Could Patton Have Prevented the Cold War?

 

Better to fight for something than live for nothing.

General George S. Patton

It has been 79 years since the end of WW II and the strange, mysterious death of General George S. Patton, but as in life, Patton continues to set off a storm of controversy. Robert Orlando's book The Tragedy of A Soldier's Date With Destiny, published in 2020, asks a lingering question whose answer has eluded history: Was General Patton silenced during his service in World War II?

Prevented from receiving needed supplies that would have ended the war nine months earlier, freed the death camps, prevented Russian invasion of the Eastern Bloc, and Stalin's murderous rampage, why was he fired as General of the Third Army and relegated to a desk job – the governorship of post-war Bavaria? Who were his enemies? Was he a threat to Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley? And is it possible as some say that the General's freakish collision with an Army truck, on the day before his departure for the U.S., was not really an accident? Or was Patton not only dismissed by his peers, but the victim of an assassin's bullet at their behest? Was his personal silence necessary?

General George S. Patton was America's antihero of the Second World War. Robert Orlando explores whether a man of such a flawed character could have been right about his claim that because the Allied troops, some within 200 miles of Berlin, or just outside Prague, were held back from capturing the capitals to allow time for the Soviet troops to move in, making the Cold War was inevitable.

Patton said it loudly and often enough that he was relieved of command and silenced. Patton had vowed to “take the gag off” after the war and tell the intimate truth and inner workings about controversial decisions and questionable politics that had cost the lives of his men.

Was General Patton volatile, bombastic, self-absorbed, reckless? Yes, but he was also politically astute and a brilliant military strategist who delivered badly needed wins. Questions still abound about Patton’s rise and fall. The Tragedy of Patton seeks to answer them.

Instead of halting the American advance and playing nice with Russia at the end of World War II, Patton wanted to stave off future threats. That’s why the American general was poised to have U.S. troops move in and occupy Berlin, Prague, and other parts of Eastern Europe. So why didn’t the allied leadership allow Patton to have his way? And, why was Patton effectively silenced before he could address the American people?

Although he was vilified in his time, it should be evident that Patton was prescient in his warnings about the Soviet Union and strategically forward looking.

“Patton could be daring and highly imaginative on the battlefield, but he lacked the tact and diplomatic grace of his contemporaries and this had some real political consequences,” claims Orlando. “But Patton was also the kind of general the allies needed to get the rough work done on the ground. He was outspoken about the conduct of the war and eager to identity the Soviet Union as the next great threat to American democracy. Only a few years after his very suspicious death, Patton’s strategy and vision were vindicated.”

Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Nearly 80 years after the untimely death of U.S. General George S. Patton, suspicions linger as to the nature and circumstances surrounding the demise of this formidable military genius. On a war-torn, two-lane highway in Mannheim, Germany, Patton's car was struck on December 21, 1945 by a two-ton Army truck less than six months after the end of WWII hostilities in Europe. The accident left Patton clinging to life in a Heidelberg hospital during a crucial period when the Allies were attempting to transition from the ravages of war to a sustained peace in Germany. Within three weeks, Patton would lose his final battle, and the fate of post-war Germany would be sealed for several decades.

At the time of his death, Patton had been relegated to a desk job, overseeing the collection of Army records in Bavaria. That he had been an outspoken critic of Stalin and a vocal proponent of liberating Berlin and the German people from certain communist aggression triggered his sudden removal from the battlefield. In the aftermath of war, the Western powers sought to sideline the mercurial Patton and his incendiary views. But Patton despised the politically driven circus and the media minions that carried out their dirty work. Still, he continued to speak out against the Russians as an American witness to their brutality during and after the war. As Stalin devoured Eastern Europe, Patton remarked, "I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them... the Russian has no regard for human life and they are all out sons-of-bitches, barbarians, and chronic drunks."

