A 1944 Christmas miracle for Gen. Patton

LA Times ^ | 12/26/2010 | Alison Bell

[Conservative Tsunami]

No member of the 101st Airborne has ever agreed that their division needed to be rescued.

No men were any braver than the 101st, but they were relieved just the same by other brave Americans.

[Conservative Tsunami]

Patton died shortly after the war was over in a military vehicle and horse drawn carriage accident (what an irony)

Some believe that "irony" was an assassination.

[denydenydeny]

but in the last months, as he drove through France's Lorraine region toward the Saar River, progress stalled. Fuel and supplies were running short

Let's be honest here. Fuel and supplies weren't "running short" as if it were some sort of supply problem. Eisenhower put the brakes on Patton's devastating thrust towards Germany in favor of Montgomery's ridiculous Market Garden fiasco. If Patton had gotten all the logistical support he needed, I really believe he might have ended the war by Christmas.

[PGR88]

What a snarky article that was - basically saying “Patton believed in God because he was a privileged brat when growing up”

Its clear Patton was taught about HONOR and FIDELITY as great virtues when he was young. Something of which LA Times reporters have no concept.

[Venturer]

I do too.

Montgomery was an ass that cost the Allies a lot of good men.

[jmacusa]

“Wars aren’t won by dying for your country. ‘’Wars are won by making the other dumb son of a bitch die for his’’.— General George Patton. Lord, do we need soldiers like this.

[eaglesiniowa]

Hey Allison, until you grow a pair and have actually experienced battle, STFU, especially about a man who saw his duty to fight evil at every turn.

[SunkenCiv]

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[21twelve]

While D-Day was obviously aided in a miraculous break in the weather, Eisenhower was known to pray before battles, and the website below did quote Eisenhower many years afterwards saying something like “that break in the weather proved there is a God.” I recalled a “National Day of Prayer” for some WWII event, it looks like I might be remembering the one about Dunkirk. From a website talking about the weather, the hand of God, and wars throughout history:

http://www.tomorrowsworld.org/cgi-bin/tw/tw-mag.cgi?category=Magazine33&item=1104261795

During two short weeks in May 1940, the Germans launched a blitzkrieg offensive that broke through French lines, defeated the Belgians and pinned a reeling British army against the ocean at Dunkirk. Several British generals said that “only a miracle” could save their beleaguered forces.

Yet with certain victory within their grasp, Hitler suddenly halted German tanks just 20 miles from Dunkirk, fearing that they were dangerously exposed and had outrun their supply lines. During this lull, a severe thunderstorm grounded German planes, allowing Allied troops to move toward Dunkirk and set up a defense perimeter.

Following a National Day of Prayer led by King George VI for the hopelessly trapped army, the British began an evacuation effort that lasted for nine days, during which the normally rough and unpredictable English Channel remained as smooth as a “mill pond.” Yet, the day after the evacuation ended, “the wind moved to the north, and giant breakers came rolling over the empty beaches” (The Miracle of Dunkirk, Lord, p. 272).

A British general recorded that “the evacuation of Dunkirk was surely a miracle” and Churchill called the evacuation of more than 330,000 soldiers (almost the entire British army) a “miracle of deliverance.” The Daily Telegraph described the thankfulness of “officers and men who have seen the hand of God… delivering them from the hand of a mighty foe” (June 8, 1940). The British people knew that God had unmistakably intervened!

[GSP.FAN]

Thanks for the ping proud parent of a son named Ryan Patton **.
I wonder would the world be a different place if they had let him go all the way to Moscow??

[SunkenCiv]

If, after the war in Europe and Japan were over, and the US had built a nuclear arsenal and told Stalin “get out of eastern Europe or else”, it would have been a different world, a different Europe, even a different Asia and Middle East. Didn’t, wasn’t. ;’(

[GSP.FAN]

Actually i was thinking more along the lines of not stopping Patton and the 3rd army and let them run all the way to Moscow before the war ended.
Every time we quit a war it comes back to bite us..

