Stephen Ambrose, Objective analysis and what makes good history.

Just to add, frankly Ambrose work is pure drivel.

Uncovering Stephen Ambrose’s fake Eisenhower interviews : The New Yorker

I mean that this is not wider knowledge still surprises me, the man was (arguably) a fantastist and a liar. Recently I dissected some of his work and found that his greatest rhetoric and arguments were totally uncited and unfounded (like many, many other historians.)

But the Eisenhower interview controversy, combined with Wild Blue, well... says it all really.

Swiper,

Well said, indeed. Ambrose was the worst sort of military historian, and did no service to the profession or his readers. A while back, before he got sick, I contacted him to ask him the name of an archive that held a particular source he referenced in one of his books. I received a short, polite reply to the effect that he had no idea where the documents, nor did he have a suggestion on where to start looking. I firmly believe he referred to the source in question without even knowing if it really existed. Damned poor.

 

I feel that the tonic is that many who write currently write are so critical that much of what they write (taken as a whole) is a total joke.

A good example is Antony Beevor exaggerating 53 Divisions's casualties in the Reichswald from 922 to over 5000 in an 11 day period in his latest book which has been called (by some absolute muppets who happen to write reviews for influential newspapers) the 'definitive' work on the subject...

Furthermore here is a telling quote
Antony Beevor: "I had been struck after doing the D-Day book that I frankly did not know enough or understand enough about the subject…”
Beevor by the Book | History Today

I mean even Hastings is guilty of far more than his fair share of blame, but isn't really worthy of discussion here.

Its easy to criticise but... how many authors can actually explain the basic formation of an infantry battalion (of any side), a Division (likewise) or Corps assets, the training, doctrine, practical application, actual use of weaponry...

The answer is aside a few niche writers the main revisionists of late have written total and utterly unashamed drivel (that reads well yes, but offers nothing new at all).

So is Ambrose to blame? Well he helped start the populist trend, crap/lack of citation/making up statistics and arguments from ground up unicorn horn... yet all of these chaps who often criticise them of say they offer good 'objective history' well, the vast majority of them don't know what they are remotely going on about.

Jim, I'm not surprised by that, out of interest what did that relate to exactly? Part of that could be from the heavy reliance on researchers that most historians will almost use them to just piggyback off (you hire them so you can) and as a result turn books into vast cash-cow enterprises...

Juliet Gardiner recently termed many historians 'trade historians' to me that says a great deal...

 

I feel that the tonic is that many who write currently write are so critical that much of what they write (taken as a whole) is a total joke.

A good example is Antony Beevor exaggerating 53 Divisions's casualties in the Reichswald from 922 to over 5000 in an 11 day period in his latest book which has been called (by some absolute muppets who happen to write reviews for influential newspapers) the 'definitive' work on the subject...

Furthermore here is a telling quote
Antony Beevor: "I had been struck after doing the D-Day book that I frankly did not know enough or understand enough about the subject…”
Beevor by the Book | History Today

I mean even Hastings is guilty of far more than his fair share of blame, but isn't really worthy of discussion here.

Its easy to criticise but... how many authors can actually explain the basic formation of an infantry battalion (of any side), a Division (likewise) or Corps assets, the training, doctrine, practical application, actual use of weaponry...

The answer is aside a few niche writers the main revisionists of late have written total and utterly unashamed drivel (that reads well yes, but offers nothing new at all).

So is Ambrose to blame? Well he helped start the populist trend, crap/lack of citation/making up statistics and arguments from ground up unicorn horn... yet all of these chaps who often criticise them of say they offer good 'objective history' well, the vast majority of them don't know what they are remotely going on about.

Jim, I'm not surprised by that, out of interest what did that relate to exactly? Part of that could be from the heavy reliance on researchers that most historians will almost use them to just piggyback off (you hire them so you can) and as a result turn books into vast cash-cow enterprises...

Juliet Gardiner recently termed many historians 'trade historians' to me that says a great deal...

Swiper,

We are in agreement that there is a bright line between the work of "trade historians" and academic historians. It seems once an academic historian gains success as an author with the general public, his/she is at risk of joining the ranks of Ambrose, et al.

