[OT] Sunday Night on Fox, don't miss Patton Special

[jon_j_rambo]

Link to TV special

Going to be on Sunday night!

'War Stories Investigates': The Remarkable Life and Mysterious Death of General Patton

Check the link for more info. The Legend will be watching this, for sure.

[SeaMonkey]

Well JJR, you won't be alone.

[JerseyJohn]

Thanks for the link, Brother Rambo. Looks interesting.

[jon_j_rambo]

I'm sure you've seen the movie "Brass Target"?

[JerseyJohn]

Actually, no. But I just found it on a search and it looks like something I'd enjoy. Thanks for telling me about it -- I'll be sure to rent it, or grab it from our local library if they've got a copy.

-- Other than the 1969 Patton, the only other I've seen was a follow up that showed the circumstances of his death. Eisenhower ordering that he be flown back to the USA with that piece of glass in his skull -- all the doctors knowing that it was a death sentence.

So, in effect, Patton and Rommel wound up being murdered by their own governments. Ironic.

[jon_j_rambo]

Yeah, this world is rigged.

[hellraiser]

Competence and popularity - 2 great assets that may not keep you alive for too long indeed ...

[jon_j_rambo]

Personally, I feel the a small group within the U.S. Government had Patton murdered! Patton was going to make a run for Russia & possibly for the White House!

[Jev.Dk]

Someone has joined the Kettler´s group of conspiracies

[JerseyJohn]

I don't think Patton had a chance at any political success.

Also, I don't think his ideas about going to war with Russia were any good. As I've already elaborated on them a dozen times here, I'll skip it on this round. Aside from which, it's possible that his orders might not even have been obeyed and he'd have wound up being court-martialed. Who the hell, other than him, wanted WWIII right after WWII? Certainly not the men who thought they were being sent home.

But, I do believe his death was engineered, not as a conspiracy, but more a decision by Eisenhower, and perhaps one or two close to him, that he'd had the accident and flying him home was a good way to have him die of natural causes.

-- Patton, as president, would have been an international disasster. Anyway, I doubt he had any intention of running.

[jon_j_rambo]

Wouldn't the engineering of Patton's death by Eisenhower, be a conspiracy?

Patton was right, we were fighting the wrong enemy.

[Retributar]

Kennedy & Lincoln might also fit in that definition of 'Conspiracy', ...against them!.

Those that oppose the exploitation & abuse of the 'masses', risk life & limb!.

Patton doesn't fit within that categorization, so for him, the reason would be something else!. All i know is that he was making life Politically Difficult & Embarrasing for Eisenhower.

[ September 03, 2006, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Retributar ]

[JerseyJohn]

We were fighting the guys who put millions of people in concentration camps and killed them for no reason other than personal prejudice.

We were allied with the people who those people who attacked, and whose civilians they slaughtered by the millions.

So who were we supposed to be fighting?

Yes, I agree, it was a conspiracy, probably a very small one involving the top generals, probably concerned that he was about to cause WWIII on some quack half-baked ideas that he'd consulted himself on and hadn't let anyone else in on the vote.

Patton's views on the Russians were all hot air. Sure, we didn't like Stalin and we weren't really friends of the Soviet Union, but the Cold War hadn't begun yet. Nobody wanted an East-West War. We were still fighting Japan! The whole line of reasoning was ridiculous.

[Curry]

Jersey makes some very good points. (as usual)

Patton was very much loved by many, but that doesnt mean they would love him enough to put him in power and vote for him.

Jersey said in one line - "Who the hell, other than him, wanted WWIII right after WWII? Certainly not the men who thought they were being sent home."

I know that personally to be true. My dad fought in Patton's army as a grunt front line trooper in the 5th US division. (One of the divisions that Patton moved north to relieve the US troops in the battle of the bludge). My dad had great respect for Patton but not much love. His favorite line of Patton was "we called him ol blood and guts, his guts and our blood." I really think my dad's view of Patton summed up how the front line soldier felt about Patton, much respect but not much love because they knew his tactics cost them their blood.

[ September 03, 2006, 04:15 PM: Message edited by: Curry ]

[jon_j_rambo]

Patton also said, I don't want them to love me, I want them to fight for me. I want them to fear me! Patton's numbers, strategy, etc...is Legendary, to say the least.

Patton was correct, he recognized the Russians as the enemey. The Nazis were finished. The Japs were finished. Patton figured quickly the next war was with Russia, and he was right.

[jon_j_rambo]

@Sir Jersey --- Of course fighting the Germans was right. Patton loved the war against them. We would have loved a war with Russia too. Gerry was finished, he was lining up the pieces for our next enemy.

Ever since the Fall in the Garden, there has been a war...between good & evil, whether you like it or not.

[Curry]

Originally posted by jon_j_rambo:

Patton also said, I don't want them to love me, I want them to fight for me. I want them to fear me! Patton's numbers, strategy, etc...is Legendary, to say the least.

Patton was correct, he recognized the Russians as the enemey. The Nazis were finished. The Japs were finished. Patton figured quickly the next war was with Russia, and he was right.

I dont think in April of 45 that everyone saw that the war with Japan was over. Hardly. First no one knew of the Atom bomb. Without the Atom Bomb many saw a great loss of life in invading Japan. To say we could see that we would beat Japan, yes correct, but to say that Japan was finished I dont think is correct.

On Patton saying I dont want them to love me, yes and they didnt. They loved Bradley, the GI general. If I am off my mark Jersey can help me out.

[jon_j_rambo]

I'd rather hate Patton & be alive. Then to love Bradley & be frozen dead in Bastogne.

