Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General

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GERMAN FRONT LINES

DECEMBER 16, 1944

5:29 A.M.

Sunrise is still two hours away. The morning sky is completely black, without even moon or starlight. German artillery crews stand at their guns, making happy small talk and stomping their feet to keep warm. Their cheeks sting from the record December cold. They have been awake for hours, waiting for this moment. Someday they will tell their grandchildren about the great instant when Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine) commenced, and how they were among the lucky gunners who fired the first rounds into the American lines, turning the tide of war in favor of the Fatherland, once and for all. They will regale their descendants about the brilliant deception that allowed a quarter million men, more than seven hundred tanks, and thousands of huge artillery pieces to remain camouflaged in the Ardennes Forest for weeks. And these young soldiers will talk about the glory of the surprise attack that split the American and British armies, and then the relentless push to reclaim the strategically vital port city of Antwerp. Next, Adolf Hitler successfully sued for peace with the west, thereby preserving the Third Reich and preventing an Allied invasion of the German homeland. With the Americans and British neutralized, Hitler activated step two of Operation Watch on the Rhine and launched his legendary second attack against Stalin and Russia that defeated the Communists.

That is the story they hope to tell.



But all that is in the future. Right now these young Germans are eager, awaiting the command to rain down hellfire on their enemies.

At 5:30 a.m. that order is delivered. Up and down the eighty-mile German front lines, some sixteen hundred pieces of field artillery open fire. The silent forest explodes, and muzzle blasts light the sky as the furnaces of hell are thrown open. “Screaming Meemie” rockets screech into the darkness, a deadly sound that American soldiers everywhere find unnerving. And big 88 mm guns fire their fifteen-inch-long shells at targets almost ten miles away, hitting U.S. positions before they even know they’re being fired upon. Every German soldier within a hundred yards is rendered temporarily deaf from the noise. Hand gestures replace the spoken word.

SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny has never once fired an artillery piece, but he has waited for this moment just as eagerly as those men manning the big guns. His life has been a whirlwind of activity since his meeting with the Führer less than two months ago. For his special role in Operation Greif, as the offensive is known, he has scoured the ranks of the German military for men who speak English. He has outfitted these men in American uniforms, and acquired American tanks, trucks, and jeeps to help them travel effortlessly behind U.S. lines. Their ultimate goal is to make their way through this rugged, snow-covered terrain as quickly as possible to capture three vital bridges over the Meuse River. But their more immediate task is to sow seeds of confusion throughout the American lines. They will spread rumors and misinformation, tear down road signs, and do everything in their power to mislead the Americans as the German army pours into the Ardennes Forest.

The problem facing Skorzeny is that the Americans know all about Operation Greif. Shortly after his Wolf’s Lair meeting with Hitler, some idiot in the Wehrmacht high command circulated a notice up and down the Western Front: “Secret Commando Operations,” the directive stated in bold letters at the top of the page. “The Führer has ordered the formation of a special unit of approximately two battalion strength for commando operations.” It went on to ask all English-speaking soldiers, sailors, and pilots who wished to volunteer to report to Skorzeny’s training center in Friedenthal.

An irate Skorzeny went directly to Hitler to have the notice withdrawn, but the damage had already been done. As Skorzeny knew it would, the paper fell into Allied hands. It was the sort of intelligence coup that G-2s such as Oscar Koch live for. And while Skorzeny insisted that Operation Greif be canceled for this blunder, the Führer personally requested that it proceed. Skorzeny reluctantly complied. In the weeks of training that followed, his men were sequestered in a special camp, set apart from other German soldiers. To brush up on their English, they conversed with captured U.S. soldiers and pilots in prisoner-of-war camps. They learned to chew gum like Americans, how to swear, and casually banter using American slang. One German soldier who made the mistake of writing home about his whereabouts was immediately shot.

The sound of the 75 mm guns thundering up and down the lines signals that the time has come for Operation Greif to begin. It is a moment that fills Skorzeny with equal parts euphoria and dread.

The legendary commando is known for his ruthlessness, which is just one reason the Allies have named him the most dangerous man in the German army. But he is also extremely loyal, and fond of his men. As Operation Greif commences, he fusses over them, quietly worrying about their fate. Every mission has peril, but this one is especially dangerous, as all the men in Skorzeny’s elite commando unit know.

If captured by the Americans, they will not be treated as prisoners of war, as regular German soldiers would be.

