General Patton reunited with his family George S. Patton III, General George S. Patton Jr., and his wife Beatrice Patton, Ruth Ellen Patton, Beatrice Smith Patton, Boston, Massachusetts, 1945.
War As I Knew It: The Battle Memoirs of "Blood 'N Guts"
(From the invasion of Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge,...)
From the invasion of Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge, General George S. Patton, Jr., was the most flamboyant, audacious Allied leader of World War II. Brandishing his famous pearl-handled pistols and driven by a profound belief that wars are won by killing the enemy as fast as possible, Patton slammed the tanks and men of the Third Army across Europe at a breakneck pace. He battled not only the enemy but Supreme Headquarters; he complained SHAEF was doing all it could to deny him early victory. Now in these fascinating and frank memoirs, Patton speaks out with intense personal feelings about the Second World War, the art of war, and the soldier’s life. He gives us an unforgettable self-portrait of an American professional soldier caught in the toils of war.
George Smith Patton, Jr. was a general in the United States Army best known for his command of the Seventh United States Army, and later the Third United States Army, in the European Theater of World War II.
Background
George Smith Patton Jr. was born on November 11, 1885, in San Gabriel, California, to George Smith Patton Sr. and his wife Ruth Wilson. Patton had a younger sister, Anne, who was nicknamed "Nita."
The Patton family was of Irish, Scots-Irish, English, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry. His great-grandmother came from an aristocratic Welsh family, descended from many Welsh lords of Glamorgan, which had an extensive military background. Patton believed he had former lives as a soldier and took pride in mystical ties with his ancestors. Though not directly descended from George Washington, Patton traced some of his English colonial roots to George Washington's great-grandfather. He was also descended from England's King Edward I through Edward's son Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent. Family belief held the Pattons were descended from sixteen barons who had signed the Magna Carta. Patton believed in reincarnation, and his ancestry was very important to him, forming a central part of his personal identity. The first Patton in America was Robert Patton, born in Ayr, Scotland. He emigrated to Culpeper, Virginia, from Glasgow, in either 1769 or 1770. His paternal grandfather was George Smith Patton, who commanded the 22nd Virginia Infantry under Jubal Early in the Civil War and was killed in the Third Battle of Winchester, while his great-uncle Waller T. Patton was killed in Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg. Patton also descended from Hugh Mercer, who had been killed in the Battle of Princeton during the American Revolution. Patton's father, who graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), became a lawyer and later the district attorney of Los Angeles County. Patton's maternal grandfather was Benjamin Davis Wilson, a merchant who had been the second Mayor of Los Angeles. His father was a wealthy rancher and lawyer who owned a thousand-acre ranch near Pasadena, California. Patton is also a descendant of French Huguenot Louis DuBois.
Education
As a child, Patton had difficulty learning to read and write, but eventually overcame this and was known in his adult life to be an avid reader. He was tutored from home until the age of eleven, when he was enrolled in Stephen Clark's School for Boys, a private school in Pasadena, for six years. Patton was described as an intelligent boy and was widely read on classical military history, particularly the exploits of Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as those of family friend John Singleton Mosby, who frequently stopped by the Patton family home when George S. Patton was a child. He was also a devoted horseback rider.
Patton never seriously considered a career other than the military. At the age of seventeen he sought an appointment to the United States Military Academy. Patton applied to several universities with Reserve Officer's Training Corps programs. Patton was accepted to Princeton College but eventually decided on Virginia Military Institute (VMI), which his father and grandfather had attended. He attended the school from 1903 to 1904 and, though he struggled with reading and writing, performed exceptionally in uniform and appearance inspection as well as military drill. While Patton was at VMI, a senator from California nominated him for West Point He was an initiate of the Beta Commission of Kappa Alpha Order.
In his plebe (first) year at West Point, Patton adjusted easily to the routine. However, his academic performance was so poor that he was forced to repeat his first year after failing mathematics. Patton excelled at military drills though his academic performance remained average. He was cadet sergeant major during his junior year, and the cadet adjutant his senior year. He also joined the football team, but he injured his arm and stopped playing on several occasions.
