up next, author jim defelice discusses his book, "omar bradley, general at war." the first in-depth biography of the general who served as a field commander in world war ii, omar bradley became the first chair of the joint chiefs of staff in 1949 and was promoted to the rank of five-star general in 1950. this is about an hour. >> well, i have to wear my marist hat because i have to tell you, first of all, before i get into omar bradley, that i'm really pleased to be back on campus and in a lot of ways not only is it coming home, but it's coming home to a much better house than i ever was at. this college has just done so much. once they got rid of me, once they got me off campus, they just improved and improved. and marist truly is one of the great institutions, not only now

in the northeast but also in the country. so i really, really am grateful that you could spare the time to host me tonight. four or five years ago, i was -- you know what? i was looking around for something for a serious project, a serious historical project to work on. i was looking for something new, something that hadn't been done. something that, you know, i could really sink my teeth into. and everything that i saw seemed a little bit on the boring side, or quite frankly, had been done so many times that, you know, i just didn't think i could bring anything new to it. and i happened to be talking to a few of the fellows who were the original rangers in world war ii. and they're tremendous men. they started telling me some stories, as old soldiers often do. among the stories they started

telling me were stories about having pulled security for some important meetings. you know, we got chatting. and well, who was there? oh, bradley was there. and they were telling some not really off-color stories, but some amusing stories about omar bradley and eisenhower and patton and some of the other generals. when i got off the phone, i said, you know, honestly, i don't really know that much about omar bradley. i really should pick up a biography or something about him. and i immediately went to the library and looked and looked through the catalog. and i discovered much to my surprise that no one had ever written a biography of omar bradley. and frankly, i was stunned. and i don't think that you have to be professional historian to really understand or to know that omar bradley played a very critical and important role in world war ii.

if -- even if you've only seen the movie "patton," you know that he had the very dubious honor of being not only patton's lieutenant, but also of being patton's boss. and if there's any job that's harder than working right under patton, it's got to be the job working right over patton. so it would seem to me that that's got to make him worth a dozen books at least. there's got to be something there. so, you know, i kind of thought about it for a while. and i said, you know, this is great. who can i get -- who do i know? i know a lot of writers, historians. who can i talk into writing this book? so, you know, what -- you know, what historian really needs a good project and, you know, really wants to make a name for himself? i tried talking some people into it.

unfortunately, i couldn't find anyone. and i was having lunch with my agent. my agent said, what do you mean somebody else write the book? you should write that book. it's a great story. it's huge. it's the war. it's important. no one's written it. i told my agent he was fired. he's supposed to get me jobs that make money, you know. biography, unfortunately, even about famous world war ii generals don't -- usually aren't best-sellers. but little by little, he convinced me that, in fact, a few people might actually be interested in the book. and if it was done well, it might even -- if it was written well, it might do well saleswise. and he also said that it really should be a matter of principle. that there's certain works that should be done. so he knows how to really kind of play me like a fiddle. and eventually i got around to it. i knew i was going to have a lot of trouble. i had written, as you see, i have written a lot of nonfiction works.

i know how to research. i have kind of a secret weapon in my wife who was a fantastic researcher. and can go through archives and just incredibly pull out all sorts of information. i knew there was going to be some problems. i'd have some difficulties. the one thing that i didn't anticipate, though, i thought it would be an automatic sale with any publisher that i brought it to. here is a huge general. this guy won the war. he's right underneath eisenhower. he was with patton. and he was from africa to berlin. so this is an easy sale. that's what i thought. turned out it was almost impossible. nobody -- nobody at the major publishers and a lot of the little publishers were willing

to take a chance on publishing a book about omar bradley. and i asked -- i would ask why. and most of them -- i assume it wasn't because, you know, i wouldn't pay for lunch or something along those lines. and if it was, they usually would tell my agent what the real story was. and apparently, they thought, they wanted to know what new thing i could bring to the story. what new thing are you going to tell us, jim? it's very good. you tell good stories, but what new thing are you going to tell? excuse me, like nobody has written a book on this guy. everything i say, first words, they're new, right? but apparently what come to find out as i probed a little bit deeper and as my agent asked, the problem was, everyone had, even all of the publishers, had already formed an opinion about omar bradley.

