Omar Bradley

Senior officers watching operations from the bridge of USS Augusta (CA-31), off Normandy, June 8, 1944. They are (from left to right): Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Rear Admiral Arthur D. Struble (with binoculars), and Major General William B. Kean.

In October 1943 Bradley moved to London as commander in chief of the American ground forces preparing to invade France in 1944. For D-Day, Bradley was chosen to command the US First Army, which, alongside the British Second Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey, made up the 21st Army Group, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery.

Lieutenant General Omar Bradley (left), Commanding General, U.S. First Army, listens as Major General J. Lawton Collins, Commanding General, US VII Corps, describes how the city of Cherbourg was taken. (c. June 1944)

On June 10, 1944, four days after the initial Normandy landings, Bradley and his staff debarked to establish a headquarters ashore. During Operation Overlord, he commanded three corps directed at the two American invasion targets, Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. During July he inspected the modifications made by Curtis G. Culin to Sherman tanks, that led to the Rhino tank. Later in July, he planned Operation Cobra, the beginning of the breakout from the Normandy beachhead. Operation Cobra called for the use of strategic bombers using huge bomb loads to attack German defensive lines. After several postponements due to weather, the operation began on July 25, 1944, with a short, very intensive bombardment with lighter explosives, designed so as not to create more rubble and craters that would slow Allied progress. Bradley was horrified when 77 planes bombed short and dropped bombs on their own troops, including Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair:[13]

The ground belched, shook and spewed dirt to the sky. Scores of our troops were hit, their bodies flung from slit trenches. Doughboys were dazed and frightened....A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar.[14]

However, the bombing was successful in knocking out the enemy communication system, rendering German troops confused and ineffective, and opened the way for the ground offensive by attacking infantry. Bradley sent in three infantry divisions—the 9th, 4th and 30th—to move in close behind the bombing. The infantry succeeded in cracking the German defenses, opening the way for advances by armored forces commanded by Patton to sweep around the German lines.

As the build-up continued in Normandy, the Third Army was formed under Patton, Bradley's former commander, while Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, whom Bradley had succeeded as Commandant of the Infantry School, succeeded Bradley in command of the First Army; together, they made up Bradley's new command, the 12th Army Group. By August, the 12th Army Group had swollen to over 900,000 men and ultimately consisted of four field armies. It was the largest group of American soldiers to ever serve under one field commander.

Bradley (center) with Patton (left) and Montgomery (right) at 21st Army Group HQ, Normandy, July 7, 1944.

Hitler's refusal to allow his army to flee the rapidly advancing Allied pincer movement created an opportunity to trap an entire German Army Group in northern France.[15] After the German attempt to split the US armies at Mortain (Operation Lüttich), Bradley's Army Group and XV Corps became the southern pincer in forming the Falaise Pocket, trapping the German Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army in Normandy. The northern pincer was formed of Canadian forces, part of British General Sir Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group. On August 13, 1944, concerned that American troops would clash with Canadian forces advancing from the north-west, Bradley overrode Patton's orders for a further push north towards Falaise, while ordering XV Corps to "concentrate for operations in another direction".[16] Any American troops in the vicinity of Argentan were ordered to withdraw.[17] This order halted the southern pincer movement of General Haislip's XV Corps.[18] Though Patton protested the order, he obeyed it, leaving an exit—a "trap with a gap"—for the remaining German forces.[18] Around 20,000–50,000 German troops (leaving almost all of their heavy material)[19] escaped through the gap, avoiding encirclement and almost certain destruction.[18] They would be reorganized and rearmed in time to slow the Allied advance into the Netherlands and Germany.[18] Most of the blame for this outcome has been placed on Bradley.[20][21] Bradley had incorrectly assumed, based on Ultra decoding transcripts, that most of the Germans had already escaped encirclement, and he feared a German counterattack as well as possible friendly fire casualties.[22] Though admitting that a mistake had been made, Bradley placed the blame on General Montgomery for moving the British and Commonwealth troops too slowly, though the latter were in direct contact with a large number of SS Panzer, paratroopers, and other elite German forces.[23][24]

The American forces reached the "Siegfried Line" or "Westwall" in late September. The success of the advance had taken the Allied high command by surprise. They had expected the German Wehrmacht to make stands on the natural defensive lines provided by the French rivers, and had not prepared the logistics for the much deeper advance of the Allied armies, so fuel ran short.

Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall (center) and Army Air Forces Commander General Henry H. Arnold confer with Bradley on the beach at Normandy in 1944.

