1. Thank you for your thoughtful and generous time-and-effort expenditure, again, in attempting to combat my woeful ignorance.
2. Seldom have events been so thoroughly scrutinized in retrospect as were WWII's command decisions. You'd think anticipating that would have kept the leaders from such folly, even in the absence of their own internal moral compass. But "All have sinned..."
3. It's certainly telling, and very much a shame, that these generals allowed such petty personal differences and agendae to ENDANGER HUMAN LIVES!!! Good thing we have a President currently who is above all that.
We can revisit this issue again in December during the Battle of the Bulge. It then becomes a military necessity to use the Ardennes as a dividing point in the line. Ike appoints Monty command of US 1st and 9th Armies to conduct operations on the northern half of the bulge, and Bradley becomes superfluous as he only commands Patton’s 3rd Army south of the Bulge. Devers is ordered to thin and lengthen his line to free troops for Patton’s counterstroke.
The obvious solution would have been to appoint Bradley to command 1st and 9th Armies in the north, and Devers to command 3rd and 7th Armies in the south.
But noooo.....