By disguising themselves as Americans, Skorzeny’s men of Panzergruppe 150 are deliberately violating the Geneva Convention. If captured in German uniforms, they could expect to spend the rest of the war in U.S. captivity, but at least they would live.

But Skorzeny’s soldiers will be wearing U.S. uniforms, and therefore will be classified as spies. The punishment for being captured while wearing an enemy uniform is death by firing squad.

Skorzeny gives the order to move out.

* * *

Confusion reigns. The narrow, muddy roads leading from Germany into the Ardennes are now clogged with German tanks, trucks, horse-drawn carts, and halftracks as thirty German divisions flood toward the American lines. The front extends north to south through three countries, meaning that Wehrmacht forces are now on the attack in Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Their movement was supposed to be lightning quick. But with the roads too narrow to handle all the German vehicles, the biggest surprise attack of the war has become an enormous traffic jam.

Still, Hitler’s gamble is achieving some success. The American army has been caught off guard. Even as German infantry creep through the forest in their winter-white uniforms, the highest levels of Allied leadership still believe that Germany is incapable of launching a major offensive. Some dismiss this as a “spoiling attack”—a diversion that weakens the American lines by forcing them to shift men and supplies from some other location. Convinced that an attack through such wooded and mountainous terrain is impossible, Dwight Eisenhower considers the Ardennes to be a place of rest and sanctuary for weary American troops. “Of the many pathways that lead to France, the least penetrable is through the Ardennes,” notes Gen. Omar Bradley, the commander in charge of the American front lines. “For there the roads are much too scarce, the hills too wooded, and the valleys too limited for maneuver.”

Bradley is George Patton’s immediate superior, in command of the U.S. Twelfth Army group, which stands poised to invade Germany. Only Dwight Eisenhower has more power among American forces in Europe.

Yet before Patton’s troubles with his temper on the island of Sicily one year ago, Bradley was his subordinate. Patton now reports to Bradley. Even worse, Eisenhower has chosen Omar Bradley for several important assignments that before might have come Patton’s way. In particular, it was Bradley who was chosen to lead U.S. ground forces in the D-day invasion back in June. Meanwhile, Patton and the Third Army languished in England, not allowed to join the greatest ground force in history until two long months later.

Ike’s message to others was clear: Omar Bradley is predictable, easily controlled, and safe. Patton, as audacious and tactically brilliant as he might be, is too unpredictable to be given command of all American ground forces.

Yet Eisenhower’s pick quickly proved costly. Bradley’s decision to halt Patton’s troops instead of allowing them to attack prevented the encirclement of fifty thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and SS troops in mid-August. The Germans took heavy losses, but many more quickly escaped through what was called the Falaise Pocket. If Patton had had his way, his tanks would have slipped the noose around those trapped German troops, taking thousands of their best soldiers prisoner and seriously damaging the Wehrmacht’s ability to wage war. “We’re about to destroy an entire hostile army,” Bradley noted of the opportunity. “We’ll go all the way from here to the German border.”



General Omar Bradley (center) with General George Patton (left) and General Bernard Law Montgomery (right)

But in the end Bradley grew timid. He ordered Patton’s tanks to halt at the town of Argentan, leaving a gap between the American and Canadian units that would have encircled the Germans—a gap through which the Germans soon escaped.

Patton knew Bradley was wrong but had no choice but to obey orders. On August 16, Patton wrote in his diary that Bradley’s blunder was “of historical importance.” Those same German units that Patton nearly captured lived to fight another day. Many of those men are arrayed against the Allied forces on the German border at this very minute. Now, even as Bradley reassures himself that the German offensive in Ardennes is nothing more than a spoiling attack, many of those same Wehrmacht and SS fighters—among them a clever young SS tank commander named Joachim Peiper—are heading toward the American lines.

Nevertheless, Bradley, who graduated alongside Eisenhower in West Point’s class of 1915,1 and who commands the million men of the Twelfth Army Group, does not see the threat. In fact, he has allowed his troops to relax.

Meantime, Patton and his intelligence officers are anxious, well understanding that there is danger in the Ardennes. But again Patton can do nothing. And it is his own fault.

