Killing Patton Part 22

4 Patton admired the discipline of the German military and the German work ethic.

5 Although Patton was received as a hero when he returned to the United States in the summer of 1945, his affair with Jean Gordon caused considerable animosity between him and his wife. "Beatrice gave me h.e.l.l," Patton told his friend Gen. Everett Hughes upon his return to Bavaria. "I'm glad to be in Europe."

6 Bandera will himself be a.s.sa.s.sinated by the Russians in 1959, as noted in the Central Intelligence Agency journal Studies in Intelligence 19, no. 3.

7 On May 4, Patton received approval from Dwight Eisenhower to invade Czechoslovakia. At this point in the war, the Third Army comprised eighteen divisions and more than half a million men, making it the largest U.S. force in history. The Third Army swept into western Czechoslovakia, quickly capturing vast regions of the nation and accepting the surrender of thousands of German prisoners who did not want to fall into Russian hands. On May 6, Eisenhower ordered Patton to halt-which he did, albeit very reluctantly. However, elements of the Third Army did not receive the order. In the ancient city of Rokycany, just east of Plze, there was conflict when the American and Russian armies linked up, very nearly starting the new war for which Patton had long argued.

8 The Russians denied the Americans and British access to many of the POW camps they had liberated, and also denied that they held any Allied POWs. Truman, and Roosevelt before him, allegedly knew otherwise, but did not want to create strife with Stalin. Thus it is believed that many American and British soldiers died in Russian captivity because their release was not demanded.

Chapter 24.

1 This is a reference to the smooth-talking religious officials whom Jesus of Nazareth condemned for their lies and air of self-importance, noting that their acts and their beliefs differed greatly.

2 The source of this innuendo is Harry Truman, speaking to a biographer in 1974. Marshall's reasons were as much personal as political. It was widely held that Eisenhower had a great political future after the war, but Americans did not look kindly on candidates who were divorced-particularly one who left his wife for a foreigner several years younger. Marshall, in effect, believed he was saving Eisenhower from making a great mistake.

3 Raymond Daniell of the Chicago Daily News would later attempt to apologize to Beatrice Patton for his part in this scheme, and for his anti-Patton bias. She refused to accept his apology.

4 Named for Joseph Stalin. In the Cyrillic alphabet, IS is the close equivalent to his initials.

Chapter 25.

1 In addition to camouflaging the villa's exterior, Stalin added several curious security details to it. He ordered that the drapes be short, so that he could see the feet of anyone trying to hide behind them. There were no rugs, so that Stalin could hear any approaching footsteps. Also, the backs of the sofas were bulletproof, and designed to be high enough so that Stalin's head was not visible when he was seated.

2 At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Stalin's dacha served as a hotel. Rooms rented for seven thousand rubles-approximately two hundred dollars-per night.

3 In 1964, CIA a.n.a.lysis cast suspicion on Sedov's death. It pointed out that the autopsies did not probe for evidence of poisoning, such as traces of microbes that might have been injected, nor did they include a thorough search of the nervous system and the skin, to make sure that the location of all injection marks was consistent with medical procedures. Sedov's successor in Trotsky's Communist movement, a German named Rudolf Klement, was murdered by NKVD agent Alexander Korotkov on June 13, 1938. His headless body was found floating in Paris's Seine River.

4 Known as the b.l.o.o.d.y Dwarf, Yezhov rose to power by arranging the arrest and execution of YaG.o.da. He then went on an unparalleled terror spree, killing an estimated six hundred thousand men and women in just two years. The killing was systematic, with security officials given murder quotas that, if not met, resulted in their own executions. Beria, Yezhov's successor, almost became one of Yezhov's victims. However, he cleverly aligned himself with Stalin, and Yezhov's influence soon waned. The b.l.o.o.d.y Dwarf was arrested on April 10, 1939, and soon confessed to anti-Soviet activities and h.o.m.os.e.xual behavior. He was executed on February 4, 1940. His nickname then changed to the Vanis.h.i.+ng Commissar, because his image was soon removed from all official photographs until it was as if he had never existed at all.

5 Testimony of Semyon Zhukovsky, head of the Twelfth Department of the NKVD. File number 975026 in the archives of the Soviet Senior Military Prosecutor's Office.

Chapter 26.

1 In all, twenty-four political and military leaders of the Third Reich were tried at Nuremberg. Martin Bormann was tried in absentia. Twelve will be sentenced to death by hanging, seven will be given time in prison, three will be acquitted, one will commit suicide four days after the trial begins, and one will be declared medically unfit for trial.

