From America's preeminent military historian, Stephen E. Ambrose, comes a brilliant
telling of the war in Europe, from D-Day, June 6, 1944, to the end, eleven months later,
on May 7, 1945. This authoritative narrative account is drawn by the author himself from
his five acclaimed books about that conflict, most particularly from the definitive and
comprehensive D-Day and Citizen Soldiers, about which the great Civil War historian James
McPherson wrote,
If there is a better book about the experience of GIs who fought in Europe during World
War II, I have not read it. Citizen Soldiers captures the fear and exhilaration of combat,
the hunger and cold and filth of the foxholes, the small intense world of the individual
rifleman as well as the big picture of the European theater in a manner that grips the
reader and will not let him go. No one who has not been there can understand what combat
is like but Stephen Ambrose brings us closer to an understanding than any other historian
has done.
The Victors also includes stories of individual battles, raids, acts of courage and
suffering from Pegasus Bridge, an account of the first engagement of D-Day, when a
detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way
for the Allied invasion; and from Band of Brothers, an account of an American rifle
company from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment who fought, died, and conquered, from
Utah Beach through the Bulge and on to Hitter's Eagle's Nest in Germany.
Stephen Ambrose is also the author of Eisenhower, the greatest work on Dwight Eisenhower,
and one of the editors of the Supreme Allied Commander's papers. He describes the
momentous decisions about how and where the war was fought, and about the strategies and
conduct of the generals and officers who led the invasion and the bloody drive across
Europe to Berlin.
But it is, as always with Stephen Ambrose, the ranks, the ordinary boys and men, who
command his attention and his awe. The Victors tells their stories, how citizens became
soldiers in the best army in the world. Ambrose draws on thousands of interviews and oral
histories from government and private archives, from the high commander Eisenhower,
Bradley, Patton -- on down through officers and enlisted men, to re-create the last year
of the Second World War when the Allied soldiers pushed the Germans out of France, chased
them across Germany, and destroyed the Nazi regime.
Dallas Morning News
A readable and necessary remembrance of a generation that met and overcame
this century's greatest test.
New York Times Book Review
Ambrose is a superb historian. . . .Illuminating and insightful.
The New Yorker - John Gregory Dunne
Ambrose['s] skill at weaving his interviews into a good read is
impressive. . . .[however, one] must rely on the memoir rather than on the
'read' for the hard edges of war. . . .what The Victors most recalls is a
movie. . . .The result is that there is little room to examine the
corrosive effects of spontaneous wanton cruelty, little room for the
nuances of personality or the parsing of fear.
Recent Reader Reviews
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Essays written by some of the most respected and well-known military historians of our time (Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan, Caleb Carr, William Manchester etc.), describe the horror and heroism of World War II.
Reveals one of the most important stories of World War II. As Allied soldiers fought the Nazis, Franklin Roosevelt and, later, Harry Truman fought in private with Churchill and Stalin over how to ensure that Germany could never threaten the world again.
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