Patton and the Bulgeļ¼ Blood, Guts, and Prayer
Episode Stats
Summary
General George S. Peaden is known for his aggressive, action-oriented tactical brilliance, but his character was also marked by a lesser-known but equally fundamental mystic piety. Those two qualities would come together in the lead-up to an execution of Peadersen s greatest achievement during World War II: the relief of baston during the Battle of the Bulge.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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general george s padden is known for his aggressive action-oriented tactical brilliance
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his character was also marked by a lesser-known but equally fundamental mystic piety those two
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qualities would come together in the lead-up to an execution of padden's greatest achievement
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during world war ii the relief of baston during the battle of the bulge alex kershaw tells the
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story in his new book padden's prayer a true story of courage faith and victory in world war ii
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today on the show alex shares how when the third army's advance into germany was stalled by plain
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grounding clouds and road money and rain padden commissioned a prayer for better weather that
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was distributed to a quarter million of his men and how that prayer became even more urgent after the
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commencement of the battle of the bulge we also talk about padden's qualities as a leader and a
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man including his reading habits how he combined a profane assertiveness with a pious faith and a
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belief in reincarnation and what happened to him as the war came to a close after the show's over
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check out our show notes at awim.is slash patent all right alex kershaw welcome back to the show
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great to be with you so we had you on at the end of last year to talk about one of your older books
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that's the longest winter which recounts the story of an 18-man u.s platoon that faced the thrust of
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the entire german assault at the battle of the bulge you got a new book out and it's about the battle of
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the bulge as well but this time it's about general george padden's role in rebuffing the nazis last
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ditch assault on the allies and it's called patent's prayer and we'll get to the title of the book here
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in a bit because there was an actual prayer that patent had composed for his troops but before we
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do that let's talk about patent the man first this guy he was a larger than life character he had
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ivory handled pistols that he carried around the shiny helmet riding boots had all these pithy quotes
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about driving and putting people's heads in meat grinders and calling everybody sons of bitches
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what's patent's background what was his family background and how did it shape who he became as
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a man well he had a very patrician background not from new england but california he's a california
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aristocrat in many ways and went to vmi and then west point and was a hell of a character i mean
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his formative years i guess after west point were spent alongside people like eisenhower
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and he was a cavalryman above all actually competed in the 1912 olympics for the uh one of the events
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he had created his own sword and famously in 1918 he commanded the first ever american tank unit and
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that was in france took to combat with great relish he was very brave almost killed wrote i think it was
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on his birthday toward the end of the war he said that would be a shame for hostilities to end because
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he was enjoying it so much he wanted a few more scraps so this guy was a natural born warrior
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very much larger than life deeply religious believed in reincarnation thought that he'd fought in several
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wars before that he was a man of destiny and that something big was going to happen in his life
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eventually where he would be truly tested and the point of my book is that that big thing did happen
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it was called the battle of the bulge or rather world war ii but certainly during the battle of the
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bulge he performed magnificently he was an extraordinary force well so you mentioned that
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he was deeply spiritual and you also talk about how he was actually incredibly intellectual i think
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oftentimes i think of patten as this unthinking brute he just had a bloodlust and that was it
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but he was extremely well read and thoughtful and as a kid he he really struggled with reading in
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school he probably had what we call today and he probably had dyslexia probably had adhd and it
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really frustrated him because as a boy he he had this driving ambition even then to be this you know
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consummate warrior in both body and mind and so he became this voracious reader as a young man
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he read the classics he read you know lots of biographies of about past generals and during
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world war ii he just he kept his reading up he had this extensive field library that he brought with
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him that had you know books like the bible and a prayer book you know going to his spirituality but
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then he had things like you know the complete set of roger kipling's poems and something he read a lot
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was the caesar's commentaries yeah he uh he never stopped studying military history and i have a quote
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in the book where he explains to a journalist that as he was crossing normandy he was reading yeah julius
