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

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TRIER, GERMANY

MARCH 13, 1945

MORNING

George S. Patton is on the move.

Finally.

Sgt. John Mims drives Patton in his signature open-air jeep with its three-star flags over the wheel wells. The snows of the cruel subzero winter are melting at last. Patton and Mims pass the carcasses of cattle frozen legs-up as the road winds through Luxembourg and into Germany. Hulks of destroyed Sherman M-4s litter the countryside—so many tanks, in fact, that Patton makes a mental note to investigate which type of enemy round defeated each of them. This is Patton’s way of helping the U.S. Army build better armor for fighting the next inevitable war.

It is a conflict that Patton believes will be fought soon. The Russians are moving to forcibly spread communism throughout the world, and Patton knows it. “They are a scurvy race and simply savages,” he writes of the Russians in his journal. “We could beat the hell out of them.”

But that’s in the future, after Germany is defeated and the cruel task of dividing Europe among the victors takes center stage. For now, it is enough that the Third Army is advancing into Germany. Patton has sensed a weakness in the Wehrmacht lines and is eager to press his advantage.

It was four weeks ago, on February 10, when Dwight Eisenhower once again ordered Patton and his Third Army to stop their drive east and go on the defensive and selected British field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery to lead the massive Allied invasion force that will cross the strategically vital Rhine River. It is a politically astute maneuver, because while Montgomery officially reports to Eisenhower, the British field marshal believes himself to be—and is often portrayed in the British press as—Eisenhower’s equal. Winston Churchill publicly fueled this portrayal by promoting Montgomery to field marshal months before Eisenhower received his fifth star, meaning that for a time Montgomery outranked the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. Now Eisenhower’s decision to throw his support to Montgomery’s offensive neatly defuses any controversy that might have arisen over Eisenhower giving Patton the main thrust.

Stretching eight hundred miles down the length of Germany from the North Sea to Switzerland, the Rhine is the last great obstacle between the Allies and the German heartland. Whoever crosses it first might also soon know the glory of being the first Allied general to reach Berlin.

It is as if Patton’s monumental achievement at Bastogne never happened.

“It was rather amusing, though perhaps not flattering, to note that General Eisenhower never mentioned the Bastogne offensive,” he writes of his most recent discussions with Eisenhower. Then, referring to the emergency meeting in Verdun that turned the tide of the Battle of the Bulge, he adds, “Although this was the first time I had seen him since the nineteenth of December—when he seemed much pleased to have me at the critical point.”

Even more galling, not just to Patton but also to American soldiers, is that Montgomery has publicly taken credit for the Allied victory at the Battle of the Bulge. Monty insists that it is his British forces of the Twenty-First Army Group, not American GIs, who stopped the German advance.

“As soon as I saw what was happening,” Montgomery stated at a press conference, at which he wore an outlandish purple beret, “I took steps to ensure that the Germans would never get over the Meuse. I carried out certain movements to meet the threatened danger. I employed the whole power of the British group of armies.”

What Montgomery neglected to mention was that just three British divisions were made available for the battle. Of the 650,000 Allied soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, more than 600,000 were American. Once again, Bernard Law Montgomery used dishonest spin in an attempt to ensure his place in history.



Montgomery’s stunning January 7 press conference did considerable damage to Anglo-American relations.1 To Patton, it seems outrageous that Montgomery should be rewarded for such deceptive behavior.

Yet despite the fact that four American soldiers now serve along the German border for every British Tommy, Eisenhower has caved in to pressure from Churchill and selected Monty to lead the charge across the Rhine. Still, the reasons for this decision are practical as well as political: the crucial Ruhr industrial region is in northern Germany, as are Montgomery’s troops. Theoretically, Monty is capable of quickly laying waste to the lifeblood of Germany’s war machine.

Nevertheless, the decision makes George S. Patton furious.

On this chilly Tuesday morning, the cautious and finicky Montgomery is still ten days away from launching Operation Plunder, as the Rhine offensive is known. So Patton, sensing an immediate weakness in the German lines, has convinced Eisenhower to let him attack, two hundred miles to the south. The plan to invade southern Germany’s Palatinate region came to Patton in a dream. It was fully formed, right down to the last logistical detail. “Whether ideas like this are inspiration or insomnia, I don’t know,” he writes in his journal. “I do things by sixth sense.”

