From one of his speeches, 37 Italian POW's were executed in cold blood. General Omar N. Bradley initiated an investigation but broke it off prematurely to save Patton's skin. During the invasion of Sicily, Patton was compromised again for having slapped a soldier, suffering from shellshock in the face, believing him to be a coward. Patton even went so far as to issue a memo stating that 'those cowards should be court martialled'.
Patton, under great pressure from his superior, General Dwight Eisenhower, offered his apologies but one week later, it happened again. This time, a furious Eisenhower relieved him of his command over 7th Army, replacing him by General Mark Clark.
Patton was relegated to headquarters where he sat dragging his heels for almost a year until he was put in command of the US 3rd Army in on the eve of the Normandy invasion.
Patton himself arrived in France, August 1st, and by December 13th, his troops had advanced as far as the Belgium-Luxemburg border. At that moment, Germany was preparing for her final convulsion, the Ardennes offensive.
Partly due to Patton's committment, this offensive was repulsed and he even managed to drive the Germans back. After Patton's 3rd Army had linked up with 7th Army, both armies pushed on towards Germany and on March 22nd, , his troops crossed the river Rhine near the village of Oppenheim. In April he was promoted to the rank of 4-star General. September , he was relieved of his command over 3rd Army for his sympathic attitude towards former Nazi's.
His request to be transferred to the Pacific to fight the Japanese was rejected. After the German surrender, he held the post of military governor of Bavaria for some time but he disliked the job. Although in the post-war years, several political functions had been offered to him, including that of Secretary of War, he accepted none of them. December 9th, , while still in Germany, Patton was involved in a serious car crash and broke his neck. He was taken to a military hospital in Heidelberg and there, General George S.
Patton Jr. This led to his temporary removal as a battlefield commander, but his skills and fighting spirit were seen as indispensable to the final victory, and he returned to the front line. Having led his men in battle all over Europe and the Middle East, Patton died in a car accident in December Photograph of General George Patton wearing his 4-star service cap in Don't ever forget them.
Someday we will have to fight them and it will take six years and cost us six million lives. If we let Germany and the German people be completely disintegrated and starved, they will certainly fall for Communism, and the fall of Germany for Communism will write the epitaph of democracy in the United States. The more I see of people, the more I regret I survived the war. I think we've been fighting the wrong people all this time, but I've oiled my belly so I can stay with them on the vodka.
My front will be as good as theirs. Another war has ended and with it my usefulness to the world. It is for me personally another very sad thought.
Now all that is left is to sit around and await the arrival of the undertaker and posthumous immortality. Now the horrors of peace, pacifism and unions will have unlimited sway. I wish I were young enough to fight in the next one. It would be real fun killing Mongols. We did not come over here to acquire jurisdiction over either the people or their countries. We came to give them back the right to govern themselves. We must either finish the job now--while we are here and ready--or later in less favorable circumstances.
You're all hoping I will! Well, my dear Marshal [ Georgi Zhukov ], let me tell you this. If any of my gunners started firing at your people before they had closed to less than yards, I'd have them court-martialed for cowardice. I was reluctant, in fact unwilling, to be party to the destruction of Germany under the pretense of denazification.
I believe Germany should not be destroyed, but rather rebuilt as a buffer against the real danger which is Bolshevism from Russia. My soldiers are fighting men and if I dismiss the sewer cleaners and the clerks my soldiers will have to take over those jobs.
They'd have to run the telephone exchanges, the power facilities, the street cars, and that's not what soldiers are for. The noise against me is the only means by which Jews and Communists are attempting and with good success to implement a further dismemberment of Germany.
Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened and present a picture of force and strength to these people [the Soviets]. This is the only language they understand and respect. If you fail to do this, then I would like to say to you that we have had a victory over the Germans and have disarmed them, but have lost the war.
I despise and abhor Nazis and Hitlerism as much as anyone. My record on that is clear and unchallengeable. Now, more than half the Germans were Nazis and we would be in a hell of a fix if we removed all Nazi party members from office. The way I see it, this Nazi question is very much like a Democrat and Republican election fight.
To get things done in Bavaria, after the complete disorganization and disruption of four years of war, we had to compromise with the devil a little. We had no alternative but to turn to the people who knew what to do and how to do it. So, for the time being we are compromising with the devil.
I don't like the Nazis any more than you do. I despise them. In the past three years I did my utmost to kill as many of them as possible. Now we are using them for lack of anyone better until we can get better people. We could beat hell out of them. The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them.
In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all-out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk. 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.
Erwin Rommel in battle] Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book! The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom. 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 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. 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. I doubted the expediency of blowing up factories, because the ends for which the factories are being blown up - that is, preventing Germany from preparing for war - can be equally well attained through the destruction of their machinery, while the buildings can be used to house thousands of homeless persons.
