The U.S. Army commander who led the Normandy campaign
Testifying before Congress on 15 May 1951, Bradley rebuked the call for a wider war: 'this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.'
Omar Bradley was a senior U.S. Army commander of the Second World War, leading forces from North Africa and Sicily through the Normandy landings and the advance into western Europe. The existing headquarters associated with his First U.S. Army Group was repurposed as a fictitious command in the Allied deception plan, while Bradley commanded the real First Army and later the Twelfth Army Group. After the war, he became Army Chief of Staff and the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helping shape U.S. military policy during the opening of the Korean War.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1915Second lieutenant, U.S. Army Infantry
- 1941Commandant, U.S. Army Infantry School
- 1943Commander, II Corps, North Africa and Sicily
- 1944Commander, First Army, Normandy landings
- 1944–1945Commander, Twelfth Army Group, western Europe
- 1948–1949Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army
- 1949–1953First Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- 1950Promoted to General of the Army
Related historical events
- 1941–1944The Second Front and the Normandy LandingsNominal commander of the fictional army groupHe was the nominal commander of the First U.S. Army Group before Patton took over, a detail used in the deception.
- 1950–1953The Korean WarSenior U.S. military officerAs the senior military officer when war began in June 1950, he reorganized and deployed U.S. forces.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Korean War
Bradley became Army Chief of Staff in 1948 and, on 11 August 1949, President Truman appointed him the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He inherited a military establishment he himself judged badly in need of reorganization, equipment and training, saying that "the Army of 1948 could not fight its way out of a paper bag." After his 1948 plan to expand and modernize the Army was rejected by the administration, he publicly backed Defense Secretary Louis A. Johnson's budget cutbacks, going so far as to tell Congress that requesting a larger force would be a "disservice to the nation." In his second memoir he wrote that not arguing more forcefully for an adequate defense budget in 1948 and 1949 "was a mistake... perhaps the greatest mistake I made in my postwar years in Washington."
When the Korean War began with the DPRK's invasion of the South in June 1950, Bradley was the senior military officer. He had to reorganize and deploy a force far below its World War II strength, and poorly equipped American troops lacking sufficient tanks, anti-tank weapons and artillery were driven down the Korean peninsula to Pusan in costly rearguard actions. He initially supported the Truman administration's plan of rolling back communist aggression by conquering all of North Korea, but after Chinese forces entered the war in late 1950 and drove American forces back, he agreed to drop rollback in favor of a strategy of containment of North Korea, which the Truman administration then adopted for communist expansion worldwide.
Bradley was never an admirer of General Douglas MacArthur and was instrumental in persuading Truman to dismiss him after MacArthur resisted attempts to scale back the war's strategic objectives. In congressional testimony soon after the April 1951 relief, he rebuked MacArthur's call for total victory, saying that "this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." In the same period he was an outspoken supporter of military aid and improved relations with Yugoslavia.
Bradley also opposed Truman's Executive Order 9981 of July 1948 abolishing discrimination in the armed forces "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin," commenting that "[t]he Army is not out to make any social reforms." He was forced by Truman to issue a public apology.