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

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SCHLOSS CECILIENHOF

POTSDAM, GERMANY

JULY 24, 1945

LATE AFTERNOON

President Harry S. Truman wants a word with Joseph Stalin.

As diplomatic negotiations end for the afternoon, he maneuvers around to where Stalin sits. The two men, alongside British prime minister Winston Churchill, have spent the day discussing the postwar future of Germany. A small group of advisers from each nation is also seated at the ten-foot-wide circular table in this century-old palace just outside Berlin. The high-ceilinged room is stifling, smelling of stale cigarette smoke, and ten degrees too warm, thanks to the summer sun shining in through the unopened windows.

The Potsdam Conference, as it will be remembered, is the first time that the new Big Three are meeting since the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Joseph Stalin plays the role of entitled host, behaving as if Potsdam were now part of Russia. The tablecloth and chairs at the negotiating table are bright Russian red. Outside, in the gardens, the Russians have even planted bright red flowers in the shape of the Communist star.

As with the last meeting between Allied leaders, in Yalta, Stalin has every intention of steamrolling his guests into acceding to his demands. The ongoing American policy of accommodating the Soviets, rather than containing their growing power, plays right into his hands.

Churchill is bitter. Joseph Stalin has not only taken full control of Eastern Europe, but is widely viewed as a hero by the rest of the Continent. There is growing speculation that voters in France, Scandinavia, Italy, and even England will favor Communist candidates in their next elections. Indeed, even as Churchill watches Harry Truman casually rise from the table and then pull Stalin aside for a brief chat, the people of Britain are at the polls selecting a new government. Churchill will fly home tomorrow to hear that he is no longer prime minister.

Harry Truman does not have that kind of a problem. He’s America’s leader until at least 1948. He is a reluctant president, and considers the White House a “jail.” But Truman is also moving quickly to put his own stamp on American politics by replacing FDR’s cabinet and trusted advisers with men he considers loyal to him.

Truman possesses one presidential trait that Franklin Roosevelt lacked, and that is the poker player’s ability to tell when another man is lying to him. FDR’s administration was filled with men such as Wild Bill Donovan, who gained access to the president through flattery and self-promotion. Harry Truman has no time for panderers who put their own interests before those of the American people. When one of Roosevelt’s most powerful advisers, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., threatened to resign if he wasn’t allowed to attend the Potsdam Conference, Truman immediately called his bluff.1

Morgenthau stepped down three days ago. His plan will not be implemented.

Truman is fiercely independent. In his lifetime, he has been a soldier, farmer, bank clerk, railroad worker, owner of a men’s clothing store, judge, and senator. He once dreamed of being a concert pianist, and still makes time to play. He waited until he was thirty-five to get married, but his devotion to his wife, Bess, is such that he regularly writes her long letters whenever they are apart. Upon his arrival in Potsdam, the Secret Service overheard an army officer make the mistake of telling Truman he could “arrange anything you like while you’re here—anything in the way of wine and women.”

An appalled Truman chewed out the officer, telling him that “I married my sweetheart. She doesn’t run around on me and I don’t run around on her. And I want that understood. Don’t ever mention that kind of stuff to me again.”

This traditional American president who dotes on his wife now grabs the elbow of Joseph Stalin, a man whose infidelities and brutality drove his wife to suicide. The two world leaders stand apart from the other attendees at the Potsdam Conference, but remain near the negotiating table. For those who can’t hear what the two men are saying, it would appear that they are simply making small talk. In fact, what Truman is about to tell Stalin will forever change the relationship between the United States and Russia. Truman, the smooth-talking “Missouri horse trader,” is determined to send a clear message: America is the true power broker at this meeting.

The president looks dapper in his double-breasted suit and his bow tie. Stalin and the Russian contingent are all clad in drab Soviet military uniforms. The Russian dictator is a man just as comfortable with hiding his emotions as Truman.

Choosing to leave his own interpreter behind, Truman speaks directly to Stalin, letting the young Russian interpreter V. N. Pavlov translate his very important message.

Winston Churchill stands five feet away, next to his foreign minister, Anthony Eden. Both have already been told the news. They silently watch Stalin, to gauge his reaction.

Stalin is known to remain expressionless in negotiations, so as not to give away his true emotions, but Truman knows there is more than one way to bluff in a poker game. “After long experimentation,” he tells Stalin in his typically direct way, “we have developed a new bomb far more destructive than any known bomb, and we plan to use it very soon unless Japan surrenders.”

