Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Hillsdale College"
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A 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 First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First 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 Third 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 poorly devised 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 re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 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 his arrival 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 Third 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 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"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 neither on the advance nor 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 was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind 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 armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. 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, the 25th! 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 towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First 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 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.
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. An unremarkable general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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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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Oh no! Not this mythical race to Messia. Hanson even mentions the film as well. 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.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
- Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/books/the-finish-line-was-messina.html
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery. His troops did taking the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
- Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateurism from Patton, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
- Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
"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 First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First 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,16 ‘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 Third 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 poorly devised 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 re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 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 his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
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 Third 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 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"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 neither on the advance nor 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 was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind 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 armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. 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, the 25th! 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 towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First 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 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, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to 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 orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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