VA History Office
General Omar Bradley and the remaking of the Veterans Administration
General Omar Bradley in 1945 before he took over as VA Administrator. After leading the VA from August 1945 to November 1947, he served as the Chief of Staff of the Army. (Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Within days of Germany’s surrender in May 1945, General Omar N. Bradley received word of his next assignment: he had been handpicked by President Harry S. Truman to replace Frank T. Hines as the next head of the Veterans Administration. For Bradley, who had commanded the 12th Army Group, the largest American fighting force ever assembled, in the campaign that liberated France and brought Germany to its knees, the president’s summons came as a shock. As he recalled in his autobiography, “I knew absolutely nothing about the Veterans Administration.” (1)