Transcription
When disturbing allegations about George S. Patton came to light, his daughter furiously defended him. But after her death, her writings revealed the truth.
George Smith Patton Jr. was born in 1885 in California. His parents, George S. Patton Senior and Ruth Wilson, had found their place in Los Angeles and lived a wealthy life in the area. They had a residence on 128 acres outside Lake Vineyard.
Patton faced difficulties with his learning and childhood. During his homeschooling, he struggled to read and write. Some historians speculate he had dyslexia. This arduousness could have left him unable to succeed. But he fought to overcome his inabilities by sheer will alone.
In addition to the US Military Academy, he also sent applications to universities that had cadet programs. Although Princeton University accepted him, he preferred to attend the Virginia Military Institute. Both his father and grandfather had attended, and Patton decided to keep up the family tradition.
In 1910, at age 24, George Patton married Beatatrice Banning, the daughter of an industrialist. They went on to have three children over the next decade. But being a father didn't prevent Patton from continuing his other pursuits. By this time, he was rising through the ranks of the US Army, setting himself apart as a man with discipline and an ability to lead others. Even if he was a bit difficult himself, George was a dedicated man, and he consistently impressed his superiors. To say the least, George had lofty goals and the motivation to achieve them.
A skilled runner and fencer, his sporting success took him to new heights in 1912 when he attended the Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. He finished fifth in the pentathlon, first among the non-Swedish competitors. After the games, he traveled to France to study under agitant Charles Clary, a master swordsman and fencer. These lessons reshaped George's technique. He spent so much time studying the blade that he ended up teaching it.
He transferred to the Mounted Service School in Fort Riley, Kansas. There he was a student and instructor of fencing. He taught superior officers in addition to other cavalry officers, and by the end of his two years there earned the name master of the sword. The first army officer to ever receive the title.
But 2 years later, the world changed. And where it was headed, swords weren't going to be enough. The United States entered World War I in April 1917. The age of the sword was ending. The age of the tank was starting. And George Patton was going to be ready for it.
In November 1917, George established the American Expeditionary Forces Light Tank School. He studied tanks, acquired the vehicles, and personally set up the school near Longre, France. His expertise made him ideal to lead the US first provisional tank brigade under Colonel Samuel Rockenback's tank corps in the American First Army in 1918. When put into combat, he gave a firm order: No one would surrender an American tank.
In September 1918, Patton was wounded during an expedition into German territory. In a report he submitted before being taken to the hospital, he related that he was shot in the leg and the round came out a few inches below his back. Thankfully, his recovery was swift, and he was able to return to duty. His return would be short-lived, as hostilities had ended just before George turned 33.
In the time between conflicts, George was assigned to Hawaii as a lieutenant colonel in 1934, but he was miserable at the lack of action. To quell his thirst for combat, he turned to the bottle. He'd brought his family with him to Hawaii, including Jean Gordon, his 21-year-old niece by marriage. While sinking himself into alcohol, he also apparently engaged in a scandalous affair with the young woman.
By the time World War II began in 1939, George Patton was a colonel. As fighting got more intense, his goal was to bolster US power within the armored forces. In quick succession, he received several promotions, and by 1942, he was commander of the first armored corps. By this time, he was the world's most knowledgeable and important figure in armored combat doctrine. George's ego was a well-known issue for him, and this endured throughout his career.
Soon after the US entered World War II, he participated in Operation Torch, an Allied invasion of Vichy, French-controlled territory in North Africa. He commanded 33,000 men and 100 ships. His ability to strategize allowed his forces to dominate the opposition before forcing the French commander to sign an armistice. After his initial victory, Patton managed to establish a naval port in the area. But his endeavors didn't stop there. The army chose him to take over as commanding general of the second corps, and he made sweeping changes to their conduct. His ironclad mandates made all the difference for his subordinate officers, and he reshaped them into effective servicemen in his image: clean, tidy, and dedicated.
