School of War - Ep. 14: Kevin Hymel on General George S. Patton

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Historian Kevin Hymel joins the show to discuss the life and leadership of the American World War II general most feared by the Nazis: George S. Patton. Times 01:48 - Introduction 04:38 - Recently uncovered details about General Patton 08:38 - History’s first draft 10:51 - How Patton became one of the most famous World War II leaders 13:35 - Patton before the war 17:34 - Patton in North Africa 23:08 - Problems with General Dwight D. Eisenhower 26:55 - Patton’s leadership style 28:20 - Fighting in Tunisia  32:49 - Patton’s risk calculations 34:16 - Patton’s behavior, temperament, and treatment of other officers 43:05 - The Civil War and Patton’s strategy in North Africa 45:00 - Patton’s role in Sicily  49:49 - Shell shock and Patton's anti-Semitism 55:21 - Sicily and combat stress

A senior American officer in the midst of hard fighting on Sicily in August 1943 walks into the 93rd Field Hospital, a bit back from the front lines. After chatting in a friendly way with a few wounded, some very badly wounded troops, he encounters a private with no visible injuries. He asks him what's wrong? The soldier says his nerves are shot. He just can't take the shelling any longer. The senior officer explodes, saying, quote, Your nerves hell, you're just a goddamn coward, you yellow son of a bitch. He slaps him.

Shut up that goddamn crying. He slaps him again. And now he's shouting at the hospital staff, not to admit, quote, sons of bitches who don't have the guts to fight. Then the senior officer starts to sob. I can't help it, he says. It makes me break down to see brave boys

and think of a yellow bastard being babied. He draws his pistol and points it at the now shaking young soldier, telling him it's time to go back to the front or he's going to shoot him himself or have a firing squad do the job. Then he storms out, surrounded by doctors and nurses. quote, there's no such thing as shell shock. It's an invention, the officer says, an invention of the Jews.

The officer, General George S. Patton, Eisenhower's most reliably successful battlefield commander, if you haven't already guessed, was less than halfway through his war. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is the war. to end in a stay-on-me. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We shall fight on the beaches,

which will fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm delighted today to be joined by Kevin Hemel. Author most recently of Patton's War,

this is the second book, I believe, that he has out about Patton. There's a book about Patton's photographs. Third, he's indicating to me that there are three. What's the third one? So the first one is Patton's photographs, and those were the photos that General Patten actually took during World War II. I found those at the Library of Congress, and my mentor, Martin Bluminson, helped me write that. And then he came to me about a year later. He had been asked to write a short 100-page book on Patton, just a, you know, general biography.

And so we wrote that together, and I told Martin that, you know, he was going to have to write the conclusion because he was the master. I was a student, but he ended up passing away halfway through the process. So I had to finish the entire book. But it really gave me a better sense of patent. You know, there's no better way to learn than to really write about things or experience them. And so it was that accumulated knowledge of that first book on the photos, doing that biography, that I really kind of decided to go for the deep dive, which is first volume of this book. Right.

And so this is going to be three volumes when it's done. It's a fascinating read. I've been into this first volume that I've been reading in preparation for this interview covers the period from Operation Torch through to the leap off into Normandy, England, into France in the summer of 44. And so we'll talk through that. First of all, thank you so much for joining. And could you tell us a bit about yourself?

How did you come to be a military historian? You sort of gave us an indication of how you came to focus on Patton. But take us back further than that. Actually, you know, grew up reading books and watching a lot of World War II movies. started as a communications major in college, but I found that I was spending on my free time reading history books. So I changed to history, always fascinated by military history, went and got my master's degree in it,

and I've worked for the Army, the Air Force, and different branches of the military, always writing about military history. Patton specifically, I think I was about 13 when my dad set me down and we watched the movie, which I found just fascinating as a character, study and as an action movie too there's a lot of combat in it sure and so it really just was a combination of my personal interest in patent and my knowledge of history and it was actually my

friend john macmanus who challenged me to do a real deep dive on patent and so a lot of the things i discovered in this book i didn't think i was going to find out you know i thought it was going to just go exactly like you'd seen in the movie or by you know in the previous books that i've read and yet by doing primary research, you know, interviewing soldiers from World War II, going through their memoirs, I came up with kind of a different patent. We had a great conversation with John McManus about his books on the Pacific a few weeks ago on the show. Did you learn anything while you're repairing these volumes that goes beyond, you know, additional detail? I mean, there is a ton of that. I will say it's fascinating

your approach is to sort of call stories that other folks had written down or one way or the other recorded about Patton. And there's just a ton of texture and detail and color in this book that was totally new to me. Did you learn anything big picture? Did you learn anything about Patton that you might correct what somebody else has said about him? Sure. I think the two big ones in this book are the death of Dick Jensen, that is Patton's aid. And if you remember from the movie, he goes off to tell Omar Bradley something.

German bomb drops on him and kills him. You know, everything I had seen followed that storyline. Patton's letters, Omar Bradley's memoir. Yet at the Army War College, I found an unpublished memoir by one of Patton staff members who said, you know, that was a whole big lie and we had to cover it up. What actually happened was on April 1st, 1943, Patton, despite Eisenhower's direct orders, decides to move his headquarters five miles closer to the combat zone in Tunisia. And the Germans see this and the Germans bomb his headquarters and kill his aid. And Patton realizes that if Eisenhower finds this out, he's going to get sent home. And so he covers it up.

