How good was Bradley?

That's a question that keeps coming up when I do interviews - people want to rate Bradley as a general.

That's difficult to do, not because the record is ambiguous - his record is pretty extraordinary - but because it's really hard to know what criteria to use in "rating" him.

What part of his job are we talking about? His tactical ability? His organizational skills? His leadership?

One criteria that's seldom used - and yet is critical for someone commanding an army group as Bradley did - is how well he collaborated with his immediate lieutenants. And yet it can determine the outcome not of a mere battle but an entire war. Think of Rommel - by just about everyone's reckoning a brilliant general - and Rundstedt in France. Clearly, a more successful collaboration might have held the Allies in check at least a little longer in Normandy.

Think of Patton and Alexander (or Montgomery) in Sicily - another poor collaboration. A close examination shows good collaboration between general officers is more rare than sound tactical judgement.

How does Bradley rate on those grounds?

My friend Jonathan Jordan wrote an excellent book on the relationship between Bradley, Eisenhower and Patton. (You can find it at Barnes & Noble, among other places.) I wonder if another book on the relationship between Bradley and his sub-commanders - Patton, Hodges, Simpson and Gerow - might not yield just as many insights. Patton of course we know, but Hodges in particular has been largely overlooked by historians. And neither Simpson nor Gerow has had a lot of attention lately, either.

Frankly, most people have tended to make their evaluations of Bradley based on emotions that have nothing to do with his actual performance. If they've decided Patton, say, is a great general because his personality appeals to them, they will tend to view Bradley as an accessory (at best) to Patton's greatness. If they've decided (against all evidence) that Montgomery was a great general, then they'll (usually) denigrate Bradley, who had little use for him.

It's human nature to try and rate other people, but often the process tells us more about ourselves than those we're trying to rate.