2 The rumor was untrue, and some believe it was generated by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

3 The forty-eight-year-old head of British intelligence is widely considered to be the model for Ian Fleming's fict.i.tious spy, James Bond. It was Stephenson who convinced FDR that Donovan should head the OSS.

4 Bazata was held in high esteem by members of the OSS. No less than William Colby, a former OSS agent who went on to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, made a point of depicting Bazata's heroism in the 1978 book Honorable Men. Bazata's obituary in the New York Times on August 22, 1999, was specific in recounting his work behind enemy lines in France. However, for three decades after the general died, Bazata remained silent about his alleged role in Patton's death. These quotes come from a letter he wrote to a friend on August 2, 1975. He later confirmed these claims in a 1979 article in Spotlight magazine.

Chapter 27.

1 In addition to being the location of Patton's headquarters, Bad Nauheim was also the site of Hitler's Adlerhorst command post. Also, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's father used to travel there to take the waters for his heart condition. Finally, Bad Nauheim was host to Elvis Presley during his short stint in the army between 1958 and 1960. The gate to the city's castle is depicted on the cover of Presley's 1959 No.1 hit record, "A Big Hunk o' Love."

2 Thompson will try to cover his tracks regarding the "borrowed" truck by telling investigators that at the time of the accident he was turning into a quartermaster depot to return the vehicle, but in fact the depot was much farther down the road. There was a redbrick building to Patton's right, with a broad driveway that might have been Thompson's intended path. He will later change his story to say that he was turning onto a side street. But that is suspicious. The closest street to Thompson's vehicle was fifteen feet north of the accident. In effect, Thompson did not know where he was going.

Afterword.

1 This was reported in the Was.h.i.+ngton Star.

2 This is the citation for Bazata's Distinguished Cross: "The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Captain (Infantry) Douglas D. Bazata, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy as an organizer and Director of Resistance forces serving with the Office of Strategic Services, in action against enemy forces from 27 August 1944 to 6 October 1944. Captain Bazata, after having been parachuted into the Haute Saone Department of France, organized and armed Resistance Forces, numbering 7,000; planned and executed acts of sabotage against rail and highway markers in order to divert German convoys onto secondary routes, leading them into well prepared ambushes and causing them to lose many men and motor vehicles. All of these tasks were performed in civilian clothing. Captain Bazata's services reflect great credit upon him and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the armed forces of the United States."

APPENDIX.

Gen. George S. Patton's Speech to the U.S. Third Army.

SOUTHERN ENGLAND.

JUNE 5, 1944.

Be seated.

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bulls.h.i.+t. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.

You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self-respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight.

When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser.

Americans despise cowards.

Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in h.e.l.l for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the h.e.l.l slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are.

The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent compet.i.tion in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they are He Men.

Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.

All through your Army careers, you men have b.i.t.c.hed about what you call "chickens.h.i.+t drilling." That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a f-ck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-a.s.shole-b.i.t.c.h is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sock full of s.h.i.+t!

There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the b.a.s.t.a.r.d asleep before they did.

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team.

This individual heroic stuff is pure horse s.h.i.+t. The bilious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who write that kind of stuff for the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about f-cking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by G.o.d, I actually pity those poor sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes we're going up against. By G.o.d, I do.

My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bulls.h.i.+t either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the h.e.l.l out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the h.e.l.l was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain.

What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those sh.e.l.ls overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly b.a.s.t.a.r.d could say, "h.e.l.l, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands." But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the h.e.l.l would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like?

No, G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war.

The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a h.e.l.l of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the "G.I. s.h.i.+ts."

Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the G.o.dd.a.m.ned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men.

One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious firefight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the h.e.l.l he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, "Fixing the wire, Sir." I asked, "Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?" He answered, "Yes, Sir, but the G.o.dd.a.m.ned wire has to be fixed." I asked, "Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?" And he answered, "No, Sir, but you sure as h.e.l.l do!" Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds.

And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-b.i.t.c.hing roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with sh.e.l.ls bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one h.e.l.l of a way they did it. They were part of a team.

Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.

Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the h.e.l.l happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to find out be the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their p.i.s.s-soaked hind legs and howl, "Jesus Christ, it's the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Third Army again and that son-of-a-f-cking-b.i.t.c.h Patton."

