World War II

A detailed Summary of World War II

>From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Stephen E. Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men who fought it. By explaining the story of the "GIs, junior officers and enlisted men" (Ambrose 14) who, in 1944 and 1945, proved Hitler wrong by driving his Wehrmacht back from the beaches of Normandy to the heart of Germany.

As the name implies, Citizen Soldiers is not so much a study on tactical moves as it is on the citizen soldier from all parts of the United States. The book concentrates on the American GI Joe and not the Allies as a whole. The epic drama of the European Theater of Operation (ETO) is told by Ambrose by following, almost step by step, various individuals and outfits among the tens of thousands of young Allied soldiers who broke away from the deadly beaches of Normandy and swept across France to Ardennes, fought the Battle of the Bulge, captured the bridge at Remagen, and crossed the Rhine to final victory in Europe.

Ambrose observes that the U.S. broke the Nazi war machine with massive aerial bombing, artillery, and the great mobility of attacking tanks and infantry. But, he argues, it was not technology but the bravery and character of the young GIs that

To often history is recorded by dates and numbers and is recorded as a giant event and not looked at through a microscope peeking at each piece that makes up the sum. I believe what Ambrose has done here is important. To record the actual testimonies of the men who walked across Europe with a rifle in hand, and saw the most horrific war the world has ever experienced, this ugly part of history might not have to repeat itself. By clearly seeing that each of the 135,576 U.S. Military service men that were killed in World War II had a name, a face, a character to them unlike anyone else in the world, brings this history closer to the heart than that of just a number. I am haunted by war.

Since Ambrose's book starts with expanding the beach head of Normandy, you learn of the German way of war from defensive tactics and not so much of offensive tactics. It is at this period June 1944 that Germany has failed to stop a beach invasion and is being attacked from at four fronts, the Eastern, Western, Southern, and home. However, with opposition from his Generals, Hitler insisted that they would counter the offensive movements with the Luftwaffe and the development of the V-2. The German tactics from Normandy were to dig in and to survive massive ground and air attacks from the allies. Ideally German ground forces prayed of tactical weather of "low clouds, drizzle, and fog...to move reinforcements to the front or to reposition units" (Ambrose 49). One major tactic that worked against Germany was the importance of reinforcements. Being that Germany was on the defensive side of the Western Front, reinforcements became ever more important. Yet as Ambrose explain!

One of the controversies, judgments of historians and critiques of the war was when Eisenhower took command of all Allied ground forces in France on September 1, 1944 and his two internal problems, Patton and Montgomery. Both men hated one another and both wanted to be the first to arrive at Berlin. As Ambrose deplored, the war could have been won if Eisenhower would of taken into more consideration Patton's one-two knock out plan. But instead Eisenhower found common ground with Montgomery and the two decided to draw up the plans for one of most costly battles of WWII, Operation Market-Garden. Operation Market Garden was composed of "a larger scale airbor

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Approximate Word count = 1577
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History