According to General Omar Bradley, it was a chance that "comes to a commander once in a century." The opportunity was to surround and destroy the enemy armies opposing the Allies in Normandy. Three months after the Allies invaded France on D-Day, the Germans had stuck their heads into a noose and made themselves vulnerable to encirclement and annihilation in the Falaise Pocket. Had the Allies succeeded in springing the trap at Falaise quickly enough, they would certainly have brought World War II in Western Europe to a triumphant end.Instead, the Allies failed. Mistakes at the highest military levels, the pursuit of conflicting goals, coalition jealousies, and temperamental discord among the top commanders permitted the Germans to escape.Trying to ensnare the Germans again at the Seine River, the Allies failed once more. For the same reasons.In hindsight, the Allied concern with geographical objectives - that is, the liberation of territory - interfered with the aim of defeating the enemy, and thus unnecessarily prolonged the war for another eight months.Martin Blumenson's new and unsparing look at Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley challenges the conventional treatment of those commanders and of the Normandy campaign itself. An absorbing history and a major addition to the literature of World War II, The Battle of the Generals will change our view of how the war was fought. Read Less