Steven L. Ossad

Omar Bradley was the youngest, and last of nine men to receive five-star rank, and the only post World War II officer so honored (1950) . The only man in our history to successively command a division, a corps, an army, and an army group, the greatest breadth of field experience of any American commander. He rose from brigadier general to full general in five years. The first post-war administrator of the Veteran’s Administration, he succeeded Eisenhower as Army Chief of Staff, then became the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top military officer during the Korean War. His life and impact on his time – the first half of the twentieth century – have never been the subject of a serious biography, yet are fascinating in their details and still offer relevant and important lessons.

• Bradley was the first man in his West Point class (1915) – “the class the stars fell on” – to becomes a general officer in the Regular Army (February 1940)

• He the first man in his class to command a Division (the 82nd) which then went on to become the first American Airborne unit in our history

• Bradley was one of Gen. George Marshall’s principal aides in the War Department, during the period of geometric expansion just before World War II.

• As the Commandant of the Infantry School, Bradley was instrumental in establishing the first Infantry Officer’s Candidate School (OCS), which became the model for training tens of thousands of “citizen-soldier” company-grade officers during World War II.

• Bradley successively commanded a Division, Corps, Army and Army Group during World War II, the greatest breadth of field experience of any American commander. He rose from brigadier general to full general in five years

• Bradley’s II Corps took the first large unconditional surrender of Axis troops (50,000) by Americans in World War II (May 1943)

• Bradley commanded all American ground troops on D-Day, June 6, 1944

• Bradley conceived and led the great breakout from the hedgerows- Operation Cobra - during the Normandy Campaign in late July, 1944

• Bradley commanded the troops that liberated Paris in August 1944

• One of only three Americans ever to command an Army Group in combat, Bradley led more combat soldiers in the field than any American in history. By the end of WWII, his 12th Army Group consisted of four field Armies (Hodges’ First, Patton’s Third, Simpson’s Ninth, and Gerow’s Fifteenth), 16 Corps, 50 divisions, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and more than 1.3 million men

• Bradley was appointed the first post-war head of the Veterans Administration, with responsibility for more than 17 million veterans, touching the lives of nearly 1 in 4 Americans households

• Bradley followed Eisenhower as Army Chief of Staff (Feb. 1948), a tenure during which he presided over the Berlin Airlift, the establishment of an independent Air Force and the “Admiral’s Revolt”

• Bradley was the first head of the military Committee of NATO (1949)

• Bradley was the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1949-1953) and held the office during the Korean War. He issued the orders that relieved Douglas MacArthur of his Far Eastern Command

• Bradley was the youngest and last of the nine men to receive five stars, the only Army officer to reach that rank after World War II (September 1950), and the last survivor of the nine. He died in 1981 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetary.