Posted on 11/10/2020 5:43:42 AM PST by Kaslin
General George S. Patton wanted to keep going!
Instead of halting the American advance and playing nice with Russia at the end of World War II, Patton wanted to stave off future threats. That’s why the American general was poised to have U.S. troops move in and occupy Berlin, Prague, and other parts of Eastern Europe. So why didn’t the allied leadership allow Patton to have his way? And, why was Patton effectively silenced before he could address the American people?
Robert Orlando, a filmmaker, author, entrepreneur and scholar, addresses these questions in a new book titled “The Tragedy of Patton” and an accompanying film titled “Silence Patton.” Although he was vilified in his time, here on this Veteran’s Day, it should now be evident that Patton was prescient in his warnings about the Soviet Union and strategically forward looking.
“Patton is best thought of as the antihero of the Second World War,” Orlando said in an interview. “He could be daring and highly imaginative on the battlefield, but he lacked the tact and diplomatic grace of his contemporaries and this had some real political consequences. But Patton was also the kind of general the allies needed to get the rough work done on the ground. He was outspoken about the conduct of the war and eager to identity the Soviet Union has the next great threat to American democracy. Only a few years after his very suspicious death, Patton’s strategy and vision were vindicated.”
The film opens by reviewing details about the automobile accident that ultimately claimed Patton’s life on a road in Mannheim, Germany on Dec. 9, 1945, seven months after the war ended in Europe. Everyone else involved in the accident walked away, but Patton died before he could go home to America to give his version of events that led to the end of World War II. Orlando steers clear of any conspiracy theories, but does make the point that President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and America’s top military brass were concerned about what Patton might say about the Soviet threat and how the American public might react to his comments.
“There would have been people in FDR’s administration who would have detested George Patton,” Paul Kengor, a Grove City College political science professor, and author, says in the film. “There was the fact that Patton thought the Soviets were the threat, or at least the future threat post war. The FDR administration has a bunch of people who were in some cases outright Soviet spies, Soviet sympathizers, dupes who were soft on communism.”
The film also explores the complicated relationship Patton had with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander.
“Eisenhower recognizes the value of Patton on the battlefield,” the film’s narrator says. “He’s a master strategist, a determined tactician and a hard driving commander.”
Eisenhower is quoted as saying, “In pursuit and exploitation there is a need for a commander who sees nothing but the necessity of getting ahead. The more he drives his men, the more he will save their lives."
Victor David Hanson, a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, provides insight into Patton’s view of warfare and what needed to be done to transform the American army into a lethal fighting force.
“Aggressiveness, brutality, killing is not innate in our democratic DNA and we have to learn to be killers. We’ve got to get rid of this whole romance that you get shot in the shoulder and then suddenly, you’re a hero and you get a purple heart. You’re not a hero. You’re only if before you got shot in the shoulder you went out and shot a bunch of Germans or you blew up a panther tank.”
Unlike other generals, Patton was an “aggressive thruster,” Hanson explains.
But unlike some of the other generals, Patton did not smoothly transition over to diplomatic and political settings, the film explains.
“The qualities that made Patton successful on the battlefield, unflinching nerve, audacity, fearless candor, were the very ones that made him a nuisance when the fighting was over,” the narrator explains. “Off the battlefield Patton is a liability, he lacks diplomacy and his actions by some accounts are insubordinate.”
At the heart of film, is the question of whether in retrospect Patton was right to preempt Soviet troop moves across Eastern Europe.
“The Allied troops were within 200 miles of Berlin and were held back from capturing the capital to let Soviet troops move in,” Orlando says. “Patton felt that this made what became known as the Cold War inevitable. He said it often, and loudly enough that he was relieved of his command and silenced. What I’ve found since the film’s release is that Patton’s behavior, character and performance on the battlefield is looked at not through the lens of history, but is retrofit into the standards of today, forgetting that the 1940s were an ugly, challenging time for the Allies and that Patton was uniquely up to the challenge.”
Orlando is the president and director of Nexus Media, a Princeton, New Jersey based filmmaking studio. A complete list of the cast and crew for “Silence Patton” is available here.
The film explains how Patton was horrified by how Soviet leader Joseph Stalin brutalized German civilians and went to his grave seeing an opportunity to free the people of Eastern Europe.
There’s one quote from Patton that echoes from the beginning to the end of the film and that resonates into today.
“Tin-soldier politicians in Washington have allowed us to kick the hell out of one bastard [Hitler] and at the same time forced us to help establish a second one [Stalin] as evil or more evil than the first.”
Orlando’s original film “Silence Patton was released by Sony Pictures in 2018, but the book The Tragedy of Patton: A Soldier’s Date with Destiny, explains, “was the product of a lifetime of passion and study for the subject.” The book and the film detail Patton’s warnings about the coming Cold War, but the book takes a deeper dive into Patton’s religious convictions and in the words of Orlando “showcases a man obsessed with fulfilling his military legacy for God, country, and his intense drive and ambition that places him in the pantheon of our greatest generals!”
Yes. A virtually unreported factor in decision making by 1945 was the war weariness of the American people. It also weighed in the decision to use the atom bomb in Japan rather than a bloody protracted invasion.
The Soviets did, indeed, have some awesome equipment near the end of the war...and in large numbers.
But the production of a lot of it was dependent upon supplies of critical materials from the West, as well as on no one bombing their mines, factories and logistical lines of communication. WRT the latter, the 8th Air Force and elements of the Pacific air forces would have done immense damage to the Soviets.