Stalin’s face is impassive, pretending not to comprehend the full weight of Truman’s words. “I am glad to hear it,” the Russian responds. “I hope you make good use of it against the Japanese.”

The discussion over, the two engage in small talk for a few minutes before Truman makes his way back over to the U.S. delegation.

Churchill is flabbergasted by Stalin’s lack of comprehension, and will later write, “If he had the slightest idea of the revolution in world affairs which was in progress his reactions would have been obvious. Nothing would have been easier than for him to say, ‘Thank you so much for telling me about your new bomb. I of course have no technical knowledge. May I send my expert in these nuclear sciences to see your expert tomorrow morning?’ But his face remained gay and genial, and the talk between these two potentates soon came to an end.”

The British and Americans have been cooperating on the special bomb since 1939. Just eight days ago, in the vast desert of New Mexico, this new “atomic” weapon was successfully detonated. The explosion was equal to twenty kilotons of dynamite, and sent a bulbous cloud nearly eight miles into the sky. The sand beneath the blast was instantly turned into a layer of green glass ten feet deep, and the shock waves could be felt one hundred miles away. The man who directed the bomb-making project, a theoretical physicist named Robert Oppenheimer, made one simple remark to others who observed the explosion: “It worked.”

Yet Oppenheimer also realized that this device brought an entirely new form of evil to mankind. “I am become Death,” he thought to himself, “the destroyer of worlds.”2

Truman had been waiting for confirmation of the blast results, and received them while on his way to Potsdam. The coded message detailing the bomb’s success was handed to him upon his arrival: “Operated this morning. Diagnosis seems satisfactory, and already exceeds expectations,” it read. With those words, Truman instantly has the power to assert American demands at the Potsdam Conference. No fighting force on earth possesses such a weapon, and he can threaten to use it on whoever stands in America’s way. Here at Potsdam, Truman uses the bomb as leverage to gain assurances that the Russians will join the war against the Japanese. The president also opposes Russian demands that the German people pay for the rebuilding of postwar Europe, with the bulk of those reparations going directly to the Soviet Union.

Yet Stalin is not afraid. Unbeknownst to Truman, he knows all about the atomic bomb, thanks to his extensive global intelligence network.3 He has deliberately prepared for this moment, determined not to give away any hint of emotion that will reveal the depth of Russian espionage in America.

It does not matter that America is an ally. The Russians spy on anyone who is a threat, considering no act of intrigue to be off limits. Stalin believes that “atomic bombs are meant to frighten those with weak nerves.” Besides, his scientists are hard at work on an atomic bomb of their own. In four short years, the Russians will detonate a giant fireball.

Simply put, Joseph Stalin is determined to rule the world.

No American president, or American general, will stand in his way.

* * *

The outcome of the Potsdam Conference is harsh: in keeping with an earlier agreement at Yalta, Germany will be divided into occupation zones governed by the Allies. Truman also secures a firm commitment from Stalin to join the war against Japan. But after meeting Stalin in person, Truman realizes that the dictator is not the friend to America that FDR believed him to be. Thus begins Truman’s policy of taking a hard line against the Russians, and the start of the Cold War that George S. Patton has long predicted.

* * *

The sun shines brightly over Germany as George Patton stands at attention. The fingertips of his right hand are firmly pressed to his polished helmet in salute. Dwight Eisenhower stands to his right, also saluting the American flag as it is raised over Berlin for the first time. President Harry Truman stands to Patton’s left with his hand over his heart. Next to him stands Gen. Omar Bradley.

Per a 1944 agreement between the Allies known as the London Protocol, Berlin is now the territory of the four occupying powers: the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. Each nation governs a portion of the city. Russia still controls the areas of Germany surrounding the city, making Berlin a rubble-filled island. “You who have not seen it,” Patton said of the German capital, “do not know what hell looks like.”



General Eisenhower, General Patton, and President Truman at the Berlin flag-raising ceremony

Patton was invited to Potsdam as a visitor to the conference, and from there traveled by car with the president and his fellow generals to Berlin for the flag raising ceremony. He has grown despondent in the past few months, undone by the fact that his fighting days are over. He plays squash and rides horses in the Bavarian countryside to keep himself in shape, and has even tried giving up cigars, but to no avail. By all outer appearances, he looks fit and healthy. But the reality is that he is bored, spending his days attending ceremonies, reviewing troops, saluting the flag, and pinning medals on those whose wartime commendations have finally come through. Without a war to fight, Patton is lost.