Patton was ranked #46 out of 103 cadets at West Point, and he graduated on June 11, 1909, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Cavalry Branch of the United States Army.
In 1912 Patton was selected to represent the United States at the Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. There he competed against military officers from around the world in the modern pentathlon, an event that included swimming, pistol shooting, running, fencing, and riding. Patton made a respectable showing, coming in fifth out of 42 contestants. He had learned fencing at West Point and continued his study of swordsmanship while in Europe. Later - while attending the Mounted Service School in Fort Riley, Kansas - Patton was designated an instructor of swordsmanship and received the title Master of the Sword. In that role he designed the U.S. Model 1913 Enlisted Cavalry Saber, known as the “Patton Sword.” Patton also loved polo, and he played it, like he pursued so many things, with a violent, reckless abandon, frequently injuring himself in the process. Biographer Martin Blumenson has suggested that his frequent head injuries may have contributed to the erratic behaviour attributed to him in his later years.
Patton saw his first combat soon after leaving Fort Riley. When Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa led an attack on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, Patton joined the staff of Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing and accompanied him on a punitive expedition into Mexico. Though the mission failed to apprehend Villa, Patton was responsible for leading a raid that killed three of Villa’s men. The attack garnered much publicity and was notable for being the first time that automobiles had been used in combat by the U.S. Army.
When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Pershing was made the commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), and Patton, promoted to captain, joined him in France. In November 1917, Patton, now a major, left Pershing’s headquarters staff and became the first officer to be appointed to the new U.S. Army Tank Corps. Over the next months he organized, trained, and even designed the uniforms for the new tank units; he was also promoted to lieutenant colonel. On September 12, 1918, Patton, ignoring orders to stay in radio contact, personally led the first U.S. tank units into battle during the Saint-Mihiel offensive. In the Meuse-Argonne offensive a few weeks later, Patton was badly wounded by a machine-gun bullet. He lay in a shell hole for hours before it was safe to evacuate him, but he refused to be taken to the hospital until he had reported to his commander. He was promoted to the temporary rank of colonel and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery under fire.
During the demobilization that followed World War I, Patton reverted to the permanent rank of captain. He graduated with distinction from the Army War College in 1932, and he remained a vigorous proponent of tank warfare throughout the interwar years. He was promoted to colonel in 1938 and temporary brigadier general in 1940. On April 4, 1941, he was promoted to temporary major general, and a week later he was made commander of the 2nd Armored Division. Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), Patton organized the Desert Training Center near Indio, California, to simulate combat and maneuvers in the harsh North African climate. Patton was commanding general of the western task force during the successful U.S. landings at Casablanca in November 1942. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant general in March 1943 and led the U.S. Seventh Army into Sicily, employing his armour in a rapid drive that captured Palermo in July and Messina in August.
The apogee of Patton’s career came with the dramatic sweep of his Third Army across northern France in the summer of 1944 in a campaign marked by great initiative, ruthless drive, and disregard of classic military rules. Prior to the Normandy Invasion, he was publicly placed in command of the First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG), a fictitious army whose supposed marshaling in eastern England helped to deceive German commanders into thinking that the invasion would take place in the Pas-de-Calais region of France. Patton’s armoured units were not operational until August 1, almost two months after D-Day, but by the end of the month, they had captured Mayenne, Laval, Le Mans, Reims, and Châlons.
As German resistance in Normandy began to collapse, a pocket formed between advancing British and American forces that threatened to trap two German armies at Falaise. Patton desperately wanted to complete an encirclement of the Germans, but his commander, Gen. Omar Bradley, feared that such an attack would leave Patton’s flanks weak and exposed to counterattack. By the time the gap between Falaise and Argentan was closed on August 20, some 20,000 - 40,000 Germans had escaped. As the Third Army approached the German border, the advance was slowed because of supply shortages, but it was not stopped until it met the strong German defenses at Nancy and Metz in November.