And Omar Bradley agrees to do it. And, you know, Patton remains in North Africa. And that was shocking for me to find out. And, you know, one person standing alone telling this story. was kind of questionable, but I was able to check other sources, including my own book, Patten's photographs, because it placed Patton there in that spot where Dick Jensen was killed, and nothing else had done that before. And so with all this other compiling evidence, it became pretty clear to me. That's exactly what happened. So that was big revelation. And then another one that's not

in the movie, but is in a lot of books, is that Omar Bradley said that he basically cashiered Terry Allen, the commander of the first infantry division, right towards the end of the Sicilian campaign, and it was because his unit was kind of too rowdy behind the lines, and Alan wasn't really kind of following orders. Well, through primary research and doing the digging, I found out that none of that was true, that it was really patent that pulled the plug, but it wasn't a relief because of any kind of trouble. It was that we got our butts kicked in Kazarin Pass, and General George C. Marshall, the commander of all the military, is back in the state saying, hey, we need combat veterans being set. We need them back in the United States

to train our army. It'd be harder in combat. And Terry Allen is picked as one of those people. And Patten says, no, I need him for Sicily. And so they basically agree he will be able to attack into Sicily. But as soon as things get secure, he's going home. And Patton went to great lengths to say this is, you know, he's being replaced. He's not in any trouble. This is no prejudice. and, you know, the first infantry division blames Patton for the relief of Terry Allen. Yet when Omar Bradley writes his memoirs in the 1950s, that becomes the story that Omar Bradley did it. And I've actually talked to John McManus and some other historians about this, how this is sort of a pattern of war, that when there's a huge war, America's Civil War, American Revolution, World War II, the first history is really written by the generals and the people that are trying to preserve their reputations.

And then the sort of generation immediately follows that, enhances that, because these people are still alive. There are heroes and we want to tell that story with more color. And then it's the generation that follows that starts to go into the paperwork and starts to see what's true and what's not. And we're just kind of approaching that with World War II right now. That's a fascinating insight. You know, it occurs to me from my own experiences that I always felt as a relatively junior officer that when I read reports produced at higher levels of command, that they were generally disconnected from reality and betrayed a real lack of knowledge of what was

actually happening, that maybe they were true in some sort of thematic way. Oftentimes, not even that. And so I suppose in some ways that squares with what you're saying, that those sort of first reports are unreliable. But you do still lose something, though, don't you? I mean, you lose, you know, you lose the eyewitness accounts of the people who are actually seeing things, and those are disappearing off into the ether. And then, I guess, in the second generation, what you're saying is you're going off and looking for the stuff those people wrote down. Right. We're going back to the classified reports that are now declassified, you know,

one of the amazing sources of information is the Army wrote an official history of World War II, as they do, in trying to do after every major war, it's referred to as the Green Book Series. And this is a multi-book series on the operations of World War II. Well, the records for all those are at the National Archives. And so I would pour through them, and they made me feel better because it showed me that these great historians that I hold in such high esteem also misspelled words and would have a poor grammar sentence or would get something wrong and you'd see the corrections. But on top of that, they would have the raw.

interviews in there, a lot of the material that wasn't used. In fact, I came across an interview of two soldiers that said, hey, Terry Allen was only sent home because we needed, you know, better training back in the States. All this stuff that you're hearing is garbage. And that's, that was the real sort of key that opened up that story for me. You have a great line of patents here in the book. I can't remember if it's him in his diary or where it is exactly. But he says, you know, the more experience I get, it's not that I think of myself more. It's that I think's less of others. Which I, you know, for its, you know, edge of pomposity, I mean, I think there's some wisdom than that. Sure. Let me just ask you a big picture question before we get into what your

book covers, which is the invasion of North Africa and Sicily and a little bit beyond. You know, there's so many colorful characters at the senior ranks of the American Army or American military in World War II, a number of whom are senior to patent, you know, Omar Bradley. there's obviously Eisenhower who probably does get more attention than that Patton for obvious reasons. You know, George Marshall, there are peers, you know, people like Mark Clark. There are all sorts of big characters who did things of genuine historical importance. Why is the balance of attention so frequently on George Patton? Well, a number of reasons.

I think because he lasted the entire war, a lot of generals did not make it out of North Africa with their reputations intact. He kind of, you know, glommed on. There was a truth to it. You know, he was a tanker from World War I. And so he kind of established in popular minds that, you know, this guy is always on a tank. You know, and the tank was the modern weapon of World War II on the ground. And so, you know, he formats this image of himself as this, you know, man in a tank with machinery,

the modern cutting-edge guy. And then he backs it up. You know, he has almost a successful campaign everywhere he goes. He has colorful language. It's well reported in newspapers that he believed he lived prior lives, you know. And I think it's that combination of things. And it's interesting. I've been reading some of the reviews of my book so far.

And one word keeps popping up when they talk about patent and it's destiny. And, you know, you were in the Marine Corps. Did you ever think that any of your generals or anybody that you would use the word destiny? with them. You know, you read about Eisenhower very pragmatic, Bradley, Marshall, yet you get the patent and there's like this mystic, you know, sort of aura surrounding him, like, you know, God's chosen warrior, all this stuff that he really believed. And I think people, you know, are drawn to that for good or ill. And so, you know, he makes everything about him a battle of good and evil, you know, that he's got God on his side, that his destiny, his greatness, you know,

all these things where everybody else is just like, you know, I've got to beat the enemy. I've got to do my job, you know, much more pragmatic, practical ways of looking at things. Yeah, there's a, there's a tension there that I'd like to come back to as we continue to talk. But, you know, on the one hand, he's this, you know, magnificent figure and there's just no arguing with the, with the battlefield success. I mean, the man, the man gets results. Yep. On the other hand, what you just outlined is on some level just clearly unhinged, right? Yes. And people had to confront to on a regular basis that they were dealing with somebody who, you know, seemed crazy. So let's talk about Patton before the war.

He is, as you point out, he's famous when the war starts. People know who he is. Correct. You know, he's had a sort of spectacular career. He was close to Persian. Just give us a sense of how he came to be the man he was, you know, on the landing craft off the coast of Morocco. Sure.

Born and raised in California, very rich. His family came from money. goes off to Virginia Military Institute down in and down of Virginia and then transfers to West Point. It has a problem with dyslexia. And so he stays back here at West Point. He was the five-year plan. Raised on stories from the Bible and old Confederate officers that would visit the house. So he has this, you know, sort of chivalrous idea of military history.

