Tuesday, September 11, 2012

George S. Patton, the anti-Rotter

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives. An Enemy of the People, says Mr Rot. Off with his head.
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6 comments:

Mr roT said...

I read The Last Days Of Patton (1981) when it was just out. That is, while you were still pulling girls' pigtails while you were wearing knee-pants.
If this ain't a VCP, there's never been one deserved on FCP...
Somehow fitting:
You know, by God I, I actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against, by God, I do.

9/11/2012 4:56 PM
Tecumseh said...

Whatever. The fact remains, Patton was the first major figure in the US to see the danger posed by the Soviet Union, right then and there, towards the end of the war.
But of course, he had to stop short of Prague, because of Yalta. And the bulk of the US army had to stop at the Elbe, and let Berlin be taken over by the Soviets.

So I have no idea what you learned from reading that book about Patton, besides some colorful language, but you certainly didn't pick up on his clear-headed, forward-looking strategic vision. Which, alas, was cut short by his untimely (and very mysterious) demise.

9/11/2012 7:30 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...

As has been noted, folks wanted him dead.

9/11/2012 11:17 PM
Mr roT said...

Right, AA, and thanks for trying to make clear to everyone here that Patton's view of things was not rare and not even requiring the mind of Poincaré to arrive at, much less that of an Einstein.
In short, Patton was a good general, but his putput in geopolitical strategy was about ten clicks behind that of George W. Bush.
Put still shorter, Patton's main theorem was x=x.

9/12/2012 10:43 AM
Tecumseh said...

Still pulling for Uncle Joe, Mr Rot? Keep on diggin'.

Just a detail: Patton was not merely a "good general" -- he was one of the best ever. And yes, he had much better strategic vision than those armchair generals and bureaucrats back at the Pentagon or Foggy Bottom.

As for comparing Patton's views as to the strategic situation in 1945 with what Poincaré, Einstein, or George W. Bush would have thought or done: that's simply a culmination of the kind of non-sequiturs you indulge in , trying to pass this off as some kind of deep thinking. It's not.

9/12/2012 10:51 AM
Mr roT said...

. .trying to pass this off as some kind of deep thinking. It's not.

I'm not trying to pass anything off as deep thinking. I'm parroting what the colonels and lieutenant colonels taught us in ROTC at A & M. That might not be as prestigious a school of US military history as your institutions of higher learning, but I doubt that since A & M produced at that time more officers than the service academies.

Probably you think Konev and Zhukov were great too.

9/12/2012 1:34 PM

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