Zero Defects - US Army Leadership during WWII

If you haven't you should read The Generals by Thom Ricks. He goes over US generalship since WWII and is pretty critical of it. His central thesis is that Marshall's habit of relieving combat generals/officers was on the balance positive. He also noted that Marshall would give men second chances somewhere down the line. I can't remember off the top of my head his stance on the 1st Army but he argued that the stakes were/are high enough that the lives of the men and the mission supersede the pride of the generals and thus ruthlessly relieving them for combat ineffectiveness is a must.

He does point out that Generals like Bradley who were Marshall men may have ultimately created a general officer corps that tends to play it safe, conservatively, and doesn't relive generals nearly as often as it should.

The article in question is "Zero Defects: Command Climate in the First US Army, 1944-1945" by (then) Maj Daniel Bolger. It's at pages 67-73 of the PDF.

Its a rather critical discussion of the leadership of the First US Army and in particular the practice of firing senior commanders for battlefield failures. Of 13 division and corp level commanders in the 12th Army Group who were relieved from duty, 11 were from the First Army. The author places most of the blame on Courtney Hodges and, interestingly, Omar Bradley.

Personally I have to say I found the arguments rather compelling; never been able to consider Bradley's record the same way afterwards. Curious to see what other people thought about it.