Gets out of West Point, becomes a cavalryman in the U.S. Army, goes down to Mexico with Pershing in the punitive expedition looking for Pancho Villa. kind of makes a name for himself there because he kind of leads the first automated attack in two cars, you know, where they drive up to a ranch and there's a gun battle that Patton takes part in

where he uses an ivory-handled pistol and then promises himself he'll always have two on him in the future because he doesn't want to have to reload in the middle of a battle. He only wears him for a few weeks, actually, World War II. He resorts back to one. World War I, he's on Pershing. staff goes over to England and then France, and like a lot of recently promoted officers to

colonel is waiting for an infantry regiment to command when he learns about this new cutting-edge technology called a tank and makes the decision to wait it out and go into tanks instead of infantry where he was going to be almost guaranteed glory if he does this, but he waits, you know, takes command of tanks and then he's going to lead them into battle in two battles and really kind of proves himself. Marches across a bridge that everyone's afraid his mind. Clives on top of a tank and rolls it into a town. In the second campaign, he's then Muzar gone.

He actually goes out into the trenches and digs a lot of trenches out so the tanks can go through them and eventually get shot in combat. And, you know, it's that connection to Pershing and the connection of tanks in World War I that really makes a name for him, stays in the army, which is rare afterwards. World War I. The army's gutted in 1920, but he sticks it out. And as the war clouds start to gather

in the late 1930s, the U.S. Army starts building back up again, and he becomes a brigade commander and then a division commander of the second armored division that does really well in these army maneuvers, famously known collectively as the Louisiana maneuvers. And he actually gets his face on the cover of Life magazine, which, you know, Life magazine was basically all. all the major networks combined back in the 1940s. And that's really where he kind of, you know, reinvents himself for World War II, that people see him on the cover of magazines.

So, you know, for as inexperienced as the U.S. military is going into World War II, because it's, you know, been going on since 39, at least in Europe, and we're entering, you know, really in 1942, he's got experience under his belt. And, you know, he knows about training guys from ground zero. because that's where he starts with the tanks. You know, he's basically training tankers in World War I without any tanks while they're waiting for them to arrive.

And so he takes command of what's called the Western Desert Training Center, which still exist today because the fighting is going to be in North Africa. And so, you know, he's training units out there in the harsh deserts of California. And it's with that experience under his belt that he gets the tag that he's going to be going to Morocco as part of Operation Torch. Yeah, I've been to the Marine Corps. equivalent of that Western training center. It's a lovely place. Highly recommend it, especially in the summer. Fun camping, right? Yeah, totally. So, okay, so it's the fall, it's November of 1942.

We're obviously dragged into the war in Pearl Harbor in the December prior. Why are we going to North Africa of all places? What's the strategic concept behind that? And Patton obviously has a piece of it, but what's the overall picture? Sure. The overall picture is we are not strong enough to go anywhere. The idea of going into France and liberating France and going into Germany is just not possible with the forces we have in 1941, 42. But Roosevelt desperately wants to get us into the war, fighting in the war. We're already declared war months and months ago. Stalin is, you know, hanging by a thread in the Soviet Union. England is, you know, not as a threat as it was. but Roosevelt knows we got to get men on the ground fighting where can we do it and it becomes

North Africa now North Africa is where the French and the Germans are fighting I'm sorry the Germans and the British are fighting but a lot of it is occupied by the Vichy French you know these are the defeated French that have signed an alliance with Germany that they will fight on the side of Germany in a crisis and so where Patton is going ashore in Morocco which actually borders the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean, like the rest of North Africa, the fighting is going to be between Americans and Vichy French. This is an enemy we do not want to have. We want the French on our side. And so it's very tentative going in. Are they going to, you know, drop rifles and shake hands? Or is there going to be real fighting? Because the faster we get the fighting over with the Vichy,

the faster we're going to be friends with them against the Nazis. Got it. And so how does the invasion actually go? And how does Patton do? The invasion goes surprisingly well. The British do not want patent invading Morocco. They feel it's too far away from the main battlefront in Tunisia and Libya, and that it would really be a waste of effort. Roosevelt, however, really wants it because he sees in the future that we're going to need a port just for the United States. And Morocco would be ideal if we eventually go into southern France, which we do. And I should mention that the debates get very heated and Patton gets very angry at the British.

In fact, he gets so mad he marches home one day to his house in Washington, D.C., and he picks up this lava statue that his wife got him in Hawaii that they've nicknamed Charlie, and he goes to the backyard and slams it into the pond in their backyard. Isn't he George Marshall's roommate at this point or something like that? There's a clubbiness to this that I hadn't really realized before reading your book. A very fortunate coincidence that when Patton moves over to Fort Meyer here in D.C., George C. Marshall, the new chief of staff of the Army, which is really basically the joint chief of staff, you know, today's equivalent. Well, his residence is being redesigned. And so Marshall's got no place to stay. So Patton invites him to stay at his house. So what a great move for promotion. Get the boss to move into your place. You know, while he's in a moment of crisis. So yes, Marshall knows him well. They were bunkeys. They were roommates for a while. But the operation goes surprisingly well. They're basically towards. is a three-pronged attack. Two of the attacks are a mix of American and British forces going in Iran and Algiers. Patton is the only one coming from the United States. The other one comes from England. Patent's attack comes from the United States, lands on the shores of Morocco. It's a three-day

battle for Patton. Surprisingly, as soon as he steps on the beach, a British officer walks up to him and hands him Charlie, the lava statue, that he spiked in the pond. His white, went and fished it out and gave it to a British liaison officer who presented it to a patent for good luck in the battle. But the fighting goes on for three days. The French do surrender. Martin Bluminson, my mentor, said that it really proved Patton's brilliance. I don't think so. He only was able to really control what was in front of him. Communications were poor. This was also a three-pronged attack on his front, and he was only able to control one of those prongs, the one in the center that takes Casablanca. But he does,

proof his competence that he's able to, you know, achieve what he's, what his mission is. And that's huge in the opening days of World War II because we don't know who's going to succeed or crumble under the pressure. Yeah, I mean, you could just look at the map of Torch. I mean, you point out it's three prongs of sort of multiple prongs each, three for, three for patent. And the distance, the distance is involved overall or what? Is it a thousand miles from the westernmost landing to the Eastern most. At least. You know, I remember there was a measurement of Rommel's drive in North Africa and they said it was equal to going from Paris to Moscow. Yeah. So that's the kind of distance we're looking at with Operation Force. The contrast between the warfare there and then, you know, what happens

in, you know, Normandy, for example, in 44 where, you know, they're worried about mutual support amongst the beaches in those first few days. And those beaches are, you know, I mean, a long jog from one to the next. I mean, in warfare, that, of course, may not matter. It may not matter. It may matter less than you think, but there's still, you know, you can see, you know, the one from the next, generally speaking, and the claustrophobia of the hedgerows there, everything's right on top of each other. And here we're fighting across a whole continent. I guess you can see in some sense, you know, patent being picked for that westernmost landing, which is really a long way away from everything else is a sign of trust in him. Yeah, yeah, a different time zone, actually. That's how far away

they are from each other. And then, so this is some of the problems with Eisenhower start here, right? You you made reference to some communications troubles. Oh, yeah. For patent success on day one, the whole time, he's not in communication with Eisenhower at all. And Eisenhower is in the headquarters in Gibraltar, which is basically, you know, southern Spain. And, you know, they're sending planes out to try to see what they're up to. And, you know, the U.S. military shooting them down.

