General Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book

The Telegraph ^ | 12/20/2008 | Tim Shipman in Washington

[bruinbirdman]

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with Russians that cost American lives.

'We've got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he's out of control and we must save him from himself'.
The OSS head General did not trust Patton

The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.

But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".

His book, "Target Patton", contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.

Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.

Mr Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph that when he spoke to Mr Bazata: "He was struggling with himself, all these killings he had done. He confessed to me that he had caused the accident, that he was ordered to do so by Wild Bill Donovan.

"Donovan told him: 'We've got a terrible situation with

[Sherman Logan]

It would be difficult to find two such consummate warriors as Patton and Petraeus who differ more in personality.

Patton would never have been able to handle the counter-insurgency warfare in Iraq. What it required from a commander was totally alien to his style of warfare.

OTOH, I suspect Petraeus would have done just fine against the Wehrmacht. (Especially if we allow him a few dozen Abrams.)

[Tenniel2]

If it's Trotsky you're thinking of, the murder weapon was an ice ax -- rather messier and not subtle at all.

[calex59]

FDR wouldn’t allow such a thing. FDR died in April. Patton died in December. Doubtful FDR was involved.

FDR allowed a lot of injustices to US citizens, including the imprisonment of many Japanese Americans(I was born in 1942 and am a staunch America and believer in the Constitution,BTW)and the placing of individuals he deemed a threat to his agenda in an insane asylum for the duration of the war. He wasn't very nice. However, he did die before Patton died and Harry Truman was in charge then, a much nicer fellow , a democrat yes, but not a total socialist such as FDR(Truman's biggest failure,IMO, was not going along with Douglas M's plan to nuke the Chinese army during the Korean war). Truman wouldn't have condoned any covert operation against Patton, he would have simply fired him, as he did MacA. FDR might have gone alone with it since he was a total a**hat.

[Leisler]

Yes, that's what I meant.

Not very common in Mexican hardware stores, I imagine.

[ScaniaBoy]

How could this guy Bazata assist the 9/11 Commission if he died two years ago in 1999?

I agree. A mystery, but a mystery created by bad writing.

The sentence should have read like this: "He ended his career as an aide to President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John Lehman, [who later became] a member of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign."

Anyway, thanks to all the posters who identified the movie plot "The Brass Target". The much younger novel by Christopher Reich "The Runner" also has as plot motif the eventual killing of General Patton.

Here are a few lines from the editorial review on Amazon:

hese "set pieces" stand awkwardly apart, like dour history professors coaxed into supervising the machinations of rambunctious students. Reich's general fidelity to detail also means that the moments in which he temporarily throws accuracy to the wind are painfully apparent: how on earth would Judge, a well-fed and well-dressed American, manage to look as if he belonged in a German work-group detail? And when would any three-star general ever tolerate the gum-cracking insouciance of Judge's driver Darren Honey, a sergeant with no regard for military hierarchy? Oddly enough, the authorial liberties Reich takes with General George Patton, saddling him with a megalomaniac's hatred of the Russians and a schemer's plot to redraw the boundaries of postwar Europe, are largely successful and add a welcome note of barely contained evil.

Anyway, a very interesting thread, and I duff my cap to all those Freepers who either themselves served, or whose fathers, served in the 3d Army.

Thanks for your service, Gentlemen.

[AnAmericanMother]

O.K.!

He served his country; he should have SOME privacy left.

My dad was a pretty good judge of character, though! (and anybody who thinks he's a reincarnation of some ancient general or other is definitely tilting towards the 'peculiar' column).

[jetson]

I do not believe a word of this.

Hold on there now chief. Patton was from the same crowd as Chesty Puller. Southern boys who had civil war heritage and new how to fight and win a battle. If you read books on Chesty ( Lewis Puller) who was the most decorated marine ever ( real medals for true valor and initiative)he was a true American hero but pointed out real problems with command and sometime wondered what the hell was going on. He saw problems with touchy feely politics ( as Patton did) and was uneasy about it. These guys had inside info from allot of big wigs and who knows what they heard. Seems Big Brother may have been around for a long time and look at us today.

[BroJoeK]

"Certainly taking Berlin cost the Soviet Union many lives. But at least part of that was due to Stalin’s way of waging war. The Americans had good equipment and good planning, for the most part, and valued the lives of their troops. So they softened up the enemy, did flanking maneuvers, and so on, to preserve lives. Stalin sent his forces bulling forward as fast as possible, to capture territory and avenge himself on the Germans."

Possibly true at certain points in the war, but by 1945 the Soviets had well learned just what it took to beat the Germans, and it was NOT sending masses of human bodies out against machine guns & artillery. Instead, the Soviets used huge masses of their own artillery, rockets, tanks and aircraft.

If the American Army had a critical advantage over the Ruskies, it was in medium & heavy bombers, which our guys used to great effect in breaking out of Normandy, and breaking up the German Battle of the Bulge offensive.

But I think you well point out one of the biggest reasons the Soviets lost so many killed -- because the Germans fought them tooth & nail for every foot of ground. Germans rightly feared the revenge Russians would wreak, and much preferred surrendering to Americans or Brits.

