World War II Essay - 1495 Words

Starting with the hedgerows of the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany on June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945 Ambrose tells an authentic story of World War II from the point of view of the men who battled in the war. The author explains the narrative of the â€Å"GIs, junior officers and enlisted men â€Å" (Ambrose 14), proved Hitler wrong by driving his Wehrmacht back from the beached of Normandy back to Germany. One of the greatest lessons that the reader can learn from reading the book, Citizen Soldiers is that the success of war is heavily relied upon by the junior officers and non-commissioned officers on the front lines. As the title suggests, Citizen Soldiers is not so much a study on tactical moves as it is on the citizen†¦show more content†¦Whereas normally in favor of Allied military management, Ambrose faults Eisenhower and Bradley of being too conservative and deems that adopting Pattons bolder knockout approach could have decreased the accrual of deaths to U.S. soldiers at the cost of victory. He informs of inadequately trained 18-year-olds as replacements on the front lines, where they underwent much higher casualty rates than the foxhole-wise GI veterans. The troops fought under the worst possible conditions at Ardennes, during the worst winter in 40 years; Ambrose portrays the long, freezing snowy nights; the wounds, frostbite, and trench foot; and the fatigue and the tensions of facing sudden death or maiming (Ambrose 157). The troops came together to drive the enemy back to the Rhine and into Germany, but took some 80,000 casualties. With amazing clarity, as though he had been on the battlefields, Ambrose presents a moving depiction of the horror and courage experienced by men at war. By painting such a clear picture, Ambrose also manages to insight the reader on some of the internal quandaries that beleaguered the Allies. 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.Show MoreRelatedThe War Of The World War II1408 Words   |  6 Pagesdifferent levels of the educational system most everyone has talked about the Second World War in great detail. The European and Pacific Theaters were the main focus of many historians and their writing, because war pertained to the audience of the time. 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