* * *

Even as the furor over his Sicily slapping incidents was dying down, George Patton made a second great public relations blunder, on April 25, 1944. It happened in Knutsford, England, while he was speaking to a group comprised largely of British women. The occasion was the low-key opening of a “Welcome Club” for American soldiers, which would allow troops a place to unwind and meet their British hosts in a comfortable setting. Though Patton at first declined to attend, his headquarters was nearby, and he finally consented to drive over and say a few words. Yet his trepidation about the event was so great that he ordered his driver to arrive fifteen minutes late, hoping that the conference would already be over.

But the women of Knutsford were waiting for him.

Patton’s remarks were supposed to be brief, just a few paragraphs. After citing George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote that “the British and Americans are two people separated by a common language,” Patton reassured the ladies that the Americans and British would rule a postwar world. The women were thrilled, not understanding that Patton had slighted the Russians.

At the time, Patton was supposed to be keeping a low profile so that the Germans would be unclear of his whereabouts before the D-day invasion. So there was just a handful of reporters present that warm spring day in Knutsford, and the few photographers on hand swore not to publish their pictures of Patton. Yet the general’s comments somehow got leaked. His well-intentioned words made headlines around the world.

Stalin and the Russians were infuriated.

Patton had done it again. “This last incident was so trivial in nature,” a distraught Patton wrote in his journal, “but so terrible in its effect.”

As with the slapping incidents, there were public demands that Patton be fired. Controversy, it seemed, followed him everywhere.

Eisenhower elevated the agony by waiting almost a week to discuss the controversy and Patton’s future. The meeting would take place at Ike’s headquarters. The results were not likely to land in Patton’s favor. Friendly relations with the Soviets were of vital importance to President Franklin Roosevelt. “Wild Bill” Donovan of the OSS was working hard to maintain that friendship, as was Eisenhower’s boss back in Washington, Gen. George Marshall. A weary Eisenhower, exhausted from planning the D-day invasion, was furious at what he considered to be Patton’s immaturity. Those errant remarks in Knutsford, as simple as they might have been, had the potential to unravel a peaceful postwar world.

Patton drove five hours to be at the meeting with Eisenhower. The date was May 1, 1944. There was a very good chance he would be sent home to America, and even reduced in rank to colonel. Patton described the moments before entering Eisenhower’s office as a time of awaiting “possible execution.”

“It is sad and shocking to think that victory and the lives of thousands of men are pawns to the ‘fear of They,’ and the writings of a group of unprincipled reporters, and weak-kneed congressmen,” Patton wrote in his journal. “But so it is.”

Unbeknownst to Patton, it was Winston Churchill’s spies who had leaked his comments, so it was appropriate that the cunning prime minister himself weigh in on Patton’s side, stating that the general was “just speaking the truth.” The politically astute Eisenhower could read between the lines in Churchill’s comments.2 So while the meeting with Patton began badly, Eisenhower had to admit that he sorely needed the general’s skills as a battlefield commander. As Patton himself once predicted, referring to the partnership between two legendary Confederate generals in the Civil War, “Ike, you will be the Lee of the next war, and I will be your Jackson.”

Eisenhower knows his military history. He knows that Stonewall Jackson was brilliant and unpredictable. And he is also well aware that Robert E. Lee’s army was never the same after a Confederate sentry accidentally shot and mortally wounded General Jackson.

So George S. Patton was spared—but damaged. From May 1, 1944, forward, Patton’s chances of leading all U.S. forces in Europe were nonexistent. He was too much of a political liability. His hopes of assuming a major postwar command in a world divided between the United States and the Soviet Union had all but vanished. The military career that George S. Patton loved so much would last only as long as the world needed his fighting skills.

“When I came out,” he wrote after the meeting, “I don’t think anyone could tell that I had just been killed. I feel like death, but I am not out yet. If they will let me fight, I will.”

* * *

As the German offensive in the Ardennes gathers speed, George Patton keeps track of events from his headquarters sixty miles south, in Nancy. He is frustrated because his immediate boss is Gen. Omar Bradley, whom Patton considers his inferior and as completely lacking in the prescience and strategic forethought necessary to win a war.

The Ardennes proves it. Totally off guard, Bradley has allowed a group of professional American baseball players to tour the area the Germans are now attacking.3 The alluring film actress Marlene Dietrich is also on hand. She has just finished performing in the Belgian crossroads town of Bastogne. Tonight she is scheduled to put on a show for the men of the Ninety-Ninth Division in the Belgian hamlet of Honsfeld.

That concert has been abruptly canceled.

