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IronDuke_slith -> RE: Why was Patton so great? (7/8/2004 4:30:18 AM)
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IronDuke:
I'm not going to refute every point you have made above because, with all due respect, I can't believe you actually believe a lot of what you have written.
I know the feeling, I got it reading your comments about Patton [;)]. With all due respect, this is easy to say, but I equally struggled with some of the broad sweeping comments you made regarding Patton and the role of 3rd Army. I found it hard to believe some of the figures you used were used seriously, however, we're heading towards personal comments with this line of argument, so I'd rather move on as I am not comfortable with the personal stuff, and this is a first class forum that deserves better.
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If you dislike Patton, and are determined to cut him off at the knees, then nothing I write, or anything you read, will deter you in your beliefs.
If you like Patton, and are determined to hoist him onto a pedestal, then nothing I write, or anything you read, will deter you in your belief.
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However, I will touch on a few points:
1) You mention that Patton's drive in Sicily was strategically pointless. Yet, you also claim such a drive isolated 53,000 Italians (whom the Allies did not have to fight). The fact that Patton gained so much ground and lost only 57 men when he captured Palermo, is not only testimony to his "correct" thinking, but also shows how wrong the Allied Command was, to have Patton watch Monty's flank (who incurred 12,000 casualties slugging it out on mountainous roads). Patton believed in out-flanking his opponent and pocketing the enemy forces.
Had Patton been allowed to implement his original strategy, he would in all likelihood, have bagged almost all the Axis forces on Sicily. As it stood, the Axis escaped Sicily with over 100,000 men and 10,000 vehicles. The Allies had to face these same Axis troops again when they fought in Italy.
With all due respect, I'm not entirely convinced you know the detail of the Sicilian campaign, your analysis gives Patton's victory far too much strategic significance, and credits the operation to his strategic sense. This cannot be sustained.
Statement by statement.
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You mention that Patton's drive in Sicily was strategically pointless.
Absolutely, look at the map, from his position on Monty's left flank the strategic move was north and north east hookng around Mount Etna. Palermo is north west, and large American units were also sent due west along the southern coast of Sicily towards Marsala. This is in the opposite direction to the strategically correct direction. However the operation was arrived at, whatever the reason it was launched, it was absolutely strategically pointless.
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Yet, you also claim such a drive isolated 53,000 Italians (whom the Allies did not have to fight).
The Allies would not have had to fight them anyway. Bradley had suggested announcing that no Italians would be taken prisoner, and that anyone who deserted was free to go home. Italians were surrendering in droves. Large units were dissolving and large bands of Italian soldiers were wandering the Island looking for Allied troops to surrender to. D'Este, Patton's biographer who'm you are regularly quoting , makes it clear the Italians in the western half of the Island posed no military threat, and in many cases were being ordered to withdraw anyway. (He also wrote a book on the Battle for Sicily).
It is clear that Patton seems to have understood (from a diary entry dated 19 July) that his most strategically effective mission would have been to support the British with more offensive action aimed against the northern coast or the right flank of the Etna line. What pro-Patton people have to explain is why, in this knowledge, he still prefers to force Alexander to let him drive on Palermo, something which was nothing more than a prestige target. Bradley was dismayed, because he well understood the campaign in Sicily. He well understood the 53000 (or 57000, I don't know which of us is right) Italians in the western half of the Island represented no military threat, but the Germans in the north eastern part of the Island certainly did.
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The fact that Patton gained so much ground and lost only 57 men when he captured Palermo
You are making a virtue out of necessity. That ground was strategically pointless. He went up against 57000 Italians and lost 57 men. That says more about the nature of the fighting than I ever could. What is the point of all that ground? Strategically, what was he going to do with it when he captured it? All that happened was that 57000 future POWs became POWs a few days earlier than might otherwise have been the case. It looked good on the front cover of the magazines but did not shorten the war in Sicily for one minute. Indeed, it lengthened it.
You might argue that 57 men were lost who didn't need to be because (in some cases) they forced men ready to surrender to fight.