Eisenhower faced a decision on strategy. Bradley favored an advance into the Saarland, or possibly a two-thrust assault on both the Saarland and the Ruhr Area. Montgomery argued for a narrow thrust across the Lower Rhine, preferably with all Allied ground forces under his personal command as they had been in the early months of the Normandy campaign, into the open country beyond and then to the northern flank into the Ruhr, thus avoiding the Siegfried Line. Although Montgomery was not permitted to launch an offensive on the scale he had wanted, George Marshall and Hap Arnold were eager to use the First Allied Airborne Army to cross the Rhine, so Eisenhower agreed to Operation Market Garden. Bradley opposed the operation, and bitterly protested to Eisenhower the priority of supplies given to Montgomery, but Eisenhower, mindful of British public opinion regarding damage from V-1 missile launches in the north, refused to make any changes.

From left to right: Major General Leven C. Allen, Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Major General John S. Wood, Lieutenant General George S. Patton and Major General Manton S. Eddy being shown a map by one of Patton's armored battalion commanders during a tour near Metz, France, November 1944.

Bradley's Army Group now covered a very wide front in hilly country, from the Netherlands to Lorraine. Despite having the largest concentration of Allied army forces, Bradley faced difficulties in prosecuting a successful broad-front offensive in difficult country with a skilled enemy. General Bradley and his First Army commander, General Courtney Hodges, eventually decided to attack through a corridor known as the Aachen Gap towards the German township of Schmidt. The only nearby military objectives were the Roer River flood control dams, but these were not mentioned in contemporary plans and documents.[25] Bradley and Hodges' original objective may have been to outflank German forces and prevent them from reinforcing their units further north in the Battle of Aachen. After the war, Bradley would cite the Roer dams as the objective.[26] Since the Germans held the dams, they could also unleash millions of gallons of water into the path of advance. The campaign's confused objectives, combined with poor intelligence,[27] resulted in the costly series of battles known as the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, which cost some 33,000 American casualties.[28] At the end of the fighting in the Hurtgen, German forces remained in control of the Roer dams in what has been described as "the most ineptly fought series of battles of the war in the west."[28] Further south, Patton's Third Army, which had been advancing with great speed, was faced with last priority (behind the U.S. First and Ninth Armies) for supplies, gasoline and ammunition. As a result, the Third Army lost momentum as German resistance stiffened around the extensive defenses surrounding the city of Metz. While Bradley focused on these two campaigns, the Germans were in the process of assembling troops and materiel for a surprise winter offensive.

Bradley's command took the initial brunt of what would become the Battle of the Bulge. For logistical and command reasons, General Eisenhower decided to place Bradley's First and Ninth Armies under the temporary command of Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group on the northern flank of the Bulge. Bradley was incensed, and began shouting at Eisenhower: "By God, Ike, I cannot be responsible to the American people if you do this. I resign."[29] Eisenhower turned red, took a breath and replied evenly "Brad, I—not you—am responsible to the American people. Your resignation therefore means absolutely nothing."[30] Bradley paused, made one more protest, then fell silent as Eisenhower concluded "Well, Brad, those are my orders."[30]

At least one historian has attributed Eisenhower's support for Bradley's subsequent promotion to (temporary) four-star general (March 1945, not made permanent until January 1949) to, in part, a desire to compensate him for the way in which he had been sidelined during the Battle of the Bulge.[31] Others point out that both Secretary of War Stimson and General Eisenhower had desired to reward General Patton with a fourth star for his string of accomplishments in 1944, but that Eisenhower could not promote Patton over Bradley, Devers, and other senior commanders without upsetting the chain of command (as Bradley commanded these people in the theater). A more likely explanation is that as Bradley commanded an Army Group and was the immediate subordinate of Eisenhower, who was promoted to five star rank in December 1944, it was only appropriate that he should hold the next lower rank.[32][33]

Allied commanders conference, April 11, 1945. Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey (commanding the British Second Army); General Omar Bradley (C-in-C 12th Army Group); Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery (C-in-C 21st Army Group); Lieutenant General William H. Simpson (commanding the U.S. Ninth Army).

Bradley used the advantage gained in March 1945—after Eisenhower authorized a difficult but successful Allied offensive (on a broad front with British Operation Veritable to the north and American Operation Grenade to the south) in February 1945—to break the German defenses and cross the Rhine into the industrial heartland of the Ruhr. Aggressive pursuit of the disintegrating German troops by the 9th Armored Division resulted in the capture of a bridge across the Rhine River at Remagen. Bradley quickly exploited the crossing, forming the southern arm of an enormous pincer movement encircling the German forces in the Ruhr from the north and south. Over 300,000 prisoners were taken. American forces then met up with the Soviet forces near the Elbe River in mid-April. By V-E Day, the 12th Army Group was a force of four armies (First, Third, Ninth, and Fifteenth) that numbered over 1.3 million men.

