George S. Patton

The orders from above--Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted him to confiscate the houses of wealthy Germans so Jewish survivors could live in them-- embittered him. His beloved 3rd Army was decaying as troops decamped for home, discipline vanished, and "the displaced sons-of-bitches in the various camps are blooming like green trees", he wrote a friend. He saw journalists' criticism of his handling of the Jews and the return of Nazis to high official positions as a result of Jewish and Communist plots. The "New York Times" and other publications were "trying to do two things", he wrote, "First, implement Communism, and second, see that all businessmen of German ancestry and non-Jewish antecedents are thrown out of their jobs." As reports on the conditions in Bavaria began to alarm President Harry S. Truman, Eisenhower came down from Frankfurt on 9/17/45 to join Patton on a tour of the camps where Jewish refugees were housed. He was horrified to find that some of the guards were former SS men. During the tour, Patton remarked that the camps had been clean and decent before the arrival of the Jewish DPs (displaced persons), who were "pissing and crapping all over the place." Eisenhower told Patton to shut up, but he continued his diatribe, telling Eisenhower he planned to make a nearby German village "a concentration camp for some of these goddamn Jews.".

Pictured on a 3¢ US commemorative postage stamp, issued in his honor 11/11/1953) (his 68th birthday).

In the early 1990s it was revealed he had covered up the killings of concentration camp guards by American soldiers.

George Kennedy, who went on to portray Patton in Brass Target (1978), served under him in World War II.

Although he had many black soldiers under his command--notably the 761st Tank Battalion, a segregated armored unit known as the "Black Panthers" that won distinction on the battlefield--he nevertheless saw African-Americans as inferior and disparaged their performance in combat.

The Oscar-winning Patton (1970) failed to mention one of the most controversial incidents in Patton's military career, when he diverted troops to liberate a German POW camp housing his son-in-law. As recounted in the book "Raid: The Untold Story of Patton's Secret Mission," he sent a mobile force of about 50 vehicles and approximately 300 men to liberate the camp, which was approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) behind enemy lines. With no air support and no additional ground support, the task force liberated 300 American officers, including Patton's son-in-law, Capt. John Waters, and 1,200 enlisted men. The mission was not authorized by Patton's superiors and is seen by some contemporary historians as indicating that he was emotionally unstable, particularly when considered in light of his two slapping incidents and his anti-Semitism. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had known Patton since 1918 and considered him a friend, respected his military genius and leadership abilities but was wary about his inability to control his emotions. Cautiously, Ike had appointed Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall to command the army in North Africa instead of Patton in 1942, then had to replace Fredendall with Patton when Fredendall proved inadequate. At the time, he cautioned Patton about avoiding "personal recklessness" when he gave him the command, and counted on the presence of Gen. Omar N. Bradley to be a calming influence on the mercurial general. Conscious of why Bradley was assigned to him, Patton insisted that Bradley--who had earlier commanded his own corps--be assigned as Deputy Corps Commander. Bradley essentially was there to ensure that Patton didn't say or do anything untoward, and together they proved a great success. By the end of the war Bradley was in overall command of 1st Army, the great force that invaded France on D-Day. Patton, free of Bradley's calming influence, was on his own when he launched his foolhardy raid--it was actually not necessary,, as Waters and the other prisoners were not in any danger. It likely was influenced by paranoia on Patton's part, rooted in his own orders to his troops to kill German prisoners.

As commander of the 3rd Army, he ordered the killing of German soldiers in the act of surrendering or after being taken prisoner because he said they could not be trusted. When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower reprimanded him for ordering his troops to kill POWs, Patton responded, "If you order me not to, I will stop. Otherwise, I will continue to influence troops the only way I know, a way which so far has produced results." Eisenhower then told Patton to continue any way he saw fit, but to be cautious lest the murder of prisoners boomerang against him. On his part, Patton did not believe killing prisoners was wrong, as he believed it saved his soldiers' lives: "Some fair-haired boys are trying to say that I kill too many prisoners. Yet the same people cheer at the far greater killings of Japs. Well the more I killed, the fewer men I lost, but they don't think of that." Referring to the fact that American soldiers and Marines fighting the Japanese took no prisoners (giving no quarter was the modus operandi on both sides during the Pacific War), Patton was convinced that he was not doing wrong. Killing soldiers in the process of surrendering and the bloody dispatch of prisoners eliminated logistical problems that would otherwise have slowed down Patton's 3rd Army, which sometimes advanced at the rate of 60 miles a day. Eisenhower, who was given the overall Allied command in Europe as he was a masterful politician, was wary about Patton's killing of POWs, as such a practice could be seen as antithetical to a democracy based on the rule of law.

As a military governor in the American-occupied zone of West Germany in July 1945 he accused the US Treasury Secretary of "Semitic revenge against Germany.".

He has been held responsible for the American defeat in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest from September to December 1944.

He had zero sympathy for the Holocaust victims living in wretched, overcrowded collection camps under his command. He was unable to imagine that people living in such misery were not there because of their own flaws. The displaced Jews were "locusts", "lower than animals", "lost to all decency." They were "a subhuman species without any of the cultural or social refinements of our times", Patton wrote in his diary. A United Nations aid worker tried to explain that they were traumatized, but "personally I doubt it. I have never looked at a group of people who seem to be more lacking in intelligence and spirit." Patton was no friend to Arabs, either; in a 1943 letter, he called them "the mixture of all the bad races on earth.".

His biographer Carlo D'Este suggested that his melancholy and increasingly extraordinary behavior may have been due to brain damage resulting from a series of head injuries caused by a lifetime of falls from horses and road accidents--the most serious being an accident in Hawaii in 1936 that had resulted in a two-day blackout. He concluded, however, that we will never know, for after his death his wife Beatrice refused to allow an autopsy on the body despite a request from the Army.

Participated in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden (the same Olympics that brought Jim Thorpe lasting fame) in the modern pentathlon. He was an exceptional marksman, fencer and horseman, and an excellent runner. Placed fifth overall, partly due to judges' determination that he missed the target/ he contended that he hit the same point on the target twice. He used a .38, which created larger holes than his competitors' .22s. He was also selected to represent the FUS in the modern pentathlon at the 1916 Summer Olympics, which were scheduled for Berlin, but ended up being canceled because of World War I.