General McNair, Manic Moran and me

[RichTO90]

On 1/18/2025 at 5:08 AM, LeeWalls said:

Was Bradley a "coward"?    I have read his actions during the Battle of the Bulge described as "craven cowardice" but i don't recall what the basis for the accusation was.  

Sorry, I missed this.

No, no one ever described Bradley as a physical coward. Moral coward, but not physical.

His performance as an army group commander before and during the Bulge though was probably his low point as a commander.

We already covered his fiasco in France failing to close the Chambois-Pocket. When the front stabilized in Late September he went back to attacking everywhere, just as he had in Normandy commanding FUSA. He backed Hodges fixation on the Huertgen Forest and allowed him to feed division after division into an unnecessary meat-grinder. At the same time he starved Simpson of troops, mostly because he was under British control for much of the time, and failed to control Patton's piracy of the supply system and coddled Patton's worse tendencies - backbiting and badmouthing Eisenhower and Montgomery.

At the same time Bradley maintained his complete laissez-faire attitude to supply, rarely criticizing the logistic missteps of J.C.H. Lee...until Lee came up with the creative solution for the infantry replacement problem by proposing retraining black service personnel volunteers as infantry. Then, Lee suddenly became the antichrist.

After the Germans attacked, Bradley spent more time worried about how his reputation would suffer than in handling the situation and ensuring that he could maintain control over his subordinate armies. He fought Eisenhower over Montgomery taking command of the First Army in the crisis, even though it was the only sane thing to do in the situation. Then, instead of backing Patton on responding with a deep envelopment after the situation stabilized. he meekly followed Montgomery's lead in pushing the Germans out of the Bulge.

Quite possibly the single most unfortunate incident affecting the U.S. Army command in World War II was the "slapping incident(s)" in Sicily. Patton, overstressed, took himself out of the running to command FUSA in NEPTUNE. If he had, he would have had Bradley and Hodges as subordinates. He never would have tolerated Bradley's lazy "attack in succession from left-to-right" handling of First Army and may have relieved him (Patton believed in giving generals a chance, but only if their second chance was a success). He would likely have ridden Hodges like a pony during the exploitation and would have happily gone along with Montgomery's deep envelopment.

Edited January 26 by RichTO90

[LeeWalls]

Thanks for that informative post Rich.