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caesar and he said you know i followed in the path of julius caesar because the guy knew what he was
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doing and uh you know why not just copy the greats and so literally there were quite a few times in
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world war ii when patten would trace the route of julius caesar a couple thousand years before and
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follow it he very much had a sense of his place in history and he relished the fact that you know
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he was fighting in north africa he was fighting in sicily that he was determined to become the first
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ally general to reach messina which is at the far eastern end of sicily he wanted to beat montgomery
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the british general to that because he wanted his name in the history books and i'd say that throughout
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world war ii he had an eye on making his name and uh going down in history as much as he did on
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defeating the enemy and believe me he really was highly aggressive when it came to trying to defeat
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nazism but yeah he it's a good point because you know people when you look when you watch
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the the famous movie about patten you just think think he's this screaming maniac i think that
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that's kind of the takeaway although the movie is really pretty accurate and i think george c scott
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does a fantastic job i think it's probably his best role um he turned down the oscar actually scott
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complained at the time when the movie was being made that it it wasn't accurate enough he read
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hugely about patten and he said that patten wasn't being rendered as a complex enough figure as a
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figure who had deep emotions and was you know profoundly religious and had a was a man a hugely
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complex man and as well as being a intellect so one of the things that really drew me to patten was
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that he was an intellect that i don't think there was anybody in the allied supreme command
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and an army commander certainly who was as well versed in military history as as patten he read
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everything he could he read the enemy's works too he studied tank warfare because he read german
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theorists so he was a polymath in many ways amount of immense culture and really great education
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yeah i know maybe something that separated him in eisenhower i know in eisenhower when he had time
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off he would read but it would be like a louis l'amour like a western yeah he would read western
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novels for relaxation right whereas patten's less reading julius caesar and the greeks and medieval
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history yeah it's funny because if you look at the route of the third army because he ended up
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commanding the third army famously and if you look at the route of the third army from normandy all the
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way to the czechoslovakian border czech border now you know often he's following in the footsteps of
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the romans and he loved that he loved the fact that when his army crossed the rhine it was the
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first time for a very long time for many centuries that an invading force had crossed the rhine and he
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he loved the idea that he was making that kind of history yeah and he decided to mark the occasion by
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peeing in the rhine yeah yeah in the book you'll see of several pictures about that period and it's uh
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still debatable whether the famous photograph of patten peeing in the rhine whether that's actually
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accurate or not but i have no reason i've come across no evidence to suggest that he didn't
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urinate in the rhine and that would be a very fitting thing for patten to do very patterness yeah
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so this is a guy a very intellectual he saw himself on the same stage as julius caesar alexander the great
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like he would had an epic view of himself inside of history he mentioned his spiritual life we'll talk
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about the reincarnation here in a bit but what was his spiritual life like he was anglican correct
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yeah and he was a practicing anglican he went to church regularly attended services prayed every day
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as far as i can make out in his diaries would write messages to his lord you know he was very devout
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more so than any other american army commander more so than any allied commander that i came across in
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world war ii he truly did believe that he was doing god's work and that he was going to be
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protected by god and that god was uh gonna answer his prayers so he was pious and and religious the
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great contradiction and i guess it if i think this through i don't know whether it is a great
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contradiction in fact because people say you know here's this guy that's god fearing and yet
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he swears blasphemes and is the most notorious user of god damn and the rest of it in world war ii you
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know the the opening speech that you see in that great movie pattern is actually not one speech but
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it's cobbled together from three or four speeches that pattern actually made so although he didn't do
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have that full-on amazing rant as he did in the movie george c scott's uh speech is actually taken
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from several that pattern made and he did swear a lot i mean he swore famously turned the air blue and
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i the instances where i found him to be most vocal i don't think they're anywhere near what he actually