With these disciplined men under his command, Patton was able to make a significant difference in the Allies' pursuits in North Africa. But as he made a name for himself, the Allies decided they needed him elsewhere. After seeing action in North Africa, Patton's superiors reassigned him to Operation Husky in Sicily. He was assigned a division of 90,000, and while they faced brutal weather conditions, he and his fellow infantry divisions were able to achieve their goal.
George's ambitions landed him in hot water at several points during the Sicily campaign. He often disagreed with Terry Dela Messa Allen Senior and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and even lost a message intended to limit his actions until he'd already followed through on them. In July 1943, his men slaughtered 71 Italian and two German POWs without cause. Patton helped the men cover up their mistake to avoid any bad press. The incident eventually came out, but Patton faced no blame for being complicit in the incident.
During the Sicily campaign, two men under Patton began suffering from battle fatigue, something we now call PTSD. Patton responded by slapping them across the face, calling them cowards, and commanding them to return to the front line. He even threatened one of them with execution.
Patton couldn't get away with this behavior forever. Dwight D. Eisenhower punished the general for his actions, and he had to make both private and public apologies. Afterwards, the army refused him a command in the field for almost a year. Furthermore, Eisenhower thought Patton was too impulsive and made too many mistakes. They had to do something about him or risk the entire war effort.
Despite his victories, Patton's superiors reassigned him to the Third Army in England, where he was to train new and inexperienced officers in combat techniques. But that wasn't the only reason he was there. The Germans feared Patton more than any Allied general, so they assumed he was preparing their main invasion force. With the Germans focused on Patton, they were distracted from the true invasion force, preparing to land at Normandy.
Patton had to miss D-Day, but soon after, the Allies brought in his Third Army to aid with the invasion of Normandy. They coordinated a plan with the other corps, and under Patton's command, the Third Army was able to make significant progress. His tactics focused on speed and aggression, relying on advanced air support and recon. His logistical abilities kept the Third Army exceptionally well-informed, but their generals' narcissistic ego began to take its toll.
Patton and his Third Army took on huge challenges in combat. While they mostly succeeded, other commanders often questioned his actions, including his enemies. Though initially impressed by Patton, one German officer was left baffled by his campaign in Lorraine, which produced heavy casualties for little benefit. Patton was so focused on completing his plan that he didn't consider the toll it would take. When he took Lorraine in September through November of 1944, his actions ended in over 50,000 fatalities, one-third of their total force. George's plan demanded so many resources that it almost wasn't worth it to take Lorraine in the first place. Historian Carlo Desty remarked that the Lorraine campaign was Patton's biggest failure, even though he was technically successful.
George's biggest tactical endeavor occurred at the Battle of the Bulge. But before he could get there, he had to disengage the Third Army from combat in Germany. Luckily, when the Allies decided to go all-in at the last-ditch effort of the Battle of the Bulge, Patton had already set up three contingency plans to make sure he could get there in time. After the meeting closed, he called the Third Army and only needed to say two words to initiate the immediate mobilization of six divisions and over 133,000 vehicles: "Play ball."
George's command made it to Bastogne at exactly the right time. They permitted relief and supplies to reach the Allied forces trapped in combat. Patton lauded his own ability to maneuver six divisions from one line of combat to another in mid-winter, no less. He even went so far as to claim his aid at Bastogne was the outstanding achievement of the war.
After the events of the Bulge, Patton and the Allies wanted to keep Germany on the retreat. But when he proposed a plan of action, the army neglected the Third Army, and their supplies were heavily restricted. But Patton wouldn't take that sitting down. He had his men pretend they were the First Army to reappropriate thousands of gallons of gasoline to fuel his tanks. Despite being underfunded, Patton's men were still able to make a huge foray into German territory, basically eradicating the First and Seventh German armies.
During the march into Germany, Patton's superiors commanded him to ignore the town of Trier, as it would require at least twice the army to seize. His superiors didn't think he could do it with the resources he had. Patton's reply is undeniably legendary.