Patent's force. They're shooting those planes down. That's a bad sign when the boss is sending planes to find out how it's going. Yes. And I think they've actually sent a fast. a mine sweeper that finally, you know, links up. And what they realize is that Patton is using the wrong code books and the correct ones are at the bottom of the she, you know, somewhere in a storage facility under the ship. And that kind of is going to start a bit of a pattern with Eisenhower

and Patton. The Eisenhower is always critical of Patton not telling him enough. And I think it's almost a tool that Eisenhower uses that he can always kind of get under George's skin that, you know, hey, you know, you remember, you're not perfect. And I think that keeps patent challenged throughout. the war. What were Patton's views of Eisenhower and how did they evolve over the war? Well, yeah, they definitely evolve. He respects Eisenhower greatly early on. He's grateful to him for picking him for the job. As the Mediterranean campaign and the Sicilian campaign go on, he starts to become more and more critical of him. However, he always has this little caveat where he says, but I sure wouldn't want his job.

He appreciates the difficulty Eisenhower has that he's dealing with all this French politics, you know, the politics of each country he's dealing with. And then he's got commanders from different countries that don't always want to coordinate. Eisenhower really does have an impossible job and pulls it off. And I think that is one of the easy sort of fallbacks with studying Patton is, you know, this guy's a genius and everybody else couldn't appreciate him. And they weren't as good at generals. and there's that tendency to badmouth Eisenhower, but that was one of the things I wanted to adhere to is my belief that Eisenhower was a good leader,

may have had faults, but he was dealing with so much more than any combat commander could appreciate, and there were so many times where Patton has fallen apart, you know, he's in basically isolation exile in Sicily after those slapping incidents, which I'm sure we'll talk about, and Eisenhower constantly reassures him, George, I got a job for you. Don't worry. Hang tight. And he'd leave and Patent go, oh, man, he's lying to me.

He doesn't know what he's talking about. And he couldn't see that Eisenhower was helping him out all along the way. He was too enraptured with his own bitterness. Yeah. And then the core patent complaint, you know, correct me if you think I'm phrasing this wrong about Eisenhower's is this constant sacrifice of military expediency or what is right from a fighting from a combat standpoint to what Patton sees as. deference to these ridiculous allies, you know, the hopeless Brits, you know, these sort of pompous and effective people we have to deal with for reasons that seem, you know, unclear to him. Right. And maybe overstating it. But the British felt the same way. Who are these rookies coming in taking over everything?

And I think Eisenhower, the one thing that he knew that Patton didn't is that by the time this war is over, the United States is going to be the dominant power and England is going to be the second rate one. And so that gives him a calm and a patience that a lot of people lack because they're like, why are we doing it this way? And because Eisenhower new, no matter what happens, we're going to be top dog at the end of this thing. So let's treat everybody else well because we're going to be their bosses when we get to the end of this. And I don't think Patton understood that. One thing about Patton's leadership style is this sort of aspect of performance. And there's a moment but that illustrates it well that you document right at the start of the book.

One of the first things he does when he gets off the boat on the beach in Morocco is he sees an Arab local picking up things from the beach. And he picks up an American rifle. That's right. And Patton draws his pistol and takes a shot at him. It doesn't hit him, it seems. No, no, just a warning. This is how Patton starts the war. And I think it's a perfect illustration because he pulls out one of his ivory-handled pistols.

And the battle is kind of passed him by. He's coming in later in the day. You know, soldiers are moving equipment up the beach. They're kind of being lackadaisical. And there's this Arab with a donkey walking the beach, picking up American equipment, putting it in the saddlebags. And Patton's kind of watching it as he's talking to naval officers and people on the beach. But then he sees the guy pick up a rifle. And Patton's like, uh-uh.

So he draws off his, draws his pistol and fires a shot past the guy. And the man drops the rifle and runs off. And all the soldiers are like popping their heads out of their foxholes. Like, wait, what's going on here? And it's really, to me, Patton sort of announcing his presence on the battlefield. And I found that story so compelling that that's the introduction. That's how I introduced Patton in the book, you know, was drawing that pistol and firing that round at that guy.

So does well in Morocco, though not necessarily, you know, the hardest fighting of the war. So well that he then becomes the solution to a problem that, the Army is having further east in Tunisia, where the Germans are doing rather well. So tell us about how things are going around in Tunisia and how the second core is falling apart, and then we'll cut to patents, fix a job. Sure. Well, there's two German forces in Tunisia, one under Ramel, very well known, but then another one under a gentle name von Armin.