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was like and this was a guy that you know could use swear words in a very inventive way
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yeah i would not have liked to be at the end of one of his tirades needless to say there would have
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been a lot a lot of effing and blinding as us brits say and i think it does make sense if you think
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of patent as sort of embodying this warrior archetype like julius caesar alexander the great
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these guys you know had a bloodlust they they were aggressive and they fought but they also they
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were pious they they made they made their sacrifices before they went out to yeah before
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they went out to war and just because you swear a lot doesn't mean that you're not devout yeah you
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know god forbid that people who swore would not be would not be regular church attenders you know
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yeah they probably need it the most right we wouldn't have many people going to church yeah
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exactly well tell us about this reincarnation because i've read that about and that he believed
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that he was reincarnated that he actually saw great battles from history yeah that again without
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referencing too much the movie there's those famous scenes when he's in north africa where
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and i believe and i think sicily where he's wandering around and he he looks at the ruins of previous
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battles and he genuinely believed that he had had many lives and in in several of those lives he'd
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been a warrior in times gone gone past so yeah he absolutely did believe in reincarnation he'd been
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reincarnated several times already you know so i don't know which life he was on but it it wasn't number
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one put it that way and you also talk about he thought he was a man of destiny he really thought
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providence god had saved him for this period to take part in this great great enterprise and i've
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seen connections between him and winston churchill like winston churchill talked the same way about
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himself he's like i'm a man of destiny i was born for this yeah well i think i make the parallel in the
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book where i i point out that churchill said that he'd walked with destiny beside destiny most of his
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life and then you know at age 65 suddenly becomes prime minister in may 1940 at the the most critical
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point in modern british history where you know britain basically stood alone against a nazi onslaught
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and you know he churchill believed that his whole life had prepared him for that ordeal that trial
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that moment and pattern was similar he wasn't 65 but he was nearing 60 during the battle of the bulge he
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was 59 years old he just turned 59 so not far off churchill but he definitely felt that he'd been
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waiting much of his 20s 30s 40s and into his 50s to really seize the moment seize the day and become
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what he was destined to become which was in my view the most effective american combat commander of
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world war ii so patten famously led the third army what was the third army's role in world war ii prior
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to the battle of the bulge well the third army was activated at the beginning of august 1944 so we
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were about to break out of normandy a lot of the really heavy bloody fighting had been done in
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normandy and the third army under pattern was brought into play and basically led the american
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breakout from normandy and did so in extraordinary style and speed the spearhead of the third army was
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the fourth armored division that was pattern's favored division hell on wheels and they cut a
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slash across france that was extraordinary they literally there were stories about how tank commanders
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would call up pattern and ask where they should rest for the night to refuel etc and pattern said you
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know what the hell are you doing calling me you're wasting time even picking up a field phone just keep
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moving don't stop and so the third army in the summer of 1944 took more prisoners and traveled further
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than any other mobile force in history in basically about six weeks all the way from britney right to
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within 100 miles of the german border i was the only thing that stopped pattern was lack of fuel and
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to some extent the weather but it was mainly the lack of fuel to supply his his armored divisions there was a
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very potent force pattern had studied german strategy and tactics and the blitzkrieg that had been so
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effective in 1940 and he basically developed an american form of blitzkrieg a very a very pattern-esque
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version of it which basically meant that he equipped manned and planned for his armored units to
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act as really effective modern-day cavalry you know flanked by infantry divisions etc but his main
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preoccupation was was speed and movement and taking the fight to the enemy and never allowing them if
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possible to have a break you know constant constant pressure just keep pushing pushing pushing it several
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times gave instructions which were basically don't don't worry about what's going on 10 miles to the
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east or the west just keep pushing your head and uh and fight just keep fighting and it proved to be
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very effective until you get into the late fall of 1944 where the weather became atrocious fuel supplies