Senior American commanders of the European theater of World War II, 1945. Seated, from left to right, are William H. Simpson, George S. Patton, Carl Spaatz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Courtney Hodges, and Leonard T. Gerow; standing are (from left to right) Ralph F. Stearley, Hoyt Vandenberg, Walter Bedell Smith, Otto P. Weyland, and Richard E. Nugent.

Unlike some of the more colorful generals of World War II, Bradley was polite and courteous in his public appearances. A reticent man, Bradley was first favorably brought to public attention by war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was urged by General Eisenhower to "go and discover Bradley".[34] Pyle subsequently wrote several dispatches in which he referred to Bradley as the GI's general, a title that would stay with Bradley throughout his remaining career.[35] Will Lang Jr. of Life magazine said "The thing I most admire about Omar Bradley is his gentleness. He was never known to issue an order to anybody of any rank without saying 'Please' first."

While the public at large never forgot the image created by newspaper correspondents, a different view of Bradley was offered by combat historian S. L. A. Marshall, who knew both Bradley and George Patton, and had interviewed officers and men under their commands. Marshall, who was also a critic of George S. Patton,[36] noted that Bradley's "common man" image "was played up by Ernie Pyle...The GIs were not impressed with him. They scarcely knew him. He's not a flamboyant figure and he didn't get out much to troops. And the idea that he was idolized by the average soldier is just rot."[37]

While Bradley retained his reputation as the GI's general, he was criticized by some of his contemporaries for other aspects of his leadership style, sometimes described as "managerial" in nature.[38] British General Bernard Montgomery's assessment of Bradley was that he was "dull, conscientious, dependable, and loyal".[39] He had a habit of peremptorily relieving senior commanders who he felt were too independent, or whose command style did not agree with his own, such as the colorful and aggressive General Terry Allen, commander of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division (who was relocated to a different command because Bradley felt that his continued command of the division was making it unmanageably elitist, a decision with which Eisenhower concurred).[40] While Patton is often viewed today as the prototype of the intolerant, impulsive commander, Bradley actually sacked far more generals and senior commanders during World War II, whereas Patton relieved only one general from his command—Orlando Ward—for cause during the entire war (and only after giving General Ward two warnings).[37] When required, Bradley could be a hard disciplinarian; he recommended the death sentence for several soldiers while he served as the commander of the First Army.[41]

One controversy of Bradley's leadership involved the lack of use of specialized tanks (Hobart's Funnies) in the Normandy invasion.[42] After the war Chester Wilmot[43] quoted correspondence with the developer of the tanks, Major General Percy Hobart, to the effect that the failure to use such tanks was a major contributing factor to the losses at Omaha Beach, and that Bradley had deferred the decision whether to use the tanks to his staff who had not taken up the offer, other than in respect of the DD (swimming) tanks. However a later memo from the 21st Army Group is on record[44] as relaying two separate requests from the First Army, one dealing with the DD tanks and "Porpoises" (towed waterproof trailers), the other with a variety of other Funnies. The second list gives not only items of specific interest with requested numbers, but items known to be available that were not of interest. The requested items were modified Shermans, and tank attachments compatible with Shermans. Noted as not of interest were Funnies that required Churchill or Valentine tanks, or for which alternatives were available from the US. Of the six requested types of Funnies, the Sherman flamethrower version of the Churchill Crocodile is known to have been difficult to produce, and the Centipede never seems to have been used in combat. Richard Anderson considers that the press of time prevented the production of the other four items in numbers beyond the Commonwealth's requirements. Given the heavier surf and the topography of Omaha Beach, it is unlikely that the funnies would have been as useful there as they were on the Commonwealth beaches.[45] The British had agreed to provide British-crewed Funnies to operate with the American forces but were unable to train the crews and deliver the vehicles in time.[46]

President Truman appointed Bradley to head the Veterans Administration for two years after the war. He served from August 15, 1945, to November 30, 1947[47] and is credited with doing much to improve its health care system and with helping veterans receive their educational benefits under the G. I. Bill of Rights. Bradley's influence on the VA is credited with helping shape it into the agency it is today. He was a regular visitor to Capitol Hill and lobbied on behalf of veterans' benefits in testimony before various congressional veteran affairs committees. Due to his numerous contributions to the Veterans Administration, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs' primary conference room at the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs is named in Bradley's honor.

Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson swears in Bradley as the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a ceremony in Washington, D.C, August 16, 1949.