We want to get the h.e.l.l over there. The quicker we clean up this G.o.dd.a.m.ned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple-p.i.s.sing j.a.ps and clean out their nest, too. Before the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Marines get all of the credit.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!

When a man is lying in a sh.e.l.l hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The h.e.l.l with that idea. The h.e.l.l with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have.

We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes, we're going to rip out their living G.o.dd.a.m.ned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun c-cksuckers by the bushel-f-cking-basket. War is a b.l.o.o.d.y, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When sh.e.l.ls are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!

I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's b.a.l.l.s. We are going to twist his b.a.l.l.s and kick the living s.h.i.+t out of him all of the time.

Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like c.r.a.p through a goose; like s.h.i.+t through a tin horn!

From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pus.h.i.+ng our people too hard. I don't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pus.h.i.+ng means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won't have to cough, s.h.i.+ft him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled s.h.i.+t in Louisiana." No, Sir. You can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-G.o.dd.a.m.ned-b.i.t.c.h named Georgie Patton!"

That is all.

Sources.

Researching this book was an adventure.

The journey began in the German town of Heidelberg, with a visit to the hospital room at Nachrichten Kaserne where Patton died. Shane Sharp, the base's public affairs officer, arranged for Major Aaron Northup to conduct a brief tour of the facility, allowing our first hands-on glimpse into the places visited by George S. Patton in the final years of his life.

After that simple and somewhat poignant beginning, the research careened all over Europe and through parts of America, as. .h.i.tler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and many of the other influential figures that grace these pages demanded their own levels of in-depth investigation. Some of this was a straightforward dig into various archives, museums, and official U.S. Army battlefield histories. In particular, the Central Intelligence Agency, the presidential libraries of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and the National Archives were of great a.s.sistance. This history is still close enough to the present time that two key figures in this book, Abe Baum and Manfred Rommel, pa.s.sed away during the research process. As with many other figures in this book, their newspaper obituaries provided important background information. These are all standard sources for historical research. However, there were also several unexpected sources that helped bring the past to life.

Among them was the George S. Patton Memorial Museum at Chiriaco Summit in California's Mojave Desert, with its vast and diverse amount of Patton memorabilia, including several tanks displayed in the desert surrounding the museum. Also, the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin offered a chilling look into n.a.z.i Germany. It is built atop the former site of Gestapo headquarters, next to a small remaining section of the Berlin Wall. And, of course, the site of Patton's grave in Luxembourg was powerful in its elegant simplicity.

The city of Bastogne is not the commercial crossroads it was in 1944, but it pays homage to the Battle of the Bulge and its American defenders each year on the anniversary of the battle. The 101st Airborne's former barracks and site of General McAuliffe's headquarters is an operational military facility that sometimes opens its gates for tours. And while it is not to be found on any map, Fort Driant still exists in the hills above Metz, slowly being reclaimed by the forest. It is possible to walk the battlefield, following the path of Easy Company and Baker Company-though this is roundly discouraged by the locals due to the large amounts of unexploded ordnance. Open doorways and tunnels allow the adventurous to step inside Fort Driant's Wehrmacht gun emplacements and see for themselves the thickness of the fort's concrete walls.

Katerina Novikova, director of press relations at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, was very helpful in pa.s.sing along the ballet's program for the night in October 1944 when Olga Lepes.h.i.+nskaya danced for Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. And Aleksandra Perisik-Green in the House of Commons Information Office was no less dogged in finding the meeting minutes for the day on which Churchill eulogized Franklin Roosevelt, allowing us to pinpoint the exact time that heartfelt speech began.

It is ironic that the people who make history are some of the most bold, courageous, and pa.s.sionate people that have ever walked the earth, but that the actual writing of history is often so fact driven that all emotion is deflated from the telling of a person's life story. So it is interesting that most literature about George Patton breaks from this tradition and displays a subcurrent of deep empathy for the general. It says a great deal about the power of Patton's personality and the tragedy of his early demise.

There is a vast body of excellent literature about Patton, so there was no shortage of published resources. War As I Knew It, Patton's published journals, was a constant source of information and insight, as was The Patton Papers, which expanded his personal writings in a way that gave them context. Beyond the words of Patton himself, the writings of Carlo D'Este (the excellent Patton: A Genius for War), Martin Blumenson (Patton and The Patton Papers), Ladislas Farago (The Last Days of Patton), and Brian Sobel (The Fighting Pattons) were particularly helpful. Each of them writes of Patton as if they knew him (which was actually the case with Blumenson, who served as staff historian for Patton's Third Army). For specifics about the conspiracy theories surrounding Patton's death, the writing of Robert K. Wilc.o.x (Target: Patton) was very helpful.