[21twelve]

I remember my Dad talking about when he heard about Germany’s surrender that everyone on his little boat was saying “we should just keep going to Moscow”. (He was in the Pacific at the time).

As a kid I thought it odd that he would have known that the Soviets were our enemies back then. But even though they may be an allie (sp?) at the time, they were still against the very ideals of America - and most folks saw that perhaps.

That said, I wonder how we would have fared going up against the Soviets at the time? I know Hitler sure got beat up bad by them - and their weather! And public opinion may not have held for that extended campaign that we had started against an “allie”. I imagine books have been written on the subject.

[GSP.FAN]

Pattons army fought all the way through Germany in winter .
Russia’s weather ,it defeated Napoleon and the Nazis,so yes who knows what have happened..
Conjecture yes...

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, I know, but his plan included changing alliances and joining up with the (shattered) Wehrmacht and Waffen SS. It had to; the Red Army had a staggering level of men under arms and firepower at the close of the war, far more than the US and UK had, and they didn’t demobilize for real until the Warsaw Pact disintegrated in the 1980s (thank you and bless you, Poland!).

Politically Patton’s plan was unachievable, and probably wasn’t within military feasibility either (and I’m a big, huge fan of Patton and his abilities). After the nukes went off and Japan surrendered, Truman should have told Stalin to stfu, forget about anything in the Far East (because the USSR never fired a shot against Japan until Germany was ground into dust), and btw, get out of eastern Europe. It was a major failure not to use that advantage while we had it.

[GSP.FAN]

I agree with you ,now that we look back on history it is nice to think what could have been.
Patton was not a politician it probably added to his demise..

[SunkenCiv]

I agree with you, too. Patton should have been given the resources to blast right across the Rhine and drive on Berlin, it would have caused a major consternation in what was left of the German war planning; Hitler’s Antwerp plan (the Battle of the Bulge) would have been born dead, and also it would have settled once and for all which of the generals really did have it going on — Patton, or that handful of military geniuses among German field commanders.

Afterthought regarding my earlier what-if — for that matter, the Korean War probably would not have happened, either.

G’night! :’)

[Pelham]

For one thing you probably would have had something resembling a mutiny among tens of thousands of GIs who were very tired of war by that time. The idea of initiating a major new war against our erstwhile Russian ‘ally’ on the heels of defeating Germany is a thought peculiar to Americans far removed those times. Patton was given to hyperbole and short of the Soviets invading the western sectors nothing was going to happen. The Soviets had a massive battle hardened army with internal lines of supply. It’s not hard to figure out how long and bloody that fight would have been.

[Pelham]

Devers and Patch already had a Rhine bridgehead secured near Strasbourg in late November 1944. Eisenhower wouldn’t let them exploit it because he wanted the American push to be farther north. If Patton had been allowed to drive across the Rhine as early and fast as he wanted he would have been enveloped by the forces that in fact launched the Bulge. Eisenhower had suspected that the Germans still were concealing a lot of strength, which the Bulge offensive proved. Ike’s strategy was one of pressure across a wide front, forcing the Germans to defend a large area rather than concentrate their forces.

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "For one thing you probably would have had something resembling a mutiny among tens of thousands of GIs who were very tired of war by that time."

And that's not even the half of it.
What did you think, a war is a walk in the park?
That armies can just ramble around, wandering hither & yon, like Hitler in Russia, and expect to win anything?
Do you imagine that America had an infinite supply of not only war materials, but also endless enthusiasm to go sacrificing millions of our own boys deep in the heart of Eur-Asia?
And for what?
When had "Uncle Joe" ever attacked us?

For that matter, if you believed the "mainstream media" of the day, wasn't Russia some sort of socialist democracy, sort of like heaven on earth?
Why would we want to fight those people?

The simple fact is that, short of some kind of direct attack on us, there was no way the American people were going to support yet another war, and against the very folks who had just sacrificed so much to help us win The Big One.

So Patton, God bless him, could bluster all he wanted to, but Americans were not going to kill one Russian who did not shoot at us first.
That's a simple fact.