Patton’s military ambitions for the assault are many, among them the devastation of all Wehrmacht forces guarding the heavily fortified Siegfried Line.2

Privately, however, he admits that not all his goals are tactical. The war is now personal. Patton has endured countless slights and setbacks. Many are of his own doing, but just as many are clearly not. Patton, at heart, is a simple man who wears his emotions on his sleeve. This makes him extremely poor at the sort of political posturing at which rivals such as Montgomery excel.

The man who lives for battle wants to be judged by his actions, not his words. The war will end soon. Patton would love nothing more than for the spotlight to shine on his accomplishments at least one more time.

Doing so at Bernard Law Montgomery’s expense, of course, would make the experience all the richer.

“He advertises so damn much that they know where he is,” Patton sneers of Montgomery, contrasting their leadership styles by alluding to the German high command’s constant awareness of his rival’s location. “I fool them.”

At Patton’s command, the Third Army romps through the Palatinate on what Col. Abe Abrams of the Fourth Armored Division calls the “Rhine Rat Race.” They travel with ample supplies of metal decking and pontoons, allowing them to build temporary bridges across the Rhine—it is hoped, well ahead of Montgomery and his Twenty-First Army Group.

American armored divisions have already succeeded in crossing the Rhine, in the city of Remagen, eighty-six miles north of Trier. The incredulous Americans could not believe that the bridge remained intact, and crossed immediately. And while they were not able to advance beyond a small toehold on the Rhine’s eastern shore, the symbolism of the Allied achievement struck such fear into the minds of the Nazi high command that Adolf Hitler ordered the firing squad executions of the four officers he considered responsible for not having destroyed the bridge.3 The men were forced to kneel, and then were shot in the back of the neck. The final letters they had written to family and lovers were then burned.

Hitler then ordered the great commando Otto Skorzeny to assemble a team of swimmers who would float down the Rhine and attach explosives to the Remagen Bridge. The mission failed when all of Skorzeny’s amphibious commandos were discovered by sharp-eyed American sentries along the shore, and were either killed or captured.

The Allies still hold the bridge, but are unable to advance farther without the assistance of a greater fighting force.

George S. Patton understands the significance of Remagen. “Ninth Armored Division of the Third Corps,” he writes in his journal on March 7, “got a bridge intact over the Rhine at Remagen. This may have a fine influence on our future movements. I hope we get one also.”

But even if he can’t find an intact bridge, Patton is determined to beat Montgomery across the Rhine.

He has just ten days.

* * *

Two weeks ago, the Third Army captured the ancient German fortress of Trier, attacking quickly and suffering few casualties. His victory complete, Patton now takes the opportunity to visit the conquered city.

Many are convinced that the Second World War will be the war to end all wars, but Patton knows better. As a reminder to himself that war is inevitable, he has been reading Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars each night before bed. The memoir recounts Caesar’s battles in Gaul4 and Germany from 58 to 51 BC. The words rise up off the page for Patton, and he feels a personal connection to the action.

As he drives to the decimated Trier, he studies the ancient highway carefully, absorbing its every nuance. It is not the sight of the swollen Moselle River that mesmerizes him, or even that of Allied engineers scurrying to corduroy5 the muddy country thoroughfare before Allied vehicles accidentally tumble down the steep hillside and into the raging torrent.

No, it is the belief that he traveled this road two thousand years ago.

Patton is convinced that he was a soldier and a great general in his many past lives. He once stood shoulder to shoulder with Alexander the Great and Napoléon. He crossed the Alps on an elephant while residing in the body of the Carthaginian conqueror Hannibal. Patton also is quite certain that he once fought for the great Caesar as a Roman legionary, marching into battle on this very same road from Wasserbillig to Trier. Even as a biting wind chaps his exposed face, Patton can “smell the coppery sweat and see the low dust clouds” of legionaries advancing on the Germanic hordes along the Moselle.

Patton has no problems meshing his Protestant faith with his belief in reincarnation. He simply believes that he has a powerful connection with the supernatural. This belief was reinforced by two very prominent occurrences during World War I. On one occasion, he found himself pressed to the ground during a battle, terrified to stand and fight. He believed that he saw the faces of his dead grandfather and several uncles demanding that he stop being a coward. The other instance took place in Langres, France, once occupied by the ancient Romans. Though he had never visited the city, Patton was able to navigate his way without the help of his French liaison officer. He gave the Frenchman a tour of the Roman ruins, including the amphitheater, parade ground, and various temples dedicated to a deity. He also drove straight to the spot where Caesar had once camped, and pointed to where the Roman leader had once pitched his tent.

Now, like Caesar in 57 BC, Patton has conquered Trier.