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were very difficult you know it's very hard to come across extra fuel and there was a manpower problem
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so yeah it was a genius of armored warfare and so uh patent the third army makes this uh slash
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into europe but then in the fall of 44 they get stymied the weather's bad there's no manpower they're
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out of fuel but yeah the weather becomes a problem as you get into november december and this is when
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the title of your book comes into play patent's prayer patent decided to he says we got to pray and
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he had this great quote talking about patent's idea about what role prayer played in warfare he says
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you got to plan and then you got to work really hard but then you have to pray really hard as well
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so he goes and finds this chaplain to say i want you to write a prayer for us so tell us about this
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chaplain who wrote patent's prayer that was a guy called o'neill he was the senior chaplain in the
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third army and i believe there were more than 20 denominations within the third army but he was the
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chief and on the 8th of december 1944 while patent was headquartered in nancy in france o'neill was at
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his desk one morning and he received a call and it was patent o'neill came from chicago he was i think
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he was 52 years old at the time and he's a roman catholic priest and but he receives this call from
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patent saying you know come and see me and when he went to see him patent said look i want you to
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write a prayer for me which was you know came as a big surprise to o'neill and the prayer was basically
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for good weather and i can read a little bit of it yeah it was printed onto over 250 000 prayer cards so
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that basically every guy in the third army received one and i think the last of these prayer cards which
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you know it's like a business card i've actually got one it fits into your wallet nicely it would fit
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into any gi's combat pocket neatly and the last of those prayers was distributed on the 14th of
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december 1944 and that's a hell of a lot of copies of a prayer and a hell of a lot of people to receive
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them but anyway on one side there was a christmas message that o'neill wrote on behalf of patent and
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then the main prayer on the other side of the card read like this almighty and most merciful father
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we humbly beseech thee of thy great goodness to restrain these in moderate reigns with which we
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have had to contend grant us fair weather for battle graciously hearken to us as soldiers who
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call upon thee that armed with thy power we may advance from victory to victory and crush the
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oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish thy justice among men and nations
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so that was the prayer and pattern was very pleased with it and in my book i go into quite some detail
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but o'neill recorded the conversation he had with pattern in quite some detail and i i shamelessly used
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a lot of the dialogue from o'neill's memoirs for that meeting between the two of them on the 8th of
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december 1944 so yeah pattern made some good points though when he was talking to o'neill he asked o'neill
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you know how much praying was being done and o'neill said that it was pretty difficult to find places
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for people to pray as a congregation and that you know in the middle of a war it was difficult to
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hold services but basically not a lot of praying was going on and pattern said well that you but we
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need to change that and pattern said uh you know up to now in the third army this is up until december
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of 1944 god has been very good to us we have never retreated we have never suffered defeats this is
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because a lot of people back home are praying for us we were lucky in africa in sicily and in italy
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simply because people prayed but we have to pray for ourselves too and he i love this about pattern he
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added that a good soldier quote a good soldier is not made merely by making him think and work there is
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something in every soldier that goes deeper than thinking or working it's his guts it is something that
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is built up in there it is a world of truth and power that is higher than himself and pattern
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basically told o'neill that everybody in the third army should be praying all the time and if they
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didn't pray sooner or later they they'd crack up as he said you know go to go insane or go go to
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pieces and so o'neill not only wrote a christmas message from pattern plus the famous patterns prayer
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for good weather we also issued a directive in pattern's name that actually went to unbelievably
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486 chaplains in the third army 32 i'm correcting myself now 32 denominations and uh the officers
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of 20 divisions that were under pattern's command and uh the directive was was really precise pray when
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driving pray when fighting pray alone pray with others pray by night and pray by day pray for the
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cessation of immoderate rains for good weather for battle pray for victory pray for our army and pray
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for peace lastly we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so patten he has his prayer issued he hands it out the same time hitler's