As Patton continued eating up German territory with the Third Army, he set up a heroic plan to save some prisoners from a POW camp near Hammelburg. It turns out he had a special connection to this camp. One of the POWs inside was his son-in-law. Patton sent a task force to retrieve him and the others from behind German lines. But while his intentions were good, the extraction didn't go according to plan. The raid on the camp holding the prisoners went terribly. They lost 57 vehicles. And of the 314 men he sent, only 35 returned. Even George admitted that it went poorly and he'd made a bad decision.
For exclusive perks like early access to new videos, priority replies to your comments, and to have your say on future content, consider becoming a Factate member. On top of that, your support helps keep the channel going. Click the link in the description for more details.
Despite Patton's troubles, the Third Army was still one of the Allied Forces' most successful units. They were in constant action for 281 days and seized 32,763 square miles of German-occupied land. Patton had a lot to be proud of by the time World War II came to an end in 1945.
In the year following VE Day, George had time to rest after almost a year traveling across Germany with his men. After traveling to Paris and London, he finally returned to Bedford, Massachusetts, where droves of people greeted him. Afterward, he went to Hatch Memorial Shell, where he spoke to around 20,000 audience members. The audience that day included around 400 Third Army veterans who sustained injuries. But while George's speech could have been inspirational and sympathetic to his fellow officers, it instead attracted controversy. He made comments about those men who were killed in action, claiming they were frequently a fool, and stated that the real heroes were the wounded.
Patton was clearly not cut out for the civilian world. He later wrote, "Yet another war has come to an end, and with it my usefulness to the world." In the end, Patton was deeply depressed by the end of World War II. As he spent more time in relative peace, he grew more restless and made horrific comments about Jews, calling them locusts, lower than animals, and a subhuman species.
In late 1945, George's mood was dismal without the act of conflict keeping his attention. To help distract him from his woes, his chief of staff, Major General Hobart Gay, brought him along on a hunting trip in Spire, Germany. While they were driving, they looked around at abandoned, rotting cars by the roadside. Hobart Gay said, "How awful war is. Think of the waste." Then a US Army truck suddenly hit their 1938 Cadillac limousine. While Patton's compatriots remained mostly unharmed, George himself endured a cut across his head, difficulty breathing, a compression fracture, and the dislocation of two of the vertebrae in his neck. His intense injuries left him paralyzed from the neck down. The once viral general was stuck in the hospital while he recovered, and spinal traction intended to help his back heal. The doctors told him that he would never resume a normal life. While in hospital, his wife Beatatrice was the only person permitted to visit him. With no chance of his life going back to normal, he said, "This is a hell of a way to die." A pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure came over him late at night on December 21st, at the age of 60.
Patton was buried in Luxembourg City alongside other casualties from the Third Army. According to his request, the legacy he left is wildly flawed. While he was often a remarkable general, he suffered from severe flaws that cost him and those close to him time and time again.
Years after their initial trust in Hawaii, Patton continued to see Gene Gordon, his niece by marriage, first in London in 1944 and again in Bavaria the following year. Even worse, Patton was incredibly vocal about his conquests with the younger woman, and his whole family apparently knew about it. When his wife found out that he was still cavorting around with his own niece, she decided to leave him. He had to beg for forgiveness, something he didn't do lightly in any circumstance. His daughter Ruth Ellen denied the romance allegations while she was alive, but posthumously her writings revealed that the family was well aware of the relationship and considered George and Jean's entanglement a romantic one.
Jean Gordon returned to the US not long after Patton succumbed to his injuries. She was devastated. In January of 1946, she was found in her friend's apartment, asphyxiated by the gas stove she had left on.
If you enjoyed this Factate video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more incredible stories. If you want to say in who we cover next, join our membership program through the link in the description for exclusive perks. Your support means everything to us. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next one.
"I'm trying to bring back to you what these soldiers have given. God damn it. It's no fun to say to men that you love, 'Go out. Go out and get killed.' And we've had to say it. And by God, they have gone and they have won. But I want you to remember that the sacrifice that these men have made must not be in vain."