George Patton (Biographics) - Historian Reaction

welcome back everyone to another reaction video this is my first one since returning home from my latest trip to europe fantastic time made some new friends including some of the guys from band of brothers who were all fantastic if you didn't see it i did a stream on my last night in amsterdam where i talked a lot about the trip uh you'll be seeing the videos from that trip in the near future probably the first one you're gonna see is actually going to be a video just of the guys from band of brothers sharing some stories i just thought that would be fun really easy one that i can get up to you guys real soon even before i finish my world war one series so speaking of the world war one series the next video will be coming out uh it's a video from the german cemetery at bellow wood so be watching for that in the next couple of days today we're gonna go back to simon whistler who you guys all seem to be a fan of this is on his biographics channel and it's one of my favorite people to do a biography of it's his story of general patton so we're gonna go ahead and dive in as always the link's in the description to take you to the original content if you want to check it out here we go the leading generals of world war ii carried a huge weight on their shoulders their decisions could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of men and their actions helped shape the fate of nations history has judged some of them as fools others as butchers and a handful as military geniuses few at least on the allied side have generated as much controversy in life and death as george s patton the flamboyant american commander never lost a major battle but his explosive temper almost cost him his career he survived two world wars often placing himself in considerable danger only to die in unlikely circumstances within months of germany's defeat the unconventional general was a devout christian yet he believed he was just the latest incarnation of a warrior spirit who'd once fought that's actually a really interesting point that he makes both absolutely true and on the surface as a christian myself as somebody who's studied theology in school and you know has you know been in ministry all my life it's a it's a really strange contradiction but it's true patton considered himself to be a devout christian but at the same time believe strongly in reincarnation which doesn't fit with biblical christianity but he he just he was sure he had been at some of these places that he had been a part of the roman army uh they had been with the legions you know i mean he goes to north africa and he was sure he had been there before i mean this was something he he lived all his life believing um he on one hand was very very on the outside very kind of cocky and brash and seemed full of himself but when you read his diaries and his writings was really super insecure at the same time he's a he's a walking contradiction probably like a lot of us are alongside the likes of julius caesar napoleon bonaparte and others he was the epitome of the rough tough warrior who reveled in his macho image and seemingly lived only for war but he could be a surprisingly sensitive individual who cried at funerals and even penned poetry doing this for most of his life in this biographics video we're going to dive right into the details of this man's life [Music] george s patton while he was born in california on the 11th of november 1885. 20 years earlier the patton family had lost much of their wealth when they found themselves on the losing side of america's civil war now he was born i mean despite the fact the family had you know started out kind of rough he wasn't born poor uh i believe it's his grandfather mount wilson outside of los angeles in california is named after his maternal grandfather uh and of course on his uh father's side he's descended from civil war and revolutionary war generals um well at least colonels in the civil war so there was some wealth there uh of course he marries great wealth his wife was much richer than he was however by the time of george's birth the patterns were prosperous and they were influential once again the young george well he knew from an early age that he wanted to be a soldier his main obstacles to doing this were his weaknesses in maths and english this wasn't a not only that but we're pretty sure that patton was also dyslexic there's a lot of evidence of that of course it wasn't something that was necessarily diagnosed back then certainly wasn't for him but it seems pretty clear that he was probably dyslexic which he was very intelligent but didn't learn the same way that other people did and that presented unique challenges for him a result of any lack of ability but rather his father's mistrust of formal education which meant that george hadn't attended school until he reached 12 years of age he caught up quickly but only narrowly passed the entrance exam for west point america's most prestigious military academy it didn't happen quite that simply either he actually initially went to the virginia military institute which is where his family his family was originally from virginia um and his you know his grandfather was killed in the civil war in 1864 i think at obiquant creek in the shenandoah valley his great uncle uh who was his grandfather's brother had died leading a regiment in pickett's charge uh waller taswell patton and uh you know of course as i mentioned already he had an ancestor who was a general in the revolutionary war died at the battle of princeton it was a good friend of george washington um so he goes to vmi and then it's through doing super well at vmi his first