Posted on 07/24/2014 2:32:45 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Nearly 70 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, Lieutenant General George S. Patton took command of the American Third Army in France. For the next 30 days they rolled straight toward the German border.
Patton almost did not get a chance at his summer of glory. After brilliant service in North Africa and Sicily, fellow officers and his German enemies considered him the most gifted American field general of his generation. But near the conclusion of his illustrious Sicilian campaign, the volatile Patton slapped two sick GIs in field hospitals, raving that they were shirkers. In truth, both were ill and at least one was suffering from malaria.
Public outrage eventually followed the shameful incidents. As a result, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to put Patton on ice for eleven key months.
Tragically, Pattons irreplaceable talents would be lost to the Allies in the soon-to-be-stagnant Italian campaign. He also played no real role in the planning of the Normandy campaign. Instead, his former subordinate, the more stable but far less gifted Omar Bradley, assumed direct command under Eisenhower of American armies in France.
In early 1944, a mythical Patton army was used as a deception to fool the Germans into thinking that Army Group Patton might still make another major landing at Calais. The Germans apparently found it incomprehensible that the Americans would bench their most audacious general at the very moment when his audacity was most needed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Patton’s desire to continue heading east after Germany’s surrender would have cost lives in the short run but in the long run would have had enormous benefits...worldwide!
Patton was far from perfect but I think he was basically an even better general than generally recognized. He studied war from his earliest days.
Both his Grandfathers were Confederate Generals. One a Colonel and one a General. Patton’s family moved to California after the war and Patton was raised in regular contact with John Mosby, probably the greatest guerilla leader ever.
Many years ago, I saw an interview with a German General who was in prison in England. He said the best allied generals were Patton and Montgomery.
How strange is it he dies just as WW2 ends, mere months after the Japanese surrender.
I’ve often wondered what the post-war would would have looked like if Patton had been around long enough to play a real part.
He certainly had his failings, but he did clearly see the communist threat for what it was. The western world’s blindness, and the willful action of traitors and fifth-columnists in western civilizations, both contributed greatly to the length and the overall bloodiness of the cold war.
Without such a high degree of acquiescence from the west, not to mention the aid and comfort of communist agents and ideologues in western nations, how many millions of lives could have been saved across the world during those years? The fact of the matter is the west was very good at throwing small nations under the communist bus in the decades following the second world war. There are plenty of mass graves out there that attest to the power of western blindness, so I wonder what would have happened if we’d had a few powerful, insightful, respected public figures take up the banner and press the fight against communism while most of the world was busy handing countries over to the Red leviathan.
“The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real battle than they do about f-—ing.”
The real issue was, at best, blindness on the part of FDR toward the reality of communism. Churchill was the better informed of the two. There was no way that Patton would be unleashed with FDR as commander in chief.
Untold millions died because of FDR’s socialist tendencies and accommodations.
Yes!
Victor Davis HAnson has it right. PC foolishness 50 years before its time....
Just avoid the winter if at all possible!
He’d make a pretty good inspirational speaker.
The 3 hour rule strikes again. That’s how it was explained to me. After 3 hours, another of the same thread is acceptable.
He knew how to deal with Mexican Villistas. He killed them and strapped their bodies to his car much to General Pershing’s surprise.
He killed them in what was basically an old West style gun fight. Patton was the better shot and carved two notches in the grip of his Colt Peacemaker.
Ike was becoming a politician when he started to play politics with Patton.
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