One of the worst here on the American side is Harry Yeidie. After receiving an email from a French historian who declined to write a positive comment for the book jacket, I fact checked Yeidie's book about 6th Army Group, and found a host of errors.

In answer to your question Ambrose referenced somewhere (I can't remember now.) an unpublished diary or papers of a panzer officer who participated in the Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen. (not von Luck) He had no idea where they were or who had them. Problematic.

Jim

 

I have a particular dislike of these 'bread-writers', they just write to make a living and do not care for historical correctness, only cheap succes.

I prefer the scholary writers: always first check with Stacey's Victory Campaign, Cole's Battle of the Bulge and the other ETO publications of the OCMH, or with Ellis Victory in the West (two volumes). Most of the time you need no other books.

Did save me a lot of money over the years!

Problem with that approach is that (at least regarding OCMH) this is probably outdated work due to its publishing date, in that it was written before ULTRA was allowed to be mentioned. Obviously it doesn't render it useless, but it means an important aspect of the campaigns won't be covered.

All the best

Andreas

 

Strange to say that when I criticize ANY author - I am castigated as "Harsh" - "Xenophobic'
et al .....but my only confidence lays in the hands of Barrie Pitt and his Desert Trilogy- "Crucible of War " - John Ellis' "Cassino - the Hollow victory"- Nicholson "Canadians in Italy 1943-45" -

The rest - yeuch !
Cheers

 

For Ambrose, try googling "Stephen Ambrose and the British Coxswains" or "Stephen Ambrose and plaigarism".

For those of us who were inspired to a lifetime of historical study by Ryan's book "A Bridge too Far" (plus seeing the film as a spotty lad!) we should remember that he was, like Chester Wilmot and Max Hastings, a journalist - not a professional historian. This is why I can still read through ABTF and marvel at the first hand accounts, but then go back to the historical records and think that perhaps it didn't happen quite like that!!

Having said that, show me someone who can read Ryan's description of the forces on the ground at Arnhem and in the corridor waiting for and then hearing and seeing the Airborne Lift on day 2 of Op MG without having the hair stand up on the back of their neck, and I'll suggest that they have a heart of stone! The same goes for descriptions of 'Banger' King reciting Henry V as the LCAs closed in on Sword Beach - inspiring, but when you think about it, I wonder how many of the men in his boat thought "Ohhh, put a sock in it Banger" and went back to being sick...

Regards

Tom

 

Problem with that approach is that (at least regarding OCMH) this is probably outdated work due to its publishing date, in that it was written before ULTRA was allowed to be mentioned. Obviously it doesn't render it useless, but it means an important aspect of the campaigns won't be covered.

Andreas - Maybe some of the OCMH volumes are a bit old, but still they are great sources and IMO not at all outdated.

 

Pegasus Bridge ..

I think some of the accounts are fake or not researched ...

We know what units were stationed there at that time... There are detailed official accounts at the Nataional Archives in DC, So we know there was no Fallschirmjager units stationed near Caen or Pegasus Bridge,
The account of the Fallschrimjager is pure fantasy.. (or based on incorrect information/research)

 

I get an unpleasant feeling reading this thread. Whatever Ambrose's faults, he was only one man and one representative of the historical profession. I belong to that profession myself, I'm not ashamed of it, and I don't care for the tendency here to condemn all but a select few writers. The great majority of historians are conscientious men and women who do their best to get the facts right. As for 'bread writers,' well, historians have to eat too, and success with a large audience does not and should not imply lack of rigor. Keegan has written some good books and sold quite a few copies of them. The Civil War is a major topic of interest in the US, and writers like Stephen Sears and James McPherson have written both well and profitably about it. I agree that official historians like Stacey and the US green book writers are often excellent, but sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they avoided controversial topics for various reasons and their work is often out of date. Ellis is a good example of that; he took the Montgomery line throughout, which is one reason why Carlo d'Este wrote his fine if flawed book about the Normandy campaign decades later. Likewise, Terry Copp has been a useful corrective and supplement to Stacey.

