The Mysterious Death of George Patton

Fox News ^ | 4/27/06 | Oliver North

[spanalot]

Was General Patton's death the result of a traffic accident or was he the victim of an assassination plot? (By Stalin)

[GB]

Great word to describe Atlee. And you're right, the Brits were sick of war, to the point where they dumped a giant for a nebbish. That's why they gave us so much grief on a lot of military stuff behind the scenes, because they wanted to win the war in 1944 to get it over with and, in Churchill's eyes, to retain some semblence of the British Empire, and we were going to take as long as it took to do it right. To get an idea of the British mindset, I recommend the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke (British chief of staff, their George Marshall) that cover 1939-45 and were published a while back pretty much in their entirety.

[investigateworld]

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[justshutupandtakeit]

In the pictures of Atlee meeting at Potsdam with Stalin and Truman he looks like he is afraid they are going to eat him.

[investigateworld]

ping

[yarddog]

We basically could have told Uncle Joe to get out of town by midnight.

The fact that we paid a huge price for the first atomic weapons is basically meaningless. After we knew they worked we could have built a large number in a short time. I know because I personally heard Dr. Edward Teller say so.

The reason Stalin knew he could behave the way he did was because he knew he had such influence in our government and we wouldn't stop him.

[Flavius Josephus]

Yeah. We need a Patton now worse than ever but it's hard to imagine how he would acheive a General's rank in the current PC army. As noted, he was too unPC even for the 1940s.

[Flavius Josephus]

If they hadn't kept playing kissy face with the russians we might have had the will to prevent them occupying all of eastern europe for over 40 years. But then, Roosevelt's cabinet was lousy with soviet commies and spies, as we all know, and we had the rats leading us, and we see now how communist they are. Labor unions - communist. Hollywood -- communist. Academia -- communist. State Department - communist. UN -- communist.

It's a miracle they haven't brought us down yet. Shows where tolerance of the left gets you.

[SoCal Pubbie]

"The Sherman tank was undoubtedly the WORST tank any nation sent into battle (with the exception of the Japanese) in the Second World War."

WRONG! The Sherman Tank definitely had its shortcomings, but criticism of the inadequacies of it design display a lack of understanding of the logistical realities at the time, as well as a distortion of the facts.

The M4 was built to counter the German PzKpfw III & IV, which it matched up well with. It was not until the introduction of the T-34 that it began to fall behind (It might be noted that up-gunned Shermans did quite well against T-34/85 in Korea).

The M4 could cross most bridges in Europe, the heavier German tanks could not. In the hills of Italy it was able to maneuver in tight quarters that were impassable to larger German vehicles. The landing craft at Normandy would have been unable to accommodate larger German tanks, much less the Pershing. It could fire on the run, unlike its adversaries, and it was undoubtedly the most mechanically reliable medium tank the Allies fielded during the war. Don't believe me? How about the Russians?

Dmitriy Loza, a Russian tanker who used Lend Lease equipment, had this to say. (The Sherman) "When someone says to me that this was a bad tank, I respond, "Excuse me!" One cannot say that this was a bad tank. Bad as compared to what?...After 1943 we largely declined British tanks because they had significant deficiencies...In general, the Matilda was an unbelievably worthless tank!"

Loza went on to explain that a direct hit on a T-34 was much more likely to result in the onboard ammo to explode than in a Sherman. The diesel powered M4A2 ("emcha") used by the Red Army was considered to be much less prone to burn and explode than the Soviet T-34.

Though the British 17 pounder was perhaps the best anti tank weapon, it was not the only improved version of the Sherman. The original 75 mm gun was replaced with a much improved higher-velocity 76 mm M1 gun. Firing HVAP ammunition, the 76 mm could penetrate the frontal armor of the Panther. By the end of the war 50% of Sherman tanks were equipped with the superior 76 mm gun.

Thicker armored versions were also produced. M4A3E2 Sherman Jumbo variant had thicker frontal armor than the Tiger and Panther.