Bradley became the Army Chief of Staff in 1948. After assuming command, Bradley found a U.S. military establishment badly in need of reorganization, equipment, and training. As Bradley himself put it, "the Army of 1948 could not fight its way out of a paper bag."[48][49][50][51]

On August 11, 1949, President Harry S. Truman appointed Bradley the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After his initial 1948 plan to expand the Army and modernize its equipment was rejected by the Truman Administration, Bradley reacted to the increasingly severe postwar defense department budget cutbacks imposed by Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson by publicly supporting Johnson's decisions, going so far as to tell Congress that he would be doing a "disservice to the nation" if he asked for a larger military force.[50][51][52][53] Bradley also suggested that official Navy protests of Secretary Johnson's canceling the supercarrier United States were due to improper personal or political, even mutinous motives, calling Navy admirals "fancy dans who won't hit the line with all they have on every play unless they can call the signals", and who were in "open rebellion against the civilian control."[54][55]

In his second memoir, Bradley would later state that not arguing more forcefully in 1948 and 1949 for a sufficient defense budget "was a mistake... perhaps the greatest mistake I made in my postwar years in Washington."[56][57]

On September 22, 1950,[58] he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army, the fifth—and last—person to achieve that rank. That same year, Bradley was made the first Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. He remained on the committee until August 1953, when he left active duty. During his service, Bradley visited the White House over 300 times and was frequently featured on the cover of Time magazine.

In 1950 Bradley was elected as an honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati in recognition of his outstanding service to his country.

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bradley was the senior military officer at the outset of the Korean War. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, Bradley was faced with re-organizing and deploying an American military force that was a shadow of its World War II counterpart.[59][60] The impact of the Truman administration's defense budget cutbacks were now keenly felt, as poorly equipped American troops, lacking sufficient tanks, anti-tank weapons, or artillery were driven down the Korean peninsula to Pusan in a series of costly rearguard actions.[61][62] In a postwar analysis of the unpreparedness of U.S. Army forces deployed to Korea during the summer and fall of 1950, Army Major General Floyd L. Parks stated that "Many who never lived to tell the tale had to fight the full range of ground warfare from offensive to delaying action, unit by unit, man by man...[T]hat we were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat...does not relieve us from the blame of having placed our own flesh and blood in such a predicament."[63]

Bradley was the chief military policy maker during the Korean War, and supported Truman's original plan of 'rolling back' Communist aggression by conquering all of North Korea. When Chinese Communists entered North Korea in late 1950 and again drove back American forces, Bradley agreed that rollback had to be dropped in favor of a strategy of containment of North Korea. The containment strategy was subsequently adopted by the Truman administration for North Korea, and applied to communist expansion worldwide. Never an admirer of General Douglas MacArthur, Bradley was instrumental in convincing Truman to dismiss MacArthur as the overall commander in the Korean theatre[64] after MacArthur resisted administration attempts to scale back strategic objectives in the Korean War.

In his testimony to the U.S. Congress, Bradley strongly rebuked MacArthur for his support of victory at all costs in the Korean War. Soon after Truman relieved MacArthur of command in April 1951, Bradley said in Congressional testimony, "Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."

Omar Bradley, General of the Army

• August 1, 1911: Cadet, United States Military Academy, West Point
• June 12, 1915: 14th Infantry Regiment
• September 10, 1919: ROTC professor, South Dakota State College
• September 13, 1920: Instructor, United States Military Academy
• September 15, 1924: Infantry School Student, Fort Benning, Georgia
• October 1, 1925: Battalion Commander, 27th Infantry Regiment
• June 10, 1927: Office of National Guard and Reserve Affairs, Hawaiian Department
• August 31, 1928: Student, Command and General Staff School
• August 1, 1929: Instructor, United States Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia
• August 18, 1933: Student, United States Army War College
• June 30, 1934: Plans and Training Officer, United States Military Academy
• June 1, 1938: War Department General Staff, G-1 Chief of Operations Branch and Assistant Secretary of the General Staff
• March 5, 1941: Commandant, U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia
• February 19, 1942: Commanding General, 82nd Infantry Division
• June 25, 1942: Commanding General, 28th Infantry Division
• April 16, 1943: Commanding General, II Corps, North Africa and Sicily
• September 9, 1943: Commanding General, Field Forces European Theater
• March 6, 1944: Commanding General, First Army
• August 1, 1944: Commanding General, 12th Army Group
• August 15, 1945: Administrator of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Administration
• February 7, 1948: United States Army Chief of Staff
• August 15, 1949: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• August 19, 1953: Remained on active duty without an assignment[80]