* * *

The Ninety-Ninth Infantry Division of the American First Army is digging in, trying desperately to stop the elite Twelfth SS Panzer Division from capturing a spot on the map known as Elsenborn Ridge, a vast, treeless hill, beautiful in the summer when wild grasses cover its summit. But there is no beauty right now. Just frozen mud, corpses, and shell craters. Except for those moments when fog covers the hilltop or the powerful winds are driving rain and snow into their eyes—which is often—the men of the Ninety-Ninth have optimal fields of fire from their lazy semicircle of foxholes. Any German attack will require the enemy to cover a half mile of open ground, all while running uphill.

But one hundred yards down the slope, a thick forest offers the Germans complete concealment. The woods are dark and gloomy. A dense fog makes the Germans even less visible. The Ninety-Ninth are easy targets for the German artillery guns hidden in the forest below—including the high-velocity 88 mm guns, which fire a round that travels a half mile per second.

Many men in the Ninety-Ninth are new to combat and came to the Ardennes to ease into the frontline action. They lack winter-camouflaged uniforms, ammunition, and warm clothes, and yet they stand ready to hold the line at all costs.



Because if they don’t, Hitler’s crazy gamble in the Ardennes just might succeed.

Like the equally strategic nearby location known as the Losheim Gap, the Elsenborn Ridge represents a vital corridor that the German army must possess in order for Operation Watch on the Rhine to be successful. The Losheim Gap is a narrow valley through which the Third Reich successfully invaded France in 1940, and is known to be the pathway for funneling tanks through the rugged Ardennes. The ridge is critical because a network of key roads lies on the other side. Capture the ridge, gain access to the roads, and the Twelfth Panzer Division suddenly stands a very good chance of making it all the way to Antwerp.

The Ninety-Ninth must hold the line.

Just yesterday they were thinking about Mel Ott, Marlene Dietrich, and Christmas. Many were even living in a warm barrack that had once belonged to the Germans, where they slept in beds and ate hot meals each morning and night.

Not today.

The Ninety-Ninth is made up of mostly green recruits who arrived in Europe just weeks ago. The unit was activated in October 1942, but many of those original members who trained together at Camp Van Dorn in Mississippi and Camp Maxey in Texas are either dead or in a hospital somewhere. Some units within the division are at half strength, meaning that cooks and clerks are now serving temporary duty as riflemen. The ground is almost frozen, but it is still possible to dig a deep foxhole, leaving the Ninety-Ninth less exposed and vulnerable. Their boots are not waterproof or insulated, so when they finally scrape away enough earth to make the home in the ground that will protect them from shrapnel and snipers, trench foot and frostbite add to their misery.

The German artillery and tanks fire from the safety of the valley forest, pounding the Ninety-Ninth as they huddle in their foxholes. The ground shakes so badly from the explosions that the few nearby trees fall over without being touched.

Snipers, meanwhile, kill anyone who exposes his head aboveground. And even when the Germans aren’t firing, the sounds of their laughter and snippets of conversation carry up the hill to the Ninety-Ninth. The Americans grow depressed and anxious as they hear the clank of tank treads from the forest, reminding them that the force now gathered below is, indeed, an enormous army.

It is only a matter of time before that army races up the Elsenborn Ridge to wipe out the Ninety-Ninth. The German forces outnumber the Americans by a ratio of five to one.

Those in the Ninety-Ninth who live to tell the story will long remember the scream of the high-velocity 88 mm shells, a sound that gets higher and more pronounced just before impact. They will remember reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over as those assault guns pound their position. They will remember “the filth, the hunger, the cold, and the life of living like an animal.”

They abide by a new list of unwritten rules: They cannot sleep for any length of time because the German attacks have no set routine. They cannot leave their foxholes during daylight because German gunners zero in on any sign of movement.

Over the next four days, the Ninety-Ninth will see 133 more of its men die. Six hundred will fall back to the battalion aid stations to be treated for frozen feet. As many as 1,844 will go “missing,” meaning that their loved ones will never enjoy the closure that comes with having a body to bury. “This was our Valley Forge,” one soldier will remember.

Through it all, the leadership skills of the Ninety-Ninth’s officer corps will be sorely tested. Some will show themselves to be true leaders of men. Others will not. One senior officer will drive away in terror. Another will favor total surrender to fighting. After all, the Ninety-Ninth is facing elements of the Waffen SS, Hitler’s most elite and brutal fighting force. Surely it is better to raise the white flag of surrender and live to see home and family when the war ends than to face almost certain death or go “missing” at the hands of the SS.