Some of you may have written history, but those of you who haven't should know that it isn't easy and if you think it is easy, then go and try it. The research alone is often damned hard, tedious work. There is always something more to know, some other book or war diary you'd like to look at, but you reach a point where you have to call a halt and just write up what you've got or the thing will never get to press at all. When you are dealing with a mass of material, errors are always a danger and checking and re-checking never stops. I am not defending Ambrose on this point--his reckless pattern is clear--but the majority of factual errors in history books are relatively minor and definitely inadvertent. And by the way, when they do happen to get through the author is even more mortified by them than the reader.

I tend to be cautious when it comes to criticizing and condemning men who have served in combat, because I haven't been and I've read just enough to know how horribly hard their work is. By the same token, I would urge people here to be more discriminating when sorting historian goats from historian sheep. Most of us, too, do our best.

 

TTH

can fully accept that the writing of History can be a daunting task and MANY historian do their very best to ensure accuracy....but we are not castigating those people but rather those who do insufficient research and tend to fictionalise or repeat others' errors..

In that I do have a hostility to one particular author - a pullizer prize winning type who churns out very well received tomes with - as you say- relatively minor errors - such as
the 17th battalion of the 21st Lancers capturing the Liri Valley town of Pulmanora- now THAT is just sloppy research.....and not just a minor matter as people tend to believe that guff....

Then I find the same author involved in a TV programme mostly about George S Patton- which in places is quite laughable - with it's half truths etc - at one point making a big fuss on how the US 5th Army Under Gen. Mark Clark captured Naples....sorry but History records that it was two units of the British Xth Corps - 11 th Hussars and 1st KDG's who did that task while attached to the US 5th Army......

So I can be condemned as one who has served in combat and knows the difference
of machine gun bullets hitting his Tank and an 88mm shot over head and entering where I was standing just a nanosecond before it arrived

Cheers

 

Tom and TTH, in some respects you are both singing from the same hymn sheet. What none of us want is sloppy history. Anyone who seriously sits down to write history, wants to get it as right as possible, but as history is about incidents witnessed by people, who all see it differently, that is a tricky task, especially when living witnesses of that incident survive to read your book and may see it differently to you. Having said that, for me there is little excuse for silly mistakes re units, factoids or whatever it is; they grate when reading, and do make you wonder whether the author really does know there stuff.

But having said that, it's impossible no matter how hard you try to get a manuscript 100% correct and TTH is right that errors which creep in mortifying the author far more than the reader - if they are serious about their craft.

As for Ambrose; I read Band of Brothers and Pegasus Bridge when they came out. They were good reads, but not my type of history. Too lite in places and some glaring errors, but there is no doubt he helped popularise an interest in WW2 in the US that hadn't really happened before. People I find less easy to forgive are those like Beevor who touts his historical credentials and then writes tripe like his D-Day book that is so out of touch with current historical thinking, especially in respect of the British Army. On the other hand, the success of Beevor et al does make it easier to get work published as there is a growing market for military history, and that can only be a good thing.... At least I hope.

 

I get an unpleasant feeling reading this thread. Whatever Ambrose's faults, he was only one man and one representative of the historical profession. I... As for 'bread writers,' well, historians have to eat too, and success with a large audience does not and should not imply lack of rigor...Some of you may have written history, but those of you who haven't should know that it isn't easy and if you think it is easy, then go and try it. The research alone is often damned hard, tedious work. There is always something more to know, some other book or war diary you'd like to look at, but you reach a point where you have to call a halt and just write up what you've got or the thing will never get to press at all. When you are dealing with a mass of material, errors are always a danger and checking and re-checking never stops. I am not defending Ambrose on this point--his reckless pattern is clear--but the majority of factual errors in history books are relatively minor and definitely inadvertent. And by the way, when they do happen to get through the author is even more mortified by them than the reader.

I tend to be cautious when it comes to criticizing and condemning men who have served in combat, because I haven't been and I've read just enough to know how horribly hard their work is. By the same token, I would urge people here to be more discriminating when sorting historian goats from historian sheep. Most of us, too, do our best.

Some good points there however...
The reckless attitude of many historians has made them cowboys, they consult on documentaries, films, review other books and in turn have greatly contributed to damaging analysis and understanding of the campaign. This vocal populist minority robe themselves with respectability taken from their other 'lives', journalists, editors, production consultants - I mean the farce of 'Grey Wolf' greatly helps on that.

However these mistakes... can often be blinding and betray a fundamental lack of knowledge. There is no basic bedrock they are building off, they do not comprehend the basics at all. Even academic historians have this issue at times, and I feel it can be as much due to hubris as anything else.

One issue I have with my writing is tying down quotes and points at times, not because I'm creating them, but because I have a blinding number of sources on my PC, in printouts, interview records, video recordings and books... however I always try to fact check extensively. I've found authors eliminate entire Operations from their books as they do not go with their wider thesis, I've also seen authors (including some I have great regard for) not check the most basic casualty figures and thus myths become reality.

The Churchill Crocodile crew execution thread on hear is most illuminating on that subject matter when the following clip is considered:
WW 2 Flamethrower Tank - The Churchill Crocodile - YouTube

Also veteran's accounts have to be taken in context, I have found them terribly useful and occasionally you encounter one whose mate will point out, "He's a bloody liar" and well... evidence will stack up against that chap telling all the truth, as his unit wasn't at 'x' they were back at 'y' having a fag etc. Some authors have relied on veteran's accounts to create 'warnography' and this frankly does the veterans, their experiences, and the suffering of their comrades a perverse disservice.

The key word is 'some historians', but from the extent of deliberate and accidental piggybacking in the academic and popular fields, and a few individuals disproportionate impact upon the whole area of study... well...

I'll leave it up to you, but ironically I've been writing and analysing this exact area (on historians and their impact upon the study of the Normandy campaign) for several years now and tidying it all up for suitable publication...

 

Tom, most likely it was a German historian drafted into artillery firing that 88 at you and knowing that it inspired your vendetta against the Historian class

 

Za
You are probably correct inasmuch as he was much more efficient than MANY other
historians I am aware of as he got FIVE Churchills inside 20 minutes and the sixth of two troops withdrawing owing to the fact that the Commander was dead and laying over the gunner which made it impossible to operate his guns....but - what the hell - we were well paid - sun was shining etc....we weren't doing anything else at the time....

Cheers

 

Paul
I can well understand your defence of some Historians and their agony of the little errors which can creep into any account - BUT - those cowboys should be aware that whatever they write can be accepted as gospel from people who have little knowledge
of the agony of war.....we have seen - too often how Hollywood in particular can revise
objective truth for the glorification of one nation.....their screen plays etc originate
essentially and primarlty from historians

This Forum appears to be suffering from too many wannabe historians at this time
Cheers

 

For Ambrose, try googling "Stephen Ambrose and the British Coxswains" or "Stephen Ambrose and plaigarism".

For those of us who were inspired to a lifetime of historical study by Ryan's book "A Bridge too Far" (plus seeing the film as a spotty lad!) we should remember that he was, like Chester Wilmot and Max Hastings, a journalist - not a professional historian. This is why I can still read through ABTF and marvel at the first hand accounts, but then go back to the historical records and think that perhaps it didn't happen quite like that!!

Having said that, show me someone who can read Ryan's description of the forces on the ground at Arnhem and in the corridor waiting for and then hearing and seeing the Airborne Lift on day 2 of Op MG without having the hair stand up on the back of their neck, and I'll suggest that they have a heart of stone! The same goes for descriptions of 'Banger' King reciting Henry V as the LCAs closed in on Sword Beach - inspiring, but when you think about it, I wonder how many of the men in his boat thought "Ohhh, put a sock in it Banger" and went back to being sick...

Regards

Tom

I read Ryan as a youth and was transfixed, but as I learned more I came to understand that this was a "trade-history" to be taken with a grain of salt. But surprisingly I still see little criticism of his work. On the other hand SLA Marshall who actually had "official historian" in his CV (but still a pre-war journalist) took a lot of criticism. Mainly because he attempted some analysis of military science with questionable data.

I spent a few years trying to square Ryan's description of how OMAHA Beach was secured with the official histories and finally had to tell myself this is just a Hollywood script. And they did it just that way when they made the movie. Regrettably SPR did nothing to correct the story but did mange a vivid account of the landing. I wish Spielberg could have kept that tension of who dies next as they fought off the beach. It would have been nice to see a few stars die early and often.