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planning his attack right this is like a last ditch effort we talked about this in our last
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conversation secret attack no one knew it was coming the allies were caught completely off guard
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how did patten respond like what was his response when he found out that the the nazis had made this
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surprise attack well you say that nobody knew that it was going to happen and that that's true to the
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extent that no one knew the extent of the german attack no one knew that there were going to be
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over 200 000 troops involved and that this was hitler's last desperate gamble on the western front
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but in fact patten did know that something was going to happen because he had a superb intelligence
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staff his entire staff were first class but he had a head of intelligence called oscar kosch who he'd
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worked with since 1942 and he trusted him hugely he didn't ever make a major decision without
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consulting kosch and kosch in late november and early december of 1944 had received a lot of
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intelligence field intelligence etc interrogations of pow's which suggested that the germans were
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building up a significant force to the north of the third army near the ardennes and so
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patten when he was told about this he gave orders to make preparations in case there was a significant
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attack further north and so when the attack finally came on the 16th of december stunning and shocking
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the allied command and patten himself was surprised by just how many men and how many
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tanks the germans had been able to bring into play without anybody really realizing it but when it
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happened when the disaster unfolded patten was the only guy with a plan in fact he had three plans
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because he'd consulted with kosch and it asked his staff to draw up preparations in the likelihood of
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such a large scale movement of german forces he had no idea that it was going to be so vast so big that
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the germans would punch almost 70 miles through past allied lines but he did have a plan in place and
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it was that plan that the one of those three operational plans that he adopted in the early days of the
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battle of the bulge there was a famous meeting of eisenhower bradley pattern and other senior staff
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at verdun a fitting place given what had happened there in world war one on the 19th of december
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and pattern stole the show you know he was the only guy in the meeting that actually was confident that
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saw this as you know a real opportunity to finish off the vermact and he had a plan he was the only guy
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with a plan and said that he could pivot his third army in 48 hours and move that third army
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over 100 miles to the north to the ardennes and then counter-attack and the reaction particularly
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from one british senior official at verdun was laughter you know this this guy's joking this guy
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really is a maniac but uh and eisenhower himself said you know that was somewhat surprised by
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pattern's plan and said well you know don't go off half cocked you know take a little bit more time
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than that but in fact pattern did only really need 48 hours and did actually pivot his entire third army
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in just over two days which is that act of changing the axis of advance of an entire army
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in such a short period of time and then moving over 100 miles in terrible winter conditions
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was the greatest achievement of pattern's illustrious military career it was a phenomenal achievement
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yeah because he had a plan even though he didn't know exactly what was going to happen he had a
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plan it allowed him to execute with speed they were again it just allowed him to be fast fast fast fast
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yeah exactly yeah um action was what was required and he knew that the german forces were
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overextending themselves they were vulnerable but what it took was someone to act quickly and with
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immense aggression and to take the fight to the enemy and you know the reason why the battle of the
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bulge is known as the battle of the bulge it's not because of any weight watchers it's because
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that if you looked at a map in certainly on the 18th or 19th of december of 1944 it would show
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a big bulge in the allied lines and pattern when he looked at that bulge he saw opportunity that well
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you know if i can cut off the uh the spearhead of the vermouth if i can attack we can take great
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advantage of this what others saw as a crisis he saw as an opportunity and i think that he not only
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saw as an opportunity to to defeat the vermouth decisively but he saw it as a way to shorten the
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war that if we did the right things we threw enough men into this battle if he was given the right kind
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of command if he was allowed to make the decisions that he wanted to make then this could be the last
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great battle of the war it ended up being the last great battle on the western front anyway
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but he thought that uh german collapse would would soon follow it actually took four months after the
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conclusion of the battle of bulge in january late january of 1945 it took until the 7th of may 1945 for