And when we make our initial landings and towards the Germans see this and push a ton of troops into Tunisia to respond to that. this. And the American Army is very slowly pushing east while the British are pushing north, and we're trying to sandwich these two German armies between them. And Von Armin goes on the attack at a place called Citibu Zid and starts pushing the American First Armored back. Ravel sees this, adds to the attack, drives it further back to Kazerite Pass, and it's basically a debacle for the U.S. Army. You know, thousands of soldiers killed, missing, taken prisoner, wounded, and just, you know, just faulty leadership up and down the scales,

the leader of the second corps, the largest American force in the area, is Lloyd Friedenold, and just kind of, you know, falls apart, you know, almost goes catatonic in certain ways. And so Eisenhower, you know, has a few other generals before Patton. Patton is not the direct solution, but Patton had always sworn if he was ever offered any kind of command he'd take it. Mark Clark was offered it, but he thought it was a step down. He was an army commander at this point. He thinks going down to Corps would be beneath

him, not Patton. He's going to take anything that comes his way. So he takes command of Second Corps and in about 12 days through a draconian discipline, I would call it, brings it up to a better fighting level and

sends it on its way that the big scare is taking a town called Gasfa. And we think this is where the army's going to be, you know, decided whether we're fighters or not. Well, the Italians holding the town just evacuate and we take it, you know, it's a piece of cake. It's at El guitar where the first infantry has moved forward that the Germans counterattack. Yeah, you know, in the movie, they wait Patton up and say, hey, that, you know, they're coming to us at El guitar. Patent actually thought the attack was coming further north at a place called, no, darn it,

it's escaping my name, Manacchese, and McNassie. And so he really prepared for this German counterattack on the first armored, well, it comes to the first infantry. And Patton rushes down there. Now, in the movie, he's coordinating the battle, blowing up all the Germans, a hell-boasted good infantry. In reality, it's Terry Allen, the division commander, who wins the battle. But Patton is rushing everything he can to him, a lot of artillery. As Terry Allen was taking off, he orders him to include anti-tank assets, these anti-tank guns or these, you know, I guess when we think of anti-tank guns, we think of these things that look like tanks. Well, back then, our technology was so poor.

They were basically half-tracked, trucks with cannons in the back. And that unit, that anti-tank unit, actually takes a hell of a beating, but knocks out a lot of German tanks in the battle. And so it was very prescient that Patton told him ahead of time get those anti-tank units to use them. So, like I said, it really is Terry Allen's victory, but Patton oversaw it, gave everything Terry Allen could have needed to win the battle.

And with that, they start pressing east, hoping to drive the Germans to the sea and meet up with the British. And the American Army, again, very green, having trouble moving forward. Patent action three times gets in his command car because the troops are stalled at a minefield, and he will have his driver drive him through the minefield. One time a tank blows up behind him that's following in his tracks. Another time he does this for about an hour and says, you know what? I better skeddowl because we're about to meet the British.

And if the first soldier the British meet is a three-star general, that's going to be embarrassing. And it was only about 20 minutes after he did that, that the meetup occurred. So, I mean, you talk about a frontline general. I mean, imagine a three-star general driving through minefields ahead of the troops. How does he think about risk? I mean, he's not a fool. He knows that these are games of probability when he's doing things like this.

And he's obviously not a coward. That's demonstrated. But he also has to know on some level if you keep playing these games, eventually you're going to run over a mine or your number's going to come up eventually. How does he think about that? Very cold-bloodedly. You know, there's a mission to be accomplished. He's constantly telling the guys, I don't care if you lose 50 tanks.

Keep moving forward. You know, he, I think deep down, like that sounds super cold, but I think his belief is once you crack that front line, we're going to be able to spill forward, but you've got to have the courage to crack that front line no matter what it takes. And, you know, he proves it on his own. You know, I'll be that point of the spear.

If no one's willing to have the courage to do it, I'll do it. And this is that point of him, I don't feel greater about myself, I think lesser of others, because he's seeing these other commanders that he knew from World War I, they thought were brave, sitting down having lunch. And he's like, what are you doing? We've got to be pursuing the enemy.

constantly, what are you thinking? You know, and it definitely puts them spine into their back, by some steel into their backbones. But that's Patton saying, we have a mission to accomplish. We need to forget about risk for now and just do what we're told. You know, get this done, whatever the cost. Yeah, he seems in your account incapable of, you know, as it were walking through or walking past a group of soldiers.

This is overstating it slightly, but only slightly. without somehow trying to put his personal mark or leave a personal impression on a situation, often in times that, you know, obviously contribute a worthwhile sense of urgency to the effort. And sometimes in ways that, you know, are, you know, basically wrong. I mean, I think the word we would use today is inappropriate, which seems to understate the situation. Sure. He kicks a guy in the butt on day one in North Africa, you know, in Morocco. One of my favorite examples that I came across is in Tunisia, he sees a group of first. infantry division soldiers marching and one's wearing a British jacket. And so Patton stops the

vehicle, goes over to the man, has him take off the jacket. Then he says, give it to me. And once Patton gets it, he slaps the guy in the face with the jacket, throws it on the ground, then orders the soldier, someone bring him a shovel, and he has to now bury the British jacket. And then once that done, Patton turns the lieutenant and says, I'm coming back tomorrow. And if this unit isn't looking sharp, I'm finding you money. And, you know, they drive away and that and say, it's like, geez, wasn't that a little extreme? And he goes, yeah, they'll get it right now. Which, you know, yeah, they did. But yeah, it's this constant question as you as you read through because the book, the book is just full of, you know, details, you know, details in color that, that, you know,

I've never seen anywhere else. And it's a real, it's a real contribution. But, you know, from moments like, even before the moment where he fires the pistol on the beach in Morocco, you show him, helping, you know, a landing craft is beached, you know. Pushing it back out into the water. And, you know, he's a general. He's in command of not only this landing. There's two other landings going on. He's got a lot on his mind as he wades ashore.

But nope, he wades on over because he sees troops right, trying to carry the gear off the boat and abandon it. He knows that the Navy needs these boats. So he goes over and personally leads the effort to push it off the sand or whatever it's different. The wave to come in so he can get it out there. Yeah, totally. And he works, you know, it's just a sort of small unit leader orchestrating. a useful little thing, but, you know, sending a message. And that's obviously, you know, impressive and worthwhile leadership. And then you have these moments, you know, the one that you

describe is kind of this borderline mix between encouragement that's probably worthwhile. And, yeah, and, you know, burying the jacket as sort of personal humiliation that just takes things to another level. And then you have, I mean, we'll get to the slapping stuff at a moment, but the, there are a couple that really stuck out at me. One was at this incident where he, his son-in-law, missing and he summons, I guess it's the battalion commander, whose unit has been destroyed in this, in this bad. It happened, I guess it happened to Tunisia before Patton gets there. Right.

