Posted on 12/21/2019 4:55:54 PM PST by DFG
Seventy- five years ago this month, General George S. Patton was en route to a Sunday afternoon hunting trip in the devastated region of Mannheim, Germany when his Cadillac limousine collided with a military truck parked on the side of the road. The two other passengers in the vehicle were unharmed except General Patton who was left with a massive head wound and paralyzed from the neck down.
Patton was swiftly taken to an Army hospital 20 miles away where he made rapid strides in recovery over the course of 12 days. His presiding physician had given him the medical clearance to make the gruelling trans-Atlantic flight back home when suddenly on December 21, 1945, the indestructible general who revelled in his nickname ‘Old Blood and Guts’ was pronounced dead.
No autopsy was ever performed. All the reports and investigations into the accident have mysteriously disappeared. In 1979, an American spy with a sterling reputation named Douglas Bazata claimed that he was ordered by the Office of Strategic Services (a precursor to the CIA) to kill Patton and make his murder look like an accident.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Sandy Berger’s socks didn’t have the carrying capacity to take out the hundreds of cubic feet of WW2 records that people want to alledge are missing. Also, Sandy Berger wasn’t interested in WW2, he was Willy Clintoon’s servant.
Intelligence files were not declassified by General Eisenhower in 1947, along with files on the Manhattan Project, the Pozit fuse, radar, and other technical advances. He ordered all the non-sensitive non-technical files. You are correct about those records that have not yet been declassified, but those records are post WW2.
Files relating to codes have an indefinite lifespan. Just like intel files on people here in the US who reported their neighbors as suspected Axis spies and saboteurs.
no, we have our christmas hooping to attend to.
Mrs. Patton was in the United States when the accident happened. The General was supposed to be returning to the State for Christmas leave that was originally scheduled to happen a couple of days after the accident. Mrs. Patton and COL R. Glen Spurling, the Army’s senior consultant in Neurosurgery were flown from Washington, DC, to Germany. The C-47 carrying both of them departed Washington, DC, on the evening of Dec. 10. Col Spurling was recalled from his Christmas leave in Louisville, KY, to make the flight to Germany. He had, until a few weeks before, been the Chief Neurosurgeon in the US Army in Europe.
This is information is from the account written by Col Spruling that is on file at the US Army Center of Military History. It is located in the Geo. S. Patton file, Center’s General Officer Biography collection
That is correct.
The best, most comprehensive account of Patton’s treatment that I’ve seen, was by Ladislas Farago in “The Last Days Of Patton”.
The movie Patton did not have any scene’s about Gen. Patton’s accident and death. The concluding scene was merely a hinting of his accidental death. Gen. Eisenhower relieved Gen Patton of command of the Third Army in October 7, 1945, 2 months before his accident. The scene at the end of the movie you are remembering was probably to represent the Sep 28, 1945 meeting between Eisenhower and Patton, where there was a heated argument over Patton’s policy and public statements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton
Yes, that is an excellent account. As well as his earlier “Patton: Ordeal and Triumph.” It still stands at the top of all subsequent Patton biographies in my opinion.
Why run the risk of permanently poisoning relations with the West by keeping thousands of Allied POWs to work as slaves when he already had plenty of others? That makes zero sense.
I agree.
While Gen. Magruder did what he could to preserve the basic intelligence infrastructure within the war department, there wasn’t any operational capability to speak of between the abolition of the OSS in 1945 and the ramp up of the CIA. The SSU - CIG - OSO - CIA in the second half of the 1940s were more about preserving institutional knowledge against the efforts of the Communists in government to destroy them than they were about actual operational capabilities. The CIA wasn’t really effective until Bedell Smith took over in 1950.
No, not kidding, but it was at least ten years ago, which is why I said “thought.”. I appreciate memory updates.
Seen that before as well.
Probably guess I need to see it again.
Wasn’t there a sequel, ‘The Death of Patton’?
I think I saw that too.
Sorry I was short with you.
Oh, really? That is what the Democrats have been saying about claims that key figures in the intel community conspired to spy on Donald Trump and his campaign and presidency and smeared them with phony Russian collusion claims.
It’s Christmas, forget it.
I’m sure that you are a fine fellow. But, I’m not going to be convinced by an anonymous dude on the internet who throws up “evidence” gleaned from one the conspiracy theories that have been kicking around for years. They are well constructed and are believable at first glance, until you find the bit that requires you believe the story about the key witness who was eaten by cannibals, and the treasure trove of documents that went down with the yacht in the deepest part of the Marianas Trench. I’ll stick the the contemporary reports that were written at the time of his death.
Merry Christmas to you. Talk to you later.
During the early years of WW II, the British shifted many archival file to storage facilities secure from the Luftwaffe's bombs. The process unearthed the previously lost records of Britain's relationship with Benedict Arnold, which then lead to a revealing academic work on the subject. That marked the end of various defenses of Arnold as misunderstood and unfairly maligned by jealous enemies in the Continental Army.
Despite efforts at suppression, secrets tend to leak out. In the 1980s, a college student collected bits and pieces of information about nuclear bomb design from various archives. His resulting thesis was so revealing that it was classified and he had a long fight before he could publish it and his resulting book. The essential secrets tuned out to be relatively straightforward applications of what are now well-recognized principles of nuclear physics.
As a rule of thumb, secrets tend to come to light officially only when scientific and technical progress or the passage of time make them almost solely of historical interest. The world at large gets to know secrets only when the secrets no longer matter very much.
I don’t know if there was or not. I don’t think I was impressed with the movie.
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