Over the week that it took to reduce the strategically vital city to rubble, the Germans fought tenaciously. Twenty Allied bombing raids pounded the Wehrmacht defenders, until it became only a matter of time before the Germans fled, and tanks from the American Tenth Armored Division rolled past the ancient Roman amphitheater on the eastern edge of town. The fact that this structure remains standing while all else has crumbled is not lost on Patton. “One of the few things undestroyed in Trier is the entrance to the old Roman amphitheater which still stands in sturdy magnificence.”

Shortly after the conquest on March 1, Patton received a message from Allied headquarters. “Bypass Trier. It will take four divisions to capture it,” read the order.

“Have taken Trier with two divisions,” an acerbic Patton responded. “What do you want me to do? Give it back?”

One week later, Patton’s plan to invade the Palatinate was approved by Eisenhower.

Following the old adage that it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission, Patton does not plan on asking for permission to ford the Rhine, should the opportunity present itself.

* * *

Patton’s barbed sense of humor is not accidental. He is weary of the ineffectual leadership of General Eisenhower, who he believes consistently sabotages his success. He feels the same way about Omar Bradley, his immediate superior.

So Bradley’s February 10 order to go on the defensive was soul crushing for Patton. He will be sixty this year, making him “the oldest leader in age and battle experience in the United States Army in Europe,” by his own estimation. The war is winding down, but it has taken its toll on George Patton.

He has become so obsessed that he is now incapable of existing in a world without war. Even the total nudity of dancers at the famous Folies Bergère dance revue, seen on a mid-February leave in Paris, could not distract Patton from thoughts of the fighting. Nor did being recognized everywhere he went in the city, which is normally a salve for his ego.

After a case of food poisoning made him violently ill—and led to a growing belief that his life was being threatened by unknown forces—Patton hurried back to his headquarters near the front, unable to stay away from the war even one day longer.

He knows that his last battle is soon to come—at least in this lifetime. Thus Patton seeks to prolong his role in the fighting. “I should like to be considered for any type of combat command, from a division up against the Japanese. I am sure that my method of fighting might be successful. I am also of such an age that this is my last war, and I would therefore like to see it through to the end,” Patton writes in a letter to the chief of the army, Gen. George Marshall, on March 13.

The mere thought that the fighting will soon end fills Patton with dread. “Peace is going to be hell on me,” he writes to his wife, Beatrice. “I will probably be a great nuisance.”

Patton wants to finish out the war on his own terms. That means go on the attack. “A great deal was owed to me,” he wrote of one conversation with Omar Bradley, after it was suggested that the Third Army once again go on the defensive. “Unless I could continue attacking I would have to be relieved.”

* * *

Dwight Eisenhower is quite confident that George Patton will never ask to be relieved. Yet he immediately follows up his February 10 order with a second command, allowing Patton to place his army on “aggressive defense.” Ike knows that Patton will interpret this order as permission to launch a series of low-profile attacks.

Such dithering is an example of Eisenhower’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness: compromise. He wants to make everyone happy, and believes that “public opinion wins wars.” Very often it seems Eisenhower would rather make the popular decision than the right one. This is the manner in which he has behaved throughout his entire army career, and it has served him well. At the start of the war he was a colonel, leading training exercises at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Now his penchant for compromise and diplomacy has allowed him to rise to prominence and power despite the glaring fact that he has never fought in battle, or even commanded troops in combat.

Eisenhower personally favors a “broad front” assault into Germany, much like the campaigns of Hannibal at Cannae in 216 BC and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the final days of the Civil War. By attacking Germany from both the north and south, Eisenhower can affect a pincer movement, trapping the Wehrmacht between the claws of his forces. Montgomery, however, prefers a single “full-blooded” thrust through the industrial Ruhr region of northern Germany. Naturally, Monty plans to be in charge, bringing the full weight of forty Allied divisions to bear on the Germans. Generals such as Patton will sit on the sidelines and watch.

At first Eisenhower privately mocked Montgomery’s strategy, joking that the plan was a “pencil-like thrust.” But Montgomery has worn him down. Monty is enormously popular in Britain, and many British people believe it is outrageously unjust, after all their suffering, that an American now commands all ground troops in Europe. Eisenhower has appeased Britain by placing Montgomery in charge of the Rhine offensive.

George Patton sees the underlying motives in Eisenhower’s determination to remain popular. “Before long, Ike will be running for President,” Patton tells one of his top generals. “You think I’m joking? Just wait and see.”

