Patton: Right Man At The Wrong Time

Patton. An American general that even the Germans admired. Some say if he had been in Eisenhower's place, Allied troops would have entered Berlin six months earlier. And may be the American army would have soon after fought the Red Army......

Patton foresaw that Soviet Russia would become a threat to America. He wanted to ally with the Germans (not Nazi) to fight the communists. He had a major 'flaw' in the then prevailing conditions; he was anti-Semitic.


At the end of World War II, one of America's top military leaders accurately assessed the shift in the balance of world power which that war had produced and foresaw the enormous danger of communist aggression against the West. Alone among U.S. leaders he warned that America should act immediately,while her supremacy was unchallengeable, to end that danger. Unfortunately, his warning went unheeded, and he was quickly silenced by a convenient "accident" which took his life.

Thirty-two years ago, in the terrible summer of 1945, the U.S. Army had just completed the destruction of Europe and had set up a government of military occupation amid the ruins to rule the starving Germans and deal out victors' justice to the vanquished. General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army, became military governor of the greater portion of the American occupation zone of Germany.

It was only in the final days of the war and during his tenure as military governor of Germany -- after he had gotten to know both the Germans and America's "gallant Soviet allies" -- that Patton's understanding of the true situation grew and his opinions changed. In his diary and in many letters to his family, friends, various military colleagues, and government officials, he expressed his new understanding and his apprehensions for the future. His diary and his letters were published in 1974 by the Houghton Mifflin Company under the title The Patton Papers.

Several months before the end of the war, General Patton had recognized the fearful danger to the West posed by the Soviet Union, and he had disagreed bitterly with the orders which he had been given to hold back his army and wait for the Red Army to occupy vast stretches of German, Czech, Rumanian, Hungarian, and Yugoslav territory, which the Americans could have easily taken instead.

On May 7, 1945, just before the German capitulation, Patton had a conference in Austria with U.S. Secretary of War Robert Patterson. Patton was gravely concerned over the Soviet failure to respect the demarcation lines separating the Soviet and American occupation zones. He was also alarmed by plans in Washington for the immediate partial demobilization of the U.S. Army.

Patton said to Patterson: "Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect."

Patterson replied, "Oh, George, you have been so close to this thing so long, you have lost sight of the big picture."

Patton rejoined:

"I understand the situation. Their (the Soviet) supply system is inadequate to maintain them in a serious action such as I could put to them. They have chickens in the coop and cattle on the hoof -- that's their supply system. They could probably maintain themselves in the type of fighting I could give them for five days. After that it would make no difference how many million men they have, and if you wanted Moscow I could give it to you. They lived on the land coming down. There is insufficient left for them to maintain themselves going back. Let's not give them time to build up their supplies. If we do, then . . . we have had a victory over the Germans and disarmed them, but we have failed in the liberation of Europe; we have lost the war!"

Patton's urgent and prophetic advice went unheeded by Patterson and the other politicians and only served to give warning about Patton's feelings to the alien conspirators behind the scenes in New York, Washington, and Moscow.

The more he saw of the Soviets, the stronger Patton's conviction grew that the proper course of action would be to stifle communism then and there, while the chance existed. Later in May 1945 he attended several meetings and social affairs with top Red Army officers, and he evaluated them carefully. He noted in his diary on May 14:

"I have never seen in any army at any time, including the German Imperial Army of 1912, as severe discipline as exists in the Russian army. The officers, with few exceptions, give the appearance of recently civilized Mongolian bandits."

And Patton's aide, General Hobart Gay, noted in his own journal for May 14: "Everything they (the Russians) did impressed one with the idea of virility and cruelty."

Nevertheless, Patton knew that the Americans could whip the Reds then -- but perhaps not later. On May 18 he noted in his diary:

"In my opinion, the American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease, because, while the Russians have good infantry, they are lacking in artillery, air, tanks, and in the knowledge of the use of the combined arms, whereas we excel in all three of these. If it should be necessary to fight the Russians, the sooner we do it the better."

