George Patton

George Smith Patton, Jr. (San Gabriel, California; November 11, 1885-Heidelberg, Germany; December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army during the Second World War. In his 36-year career, he was one of the first to advocate for armored cars, commanding important units of them in North Africa, in the invasion of Sicily and in the European theater.

Although many have seen Patton as a pure and fierce warrior, which earned him the nickname General Blood and Guts ("our blood and <i "his guts," some soldiers said), history has left him with the image of a brilliant but lonely military leader punctuated by insubordination, transgressions and periods of certain emotional instability.

Family

The Pattons enjoyed a large family estate, making George Smith Patton, Jr. one of the richest military personnel in the United States. He descended from a long tradition of military men who fought and often died in many conflicts, including the Revolutionary War and, in particular, the Confederate side of the American Civil War (1861–1865). His paternal grandparents were Brigadier General George S. Patton (Fredericksburg, Virginia, June 26, 1833-Battle of Opequon—the Third Battle of Winchester—September 19, 1864) and Susan Thornton Glassell. The brigadier general served in the 22nd Rgt. of Virginia Infantry of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Patton was the son of George Smith Patton (Charleston, Virginia - now West Virginia - September 30, 1856 - Los Angeles, California, June 1927) and Ruth Wilson. His father was a child during the American Civil War. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1897 and later began a career as a prosecutor. He notably served as district attorney of the city of Pasadena, California, and was the first mayor of San Marino, California. He was strongly opposed to women's suffrage, and was a friend of John S. Mosby, cavalry hero of the Confederate States of America, who first served under J.E.B. Stuart and later as a member of a guerrilla. Apparently, it was his influence that made young Patton want to join the military.

Education

Patton studied for a year at the Virginia Military Institute, later moving to West Point, where he graduated in 1909.

Patton was an intelligent boy, who studied classical literature and military history with great intensity, but apparently suffered from an undiagnosed case of dyslexia, the consequences of which followed him throughout school. It took him a long time to learn to read and he never spelled correctly. Because of these difficulties, it took him five years to graduate from West Point, although he did manage to become an adjunct in the Corps of Cadets. While at West Point, Patton renewed his acquaintance with his childhood friend Beatrice Ayer, daughter of a prosperous textile industrialist. They married shortly after Patton's graduation.

After graduating from West Point, Patton participated in the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, representing the United States in the first modern pentathlon. Patton finished the event in fifth place. He was in the lead until the shooting competition, in which his second shot appeared to miss. Patton claimed that the second bullet had passed through the hole made by the first.

Beginning of his military career

During the Mexican border campaign of 1916, while serving with the 13th Cavalry Regiment in Texas, he accompanied then Brigadier General John J. Pershing as an adjutant during the punitive expedition into Mexican territory in pursuit of Pancho Villa. During this mission, Patton, accompanied by ten soldiers from the 6th Infantry Regiment, killed Captain Julio Cárdenas, commander of Villa's personal guard. Patton's success brought him some notoriety in the United States.

First World War

When the United States entered World War I, General Pershing promoted Patton to captain. While in France, Patton requested to be given command of a combat unit, and Pershing assigned him command of a unit of the newly created American Tank Corps. By organizing a training school for American tanks in Langres, France, Patton was twice promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and placed in command of the Tank Corps, which was part of the "American Expeditionary Force". He took part in the St. Mihiel offensive in September 1918 and was wounded by machine gun fire while helping a tank that was stuck in the mud. While Patton recovered from his wounds, hostilities ended.

The interwar period

While serving in Washington, D.C. in 1919, Patton met and became close friends with Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would play an enormous role in Patton's future military career. In the early 1920s, Patton petitioned Congress for appropriate funds for an armored force, but was unsuccessful. Patton wrote professional articles on tanks and armored vehicle tactics, suggesting new methods of using these weapons. He also continued to work on improving tanks, with innovations in radio communication and their bodies. Despite everything, and because of the little money invested in peacetime innovations, Patton eventually returned to the cavalry corps (still a horse-mounted force) to advance his career.

In July 1932, Patton served under General Douglas MacArthur, as a major, to disperse veterans protesting in Washington, D.C., known as the 'Bonus Army'. He is promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 1934, subsequently transferred to Hawaii in early 1935. For his service in the Meuse-Argonne operations, Patton received the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Service Cross, and was promoted to colonel in July 1938.

Patton served in Hawaii before returning to Washington to once again ask Congress for funding for armored units. In the late 1930s, he was assigned command of Fort Myer, Virginia. Shortly after the German blitzkrieg attacks in Europe, Patton was finally able to convince Congress of the need for armored divisions. Following its approval, in October 1940 Patton was promoted to brigadier general and appointed commander of the 2nd Armored Brigade. This brigade grew to become the 2nd Armored Division, he was named its commander and in April 1941 he was promoted to major general.

World War II

During the preparations of the US Army prior to its entry into World War II, Patton established the Training Center in the Indian Desert, California. He also commanded one of the two training armies in the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1941. Fort Benning, Georgia, is famous for the presence of General Patton.

North Africa Campaign

In 1942, Major General Patton commanded the US Army's I Armored Corps, which docked on the coast of Morocco during Operation Torch. Patton and the unit arrived in Morocco aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31), which was attacked by the French ship Jean Bart as it entered the port of Casablanca..

Following the defeat of the US Army by the German Afrika Korps at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943, Patton replaced Major General Lloyd Fredendall in command of the 2nd. United States Army Corps and was promoted to lieutenant general in March 1943. Despite being tough in training, he was generally considered a fair man and well-liked among his troops. The discipline paid off when, in March, the counteroffensive pushed the Germans eastward while the British Eighth Army, commanded by Bernard Montgomery, drove them back westward from Egypt, successfully driving the Germans out of North Africa. Patton never got along with Montgomery, whom he considered faint-hearted ('he tries to adapt reality to his plans, when what needs to be done is to adapt the plans to reality'), and a tough rivalry was established between them for fame and conquest on European stages.

The Italian campaign

As a result of his successes in North Africa, Patton was given command of the US VII Army which was preparing to invade Sicily in 1943. His task was to liberate the western part of the island while the VIII Army General Montgomery's British had to liberate the east.

Determined to prevent his rival Montgomery from taking glory, Patton quickly advanced into western Sicily, liberating Palermo and then taking it east to Messina, always ahead of Montgomery.

Patton's fiery speeches were his main enemies due to the relevance and consequences they generated in the war scenario. These speeches gave rise to great controversy when it was claimed that one of them inspired the Biscari massacre, in which American troops murdered sixty-six prisoners of war. Patton's military career was almost over in August 1943 if it had not been for the intervention of General Bradley, a friend of Patton, and his influence on his friend, Eisenhower. Patton also slapped soldiers suffering from combat fatigue, and when Patton's actions became public, many called for his resignation or expulsion from the military.

Patton was relieved of command of the Seventh Army just before operations in the Italian peninsula.

However, although Patton was temporarily relieved of his position, his prolonged stay in Sicily was interpreted by the Germans as indicative of an immediate invasion of southern France, and subsequently, his stay in Cairo was interpreted as the signal of a future invasion through the Balkans. The fear of General Patton helped keep many German troops busy, and would be a very important factor in the following months, thanks to him being used as a decoy by the Allies.

Normandy

In the period leading up to the Normandy landings, Patton gave numerous speeches as head of the fictitious First American Military Group (FUSAG), which supposedly intended to invade France through Calais. This was part of a sophisticated Allied military deception campaign, Operation Fortitude: FUSAG had empty barracks and tanks and inflatable cannons to deceive Luftwaffe observation planes and some broadcasters who broadcast false radio communications into the enemy captured them.

A month after the invasion of Normandy, Patton was placed in command of the United States Third Army, located west of the Allied ground forces. He led his army during Operation Cobra and moved south and east, helping to trap hundreds of thousands of German soldiers in the Chambois Pocket, near Falaise. Patton used Blitzkrieg tactics against the Germans themselves, covering 900 km in two weeks. Patton's forces liberated much of southern France and engulfed Paris, while French General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (Leclerc), against Patton and Eisenhower's advice, aided insurgents fighting in the inside the city, until finally freeing it.

Lorraine

However, Patton's offensive came to an abrupt halt on August 31, 1944, when his troops ran out of fuel outside Metz (according to Patton himself it was a conspiracy to favor Montgomery). The time needed to obtain the fuel was enough for the Germans to gain strength in the fortress of Metz. During the months of October and November, the Third Army was practically in a stalemate against the Germans, inflicting heavy casualties on each other. Despite everything, on November 23, Metz surrendered to the Americans, the first time a city had surrendered since the Franco-Prussian War.

Ardennes Offensive

At the end of 1944, the German army began a desperate offensive through Belgium, Luxembourg and northeastern France. The Ardennes Offensive was the last major offensive of the German army in World War II. On December 16, 1944, the Wehrmacht launched 29 divisions (in total about 250,000 men) into a weak point in the Allied lines and moved en masse towards the Meuse River during one of the worst winters in Europe in many years..

Without first consulting Eisenhower and the Allied High Command, Patton suddenly directed Third Army north (a considerable tactical and logistical success), vacating the front to relieve the surrounded and besieged 101st Airborne Division, trapped in Bastogne. For many historians this was Patton's most brilliant maneuver in the war, overcoming the logistical difficulties of turning the axis of advance of several entire Army Corps. It is worth mentioning the decoration that was imposed on Colonel James O'Neill, reverend of the unit, by Patton, from whom he was commissioned to write a prayer in which he asked God for at least 24 hours of atmospheric conditions conducive to the development of air support operations.

By February, German troops were again in retreat and Patton moved to the Saar Basin in Germany. On April 14, 1945, Patton was promoted to general, the promotion being championed by United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in recognition of his battle achievements during 1944. Patton, Bradley, and Eisenhower toured the Merkers Salt Mine, as well as the Ohrdruf concentration camp, seeing the conditions of the camp first-hand caused Patton great displeasure. The Third Army was ordered to march towards Bavaria and Czechoslovakia, anticipating a last battle with the German forces present there. He was reportedly horrified to see that the Red Army would take Berlin. Sensing the Soviet Union as a threat to the US Army, Patton advanced to Pilsen, but was stopped by Eisenhower, from reaching Prague before Victory Day on May 8, which marked the end of the war in Europe. Patton planned to take Prague, but the Allied command decided to stop the American advance. However, his troops liberated Pilsen (May 6, 1945) and most of western Bohemia, in what was one of Patton's last war actions.

During one of the celebrations following the victory with Russian officers, Patton made a fiery speech of a veiled anti-communist nature, which had as a consequence, if not directly, the beginning of the cold war with the Russians, his allies in World War II. Patton was quietly removed from the political scene.

After the German surrender

After the victory in Europe, Patton was disappointed by the Army's refusal to give him another combat command in the Pacific. Dissatisfied with his role as military governor of Bavaria and depressed by his conviction that he would never participate in war again, Patton's behavior became increasingly erratic.

Carlo D'Este, in Patton: A Genius for War, states that "it seems practically inevitable... that Patton would experience some type of brain damage after so many head injuries" by a life full of accidents involving horses or vehicles, especially one suffered while playing polo in 1936.

Whatever the cause, Patton again found himself in trouble with his superiors and the American public when, speaking to a group of reporters, he compared the Nazis to the losers of the American elections. Patton was soon relieved of command of the Third Army and transferred to the Fifteenth Army, a bureau unit that prepared a history of the war.

Patton would also go so far as to claim that the United States fought the wrong enemy in the war.

Sad and considering leaving the army, General Patton assumed the Fifteenth Army in October 1945. But on December 9, 1945, he suffered very serious injuries in a strange car accident. Gen. Patton was in a military Cadillac; a sturdy, green car with a white star on the door. He was heading to Bad Nauheim . From this point he planned to march to Mannheim with the purpose of carrying out a hunting party. After stopping at a level crossing, the car entered a two-way road. You can't say it was fast. At most, about 35 kilometers per hour. Perhaps that is why the driver was not worried when he observed that an Army truck was advancing towards them in the opposite direction. But bad fortune meant that, at the last moment, this considerable vehicle turned left and crashed squarely into the Cadillac. Many conjectures arose as a result of this strange accident. He died on December 21, 1945 in Heidelberg and was buried with honors in the American War Cemetery in Hamm, Luxembourg.

Patton was undoubtedly one of the great military geniuses of the United States, as well as one of the most controversial for his words. Mexican historian Paco Ignacio Taibo II (who has thoroughly researched Pancho Villa) has questioned Patton's image about his participation in the assassination of Mexican revolutionary Julio Cárdenas. Many of his sayings, especially against communism, conditioned unwanted actions and responses on the part of the Soviet Union. ^{[ citation needed ]}

Personality

He was a soldier considered a genius in tactics and was the Allied soldier that the Germans feared most; However, his strong personality combined with notorious empathetic blunders made him lose his goal of being considered the most admired soldier in the United States.

A hardened personality was forged in military rigor, charismatic, risky, willful and brave; His greatest enemy was his own emotional volatility and lack of tact in his interpersonal relationships.

Since he was a child he suffered from dyslexia which led him to develop his physical abilities instead of academic ones, he cultivated the construction of an ideal image of the American soldier forged in military rigor, he also cultivated his own ego, constantly seeking personal recognition, Developing bravery and courage, competitiveness and personal improvement, he came to be fifth in the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games in pentathlon and was also a very good pistol shooter and excelled in swimming.

Like many other members of his family, he had complex religious beliefs and often claimed to have had vivid visions of his ancestors. He was a firm believer in reincarnation, and much anecdotal evidence indicates that he believed he was the reincarnation of the skilled Carthaginian general Hannibal, or of a Roman legionnaire, a field commander of Napoleon, and other historical military figures.

During war actions, Patton tried to instill in his soldiers respect and worship of his figure out of fear and sought to make them idolize him permanently. He hated the cowardly soldier and was very accommodating to those who excelled in action.

Eisenhower, aware of Patton's strengths and weaknesses, placed at his side General Omar Bradley, whose serenity, poise, honesty and judgment, added to his tactical skills, should complement Patton's strengths; In the long run, it was Bradley who became his alter ego and went from subordinate to Patton's direct boss; However, a true bond of friendship and mutual respect was established between both soldiers with such diametrically opposed personalities. This point would be refuted by later biographers, who affirm that General Omar Bradley never accepted Patton willingly, as demonstrated by many testimonies from Third Army soldiers, who saw Bradley as someone haughty, contemptuous and distant.

Both generals never had a friendship. Proof of this is the film Patton, for which Omar Bradley was an advisor and in which General Patton is shown as a histrionic character, while Bradley himself shows himself with a totally unrealistic vision. than his own men had of him.

He hated jokes in bad taste, he lacked the sense of humor that stood out to Eisenhower and he was particularly biting, so when he risked saying something in a joking or ironic tone, the effect he achieved was the opposite, provoking antipathy.

Patton on certain occasions exhibited racist traits by dismissing the combat capabilities of the African-American soldiers under his command.

While visiting hospitals in Italy and praising wounded soldiers, he slapped and verbally humiliated soldiers Paul G. Bennet and Charles H. Kuhl, convinced they were exhibiting cowardly behavior. The soldiers suffered from various forms of combat fatigue and had no visible wounds (although one of them was later found to be suffering from dysentery). Because of this action, Patton was removed from the public opinion for some time and was secretly ordered to apologize to the soldiers.

Ironically, many modern psychiatrists who have examined these incidents claim that Patton himself may have suffered from combat fatigue. However, the soldiers, although they hated him for the strict application of military discipline, preferred to be under his command than under another, as they considered him their best option to get out of the war scenario alive. Once the war in Europe was over, he requested a transfer to the Pacific Front since he knew that his personality was exalted by the war scenario. His assignments in rather honorary positions caused him considerable discouragement.

Service history

Promotion dates

General Patton's promotion history:

	Second Lieutenant, Regular Army: June 11, 1909
	First Lieutenant of the Regular Army: May 23, 1916
	Captain, of the Regular Army: May 15, 1917
	United States National Guard Major: 26 January 1918
	Lieutenant Colonel of the United States National Guard: March 1934
	Colonel of the United States National Guard: July 1938
	Brigadier General of the United States Army: 2 October 1940
	General, United States Army: 4 April 1941
	Lieutenant-General, United States Army: 12 March 1943
	United States Army General: 14 April 1945

Awards and decorations

At the time of General Patton's death, he was authorized to wear the following awards and decorations:

Decorations of the United States

	Cross by Distinguished Service
	Army Distinguished Service Medal
	Silver Star
	Legion to the Merit
	Bronze Star
	Purple Heart
	Silver Medal for Saving Lives
	Medal to the Mexican Service
	Medal of Victory in World War I with five campaign stars
	Medal to the U.S. Defense Service
	American Campaign Medal
	Medal of the European-African-Medium East Campaign
	Medal of Victoria Second World War
	In 1955, the U.S. Army posthumously decoded General Patton with the Occupation Army Medal for his service as the first occupation commander in Bavaria.

Foreign decorations

	Commander of the Order of the British Empire
	Companion of the Order of the Bath
	Belgian Order of Leopoldo
	Belgian War Cross
	Leader of the Legion of Honor
	French War Cross
	Luxembourg War Cross
	Grand Cross of Luxembourg of the Order of Adolf of Nassau
	Grand Cross of Ouissam Alauite of French Morocco
	Order of the White Lion of Czechoslovakia
	Cross of the Czechoslovakia War (1939 - 1945)