Patton: The Glory of War and its Limitations

Toogood Reports ^ | 28 September 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[mrustow]

"Das Geheimnis Pattons ist die Vergangenheit," says a captain in the German high command. "Patton's secret is the past." The secret of the man and the movie.

I rented the 1970 film, Patton, last week, and saw it three times with my son. A fellow’s got to get his money’s worth. It made quite an impression on yours truly, though I’m not so sure about Richard, who is three-and-a-half years old, and is currently much more passionate about James and the Giant Peach.

The moment Patton opens, you know this will be like no other war movie. General George S. Patton Jr. (1885-1945) stands before the biggest American flag I have ever seen, wearing a highly buffed, black helmet and a uniform suggesting the 18th or 19th century, weighed down with medals domestic and foreign, bearing not one but two ivory-handled revolvers, and holding a riding crop. As a bugler plays reveille, the camera focuses on each feature in turn. And then Scott lets loose with the now famous monologue, which was actually the last thing the filmmakers came up with.

"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country…!"

Atten ... tion!

Consider the time. Patton was made in 1969; America was mired in a highly unpopular war in Vietnam, the draft was about to be ended, and America was preparing to pull her fighting men out of the first military defeat in her history. And here was this spirit from the past, saying that "Americans love to fight," and "will not tolerate a loser"!

Early in Patton, we hear the sound of distant trumpets, as in 1943, the general surveys the ancient battlefield where Carthage (modern name, Tunis, in Tunisia) was burnt to the ground by the Romans in 146 B.C.

Patton is standing near the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, where over 1,000 American G.I.s were butchered in their first encounter with the German Wehrmacht, in the form of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. "I was there," he tells his assistant. In 146 B.C.

Is he mad or is he teasing? The answer is, a little of both.

He quotes part of a lush, romantic poem on the eternal warrior – he is the poet. An American poet-general? We are dealing with a man singular in the annals of 20th century American warfare. "I hate the 20th century," the old "cavalry horse officer" remarks.

Through a Glass, Darkly
George S. Patton, Jr.

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listened to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I've called His name in blessing
When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
>From the Hoplite's leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor's Star.

Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in its quivering gloom.

So but now with tanks a'clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell's ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

(Note the similarities to German Romantic notions, as well as to Nietzsche’s notion of an “eternal return of the same,” and later, Mick Jagger's lyrics to "Sympathy for the Devil." In the movie, Scott quotes only the poem's highlights.)

Patton refers to himself as a “prima donna,” but as director Franklin Schaffner, scenarists Francis Ford Coppola (yes, before he became Hollywood's greatest active director, he was its greatest active screenwriter!) and Edmund H. North, and star George C. Scott portray him, “megalomaniac” is more like it. Before heading in to battle, as he stands before his mirror, his Negro soldier-valet carefully placing his begoggled helmet on his head, he more closely resembles a Roman general (or Il Duce) than a modern officer. And in a notorious, true incident, upon encountering a shell-shocked soldier, he slaps the man silly, threatens to shoot him, and is almost cashiered by Ike. But he was our greatest 20th century field commander.

(The valet is played by a trim, youthful-looking, fifty-year-old Jimmy Edwards. Unfortunately, Edwards (Home of the Brave, Bright Victory, The Member of the Wedding, The Manchurian Candidate), whose career was limited by racism, died of a massive heart attack before the film's release. He went through hell, paving the way so that the likes of Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington could become screen icons, while he was forgotten.)

The making of Patton clearly influenced Coppola, when the latter made Apocalypse Now. At one point on a battlefield, Patton smells the smoke of spent gunpowder and says, "I love it, God help me, I do love it. I love it more than my life." This scene clearly anticipated the scene in Apocalypse Now, where Robert Duvall's Lt. Col. Kilgore famously says, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like ... victory."

In Patton's brutality, his talk of never giving up an inch of land (Hitler said the very same thing.), in his contempt for civilian authority, in his joy at killing, he comes across as a fascist or Nazi, which is how he was often depicted at the time. Amazingly, the movie is able to glorify this man, while maintaining a posture of cold sentimentality towards him. Schaffner loves Patton, but without illusions. Patton wasn't "larger than life" - no one is - he WAS life, or at least the martial, intellectual, and aesthetic lives, in all their fullness.

General George S. Patton Jr. had a sense of destiny; his purpose in life was to do great things on the field of battle. And as he observes, only once in a thousand years, do the heavens so align that a soldier has such an opportunity to change history.

