December 1944.
Snow blanketed the battlefields on World War II’s Western Front.
Exhausted Allied soldiers silenced their guns.
War-weary generals whispered that the Nazi army was on the verge of defeat.
They were wrong.
[The surprise attack — and Patton’s foresight]
On December 16th, under direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself, the German Army launched a brutal surprise attack that caught most of the Allied generals off guard, but not American Lieutenant General George S.
Patton.
Patton is one of the few leaders who doesn’t count the Germans out even in late game.
In December of 1944, Patton had seen the Nazi counterattack coming and been planning for it since November.
He was very intuitive, very impulsive, and very courageous in his choices.
He often said, “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
Over the next few weeks, Patton’s ability to follow through on his plans would turn the tide of the war.
[Patton as “American Achilles”]
George Patton was the most brilliant battlefield commander in World War II.
Actually, he has no equal.
He did things that nobody else could have done.
But he also had difficulties working well with others of his peers, and so he’s, of all our World War II leaders, perhaps the most controversial—while also being perhaps the most capable.
The American Achilles—if you think of Achilles as the great warrior who was born for war.
[Home as a hero — June 1945]
In June 1945, General George S.
Patton Jr.
came home from World War II to a hero’s welcome.
He had left for the war a relative unknown, but promised to return either a conqueror or a corpse.
He succeeded beyond everyone’s expectations, except perhaps his own.
Patton was a patriot, but he also had a thirst for personal glory.
He really had this role in mind for himself, and he was going to do whatever it took to achieve that goal.
Here was a man that loved war.
He understood in a very palpable and true way the cost of war, and yet for him he just felt that that was part of its terrible grandeur, as he put it.
He felt that it was the arena in which a man could be tested.
By the time World War II broke out, Patton had been longing for a chance to test himself in war’s arena for almost 30 years.
[Mexico, 1916 — chasing glory]
As a young lieutenant, he had jumped at the opportunity to join the U.S.
Army’s 1916 invasion of Mexico.
They were going there to track down revolutionary leader Pancho Villa and pay him back for attacking U.S.
territory, but it didn’t turn out to be the adventure Patton hoped for.
Nothing was happening.
It was boring, monotonous, and a terrible place to be.
The frustrated Patton decided to take matters into his own hands.
On a routine trip to buy supplies, he took a detour to go track down one of Villa’s generals and two of his officers instead.
Patton and his men found their prey and killed all three of the Mexicans in a ferocious gun battle.
The men strapped the bodies across the hoods of their automobiles and went back to headquarters, and this was really something.
War correspondents wrote stories, and Patton was a national hero for about two weeks.
Two weeks wasn’t enough for Patton, and the invasion would end before he got another chance to show his stuff.
[World War I — wounded and haunted]
World War I seemed to give him another opportunity to earn the glory he craved, but after just two days of battle, his eagerness to prove himself would lead Patton to make a near-fatal mistake.
They were under fire, and Patton kept walking up and down, saying, “They can’t kill me, they can’t hurt me.” At that moment, a bullet hit him in the thigh and came out the back.
He collapsed, and he was out of the war.
He felt it was the end of his career and the end of his dream to become a great warrior.
He was tormented with the idea that there would be no occasion for him to prove himself again in battle.
And while we can say, “Thank God for peace,” he was very ambivalent about it, to say the least.
He wanted another opportunity.
[World War II — the big chance]
Patton’s opportunity finally came when America declared war on Germany in World War II.
This was a time when his fate, or destiny, was going to come to pass.
This was opportunity with a capital O.
In 1942, Patton was chosen to be the first American general to lead troops against the Nazis.
His job: head for North Africa and drive the Germans out of the former French colonies there.
“All my life I have wanted to lead a lot of men in a desperate battle,” Patton wrote a friend.
“Now I am going to do it.”
[North Africa — Casablanca and the Patton persona]
From the moment Patton and his men hit the beaches in Morocco, their daring exploits thrilled Americans who had feared that the dreaded Nazi army could never be defeated.
Patton led a group of American soldiers and landed on the shores of Morocco, and they took Casablanca in three days.
Casablanca surrendered on the 11th of November—which was Patton’s birthday—which he loved.
Reporters on the scene celebrated Patton as a “warin’, roarin’ comet” and the “rootin’-tootin’, hip-shootin’ commander” of American forces in Morocco.
But the men he led into battle just called him “Old Blood and Guts.”
Patton was very blunt, very forthright, and very ferocious in his effort to impart an attack, can-do, killer mentality among his troops.
“The faster and more effectively you kill, the longer you will live to enjoy the priceless fame of conquerors,” Patton told his men.
“We must not only die gallantly—we must kill devastatingly.”
He artfully used profanity and promoted a persona that may or may not actually have been his, but it communicated to soldiers the impressions he wanted them to have of their leadership.
He had a great deal of energy and emotionalism, which appealed to men and came across when he met them.
But above all, when asked why his men liked to fight for him, he said, “People like to play for a winner.”
[Controversy follows]
Even in his moment of victory, Patton’s pep talk sparked controversy that would dog him throughout his career.
Some civilians and many of his fellow officers were offended by Patton’s bloodthirsty language and use of profanity.
They complained that Patton, in spite of his success on the battlefield, was an embarrassment to the U.S.
Army.
For the moment, Patton’s triumph in North Africa gave him the freedom to ignore his critics, and he hoped the next big battle would give him another chance to add to his growing fame.
[Sicily — winning “the race”]
The Allies were finally ready to take the fight against Hitler to Europe itself: to take the heavily fortified Italian island of Sicily back from the Nazis.
But Patton’s British allies still weren’t convinced the Americans had what it took.
When D-Day in Sicily came on July 10th, 1943, the British kept the main thrust of the action for themselves and relegated Patton and his men to a supporting role.
The English army under General Bernard Montgomery would land on the eastern coast of the island and move north to take the key port city of Messina.
Patton and his army were to sail to the island’s southern coast, come ashore, and protect the British army’s flank.
But once he got to Sicily, Patton wasn’t about to let official battle plans—or concerns for British pride—hold him back.
General Patton ran wild in Sicily.
He was supposed to be protecting Montgomery’s flank and rear while Montgomery got to Messina.
But the British bogged down at Catania.
Patton saw his chance to show the British what his Americans could do.
First he pushed his men hard out to the west and up to the north of the island to wipe out the Nazi defenses.
Then he turned them around and drove them east toward Messina.
Patton got to Messina ahead of Montgomery.
“We win the race.”
Patton proved that the American fighting man was just as good as the British, and from then on nobody said disparaging things about American troops.
[The slapping incident — a career crisis]
Patton’s success in Sicily seemed to make him the top contender for World War II’s next big job: commander of American ground forces for the Allied invasion of Europe.
But his triumph turned to disaster.
During a routine visit to a hospital in Sicily, among the wounded men he came across two soldiers suffering from shell shock.
Patton had seen such trauma and blood in the hospitals that when he came upon two soldiers who were not physically hurt, he snapped.
He exploded at the sight of them and struck them.
That was a catastrophe for his career, potentially his Achilles’ heel.
His unstable and violent personality—his mood swings—were on display.
Word spread quickly through the ranks and back home.
No one could understand how a leader so stalwart in battle could prove so unstable in a moment of peace.
[Childhood and insecurity — the need to prove himself]
To understand Patton, you have to understand his childhood.
He was a favored and pampered boy—spoiled, certainly.
Oddly enough, he had traits we wouldn’t associate with the later general.
He was insecure, doubted his courage, was shy, and was not considered a particularly good student.
All of which he took to heart as a lack within himself.
Patton felt a need to prove himself and was concerned about whether he would react to fear as other men did.
He undertook unusual experiments to test himself—one of which was at West Point, exposing himself between targets while firing was going on, just to make sure that he wouldn’t flinch.
This self-testing promoted the Patton mystique of being fearless, when actually he was trying to prove he could master the fear he felt.
By the time he slapped the two soldiers in Sicily, Patton had spent a lifetime trying to master his own fears and training his men to master theirs.
Patton later explained that he thought he was saving two souls by slapping them back to normality.
[Eisenhower’s response — apology tour]
At first, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower tried to hush up the incident, but he couldn’t, and the howls for Patton’s scalp began.
To the American public, it came across as bullying—getting physical with hospitalized men.
Eisenhower had no choice but to publicly censure Patton.
Patton went from unit to unit, described what had happened, and begged forgiveness from his subordinates—very difficult.
Yet he was gifted at the art of apology, and on many occasions the soldiers shouted him down and wouldn’t let him apologize.
Veterans have said, “Patton was an S.O.B… we didn’t like him,” but ended with, “we sure were proud to ride with him.”
[Kept out of D-Day planning]
His men may have supported him, but superior officers weren’t as willing to forgive and forget.
Eisenhower put him in the doghouse.
When planning the next phase—the D-Day invasion—Patton was not permitted to be an active part of it, which he desperately wanted.
Patton was heartbroken when he learned the job he thought was his would go to General Omar Bradley—who had been his second-in-command in North Africa and Sicily.
[D-Day — Patton hears it on the radio]
When the long-awaited Allied invasion began on June 6th, 1944, Patton learned about it the same way millions of other noncombatants did: from the radio.
He was going to be in the follow-up forces and was terribly afraid the war would be over before he could get there.
For weeks Patton watched anxiously from England as the Allies struggled to get off the beaches of Normandy and into the heart of France.
Things weren’t going well.
The Nazis pinned the Allies down in the fields near their beachheads.
The Allies feared the attack was turning into the trench warfare of World War I.
There was genuine concern—horrific fighting hedgerow to hedgerow—that no one wanted.
Everyone anticipated a war of maneuver: “We’re going to out-blitz the blitzers.”
[Patton unleashed — Third Army, Aug 1, 1944]
For Patton, the frustration ended on August 1st, 1944, when he rejoined the war as commander of a new Third Army Eisenhower had put together to serve under Patton when his unique talents were needed most.
There was something unique and irreplaceable about him for dash, maneuver, aggressiveness, and assault.
He was unequaled.
He could be extremely difficult behind the lines—say the wrong thing, tick people off—but Eisenhower kept him around for the right moment.
The Germans regarded Patton as the person they most feared.
Those fears became reality when Patton broke through the defenses that had held the Allies back since D-Day and charged into the heart of France.
[Breakout — St.
Lô and beyond]
The breakthrough at St.
Lô was a masterpiece of momentum, maneuver, timing, and tempo.
Patton was now in his element.
He took over in a fluid situation—mobility, improvisation, exploitation—and nobody could do it better than a man attuned to being audacious.
Patton didn’t worry about his flanks.
He told his corps commanders to go in every direction—and they did.
They crossed one river after another and compromised German defenses.
Patton’s greatness was his ability to see in time and space how to use airplanes, close air support, and tanks to further objectives.
He was an incredible tactician.
He preferred surrounding an enemy—getting behind, going around—rather than frontal attack at great cost.
He had a natural ability to know what the enemy was about to do.
He transformed a local breakthrough into a theater-wide breakout, and the campaign opened up as everyone raced after Germans in full retreat.
[Stall — running out of gas]
By September the Allies had chased the Nazis to the border of Germany itself.
But the race ended when Patton and the rest of the Allies literally ran out of gas.
There wasn’t gasoline for frontline troops, so everything shut down, came to a halt, and closed up.
[Winter 1944 — Patton’s warning instincts]
By December, most Allied generals thought the Nazis were all but defeated.
They were willing to wait out the gas crisis and winter weather while planning for a spring offensive.
But all the quiet worried Patton.
His instincts told him the Germans weren’t ready to give up yet.
[The Battle of the Bulge — Dec 16, 1944]
On December 16th, 1944, the Nazis proved Patton right.
Before the stunned Allies knew what hit them, the Germans punched a dangerous bow in Allied lines—a bulge—threatening to split the armies in two and storm across Belgium to Antwerp, a vital port in the supply chain.
Eisenhower had to make sure that didn’t happen.
At an emergency meeting on December 19th, he turned to Patton to get the job done.
Eisenhower asked how fast he could attack.
Patton said, “I can go in 48 hours with three divisions.”
People said it had to be impossible to reorient his entire effort.
The army was supposed to go east—now he’d turn it north.
Patton said he could.
He had it prearranged.
He made a phone call from Sedan to headquarters in Nancy: “Plan A” or “Plan B.” His chief of staff knew exactly what it meant.
Turning an army of 200,000 men 90 degrees requires expert handling of troops, equipment, supplies, and communications.
They moved 100 miles over icy roads around the clock, committed on a 20-mile front, and began to erase the bulge.
It was his personal leadership—he was out there leading.
[Bastogne — “Nuts” and the relief]
The battle for a little railroad town called Bastogne became a turning point in the war and in Patton’s growing legend.
Brigadier General Anthony C.
McAuliffe and the men of the 101st Airborne Division were surrounded.
When the Nazis called on McAuliffe to surrender, he gave them a one-word answer: “Nuts.”
Patton heard of this and said anybody with that much character deserved to be saved.
They broke open a narrow corridor to Bastogne soon after Christmas and relieved the force there—like cavalry riding to the rescue.
After erasing the bulge (through most of January), the American Army and their allies were ready to go again.
Things moved rapidly in February and March, culminating in a race across Germany in April.
The Germans surrendered on May 7th, 1945.
The war against the Nazis was over.
[Peace doesn’t suit Patton]
But peace in Europe failed to bring peace to George Patton.
“The great tragedy of my life was that I survived the last battle,” Patton wrote.
“Peace is going to be hell on me.”
For this American Achilles, there was never enough glory, never enough war.
This was his last war.
He tried to prolong it but wasn’t able to, and he lost control of himself.
He became openly anti-Semitic for a short time—one or two months after the war.
He almost provoked a fight with the Russians.
It was a case study in feeling he needed more worlds to conquer.
He wrote his wife: “It is hell to be old and poor and know it,” a couple months before the war was over, because he knew his moment on the stage was coming to an end.
[Final spotlight — Los Angeles, June 1945]
A trip home to Los Angeles in June 1945 gave Patton one last moment in the spotlight—one last chance to celebrate the glory of war and acknowledge its cost.
“Your honor, the mayor, soldiers, ladies and gentlemen… God forgive me, I love that sort of war.
I’m trying to bring back to you what these soldiers have given.
God damn it, it’s no fun to say to men that you love, ‘Go out and get killed.’ And we’ve had to say it.
And by God, they have gone, and they have won.
But I want you to remember that the sacrifice these men have made must not be in vain.”
[Reckoning]
By the end of World War II, he realized that sending so many thousands of people to die just for one man’s glory is unjustifiable, and that the only thing that made these deaths worthwhile was the cause itself.
[Death and legacy]
But after just six months of peace, Patton—who had longed to die in battle since he was a little boy—was mortally injured in an automobile accident in Germany.
Twelve days later, he would die in bed.
Toward the end he was heard to mutter, “I guess I wasn’t good enough.”
Few of the enemies who fought against him—or the men who served under him—would have agreed.
Patton’s death, although untimely, also made him a cult icon: the great warrior who was born for war and died because there were no more wars left to fight.
It’s tragic that he dies the way he does in 1945, but it also suspends in our imaginations Patton as the figure leading the Third Army and achieving victory—because that’s what we remember.
This was a man who was made for war, and he really did very, very well.
And I for one am certainly glad we had him on our side.
