This book picks up where Ambrose's bestseller about D-Day left off, taking the armies from the hedgerows of Normandy through the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. It's an infantry soldier's-eye view of the war, filled with interviews of hundreds of soldiers from both sides. The tales run from the sublime (American soldiers capture a German who rescued an American from a burning tank, ask him if he would rather be a prisoner or return to his buddies, and let him go), to the anguished (ordered by superiors to keep all his men in their positions, German General Bayerlein reports "Not a single man is leaving his post. They are all lying silent in their foxholes for they are dead"; American foot soldiers gingerly try to avoid stepping on comrades flattened by tanks), to the ridiculous (surprised by three Germans, an American tries to surrender, but since they outnumber him they get to surrender while he has to go on). A thick book that reads fast.
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The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus