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war

by dying for his country. He won it

by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

In early May 1945, as the Allies shut down the Nazi war machine, Patton stood with his massive 3rd Army on the outskirts of Prague in a potential face off with the Red Army. He pleaded for General Eisenhower's green light to advance and capture the city for the Allies, which also would have meant containment of the Russians. British Prime Minister Churchill also thought the move a crucial and beneficial one for post-war Europe and insisted upon it, but to no avail. Eisenhower denied Patton's request, and the Russians took the region, which would pay dearly for years to come. Earlier that year, at the February conference in Yalta, President Roosevelt, with Churchill at his side, extended the hand of friendship to "Uncle Joe" Stalin and signed his Faustian pact. In so doing, the destiny of millions was reduced to mass starvation, blood revenge, and distant gulags. At the time, Patton understood the tragedy of this event and wrote, "We promised the Europeans freedom. It would be worse than dishonorable not to see that they have it. This might mean war with the Russians, but what of it?"
Berlin also was given to Stalin's Army as red meat to feed the dictator's appetite for killing Germans. To some, including Patton, this was an unnecessary and devastating concession. In late April 1945, Patton claimed he could take Berlin in just "two days," an assessment shared by the commander of the 9th Army, General William H. Simpson. As with Prague, Patton's request to secure Berlin was denied. Sadly, after Patton finally reached the ravaged city, he wrote his wife on July 21, 1945, "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."
Conventional wisdom holds that Eisenhower's choice not to capture the eastern capital cities was sober decision-making or that he was bound by the Yalta agreements, though he originally planned for Berlin and Prague. Many would argue that in the spring of 1945 the U.S. was fatigued with war and its military was in no condition to fight World War III. The Americans also needed the Russians to join the fight in the Pacific war, though the Russians never fulfilled that promise. Yet, the "what ifs" of history echo in Patton's words:

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.

Moreover, Patton's notion of meeting the enemy "now, rather than later" in retrospect seems not the mere wiles of a warmonger unable to embrace peacetime, but rather a worthy and prudent strategy of a seasoned tactician, even if a gamble. Stalin's own records prove that he told his leaders to "play down" the Berlin invasion, aware that it was Europe's crown jewel. Eisenhower, for all his discernment and skill at war management, did not see the Russians coming as did Patton and Churchill, who both recognized the wisdom of stopping Stalin in his tracks and perhaps offering Eastern Europe a chance at liberation.

Stalin had promised to liberate the capitals of Eastern Europe -- Berlin, Prague, and Vienna -- as well as Eastern Poland and the Baltic states. In his public broadcast dating back to November 1943 he promised: “The day is not far off when we will completely liberate the Ukraine, and the White Russia, Leningrad and Kalinin regions from the enemy; we will liberate... the people of the Crimea and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia and Karelo-Finnish Republic.”

Instead, history proves that Stalin was responsible for the murder and/or starvation of some 40 million Russians and Ukrainians during his reign of terror.
In light of the Red Army's 20th century rampage, with unprecedented carnage and devastation and arguably the darkest time in Western history, was Patton not the sober warrior speaking truth to a political expediency or human fatigue? Was he not correct about Russian post-war intentions? Would not his attempt to push back his future foes and prevent further genocide have been worth the risk of another battle to secure the eastern capitals? We know the answer now, but Patton knew the answer then.
By the end of the war Patton was defeated. As Eisenhower prepared for the political stage, every misspoken or emotionally charged word uttered by his greatest fighting general threatened to undermine Eisenhower's credibility and authority, as well as the progress of a post-war order. Patton's outspoken and unsolicited opinions, coupled with his unwillingness to punish all German citizens during the de-Nazification period, caused Eisenhower to sideline the general. Patton believed in the righteous cause of the military and revealed his plans to fight those who were destroying its morale and who endangered America's future by not opposing the growing Soviet threat. As a result, he was silenced. He would later say, "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..."

Never short on words or the courage to deliver them, one wonders what secrets Patton might have revealed to the world had he not met a premature end. His diaries are littered with criticisms of Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley, and at times he found fault with how the war was executed at what he believed was at the expense of American GIs. Were these convictions enough of a threat to put his own life in danger with his peers? Is it plausible that the Russians, weary of his anti-Soviet rhetoric, might have employed the NKVD for the ultimate dirty job?

In light of those who opposed Patton - enemies and allies alike - is it any wonder why near 80 years later many still would question his untimely death?
Even today, his silence can be heard.

by Robert Orlando at huffpost.com on June 24, 2014, updated December 6, 2017