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the third right to finally collapse but um you know it was speeded up yeah defeat in the battle of the
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and you do such a great job in this part of the book talking about you know this drive that pat was
00:26:55.380
making with the third army they're trying to reach baston and you do a great job of showing the
00:27:01.140
leadership style of pat like he was one who led from the front he actually talked about he said
00:27:06.180
it's important for my men to see me at the front and it's also important that the enemy sees me at
00:27:13.780
the front because he understood the power of presence he understood the power of having an image
00:27:19.280
and that he could inspire his own men but also strike fear in the enemy you recount this there's
00:27:25.680
points where you know germans talk about oh my gosh where's patton is patton here like they start
00:27:31.260
freaking out when they hear that patton's on his way and talking about this theatrical aspect of
00:27:36.000
patton's leadership style you do this great quote when he got asked about it in the press and he
00:27:40.880
started talking about it and he was very self-aware of it he said you quote this i like this a lot he says
00:27:45.940
you know people ask why i swagger and swear wear flashy uniforms and sometimes two pistols
00:27:50.960
well i'm not sure whether some of it is any of my own damn fault but however that may be the press
00:27:56.300
and others have built a picture of me so now no matter how tired or discouraged or even really ill i
00:28:01.100
may be if i don't live up to that picture my men are going to say the old man's sick the old son of a
00:28:06.680
bitch has had it then their own confidence their own morale will take a big drop um so yeah you could
00:28:12.800
see him like there's instances where he would help you know push a truck out of the snow that was
00:28:18.020
really important for the men to see that yeah definitely i mean if you're in the battle of
00:28:23.520
your life and things are really really tough it's nice to see that the big boss you know lending a
00:28:29.540
hand one of the things that i love about patton is the fact that he you know he walked it as he
00:28:34.600
talked it i mean he talked big but he walked big if you know what i mean yeah and you know in
00:28:39.620
contrast to someone like bradley who was the so-called gi's general you know that was a
00:28:44.180
myth propagated by ernie pile who wrote a bunch of columns about bradley eulogizing him you know
00:28:50.940
bradley barely left his hotel in luxembourg throughout the battle of the bulge whereas
00:28:55.020
patton was out there almost every single day for sometimes all day in uh open jeep
00:29:02.500
armored jeep visiting division commanders core commanders and being seen by countless of his men
00:29:09.500
there are so many examples and so many instances of guys under his command actually spotting him as he
00:29:16.800
passed by in a jeep and he would stand up and shout out encouragement and you know swear and say that
00:29:22.740
they had the germans nuts in a grinder you know etc etc you can only imagine uh but the fact was that
00:29:29.980
he was there he was seen and he was seen at the front pushing his third army towards victory and i
00:29:36.580
think that that's something that you need to know about patton that he was a man that was there and
00:29:42.160
led from the front was seen at the front and uh knew how important it was to be regarded that way
00:29:48.300
by his troops yeah um he was very strict he's a disciplinarian oh yeah he's a big stickler for that
00:29:54.700
sort of thing very very loyal i mean everybody complained everybody complained in the third army that
00:29:59.000
they always had to wear neckties that their helmets had to be polished whatever that it was at this
00:30:04.080
seemed to be this sort of ridiculous level of neatness that pattern required but that was part of
00:30:09.860
a broader philosophy that pattern had which was that he did demand discipline that he wanted men to be
00:30:15.060
extremely well trained to do what they were told to to perform at a very high level and that came
00:30:20.660
through discipline yeah you need you need great discipline in a great army and they might have
00:30:27.080
pitched and moaned about it but after the war when they looked back they were all all proud to have
00:30:31.880
served served under old blood and guts they realized that that kind of order and discipline and pride of
00:30:36.660
unit mattered mattered a great deal did patton's prayer get answered like the weather clear up
00:30:42.360
eventually yeah it did and patton certainly believed that it was that was answered and other men in the
00:30:48.980
third army believed that it had been answered and the main answer came that the answer came on
00:30:53.840
22nd of december when the weather started to change and then the morning of the 23rd
00:31:00.000
patton awoke and looked out of his headquarters in luxembourg up at the sky and it was bright blue
00:31:06.280
so the cloud cover and fogs and mists that had shrouded the vermouth and shrouded the battlefield
00:31:13.400
since the beginning of the battle of the bulge the 16th of december that finally all went away
00:31:18.860
and the point was that with clear skies the allied air forces could go to town and they had air
00:31:25.380
superiority massive air superiority and could do a hell of a lot of damage but they couldn't do that
00:31:30.880
with low cloud cover and mist and fog in fact they'd been grounded until that point but with clear skies
00:31:37.320
on the 23rd of december they just boy did they they pounded everything they could find between the
00:31:42.080
rhine and the ardennes they hit columns of german tanks they strafed and pounded and bombed and shelled and
00:31:48.080
you name it and did a hell of a lot of damage and made and made the critical difference in the
00:31:53.400
battle of the bulge so when patton looked up at the clear blue skies he absolutely believed that his
00:31:58.560
prayer had been answered and then soon after he called for his chaplain o'neill his head chaplain o'neill
00:32:04.140
and he um he gave him a medal um the only only chaplain in world war ii that we know of that
00:32:12.780
i think it was a bronze star yeah uh so it's very patent-esque and patent pinned it onto him
00:32:23.120
himself it wasn't just handed it by some underling it was patent he pinned the medal on him himself
00:32:28.460
you know all right so they make it to baston and like this basically this is kind of the that
00:32:33.740
all the bolts sort of winding down it took a few more weeks for it to happen what happened to the
00:32:37.400
third army after that like what do they what do they do well you know baston was relieved on the
00:32:43.320
26th of december but actually in the first couple of weeks of january of 1945 there were much higher
00:32:51.180
casualties suffered by the third army and in fact by the 101st airborne then from the 16th of december
00:32:58.400
through to the end of 1944 because it's one thing to stop a german counter-attack and to relieve
00:33:05.600
a besieged town it's quite another thing to push the wehrmacht back to their starting point
00:33:10.500
and that took most of january of 1945 and it was a very bloody ordeal indeed because the germans
00:33:18.000
fought very very hard you know they they knew they had their backs to their homeland finally the two
00:33:24.660
