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

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FLINT KASERNE

BAD T?LZ, BAVARIA, GERMANY

MAY 25, 1945

MIDDAY

George Patton is smoking a cigar. He has once again been trying to kick the habit, but the boredom of his new job as military governor of Bavaria requires the distraction. With the fighting in Europe over, Patton now works alone in the commandant’s office of this former SS officer training school thirty miles south of Munich. On this beautiful spring afternoon, he can see the Alps rising in the distance.

The magnificent Bavarian headquarters is just one of the perks Patton enjoys now that Germany has been defeated. Rather than sleep on an air mattress in the cramped mobile trailer he has called home for much of the last nine months, the general lives in a manor house built on the shores of a shimmering blue mountain lake. “This is the handsomest villa I have ever seen,” he remarked in a letter to his brother-in-law Frederick Ayer just yesterday. Patton has a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and two boats at his disposal. “If one has to occupy Germany,” he added, “this is a good place to do it from.”

May in Bavaria should be an idyllic time for Patton, yet he is anxious, longing for just one more battle. The Third Army was still at full strength in May 1945, soon to begin the process of transitioning men and matériel back to the United States.1 Patton spends his days lobbying to fight in the Pacific. He is still “hopeful of having a chance to fight the Japanese,” as he wrote in two letters to well-connected friends in Washington yesterday, knowing that they would pass along the word to others who might arrange such a posting. But a command in the Pacific is now unlikely. His monumental ego and that of the massively self-important Pacific Theater commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur would surely clash.

Yet Patton is not one to avoid conflict. He is still fuming over an order from Dwight Eisenhower in the waning days of the war that prevented the Third Army from advancing into Czechoslovakia to assist the people of Prague. Instead of allowing Americans to come to their aid, by halting Patton’s tanks Eisenhower made it possible for the Russian army to enter Prague. As in Berlin, the Russians did not come in peace, and were soon suppressing the locals in the same horrific manner.

Even weeks later, Patton still seethes about the absurdity of Eisenhower’s order. He believes Ike to be a fool. Patton has been wary of Russian duplicity as far back as November 1943, when he noted in his diary that “It will be just as bad for us to have Russia win the war as it will be for Germany to do so. To be a success and maintain world peace, the U.S. and the U.S. alone should destroy Germany and Japan and be ready to stop Russia.”

Patton has met with Russian generals and officials several times since the war ended. Each time, they have plied him with alcohol, his Russian counterparts trying to get him drunk, hoping he would embarrass himself. But Patton is onto the game, constantly adding water to his whisky, and drinking the Russians under the table.

The Red Army is relentless in its quest to control as much of Europe as possible, with Stalin taking full advantage of Dwight Eisenhower’s timidity. The Russians are seizing more land, and more people are coming under their occupation.

Patton is incensed. “You cannot lay down with a diseased jackal,” he recently insisted to a group of journalists. “Neither can we ever do business with the Russians.”

When Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson visited the Third Army, Patton openly lobbied for at least 30 percent of all American troops to remain in Europe, “Keeping our forces intact. Let’s keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to these people. This is the only language they understand and respect. If you fail to do this, then I would like to say to you that we have had a victory over the Germans but have lost the war.”

Even Patton’s nemesis, British field marshal Montgomery, agrees: when accepting the surrender of German soldiers, he ordered his troops to stack the Wehrmacht rifles in such a way that they could easily be redistributed should the Germans and British need to defend themselves against a Russian advance.

Yet the Harvard-educated undersecretary Patterson thinks Patton is delusional. He advises Eisenhower, army chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall, and President Harry Truman to continue to view the Russians benevolently.2

In time, of course, Patton’s predictions will come true, and the world will have to live with the consequences of American gullibility.

* * *

The Soviet threat is not the only thing troubling Patton. He personally has undergone a series of strange near-death “coincidences.” First there was the attempt a few weeks ago by the Spitfire to shoot down his airplane. The British had loaned many of those airplanes to the Polish air force, and it was originally believed that it was a Polish pilot who attacked Patton’s L-5. But it turns out that the only Polish Spitfire wing in that part of Germany at the time was stationed far to the north, on the Baltic coast. The Spitfire has a combat range of 395 miles, making it impossible for the Polish fighters to make the round-trip flight from their base in Nordhorn to the location where Patton was fired upon, nearly three hundred miles south.