Before D-Day in June 1944, Soviets did nearly all the real fighting. Even after D-Day, for every German soldier Americans or Brits faced, the Russians had to defeat three or four. And I think the ratio of Russian to German dead was never less than two-to-one.

[VOA]

Standing in a dusty street, aiming and firing like a gunslinger,
which he probably would have been if he had been born 30 years
earlier. Then he tied the bodies to the front of his staff car
like dead deer and carted them back to base as trophies.

Great end to a great tale.

And I'm not ignorant of the personal sacrifice by the men that
served under Patton.

The QUIETIST co-worker I ever had was a lady I worked with during
the mid-1970s.

Once the topic of warfare came up.
She mentioned that she and her sister were strongly encouraged
by their mother to "be quiet".

Because their father, who served under Patton in WWII...
came home with what many (if not most) Americans would recognize
as PTSD.

She said that even a modest neighborhood sound (car back-fire)
would set her father into an involuntary quivering fit with
a primal look of fear on his face.
That would not subside until 15 min to 2 hours had passed.

[Eagle Eye]

So give me an example of the times that the losers write the history.

[justiceseeker93]

Paraphrasing a statement by Newt Gingrich at an informal gathering of conservative writers, July 1995:

You would have to be "brain dead" to believe the official story about the death of Vincent Foster.

- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, p.204.

[ma bell]

FDR allowed the Serbs, who fought alongside the allies and died at the hand of the nazis and ustashe, to be left to the mercy of their enemies. so, yes, FDR is capable of doing this. He is or was capable of decapitating Americas economy with his economic policies of the great depression.

[Tribune7]

How about Harry Truman since he was the president, & FDR was dead?

[tired1]

I take it all back. Feel better?

[PhilDragoo]

I'll have Target: Patton by Robert K. Wilcox in about a week. The subject intrigues me.

In The Roosevelt Myth by John T. Flynn, 1948 (50-year commerative edition 1998 with foreward by my history prof Ralph Raico) the awful betrayal of Eastern Europe is too vivid.

Roosevelt had the same hubris expressed by Hussein: Roosevelt would win Joe over with persuasive power of personality, just as Hussein would do if he could chat up Awkward Imadeadjihad.

Was McCarthy correct. Ann Coulter calls M. Stanton Evans the greatest living authority on McCarthy. I watched Evans destroy Dr. Robert Risk head of Indiana Civil Liberties Union when the former was editor of the now-defunct Indianapolis News. Evans cites Venona as confirmation of McCarthy's claims.

Reds in the government, oh my.

How inconvenient to have Patton privy to the inner sanctum's plans.

Look what was done to Nixon for outing Hiss.

Who lost China? Who covered up the Stalin purges? Who fired MacArthur?

Did Soviet technique have a missing link between ax and polonium.

Certainly a state of covert action which could dress a corpse up with a manacled satchel of bogus invasion plans could snap a geezer's neck like a carrot.

Maybe Newt's wrong; maybe Vince really drove himself to the park but left his keys with Craig Livingston, explaining their absence from the former's person.

Patton was unlucky; Forrestal wasn't slipped LSD by Sydney Gottlieb; MacArthur was just violating protocol.

Our friend tasked with establishing the Chinese order of battle right after the Korean conflict suggested MacArthur had a method to his madness, but he was interrupted.

So, instead of nuking the Chinese, we now have as SecState half of the team which gave them our missile secrets in a 200-page fax in 1995, gave them our warheads via the so-picked-upon Wen Ho Ho Ho, gave them anything they wanted through John Huang Mr. Fax hisself.

Treason never prosper
What's the reason
For if it prosper
Then none dare call it treason

Caution: Entering Age of Hussein--limited freedom next four years

[bruinbirdman]

I knew it was in memory someplace.

Before he died Patton was assigned to the Army History Division, or some such.

He would have had access to just about everything he would need to prove his suspicions!

Patton would have had a field day with contemporary WWII archives.

Perhaps someone figgered that was the last place Patton needed to be?

yitbos

[LucyJo]

ping

[Tallguy]

...but by 1945 the Soviets had well learned just what it took to beat the Germans, and it was NOT sending masses of human bodies out against machine guns & artillery. Instead, the Soviets used huge masses of their own artillery, rockets, tanks and aircraft.

The Battle of Berlin probably cost the Russians far more than it should have. Stalin deliberately setup 2 of his front commanders -- Marshals Zhukov & Konev -- in a sort of competition to see who could capture the heart of the city first.

[1066AD]

Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, ... ... ...ended his career as an aide to President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign.

Huh ?

[Ditto]

Didn’t Ike stop Patten so the Soviet army could take Berlin?

That's true... and tens of thousands of Americans are alive because he did. Stalin wanted to take Berlin and lost over 80,000 troops to Nazi fanatics in doing so. A few weeks later, we (and the Brits and French) strolled in and took over more than half the city.

I'm sure Patton wanted to take Berlin to add to his 'list of triumphs,' but if your father or grandfather was a grunt in the 3rd Army, be glad that Ike let the Ruskies do it. It was a price we did not need to pay.

The Russians lost 80,000 men killed and 275,000 wounded or missing in the lead up to the battle and in the battle itself. Two thousand Russian tanks were destroyed. 150,000 Germans were killed during the battle.

Source = http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_for_berlin.htm