I wasn’t sure if this worked better here or in elsewhere. I’m rereading An Army at Dawn, which is the first in an excellent WW2 series. Most of the Allied generals seem awfully high on themselves and eager to throw troops at any problem, but Patton (and Montgomery) really seem like assholes. Why did anyone follow or promote him? He seemed very punchable to me.
He obtained results that others didn’t (or couldn’t)
The US army grew about thirty times for the war, and all those generals had to come from peacetime lower ranks officers. Those that adapt were promoted, others weren’t. Patton was efficient, had good publicity and so his celebrity is still great. Clark, Hodges or “howling mad” ? not so much.
It’s cliche, but he wasn’t there to be liked, he was there to send men into battle where some (many) might not come back in one piece.
I’ve had many Commanding Officers in my 30-year military career, but I have to admit - the men that I’ve like least are the ones that I would have wanted when the fur was flying.
Patton was obsessed with Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist for Stars and Stripes and 45th Division News. He hated the fact that Mauldin drew scruffy, unshaven soldiers. He got so obsessed that Eisenhower arranged a meeting between Patton and Mauldin so that Patton “could get back to fighting the Germans.”
Mauldin, a sargeant met with Patton, all dressed up in his little outfit with the cowboy guns and Patton proceeded to chew his ass. Mauldin left the meeting and kept drawing the comics he wanted to draw. The balls on that guy.
I’ve read that Payton had soldiers who weren’t shaved or in full uniform fined, so that tracks.
Patton was demanding. And he was good. He got results. When your lives are on the line, you don’t care so much that he’s an asshole.
Mauldin had some pretty harsh things to say about Patton in his autobiography. Mauldin’s general was Lucian Trusscott, and he thought Truscott was worth 2 of Patton any day of the week.
That’s from Mauldin’s book, The Brass Ring.
He was a brilliant strategist and leader who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. His support of Nazis in the post-war period didn’t make him any friends. He may have been a jerk, but he proved himself again and again in combat.
I love that book and Up Front, his war memoir. He thought Patton was a pompous ass.
Successful commanders are often ruthlessly unlovely people.
Perhaps my favorite Mauldin cartoon. Caption (approximately, from memory): “Radio the Old Man and tell him we’ll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour.”
ETA something I’ve said elsewhere: the world was fortunate that MacArthur was in the Pacific, since having him, Montgomery and Patton in the same theater would have created a mass of ego sufficient to swallow the whole shebang.
The edges may have rubbed off that over time
In a 1989 interview, Mauldin said, “I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn’t like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.”[11]
That’s not incompatible with what he wrote earlier. The Brass Ring was written in the '60s and Up Front was written immediately after he got home. He made some interesting comparisons between the Italian campaign and Vietnam in The Brass Ring. Like many people (Including my grandfather) his perspective on WWII mellowed the farther he got from it.
During the 1941 Louisiana war games, Patton cheated. The army had to buy a lot of fences and destroyed crops.
Patton had a private plane with a loudspeaker. He would fly over the games and encourage the troops. Various locals drove out to watch. I wonder what the church ladies thought when he addressed three tank crews who had met for a smoke. “Don’t bunch up, you m—r f-----s! All three of your b-----d tanks could be taken out by a single f-----g shell!”
He could exercise creative thinking: at the Battle of the Bulge when German commandos were infiltrating in US uniforms and misdirecting movements at crossroads, Patton deployed Black soldiers exclusively to man checkpoints.
My dad (a WWII vet) had a copy of Up Front that I loved looking at as a kid. I know there were cartoons that went over my head, but I loved Willie and Joe.
He was told not to try and take the city of Trier, because it was estimated to take 4 divisions. His message back to headquarters was:
“Have taken Trier with 2 divisions, do you want me to give it back?”
That’s just it though; he figured out ways to win, even if it was “cheating” by the rules of pre-war exercises. That’s why he kept getting important commands, plain and simple. Otherwise he was pretty much an outspoken nut and a martinet, and without the consistent winning, he’d be looked at as worse than Lloyd Fredendall.
The reason he’s remained as popular as he has, is because he was such a nut, and very outspoken about pretty much everything, and because he won.
Years ago, in my second, civilian, career, a colleague was complaining about the lack of leadership in our organization. I didn’t disagree, but I pointed out that if he ever encountered leadership, he might not like it very much.