Stephen E. Ambrose combines history and journalism to describe how American GIs battled their way to the Rhineland. He focuses on the combat experiences of ordinary soldiers, as opposed to the generals who led them, and offers a series of compelling vignettes that read like an enterprising reporter's dispatches from the front lines. The book presents just enough contextual material to help readers understand the big picture, and includes memorable accounts of the Battle of the Bulge and other events as seen through the weary eyes of the men who fought in the foxholes. Highly recommended for fans of Ambrose, as well as all readers interested in understanding the life of a 1940s army grunt. A sort of sequel to Ambrose's bestselling 1994 book D-Day, Citizen Soldiers is more than capable of standing on its own.


From Library Journal
Military historian and author Ambrose offers a sequel to his best seller, D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (LJ 5/1/94). A skillful blending of eyewitness accounts (gathered mostly from the oral history collection at the Univ. of New Orleans's Eisenhower Center and from personal interviews) gives the reader an intimate feel of what war was like for infantrymen in the European theater of operations?from the beaches of France to victory at the Elbe River. Additional chapters on the air war, medics, and prisoners of war offer firsthand accounts on topics rarely described in traditional histories. The book complements Paul Fussell's Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (LJ 8/96) and Michael Daubler's Closing with the Enemy: How G.I.'s Fought the War in Europe, 1944-45 (Univ. of Kansas, 1994). This well-written oral history would also make an excellent general text. Highly recommended for all library collections.?Richard S. Nowicki, Emerson Vocational H.S., Buffalo, N.Y.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Carlo D'Este
Stephen E. Abrose's Citizen Soldiers is a sequel to the story of the American fighting man in the European theater of operations begun in D-Day, his acclaimed 1994 account of the Normandy landings in 1994. Although D-Day was arguably the single most important milestone of the war for the Allies, it was but one of a series of battles fought to bring about the defeat of Nazi Germany.... These events have all been well documented, but in Ambrose's capable hands, the bloody and dramatic battles fought in northwest Europe in 1944-45 come alive as never before.


From AudioFile
Stephen Ambrose has studied WWII in Europe through D-Day and his biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ambrose begins this account on the Normandy beaches on June 7, 1944, and follows the war through the Battle of the Bulge, concluding on May 7, 1945, with the surrender of Germany. A portrait of the war, and the US Army from privates to generals, is drawn from letters, interviews, recollections and written accounts. Cotter Smith presents these stories of individual soldiers--the acts of heroism, bursts of ingenuity, moments of despair that describe, not just the events, but the spirit of the fighting men and women. Smith's style is quiet and restrained, sometimes not putting enough energy into the recollections. While made up of many incidents, Citizen Soldiers follows a cohesive narrative. Ambrose's sparse, unadorned style allows his "snapshots" to vividly define the conflict, to honor the participants and to present a humanistic view for future generations. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
A worthy sequel to Ambrose's 1994 D-Day. Bestselling historian Ambrose (Undaunted Courage, 1996) uses firsthand recollections of combat veterans on both sides to flesh out his well-researched narrative. He picks up the epic drama 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 the Ardennes, fought the Battle of the Bulge, captured the famed bridge at Remagen, and crossed the wide Rhine to final victory in Europe. Ambrose observes that the US 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 valor and character of the young GIs and their European counterparts that ultimately proved too much for the vaunted German forces. While generally approving of Allied military leadership, Ambrose faults Eisenhower and Bradley as too conservative and believes the great human and materiel cost of victory could have been reduced by adopting Patton's more innovative and bolder knockout movements. He deplores the sending of inadequately trained 18-year-olds as replacements on the front lines, where they suffered much higher casualty rates than the foxhole-wise GI veterans. The troops fought under the worst possible conditions in the Ardennes, during the worst winter in 40 years; Ambrose describes the long, freezing snowy nights; the wounds, frostbite, and trench foot; and the fatigue and the tensions of facing sudden death or maiming. The troops rallied to drive the enemy back to the Rhine and into Germany, but took some 80,000 casualties. With remarkable immediacy and clarity, as though he had trained a telescopic lens on the battlefields, Ambrose offers a stirring portrayal of the terror and courage experienced by men at war. (109 photos, 9 maps, not seen) (First printing of 250,000; Book-of-the-Month Club/History Book Club main selection; Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
John Omicinski Detroit Free Press Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers is his best book ever, the culmination of a career largely spent immersed in the details of Ike's war.


