ENTERING WORLD WAR II in December 1941, the US government gave priority to the defeat of Germany rather than the war against Japan. Commanding the vast American forces sent across the Atlantic was a huge task entrusted to individuals who had little or no combat experience. Command structures were necessarily complex: in France in late 1944 General George Patton had two other generals, Omar Bradley and Dwight David Eisenhower, above him in the chain of field command.