Records also show that no Polish aircraft went missing, and no Polish pilots were killed on the date of the attack—even though the Spitfire in question had Polish markings.

A Russian pilot, however, could have been the culprit.

Winston Churchill had been kind enough to give Joseph Stalin’s air force one thousand Mark IX Spitfires to fight the Nazis. The planes were everywhere over the skies of Germany.

Two weeks after the air attack, Patton was riding in the passenger seat of his open-air jeep when a German peasant’s ox cart nearly smashed into his vehicle. A long pole tipped with a sharpened farming blade protruded from the front of the cart. “We were nearly killed,” Patton wrote of his near decapitation in his journal. “The pole missed us by inches.”

Army intelligence agents have warned Patton that his life may be in danger. NKVD, the Russian security force in charge of political assassinations and espionage, is thought to be tracking his movements.3 Whether it is the Russians or crazed Nazi sympathizers who have visions of assassinating him, Patton is taking no chances. His security detail has been strengthened, and he now carries a loaded revolver with him at all times.

As night approaches, Patton takes a break from writing letters in his office near Bad T?lz as Gen. Hobart “Hap” Gay, Patton’s longtime chief of staff, enters through the open door. “General,” he says to Patton, “there’s a Russian brigadier out in my office who says he has instructions to speak with you personally.”

Patton removes the Montecristo Especial cigar from the corner of his mouth. “What the hell does the son of a bitch want?”

“It’s about river craft on the Danube,” Gay replies vaguely.

“Bring the bastard in,” Patton replies. “You and Harkins come with him.”

Patton depends greatly on the wisdom of both Gay and Col. Paul Harkins, who have been at his side for years. In fact, it was Harkins who six months ago at Verdun nodded to Patton and confirmed that the Third Army was poised to quickly wheel north to save Bastogne.

The English-speaking Russian general enters Patton’s office, followed closely by Gay and Harkins. The Russian snaps to attention as Patton rises.

What follows is a lengthy protest against the behavior of the American army. Many Germans fled the Russians by crossing the Danube River into what is now known as the “American Zone.” Among them were boatmen who made their living ferrying people across the river. The Russians feel that these men and their boats rightfully belong to Mother Russia. “General Patton,” the general concludes. “The Fourth Russian Guards Army demands that you, General Patton, return these craft to Russian control.”

Patton does not immediately respond. He calmly places his Cuban cigar in an ashtray, slides opens his desk drawer, and removes his Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.

Patton looks hard at the general. He then picks up the revolver and smashes it down hard on the desk. His face goes red. “Gay, goddamnit! Get this son of a bitch out of here. Who in the hell let him in? Don’t let any more Russian bastards into this headquarters. Harkins! Alert the Fourth and Eleventh and Sixty-Fifth Divisions for an attack to the east.”

The Russian general’s face instantly goes pale. Terrified, he says nothing as Gay leads him from the room. Harkins, as ordered, picks up a telephone and gives the command to commence attacking the Russian lines.

The general hurries away from Patton’s headquarters.

Gay and Harkins quickly return to Patton’s office to report on the situation. They fear that Patton may have just started a new war.

But the general is all smiles. He reclines in his desk chair, once again puffing on his cigar. “How was that?” he asks with a grin.

Patton doesn’t wait for an answer. “Sometimes you have to put on an act, and I’m not going to let any Russian marshal, general or private tell me what I have to do. Harkins, call off the alert.

“That’s the last we’ll hear from those bastards.”

But even George Patton knows that is not true.

* * *

On June 13, it is George S. Patton who is effectively silenced. He receives news that he has long dreaded: his combat career is over. Gen. Courtney Hodges’s emotional meltdown and his ineffective leadership of the American First Army during the early days of the Battle of the Bulge have been forgotten. Gen. Douglas MacArthur has chosen Hodges instead of Patton to join him in the Pacific Theater for the fight against the Japanese army.

George Patton has fought his last battle.