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...is not only testimony to his "correct" thinking, but also shows how wrong the Allied Command was, to have Patton watch Monty's flank (who incurred 12,000 casualties slugging it out on mountainous roads). Patton believed in out-flanking his opponent and pocketing the enemy forces.
Where is your source for this, because D'Este's biography (chapter 33 deals with Sicily) makes no claim as far as I can see for Patton having some grand strategic notion regarding the campaign. It (like most observers, me included) felt that Alexander's campaign in sicily was very poor, but that it was Bradley, not Patton, who recognised what needed to be done. Alexander had no trust in American ground forces after what he had witnessed in Africa (rightly or wrongly, that's a separate argument) Patton is itching to move, so dreams up a scheme whereby he secures Palermo by reinforcing a recce in force. Palermo was the second most prestigious target on the Island after Messina, but at this point in the campaign, strategically pointless. Off Patton goes and in one of his feats of agressive mobile advance in the face of negligible enemy resistance (something I've conceded he had no equal at in the Allied command), secures everything. Maxwell Taylor, head of 82nd Airborne described the action in western Siciliy as "a pleasure march". Truscott, who commanded 3rd US Division that performed exceptionally well during the advance said "It is my belief that the glamour of the big city (Palermo) was the chief thing that attracted General Patton."
You claim this operation was an example of Patton's "correct thinking" and an operation that cut off 53000 Italians who no longer would be able to fight and yet Patton's senior Corp Commander thought the operation insane and strategically criminal, Patton's senior Divisional Commander thought the operation driven by a desire for glory, not any strategic consideration, and another of his divisional commanders (a very good one - Taylor) descibed the operation as a pleasure march.
you later say:
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it is quite obvious that you have either not read much about Patton. Or, if you have, you have completely turned a blind eye to what you have read.
The above is what I have read. A strategic analysis (an amateur one) backed however by Senior American Commanders. My apologies if I am overdoing a point here, but the quote above upset me more than everything else put together. If you disagree with Taylor, Truscott and Bradley, please describe why.
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2) Your statement about Patton not caring about the Gap in the Falaise Pocket is pure fantasy. He was outraged over Bradley ordering him to stop. As a result 75,0000 Germans escaped to fight the Allies again.
This one runs the above statement a close second. I had a look through the thread and found these comments of mine concerning the breakout.
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Bradley stopped him because he felt that the pocket could not have been closed by the forces at Patton's disposal. He was nervous that the Americans would be spread so thin, that ad hoc German battlegroups would break through and hurt him in the process. I think he was wrong, and agree Patton should have been allowed to close the gap, but I think the battle was won, and Allied Commanders were relaxing a little having done the hard work.
I'm not sure how you interpreted this in the way you did. I did say later:
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His first instinct was to drive for the Rhine and trap even more German forces (as was Monty's instinct), the so called long hook, rather than the short hook that eventually developed around Falaise.
I made an error here in using the word Rhine when I meant Seine. However, that doesn't affect your criticism.
However, let me quote from the biography you keep recommending we all read about General Patton and his life and times. A genius for War by Carlos D'Este. Let me refer you to page 642. The bits in square brackets are my comments.
"Neither Patton nor Montgomery had any great enthusiasm for Bradley's so called short hook [the attack to close the Falaise gap]. From the outset both clearly preferred the long envelopment, a drive to the Seine by the third Army, the Canadian First Army and the British second Army to establish blocking forces to prevent the mass escape of Army Group B from Normandy."
In other words, Patton was not interested in Falaise as he felt he could get more Germans if he headed for the Seine. Bradley wanted Falaise, and then lost his nerve as Patton reached the vicinity of Argentan ready to strike for Falaise and close the gap. Patton wanted to close the gap having arrived at Argentan, as he had been denied his favoured option, and Falaise was the only one available. He would rather have been driving for the Seine, however.
If you need any more convincing, let me quote the good General himself who told a war correspondent in September 1944 that the Falaise pocket was improvisation on Bradley's part: "I thought we were going east [toward the Seine] he told me to move north [towards Falaise]".
That is essentially what frustrates me when you say:
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From what you have written, it is quite obvious that you have either not read much about Patton. Or, if you have, you have completely turned a blind eye to what you have read. That is your perogative. Clearly, you have already formulated an opinion about Patton, and have made up your mind, despite the facts at our desposal.