Their logistics also SUCKED. A modern army requires food and fuel - and part of Patton’s plans for the Soviets was to utterly destroy their fuel transportation system, stranding all of that great equipment in the field after the first engagement. We’d have been able to mop up a few million guys with small arms fairly easily in comparison.
“Unlike other generals, Patton was an “aggressive thruster,” Hanson explains.”
And maybe a slow learner. Germany’s “aggressive thrusts” into the Soviet Union had just failed completely, despite Barbarosa being unleashed when the SU was unprepared, its military poorly equipped and even worse led. In 1944, Soviet war production, military size, momentum, and sheer brutal force were at a peak. The US was still at war with Japan, and the US population was eager to bring our forces home, not convert our “wonderful” Russian allies into new monsters to slay. Patton was like a queen on a chess board, but winning requires all the pieces.
You are talking nonsense.
The Germans were already losing at Stalingrad at the same time as Torch and US strategic bombing of Germany did not begin until March 4, 1943, after Stalingrad. After Stalingrad, the defeat of Germany was certain, just maybe not by May 1945.
The only way Stalin maybe loses is without Lend-Lease as well. Stalin was able to commit everything at Stalingrad because LL resupply was beginning to flow.
True. Germany was defeated in Russia with Allied logistics and Russian cannon fodder.
I don’t think we could reach Soviet industry even from bases in Germany. Maybe B-29s could do it.
As for destroying Soviet logistics, it is important to remember that the enemy gets a vote. The Germans had been trying to this for the entire war and never succeeded.
Did they fail because of the tactics or the overall strategy?
The failure to drive on Moscow until the summer had passed for example.
The British were already bombing Germany drawing away fighters and AA guns that could be used on the Eastern Front.
IF the Germans could have won at Kursk in 43 that changes the complexion of the war in Russia.
IF Germany could have concentrated all its resources on Russia they could have defeated them.
It's hard to take on the US, UK and USSR if your Germany. The industrial production just isn't there for the Germans.
True.
All of these discussions presume the American public, and soldiers, would have been willing to engage in a new war.
I don't think that was going to happen in 45.
“And maybe a slow learner. Germany’s “aggressive thrusts” into the Soviet Union had just failed completely, despite Barbarosa being unleashed when the SU was unprepared, its military poorly equipped and even worse led.”
Yes, there are limits to aggressive thrusts, but that isn’t the cause of the Germans’ failure to defeat the Soviets in 1941.
“...After Stalingrad, the defeat of Germany was certain, just maybe not by May 1945...”
After Stalingrad, the Germans had a remarkable victory in the retaking of Kharkov. There were certainly chances for a longer stalemate on the Eastern Front but Hitler kept stripping away divisions to gamble in other theatres like Italy.
If the USA had not supplied the USSR with materiel the USSR would have collapsed in 1942/43
If humanitarian assistance was given but lesser military aid then the USSR would have collapsed.
Bluntly, without American manufacturing prowess, the USSR stood no chance against the Germans
Even with those, the Left’s ability to do much of anything was tiny.
“I don’t think we could reach Soviet industry even from bases in Germany. Maybe B-29s could do it.
As for destroying Soviet logistics, it is important to remember that the enemy gets a vote. The Germans had been trying to this for the entire war and never succeeded”
WRT Soviet logistics, the very fact that much/most of their production was in the Urals was a weakness - it had to travel 2,000 miles to get to the front lines. Again, our larger and more effective air force would have put a serious crimp in their ability to reinforce the tip of their spear.
But, of course, the biggest weakness they had was petroleum. We knew exactly where their oil fields and production facilities were in the Caucasus, and planes based in either Italy or Egypt could have utterly destroyed them (especially if the strike was done as part of the initial surprise attack.
I suggest YOU read more.
Isolationism was massive and needed NO help from the left, at all. It was so big, the British infiltrated our polling orgs to try and change opinion (Thomas Mahl, “Dangerous Deception”). They failed.
The left was real, tiny, and irrelevant.
No they absolutely did not.
The most influential of them was Harry Dexter White, who “may” (evidence is WAY out on this) have delayed a gold shipment to Chaing that “may” have caused desertions in his army. But Chaing lost to Mao long before that.
Others wrote stuff in magazines, that “may” have affected the opinions of a few elites. But the fact is, their influence was overwhelmingly aimed at China, and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do there.
One wonders how Stalin would have responded during a drive eastward by Patton after seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Soviets weren’t going to leave unless pushed out, period.
There is NO WW II historian, including Victor Davis Hanson, who would say otherwise. The Soviets only peacefully left two places: Austria, where, when Austrians threatened to pull down a statue of (I forget, either Lenin or Stalin) the Soviets threatened to come in again; and Iran, where Truman threatened them with the bomb.
They had 200 DIVISIONS. We had a total of 86 in both the European and Asian theaters. In 1946 the US wanted the troops home asap. Even Stephen Ambrose, in his book “Band of Brothers,” noted that for the first time in the war, American soldiers started to become interested in medals and decorations because transfer to the Pacific Front was a point system toward which medals counted. Enough decorations, they wouldn’t transfer you.
“Isolationism was massive and needed NO help from the left, at all. It was so big, the British infiltrated our polling orgs to try and change opinion (Thomas Mahl, “Dangerous Deception”). They failed.
The left was real, tiny, and irrelevant.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.