Two days later he repeated his concern when he wrote his wife: "If we have to fight them, now is the time. From now on we will get weaker and they stronger."

PATTON ON THE SS

SS means no more in Germany than being a Democrat in America -- that is not to be quoted. I mean by that that initially the SS people were special sons of bitches, but as the war progressed they ran out of sons of bitches and then they put anybody in there. Some of the top SS men will be treated as criminals, but there is no reason for trying someone who was drafted into this outfit . . ."

PATTON SAID THAT......

"Today we received orders . . . in which we were told to give the Jews special accommodations. If for Jews, why not Catholics, Mormons, etc? . . . We are also turning over to the French several hundred thousand prisoners of war to be used as slave labor in France. It is amusing to recall that we fought the Revolution in defense of the rights of man and the Civil War to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles."


"Actually, the Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. it's a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans."

"What we are doing is to destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe, so that Russia can swallow the whole."


ON DESTROYED BERLIN....

After a visit to ruined Berlin, he wrote his wife on July 21, 1945: "Berlin gave me the blues. We have destroyed what could have been a good race, and we are about to replace them with Mongolian savages. And all Europe will be communist. It's said that for the first week after they took it (Berlin), all women who ran were shot and those who did not were raped. I could have taken it (instead of the Soviets) had I been allowed."

----------------

"It is my present thought . . . that when I finish this job, which will be around the first of the year, I shall resign, not retire, because if I retire I will still have a gag in my mouth . . . I should not start a limited counterattack, which would be contrary to my military theories, but should wait until I can start an all- out offensive . . . ."

This article originally appeared in Issue Number 53 of National Vanguard Tabloid in 1977.
© 1999 National Vanguard Books · Box 330 · Hillsboro ·WV 24946 · USA

WAS PATTON KILLED?

In his book Target Patton, Robert Wilcox believes he was.

Wilcox writes that Patton was threatening to quit the Army and denounce Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D Eisenhower, once his junior and close friend, who he believed had made a deal with the Soviets to stop him racing them to Berlin.  This left hundreds of thousands of German troops free to escape to kill U.S troops in the Battle of the Bulge, and let the Russians take Eastern Europe. 

Wilcox says General 'Wild Bill' Donovan, boss of the Office of Strategic Service  -  forerunner of the CIA  -  ordered assassin Douglas Bazata to kill Patton.  The historian interviewed Bazata, who died in 1999, and was granted access to his diaries. 

Wilcox cites diary entries which apparently reveal that Bazata arranged for the lorry to plough into Patton's car, then broke his neck with a rubber-bullet gun. Bazata said that when the general began to recover, U.S. officials turned a blind eye as Russian agents poisoned him. No autopsy was performed. 

Wilcox said: 'Bazata confessed to me that he had caused Patton's accident. 'Patton wanted to go to war with the Russians. The administration thought he was nuts. 

'He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers. I don't think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected president if Patton had lived to say the things he wanted to say.'

From Daily Mail

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Some Facts of WW2 That We Hardly Know

As we read and go deeper into what happened in the years 1939-45, a lot of our illusions shatter. May be because we all  got acquainted with WW2 from movies and "Commando" comics, which paint rosy pictures of American and British soldiers, showing them as good men who fight bravely against the evil "Krauts".

The reality is different.

The reason the Allies took almost a year after landing on Normandy on June 6, 1944 to defeat Germany was that many soldiers were not motivated enough to fight It is a well known fact that British and American soldiers moved forward only after the enemy lines had been flattened by a lot of artillery fire. Unlike the German or Russian soldier who went ahead, without waiting for artillery or tank support.

There were a lot of desertions. In the German or Russian army they would have been shot.

Allied commanders were cautious and hesitant to act quickly. If Eisenhower had reacted fast after the Germans were on the run from France, the Allied armies would have reached Berlin by December 1944.