they already thought that what everything had been said, what needed to be said about omar bradley had already been said. i didn't understand that. until i started asking them, what's been said? they started telling me mediocre general. he's an ordinary guy. he was in the shadows. he didn't do anything, really. he's just -- he was, you know, eisenhower's yes guy, he's a boring guy. maybe he was a foil to patton. maybe there's -- you know, maybe there's an article there or something. and that was their opinion. obviously, i have a vested interest in saying that's not what the story is. obviously, i have a book and i want you to buy it.

or at least steal it out or borrow it, don't steal it. unlike me, you know, when i came back on campus, i think the librarian was there looking for her fines. so please, if you borrow it, bring it back to the library. but i think that there's a little bit more to omar bradley than the image of carl malden that we see in the movie "patton." i mean, how many general officers in world war ii were insubordinate? how many general officers tried to cover up patton's slapping incident? how many general officers dated marlene dietrich? all right, you got me on that last one. a lot of them did. you know, as far as i can tell, nothing -- well, i don't want to give it away in the book. we'll leave it there. but more seriously, who was the guy who was responsible for combining tactical air and

ground units in a way that made the american victory in france possible? who was the guy who single-handedly -- single-handedly in an era of staffs and huge assistants and aides upon aides upon aides. who was the guy who single-handedly came up with the plan that busted america out of normandy? after, i might add, the british had failed to do so. who was the guy at a time when things were not going so well who recognized, had the guts to recognize that the battle of the bulge, or what we now call the battle of the bulge, was not a disaster and not going to be a disaster but rather a huge

opportunity for an army that had frankly kind of started to stall? who led the american army in the first victory -- in its first major victory in africa? who saved the american invasion in sicily? who finally broke through the german defenses and could have taken berlin and may or may not actually have had troops in there if he hadn't been ordered to withdraw? i think you guys all get the point. those are legitimate achievements that should be credited to bradley. now, there are, of course, bradley does have negatives. he's not god. he does make mistakes. and we can talk about them a little bit later. my point is that all of the things i've just said, not one of them is part of the popular image of the general.

and even to the extent that there is a popular image of the general or any image among historians and world war ii buffs. and i think -- i think the reason for this starts with bradley himself. bradley was -- he had an almost militant disdain for publicity. he did not want to be the star of the show when it came to the cameras rolling. now, a few people have written about this. they've often said that he was shy. i would have to say that -- well, he wasn't very outgoing in most social gatherings unless you were talking about a hunting party in which case he would be really the guy to be with. he was a great shot. he was a great hunter and absolutely the man to be with.

but he -- he -- it goes beyond -- he wasn't really shy in that we can't really say that a general, really, someone doesn't achieve the rank certainly of a five-star general and be retiring personally. i mean, he does have some -- he does like to talk to people in some way. and i think that bradley believed in humility as a character trait that ranked with honesty and self-reliance. for bradley, a man who was truly worthy of being a leader didn't blow his own horn. he didn't talk about himself. he didn't make much of his achievements. you know, today, we have -- i mean, we have facebook. we have twitter. we have, you know, videos here, youtube. we have all this stuff. and a lot of it is about ourselves. a lot of it that we put in there. i don't think it's possible to understand somebody like -- somebody like bradley in today's context. but i have to confess that it was also difficult to understand

bradley in the context of 19 -- of the 1940s. bradley was militantly against publicity. he had to be talked into allowing ernie pyle to travel with him. i'm not sure how many remember or have heard of ernie pyle, but ernie pyle was at the time a very famous correspondent whose stories were about the common man before the war and then about the common soldier during the war. and pyle had heard -- there's various stories about where pyle had heard about bradley and how great a fellow he was. and how he ought to do a story about him. and in any event, pyle went to bradley's aides and said, you know, i was told by so and so, eisenhower thinks this would be a good story.

what about it? can i sit with the general? and bradley said no. bradley said, i'm not going to waste my time with reporters. no offense, but, you know, i've got important things to do. i have a war to win. and the argument that convinced bradley to actually give pyle time was this. i'm going to paraphrase it. the argument was, listen. you are sending literally thousands and thousands of young men into battle, into harm's way. a lot of them are going to die for you. don't their parents deserve to know who it is they're doing this for? don't their families have a right to understand who their general is? you probably say yeah, you got me.