In December 1944 the Germans launched a massive surprise counterattack in the Ardennes Forest, encircling the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, Belgium. Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Third Army to relieve Bastogne, and Patton repositioned his force with astonishing speed. Such a feat was made possible in large part by Patton’s intelligence officer, Col. Oscar Koch, who had predicted the German offensive on the basis of a shrewd analysis of enemy troop strength and disposition. Advance elements of the Third Army reached Bastogne’s tenacious defenders on December 26, and additional reinforcements followed over subsequent days. Patton’s forces continued to push the Germans back, and by the end of January 1945, the Third Army had reached the German frontier. On March 1 those forces took Trier, precipitating one of the most famous exchanges of the war. When Patton received a message instructing him to bypass the city because it would take four divisions to capture it, Patton replied, “Have taken Trier with two divisions. Do you want me to give it back?” Over the next 10 days, they cleared the entire region north of the Moselle River, trapping thousands of Germans. They then joined the Seventh Army in sweeping the Saar and the Palatinate, where they took 100,000 prisoners.
Patton had wanted to push on to Berlin, but Eisenhower rejected the idea, deeming the cost too high for a city already allotted to the Soviets by the terms of the Yalta agreement. Patton’s supporters claim that the Cold War may have unfolded differently had the West taken the capital, but this largely ignores the military situation on the ground in eastern Europe. By V-E Day (May 8, 1945), Patton’s Third Army had fought for nine months since becoming operational, capturing more than 80,000 square miles (more than 200,000 square km) of territory. During that time the Third Army suffered roughly 137,000 casualties, but it had inflicted more than 10 times that on the enemy.
After the German surrender, Patton campaigned vigorously for a command in the Pacific theatre in the ongoing war against Japan. This failed to materialize, and he was instead made the military governor of Bavaria, a political position for which he was ill-suited by training and temperament. His public criticisms of the Allied postwar denazification policy in Germany, coupled with ill-advised comments to the press, led to his removal from the command of the Third Army in October 1945. Patton’s final command was to head the Fifteenth U.S. Army in Bad Nauheim, Germany, where he oversaw the writing of a history of the war in Europe, a role Patton described as serving as an “undertaker at my own funeral.” On December 9, 1945, Patton sustained serious injuries to his head and spine in a low-speed car accident; after 12 days of terrible pain, he died. A number of books and films have advanced conspiracy theories suggesting that the outspoken Patton was actually assassinated on orders from either Washington or Moscow. However, such accusations tend to rely on circumstantial evidence, and no definitive proof of any conspiracy has emerged.
Patton’s memoirs, War as I Knew It, appeared posthumously in 1947. Patton (1970), a film biography directed by Franklin Schaffner and starring George C. Scott in the title role, won seven Academy Awards, including one for best picture.
(From the invasion of Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge,...)
1947
Religion
George Patton was a devout Episcopalian who prayed morning and night.
Politics
Patton attracted controversy as military governor when it was noted that several former Nazi Party members continued to hold political posts in occupied region. When responding to the press about the subject, Patton repeatedly compared Nazis to Democrats and Republicans in noting that most of the people with experience in infrastructure management had been compelled to join the party in the war, causing negative press stateside and angering Eisenhower.
Views
Patton was a staunch fatalist, and he believed in reincarnation. He believed that he might have been a military leader killed in action in Napoleon's army in a previous life, or a Roman legionary.
Patton's views on race were complicated and often negative. This may have resulted from his privileged upbringing and family roots in the southern United States. Privately he wrote of black soldiers: "Individually they were good soldiers, but I expressed my belief at the time, and have never found the necessity of changing it, that a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor." He also stated that performance was more important than race or religious affiliation: "I don't give a damn who the man is. He can be a Nigger or a Jew, but if he has the stuff and does his duty, he can have anything I've got. By God! I love him."
After reading the Koran and observing North Africans, he wrote to his wife, "Just finished reading the Koran – a good book and interesting." Patton had a keen eye for native customs and methods and wrote knowingly of local architecture; he once rated the progress of word-of-mouth rumor in Arab country at 40–60 miles (64–97 km) a day. In spite of his regard for the Koran, he concluded, "To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammad and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab ... Here, I think, is a text for some eloquent sermon on the virtues of Christianity."
