“A good commander COMMANDS.” “A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.” These are three of my favorite quotes from General George S. Patton, Jr.
In the hierarchy of WWII, there were generals who planned, generals who defended, generals who never should have been generals, and generals who negotiated, not unlike today’s time. Then there was George Smith Patton, Jr. He was an American force of nature, a man who believed wars were won by absolute, relentless, and violent aggression. To his enemies, he was a terrifying phantom. To his own superiors, he was a dangerous maverick. To his men, he was “old blood and guts”, the one general who promised to lead them to Berlin or die trying. This is the story of Patton’s most insane tactics and the savage genius that made him America’s most feared commander. Frankly, we could use a dozen of him in today’s world, but, that is perhaps better saved for another article.
He was a paradox. He was a deeply religious man who swore like a sailor. He was a historian and a poet who preached a doctrine of pure unadulterated violence. He was a cavalryman from a bygone era who became the world’s foremost practitioner of modern mechanized warfare. He is the reason the U.S. has armored vehicles, despite resistance of his superiors. This deep dive will prove that Patton’s controversial methods were in fact a coherent and devastatingly effective system of warfare.
We will explore how he transformed a defeated American army in Africa to razors winning victory after victory. How he outmaneuvered his rivals in Sicily and how his legendary race across France and his relief of Bastogne became the stuff of military legend.
Our story begins in the aftermath of a disaster. In February 1943 at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, the untested American Second Corps was obliterated by Erwin Rommel’s veteran Africa Korps. It was a humiliating defeat. The American soldiers were poorly led by General Lloyd Fredendall, the troops were undisciplined, and demoralized. General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower needed a fixer. He needed Patton. Patton arrived at the shattered II Corps like a thunderbolt. His first actions were not tactical. They were psychological. He immediately instituted a brutal, uncompromising regimen of discipline. As documented in his own diaries, he fined officers for not shaving, not wearing neckties, etc. He enforced a strict uniform code in a combat zone and he ran his troops through punishing drills. Many thought he was insane. However, Patton knew that an army that looks like an army acts like an army. He was forging the soul of a fighting force. And it worked. Just weeks later at the battle of El Guettar in March of 1943, Patton’s re-trained and re-energized II Corps met Rommel’s 10th Panzer Division for the first time defeated them in a major head-on engagement. Patton had taken a broken army, through sheer force of will and what many saw as insane levels of discipline and re-forged them into a weapon of mass destruction.
Patton’s next command was the U.S. 7th Army during the invasion of Sicily. His role was secondary. He was supposed to protect the flank of the main British force under his rival, General Bernard Law “Monty” Montgomery. To Patton, this was an insult. He was not a flank guard. He was a conqueror and the spearhead. In a move of audacious and controversial insubordination, Patton gave his superiors misleading information and sent a “reconnaissance in force” towards the island’s capital of Palermo. This “reconnaissance force” was, in reality, a significant part of his army. It was a gamble. While Monty and General Omar “Brad” Bradley were bogged down in heavy fighting, Patton’s forces, using a series of daring amphibious end runs by General Lucian Truscott along the coast, raced 100 miles in just 4 days, capturing Palermo and taking over 50,000 Italian and German prisoners. Among the captured enemy was the “elite” Hermann Göring Division armored division, commanded by General-Major Paul Conrath. The operation was a stunning tactical success, but it came at a high cost to Patton’s career. It was during this campaign that the infamous “slapping incidents” occurred where Patton struck two soldiers suffering from shell shock. The incidents, when leaked to the press, caused a massive scandal. Patton was relieved of command by Ike’s adjutant, General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith. Beetle was a politically correct bureaucrat. Personalities such as his and Patton’s are like oil and water. Bureaucrats have no business being in positions of power during wartime, as they tend to make decisions such as this, which in essence prolonged the war in Europe. Paper pushers and warriors are a bad combination when one is trying to defeat the enemy, and this was no exception to that rule.
Patton thought that his career was over. The German Army High Command was inadvertently given a break from America’s best European Theatre Commander. The blow-back Ike received from Washington, D.C., instead of ignoring the blather, folded. Moreover, the German High Command laughed at Ike for succumbing to the political pressure from people who weren’t even actually fighting the war. Patton’s career was in fact not over, as you can’t keep a weapon like Patton on the shelf for long. After being used as a brilliant decoy for the D-Day landings, Patton was finally given what he craved, command of the newly activated 3rd Army. On 1 August 1944, Old Blood and Guts was unleashed once again. What followed was one of the most astonishing feats of armored warfare in history. While other Allied armies advanced cautiously, Patton’s doctrine was one of perpetual violent motion. His orders to his commanders were simple and savage. Bypass strong points, keep moving, and never, ever, stop to rest. This was a polar opposite to Monty.
