A critique on D-Day by Stephen Ambrose.

Essay by cande81High School, 11th gradeA+, January 2004

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One of the most overused essay topics is as follows: "If you could go back in history and meet one person, who would it be?" Typically, the answer is one of the famous presidents such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Why? Historians have examined the lives of these men, wrote about their failures and triumphs, people read them, and most have derived that Washington or Lincoln were superior men and should be revered forever and ever. However, let us dwell on a topic that is not typical but sounds like it should be: "If you could go back in history and relive one day, what day would that be?" One historian, Stephen Ambrose, has created an extraordinary account of the forsaken June 6, 1944, known to all as D-Day, that allows the readers jump into the past and become part one of the most tragic days in history.

D-Day actively identifies and describes the roles of the individuals involved in D-Day not only in a "soldier's viewpoint" but in a humanly aspect as well. Not even at the official commencement of the book in Chapter 1 does Ambrose examine the horrors, complexities, and triumphs of the men during possibly the most demanding moment of their lives. His prologue is filled with the actual descriptions and actions of honorable people in both an individual and "team" level. Ambrose emphasizes constantly throughout the book how the men as a collective one were able to overcome not only the military challenges but personal challenges as well. He has written D-Day in almost a way that it is almost as if the reader was reading the diary of the men themselves. And it is not only of the Allied men of whom Ambrose writes of. The depictions of Nazi soldiers and other...