Patton had them pegged:
“The difficulty in understanding the Russians we do not take cognizance of the fact he is not a European, but an asiatic therefore thinks deviously.
We can no more understand a Russian than Chinese or a Japanese.”
If we take Patton at his word, he also said that we fought the wrong enemy shortly before his death, he was strongly against integration in the US Army and he made disparaging remarks about death camp survivors that he met.
He was a brilliant general and a very complicated, if flawed, person.
Most of his commentary on social matters would be unprintable today.
His comments were Status Quo for his time (19th/20th century).
He correctly saw that we had more in common with Germany (Not the Nazi ideology) than Russians (again ignoring communist ideology).
He was the product of a phenomenal merit-based system and that is why he was a brilliant general - as you say.