Patton will be proven correct. On November 4, 1952, Dwight Eisenhower will be elected the thirty-fourth president of the United States.6

On a tactical level, it is clear that Eisenhower’s broad-front strategy is the best possible method of attacking Germany. But in yet another example of attempting to make the popular choice, Eisenhower has temporarily discarded the strategy. Montgomery and Operation Plunder will be the focus of the Allied advance. But Montgomery’s notorious caution on the battlefield, combined with the likelihood that his plan to attack through the industrial and heavily populated Ruhr region of Germany will mean bitter fighting and heavy Allied casualties, could very well spell disaster. So Eisenhower knows he needs Patton as a backup in case the Montgomery offensive doesn’t work.

Thus, the war has once again become a personal competition between Patton and Montgomery—and once again, Monty seems to have the advantage.

Eisenhower is giving Monty and his Twenty-First Army Group all the manpower, ammunition, gasoline, and bridging supplies they need to cross the Rhine at the northern town of Wesel and push on to Berlin, while Patton and the Third Army stay south, content with destroying the Siegfried Line.

It looks like, this time, Montgomery will be the victor, making the decisive thrust across the Rhine and venturing the final three hundred miles to Berlin, and glory.

* * *

“If Ike stops holding Monty’s hand and gives me the supplies, I’ll go through the Siegfried Line like shit through a goose,” Patton has promised a British newspaper reporter.

As the days tick down to Operation Plunder, Patton’s army surrounds the Wehrmacht in southern Germany, capturing sixty thousand prisoners and ten thousand square miles of German countryside in two weeks. The Siegfried Line proves no match for the Third Army. Patton’s forces are everywhere. Even in remote regions such as the Hunsrück Mountains hundreds of tanks and infantry units are seen rolling down roads long considered “impassable to armor.”

“The enemy,” notes one American soldier, is “a beaten mass of men, women, and children, interspersed with diehard Nazis.”

Patton writes candidly to Beatrice about the condition of the German people. “I saw one woman with a perambulator full of her worldly goods sitting by it on a hill, crying. An old man with a wheelbarrow and three little children wringing his hands. A woman with five children and a tin cup crying. In hundreds of villages there is not a living thing, not even a chicken. Most of the houses are heaps and stones. They brought it on themselves, but these poor peasants are not responsible.



Beatrice Patton

“I am getting soft?” Patton asks Beatrice rhetorically.

* * *

Predictably, Montgomery waits. The British commander is assembling the largest amphibious operation since D-day. His staff checks and rechecks every detail, from the perceived numerical superiority of Allied forces to the number of assault boats that will be required to cross the Rhine, and even to the tonnage of munitions that British bombers will drop on Wesel to set it ablaze and thus root out any concealed German resistance.

Meanwhile, Patton attacks. His Palatinate campaign will go down in history as one of the great strategies of the war. Even the Germans will say so. And their praise for Patton is evidence of their enormous respect for the general. “The greatest threat,” a captured German officer reveals during his interrogation, “was the whereabouts of the feared U.S. Army.” George Patton is always the topic of military discussion. “Where is he? When will he attack? Where? How? With what?”

Lt. Col. Freiherr von Wangenheim will go on to add, “General Patton is the most feared general on all fronts … The tactics of General Patton are daring and unpredictable … He is the most modern general and the best commander of armored and infantry troops combined.”

Patton’s tanks are riding roughshod over the rugged countryside. After the staggering setback at Metz six months ago, Patton has shown what he’s made of at Bastogne and now at the Palatinate.

“We are the eighth wonder of the world,” Patton says of the Third Army on March 19, congratulating himself on yet another success. “And I had to beg, lie and steal to get started.”

Patton’s forces capture the pivotal city of Koblenz, at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers. He now has eight full divisions lined up along the western shore of the Rhine, the tank barrels aimed directly at the eastern bank.

All Patton needs is a place to cross.

* * *

The date is March 22, 1945. Two hours before midnight, under cover of darkness, a Third Army patrol paddles across the Rhine at Nierstein in flimsy wooden assault boats. The slap of their paddles stroking the swift waters goes unheard. They report back that no enemy troops are in the vicinity. When Patton receives the news, he immediately orders that bridging material be sent forward. By morning, hastily built pontoon bridges7 span the river, and an entire division of Patton’s army is soon across.

Patton calls Bradley, but instead of making the sort of bold pronouncement that would inform the Germans of his precise location, he sets aside his ego in a moment of caution.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m across,” Patton informs Bradley.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bradley responds. “You mean across the Rhine?”

