[Citizen Blade]

Patton was a great general, but he was a bigot. Not his fault, as he was a product of his time, but I'm not willing to accept his racial and ethnic views. This is a man who wrote:

[others may believe]... that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.

[mkjessup]

It isn’t about ‘accepting’ his views, try refuting them.

You might start by referencing the last major Russian military victory prior to their recent Georgian operation. As for Patton being a bigot, he had more experience dealing with various nationalities (such as the Russians) than either one of us, and his analysis can’t be dismissed on the altar of political correctness.

And I might add, we’re not talking about Patton’s views on Jews, we’re talking about his views on the slavic savages of Russia.

[archy]

Patton was a great general, but he was a bigot. Not his fault, as he was a product of his time, but I'm not willing to accept his racial and ethnic views. This is a man who wrote:
***[others may believe]... that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.***

Patton saw the DPs of Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe firsthand; you and I have not.

We also can wonder what Patton's view of the Jews of Israel at time of the founding of that nation would have been, and I suspect it would have been somewhat higher, probably considerably so: Israel's first field General, aluf Michael Stone, was in reality West Point graduate Mickey Marcus, who had served in Patton's Third Army.

Sadly, neither Patton nor Marcus lived to see that thing occur: Patton died in Germany from injuries received in a 1945 staff car accident, and Mickey Marcus was mistakenly killed by a nervous young Israeli sentry shortly after the forces Marcus commanded broke the Arab siege of Jerusalem in an incident not unlike that which cost the Confederacy the leadershi of Stonewall Jackson. The grave of Mickey Marcus is the only grave in West Point Cemetery at the United States Military Academy for an American killed fighting under the flag of another country.

Somehow, I think Georgie Patton would have very much appreciated the efficiency and professionalism of the Israeli Defence Forces, and their conduct during the 1967 and 73 wars in particular. And Mickey Marcus would have been equally proud of what has become of the Israeli army and nation in whose service he gave his life.