Fortunately, in the movie as in life, Patton had humble, ordinary Joe – at least as Bradley tells it – Gen. Omar Bradley (the last five-star, General of the Army, in the history of the U.S. Army) as a counterweight. Bradley is played by Karl Malden with a restraint and self-effacing humor that perfectly contrast Patton/Scott's bravado.

Jerry Goldsmith's score has just the right blend of the elegiac (distant trumpets) and the pompous yet playful (fanfare of horns and flutes), corresponding to the tempers of Patton's personality.

While almost three hours long, Patton does not flag, and could easily have been longer.

The DVD, which came out in 1997, has a lovely documentary on the making of Patton, as well as Jerry Goldsmith's rousing score. However, I do not believe the claim of the movie's late director, Franklin Schaffner, that he did not make Patton in response to the anti-war movement. Producer Frank McCarthy was a retired general, and many generals felt that the media lost Vietnam, the original “quagmire,” for us. Recall that it was Walter Cronkite himself - Uncle Walter - who portrayed an American victory against the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, in January, 1968, as a defeat, and thus turned the tide of domestic support against the military. In Patton, the media is depicted in despicable terms – if Patton wanted to be sure something leaked out, all he had to do was tell reporters it was "off the record" – and one reporter is shown personally insulting him.

Schaffner’s Patton will evoke different reactions from different observers. For instance, during the German occupation, he complains to reporters that Truman had stopped the war too early. We’d been fighting the wrong guys, and needed to march on to Moscow, since we were going to end up fighting the Russians, anyway. The problem with politicians, he said, was that they were always ending wars too soon, leaving the soldiers another war to fight.

Patton’s criticism of our de-nazification policy proved his undoing, and resulted in his being removed as commander of the Third Army, and placed in the military equivalent of purgatory. A few months later, in Germany, he died as a result of a car accident, at the age of 60.

Some people thought him mad, for wanting to fight the Russians (and for believing we should have been fighting them, rather than the Germans), but millions thought he was right. The notion that we were fighting the wrong guys echoes today among those who suggest our enemies are the Jews of Israel, rather than radical Islam. As for Patton’s notion of premature peace, that sounds great in theory, and today evokes Gulf War I, when we chased Saddam out of Kuwait, but let him escape back to Iraq. Many people forget, however, that liberating Kuwait alone was the deal that George H.W. Bush had cut, in order to put together the so-called coalition that fought Saddam at the time. In practice, the desire to tie up all loose ends would have an army always advancing, until it was ultimately vanquished, or its soldiers rebelled against, and shot its generals.

Patton: "For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph – a tumultuous parade.... A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."

America’s empire, er, nation-builders, would do well to hearken to that warning, though I’m sure they won’t. But then, even Patton contradicted himself – a general that does not know how to make peace, will be brought low, one way or another.

The conflicts that Patton had with desk generals in World War II, have if anything taken over military life in the intervening years. While cooler heads must prevail at the top – recall General MacArthur’s desire, during the Korean War, to nuke Manchuria – the American military seems to have little room today for great battlefield commanders. It is increasingly run by lawyers and desk generals. (Remember the time our boys had Mullah Omar in their sights, but the lawyers said no?) We won in Iraq through an overwhelming advantage in men and materiel, against a woefully inferior opponent. Had we been up against one of history’s great military machines, such as Hitler’s Reichswehr and Luftwaffe, we would have lost.

Just as Patton was unable to savor his success, so too George C. Scott, the rare actor who could carry a film on his shoulders, was unable to build on his success as Patton. After a series of brilliant performances culminated in his well-deserved Oscar for Patton, Scott, a violent drunk, went downhill until his death in 1999. He still got steady work, but the work was largely undistinguished. But for one moment, he tasted of that perfection that comes when the stars align, and a great role is delivered into the hands of just the right actor at just the right moment in his career. It was George C. Scott's destiny to play Patton.

And what of America’s destiny? Is it to crush one enemy after another, and reshape the world, a la the neo-conservative (and Patton’s) vision? Is it, alternatively, to pull all of her troops out of every foreign outpost, and renounce her longtime ally, Israel, a la the paleoconservative vision; or failing that, to bring about the paleoconservative nightmare, causing all of world Islam to join against her in a holy war, and destroy her through a thousand September 11s?