Patton was impressed with the Soviet Union but was disdainful of Russians as "drunks" with "no regard for human life". Later in life he also began to express growing feelings of antisemitism and anticommunism, as a result of his frequent controversies in the press.
Quotations:
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't."
"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory."
"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
"It is a popular idea that a man is a hero just because he was killed in action. Rather, I think, a man is frequently a fool when he gets killed."
"Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then sonofabitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don't agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I'll be cutting the bastard's throat."
"Few men are killed by bayonets, but many are scared by them. Having the bayonet fixed makes our men want to close. Only the threat to close will defeat a determined enemy."
"A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood."
"Sometimes I think your life and mine are under the protection of some supreme being or fate, because, after many years of parallel thought, we find ourselves in the positions we now occupy."
"The publicity I have been getting, a good deal of which is untrue, and the rest of it ill considered, has done me more harm than good."
"We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way."
"There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent."
"There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying."
"A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later."
"Always do everything you ask of those you command."
"Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory."
"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."
"It is the cold glitter of the attacker's eye not the point of the questing bayonet that breaks the line."
Personality
Historians generally agree that Patton was not only one of the greatest military leaders that the United States has ever produced but also one of the most complex and contradictory. Patton believed that it was critical for a general to stand out and to be seen by his troops, a philosophy that conveniently coincided with his ego. He dressed impeccably in a colourful uniform and knee-high boots, sporting ivory-handled pistols.
As a leader, Patton was known to be highly critical, correcting subordinates mercilessly for the slightest infractions, but also being quick to praise their accomplishments. Although he garnered a reputation as a general who was both impatient and impulsive and had little tolerance for officers who had failed to succeed, he fired only one general during World War II, Orlando Ward, and only after two warnings, whereas Bradley sacked several generals during the war. Patton reportedly had the utmost respect for the men serving in his command, particularly the wounded. Many of his directives showed special trouble to care for the enlisted men under his command, and he was well known for arranging extra supplies for battlefield soldiers, including blankets and extra socks, galoshes, and other items normally in short supply at the front.
Patton developed an ability to deliver charismatic speeches. He used profanity heavily in his speech, which generally was enjoyed by troops under his command, but it offended other generals, including Bradley. The most famous of his speeches were a series he delivered to the Third Army prior to Operation Overlord. When speaking, he was known for his bluntness and witticism; he once said, "The two most dangerous weapons the Germans have are our own armored halftrack and jeep. The halftrack because the boys in it go all heroic, thinking they are in a tank. The jeep because we have so many God-awful drivers." During the Battle of the Bulge, he famously remarked that the Allies should "let the sons-of-bitches [Germans] go all the way to Paris, then we'll cut them off and round them up." He also suggested facetiously that his Third Army could "drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk."
Quotes from others about the person
Alan Axelrod (historian): "For Patton, leadership was never simply about making plans and giving orders, it was about transforming oneself into a symbol."
Albert Kesselring: "Patton had developed tank warfare into an art, and understood how to handle tanks brilliantly in the field. I feel compelled, therefore, to compare him with Generalfeldmarschall Rommel, who likewise had mastered the art of tank warfare. Both of them had a kind of second sight in regard to this type of warfare."
Eisenhower: "George Patton was the most brilliant commander of an Army in the open field that our or any other service produced. But his army was part of a whole organization and his operations part of a great campaign."
Alan Brooke: "I had heard of him, but I must confess that his swashbuckling personality exceeded my expectation. I did not form any high opinion of him, nor had I any reason to alter this view at any later date. A dashing, courageous, wild, and unbalanced leader, good for operations requiring thrust and push, but at a loss in any operation requiring skill and judgment.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
running, swimming, fencing, riding, shooting
Connections
Patton married Beatrice Banning Ayer, the daughter of Boston industrialist Frederick Ayer, on May 26, 1910, in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. They had three children, Beatrice Smith (born March 1911), Ruth Ellen (born February 1915), and George Patton IV (born December 1923).