Yeah, for the Kazrin Pass. So his son-in-law is missing. They don't know if he's alive or dead. And Patton summons this field-grade officer. Guy comes in while Patton's asleep. And Patton wakes up and starts screaming at him, you know, where's my son-in-law? Where's my son-in-law? And with great dignity, an understandable offense.

the more junior officer responds, you know, where's my regiment? Yeah. Where's my unit? I care about, you know, the exchange goes basically continues inconclusively along those lines with Patton saying something to the, if you can correct my word to me, but something I don't give a goddamn about your regiment. I want to know where my son and law is. And it's just wildly wrong.

It's just not right. Yep. It's just not right. So that's one. Then the other, which in some ways is worse because the first one, at least there's, you know, a sort of human motion of all you can understand. why the man cares about his son-in-law. The second one, his plane, I can't remember where this happens.

The plane lands carrying Patton somewhere. He gets off the plane and, you know, his car isn't ready. Oh, yeah. And he looks across the hangar and some poor, you know, pilot who apparently has flown in from, you know, it's the war. We could presume some sort of at least stressful mission, if not actually difficult mission. And he's just sitting there minding his own business. He has nothing to do with the airfield, nothing to do with the unit. He's an officer.

I think I think he's a major. And Patton screams at him, not only to go get. him a car to which the guy protests that, hey, you know, I don't know anything about any cars general. I just landed here. I'm in the same boat you are. And after the officer dutifully gets up to go see about what's going on, Patton shouts after him, I told you to run. And the guy refuses to run. Yeah. And again, a sort of show of, you know, some dignity in the face of what is, you know, kind of unhinged behavior. And in this case, I think particularly hard to defend because it really is just pomposity.

It's just self-centeredness. Yeah. He's looking for someone to be angry at and whoever's in his line of sight is going to be the victim. Ironically, he's going to meet that officer again in Europe and they're going to sit down and have drinks and have a good time and talk together. But yeah, there is that sort of unevenness with Patton's temper, with his ability to deal with things.

He's one of those people you never know when he's going to snap off, you know, like that where he's just going to blow up at people. You know, and that's the unsteadying element that Eisenhower is constantly worried about. They put Eisenhower in a bad place numerous times because he has to make up for Patton's misgivings and outrageous behavior with this belief. This guy is going to help us in the future. We got to, you know, got to temper him, but we got to hold on to him. And it's very difficult for Eisenhower because of Patton's temperament and, you know,

the way he behaves. And that's why he likes Bradley because he's a more. steady player. He might lack some of the genius of Patton, but he's constantly reliable. Same thing with General Simpson, who's going to command the Ninth Army further north. So yeah, for Patton's great, you know, some of his genius and his great deeds, he's not a perfect person. You know, he has this fly off the handle temper that doesn't serve anybody well. I guess the other side of the argument is that the instability contributes somehow to the battlefield success in the following way. I'm curious to know if you agree with this because I'm kind of making it up as I go along.

But, you know, we've all had, we've all had, you know, people in our chain of command. You know, we all know from our experiences in the military that there are people who, when you know they're in the area, you just change how you're behaving. Correct. You're a little faster. You're a little more put together. Maybe in other circumstances, you take a breath or take, you know, 30 seconds to yourself. But not when you know that that person's around. Right.

You are going to make sure that you're not only doing the right thing, but you're doing it visibly and aggressively. Yep. and something about Patton's reputation and his ability or inability not to fly off the handle, maybe is the better way to put it, clearly kind of inspires that urgency around him. Correct. It's funny you say urgency too because there was a reporter during World War II who traveled between the armies in Europe, you know, the American 7th Army, Patton's Third Army, First Army, Ninth Army. And he was talking to an officer in Third Army.

He goes, you know, I've been to all these armies. and only third army has a sense of urgency. You know, like there's a whole different atmosphere here. The guys dress a little sharper. You know, they're not civilians in uniform. These guys are soldiers. And there's a sense of urgency to get things done that only exists in this army. Yeah.

Yeah, I forget where I read this, but it stuck with me over the years. I don't know if it's in battles and leaders of the Civil War. But an observation that in the Civil War, divisions, corps, Army, what have you, tended to take on the personality of their commanding officer. I mean, down to the details of how things move. You know, do they move quickly? Do they appear to be slow? And then you go look at the individual behavior of the commanding general as he's slow in

his motions, as he calm, you know, et cetera. Paul Jackson, perfect example. Yeah, it bleeds out to these formations of thousands and thousands of men. And it goes beyond that, too, because the Germans, you know, they start keeping tabs on patent on the battlefield. In fact, when they started planning the battle of the fold, the biggest concern is what is Patton going to do? You know, can we do this fast enough before Patton can react?

And it's really one of the very few commanders they talk about. It's really Eisenhower that the reason the bulge will be successful is Eisenhower is Eisenhower is going to have to ask Roosevelt what to do. And by the time Lord gets back, we'll have accomplished our mission. But what about Pat? That guy can, you know, he's capable of so many things. We need to really keep an eye on him. So, yes, he's going to have an effect.

on his troops, but he's also having an effect on the enemy. Yeah. Before we leave, there's so much here. We're going to run out of time before we get too far into the war, but that's okay because you have more volumes coming. That's right. You can have me back every day for the next couple years. We can continue the conversation sometimes.

In North Africa, you write about how the civil war is on his mind at times. As he looks at the, you know, sort of the tactical situation in front of him at his level. He's reminded of, you know, Manassas or Petersburg. You know, how talk us through that. How does he connect these two things that are 100 years apart and obviously quite different for important respects? So for as much as Pat loved history, I would say the civil war was always sort of in the forefront of his mind, mostly because, you know, his grandfather fought in the civil war. He had uncles fought and killed in the civil war while his grandfather was killed also. And then when he moves out to California, that was kind of a trend after the civil war that, you know, Virginia was decimated.

the land was barren because of all the fighting over it. And a lot of Virginians moved out to California. So, you know, as he's growing up, a lot of these former Confederate officers would come over to the family house and tell him stories. So that's where you get that initial, you know, impact. He said that when he grew up,

he thought he had a picture of God and Jesus on his wall. It turned out to be Robert E. Lee in Stonewall Jackson when he got older. But he really does study the Civil War a great deal more than any other wars. so when he gets to North Africa and he's planning his attacks, he's like, oh, this is just like Second Manassas where you draw the enemy in here and then you hit him here. And then he's openly disappointed that when the plan doesn't match the Civil War, he's frustrated. And when the Germans don't drive and attack home well enough, he goes, oh, they should have studied,

you know, Robert E. Lee at Petersburg to have maneuvered better. And so it is definitely something constantly on his mind that he will draw parallel levels too throughout the war. Got it. You know, maybe it occurs to me as you say that maybe the Virginia background helps with him and Marshall because, of course, Marshall is another old Virginia family. Very true. Very true.