I don’t see either vision or nightmare as America’s destiny. Although America is the world’s great power, a program of endless wars would bankrupt our economy and lead to revolution or the collapse of our political system. Americans will not tolerate a garrison state. And if such a state did not collapse from within, it would call forth a grand alliance of nations – likely making for strange bedfellows, as did our World War II alliance – whose militaries are not crippled by bureaucrats, lawyers, and feminists.

But since America is the world’s great power, she cannot proceed from paleoconservatism’s Switzerland fantasy. And since we are Number One, we will automatically have enemies – Islamic nations and terrorist organizations, and the opportunistic Europeans and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who carry water for them – simply because of that fact. And the oceans framing America no longer protect her from attack. Isolationism is not an option.

Meanwhile, trying to act as though we were not the most powerful nation, and seeking to live out the fantasies, beloved by feminists, that we could win wars either by pushing buttons from a distance, or by using emasculated fighting men as social workers, is what led Osama bin Laden to conclude we are a paper tiger.

And so, we must take a constructive course that protects our vital interests, and makes our enemies fear us. Foreign affairs has always been, and always will be, the state of nature, the war of all against all. That state can be seen in terms of individual nations, or of blocs of allies and enemies. And so, we must periodically take the war to some of our enemies, to keep them from our doorstep, and so that others may see what lies in store for them, should they underestimate our resolve. But we must also be disciplined in our war making.

All glory may be fleeting, but there is no date set in stone for the demise of America.

[mrustow]

Nah, I just have an aversion for nonsense. Which is why this guy draws so much criticism.

But he doesn't. Don't lie, to try and get other people to jump on your pathetic little bandwagon. You can't compensate for your own lack of an argument, by inventing other people who supposedly do.

[dirtboy]

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with Dirtboy's comments.

He doesn't, because they go right over his head. This army didn't have to up to beating Hitler, because we weren't fighting Hitler - so the statement was both true and absurd, with absurdity being the more important qualifier here. And Hitler was a different enemy in a different time and in a different situation. For all the whining that we didn't have a great field commander, we managed to take all of Iraq with fewer casualties than we suffered trying to maintain a few peacekeepers in Beruit.

[dirtboy]

But he doesn't.

Once again, I wasn't disputing the veracity of his comment, just that it was an absurd point of argument to make. We didn't have to have a continental army to fight this battle.

Don't lie, to try and get other people to jump on your pathetic little bandwagon. You can't compensate for your own lack of an argument, by inventing other people who supposedly do.

Why don't you try growing a thicker skin and quit responding to critiques with personal attacks and vulgarity? Why don't you support YOUR position instead of attacking those who question it? Why don't YOU state why you think this is a valid argument to make and why it is relevant - why is it relevant that we didn't have an army to beat Hitler when we were fighting what was left of Saddam's regime?

[dirtboy]

But he doesn't.

He drew plenty on threads I have seen. He got resoundingly spanked on the thread you called into question by dragging your dispute with me from that thread into this one - hardly any comments were favorable. Yet you call me the liar.

[mrustow]

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with Dirtboy's comments.

You're right, especially when he gets help from a higher power, removing my responses to his flames. You can't call it a flame war, when one side is disarmed.

I admire your whole posting...and responses.

Thanks.

I was taken by Patton's theory to avoid foxhole digging...but rather continue moving foward. (I believe this came from someone else but your post engendered it.)

Me, too. I'll have to study up on that, since he's the only general I've heard of espousing that idea. Maybe it depends on the battlefield leader -- with the right guy, the troops go psycho and run over the opposition, but with the wrong guy, they get shot to pieces. On the other hand, you have the Civil War, where it practically became a matter of who had more bodies to throw at the enemy.

[archy]

Another retired general is on the record as saying he would not vote for Clark because of character issues.

That was General H. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11. Check the FR keywords for stories listed under the category WEASELY for details.

-archy-/-

[dirtboy]

You're right, especially when he gets help from a higher power, removing my responses to his flames.

Gee, you only spewed an insult, used vulgarity and dragged a dispute from one old thread into this one. That's THREE violations of the posting guidelines. Yet I'm the heavy.

I've got a hint - if you keep your posts on the up-and-up, they won't get pulled! Is that such a difficult concept to grasp?

[mrustow]

A good article about a great man, but there are surely some false notes in it.

For one thing, Patton didn't say we fought on the wrong side. He said there were TWO enemies, Hitler and Stalin, and he was right about that.

