Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Hillsdale College" channel.

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  11.  @oldedwardian1778  The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour. Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him: ▪️ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein; ▪️ March 1943 - Medenine; ▪️ June 1944 - Normandy; ▪️ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands; ▪️ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge; A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2: ▪️ Battle of Alam Halfa; ▪️ Second Battle of El Alamein; ▪️ Battle of El Agheila; ▪️ Battle of Medenine; ▪️ Battle of the Mareth Line; ▪️ Battle of Wadi Akarit; ▪️Allied invasion of Sicily; ▪️Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history; ▪️ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory; ▪️ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies; ▪️ Operation Veritable; ▪️ Operation Plunder. Montgomery not once had a reverse. Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, leaving the maps on the walls. Despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe.  Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about.  The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship. Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem. People need to give respect where it is due.
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  12.  @archiedavis1079  The US contribution, although huge at the very end, is overrated. Britain was clearly key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad. Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in: ♦ French North Africa; ♦ Libya; ♦ Egypt; ♦ Cyprus; ♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked; ♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina; ♦ Iraq; ♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941. Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis. The Germans had been stopped: ♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940; ♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks. The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of: ♦ El Alemein; ♦ Stalingrad; The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the hand to hand battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. They took in 80,000 leaving with 20,000 retreating all the way from then on. Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, combined it was not far off in numbers to the US fleet.
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  16.  @samueladams3746  The USA did learn the hard way, unnecessarily so when all they had to do was do what the British told them. US top brass was full of buffoonery. King despised the British over an incident in WW1 when he disobeyed orders. He was carpeted by the British commander of a group of which his ship was a part. Even then he never liked taking orders. King was a buffoon, who should have been removed in 1942. In the first six months of WW2 600 vessels were sunk off the US eastern seaboard. After U-Boat losses in 1941 had dropped to manageable levels, with the USA entry in to the war they were now catastrophic, to the point the US fighting Germany was in question. This was because King would not lower US ships to escort civilian convoys, viewing they only fought military ships. The Americans would not even implement blackouts of coastal cities. The British were very concerned at the dramatic allied shipping losses. The British viewed the Americans as our Italians. The British insisted the Americans take 25 corvettes, with crews, the losses were so high. Eisenhower said the best way to win the war was to kill Admiral King. If such a British commander was so inept he would have been removed for ever. For some strange reason the US never removed their top men no matter how poor they were - Eisenhower should have been removed over the Bulge debacle. King and other Americans were of the view they would not support the British in WW2, if it liberated territory of the British Empire, putting the British back in charge. This was none of their concern as the focus was to defeat the Germans and Japanese. The British did not insist the USA return territory stolen from Native Americans and the Mexicans.
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  24. Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status. "The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian 1st Army HQ for the same purpose. Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the 1st Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to 3rd Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian 1st Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant." - Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944 Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation. "This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the 3rd Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise. Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress." - Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944 Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.” Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper Panzer divisions were rebuilt after the summer battles. The Panzer brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. Patton's Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT. ♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage? ♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat? ♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion. In The Lorraine, the US 3rd Army faced a rabble, with the German commander of Army Group G, Hermann Balck, taking command in September 1944 saying: "I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans." Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine. Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The men in the town were brave and tenacious, however their stand did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from a top German armoured unit with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full Panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armour outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne as the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving west to the River Meuse the target. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant on the Meuse, at the furthest German advance referred to as the "tip". Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back. On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed. Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual "attack" towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move through American held lines. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne, yet he still took five days to reach Bastogne. With 18,000 US troops in Bastogne. They were going to break out anyhow as the Germans had largely moved on. In Normandy in 1944, the Panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The 1st US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra, coming in at the end of Cobra, performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour. Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates. ♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing ♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight". ♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps. ♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect". ♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses. After the German attack in the Ardennes, all US tactical air force units in the Bulge were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack plane support yet he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Monty. About the only person he ever liked was himself. Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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  25. Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace after Dunkirk. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. The Royal Navy controlled the eastern Atlantic, the Atlantic entrance to the Mediterranean, and the eastern Med. The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. Germany could not win from this point onwards. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world. Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans not only to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources. The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Britain war was partially an economic war. Every German operation versus the UK had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war and they were very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another. The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources came from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top. Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular view as that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was valid, however, it was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely. Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them. Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil. After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat not entertaining peace, throttling the Germans every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The invasion of the USSR may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war it was just a matter of who won it and when Germany collapsed.
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  41. Victor..... ‘At the September 10 conference in Brussels Field-Marshall Montgomery was therefore authorized to defer the clearing out of the Antwerp approaches in an effort to seize the Bridgehead I wanted.' - Eisenhower. Crusade in Europe: page 336 "Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed." - James V. Schultz. A Framework for Military Decision Making Under Risks A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES AIR UNIVERSITY, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, There was actually parity of supplies between all armies in September 1944. Market Garden didn't even involve a ground army, only a corps and some supporting elements. Much of the supplies were dropped by transport planes. The US First Army put on a much larger and more well supplied ground offensive with their twin pronged Hurtgen Forest and Aachen advances which commenced soon after Market Garden, that fared worse than Market Garden for sure. Not one inch of the Market Garden salient was retaken, in fact it was fleshed out. Despite considerably more men and supplies, Hurtgen Forest was a defeat. Patton himself received four fresh newly equipped divisions in September 1944 for his Lorraine efforts and again he didn't do any better than Market Garden, continuously floundering against Metz for months. Monty opened Antwerp quicker than Patton took Metz.....and when Monty did that supplies poured through for the next three weeks. Well supplied Americans forces somehow fell asleep in the Ardennes and got their front lines booted in, forcing them into a retreat.
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  43. What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton: ♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton]. ♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army. ♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities. ♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes. ♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents. ♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’” ♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent. ♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war. ♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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