I would like to point out few historians take Ambrose seriously (except when he lifts whole passages from other works). In writing narrative histories, he may have commentary that sounds like history but without researched facts and a coherent argument he offers nothing.

On the other side, even those who do detailed archives research and describe a battle with complete accuracy are of not much interest to academic historians. With the glaring exception that they can be a great guide to primary sources.

I would say Beevor's earlier work was closer to narrative 'history' and when he took on the whole war then he went into the academic historians backyard and is getting a closer look.

I think it is the detailed researchers that are getting most annoyed at the "trade histories". Academic historians probably haven't seriously re-looked the war since ULTRA came out (or the Soviet archives opened, maybe).

 

Tom and TTH, in some respects you are both singing from the same hymn sheet. What none of us want is sloppy history.
.......


To completely discredit myself I have to admit I am enjoying a poorly written and poorly argued book right now.

The Battle for Western Europe, An Operational Assessment by John A. Adams. Here's a review of his previous work and all the same criticisms apply.

Michigan War Studies Review - book reviews, literature surveys, essays, and commentary

It is less of a history and more military science (but no soldier need take it seriously). Honestly it reads like a series of posts from a WWII forum.

But he does make an argument (not well presented or without factual errors) and I find questioning his analysis thoughtful and entertaining. It does help that he is skewering people I don't care for: Monty, Bradley, Patton (yet to see if he has a bad word for Ike).

Although he doesn't say it, I don't take it as history. While personality flaws and human foibles are the center of his thesis, he does not acknowledge that war and command are human endeavors (as historians must), he just provides an armchair "military analysis" of what he thinks transpired and, so far, how SHEAF had a better plan than was executed by the Army Groups.

So it is a dangerous book, not one for readers who don't already know the history. Luckily it is not a popular book either so it is not likely to hurt the popular knowledge at large.

 

I have a particular dislike of these 'bread-writers', they just write to make a living and do not care for historical correctness, only cheap succes.

I prefer the scholary writers: always first check with Stacey's Victory Campaign, Cole's Battle of the Bulge and the other ETO publications of the OCMH, or with Ellis Victory in the West (two volumes). Most of the time you need no other books.
Did save me a lot of money over the years!

While Stacey had unparalled access to the major Canadian military and political figures involved in the war, both during the conflict and afterwards, he wrote Victory Campaign before the Ultra decrypts were made public (1949). He served in the Army for 35 years (1924-1959) and many of his conclusions now seem to carry a pronounced bias in favour of the senior commanders and are highly critical of unit level commanders.

Admittedly, Stacey and official historians, with exclusive access to documents, did provide the first foundational studies but the context does bear more scrutiny. Being in the military and a contemporary of powerful personages bent on safeguarding wartime reputations does not provide the ideal environment for an objective view on Stacey's part.

Many regard Jack English’s, The Canadian Army in the Normandy Campaign: A Failure in High Command, to be the definitive work.

Maybe the lesson is that no one book or even the best 3 books on a given subject are adequate to provide the full picture.

 

I would like to recommend a remarkable book written by Peter Ryan called "Fear Drive My Feet". He wrote it at the age of 21; a veteran of intelligence patrols in the jungles of Papua New Guinea during WWII.
This book has rarely been out of print in the last 40 years. Peter Ryan writes a classic about his dangerous patrol missions gathering intelligence for the Australian forces. It is amazing that he survived. As a writer, he has been compared to Seigfried Sassoon.
ISBN 1 875989 87 0

 

Hi
Quick comment. Yes Ambrose was a showboat. But he gets people interested in history. Some of the comments I read here are about the Band of Brothers movie. I do not know of a single movie that gets all the facts right! I went and got my copy of BoB and cannot find where Ambrose says Liebgott was a Jew. That is why I read history. I would rather read about the SOLDIERs not the Generals. That is what Ambrose wrote about in Pegasus Bridge(Love to see a Good Movie on that) and Band of Brothers (the only Ambrose books I have read). I have read almost every book about these guys (E 506) and either it is the biggest lie in history or these things happened the way all of them said it did. I have commented before that I like Don Burgett's many books and Ross Carters book. I guess that because I was a soldier I would rather read about them. It is the guys/blokes who lived the terribleness of War, I want to know about. Not the General in the rear. TTyman