Perhaps Loza sums it up best. "Overall, this was a good vehicle but, as with any tank, it had its pluses and minuses." It's hard to imagine such a successful design as the Sherman be labeled the WORST tank any nation sent into battle.

[Vicomte13]

What a great thread!

Since you pinged me, I'll respond to you in commenting on several of the thoughts passed above.

First, the greatest thing that ever happened to General George S. Patton was having George C. Scott play him in that movie. My uncle actually fought under Patton in Italy. He remembers Patton as having been a respected General, but not beloved. This is important. Patton was more than a little bit a prima donna. HE perhaps thought he was something of a Caesar (the comments above about putting Patton and MacArthur together) or even a Napoleon or Alexander...and ever since that movie about him came out, it seems to be the popular consensus that he practically WAS...but what Caesar, Napoleon and Alexander had in common, which Patton did not have, was the fanatical loyalty and love of the troops. Robert E. Lee had that. Stonewall Jackson had it, to a degree. George Washington certainly had it. But Patton did not. Patton was appreciated as a competent, effective officer, but with a nasty temper. He was not beloved. Is that important? If you're going to try some damfool thing like invading Russia, yes it is.

Now, as to the "What if?" question of Patton and MacArthur in the Pacific, the answer to that is clear enough. They might have had one dust-up, and then Patton would have obeyed the 5-star General or been fired. Patton had a strong personality, but he was a military officer in the chain of command, a subordinate subject to orders. You do not have a personality conflict with your commanding officer. HE has the personality, and YOU have the conflict. Patton would have done as he was told, or he would have been fired and replaced. He was not superhuman, and his authority did not derive from some mystic place. He had the authority of a General in the US Army, in a chain of command. He was no Caesar who wrote his own ticket, and had no independence from superior authority. Patton in the Pacific might have served well under McArthur, once he learned how to give his boss what he wanted. Or he could have gotten himself fired in a week. Either way, it would not have been a catfight. Military inferiors have nothing to fight with when battling with their superiors.
Like Lincoln is supposed to have said in a cabinet meeting: "That's one 'Aye' [his] and eight 'Nays' - the 'Ayes' have it."

Hero worship is fun, but we should be realistic. Patton was an effective senior officer.

As to "What would have happened" had the US attacked the USSR in 1945, two thoughts.

Long term, the result would be that the US would have conquered the world, and we would all be living in a fascist dictatorship with its capital at Washington DC. For the truth is that Americans had no interest or desire in going to war with their Russian ally, and any such attack would have required a military override of the people, in order to simply conquer for the sake of conquest. To defeat the USSR, the US would have had to get atomic bomb production underway in a hurry, and destroyed major Russian cities with millions upon millions of civilian deaths. The American Army would have had to press ahead through a Russian Army thrown into chaos by the nuclear decapitation of the command structure, and with those Russians having a (justifiable) hatred of Americans as intense as they had of the Nazis. Why? Because to beat the Soviet Union, the USA would have had to use nuclear bombs to incinerate Russian cities, and would have had to take each new bomb as it was built and drop it on centers of Russian population. That WOULD have broken Russia's capacity to fight as an organized country. It would have also turned Americans into the worst genocides in history, worse than the Nazis we had just defeated.

Conventionally, with airpower, the Americans could have held the line against the Red Army, but to actually advance into Russia and overthrow the regime would have required breaking the Russian ability to keep the army in the field. And that would have required nuclear strikes and firebombing of Russian cities, etc.

Against the Germans and the Japanese, such tactics were justified: they declared war on America. But to engage in the mass murder of Russians, using nuclear weapons and conventional firebombing of cities, would have required the Americans to turn on an ally and attack without cause. And to wage a relentless campaign against Russian people in cities.

Liberated Europe would not have supported that. After the Fascist experience, the Communists were strong all across Europe. And they would have been morally in the right too. Surprise attacks on Russia with the mass murder of Russian civilians in their cities would have made the Americans the new Nazis. Could the Americans have suppressed the Communists and Socialists all across Europe, and America too, where they had quite a bit of residual strength?