What follows is a list of sources that helped with the research for this book. It is lengthy but hardly exhaustive, because hundreds of sources were called upon.

World War II has been written about extensively, but Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle and Rick Atkinson's Guns at Last Light are loaded with detail and action. The Victors, by Stephen E. Ambrose, takes the reader onto the battlefield through the eyes of ordinary soldiers, and in vivid fas.h.i.+on. For a look at the war from a command point of view, Omar Bradley's A Soldier Story is self-effacing and an easy read. While there are too many books detailing the war to list in this s.p.a.ce, some that were very helpful in providing background nuance include Darkness Visible: Memoir of a World War II Combat Photographer, by Charles Eugene Sumners; World War II in Numbers, by Peter Doyle; Patton, Montgomery, Rommel: Masters of War, by Terry Brighton; The Nuremberg Trials: The n.a.z.is and Their Crimes Against Humanity, by Paul Roland; and The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational a.s.sessment, by John A. Adams. Wild Bill Donovan, by Douglas Waller, proved to be the definitive source on the OSS chief; also useful on the topic were The Jedburghs: The Secret History of the Allied Special Forces, France 1944, by Will Irwin; and OSS Against the Reich: The World War II Diaries of Colonel David K. E. Bruce, by David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce.

Metz was written about in spectacular fas.h.i.+on by Anthony Kemp in The Unknown Battle: Metz, 1944, and Steven J. Zaloga with Metz 1944 and Lorraine 1944. The Battle of the Bulge is another milestone of the war that has been covered at great length, but the books we relied on were Robert E. Merriam's The Battle of the Bulge; Troy H. Middleton: A Biography, by Frank J. Price; Battle: The Story of the Bulge, by John Toland; 11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944, by Stanley Weintraub; Alamo in the Ardennes, by John C. McMa.n.u.s; Against the Panzers: United States Infantry versus German Tanks, 19441945, by Allyn R. Vannoy and Jay Karamales; The Ardennes on Fire: The First Day of the German a.s.sault, by Timothy J. Thompson; Fatal Crossroads: The Untold Story of the Malmedy Ma.s.sacre at the Battle of the Bulge, by Danny S. Parker; The Ghost in General Patton's Third Army: The Memoirs of Eugene G. Schulz During His Service in the United States Army in World War II, by Eugene G. Schulz; Battle of the Bulge 1944 (2): Bastogne, by Steven J. Zaloga; and the underrated Once Upon a Time in War: The 99th Division in World War II, by Robert E. Humphrey.

Adolf Hitler is modern history's best-known madman, so to step inside his world is frightening, to say the least. It helped to follow the research of other writers who had gone there already, including firsthand accounts by Otto Skorzeny (Skorzeny's Special Missions: The Memoirs of Hitler's Most Daring Commando) and Traudl Junge (Hitler's Last Secretary: A Firsthand Account of Life with Hitler). In addition, Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, by Joachim Fest; Hitler, by Joachim Fest; Hitler, by Robin Cross; and Hitler: A Biography, by Ian Kershaw were all spectacular.

The Big Three Allied leaders were vital to telling this story properly, and their prominence ensured that a great amount of archival detail was available to doc.u.ment their movements and thoughts. Books of note were The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 19391953, by Michael Parrish; Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion, by Helen Rappaport; The FDR Years, by William D. Pederson; My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin, edited by Susan Butler; No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, by Doris Kearns Goodwin; Defending the West: The Truman-Churchill Correspondence, 19451960, edited by G. W. Sand; The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire, by Peter Clarke; and The Road to Berlin, volume 2 of Stalin's War with Germany, by John Erickson.

Thanks to these authors, and to those whose books are not mentioned but whose research aided in building this narrative.

Acknowledgments.

My a.s.sistant Makeda Wubneh and literary agent Eric Simonoff were invaluable in helping me write Killing Patton with Marty Dugard, the best researcher I have ever known.

-BILL O'REILLY.

Thanks to Eric Simonoff, the world's greatest agent. To Bill O'Reilly, a master storyteller and all-around great guy from whom I have learned so much. And, as always, to Callie: You are my suns.h.i.+ne.

-MARTIN DUGARD.