Montgomery was on his own ego-trip and came up with the hare-brained Operation Market Garden which achieved little but cost a lot of airborne troops. Eisenhower indulged him because he wanted to keep British-American relations cordial.

The only Allied general that the Germans too respected was Patton. If he had been in place of Eisenhower Germany would have been defeated before the red Army could enter east Prussia. The problem with Patton was, he would have led to a massive row with the British and also he was anti-Jew.

After 1944, the Americans turned a deaf ear to what Churchill said. Churchill wanted Allies to land in Greece and move into the Balkans before the Russians did. If such a thing had happened The Americans would have had to fight not only Germans but the Red Army too.  America hardly had enough troops to do that as it was busy fighting Japan too.

A clash between the Allies and Russia would have been catastrophic. Hitler knew the friction and was hoping for the friction to lead to an explosion.

But wiser counsel prevailed. Thankfully. The Americans knew that Russia was shedding the blood necessary to defeat the formidable German Army. Alone it seems unlikely that American or British soldiers would have been prepared to fight the savage war that raged in the Ostfront. Only the Russians could have done that.

Democracies by nature have little martial tradition and their soldiers are not moulded  to fight absolute war that the Wehrmacht or the Red Army fought during WW2. It was Russian blood and America's immense arms production that defeated Nazi Germany.

This is not to say that American soldiers are soft. The War in the Far East with Japan proved beyond doubt that the American soldier was as hard as the Japanese soldier and could take a lot of beating. Only that more American blood would have been shed to defeat both Japan and Nazi Germany if the Russians had caved in in 1941-42. It would have taken a lot more time to defeat Hitler, if ever. If Russia had collapsed and if there had been no Stalingrad, Hitler would have got his hands on the plentiful oil lying under the ground in the Soviet Union.

Perhaps then America's massive arms production would have been of little use in defeating Hitler. Because as a soldier, the German was undoubtedly the best fighting machine mankind has ever seen.

Coming to America's war with Japan. After the Marianas Islands were captured after brutal fighting in 1944, America had a base from which it could launch massive bombing operations on Japan with B-27 bombers. The Japanese Navy had largely been annihilated. American aircraft-carriers and ships ruled the seas. American submarines had knocked the stuffing out of Japanese supply lines .

So there was little need to launch combat operations to take over Japanese held islands in a hurry. With no supplies of arms or men the Japanese soldiers on different islands could do little harm. The focus should have been bombing Japan proper to dust. The Japanese would have then capitulated.

But General MacArthur, was like Montgomery, a publicity seeker and a vain man. He wanted to make frontal attacks and liberate Philippines where he had spent many years. He went ahead though militarily there was no need to do so because he was a media's hero and enjoyed massive popularity back in America. Roosevelt dared not sack him. So the bloody fight for the Philippines ensued with massive loss of American lives and those of the local inhabitants.

A popular myth is that only German and Soviet  soldiers acted brutally and took no prisoners. That American and British soldiers in contrast were 'humane'. The good guys who followed the Geneva Conventions to the G. This is just propaganda. There are lots and lots of instances where Allied soldiers took no prisoners and shot German POW straight away. This despite the fact that most American soldiers did not hate the Germans, as say the Russians did. In contrast, a few instances aside, German soldiers while dealing with American and British POW behaved very properly.

The infamous British Bomber Command was headed by Sir Arthur Harris from 1942. Harris believed that bombing and terrorising German cities and civilians would demoralise them and Germany would lose the war. So he went about the task enthusiastically and by April 1945 all German cities had been blown to bits. Harris' thinking was criticized by many as being not a war-winning one. They felt bombing military and war production plants would be more helpful. But so popular was Harris amongst the British public that no one dared to stop him.

Hindsight revealed that bombing did not demoralise the German people so much that the country surrendered. The bombings by the British Bomber Command and the US Eight Air Force did serve one purpose. Hitler was forced to strip Russia of most of Luftwaffe planes to defend German cities. Also the formidable German 88 mm guns were diverted from the Ostfront. This greatly helped the Red Army.