Stephen Ambrose on D Day: Into the Fire at Normandy

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 737 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, in this continuation of Ambrose’s work on June 6, 1944, the battle comes into view through the voices of the men who survived it. He follows their push off the beaches, their losses, and their small gains, and how those efforts turned the invasion into a foothold that could not be pushed back. Ambrose also highlights the Army’s “soldier suggestion box,” an unusual program that invited frontline troops to offer ideas for improving equipment and tactics, and how those insights shaped the fight for Normandy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:15.1	This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.
0:19.7	Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians.
0:24.3	At the core of Ambrose's phenomenal success,
0:26.4	it's his simple but straightforward belief that history is biography and that history is about people.
0:34.4	Ambrose passed in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at
0:40.3	Our American Stories thanks to those who run his estate. Here's Ambrose with the D-Day
0:47.3	Invasion Part 2. Let's take a listen.
0:50.3	The battle over the next couple of weeks took on a form that brought great anguish
0:58.0	to Eisenhower and posed great dangers for the alliance. This was because General Montgomery
1:05.5	had in the pre-overlord planning said that the way this battle is going to go is as follows. We're going in on the left,
1:13.6	that is the closest to the city of Khan and thus to the city of Paris. The role of the Americans in this
1:20.6	operation would be to protect the right flank of the British forces advancing on Paris. But the Americans felt that he was being
1:29.2	pennywise and pound foolish, that he was saving a few lives now by not attacking. It was going
1:34.8	to mean more British lives would be lost later on. We had the initiative, we had the advantage,
1:39.4	we should have driven on. It was Patton's attitude, Bradley's attitude, Collins, Eisenhower's, and many of
1:45.8	the senior British officers at Shea felt the same way.
1:49.2	Well, with Montgomery held up in front of Khan, it now fell on the Americans to the right
1:56.8	under General Bradley, the U.S. First Army, the 4th Infantry, the 29th Infantry, the 1st Infantry Division,
2:02.9	and the 2nd Airborne Divisions, the 82nd and 101st, to effect a breakout from the Normandy Peninsula.
2:11.1	This was about as bad a country as there is in the world for fighting an offensive action, Or turning that around, it was just ideal for the defense.
	...

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