Was Patton a jerk?

[Sailboat]

@Cicero

Stalin had huge manpower and the massive Stalin tank. The Allies had pretty weak armour in the Sherman but they had the bomb.

Well, we did have the Pershing just coming online…looks like 20 of them saw combat before the war ended. But generally I agree that Soviet armor was superior; markedly so in some cases.

[muldoonthief]

@Captain_Midnight

Supposedly, Patton wanted to take the survivors of the German Army and invade Russia. I don’t know where he thought he was going to get healthy German soldiers from, since they were mostly all dead. By the Spring of 1945, Hitler was down to young teenagers and the elderly to defend the capital. The Germans literally fought to the last man in Berlin, running out of bullets before the surrender. Germany was ruined, over with, bombed out. Fucked.

Actually, tens or hundreds of thousands of German soldiers surrendered to the Allies in the waning days of WWII. Hitler didn’t have any troops left in Berlin, but there were plenty of surviving soldiers.

There’s a scene in Band of Brothers where a German general wants to surrender his entire army, and the highest ranking US officer he can find to surrender to is Major Winters.

[Guinastasia]

@Sailboat

Citation on the slapping incidents.

Patton’s apparent rationale in the first incident was that he thought the soldier was shirking duty that other men faced. PTSD was not a diagnosis then – “shell shock” was the term of art, but many did not believe in it – and Patton was not a particularly subtle man.

Just a quick hijack – “shell shock” was the WWI term – by WWII, it was “battle fatigue”. (Which actually sounds kind of pathetic, making it seem like the soldier is merely tired, rather than an actual mental trauma. “Shell shock” sounded better.)

I can see slapping someone on the battle field, if they started freaking out and running away, but if you’ve got someone in the hospital, suffering from severe stress like that guy? No excuse for it.

Needless to say, it was completely unacceptable.

Patton himself, however, was a complicated individual. I was always interested in his actions when he liberated Buchenwald:

Patton was horrified at what he found when his Third Army liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. Local German citizens claimed that they didn’t know what was going on, though at least a few admitted to knowing of the atrocities but insisted they had been powerless to stop it. He ordered American troops to round up the approximately 2,000 local Germans and march them through the camps. He wanted them to see the atrocities firsthand.

(I believe that there was a Soviet troop that also did this at another camp, but I can’t remember which one it was)

[Sage_Rat]

@Cicero

The Allies had pretty weak armour in the Sherman but they had the bomb.

I believe that I’ve read on this board that we only had the two bombs. Getting a third out the door would have taken a few months.

A lot of people can die in a few months.

[muldoonthief]

@Sage_Rat

@Cicero

The Allies had pretty weak armour in the Sherman but they had the bomb.

I believe that I’ve read on this board that we only had the two bombs. Getting a third out the door would have taken a few months.

A lot of people can die in a few months.

No, they had another bomb ready to go after Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and could manufacture 3 a month for the next few months. cite.

Not that it wouldn’t have been a horrible idea to invade the Soviet Union.

[Little_Nemo]

@ralph124c

What has always interested me was the rivalry between Patton and the British Montgomery. Monty was in charge of the british forces which were in Holland-his plan was to drive into north Germany via the flat plains of eastern Holland.
However, Monty was a guy who never attacked until he had superiority in all areas-men, materiel, etc.
Patton thought that attacking Germany through the Rhineland was the way to go-he claimed that he was held back, because gasoline (which his tank force needed) was diverted to Montgomery’s forces.
What do present day military historians say about this-was Patton correct?
After the war, Patton had a problem keeping his mouth shut-which was why he was shuffled off the a position in southern Germany. A while back, I read an odd little book (forget the title) which claimed that Patton’s death was not accidental-he was murdered on purpose. But I didn’t find the book all that convincing.

Operationally, Montgomery and Patton were competing. But on a strategic level, they were in full agreement - each thought the best strategy would be to devote most resources to one army and use that to attack as far into Germany as possible on a narrow front. The only difference between their plans was that each thought it should be their army leading the attack.

The person who disagreed was Eisenhower. He favored the broad front strategy where all of the western armies got a share of the supplies and advanced together. Eisenhower felt that if he concentrated all of the attack into a single army it would allow the Germans to concentrate all of their defenses against that lone army. And if the Germans could defeat that army, they would have stopped all advances along the western front.

It’s impossible to judge if Montgomery and Patton were right. They might have been - maybe either of them could have won the war in a month or two if they had been given the resources. But their plan did have legitimate risks.

Eisenhower’s plan was slower. It would take several months or maybe even a year to win the war. But it was virtually certain to work eventually - there was nothing the Germans could do against it. So Eisenhower was choosing a certain eventual victory over a possible quick victory.

[Little_Nemo]

@muldoonthief

@Captain_Midnight

Supposedly, Patton wanted to take the survivors of the German Army and invade Russia. I don’t know where he thought he was going to get healthy German soldiers from, since they were mostly all dead. By the Spring of 1945, Hitler was down to young teenagers and the elderly to defend the capital. The Germans literally fought to the last man in Berlin, running out of bullets before the surrender. Germany was ruined, over with, bombed out. Fucked.

Actually, tens or hundreds of thousands of German soldiers surrendered to the Allies in the waning days of WWII. Hitler didn’t have any troops left in Berlin, but there were plenty of surviving soldiers.

There’s a scene in Band of Brothers where a German general wants to surrender his entire army, and the highest ranking US officer he can find to surrender to is Major Winters.

But how many of those German soldiers would have been willing to go back into the Soviet Union?