So why don't we, let's talk about Sicily for a few minutes. You know, Patton writes the ship and makes progress there in North Africa. Sicily is next for the Allies. What's Patton's role in that? And let's talk through, I mean, this is obviously a high point for him, but also a low point. Yeah. What happens? So originally he's going to command another corps going into Sicily,

as opposed to the British, General Montgomery will be commanding an army. And the Americans decide that, you know what, we have enough trade troops, let's give Patton an entire army. In the movie, they play up that he wants to land in the north and have Montgomery land in the south and sandwich the Germans between them. He did kind of have that idea,

but it was rendered impractical Eisenhower, actually, was part of that plan too. And the Allies really couldn't settle on one because he wouldn't get enough air support in the northern attack. And so it is decided that he's going to land to the left of Montgomery. He does feel it's kind of a slight, not that bad, but as you see, once they get ashore, Montgomery starts taking liberties with anything he wants to do. And Patton starts seeing himself sidelined at every turn and getting really frustrated. Now, to Montgomery's credit, he did tell Patton, listen, once we get ashore, I'm going to do what I feel like.

And I think you should do the same. And Patton is obeying all the commands of General Alexander, the group command on top of them. But when he sees Montgomery doing this, he says, all right, if you're going to do it, I'm going to do it. And, you know, he's got a much more mobile army, a lot more armor. But he really does rely on the infantry in this very rugged country, Sicily. And so he basically races up to Palermo. He's very much the whip cracker, maybe even one. worse than he was in North Africa. He actually pushes a Italian man, a Sicilian with a cart off the

side of a cliff and kills him just because he got in the way of Patton's caravan. But he does make it to Palermo. Another thing I discovered, he comes up with an idea of using the Navy to do a sort of a hopscotch across the northern coast to Sicily. And there was some debate whether that was Patten's idea or Truscott's, but through reading through the primary materials, everything, I realized Pat was planning it even before he got to Palermo. He's already noodling this. And he asked the Navy for enough ships to land an entire regiment, you know, a couple thousand. And the Navy says, no, we'll give you enough for a battalion, 700. And, you know, the first one kind of lands a little on place. It doesn't go off as well. So he goes for another one in a place called Brolo. And that one does

land in the correct place, but it gets discovered. The men kind of head up a hill. Actually, it's more like a mountain I've actually been there. And they're radioing to the Navy to shell the German positions, and everything's kind of going, well, this is sort of like a hammer anvil, you know, attack cutting off the German retreat. But their radio breaks down, and the Navy kind of pulls out. And so Patton kind of loses this perfect, you know, dreamed about by military people that

they kind of crossed the T and attack the enemy right where they're the weakest. So he tries it a third time. Now, the third time, everybody tells him not to do it, the Americans on the ground are advancing so rapidly. They're going to land behind the lines. But he does it anyway, and then he's criticized for it. But when you look at the bigger picture, I think Pat is thinking, we have a lot of amphibious landings ahead of us and want as many men trained under combat conditions as possible.

I think that's why he really did it. I think it was a smart move. But, you know, for as brilliant as all this stuff is, he is really pushing the troops on the ground to hurry up and get to these amphibious troops. And he's losing patience by the minute. And at one point one of the commanders says, well, you know, one of our big problems is we had a lot of goldbrickers, guys that just don't want to fight. And I've interviewed some of the soldiers that said, yeah, we didn't want to fight. We ditched our units and lived in a village and, you know, would run after army trucks and they would throw sea rations to us. You have a huge drafty army.

you're going to have some reality to this. And it got so bad. They started sending vehicles with MPs down into the south with, you know, telling everybody, hey, you don't get back to your unit right now and nothing will happen. But if you don't, you'll be court martial. And that's how the soldier I interviewed went back to his unit. And so this is all weighing on time. He's trying to get to Messina, the final court, you know.

And if he can get there before the British, he can erase the humiliation of the Khazarin past. He's going to show that Americans can fight this war. as well as anyone. You know, it's all on him. And so it's under this pressure that, you know, men aren't fighting and he's got to reach these goals at a certain time that all comes to a head in two different hospitals at two different times.

In each of these hospitals, he's going to come across a soldier that has mental scars. Is he suffering PTSD? Both of the soldiers saw extensive combat, saw friends killed, hadn't been sleeping for days, had been eating, had been set back, and then went back to the front and came back again, and Patton loses it. You know, he slaps one of them. He yells at both of them, draws his pistol on one of them, and the one that he slaps, he turns to the doctor, and Patton burst out crying, which was not uncommon for him when he would get emotionally worked up. And he says to the doctor, do you see what I have to work with? And, you know, he marches out of the tent. And he says,

all of this shell shock, or what's now called PTSD, is a plot by the Jews. And so this is showing you Patton's kind of really who he is when all the chips are down. And it's a pretty ugly side of him. And, you know, there was that temptation to write about the greatness of Patton. But as an historian, you've got to write what happened. You know, you can't cover that up. And there was an eyewitness account that saw him say that. And, you know, he would later say, hey, I was trying to snap.

this guy out of it. In World War I, there was a guy, same thing, and he ended up committing suicide. And if somebody just slapped him and said, you know, come on, man, snap out of it. It would have changed things. But Patton completely lost his composure in both of these incidents. Eisenhower even said, if this happened at an aid station or something close to the front, we wouldn't even bat an eye, but it was in a hospital way behind the lines. And so the doctors, you know, wrote a formal complaint. The reporters who knew about it wrote a formal complaint. this all lands on Eisenhower's desk, what are you going to do? And this is, you know, as Patton's taking Messina, you know, his great victory.

