“His idea was to make a separate peace with the Germans, then ally with them to fight the Russians.”
Did he ever seriously propose that, or was it just some bravado big talk that he knew wasn’t practical? Even a cursory look at the Nazi armies at the end of the war shows a destroyed, exhausted and shattered force.
Not to mention they were so abysmal morally that an alliance side by side would have been an anathema.
How do you expect men who saw the death camps, the SS, Orador, Malmedy, etc to suddenly operate jointly with those monsters?
This was Patton just pipedreaming, theres no way he was serious.
And the overarching goal of the Russians was no more invasions from Europe as had happened numerous times. So they decided to hold and rule the areas invasions came from. Simple as that. Nothing short of an American Barbarossa could have stopped that goal.
On the other hand, we could have gone nuclear very soon. Cool parlor game, and I suspect that’s exactly what Patton was doing.
“We could have gone nuclear very soon.”
Except that it was several years before we had enough nukes to make a real difference. Had we started a war before then, there was a considerable chance the Red Army would have driven us into the sea rather than our driving them out of eastern Europe.
Aside from that, I agree completely. Patton was magnificent in war. Outside war he was an idiot.