“Sure I am. Sneaked a division over last night. But there are so few Krauts around here they don’t know it yet. So don’t make any announcement. We’ll keep it a secret until we see how it goes.”

It goes well—but only for a short time.

The sight of thousands of men marching across hastily built pontoon bridges is hard to conceal. The German air force discovers the Third Army’s encroachment later that day. Disregarding Allied air superiority, the few Luftwaffe Messerschmitt fighters that have survived thus far in the war patrol low above the Rhine, searching for signs of soldiers, vehicles, and supplies. The pilots radio back what they see, then harass the intruders by dropping down to treetop level to strafe the Americans with lethal rounds of machine-gun and cannon fire.

But the German pilots are too bold, and in their determination to throw back Patton’s invaders, all thirty-three Luftwaffe planes are blasted out of the sky by precision firing from the Third Army’s antiaircraft guns. The German pilots are so low that bailing out and parachuting to safety is not an option. The American soldiers continue their march across the swift blue waters of the Rhine, cheered throughout the day by the sight of enemy planes exploding all across the horizon and falling into the river with a mighty splash.

It is clear that the Americans no longer need to proceed under radio silence.

Patton once again phones Bradley, on March 23, eager to make history at his rival Montgomery’s expense. “Brad, for God’s sake, tell the world we’re across,” he barks into the receiver. Bradley will later remember that Patton’s already high voice “trebled” in happiness. “We knocked down thirty-three Krauts today when they came after our pontoon bridges. I want the world to know Third Army made it before Monty starts across.”

* * *

Patton’s swagger only increases the next day, as he takes his victorious celebration to a new level. He is driven to the front, close to where American troops pour across the Rhine at the small German town of Oppenheim. The broad, icy river is dull gray, reflecting the overcast morning sky.

Sergeant Mims eases Patton’s jeep onto the temporary bridge, taking care to align the wheels with the wooden planks. Patton has thought carefully about how he will mark the occasion of crossing the Rhine and has a very special plan in mind.

At the bank of the river, he orders his driver to stop. “Time out for a short halt,” he tells Sergeant Mims. Patton steps out of his jeep and walks along the wooden planks to the center of the bridge. “I have been looking forward to this for some time.”

Walking carefully to the edge of the swaying bridge, Patton instructs army photographers to look away. However, his aide Charles Codman will be allowed to take a photograph to preserve the moment for posterity. Patton unzips his fly, faces downriver, and relieves himself.



General George Patton making good on his ambition to “piss in the Rhine”

“I didn’t take a piss this morning when I got up so that I would have a full load,” he brags as he begins to urinate.8 Patton looks straight into the camera lens.

Upon reaching the far bank of the Rhine, Patton continues his celebration by once again stepping from his jeep and re-creating William the Conqueror’s arrival in England nearly nine centuries earlier. It was William, the legendary invader from the Norman region of France, who famously fell flat on his face while leaping from his boat as it kissed the English shoreline. “See,” he yelled to his men. “I have taken England with both hands.”

Patton falls to one knee and then plants his hands deeply into the German soil. “Thus,” Patton cries, “William the Conqueror,” in an allusion appreciated but not completely understood by some within earshot.

George S. Patton and his Third Army are now across the Rhine and prepared to invade the German heartland. Just as he did nearly two years ago at Messina, the ever-competitive Patton has defeated his military nemesis, British field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.

Patton will take particular pride in boasting of this accomplishment: “Without benefit of aerial bombardment, ground smoke, artillery preparation and airborne assistance, the Third Army at 2200 hours, Thursday, 22nd March, 1945, crossed the Rhine River.

“The 21st Army Group was supposed to cross the Rhine on 24th March, 1945,” Patton will continue, “and in order to be ready for this ‘earthshaking event,’ Mr. Churchill wrote a speech congratulating Field Marshal Montgomery for his first ‘assault’ crossing over the Rhine River in modern history. The speech was recorded and through some error on the part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, was broadcast. In spite of the fact that the Third Army had been across the Rhine River for some thirty-six hours.”

* * *

Looking east, Patton just needs to find a way to beat the Russians into Berlin.

“We are now fairly started on that phase of the campaign which I hope will be the final one,” he writes to Eisenhower two days after crossing the Rhine. He couches his letter in respect, but his desire to remain in the fight is evident in the quiet demands of his conclusion.

“I know that Third Army will be in at the finish in the same decisive way that it has performed in all preliminary battle,” Patton reminds Eisenhower.