key armies involved in the battle of the bulge met up at a place called hufolies and the americans
00:33:31.360
pipped the brits to hufolies by just a matter of a few hours and so that was the join up of the two
00:33:38.700
main armies involved on the allied side in the battle and from there until the end of january
00:33:44.980
from hufolies until the end of january it was a slogging match to push the germans back to where
00:33:49.400
they'd they'd started from on day one of the battle of the bulge they took a break for a while and then by
00:33:55.520
early february the third army was on the move its progress was relatively slow through february
00:34:02.100
again because of the winter conditions and determined german counter-attacks and and stubbornness you
00:34:08.660
know but then finally by march they're starting to move they've broken the back of the wehrmacht on the
00:34:13.460
western front and they're moving towards the rhine the allies crossed the rhine first on the 7th of
00:34:18.880
march 1945 across the ludendorff bridge at reymargen and then through the rest of march the rest of
00:34:25.600
the allied armies across the rhine from north to south patten crossed the rhine on the 25th of march
00:34:32.260
near oppenheim and famously urinated in the river and got to the other side to the eastern banks of the
00:34:39.280
rhine and fell to his knees and grabbed a bunch of dirt and shouted out thus william the conqueror
00:34:44.880
you know basically you know that this is this is we were talking earlier on about his understanding
00:34:51.520
of military history and his love for those who'd come before so only patten would have now dropped
00:34:57.060
to his knees on the other side of the rhine and and invoked william the conqueror you know so that's
00:35:01.800
that takes you to april of 1945 you know once we were across the rhine that was the last natural
00:35:07.860
barrier between us and berlin you know you go siegfried line and then the rhine and then that's it
00:35:14.700
basically you're you it's there was still a lot of heavy fighting going on but it was all over
00:35:19.620
really for the third rank on the western front and and patten became he was a celebrity he became a
00:35:24.200
hero like everyone loved patten oh yeah i mean his name was in the headlines through much of the
00:35:29.120
battle of the bulge i mean he became a superstar eventually so you know patten's not fighting as
00:35:35.620
much there's still some fighting going on but he starts getting into trouble and eventually he gets in a
00:35:41.460
lot of trouble and he got relieved from his command of the third army what caused that
00:35:46.120
he hated the soviets that was the main the main reason and he spoke out about it unwisely and time
00:35:54.640
and time again just couldn't keep his mouth shut and uh basically said that we should carry on fighting
00:36:00.540
and that rather than the nazis we should be fighting the the red army it's not what people wanted to hear
00:36:06.260
certainly not what eisenhower or any politicians wanted to hear it what when i read that i thought
00:36:11.720
he kind of has a point he said like we got to probably fight these guys because if we don't
00:36:16.140
we'll be fighting them in 20 years and like that's exactly what happened yeah it was called the cold war
00:36:21.940
but that looming conflict was pretty hot even in 1945 you know and that you know if you ask somebody
00:36:29.540
that lived throughout the uh cold war or was in the part of eastern europe that was occupied by the
00:36:36.080
red army they they certainly didn't regard themselves as being liberated and patten insisted on trying to
00:36:42.200
get to prague and was stopped he was told no you you got to stop we've agreed that the altar these are the
00:36:48.520
lines that we're going to finish with at the end of the war stalin gets this we occupy this and and that's
00:36:53.480
it and uh patten wanted to go as far as he could as fast as he could and the reason why was because he
00:37:00.560
he knew that he was a liberator not a conqueror that he wanted to set people free rather than enslave
00:37:07.020
them which is what he believed the soviets would do and did do so in terms of identifying the soviets as
00:37:16.320
the main enemy of democracy in europe he was dead right but that was not the time to do it when we
00:37:22.140
you know over 19 million european civilians lay dead and we'd gone through a horrific global conflict
00:37:28.740
it was just you know not what people wanted to hear they and it's not what his men wanted to hear
00:37:34.020
either to be honest they you know they all they could think about in 1945 was going home and they
00:37:40.480
didn't want to go and didn't want to stay in europe and fight against a formidable red army that would
00:37:45.820
have that would have been a horrific bloodbath yeah so yeah you know eisenhower he was thinking about
00:37:52.140
the ally he was thinking about relationships and trying to figure out how we're going to
00:37:55.300
organize this post-war thing yeah he's thinking bigger picture and patten's comments weren't
00:38:01.300
helping that and so yeah yeah he basically got sacked from yeah he didn't get he didn't get sacked
00:38:06.860
for comments about the soviets although those were very impolitic and it's surprising that he wasn't
00:38:14.220
disciplined severely he got sacked eventually because eisenhower ran out of patience and the reason
00:38:21.960
why he ran out of patience finally was that in a press conference patten had been set up by a
00:38:27.560
journalist and patten was pretty easy to set up you know you just ask them a question about the red army
00:38:32.720
or you ask them a question that would set patten off and one of the questions was it was seemingly
00:38:40.240
benign and it was basically about his role after the end of the war which was that he was the governor
00:38:46.840
of occupied bavaria and it was his responsibility to you know put that shattered part of germany back
00:38:54.800
together and make it run and and organize things it was an army of occupation that he was commanding
00:39:00.700
and he was asked a question about the treatment of nazi officials and patten basically pointed out that if
00:39:09.700
you didn't allow any nazi official back into government if you didn't allow them to some of
00:39:15.880
them to run the show and you know to make the electricity work to organize various things to run
00:39:22.220
towns and cities and then who are you left with because pretty much anybody that had been in power
00:39:27.940
of any kind since the rise of hitler had been in the nazi party you had to be in the nazi party to be in
00:39:34.200
a senior government official anywhere in germany you know that's what it was all about and so
00:39:39.860
patten basically said well you know the nazis aren't that different to the republicans and the
00:39:43.800
democrats you know it's like if you belong to them you know it's not that much different to being in
00:39:48.080
the nazi party and of course that comparison of the republicans and democrats to the nazis
00:39:53.320
just you know lit a bonfire people that was a step too far even though when you really think about it
00:39:59.340
what patten was saying was pretty true you know and as we learned to our great dismay but not a lot
00:40:06.660
of people's shock in some parts of the world when we invaded iraq there was no plan for real plan for
00:40:13.380