And it's the day after he celebrates and they have the parade through the town that he gets to notice, you know, you're in big trouble for this. And, you know, it kind of hits in two ways. Eisenhower shoes him out for it. And in a lot of ways, Eisenhower is kind of at fault because Patton is slapping and kicking people all across North Africa. And Eisenhower didn't do anything. to check it. And that's kind of, you know, that's a very big leadership principle, kind of inspect what you expect of people. And Eisenhower should have been more hands-off with Patton. But Patton was delivering victories. He left him alone. And this is sort of the result. So he reprimands Patton,

you know, kind of humiliates him. He tells him to apologize to the soldiers and the doctors. And then another general comes in and says, what you really ought to do if you want to get this behind you is apologize to all the troops of your command. And so that Patton kind of makes a tour of all the different units making the apology. But then things kind of start to settle down, but then wounded soldiers going back to the U.S. start telling the story. And a radio announcer tells it one night on the radio, and it's a second explosion. And suddenly now it's all the old West Point generals covering up for each other.

You know, Senator Harry Truman, who was a captain, a National Guard captain in World War I, always has this resentment of all the regular army, a distrust of the regular army guys. And he goes, perfect example right here of the General Protection Club of the U.S. Army. And so it's a big black guy for Eisenhower. But he is determined to keep Patton for a future role. Yeah. There's a lot there. One question that sort of skips ahead of the scope of your first volume here,

but I'm curious to know, you know, Patton obviously is an army commander and, you know, participates in the liberation of, you know, any number of concentration camps. He only survives the war by a few months. Correct. of course, because he's killed in the car accident. But, you know, what, what if any effect did witnessing, you know,

the evidence of the final solution have on someone who, you know, his anti-Semitism, you know, is unsurprising in somebody of his class and time background? I mean, it would be surprising if he weren't an anti-Semite on some level. What is, what impact has seen the Holocaust have on him? The immediate impact is heavy, you know, when he sees how these people have been tortured and killed and slaughtered, it sickens it, you know, and he's disgusted by the Germans that they did this. That's in April 45.

Then as time goes on, he somehow almost gets the amnesia. Now, I haven't delved into it. I'm going to tell you what I've learned from secondary sources. And one of the reasons he lost Third Army was not because he disagreed with Eisenhower on the denunciation of Germany. It's that in one of the concentration camps that he visited, he just determines that these people are beyond help. so we should just board up the concentration camps and set them on fire.

That's the real reason he loses a third army. He has a brother-in-law who is constantly sending him articles about how Jews are trying to take over the world. So here's a group of people that are almost snuffed out of existence. And yet there's enough anti-Semitism in the United States that they're writing about how Jews and unions are trying to take over the world. And Patton is reading this stuff and agreeing with it. So it's kind of sad that here he sees the exact, I mean, the thing that so many people deny, you know, this huge governmental, German governmental effort to eradicate a race of people, he sees it for all of its ugliness, and yet it's not enough to rescue him from his own prejudices. Yeah. Now, it'll be interesting to see the results of your, you're getting into the archives on that one.

Back to, back to Sicily. You know, it's just striking that someone of Patton's experience, you know, when he's, when he, when he, when he, when he has these two incidents with the soldiers. I mean, you know, of course, as you just, as you just discussed a few minutes ago, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of troops who are, you know, if not actually deserting, certainly engaged in deserterter-like behavior for long periods of time. And there are certainly troops who are, you know, faking stress. That said, you know, combat stress is a real thing. I've seen it firsthand.

I've seen people break down. It's not nearly as common, I think, as the general public believes it to be. It's sort of become this impression that somehow this is just, what happens. You send soldiers and Marines to war and they get combat stress. That's not really true. But it happens. It's a thing. And that Patton would, without any other information about the individual he was dealing with, without having really any way whatsoever of knowing whether this person was faking or, you know, if they're that far back at the hospital, after that many levels of review very possibly genuine, but behave in the way that he did.

It's just, it's just striking. So, yes, he had seen it before, you know, and he saw it with the commander of the third infantry division with General Nate Anderson. They said, like, God, the guy's losing weight. He's really stressed out. And that's one of General Patton's great moves as he puts General Truscott in charge of third infantry division removes Anderson. And Truscott's going to go on to great things. Then this horrible thing happens in the hospital where he slapped a soldier.

And I've actually seen, I've got eyewitness accounts. You'll see in the book that, you know, a nurse walked into, ran into another ward. Said, oh, my God, Paton just slapped a soldier. and the guys applauded. And they said, we felt like he was slapped in the face of everybody back in the United States that didn't care about this war. We felt like we were out here in the middle of nowhere doing all this fighting and nobody at home cares, which is a universal truth with all soldiers fighting overseas.

However, we get to Europe and Patton will visit a number of hospitals. And they like, they'll say, they'll say like, hey, this is the ward for PTSD and Shellshock. And Patton goes in there and talks to all the soldiers. soldiers jokes around with him and comes out. So maybe he did evolve from that incredible low point to appreciating it only because he almost lost his career over it, but he does become empathetic to those soldiers and what they're suffering. And I should caveat that this isn't in the book, but he comes back.

I was asked to write and stuff about Patton in Arlington Cemetery. The patent took part in the burial of the unknown soldier in 1921. And what was ironic about it, I went through the library card, Patins, diaries, notes, and everything. There's just millions of them. There's nothing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, except his letters of review from his commanders. And there's no personal writings of him from 1920 to 1923. And I did like, this guy, he'll write about anything. Where's that, what, this gap?

Well, there's a letter from his wife to one of her friends. and said, George has finally come out from under the fog he's been for the years since he got back from the war. So I think Patton was suffering from post-traumatic stress himself at one point from his life from World War I, that he went into this quiet, you know, reflective mode where he wasn't writing anything down. So he really didn't know what, you know, battle shock, post-traumatic stress was. He went through it himself. but at that incident in Sicily, I don't think he was himself. It's fascinating.

Well, we've only made it to Sicily. There's a lot more to the story, but you've got a couple more books coming. Yes. So I'd love to have you back and keep talking about Patton as those come out. So Kevin Hemel, thank you so much for joining and much appreciate the discussion of Patton's word. Thank you. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.