I have never seen in any army at any time, including the German Imperial Army of , as severe discipline as exists in the Russian army. The officers, with few exceptions, give the appearance of recently civilized Mongolian bandits. I will probably be in the headlines before you get this, as the press is trying to quote me as being more interested in restoring order in Germany than in catching Nazis.
I can't tell them the truth that unless we restore Germany we will ensure that Communism takes America. I have been at Frankfurt for a civil government conference. If what we are doing [to the Germans] is"'Liberty, then give me death". I can't see how Americans can sink so low.
It is Semitic, and I am sure of it. There is a very apparent Semitic influence in the press. They are trying to do two things: first, implement communism, and second, see that all businessmen of German ancestry and non-Jewish antecedents are thrown out of their jobs. They have utterly lost the Anglo-Saxon conception of justice and feel that a man can be kicked out because somebody else says he is a Nazi.
They were evidently quite shocked when I told them I would kick nobody out without the successful proof of guilt before a court of law. Another point which the press harped on was the fact that we were doing too much for the Germans to the detriment of the DPs, most of whom are Jews. I could not give the answer to that one, because the answer is that, in my opinion and that of most nonpolitical officers, it is vitally necessary for us to build Germany up now as a buffer state against Russia.
In fact, I am afraid we have waited too long. 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. What we are doing is to destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe, so that Russia can swallow the whole. Where, although room existed, the Jews were crowded together to an appalling extent, and in practically every room there was a pile of garbage in one corner which was also used as a latrine.
The Jews were only forced to desist from their nastiness and clean up the mess by the threat of the butt ends of rifles.
Of course, I know the expression "lost tribes of Israel" applied to the tribes which disappeared--not to the tribe of Judah from which the current sons of bitches are descended. However, it is my personal opinion that this too is a lost tribe--lost to all decency.
I am frankly opposed to this war criminal stuff. It is not cricket and is Semitic. I am also opposed to sending POWs to work as slaves in foreign lands [i. It is my present thought. 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.
I have been just as furious as you at the compilation of lies which the communist and Semitic elements of our government have leveled against me and practically every other commander. In my opinion it is a deliberate attempt to alienate the soldier vote from the commanders, because the communists know that soldiers are not communistic, and they fear what 11 million votes [of veterans] would do.
I know the expression 'lost tribes of Israel' applied to the tribes which disappeared - not to the tribe of Judah from which the current sons of bitches are descended.
However, it is my personal opinion that this too is a lost tribe - lost to all decency. This happened to be the feast of Yom Kippur, so they were all collected in a large, wooden building, which they called a synagogue.
It behooved [Gen. Eisenhower ] to make a speech to them. We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. When we got about halfway up, the head rabbi, who was dressed in a fur hat similar to that worn by Henry VIII of England and in a surplice heavily embroidered and very filthy, came down and met the general. The smell was so terrible that I almost fainted and actually about three hours later lost my lunch as the result of remembering it.
Of course, I have seen them since the beginning and marveled that beings alleged to be made in the form of God can look the way they do or act the way they act. I will only say we had a perfectly uneventful trip. Never saw a U-Boat and reached London on the 7th of June.
My Jews were quartered in the tower and so was I. It was fine and the officers of the Honorable Artillery Corps who date from were fine to me.
Being English the name "Artillery Corps" does not mean anything, as they are an infantry regiment belonging to the Guard Brigade. The reception they gave us in the Tower of London was worth the trip. The officers took us in and treated us like more than brothers; we could not spend a cent. The H. One night they gave us a theater party and the men were entertained every moment.
The Jews behaved wonderfully and everyone complimented them. The night we left the officers gave [Richard B. The Commander, Col. Truffey, made a toast in which he said that the H. I replied and said as follows as near as I can remember: "Col. Top Image: General George S. At a. The year-old general had led a life of adventure, fighting in almost every major American twentieth century conflict. He often led from the front, and he almost always delivered victory.
His swift conquest of Sicily, his race across France, his relief of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and his drive into Germany destroyed German armies, saved American lives, and captured the collective imagination of the American public.
Yet, all his laurels could not protect the General from a simple car accident eight months into the peace. Twelve days before his death, on December 9, , Patton was sitting in the back of his limousine when his driver, PFC Horace Woodring, sped too fast over a railroad crossing in Manheim, Germany, and plowed into the passenger-side of a left-turning Army truck headed into a depot.
The intersection where Patton had his car accident. The black car stands at roughly the position of the US Army truck, prior to it turning left into a depot, denoted by the cobblestone driveway. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. No one was hurt except Patton, who, despite a nasty gash on his head, immediately realized he had been paralyzed.
Patton was rushed to the th Station Hospital in Heidelberg, 12 miles away. There, he was x-rayed, revealing two crushed vertebrae.
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