George S. Patton

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George S. Patton Jr., before May 1945, as Lieutenant General

George Smith Patton Jr. (Born November 11, 1885 in San Gabriel , California ; † December 21, 1945 in Heidelberg ) was a general in the US Army in World War II . He was in command of the 3rd US Army after landing in Normandy .

biography

family

The Pattons were a family of Scottish-Irish and English origins, which included a number of military officials and politicians, including Generals Hugh Mercer and Hugh Weedon Mercer. George Smith Patton's parents were George Smith Patton Sr. (1856-1927) and his wife Ruth Wilson (1861-1928), the daughter of Benjamin Davis Wilson (Don Benito) , a California politician and Indian friend. He was already the third George Smith Patton after his grandfather Colonel ( Colonel ) George S. Patton senior (1833-1864). Patton's father was a friend of John Singleton Mosby , a famous cavalryman and a notorious guerrilla leader . A great uncle, Colonel Waller T. Patton, died in the American Civil War near Gettysburg in 1863 , while others served as colonels in the Confederate States Army or the Confederate States Navy . John M. Patton , his great-grandfather, was the deputy governor of the state of Virginia.

Patton married in 1910 Beatrice Banning Ayer (1886-1953), daughter of the textile industrialist Frederick Ayer . They had known each other since childhood because the families spent their holidays together on Catalina Island . They had three children, Beatrice Smith Patton (1911–1952), Ruth Ellen Patton Totten (1915–1993), who published a family history of the parents, and George Patton IV (1923–2004), who also visited West Point and was Major General US Army was.

Cadet Patton 1907

Training and Olympic participation

He spent a year at the Virginia Military Institute and there at the Kappa Alpha Order and then moved to the US Military Academy in West Point . He had to repeat his first year of study because of mathematics weaknesses, which he then did with honors, and in 1909 became a cavalry officer.

He finished the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912 in modern pentathlon in fifth, where he caused a controversy because of his shooting results - Patton, who großkalibrigere guns used, claimed some of his hits were double counting because he had met twice exactly the same point.

Lieut. Col. Patton in France, summer 1918

First World War

In 1916 he became 1st Lieutenant . Patton was moved to the Mexican border , where he fought against insurgents and killed "General" Julio Cardenas, the leader of the Pancho Villas bodyguard , with his Colt . Under General Pershing , Captain Patton fought on the Western Front in Europe during World War I. He trained the first 500 American tank drivers and distinguished himself by taking over French tanks in September 1918 during the Battle of St. Mihiel . As part of the 1st US Corps , he took part with his tank division in the following Meuse-Argonne offensive .

Patton ended the war, wounded by machine gun fire, as a Colonel ( temporary rank ).
Patton was a believer in reincarnation and believed to have been to France in a previous life.

Second World War

General Bernard Montgomery and Lieutenant General George S. Patton on July 28, 1943 in Palermo , Sicily

During the Second World War he commanded the I US Armored Corps until January 1942 and took part in Operation Torch , the Allied landing in North Africa , under General Dwight D. Eisenhower from November 8, 1942 . Major General Patton commanded the western force that landed at Fedala and aimed at the occupation of Casablanca . He gained general fame among the enemy through his successes in the Tunisia campaign and after landing in Sicily .

George S. Patton Jr., 1943

On March 6, 1943, Patton was promoted to Lieutenant General at the suggestion of Eisenhower . At the same time he took over the second US Corps. Major General Omar N. Bradley was assigned to him as deputy. Patton let the US troops advance on Gafsa , who by May 1943 had participated in the encirclement of the German-Italian army group in the Tunis bridgehead through the advance on Biserta .

As the newly appointed Commander in Chief of the 7th US Army , Patton commanded the landing of the US forces in Sicily as part of Operation Husky from July 10, 1943. Initially, the 7th Army was only intended to cover the flank of the British 8th Army under Bernard L. Montgomery , but Patton's ambition drove his units into the interior of Sicily. After taking Palermo on July 22nd, all of western Sicily was under American control while the British ran aground off Messina . Patton planned to take Messina before the British too. Parts of the 3rd US Infantry Division penetrated Messina on August 17, so Patton had also won this "race".