Yes.
To win, the Americans would have HAD TO.
And the result would have been a world-dominating American dictatorship.

Had Stalin attacked the West, it would have been a different thing completely, but for the Americans to simply spontaneously attack Russia, with an aim of ending Communism, would have been an act of barbarism. And given that the Americans were no match for the Soviets conventionally (and given that the Labor movement in Britain would have taken Britain right out of the war, if they were not violently suppressed), Patton would have had to use nuclear weapons.

The assumption that a nuclear bomb on Moscow would have ended Russian resistance is crazy. Mass murder a few million Russian civilians from the sky, and you think the Russians are going to surrender to you? No, they will hate you, and the whole world will hate you, and they would be right too.

Communism was not so bad that it justified the United States committing mass murder of Russian civilians, and that was the only way to defeat Stalin's Russia.

Would the US have won?
Sure.
And we would all live in a Fascist-American world imperium, because that would have been the price of such an action: the loss of American democracy and liberty. It would not have been a conservative place. It would be a corporatist/military-industrial place.

Anyway, it's unimaginable that Harry Truman (or FDR, or Reagan, or W, or any other American President since) would have ordered such a thing, even with 20/20 hindsight.

In the end, we defeated the USSR without a nuclear war, and without turning ourselves into a Fascist empire. The Russians (and the rest of the world) do not hate us as genocides. That's my view, anyway.

[investigateworld]

LOL ! "Conflict" with senior officers.
I was in our embassy in Bonn when word came in that Japanese high school kids were spitting on his grave in Luxembourg City. We heard the American lads passed out some black eyes and split lips as a result. Made me want to go out and buy some EE series Bonds ;^)

[hosepipe]

Faux Assassination attempts by the wily Patton himself..
Should not be under rated..

The boy was a glory hog.. extremely self important..

[spanalot]

The preview has an interview with the driver who is american and alleges that the truck purposely cut them off.

[spanalot]

"IMHO, think of how different the world would be if Patton had gotten his way"

Bingo - no 50 million dead inAsia, no Korean war, no viet nam, no cold war, no west bashing islamo-fascists.

[Vicomte13]

"Bingo - no 50 million dead inAsia, no Korean war, no viet nam, no cold war, no west bashing islamo-fascists."

20 million dead in Russia, and a fascist American empire spanning the globe, with political liberties crushed on every continent, including North America, because that is what would have had to have been done to force the Americans to stay in a war begun by a US surprise attack on an ally and won by nuclear mass murder.
No thanks.
The price of victory over the USSR in 1945 would have merely been the destruction of American democracy.
Not worth it.

[spanalot]

"Where would the national will have been in 1945 to go to war with someone who was our best buddy not a month earlier? "

Best Buddy? We WERE at war with Russia - do you realize how many thousands of American POWs the Russians held after the war?

This alone would have demanded swift and nuclear action.

[spanalot]

"*Said troops and American public were heartily sick of the war by that time."

Yes butwe had the bomb - and a few hundred thousand casualties in Moscow and Stalingrad would have saved us 50 million genocide victims.

[spanalot]

"The US was in no position to argue with Stalin's bottomless supply of the excellent T-34's "

What are they going to run on when you nuke the refineries?

[spanalot]

"It was the Russian People which provided the bulk of the blood lost in defeating Hitler you should remember."

Actually more Ukrainians died than Russians - the First Ukrainian Front took the brunt in Stalingrad and they took Berlin. They would have been glad to lay down their arms to get rid of their murderous Russian hierarchy.

[spanalot]

"There was no way we could have forced the Soviets back"

They were beyond exhausted and their supply lines were stretched to the breaking point.

And tell me what American Soldier would have gone home knowing that the Russians had kidnapped thousands of their fellow soldiers.

[spanalot]

"I think what ultimately killed the general was pnuemonia."

There are conflicting reports - some say he was paralyezed yet his driver reports he was talking and moving quite capably.