In his memoir of World War II he admitted to having nothing but contempt for General Patton.[1]  Mr. Rooney had worked for the GI newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, and obviously was one of those who could be around a battlefield for a hundred years and not know what it was like.  Unlike the mules of Hannibal of two thousand years ago, Mr. Rooney has not known enough to shut his mouth.

 

            There was the Patton who was a serious student of international politics and warfare and had the best historical sense of any of the American high command.  There was also the Patton parading his patriotic sense of the duty of the citizenry to be a soldier and to be a good one: "The highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country".[2]  Perhaps, Mr. Rooney was upset with Patton's statement that "battle is much more exigent than football"[3] and believed otherwise

 

 

 

 Patton's adversaries respected him

Above all was the accolade afforded George Patton by his foremost adversary, Field Marshal von Rundstedt.  After the war von Rundstedt told the British historian, Liddell Hart, that the two best battlefield commanders the Allies had were Patton and Montgomery.[4]  One would like to think that the German military professional was a far superior judge of things military than the pouting pansy of American entertainment, Mr. Rooney.

 

 

 

 

Ivy League Professor tried to set things right.
Paul Fussell set for himself the almost impossible task of changing the recall of his war by  the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, the bloodthirsty, and the Hollywood film.  While attempting to explain to William F. Buckley on his Firing Line, television interview show, Mr. Fussell first expressed how irked he was by his countrymen seeing World War II as a great source of virtue for their country and how he hoped grown-ups did not get their sense of history from movies.
Then he had the audacity to reveal his contempt for the portrayal of George Patton by George C. Scott, and he stated he believed Scott's depiction about as much as he believed in Rambo saving the western world. Mr. Buckley hesitatingly challenged Mr. Fussell by asking if General Patton really was not as Scott portrayed him.  Mr. Fussell revealed to Mr. Buckley that he heard Patton speak and found him to be a very different person than the one Scott depicted.  General Patton was a very small person with a very small head.  General Patton impressed Mr. Fussell as being a very likeable high school teacher and a much more complicated person than the one shown by the movie.[5]…

 

 

Patton knew the Soviets

George Patton was deeply concerned with the 100,000 White Russians who wanted to surrender to the Third Army as he was fully aware they probably faced death if turned over to the Red Army.[6]   At the conclusion of the war General George Patton issued his victory proclamation to the Third Army.  Patton using long accepted bombast of the military imagination congratulated all forces from the XX Tactical Air Command to the thirty-nine divisions which once had been part of his Third Army.

      Patton lauded his troops for killing or wounding 500,000 enemy soldiers and capturing 956,000 others.  After the necessary boast to his troops, he penned a more thoughtful letter to his wife in which he observed: "The Germans are all trying to surrender to us so that the Russians will not get them.  There are hundreds of thousands of them all without food".[7]

 

 

 

 

Marshall and Patton on American Army’s performance in World War II

	One sensed George Marshall had qualms about the performance by his country during that demanding war and felt we could have done more.[8]  A decade later Marshall told his Forrest Pogue that the Germans are "natural fighters" and "natural warriors", and Americans must accept that.  He found the ordinary military quality not to be dominant in Americans during both world wars.[9]

    Long  buried in his papers has been George Patton's disparagement of American infantry in both wars fighting Germany.  He thought American infantry needed all the help it could get.[10] These two unflattering assessments of American fighting ability by two competent generals have flustered professional American patriots.  Thus they have been forgotten.  More satisfying myths have taken their place

 

 

 

Irish were not all that neutral

 

 When the Allied victory was announced in Dublin, bitter street fights with police fighting rioters lasted for three days.  Initially the disturbances were confined to those who thought Ireland should have fought in the war and those who thought she should not have fought.  An Irish newspaper, the Sunday Independent, maintained government censors prevented publication of an article praising American General George Patton, but did permit the publishing of one praising Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.[11]  When remembering fifty years of peace in Europe in 1995, the Irish Times confessed it was an act of rash courage to go out into the streets of Dublin showing any sympathy for the Allied victory.  The burning of the Union Jack outside Trinity College, the symbol of Protestant culture in Dublin, was remembered.  The visit of de Valera to the German Minister diminished the Irish claim to moral neutrality.[12]

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Lai was not the first butchery     General George Patton remembered 800 German prisoners being taken and 500 of them being killed.   In one sentence he dismissed this butchery.  Patton attributed the slaughter to Americans having the mistaken belief that Germans had killed hospitalized American troops.[13]

 

 

 

 

Would George Patton have smacked his son?

One of the most depressing endorsements of the behavior of Dan Quayle came from an unlikely source, retired Major General George Patton.  This Patton thought the verbal thrashing the Senator had received was uncalled for and bordered on being brutal.  The general thought Quayle had taken it well and would learn lessons about the media that would serve him well in the future.

Another characteristic of the boyish Quayle which impressed the younger Patton was his composure when Senator Bentsen denigrated him by telling him he was no Jack Kennedy.[14]  A question that arose was how Patton the Senior would have reacted to a poltroon like Quayle being thought qualified for national office.  One wondered if given an opportunity, the elder Patton might not have slapped the rich arrogant Quayle for being a pansy who waved the flag for others, but lacked courage himself.

 

 The elder Patton wrote that loyalty was a two-way street, but in the World War II Army loyalty had become a one way street with loyalty being expected from the bottom upwards.  The much rarer quality of loyalty extending from the top downwards was much more needed for all good armies.[15]  The general of World War II wrote of his belief that the highest obligation and privilege of the citizen was bearing arms for his country.[16] 

 

   The younger Patton, who commanded the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam, did not demonstrate any loyalty to the men, dead or alive, who served under him.  One may wonder if the elder Patton would have felt like slapping his son