General Patton (left) with Brigadier General Otto P. Weyland (US Air Force) in Nancy , France , 1944

During two hospital visits in Sicily, he had beaten soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or threatened them with his weapon. Although initially kept under lock and key, the incidents of August 3 and 10, 1943, did finally reach the public. Due to the slapping scandal , Patton initially had no active role in Operation Overlord , the invasion of France in 1944. Because of the events, Patton initially became a marginal figure in the European theater of war for the next eleven months, but discharge from military service was never really an issue for Eisenhower. As part of Operation Quicksilver Patton was then commander of the only on paper (or from vehicles and artillery dummies ) existing US 1st Army Group at (FUSAG, the First United States Army Group) to the German military command an Allied landing intent simulating the Dover Strait when the actual landing in Normandy took place on June 6, 1944.

Patton's most important success as a troop leader was after his rehabilitation his breakthrough through the German lines at Avranches on July 30, 1944 , when he was the outer left during Operation Cobra through an operation carried out with great speed with the 4th and 6th US Armored Divisions could pierce the German flank. At the bridge of Pontaubault he smuggled in 72 hours seven divisions and looked almost without resistance toward his advance. After this breakout from the landing head, Patton achieved legendary fame as a fighting general of the 3rd US Army , but also ambivalent fame in leadership circles.

The US Commander in Chief Lt. General Omar Bradley reports that when Patton reached Argentan (while closing the Falaise Cauldron), he called him and said (with regard to the British pliers company on the way from the north): “Let You march me on to Falaise and we will chase the British back into the sea to a second Dunkirk . "

Patton achieved further success

George S. Patton Jr. was a horse lover . It is thanks to this fact that in May 1945 he ensured that the Hostau Stud , where all the horses of the state studs under the influence of the German Wehrmacht were gathered, including the famous Lipizzaner from Piber , from the Soviet troops in Security was brought in to save the valuable horse population. He was concerned that the Soviet troops would fail to recognize the cultural value of the Lipizzaner breed . Shortly before the end of the war, Patton was promoted to general .

The failed Task Force Tree

As an inglorious memory of General Patton, in addition to the shooting of several dozen German prisoners of war in the Chenogne massacre , the Baum task force he set up went down in the history books. On March 26, 1945, shortly before the end of the war, Patton sent a task force of 300 men with tanks, half-tracks and jeeps from Aschaffenburg behind the German lines. The commanding officer was the 24-year-old Captain Abraham J. Baum and the aim was to free Patton's son-in-law John Waters (married to his daughter Beatrix), who was in a German prison camp near Hammelburg . Baum cut through the Spessart ; He reached the camp with great losses and injured himself. During the retreat on March 28, 1945 Baum's squad was trapped and completely wiped out. He and John Waters met in the prison hospital. The camp was finally liberated ten days later. Patton flew his son-in-law Waters, but not Baum.

Liberation of Buchenwald

When the 3rd US Army liberated Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945 on the heights of the Ettersberg near Weimar, he was - after a visit on April 15 - so shocked by the atrocity of the Nazis that he ordered the military police to on the following day to lead 1000 Weimar residents through the concentration camp to confront them with the reality of the Nazi dictatorship .

Governor of Bavaria

After the war, Patton was the military governor of Bavaria and resided from May to September 1945 in the house of the former Reich press officer, Max Amann , in St. Quirin in Gmund am Tegernsee . He soon got into trouble because he didn't push ahead with denazification quickly.

Patton loved his job and believed that war was part of human life. His trademarks were an engraved nickel-plated Colt Single Action Army Revolver .45 Model 1873 with ivory handle, a Smith & Wesson  .357 Magnum and his Bull Terrier Willie. He was a cynic and controversial, but very successful in his actions.