what we're going to do once we'd invaded just a lot of idealism and uh you know when you get rid of
00:40:19.900
when we got rid of saddam hussein's forces and his senior command structure etc and all those who had
00:40:26.120
obeyed saddam hussein you know you were left with a vacuum you didn't have anybody to turn to and to
00:40:32.760
help you organize our occupation of iraq and patten was basically saying the same thing you know you
00:40:38.620
need to find people who can actually run the show otherwise we're going to have to do it all and
00:40:43.280
we can't do it all on our own how did he respond to his getting removed from command well you have to
00:40:50.480
remember that eisenhower's patients had been tested since 1943 with the the famous slapping
00:40:57.480
incident and there were several other occasions since then that that had caused him a lot of
00:41:04.040
irritation he basically just wanted patten to keep his goddamn mouth shut and you know when they finally
00:41:10.900
met it was in september of 1945 in europe in germany and they had a real ding dong i mean
00:41:20.320
the meeting went on for about two hours voices were raised eisenhower's assistant and driver a
00:41:28.740
woman called case summersby wrote in a memoir that this was the most annoyed that she'd ever seen
00:41:33.800
eisenhower that he aged like 10 years during this whole episode when he was having to you know
00:41:39.880
basically fire a good friend and that was what you know patten was and he basically relieved patten of
00:41:47.900
command of the third army which was a stunning blow to patten when patten left the meeting he was
00:41:53.360
an observer so that he was white you know maybe with shock but certainly with disappointment
00:41:57.900
and he was given sort of a bogus role as head of the 15th army which is basically a
00:42:03.940
was going to write the history of world war ii as an historical unit so uh it was a real come down
00:42:10.980
from you know at the end of the war patten had almost 500 000 americans and there was commanders
00:42:16.540
third army commander and then to suddenly find himself in charge of a bunch of guys who were going
00:42:21.940
to write the history of world war ii was was a real demotion and it hit him hard he pretended that
00:42:27.040
it didn't in public anyway but you know it left him somewhat embittered deeply saddened and wondering
00:42:34.080
about what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life because his glory days were
00:42:37.560
definitely over yeah the problem for patten was that even then you know when the war ended in
00:42:43.880
europe on the 7th of may 1945 he wanted to go to japan he was all for it and in fact he visited
00:42:49.720
washington dc in june of 1945 and he was on a mission to try and get sent to japan at his last
00:42:55.960
meeting with his third army staff he said i'll see you in china so he was all up for the for even more
00:43:01.800
of a war but macarthur who was the king of the pacific theater he wouldn't have patten anywhere
00:43:07.800
near him i think he was threatened by patten it certainly didn't want that size ego anywhere near
00:43:12.120
him and so patten there was no role found for patten in the pacific even though patten had actually
00:43:17.680
asked president truman when he was at the white house in june of 1945 to send him there it wasn't
00:43:23.480
going to happen because macarthur wouldn't allow it basically and so it raises a question about what
00:43:29.240
would have happened to patten had he not died in a car accident in december 1945 so yeah he was a
00:43:35.660
man without a real role or purpose or as he saw it a future and it hurt him a great deal he'd spent
00:43:41.880
his entire devoted his entire life to the u.s army yeah that car accident it was a pretty banal death
00:43:47.840
for patten i don't think it was the death that he thought he had like this glorious warrior death
00:43:52.040
so yeah it's the end of 1945 he's about to leave europe he's thinking about retiring from the army
00:43:57.580
and he gets gets in this dumb car accident everyone else was fine but he ended up being paralyzed from
00:44:03.460
the neck down he had to spend i think 12 days in spinal traction in a hospital but even during that
00:44:09.880
time he was the the he was a stoic soldier the nurses said he was the ideal patient but he said yeah
00:44:15.820
this is a this is a hell of a way to die and he ended up dying from those injuries from that car accident
00:44:20.800
what's interesting though is that patten had a clear premonition of his death several months before
00:44:27.740
so he went back to the united states for leave and while he was there you know right before he went
00:44:34.460
back to europe he told his family this is our last goodbye and they were like what are you talking
00:44:39.180
about like the war's over you're not going to die but he knew he was going to die soon because he
00:44:43.960
thought he believed you had a certain amount of protection from providence or a certain amount of luck
00:44:48.900
and his had run out but he did think he would be reincarnated again so after writing this book
00:44:56.880
did you take any life lessons from patten yeah that's a great question the one thing that i came
00:45:02.340
to realize by looking at patten is that you know today he would be totally ostracized he wouldn't stand
00:45:10.200
a chance in the modern us military he was too outspoken he uh wasn't a team player in some ways
00:45:18.100
but if you look at human history if you look at in detail at human history a lot of it is about
00:45:24.360
conflict modern history is the history of war in many ways one war after another and we are we would
00:45:30.280
be very naive to assume that we're not going to stay that way as a basically conflictual species
00:45:36.200
and we need people like patten we're always going to need figures like patten in the future if we face
00:45:43.760
great military tests we're going to need aggressive brilliant commanders who want to win and are
00:45:51.600
prepared to do whatever they can to win you don't want to have your hands tied behind your back in a
00:45:56.280
war if the stakes are everything national survival is on the line you're out to win and from my point
00:46:03.500
of view men like patten we've always needed them and we'll always need them in the future well alex
00:46:09.380
this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work
00:46:12.780
you can go to all the usual online bookstores and you can also go to my website alexkershaw.com
00:46:21.220
and follow me on twitter yeah the book's published on the 21st of may and um you know hopefully people
00:46:28.400
will enjoy it i had a great time writing it because i got to write about an incredibly fun fascinating
00:46:34.660
colorful figure which is patten yeah i had a great time reading it's a it's a great book
00:46:38.760
oh thank you well alex kershaw thanks for your time it's been a pleasure
00:46:42.220
uh my pleasure mate thanks a lot my guest here is alex kershaw he's the author of the book patten's
00:46:48.360
prayer it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about
00:46:52.080
his work at his website alexkershaw.com also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:46:56.320
slash patten we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic
00:46:59.720
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:47:10.840
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00:47:14.660
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