Book Description
In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.


Card catalog description
In this account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with starting clarity and immediacy. Citizen Soldiers tells the real story of World War II - from the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany - from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.


From the Publisher, Simon & Schuster
CITIZEN SOLDIERS opens on June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends on May 7, 1945. From the high command (including Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton) on down to the enlisted men, Stephen E. Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from men on both sides who were there. He recreates the experiences of the individuals who fought the battles, the women who served, and the Germans who fought against us. Ambrose reveals the learning process of a great army -- how to cross rivers, how to fight in snow or hedgerows, how to fight in cities, how to coordinate air and ground campaigns, how to fight in winter and on the defensive, how citizens become soldiers in the best army in the world‹all from the point of view of the men. A masterful biography of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations, CITIZEN SOLDIERS provides a compelling account of the extraordinary stories of ordinary men in their fight for democracy.


About the Author
Stephen C. Ambrose is the author of numerous books of history, including the New York Times bestsellers Undaunted Courage and D-Day, as well as multivolume biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He is founder of the Eisenhower Center and President of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. He lives in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and Helena, Montana.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
"Stephen Ambrose has again demonstrated his absolute mastery of military history. His brilliant narrative puts you on the field of battle.... An extraordinary book and worthy companion to D-Day."—General Colin Powell (Retired)

"What a wonderful book.... His arsenal is imposing and effective; Ambrose's pen is a machine gun: detached, hot, and devastating."—Ken Burns

About the Books America's preeminent military historian, Stephen E. Ambrose brings us two gripping books on World War II combat — told from the perspective of the noble men and women who fought the battles. Citizen Soldiers, a New York Times bestseller now available in paperback, follows the individual characters of this brutal war from the high command down to the ordinary soldier. The Victors traces the war from D-Day to the end, 11 months later, and includes stories of bloody battles, raids, and acts of courage and suffering.

In Citizen Soldiers, Ambrose — who was a consultant for Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" — takes to the World War II battlefields of western Europe to track a year in the life of U.S. GIs as they fought their way off the beaches of Normandy and across the Rhine into Germany. The author's uncanny ability to tell a compelling story without compromising the facts or his critical eye comes through as strong as ever.

Citizen Soldiers weaves several stories together: There is the large, strategic plan to defeat Germany; the story of the leaders who planned the advancementandbattles; the tales of the units who spent months in the coldest winter in 40 years; and the personal tales of individual soldiers whose commitment and bravery, according to Ambrose, were the deciding factor in the war. Although the canvas is broad, the focus is on the GIs in the trenches and the stunning hardships they endured. To make his narrative more personal, he draws on extensive interviews with veterans from both sides of the battles that saw the Allied troops push the Germans back to Germany and ultimately force them to surrender. As always, Ambrose's history is not bland hagiography but a critical and thoughtful narrative.

The Victors, a one-volume history of World War II from D-Day to Berlin, draws from Ambrose's bestselling accounts Eisenhower, Pegasus Bridge (the first engagement of D-Day), Band Of Brothers (about E Company, from Normandy to Germany), D-Day, and Citizen Soldiers. As always, Ambrose's attention is on the ordinary men who fought, endured, and won.

The Victors begins with the preparation and training of the Allied armies and moves on to describe Eisenhower's decision to cross the English Channel to capture the Normandy beaches on D-Day, and the men who pulled it off. It covers the bitter winter of 1944 and the horrible battles on the drive to conquer Germany. At the center of this epic drama are the citizen soldiers, the boys who became men as they fought and proved eventually unbeatable. The Victors displays Ambrose's scholarship and authority, his readability, and his powerful love and admiration for these young men, all of the qualities that make his books so popular.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.

SYNOPSIS

The stories of the ordinary men who served in World War II in Europe are told by the bestselling author of Undaunted Courage, based on hundred of interviews with people from both sides of the war.