You claim to have read D'Este but do not realise when he agrees with me. You instead decide that I do not know the facts and if I do, have chosen to ignore them. I keep quoting facts and quoting authorities to back them up (I'm keeping score, I have two American Divisional Generals, a US Army Chief of Staff, D'Este and Weighley so far.)
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3) You mention that Patton did not fight any battles worth mentioning. Patton believed in outflanking the enemy. Only a poor commander wastes his men in frontal assaults. Patton performed flanking maneuvers to pocket the enemy, much as the Germans did in the early years of WW2.
Can you show me a General who didn't believe in outflanking the enemy???? Even Monty often attempted it. Why is it cause for celebration in Patton? At the Bulge he launched a frontal attack across a long front dissipating his strength. In Sicily, who'm did he outflank? In Normandy, he first went into Brittany rather than towards the German Field Army in the west (although Normandy is difficult to assess as Bradley had a hand in most of his manouevres). Metz has already been cited as a costly frontal assault. Can you give us specific operations in which you believe Patton showed operational ability (together with reasons why) as the basis for further discussion.
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You say that Patton met only poor quality German troops, and therefore, his victories were of dubious quality. If that is so, then of what value were the early German victories in Belgium and France and in Barbarossa? German panzer armies out-flanked and surprised poorly led Allied forces in France, and "defeated" Russian armies who simply gave themselves up by the bushel-full in wide, sweeping pockets.
The Germans were indeed superior in the west. My contention, though, is that they did better against such mediocrity than Patton ever managed. They also did not have the superiority in numbers and material that the Allies had in the latter part of the war to aid them.
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4) Your poor assessment of Patton is contradicted by almost all major historians.
Please name them. I've so far cited evidence from two, Weighly and even D'Este. A third, John Ellis, was even more damning in "Brute Force". Max Hastings in "Overlord" believed Patton could drive tanks like no other, but when 3rd Army met determined resistance, it performed no better than any other Allied units. I could go through everything I have on Normandy looking for more if you wish. I have D'Este's study, and the recent one from Neillands.
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Even Bradley, who despised Patton, had nothing but praise for the magnificent job and accomplishments he did in Europe, especially at the Bulge.
If this is the case, who said:
of the Palermo operation:
"...there was little to be gained in the west. Certainly, there was no glory in the capture of hills, docile peasants and spiritless soldiers."
Of the Breakout:
"George walked out of Normandy."
D'este describes Bradley's thoughts on the Palermo operation as believing the entire venture was insane. He charts very well the growing distrust with Bradley seeing Patton putting glory ahead of everything else whilst Bradley's men fought and died. Bradley should not be cited in General Patton's defence. Indeed, he once described a plan of Montgomery's he considered unrealistic as "Pattonesqe".
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5) When Patton swung his forces across France, he trapped over 130,000 Germans in the Falaise Pocket. Even though many Germans escaped, those trapped in the Pocket led to the largest capitulation of German forces since Stalingrad.
We've covered this in detail already, but I think to suggest this is somewaht superficial. It takes no account of the Normandy campaign, Patton's actions after breaking out, the insanity of Mortain, nor the controversey over the short or long hook. It's like saying Monty is a genius because the Allied Armies reached Paris when he predicted they would. Did beneath the surface and it's a whole different story.
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I could go on and on. . .
But I feel to do so would be an exercise in futility.
Not if you cite specific examples, accompanied by quotes from recognised authorities. Quoting web pages doesn't cut it.
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From what you have written, it is quite obvious that you have either not read much about Patton. Or, if you have, you have completely turned a blind eye to what you have read. That is your perogative. Clearly, you have already formulated an opinion about Patton, and have made up your mind, despite the facts at our desposal.
I will stand by what I have written and allow others to decide which of us holds an opinion in despite of the facts.
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For those who don't know much about the period or about Patton, I would urge you read about him and his exploits in WW2. It makes for fascinating reading, and people can then make up their own minds.
Agreed, but read well.
Regards,
IronDuke
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