It is Heinrich Himmler, the psychopathic leader of the SS, who preaches a philosophy that if an enemy is made to feel enough terror, there is no need for battle. He will simply quit.

But the Ninety-Ninth will soon learn that surrender does not always prevent violent death.

* * *

As the second day of Operation Watch on the Rhine begins, the First SS Panzer Division is on the move. They are the lead element in the much-larger Sixth Panzer Army, tasked with racing through the countryside to capture three vital bridges over the Meuse River.

The First comprises the best of the best, a fighting force so highly regarded by Hitler that he has allowed them to sew his name onto their uniform sleeves. In the buildup to Operation Watch on the Rhine, a lack of manpower was solved by shifting men from the Luftwaffe and German navy into the infantry. This is not the case with the First. They are all hardened fighters who have seen more than their share of combat in this war. And their armament bears testimony to their elite nature. It’s nothing but the finest for the First SS Panzer: sixty tanks, three flak tanks, seventy-five halftracks, fourteen 20 mm guns, twenty-seven 75 mm assault guns, and numerous 105 mm and 150 mm self-propelled howitzers.

“The morale was high throughout the entire period I was with them despite the extremely trying conditions,” an American officer will later write of his time as a prisoner of the First SS Panzer. “The discipline was very good. The physical condition of all personnel was good … The equipment was good and complete with the exception of some reconditioned half-tracks among the motorized equipment. All men wore practically new boots and had adequate clothing. Some of them wore parts of American uniforms, mainly the knit cap, gloves, sweaters, overshoes, and one or two overcoats. The relationship between officers and men … was closer and more friendly than I would have expected.”

In command of this magnificent fighting force is the dashing poster boy for the SS, twenty-nine-year-old Joachim Peiper. “He was approximately 5 feet 8 inches in height, 140 lbs. in weight, long dark hair combed straight back, straight well-shaped features with remarkable facial resemblance to the actor Ray Milland,” the American POW major will later write.

Peiper is a graduate of the SS military college at Bad T?lz, the German equivalent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, or Britain’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. The requirements for admission are rigorous, and include a background check to ensure Aryan racial purity4 and personal behavior that the SS considers to be proper. The curriculum includes ample time in the classroom combined with hours of long-distance running to ensure maximum physical fitness. Combat exercises include using live rounds of ammunition to inure the future warriors to the feel of combat. The end result is an officer in the tradition of the legendary Greek Hoplites, who formed the backbone of the Spartan heavy infantry.

Amazingly, an advanced education is not necessary for admission to the SS-Junkerschule at Bad T?lz. The most important qualification is total loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Which is why a man such as Joachim Peiper, who dropped out of school to join the army, not only was accepted to the school but became a star alumnus.

Upon graduation, Peiper was selected to serve as a top assistant for SS leader Heinrich Himmler, a calculating and brutal man whom Peiper came to idolize. He even allowed the Reichsführer-SS to arrange his marriage.

Himmler was loyal to Adolf Hitler’s Nationalsozialismus (National Socialism, later shortened to Nazi) long before the Führer achieved absolute power over the German people in 1933. As such, he enjoys Hitler’s confidence, and is given the harsh task of carrying out the extermination and suppression of those races, ethnicities, and enemies whom Hitler deems a threat to the Reich, including Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Nazi political opponents. Under Himmler’s tutelage, Peiper developed the philosophies of intolerance that now guide his military tactics. He stood at Himmler’s side to witness the shooting of Polish intellectuals in the early days of the war, and was an eyewitness to the first gassing of Jewish civilians, including women and children. When Himmler rewarded Peiper with an assignment to lead a halftrack battalion on the Russian front, the fanatical young officer developed a reputation for battlefield cunning. His men and tanks moved quickly, thrusting and feinting in a manner reminiscent of George S. Patton’s lightning-fast maneuvers. In one daring nighttime raid, his men rescued a German infantry division surrounded by Soviets who, on the verge of decimating the German unit, the 320th Infantry, had ceased their attack in order to rest and recoup. After waiting until well past midnight to make sure the Russian tank crews were sound asleep, Peiper’s First Panzer smashed through their lines, guns blazing. Not only were the able-bodied members of the 320th saved, but so were more than fifteen hundred wounded Wehrmacht fighters.