He didn’t just defeat the German 7th Army, Patton executed a brilliant maneuver to completely encircle it in what became known as The Falaise Pocket-a brutal killing ground that annihilated the German defenders in Normandy. (Ironically, this tactic was first developed by Generalfeldmarschall Graf Alfred von Schlieffen, who died in 1913.) With the German lines shattered, the 3rd Army went on a rampage. In just thirty days, they advanced over 400 miles, a pace that hadn’t been seen since the German Blitzkrieg of 1940.
They liberated 80,000 square miles of territory and inflicted over 100,000 casualties on the enemy. This insane speed was only possible because of Patton’s obsession with logistics, fueled by the legendary Red Ball Express supply line. However, by September, that supply line was stretched to its breaking point, and the 3rd Army’s lightning advance finally ground to a halt. Patton’s juggernaut had finally run into two enemies its speed couldn’t defeat-an empty fuel tank and the fortress city of Metz. With the Allied high command diverting critical supplies to Monty, Patton was forced into his least favorite kind of battle, a slow, brutal, frontal assault against one of the most heavily fortified cities in Europe. Metz was a nightmare. It had been a fortress for centuries, and the Germans had turned its complex of massive, mutually supporting forts into a death trap. A direct assault was considered suicidal. Many in the Allied command believed that Patton, the master of the Blitz, would fail at this kind of slow, methodical siege warfare. They were wrong.
Instead of a bloody frontal attack, Patton displayed a different kind of tactical genius. He ordered his divisions to conduct a battle of the forts, an insane and brilliant tactic of bypassing some, encircling others, and cutting their supply lines. His troops became masters of siege warfare, coordinating with combat engineers to blow up fortifications and using massive 155 mm Long Tom artillery in a direct fire roll like giant sniper rifles. It was a slow, bloody, yet intelligent campaign. After nearly three months of brutal fighting, the city of Metz fell. Patton had proven he was not just a master of the “breakout and pursuit” tactic. He was a versatile commander who could master the brutal methodical siege as well.
Patton’s most insane and perhaps his greatest moment came in the darkest hour of the war for America. In December 1944, Hitler launched his last desperate offensive through the Ardennes forest-The Battle of the Bulge. The German attack had surrounded a critical crossroads town, Bastogne, held by the heroic but beleaguered 101st Airborne Division commanded by General Anthony “Nuts” McAuliffe. At a high level meeting with Ike, Monty, Beetle, Brad, and the rest, while other generals were panicked and pessimistic, Patton made a statement that seemed completely unhinged.
He claimed he could disengage his 3rd Army, which was preparing for an offensive in a completely different direction, turn it 90°, and launch a counterattack to relieve Bastogne in just 48 hours. The staff officers in the room, as Ike later recalled in his memoirs, thought it was impossible. But it wasn’t a bluff. In a move that showcased his incredible foresight, Patton had already told his staff to prepare three different contingency plans for just such an attack. Within hours of the meeting, over 130,000 men and thousands of vehicles of the 3rd Army were in motion, disengaging from one battle and racing north through ice and snow in one of the most complex and brilliant logistical feats ever performed. On December 26th, the lead elements of Patton’s fourth armored division broke through and relieved the defenders of Bastogne.
It was an act of operational genius that no other general on the field could have accomplished. So, what was the secret to Patton’s insane tactics? It was a trinity of beliefs. First, discipline. He believed that an army that was perfect in its appearance would be perfect in its violence. Second, speed. He knew that relentless forward motion would shatter the enemy’s ability to react, creating chaos and panic. Third, logistics. He was a master of supply, understanding that his entire philosophy of aggression was utterly dependent on a river of fuel and ammunition. His methods were controversial. He was profane. He was arrogant. At times he was brutal. However, he forged his armies into instruments of pure aggressive will. He didn’t just command, he inspired, he terrified. He drove his men to achieve victories that seemed impossible. General George Smith Patton, Jr. remains one of the most studied and controversial figures in military history to this day.
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