To make matters worse, the new president dislikes Patton. Back in 1918 the two men fought in the great Battle of Meuse-Argonne, and Patton surely appreciated the precision artillery support provided by Truman’s Battery D, even though he didn’t know Truman personally. A colonel in those waning days of World War I, he outranked Captain Truman, but now the tables are turned.

“Don’t see how a country can produce such men as Robert E. Lee, John J. Pershing, Eisenhower, and Bradley,” Truman will write in his journal, “and at the same time produce Custers, Pattons and MacArthurs.”

Truman’s scathing opinion of the general is based solely on a first impression. He has not taken the time to get to know Patton, and the two will never engage in a meaningful discussion of any kind.

Truman just doesn’t like him.

The two men are polar opposites.

Patton has swagger; Truman is humble.

Patton is tall and athletic, a larger-than-life military hero. The diminutive, bespectacled Truman, on the other hand, looks like the bank clerk he once was.

Patton was born into wealth, and then married into even more money. Truman has been handed nothing in his life—nothing, that is, except the presidency.

In Patton, Truman sees a braggart who struts around like a peacock in his showy uniform, with the polished helmet and bloused riding pants.

Truman dresses simply, and avoids putting on airs. He detests Patton’s flashy style. Despite the many pressing international obligations on his mind as the flag is being raised over Berlin, Truman takes time to covertly count the number of stars adorning Patton’s uniform—and is appalled to find them adding up to twenty-eight.

With the Second World War now at an end, the president has little need for a general who believes it his birthright to speak his mind, especially when it creates international discord.

The official American policy toward the Germans is that anyone previously connected with Nazi Germany is ineligible to help the nation rebuild. The Russians agree; in fact, this is a cornerstone of the Potsdam discussions. But Patton dissents. He speaks fearlessly about the lunacy of “denazification,” telling the press that it is “no more possible for a man to be a civil servant in Germany and not have paid lip service to Nazism than it is for a man to be a postmaster in America and not have paid at least lip service to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party when it is in power.”

Patton disagrees with official American policy. One disturbing element of which is that former German soldiers be used as forced labor in Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. These men, Patton feels, should be used to rebuild their own country. Germany’s hospitals are no longer functional, its sewer systems don’t work, the roads and bridges have been bombed, and there are millions of former POWs and displaced persons who will need shelter and food once winter comes.

So with words that put him directly at odds with the policies of his president, Patton tells a reporter that German labor is the solution to rebuilding Germany—whether or not someone was once a Nazi. He says, “My soldiers are fighting men and if I dismiss the sewer cleaners and the clerks[,] my soldiers will have to take over those jobs. They’d have to run the telephone exchanges, the power facilities, the street cars, and that’s not what soldiers are for.”

In his own way, Patton is still fighting battles. Even as he quietly begins making plans to leave the military, he wages an ironic war in favor of the German people. “The Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. It’s a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans.”4

The Russians interpret this stance as an attempt to shield former SS members, perhaps to use them against the Russians in a future war. They have lodged a formal complaint with Omar Bradley suggesting just that, noting that Waffen SS fighters who surrendered to the Third Army in Czechoslovakia during the month of May have not shown up on the lists of individuals turned over to the Russians for repatriation. Soviet spies now fill Bavaria, hunting these men down.

The Russians win again. On June 13, while Patton is on tour in America selling war bonds,5 his headquarters is informed by cable that the Third Army must immediately account for any German forces in its region. At the same time, army chief of staff George Marshall orders that Patton’s phones be tapped, and even takes the extraordinary measure of requesting that a psychoanalyst from the navy’s Medical Corps observe one of the general’s press conferences to see if Patton is suffering from a nervous breakdown.

Marshall, himself, likes Patton, but his top commander, Eisenhower, has written to him that Patton is a “mentally unbalanced officer.” Ever since the Knutsford incident in 1944, when Patton inadvertently slighted the Russians while speaking to a group of British women, Ike has come to believe that Patton suffers from seizures and bouts of dementia. This serious charge, and Patton’s habit of speaking out in favor of the Germans, has convinced Marshall to investigate Patton’s mental health.

The powerful Wild Bill Donovan also loathes Patton. Donovan and the OSS have been working with the Russians ever since he visited Moscow in December 1943. The American and Russian spy agencies are now exchanging information and helping one another on espionage projects within Germany, including spying on George Patton.

In fact, OSS agent Duncan Lee, an Oxford graduate and descendant of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, is assigned to deliver to Donovan “the monthly confidential report of the military governor in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany.” This includes an OSS accounting of Patton’s personal movements and wiretap recordings.

