about events before June 1944 and anything other than what happened in France, Belgium and Germany, seriously do yourself a favour and get another book.
This book smells of cash-in, and to me it's nothing more than a hotch potch of his other books.
(Of Eisenhower)"London took him to its heart. Read more
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