	Defense Distinguished Service Medal
	Army Distinguished Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters
	Navy Distinguished Service Medal
	Silver Star
	Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster
	Bronze Star Medal
	Presidential Medal of Freedom
	Mexican Border Service Medal
	World War I Victory Medal
	Army of Occupation of Germany Medal
	American Defense Service Medal
	American Campaign Medal
	European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with Arrowhead device, one silver and two bronze campaign stars
	World War II Victory Medal
	Army of Occupation Medal with "Germany" clasp
	National Defense Service Medal with oak leaf cluster
	Korean Service Medal
	United Nations Service Medal

• Combat Infantryman Badge (honorary)
• Army Staff Identification Badge
• Four Overseas Service Bars

• Grand Cross, Legion of Honour (France)
• Grand Cross, Order of the Crown (Belgium)
• Grand Cross, Order of the Oak Crown (Luxembourg)
• Grand Cross, Order of George I (Greece)
• Grand Cross, Order of the Phoenix (Greece)
• Grand Cross, Military Order of Savoy (Italy)
• Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (United Kingdom)
• Grand Officer, Order of the Liberator (Argentina)
• Grand Officer, Order of Military Merit (Brazil)
• Grand Officer, Order of Orange-Nassau (Netherlands)
• Commander, Order of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia)
• Commander of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite (Morocco)
• Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Poland)
• Order of Suvorov (1st class) (Soviet Union)
• Order of Kutuzov (1st class) (Soviet Union)

• French Croix de guerre with silver-gilt palm
• War Cross WWII (Belgium) with palm
• Czechoslovak War Cross 1939–1945
• Luxembourg War Cross
• Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal

Source:[81]

No insignia	Cadet, United States Military Academy: August 1, 1911
No pin insignia in 1915	Second Lieutenant, United States Army: June 12, 1915
	First Lieutenant, United States Army: July 1, 1916
	Captain, United States Army: May 15, 1917
	Temporary Major, National Army: June 17, 1918 to January 22, 1920
	Major, National Army: July 1, 1920
	Captain, Regular Army (reverted to permanent rank*): November 4, 1922
	Major, Regular Army: June 25, 1924
	Lieutenant Colonel, Regular Army: July 26, 1936
	Brigadier General, Army of the United States: February 24, 1941
	Major General, Army of the United States: February 15, 1942
	Lieutenant General, Army of the United States: June 2, 1943
	Colonel, Regular Army: October 1, 1943**
	Brigadier General, Regular Army: September 1, 1943**
	Major General, Regular Army: September 8, 1944
	General, Army of the United States: March 12, 1945
	General, Regular Army: January 31, 1949
	General of the Army, Regular Army: September 22, 1950

* – Discharged as Major and appointed Captain November 4, 1922; acts June 30, 1922 and September 14, 1922[82]

** – Bradley's effective date for permanent brigadier general in the Regular Army is earlier than his effective date of promotion for permanent colonel. While serving as a temporary lieutenant general in early 1943, Bradley was notified that he would be promoted to permanent colonel with an effective date of October 1, 1943. At the time, promotions to permanent brigadier and major general had been withheld for more than two years, except for Delos C. Emmons, Henry H. Arnold, and Dwight Eisenhower. President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted the moratorium after Bradley was notified that he would be promoted to colonel, but before the October 1 effective date.

In determining whom to promote after the lifting of Roosevelt's moratorium, Marshall consulted with Eisenhower, and they agreed to promote Bradley and several others. Marshall and Eisenhower then arranged the effective dates of promotion to brigadier general based on where they wanted each of the individuals selected to rank in terms of seniority. Bradley's date of rank for permanent brigadier general was then set as September 1, 1943—even though this was before his October 1, 1943 effective date for promotion to colonel—based on where Eisenhower and Marshall wanted Bradley to fall in terms of seniority as a brigadier general.

Bradley's and the other promotions to brigadier general on which Marshall and Eisenhower had conferred were not acted on until mid-October 1943 because Congress had to approve a waiver for those generals, including Bradley, who did not yet have 28 years of service. As a result, his October 1, 1943 date for promotion to permanent colonel was allowed to remain in effect. When Congress acted in mid-October to approve Bradley's time in service waiver and promotion to permanent brigadier general, his effective date for brigadier general was backdated to September 1, 1943. The September 1, 1943 date for permanent brigadier general enabled Bradley to line up with his peers where Marshall and Eisenhower intended for purposes of seniority.

The effective postdated (and then backdated) date of rank for Bradley's promotion to permanent brigadier general—September 1, 1943—thus came before the effective postdated date of rank for his promotion to colonel—October 1, 1943.[83][84][85][86][87]