Review: The Boys' Crusade

The Boys' Crusade by Paul Fussell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was a quick and easy read about WWII in the ETO with focus on young infantry recruits. What made it special was occasional examples of eloquence.

Two quotes I particularly like:

[Hitler] radioed Kluge: "I command the attack be prosecuted daringly and recklessly to the sea — regardless of risk... Greatest daring, determination, imagination must give wings to all echelons of command. Each and every man must believe in victory." (Phrases like "1 command," "give wings to," and "must believe" are pure Hitler, power nuttiness wedded to Viennese sentimentality.)


There were actually plenty of intelligence reports of strengthened German activity behind their line: heavy tank noise was heard and noted; spotter planes saw and brought back news of odd armored- vehicle concentrations hiding in forests. So the problem was not really paucity of evidence and data. It was, as so often, complacency and the lust for intellectual comfort overriding the meaning of evidence. The Americans' Ardennes intelligence failure takes its place in a long line of similar, apparently inexplicable modern events, like the failure of radar to convey that immense groups of Japanese planes were approaching Pearl Harbor.



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