Wild Bill Donovan’s future is uncertain now that Franklin Roosevelt has died. Harry Truman keeps his distance. With the war over, the OSS may be dissolved. Donovan will do whatever it takes to keep his spy agency intact, including undermining the Truman administration’s increasingly hard-line stance against the Russians by sharing secrets about Patton.

But Donovan himself is being deceived.

The spy war in Germany between Russia and the United States is ratcheting up. It is, as American intelligence officer James H. Critchfield will later write, “the largest, most concentrated and intense intelligence warfare in history.” However, Donovan does little to stop the Russian influence within the OSS. Since the summer of 1944, his security office has made it known to Donovan that forty-seven OSS agents are either Communists or Russian sympathizers. Wild Bill also knows that Joseph Stalin has been planting Russian spies within the OSS since 1942.

What Donovan does not know is that Duncan Lee, his executive secretary and the man who knows all his secrets, is a traitor. Lee is working for the Russian spy agency NKVD, as a double agent. Among invaluable nuggets of information Lee has provided the Soviets over the course of the war was advance warning of the D-day landing date and the exact location of the atomic bomb research in Tennessee. That the Russians would use such a prized asset, Lee, to gather information about George Patton speaks volumes about their eagerness to see him silenced.

In May 1945, Donovan gains shocking information about Patton, of which the general himself is totally unaware. Stephen Skubik, a special agent in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, speaks fluent Ukrainian, and is tasked with developing undercover sources of Slavic ethnicity to report to American intelligence. On May 16 he met with Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who will one day assist the Americans and British in spying on the Russians.6 Bandera specifically told Skubik that “Soviet High Command has been ordered by Marshal Stalin to kill U.S. Army General George Patton.”

Stalin’s reasons are simple: Patton defied Russian authority when he invaded Czechoslovakia back in May, during the waning days of the war.7

But rather than being shocked by Skubik’s news, Donovan orders him to arrest Bandera so that he can be returned to the Russians, thereby silencing the man who is warning about an attempt on Patton’s life.

“I was disappointed with my first visit to OSS,” Skubik will later write with a great deal of understatement.

But the investigation is not over for Stephen Skubik. A few weeks later he meets with Professor Roman Smal-Stocki, an academic and former Ukrainian diplomat, who is on the verge of being expelled from Germany and sent back into Russian hands. Smal-Stocki informs Skubik that “the NKVD will soon attempt to kill General George Patton. Stalin wants him dead.”

Finally, in the middle of the summer, Special Agent Skubik interviews yet another Ukrainian, Gen. Pavlo Shandruk, who fought with the Nazis in the waning days of the war and is now desperately trying to avoid being sent back to Russia. He offers the United States some vital intelligence that he hopes will allow him to remain in the American Zone. “Please tell General Patton to be on guard,” Shandruk tells Agent Skubik. “He is at the top of the NKVD list to be killed.”

Wild Bill Donovan and Special Agent Skubik soon meet again. And once more, Skubik tells him of the threats. But Donovan dismisses them, saying they are “just a provocation.”

* * *

Back in Berlin, Patton stands at attention on this crisp morning, watching the Stars and Stripes hoisted over the city he once longed to conquer. Today, Patton is harboring a dangerous secret. Although American undersecretary of war Robert Patterson proclaimed on May 31, 1945, that all Allied POWs had been returned, Patton knows that a top-secret policy instituted by Gen. George Marshall, then tacitly approved by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, effectively abandons all American and British POWs who fell into Russian hands at the end of the war. The Russians are using them as leverage in negotiations with the Allies to ensure that all Soviets who have fled to the West will be returned.

Patton believes that the man to his left, President Truman, has allowed more than twenty thousand American POWs to remain in Russian hands. As a military man, Patton will do whatever it takes to see these men released—even wage war. But he is conflicted, because he understands that Truman’s motivations for allowing these Americans to be held hostage is to ensure that the Russians join in the fight against the Japanese and then, once the war is over, join a new organization to be known as the United Nations, in order to ensure future world peace.8

Patton is becoming more and more certain that the only way he can speak freely about these issues is to leave the military.

Armed with top-secret knowledge and his usual defiant attitude, George Patton has made himself a target—and he knows it.

A few weeks ago, before leaving his daughters in Washington, Patton said something that disturbed them greatly: “Well, I guess this is goodbye. I won’t be seeing you again.”

Patton’s daughters were shocked. “It’s crazy,” they protested. “The war is over.” To which Patton mysteriously responded, “My luck has run out.”