all right. i guess so. and that argument happens to have won the day with bradley, and i think it says a lot about who bradley was and the responsibility that he felt to his everyday soldiers. pyle goes with bradley and spends a few days dodging bullets. and depending on whose version, either wearing his helmet, according to bradley's aide, pyle always wore his helmet, or not wearing his helmet pyle was notorious for not wearing a helmet in battle. bradley was notorious for insisting people wear helmets in battle. i don't know which perspective was actually correct, but in the end, pyle writes a series of stories about him and the legend of the g.i. general. but even though that legend starts there, it kind of blossoms after the war. the number of stories that are written about bradley is actually dwarfed by just about every other important general in the war, certainly by patton.

and i think that the lack of a lot of stories, the record beginning very, very poor gave us in the beginning, if journalism is the first draft of history, that first draft was very thin. and people did not have the recognition of bradley at the time. and historians looking back didn't have as much material to work with. but historians have continued the neglect on bradley. there haven't really been many secondary sources devoted to his life. a soldier's story which is his personal memoir about the war was actually ghost written largely by his aide, chet hanson.

is an excellent -- i have to say, it turns out to be an excellent memoir, an account of a general's activity during the war. but i didn't necessarily know that until i went and looked at the original records and everything that had led to it. and i think that looking at memoirs, historians tend to look at things skeptically. and having only that as a record started to tilt the -- started to tilt the balance against him. on the other hand, there's a huge amount of material about patton. and unfortunately for bradley, bradley has often come off as a foil for patton. and he's been especially done in by a few highly selective quotes from patton's diary. and from some other sources. and it's often supposed that those two guys didn't get together. they fought or they had a bad relationship or patton bulldozed bradley. the actual reality is that their relationship was actually

extremely complex. and depending on the time exactly that you're looking at it, bradley, at some times, was patton's biggest antagonist. and other times his biggest defender. on sicily, with the slapping incident which patton, just to kind of recount that very briefly, patton had been visiting a military hospital and encountered a soldier who appeared to be suffering from what was known as battle fatigue at the time. patton's attitude was basically not what we would call now an enlightened one. and essentially ordered slapped the aide, perhaps, actually slapped the soldier and told the soldier to go back to the front and get out of his sight. the incident and another incident very similar would have caused patton quite a lot of

trouble. the information about that incident was duly reported by someone that was -- that had witnessed it, an officer. that officer reported it up the line. and it went to bradley. and bradley took the paper and said, this is going to be a big problem for patton. i have been having a lot of personal problems with patton's tactics and the things that patton is doing. but you know what? i think patton is a very important general. i think he should not -- his career shouldn't be ruined by this. and i think the american army needs him, and i'm going to take this report and stick it -- literally stick it in my safe, and that's what he did. now, bradley was not able to quash the incident.

because once something like that gets out, it gets out. again, i think that shows another facet of bradley's character. he was able to remove himself from his personal feelings about a person, whether they're a general or soldier, even if they were antagonistic to him and look at the greater good of the army. in contrasting bradley to patton, i think that one of the reasons that we haven't seen -- that we haven't seen that much information about bradley is due not only to the original journalists that were writing, not only to the historians that have been writing, but also to us because i think we all have prejudices that we share about what a leader should be. especially since the advent of television and movies.

i think we want our heroes. we're americans. we want our heroes to be loud. we want them to be brash. we want them to order people around. and if they're not going to get results, we're going to kick them in the butt where it does the most good, and that's the way it should be. no discussion. end of story. a military leader has to be demanding and imperious and get things done. bradley was actually none of those things. bradley had very high standards and he wasn't afraid to fire generals. as a matter of fact, if you look at the record, i'll bet while most people think that patton was the one that would fire generals left and right, the truth is, patton actually didn't fire very many generals or demote them or actually transfer them away. bradley's record, however, is quite incredible. he had quite a long line of generals.

the way that patton would deal with a general who wasn't achieving, he might come up to him, and they might have a trench dug. and patton would say, well, what's that trench for? well, that's when the airplanes attack. and patton would urinate basically in that trench, to put that as politely as i can. basically, humiliating that general in front of all of his staff, in front of his men and about the most humiliating thing you can think of. and that was patton's way of dealing with it. but patton would keep him on for some reason. he'd just kind of keep them going and going because, you know, that was the way he dealt with people. bradley would not do that. bradley would counsel the general once or twice.