He did not hold back his anti-Semitism . In his diary in September 1945, he wrote that US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Presidential Advisor Bernard Baruch would take “Semitic vengeance” against the Germans. In a letter to Baruch dated December 1945, however, he denied being an anti-Semite. Patton's remarks about the SS were seen by some as an admiration for them: "The SS ... a damned good-looking bunch of very disciplined sons of bitches." With such little diplomatic remarks he aroused the incomprehension of many contemporaries. He wanted an alliance with the Germans to destroy the Soviet Union . He was thinking in a similar direction to that of the British Prime Minister , Winston Churchill , with Operation Unthinkable . In an interview with US journalists on September 22, 1945, Patton described the NSDAP as a “normal” party comparable to the Democrats and Republicans in the USA. Then Eisenhower released him from his command of the 3rd US Army ; he was succeeded by Walter Joseph Muller . He gave Patton the 15th Army in Bad Nauheim and told him to compile source material on the history of World War II. Patton found this assignment degrading and degrading.

death

Patton's grave in the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial

On December 9, 1945, one day before his planned return to the United States, the general and his chief of staff , Major General Hobart R. "Hap" Gay, went on a pheasant hunt. At around 11:45 a.m., the car, a Cadillac Model 75 , driven by PFC Horace Woodring , collided head- on at a level crossing in Mannheim-Käfertal with an American truck, at the wheel of Technical Sergeant Robert L. Thompson (scene of the accident today: Mannheimer Straße , Corner of Neustadter Strasse). While General Gay and the driver were uninjured, Patton suffered a fractured cervical vertebrae with paraplegia , presumably because he hit the partition in the car.

He died on December 21 in the Heidelberg military hospital as a result of a pulmonary embolism . At his own request, he was buried in the American military cemetery at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial near Hamm in Luxembourg amid the soldiers of "his" 3rd US Army .

Later he was reburied from the burial ground in a separate place closer to the entrance so that the many visitors who come specifically for him would not disturb the peace and quiet of the surrounding soldiers.

In 1947 parts of his papers were published. Other memoirs of other commanders-in-chief followed later (e.g. by Eisenhower in 1948, by Montgomery in 1958).

honors and awards

Patton Monument in Marienbad, Czech Republic
Postage stamp from 1953. You can see George S. Patton and two M48 Patton tanks.

Honors

Awards

Selection of decorations, sorted based on the Order of Precedence of Military Awards :

Quotes

  • "May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't have them." (Originally: "May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.")
  • “I have great respect for the German soldiers. In reality, the Germans are the only decent people living in Europe. ”(In his 1974 documentary estate or in his diary: Excerpt - Notes, Ed. 2 - 1974 - 889 pages - Master of War: The Patton Papers 1940–1945 )
  • “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. "(Originally:" Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. ") : Schmitz, Heribert "Get out of the demotivation trap", Gabler-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005 (D).
  • "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."
  • “Somewhere in Sicily there are 400 neatly arranged graves. And that's only because a man was sleeping on duty. But they are German graves because we caught the sleeping bastard in front of them. ”(From his speech to the 3rd Army on June 5, 1944)
  • "The cabbage has stuck its head in the meat grinder, and I'm holding the handle in my hand." (December 26, 1944 to Omar N. Bradley on the occasion of the intervention of Patton's 3rd Army in the Battle of the Bulge )

Incorrect attributions

  • “The aim of the war is not to die for your country, but to let the other bastard die for his.” (Originally: “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. ")

Publications

  • George S. Patton jr .: War As I Knew It. Houghton Mifflin, 1947/1975, ISBN 0-395-73529-7 .
  • Martin Blumenson (Ed.): The Patton Papers: 1940–1945, Houghton Mifflin, 2 volumes, 1974, Da Capo 1996
  • Kevin Hymel (Ed.): Patton's photographs: War as he saw it. Potomac Books, 2006, ISBN 1-57488-872-2 .

