George Smith Patton was born November 11, 1885 in San Gabriel, California. George Patton came from the Virginia family, the glory of military traditions. From an early age he admired heroes of the American Civil War (1861-1865), especially cavalry generals, both those of them who led the Confederate forces, and those who led the northerners.
He studied at the Virginia Military Institute Virginia Military Institute, and then in the United States Military Academy in West Point. He graduated in 1909.
He did not show outstanding academic success, according to some reports, he even was within an inch of expel from the academy after the first year of study. Nevertheless, he became a brilliant horseman, swordsman, yachtsman and private pilot.
Patton for the first time participated in the fighting during the expedition military operation the United States Army to destroy the paramilitary forces of the Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa in 1916. This operation was the first American military operation involving vehicles.
Although the US briefly participated in the World War I, Captain Patton managed to be in the war in France. A quarter-century after, he would find himself in the same places once again, and still later the inhabitants of Avranches in Lower Normandy would erect a memorial in his honor. In September 1918, at the Battle of the Meuse, he was severly wounded, but comrade Joe Angelo pulled it out of the fire.
Following the war, Patton became colonel and knight of the Purple Heart. He served in tank training center in St. Meade, where he became friends with the future head, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Patton tried to persuade the US Congress to increase allocations armored forces, but his idea got no support. Patton also engaged in elaborating the spheres of tank battles and general tactics of armored troops, offering new methods and tactical techniques. He continues to work on improving tanks, speaking with innovative proposals in media. However, the lack of public interest to the issue played a bad role on his advancement in rank, therefore he returned to the cavalry.
In 1932, during the Great Depression, he had to participate in the disrupting of the famous veterans march on Washington. The crowd was rather determined. General Douglas MacArthur threw armored vehicles and infantry with bayonets against them. There is still a mixed attitude to this event in the US. MacArthur always said that prevented the communist putsch. Patton later learned that among the demonstrators was his savior Joe Angelo.
For the first time the public learned the name of Patton after the operation "Torch" in November 1942, when the corps under his command, place themselves on record during the landing in Morocco and then fighting with Rommel in the south of Tunisia. He became famous for the fact that even in the desert he was keeping military chic, as members of his staff were always clean-shaven.
In early March 1943, he assumed the difficult task - to return to the 2nd Army Corps in Tunisia its fighting capacity. In April he transmits it’s literally re-born and tempered unit to Omar Bradley and returns to his staff involved in the development plan for the invasion of Sicily.
In the summer of 1943, Patton led the formed 7th army for the landing in Sicily. July, 10 his soldiers landed on the beaches of Italy, July 22 first entered Palermo, and on August 17 took Messina, the last stronghold of the enemy on the island.
August 3, visiting the field hospital, Patton encountered a soldier, who got a nervous breakdown under enemy fire. Patton called him a coward and hit him in the face (Blumenson, 331). The same happened on August 10. The information leaked got into the newspapers, and in the midst of warfare, one of the best generals was suspended from command. Patton was held in reserve for six months, until his abilities were not needed again for the Normandy operation. According to his presence in Mediterranean region, German intelligence reported to Hitler that the allies apparently preparing a major operation in the Balkans.
In England, Patton again exhibited his straightforwardness. Speaking to a civil audience, he had used strong language in the presence of ladies and bluntly said that after the war the United States and Britain will rule the world. Furious Eisenhower was going to call off the general, but changed his mind, saying at the meeting that Patton owed a few victories. The order of Chief was exceeded by Patton. In August 1944 his 3rd Army liberated Brittany and could be the first unit to enter Paris, but at the order of higher command granted this possibility to the French. In December and January his 3rd Army stopped the German offensive in the Ardennes, in late March, crossed the Rhine, in April rapidly marched through southern Germany. Patton applied against the Germans their own tactics of "blitzkrieg”. Spectacular photos of four-star general in the field form and a soldier's helmet was a popular in most American magazines.
Since landing in France, army under Patton's command, accounting for about half a million people, liberated more than 80 million square miles of territory and captivated or destroyed nearly half a million soldiers of the Wehrmacht (Wallace, 1946, pp. 194–195.). The 3rd Army met the end of the war in western Bohemia, advancing deep into the territory, referred to area of influence of the Soviet Union during the meeting in Yalta. After Stalin's diplomatic demarche Patton received orders to retreat, and Patton did not hide his discontent about the issue. In general, he was perhaps the first among US generals and politicians to openly speak about the Soviet threat.
Not only the enemy, but even own heads sometimes found themselves taken by surprise by swift action of Patton. Sometimes he almost prayed that the commander-in-chief or even Omar Bradley, with whom Patton, in his own statement, shared views on many things, did not know about the bold maneuver of a division of the Third Army and ordered to stop the advance.
Upon the end warfare in Europe, Patton asked to be transferred to the Pacific Ocean, but instead was appointed the military governor of Bavaria.
He was accused of connivance with the officials of the Nazi past, many of whom he had left in their original positions. He showed his straightforwardness and controversy again, when responded to these accusations. He compared the Nazi party with the political parties of the US in the way that in both instances people with good skill of infrastructure management had to enter the party in the time of war (Axelrod, 2006, pp. 165–166).
He was the first among the Allied administrators, who organized for the Germans forced tours to the former death camp.
It's hard to say what would have been the further fate of Patton. In peacetime, the soldier's frankness, most likely brought to his dismissal from the army. The order on his transfer to the United States and the appointment of the head of a group of experts generalizing the experience World War II was nearly signed. On the other hand, in the late 1940s, when the political pendulum swung to the right, he could easily become a senator or even president. Nothing that he did not happened. December 9, 1945 George Patton got into a car accident in Heidelberg. 12 days later he died from injuries and was buried in the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg. After his name a series of American battle tanks were called. The movie "Patton", filmed in 1970, won seven "Oscars".
Patton contemporaries and colleagues, especially the French, sometimes compared him with the general Napoleon.
References
Blumenson, M. (1974). The Patton Papers: 1940–1945. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Axelrod, A. (2006). Patton: A Biography. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wallace, B. (1946). Patton & His Third Army. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Military Service Publishing.