and then if the general still didn't achieve it, the general would be out on his butt. quietly, politely, but he'd still be out on his butt. and bradley was able, i think, to get results that way. but his usual style of leadership called for listening first and deciding next. bradley was a great tactician praised by officers above and below him including eisenhower who called him one of the greatest tacticians of the -- in the war. but generally as an army group commander, he tended to offer advice rather than give fiat orders. he was -- until he decided that he really needed to step in, he actually would listen first and let the -- his subcommanders make their decisions. somehow, that combination of the way that his leadership style

was brought out not only the best in patton, which allowed patton to have those great successes, i think, in france, but they also let bradley kind of turn things around so that when he was dealing with hodges who perhaps -- perhaps may have needed more encouragement to be aggressive than patton did. bradley was also able to turn on a dime and push this general because he -- he was able to kind of move what his -- he was able to change what he wanted to do in his approach, depending on what needed to be done. so does that mean that our heroes should be more like bradley, quietly assertive, helpful rather than domineering, listeners rather than talkers? should they put their own jobs and goals above their personal aggrandizement? well, bradley pretty much got results.

and i think that those results kind of speak for themselves. now, i want to tell you -- i'm not going to tell you everything there is about omar bradley, but let me just -- hopefully i'll leave something left for the book. but let me just summarize omar bradley, the man, for you briefly. he was -- bradley was born on lincoln's birthday in a one-room log cabin. he was a very poor missouri boy. he had an extremely close relationship with his father who was a schoolteacher. they lived for quite a while in a one-room house at least when he was young. and his father and the father and son actually shared a bed. that's how close they were. they literally walked to school several miles a day together.

and his dad taught him -- taught him everything, taught him how to hunt. he taught him how to read. he taught him numbers. bradley turns out to be very good in math. which becomes a skill that he needs later on in war. and at west point he becomes a mathematical teacher. he also taught him how to play baseball. and i think that -- i think that there's two things that in bradley's early days that are very important for bradley later on. and one is hunting. as he's hunting and being out in the woods and he learns to deal with terrain, and he becomes able to transfer what he understands about terrain to small group tactics. and then larger group tactics and on up the line as he becomes a professional soldier. and i don't want to press that metaphor too much. i mean, hunting squirrels is a little different than hunting germans, i understand. but i think that the practical experience in the field does help him quite a lot.

and he's able to visualize battle flows, different things, strong points, et cetera, et cetera. as a matter of fact, the two places where he really kind of fails or where things don't go as well as probably he thought they should earlier in normandy in the hedge rows of normandy and later on at hurt garden in the forests of germany, the two terrains -- and i don't think it's a coincidence -- the two terrains he's not all that familiar with from his youth and later on. and i think that that kind of fed into some of the problems that he experienced there. the other important early influence was baseball. baseball is a team sport where individual performance is important, but individual performance doesn't guarantee a victory. now, when bradley comes to west point, he was on the baseball team. and he was a very good player. it's said that he could throw a baseball 300 feet which would be roughly the distance from home

plate to the outfield in most professional ballparks. and there's a lot of stories that say that. so i think it's probably true. he had a very good arm. he was the center fielder at a time when center field was an important athletic position. and he batted .300 or over .300. he was clearly a good athlete. but he also understood that it's a team sport, and individual achievements are not going to necessarily bring you victory. after west point, bradley becomes a coach, is often volunteering either with rotc or with the other places that the other post where he is on baseball teams. and i think that his interaction as coach with individuals on the team also helped later on provide kind of a template for the way that he dealt with a lot of his -- not only his staff people but also his generals.

i want to make one other point about bradley. he was extremely good at numbers. he was very good at math. he ends up being a math teacher at west point and teaching all levels there. he does algebra. there's a lot of stories about some obscure algebra problems he's solving on airplanes. and the airplanes he's solving them on are little piper cubs where, quite honestly, to get in the plane, actually, even to look at it, i think a lot of people get air sickness. to kind of relax himself, he does these math problems. and he's also -- he also has a math formula for picking ponies out at horse races afterwards. the two people that have looked at that have different opinions about whether his formula actually won money or not. so i don't know, there's still some question as to whether this mathematical formula works.