Yeah, I seem to recall a line where someone asked him if he had said that if he had the Reds on one side of him, and the Browns on the other, that he would attack in both directions. And he said, IIRC, no, but I sure as hell wish I had.

I was especially bothered by this: "Some people thought him mad, for wanting to fight the Russians (and for believing we should have been fighting them, rather than the Germans), but millions thought he was right. The notion that we were fighting the wrong guys echoes today among those who suggest our enemies are the Jews of Israel, rather than radical Islam."

Horse manure. The people who loved Uncle Joe Stalin and the people who pretended that Tet was a great defeat are all slobbering over Arafat and the Palestinian terrorists. The people who thought we were naive to give Eastern Europe to Stalin with a bow on it or to give China to Mao are not the antisemites of today.

You're right that some aren't, but some are, or at least are the successors to some of those guys.

The notion that we were fighting on the wrong side relates not to our support of Israel but to our war against Yugoslavia on behalf of drug-running Muslim Albanian thugs.

Whoa! Did part of your post jump over from a Wesley Clark thread? I know so little about that issue, that I'm sure as heck NOT going to open that can of Balkan worms.

[mrustow]

Thanks for the great post. I was about to pick some out as the most important, but realized that others were just as essential.

[mrustow]

Thanks for the background. The politics were unbelievable. In 1982, I heard a lecture by a German historian who still couldn't that FDR would let his ole' buddy Joe have Eastern Europe. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it a matter of "finders, keepers"? That what the Russians "liberated," they took, and what we "liberated," we took? Whic is why hundreds of thousands of Germans fled across the iced-over bay in the North Sea, to get "liberated" by the Americans.)

Now, I can understand coddling the Brits -- to a point. But the French?!

DeGaulle has to have been the greatest con man in 20th century history. Didn't he essentially name himself the head of the French military in exile? And getting treated as an "ally" and "victor," after the war ...! And he stabbed us in the back, just as Chirac has been doing for the past two years.

[mrustow]

When I grew up, it was taken for granted that every president would have served his country under combat arms.

I am assuming that you are a boomer.

Correct.

Your parent's generation (my grandparents) sent a lot of young men into the war, and every President from Ike to GHWB served in that war, if I remember correctly. However, the rapist and W are boomers too. Their war did not involve as much of the population as did WWII, so it is not surprising that we see fewer candidates with a military background.

Beginning with Korea, the Pentagon increasingly issued draft deferments to college boys and grad students that did not exist in WWII.

...all I see is a bunch of draft-dodgers. (dems and GOP'ers).

I don't think that one's military service (or lack thereof) is a qualifier for serving as President.

Not anymore, I guess. The qualified guys would all be dying off. But I support bringing back the draft -- with no deferments. Even if it involved only one year of mandatory military service.

Consider Gen. Clark ...

I'd rather not.

- who on FR would vote for him because of his service record? Another retired general is on the record as saying he would not vote for Clark because of character issues.

Yeah, Clark is definitely not an argument for a military man as civil leader. Heck, if anything, he's an argument against a military man as military leader. I don't want to speculate as to how many men might have needlessly died, had he been in charge of the war in Iraq. The guy doesn't have decision-making capabilities to close a home sale, let alone a war. That he made it all the way to NATO Supreme Commander is scary as hell (regarding both NATO and whoever was in charge of giving Clark the command), and a judgment on the deterioration of NATO's post-Berlin Wall significance.

[mrustow]

My pleasure.

[mrustow]

Just to pick a nit, the opening music isn't Reveille, it's "To the Colors."

Thanks for the correction.

[Pagey]

A "What a great post, What a great thread" BUMP

[archy]

On the other hand, you have the Civil War, where it practically became a matter of who had more bodies to throw at the enemy.

See the exploits of Confederate General *Wild* Patrick Cleburne, both in the attack and defending. asside from the final attack ordered by Hood at Franklin in which Cleburne and most of his men were killed in a suicidal charge against dug-in troops, his operations were a textbook example of the way to do it.

...with the right guy, the troops go psycho and run over the opposition, but with the wrong guy, they get shot to pieces.

Ah yes. And from the same conflict, that would be Confederate general and cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest, fond of putting the scare into! those opposing him, and said by Lee to be his best commander, though the two men never met. Cleburne and Forrest were a bit more than passing acquaintences, though, and their conversations must have been something to have been a part of.