The war against Japan was over. Even without the nukes, we had them blockaded, thus starved out. It was over.

[jon_j_rambo]

This show is awesome!!! Patton rules!!!

[jon_j_rambo]

Forget Bradley, Monty, & Ike.

[JerseyJohn]

Curry,

Many thanks for that first comment, and I do agree with you all the way through.

General Rambo,

A lot of people distrusted the Soviets in 1945, but there are a lot of things you're shooting past, exactly as Patton shot past them.

-- How does a democracy suddenly start a war against it's ally of three years? Worse than that, how would we have justified it after we'd built a highway from Oregon to Alaska to supply them, in addition to another from the Persian Gulf through Iran, and in addition to all the losses we lost in the Murmansk Convoys? Aside from which, we'd been promoting the Russians as our second best friends since June of 1941. It was not going to work, period.

And, for all his hot air, Patton knew that too.

I'm sure a lot of generals, and statesmen, knew that sooner or later we'd have to go at it with them, but Spring 1945 was not the time, and Europe was not the place. It's that simple; we were not going to do it.

If Patton had been ten years younger he might have been more discreet with his political opinions, knowing that he'd be proven correct before long and would work for when that happened. But, being in his late fifties, he knew he didn't have ten years to wait, so he agitated and, apparently in the end even he realized he'd proven to be his own worst enemy. Except, of course, for the Soviets.

-- I agree that, militarily, he was a much better general than Eisenhower. Comparisons with other generals, such as Bradley and Montgomery are less clear cut, though, because they handled things totally differently. In the documentary, when they said Bradley didn't have a plan on the first day the Germans broke through at Bastogne, that was because he was thinking in terms of an entire army group. Patton was only planning in terms of his own army, so of course he would realize that he could turn most of it north and reach Bastogne. Bradley wouldn't -- how could he?

That's one of the things I don't like about documentaries, they confuse issues by only showing part of the situation.

-- And here again, it goes back to the old point about Patton facing the German Army after it had worn itself out. He was only able to turn from the Metz battle because the forces in front of him had no offensive ability. He couldn't have handled things the same way if the forces against him were adequately supplied and motorized and adequately supported by an air force.

-- -- Which is not to take anything away from him, he did a great job. But he just wasn't facing the same army that tore through Europe four years earlier.

On the whole, I liked the show, though it didn't really answer any questions. The earlier movie, the sequel to Patton, starring George C. Scott as patton after the accident, gave the impression that he had been flown somewhere and that caused fatal hemorhaging. But that doesn't seem to have been the case. The events shown in this thing are more plausable.

I'm leaning toward the idea that it really was an accident. It's hard to believe that one of three people in the same car could be singled out for death with a surgical truck collision. If they'd wanted him dead, there would have been much cleaner, more certain, and better ways. If Wild Bill's assassins had been doing it, I don't think they'd have chosen that manner, and I don't think they'd have failed.

But, afterwards, lying in a hospital, paralyzed, it's anyone's guess whether he just died, or was killed. And, really, though a lot of Americans would have liked to have seen him silenced, I think the most likely executioners would have been Soviet agents. They had an excellent spy network.

[jon_j_rambo]

Of course the TV program is going to help the "I don't believe people". You really think FOX is going to let Oliver North come out and say,"Ike killed Patton"?

Folks, Patton was destroyed by the US Government, specifically, Ike.

[Liam]

Patton wasn't killed, let us rephraze it, "Live by the sword, die by the sword!" Translated:

the man was a Warrior the only shame is he didn't die from a piece of shrapnel leading a armored Cavalry charge, I would think it more honorable if a Soviet agent or American Government Agent executed him. That means he fulfilled his Role in Life. I believe that Patton was likely descended from a Roman General that Razed Carthage (Or reincarnated) what was his name?

P.S. the Soviets and Americans never did fight it out, so Patton was wrong. Politics, or rather Technology and Money outweighed Ideologies. The Cold War was lost for the Soviets. We Won

[hellraiser]

'The Cold War was lost for the Soviets. We Won '

Wrong! With all that cash sunk in supporting the cold war, USA lost the chance to be even greater than it is today and USSR ruined its economy.

'We all lost' - seems more appropriate. Think that with all that cash and brilliant minds put to better use, humanity maybe would have reached Star Trek era or something or maybe a lot of other hot problems of today's world would have been solved to some extent...

Ref. Patton - > I maintain my ideea - great general indeed, and a pioneer of the armoured warfare in the USA. Indeed he faced a depleted german army, unsupplied and not covered properly by its air force, but still he was a good field commander. Regarding the western allies facing rather weak german defenders - guys, the western allies faced 1/5 of the german wehrmacht's strength - the rest was caught in a desperate battle against the russians, the eastern front was the 'real' war. No way in hell the allies could have landed in Europe or anywhere else if the germans defeated or signed peace with the USSR. 80% of the damn war effort was beared by the soviets making them the most important member of the Allies. Whether we like it or not, it was the russians who defeated Germany in the first place. If you want to find true war heroes or brilliant generals, search them in the East - both sides had plenty of them.

[jon_j_rambo]

Hellraiser, remember some other things...we had to fight two wars which were A LONG WAY FROM HOME. Either little thing had to be shipped across the planet. Can you imagine the jobs done by management just to coordinate all that? Troops, weapons, jeeps, tanks, transports, ammo, food, clothing, gas, repair parts, shovels, tents, etc...endless list of crap to bring along.

The Yalta Conference probably already had the future map drawn! Which is why Patton was held back!

USA could have just bombed Germany & Japan to death, starved them out. (see Dresden) USA is "too nice" in war. If we took the gloves off, it would have been messy.