Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: November 2009
Reviewed by Tim George
As each day passes fewer people have any first or even second-hand connection to World War II. Therefore it is important that Jeff Shaara does for this generation what Herman Wouk did for the last: remind us all that it happened. First with The Steel Wave, then The Rising Tide, and now No Less Than Victory, Shaara paints a vivid picture of the madness and heroism than gripped our world from 1938-1945.
Many names in this historically accurate story are familiar. There is Dwight Eisenhower excelling at walking the political tightrope that ensures the cooperation and success of armies from many nations. Field Marshall Montgomery is his usual pompous self: distasteful to most yet necessary for the people of Great Britain in desperate need of a hero. And of course one can’t forget George Patton, who General Eisenhower doesn’t know what to do with yet can’t win the war without. On the German side, lesser names like Albert Speer rise to prominence as we are shown their loyalty to their country yet increasing awareness of the insanity they have allowed in the person of Hitler. None of these are cardboard cutouts but rather real men with real hopes, fears, and frailties.
The real heroes of this story, however, are the soldiers few but their own families remember. Most notable is Benson, a foot soldier. His 106th Infantry faced some of the fiercest fighting of 1944 and emerged a ragtag group of stragglers thrown into units where they knew virtually no one. His story is where historical fiction rises to importance and Jeff Shaara excels. While numerous volumes have been written about the world leaders and generals of that time, the stories of men like Benson are only known through eye-witness remembrances of people in their 80’s and 90’s and family members who remember the stories of those no longer with us.
The most powerful scene in No Less Than Victory is when Benson’s unit comes across what they first think to be a POW camp in Germany only to realize they have discovered the first of Hitler’s infamous death camps. Here we see men hardened by years of war weeping like children, sick at their stomachs as they try to understand what they see. It is a site too horrible to be fiction yet in need of good fiction to tell the story. And then we see Eisenhower, who first works to control the press lest it blow the story out of proportion, and then after visiting the camp personally commands all press members to witness for themselves lest others in later years think it was fabricated. Ironically, we still need great historical fiction writers like Jeff Shaara to remind yet another generation that none of the characters or events he writes about is fiction at all. No matter how much we wish it was.
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