literature

  • Martin Blumenson : Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, 1885-1945 , William Morrow 1994
  • Ladislas Farago : The last days of Patton. Berkley Books, New York 1982, ISBN 0-425-05388-1 .
  • George Forty: The armies of George S. Patton. Arms & Armor, London 1996, ISBN 1-85409-295-2 .
  • Stanley P. Hirshson: General Patton. HarperCollins, New York 2002, ISBN 0-06-000982-9 .
  • Earle Rice: George Patton. Chelsea House Publ., Philadelphia, Penn. 2004, ISBN 0-7910-7403-X .
  • Robert H. Patton: The Pattons: The Personal History of an American Family . Potomac Books, 2004, ISBN 1-57488-690-8 .
  • John Nelson Rickard: Patton at Bay: The Lorraine Campaign, 1944 . Potomac Books, 2004, ISBN 1-57488-782-3 .
  • John Nelson Rickard: Advance and Destroy. Patton as Commander in the Bulge . The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, USA, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8131-3455-0 .
  • Trevor Royle: Patton: Old Blood and Guts. - London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, ISBN 0-297-84676-0 .
  • Arno Lustiger : Der Feldherr , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 299, Saturday, December 23, 1995, supplement "Events and Figures"
  • Sven Felix Kellerhoff, “Patton sends combat group into perdition”, Main-Post, March 14, 2005
  • Jochem Hauck, "Himmelfahrtskommando durch den Spessart", Spessart, March 2020, pp. 12-17

Movie

Web links

Commons : George S. Patton  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography of General Hugh Mercer. Militaryhistory.about.com, September 29, 2011, accessed March 21, 2012 .
  2. ↑ The Button Box: A Loving Daughter's Memoir of Mrs. George S. Patton.
  3. ↑ Chester Wilmot : Der Kampf um Europa , Gutenberg Book Guild, Atrium-Verlag, Zurich 1955, pp. 414 f., 421.
  4. ↑ Omar Bradley: "A Soldier's Story", New York 1951, p. 376. Quoted in: Wilmot: Europa, p. 443.
  5. ↑ Jochem Hauck, "Himmelfahrtskommando durch den Spessart", Spessart, March 2020, p. 17
  6. ↑ Jonathan D. Sarna: American Judaism. A history . Yale University Press, New Haven 2004, ISBN 0-300-10197-X , p. 266.
  7. ^ A b Thomas E. Ricks : Patton the anti-Semite - and hypocrite , in: ForeignPolicy.com , June 25, 2010.
  8. ^ Michael S. Neiberg: Warfare and society in Europe. 1898 to the present . Routledge, New York 2004, ISBN 0-415-32718-0 , p. 157.
  9. ^ Barry Turner: Countdown to Victory. The final European campaigns of World War II . Morrow, New York 2004, ISBN 0-06-074067-1 , p. 577.
  10. ^ German Cars / Vehicles in Wehrmacht Service - Page 13 - Histomil.com. Retrieved February 23, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Winfried Mönch: decisive battle "Invasion" 1944 ?: prognoses and diagnoses . Franz Steiner Verlag p. 227.
  12. ↑ www.patton.lu
  13. ^ Patton Museum. Retrieved February 23, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Plan and photos of Patton Barracks on a page about the American military facilities in Heidelberg, accessed on February 22, 2012.
  15. ↑ Wetterauer Zeitung of April 8, 2010.
  16. ↑ Google Maps. Retrieved February 23, 2019 (de-US).
  17. ↑ PATTON MEMORIAL PILSEN. Retrieved February 23, 2019 .
  18. ↑ www.quotedb.com , accessed June 9, 2007.
  19. ↑ After hoeners.de , accessed 9 June 2007.
  20. ^ Antony Beevor : The Ardennes Offensive 1944. Hitler's last battle in the west. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-10220-6 , p. 317
  21. ^ Patton (1970) - Memorable quotes
  22. ↑ see filmography ( memento from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Patton, George S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Patton, George Smith Junior (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION General in the US Army in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH San Gabriel , California
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1945
Place of death Heidelberg