Bradley's "what-if" failures

Any great general has his share of mistakes and failures - battles that don't go quite as well as he planned or hoped. It's almost an absolute requirement for greatness - because if he never fails, one might conclude that he's never taken enough risks to be great.

It's a tricky issue, of course. In the book I go into some depth on the battles where Bradley is faulted, and where I think criticism is justified. Two large incidents will immediately stand out - the failure of intelligence right before the Battle of the Bulge, and the slogging fights that we lump together as Huertgen Forest.

Of course, we can debate to what extent those failures were due to him, and so on, but at the end of the day I think he would have to accept that neither moment was among his finest. (Turning the Bulge into a victory is another story.)

But there are a few places where I think Bradley's record might stand a bit more examination, if not necessarily criticism. They're not generally thought of as "belonging" to Bradley, nor are they necessarily looked at as failures by traditional historians. But they did play an important role in shaping the war.

Here are two:

Bradley is sometimes criticized for not closing the so-called Falaise Gap after the breakout and right turn in France. A lot of the criticism frankly isn't warranted, but the issue is complex and certainly isn't going to be settled here, or even in my biography. But he's never, to my knowledge, been criticized for pushing Patton to detour forces from his main drive and hold the side of that gap. (The criticism is generally that he was late to do so, etc., etc. - it's usually assumed that it's right to get them up there.)

Think about it - if Bradley had stuck to his original plan and let Patton continue toward Germany, would he have had enough momentum to breach the frontier before the Germans could reinforce it? Would the increased number of Germans who survived outweighed the geographical gains Patton might have made?

Admittedly a great what-if question, perhaps one that can never be resolved. I suspect that in trying to answer it, many specialists would immediately start thinking about the supply problems that dogged Bradley throughout the campaign, which brings me to the second point: Did Bradley error by failing to either protect some of the rail network across France from bombing, or by failing to properly plan to replace the train lines? For if the rail network was better, it's theoretically possible that he would have been able to get more supplies to his troops.

Now strictly speaking, neither question is really "fair," since they have to be considered in the larger context of what happened. But sometimes broader stroke "what-ifs" can more fully illuminate the choices that were taken. here, the question about how to use Patton puts the actual achievements at Falaise on something of a scale, attempting to weigh force against speed in a manner that few historians ever attempt; the second would prod us to look deeply at the supply issue that weighed on Bradley throughout the war. (In fairness, Bradley actually spent considerable time worrying about the train lines, and it's from him that I learned how deeply and involved the issue was. And he, too, debated about turning Patton's units - which Patton was reluctant to do.)