Don't know if anyone can confirm this but here goes: During the late 1960s and thru' the '70s I lived in Phila., PA. I met a guy then who had served under Patton. Among other things that happened, he told me that as they were advancing thru' Germany, they had a serious problem with snipers that lay in wait for them.
So Patton had flyers printed up and dropped over each little village or town a couple days before they entered them. The flyers warned everyone to stay indoors because of the snipers. They were to keep even their dogs indoors because Patton gave the order to shoot anything that moved. He was taking absolutely no chances that any more of his men would be killed.
This guy told me that the guys in his platoon were so on edge that they took no chances and did indeed shoot at anything that moved. Dogs WERE shot. An old guy came riding around a corner on a bicycle and he was shot, he said.
I don't believe that many people were shot like that but it sure depicts the atmosphere of the time. One thing about Patton was, from what I had been told, that altho' he was a real taskmaster, he stood by his men 100%. He considered himself one of them.
Also, I worked with a German who had been an Infantryman. He told me of how Hitler had inspected them on parade when they joined up at the start of the war. His eyes lit up as he told of Hitler walking past him. When I asked him how he felt about all the thousands killed in the concentration camps he insisted that it was the men around Hitler who were responsible; that Hitler was a great leader and didn't really know of much that was going on. hmmm.
The irony there was that although he worshipped Hitler and the German cause, here he was, in America, earning a good living. The paradoxes of life ?