FROM THE CRITICS

R. Z. Sheppard

Citizen Soldiers [is] a high point in Ambrose's long fascination with the nature of leaders and followers. --Time Magazine

Publishers Weekly

The story of the front-line American combatants who took WWII to the Germans from Normandy to the Elbe River makes, in Ambrose's expert hands, for an outstanding sequel to his D-Day. These men are frequently dismissed as winning victories by firepower rather than acknowledged for their individual fighting power. Using interviews and other personal accounts by both German and American participants, Ambrose tells instead the story of enlisted men and junior officers who not only mastered the battlefield but developed emotional resources that endured and transcended the shocks of modern combat. Ambrose's accounts of the fighting in Normandy, the breakout and the bitter autumn struggles for Aachen and the battles in the Huertgen Forest and around Metz depict an army depending not on generalship but on the courage, skill and adaptability of small-unit commanders and their men. The 1945 offensive into Germany was a triumph of a citizen army, but the price was high. One infantry company landed in Normandy on August 8 with 187 men and six officers. By V-E Day, 625 men had served in its ranks. Fifty-one had been killed, 183 wounded and 167 suffered frostbite or trench foot. Nor do statistics tell the whole story. Ambrose's reconstruction of "a night on the line" is a brilliant evocation of physical hardship and emotional isolation that left no foxhole veteran unscarred. It is good to be reminded of brave men's brave deeds with the eloquence and insight that the author brings to this splendid, generously illustrated and moving history.

AudioFile - Robin F. Whitten

Stephen Ambrose has studied WWII in Europe through D-Day and his biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ambrose begins this account on the Normandy beaches on June 7, 1944, and follows the war through the Battle of the Bulge, concluding on May 7, 1945, with the surrender of Germany. A portrait of the war, and the US Army from privates to generals, is drawn from letters, interviews, recollections and written accounts. Cotter Smith presents these stories of individual soldiers the acts of heroism, bursts of ingenuity, moments of despair that describe, not just the events, but the spirit of the fighting men and women. Smith￯﾿ﾽs style is quiet and restrained, sometimes not putting enough energy into the recollections. While made up of many incidents, Citizen Soldiers follows a cohesive narrative. Ambrose￯﾿ﾽs sparse, unadorned style allows his snapshots to vividly define the conflict, to honor the participants and to present a humanistic view for future generations. R.F.W. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Carlo D'Este

...[A]n unforgettable testament to the World War II generation. -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

A worthy sequel to Ambrose's 1994 D-Day. Bestselling historian Ambrose (Undaunted Courage) uses firsthand recollections of combat veterans on both sides to flesh out his well-researched narrative. He picks up the epic drama 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 the Ardennes, fought the Battle of the Bulge, captured the famed bridge at Remagen, and crossed the wide Rhine to final victory in Europe. Ambrose observes that the US 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 valor and character of the young GIs and their European counterparts that ultimately proved too much for the vaunted German forces. While generally approving of Allied military leadership, Ambrose faults Eisenhower and Bradley as too conservative and believes the great human and materiel cost of victory could have been reduced by adopting Patton's more innovative and bolder knockout movements. He deplores the sending of inadequately trained 18-year-olds as replacements on the front lines, where they suffered much higher casualty rates than the foxhole-wise GI veterans. The troops fought under the worst possible conditions in the Ardennes, during the worst winter in 40 years; Ambrose describes the long, freezing snowy nights; the wounds, frostbite, and trench foot; and the fatigue and the tensions of facing sudden death or maiming. The troops rallied to drive the enemy back to the Rhine and into Germany, but took some 80,000casualties. With remarkable immediacy and clarity, as though he had trained a telescopic lens on the battlefields, Ambrose offers a stirring portrayal of the terror and courage experienced by men at war.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

What a wonderful book, an emotionally powerful arugment for our wonderful, flawed system and its home grown heroics. Ambrose's pen is a machine gun: detached, hot, and devestating.  — Ken Burns

Just about the most gripping account of the Second World War that I have ever read. -- Author of Catch 22 — Joseph Heller