Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_

[jbor]

Ambrose's revisionist history of the US intervention in WWII is "littered 
with lofty cant", according to Benjamin Schwarz:

http://www3.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/06/schwarz.htm

    Ambrose's version of events retroactively imposes an elevated meaning on
    the American side of the war. Although _The Good Fight_ neglects a host
    of relevant events and subjects that did not directly involve the United
    States (the V-weapon attacks on Britain; Operation Bagration; the
    resistance movements in Yugoslavia, Italy, and France, to name a few),
    Ambrose does discuss -- and in greater detail than any other event save
    D-Day -- the Holocaust. Young readers could be forgiven for inferring
    that the plight of the Jews and others in the death camps in part
    motivated America's involvement in the war. Ambrose quotes a former U.S.
    Army major who "voiced the emotions of so many of his fellow soldiers"
    when, many decades after the event, he maintained that when he saw
    Dachau, he said to himself, "Now I know why I am here." In truth,
    stopping the mass murder of Jews figured in no way in either American
    war aims or American conduct. In fact, U.S. political and military
    leaders, along with the press, played down the Nazi effort to
    exterminate the Jews, and the Army's own propaganda film series "Why We
    Fight" didn't even mention the Holocaust.

best