Stephen E. Ambrose's book on D-Day [D-Day, June 6, 1944] has scaled the heights: a selection of the Book-of-the-Month and History Book clubs, nine weeks on the best-seller list, the most heralded of the works commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of that fateful day. A well-known historian in his own right, Ambrose acknowledges his many debts in writing the book, from Forrest Pogue, the noted American military historian, who was actually interviewing wounded men offshore on June 6, 1944, to Cornelius Ryan, whose The Longest Day (1959) became a classic in the use of first-hand accounts to depict the Normandy assault. Ambrose's outstanding work continues that tradition, for at its heart are 1,380 oral histories that, as director, he and others at the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans undertook and gathered from other sources to describe the battle.

Ambrose's intent is to provide a popular, up-to-date version of the invasion and to have it serve as an inspiring reminder of what democracies, when roused, can accomplish. He succeeds on both counts, and even the most knowledgeable historian will gain new insights into the background and execution of the operation.

The book's most noteworthy feature is its gripping narrative. Ambrose writes exceedingly well, and his use of the oral accounts to illustrate the horror and valor of war makes for compelling reading. Ambrose's centerpiece is the American landings at Omaha Beach, to which he devotes nearly one-third of his 583-page narrative. One of the soldiers, Sergeant Harry Bare, described getting ashore as follows: “We waded to the sand and threw ourselves down and the men were frozen, unable to move. My radio man had his head blown off three yards from me. The beach was covered with ‘bodies,’ men with no legs, no arms—God it was awful” (p. 331). As for getting off the beaches in the face of enemy fire, Private Raymond Howell explained his thought process. He remembers thinking, “If I am going to die, to hell with it, I'm not going to die here. The next bunch of guys that go over that … wall, I'm going with them. So I don't know who else, I guess all of us, decided, well it's time to start” (p. 345). Of course, others besides Howell also made it up the bluffs to the commanding heights above, so that “bloody” Omaha could be held.

Ambrose covers not only the combat side of the battle but also delves into seldom discussed aspects, such as telling vignettes about the reactions of individual French citizens in the Calvados landing area, the role of American women doing factory work, and the involvement of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, one of the few African-American formations to take part in the invasion. He also describes the broadcasts of Axis Sally, the Ohio native but longtime Berlin resident who mesmerized numerous GIs and British soldiers with her “sweet, sexy voice,” but who frightened them on occasion with her knowledge about specific allied units.

Ambrose also discusses technological features of the operation in understandable terms. For instance, his description of the German defenses from foreshore obstacles to reinforced concrete fortifications are graphic as well as accurate, and he further gives proper due to a number of British “inventions,” including midget submarines that were to guide DDs (“swimming tanks”) to shore and tanks with flails to detonate land mines. Neither does he neglect the often overlooked American B-26 medium bombers and P-47 fighters, whose pilots and crews played extremely important roles in the successful campaign to gain air superiority over the beachhead and beyond.

Moreover, Ambrose rightly emphasizes allied landing craft, that precious commodity, and its intrepid, civilian developer, Andrew Higgins. Not by chance did the U.S. Congress in 1992 authorize the building of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, on the site where Higgins and his employees built and tested his boats.

Besides Higgins, Ambrose fills his book with other heroes, from the lowest in rank to the highest. He is particularly impressed by the airborne and infantry troops, and, as one might expect from a biographer of Dwight Eisenhower, Ambrose accords the American supreme commander a prominent part in the book. The author's attempt to compare Ike with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the German tactical commander, however, is overdrawn. It would have been more appropriate to compare Eisenhower with his German counterpart, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, and Rommel with either of the Allies’ ground commanders, the American General Omar Bradley, or the British General Sir Bernard Montgomery. But neither Rundstedt nor Bradley adequately fits the heroic mold, and although the flamboyant Montgomery might have been appropriate, his abrasive egocentrism eliminated him as a possibility. Ambrose carries the Eisenhower-Rommel comparison, despite its being insightful and masterfully etched, too far.

The book also contains other disputable points. Among them is Ambrose's generalization that the Atlantic Wall was “one of the greatest blunders in military history” (p. 577), a statement that ignores the fact that Germany's holding of numerous harbors and their approaches helped cause an allied logistic crisis in the late summer and fall of 1944, which, in turn, helped prolong the European war into 1945. In addition, even though Ambrose dispels the myth that British and American troops did not train sufficiently for the assault, his contention that the Axis soldiers spent their time primarily building defensive barriers is wide of the mark. They both constructed and trained, and their performance on D-Day was not as deficient as alleged. Also, try as Ambrose might to be fair to each of the allied nations, the Americans emerge as the true heroes, and the other partners—the Canadians, the French, the Poles, the Dutch, even the British—at best become supporting members of the cast.

Nevertheless, although Ambrose's traditional approach will bother some historians, none will deny his ability to combine a first-rate narrative with a significant theme. He also does not gloss over what he considers allied military mistakes, such as the dropping of the U.S. airborne troops at night and the unreadiness of ground forces for hedgerow combat. But over and over his main point is that, although the allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen fought well, they would have much preferred not to have been fighting at all. In this sense, D-Day forms an appropriate link with the democratic tradition Ambrose extols.