Two very different men, two differing ways of doing things. Same excellent results.

[Light Speed]

Yes..you are spot on as they say about Duh! Gaul

He did name himslf..and tried to do a coup of sorts under the U.S. Eurpoean command.

Roosevelt saw thru this..blocked him by spltting the Free French forces with De Gaul and another miltary commander.[Who De Gaul despised].

Hence the tantraum back in England..Roosevelts impatience.

There is a myriad of garbage that History denotes ..but is seldom discussed openly.

Like the Families from Sicily and Italy which worked mob and dock realities...the U.S. actually went into Sicily to put the formers back in place.
I guess the same occured as per Italy.

No foolin here...the mob made their desires known..the U.S. Navy needed the docks to be proficient.

Some Navy types in high places were connected to the mob..or did their bidding via extortion.

If one tracks the recent history of Internet hacking and fiscal extortion..one would find the Russian mob in the U.S. ,,throw in Japanese and Chinese tongs or gangs.

America has got to cozy with the nations they have met...now..they undermine America..exploit the numerous advantages they never had back home.

Churchill saw Russias Gambit....Macarthur saw China.

America has zenithed them all in stratagem..but the cost has been beyond imagination.

Now the Third world is clawing at America...and the Corporate crowd is drooling to new bell ringing.

[mrustow]

We won in Iraq through an overwhelming advantage in men and materiel,..

Geeze I thought the Wes Clark said we had insufficient troops.

What day was that? And was that his morning, afternoon or evening position? Was it before or after he took his meds? I think you'd betteer check with his press secretary on that. Or make that, HE'D better check with his press secretary on that.

Sorry we don't do wars of attrition, that's the old Europe philosophy. We do firstest with the mostest. How? With superior ability to communicate the operational picture up and down the chain of command. We knew where the Iraqi Divisions were. They could only guess at our dispositions. In addition, it appears that hardcore elements adopted the run away to fight another day strategy. There's a lot of buried munitions and weapons that are being policed up.

That's all true. But the ultimate criterion for judging a fighting force is the greatness of the enemy over whom it triumphed. When two great forces meet on the field of battle, attrition is inevitable. I'm happy for our boys in Iraq that they didn't have to make a world-historical statement, but I'm not going to dishonor our boys from WWII, by saying that both American forces were equals.

[mrustow]

Bumpbackatcha!

[archy]

DeGaulle has to have been the greatest con man in 20th century history. Didn't he essentially name himself the head of the French military in exile?

There was some contention for his heading the Free French military effort from General LeClerc, successfully continuing the resistance to the French surrender from his posting in Cameroon at a time when Degaulle was vice secretary of State of War in the last reshuffle of the Reynaud cabinet. But LeClerc and later Massu, then a captain supported DeGaulle, and that was pretty much that, though I recall a French Admiral-Darlan?- who had to be removed from the scene after General Mark Clark had promised him recognition of his claims to be regarded as head of the French government aronnd Christmas '42/ New Years '43 when the *Torch* landings in North Africa were taking place.

-archy-/-

[mrustow]

Our victory in Iraq was planned out by some leaders who studied their tactics. "There is nothing to be gained by a long protracted war" - Sun Tzu. And G.S.P. knew and studied tactics.

I don't think Patton would have criticized our strategy, were he alive. He loved speed. Jimmy Johnson may have learned coaching from him.

But make no mistake, our Military force is the best in the world. Why? Because it is staffed by people who love their freedom enough to fight for it. They are highly disciplined, and highly effective as long as we do not allow the moral fabric of the service to be undermined by the likes of DACOWITS (Defense Assessment Committee On Women In The Service) and the Gay Rights fuqairs.

I do think that our military is the best in the world today -- by default. But I think it could be much better, if not for the negative influences of those very groups you cited. And some of our people have died, and many more will die in the future, if those influences are not rolled back.

Fred Reed has written on sexually integrated units in Marine Corps boot camp, where the women stand around and watch the men during much of the exercises, because the womenfolk aren't permitted to do them due to their inferior upper body strength, agility, stamina, etc., or because the women injured themselves doing the few modest exercises they ARE permitted to do. And William McGowan has written, in Coloring the News, about the incompetent, and in some cases, insubordinate women pushed along through pilot school, in order to fill illegal quotas for feminist flyers. Some of those females got themselves killed, destroyed $100 million jets, and/or had to get bounced out of the service for service unbecoming an officer and a ...?