year that he then is able to get into west point and yeah he did he did struggle with the entrance but his vmi credentials helped him to get in while patton would regularly clash with his superiors during world war ii his conduct at west point was exemplary he was particularly successful at sports such as polo and football playing with such relentless aggression that he broke several bones yeah i think he had a football game against and we're talking american football football game against a team that jim thorpe was playing for uh and he was like so adamant that he wanted well you know what now that i'm thinking about it was that eisenhower i need to look that up yeah i didn't want to be wrong on that it was actually eisenhower that was playing against jim thorpe but yeah patton would play so hard when he played football that like it almost seemed like he was trying to injure other people and injure himself like the guy didn't do anything light-hearted and he ends up being an olympic athlete which i'm sure they'll mention he would later bring this aggression to his method of waging war [Music] cool story patton's considerable sporting ability it did not go unnoticed and he was selected to represent the united states of america in the modern pentathlon at the 1912 stockholm olympic games he would compete at riding shooting fencing running and swimming all things that patton excelled at interestingly in the event it was patton's shooting that may have let him down he fired 20 bullets but the judges ruled that three of them had missed the target patton remained adamant that his aim had actually been too good and his shots had passed through the hole he'd already made in the bull's-eye it is possible that he was correct here but the judges ultimately ruled against him at the end and part of the reason why is that patton insisted on using a different caliber gun he he was more comfortable with a larger gun and so the odds that it because it created bigger holes the odds that was possible were certainly there i think he ended up finishing fifth but he was the highest ranking non-scandinavian in that event uh so he did really well if it hadn't been if even one of those bullets had been counted one of those misses he would have been an olympic medalist at the end of the first day patton was placed in a slightly disappointing 21st from 41 competitors strong performances in each of the remaining events saw him climb all the way to fifth place it was the first and last time he competed in the olympic games but he didn't have to wait long to test the accuracy of his shooting in a combat situation [Music] by 1916 most of the world's great powers were locked together in seemingly interminable conduct only the united states had thus far succeeded in avoiding being drawn into the slaughter and patton's one of those people that's not the best most flattering picture to pause him on is it patton's one of those people like alexander hamilton was who really wanted to get into the conflict who felt like they needed a war in order to excel patton always wrote that he hoped that he'd be able to arise to at least the level of lieutenant general and so world war one was an opportunity for that but he's sitting there watching as his own country won't get involved and he's like when are we going to get involved we've got to get involved and so when an opportunity comes along with mexico with the mexican punitive expedition and he's seemingly left on the sidelines he is not going to be left out of that fight however america did suffer a surprise attack from the direction of mexico on march the 9th 1916 400 heavily armed bandits led by notorious francisco pancho villa stormed across the border for two hours they ransacked and looted the border town of columbus before finally being chased away by the cavalry if philia believed he could hide out safely in mexico well he was sorely mistaken president woodrow wilson ordered that the u.s army crossed the border and put an end to the threat john and the u.s army actually raised troops for this like my wife's great grandfather we just found out a couple years ago was in the pennsylvania national garden they called up pennsylvania pennsylvania national guard troops to send them down to the border uh as part of what was called the mexican punitive expedition pershing was given command of the expeditionary force and he chose patton to serve as his aid patton would go on to become famous for his skill at commanding fast-moving motorized forces now he didn't actually initially choose patton as his aide patton basically hounded him into choosing him as an aide uh there's this story and let me let me see if i can find the story because i want to i want to share this with you and make sure i get it right i couldn't find it but there was something about um him going to pershing and lobbying for position on his staff because the unit that patton was with which was a cavalry unit was going to be left at the border and wasn't going to be taken in uh and so patent i don't remember the details it wasn't a biography i read but it was something to the effect of uh like they asked him like he got a call and was asked how long it would take him to be ready and he said i'm ready now and that was what kind of convinced pershing that this guy was always ready to go and and that he could be trusted he put him on his staff and then once he was on pershing staff that meant he could go but then he immediately started lobbying him for a combat position and it's in a combat role that uh that patton ends up leading the first motorized attack in american history because they used vehicles they used cars in one of their attacks and he would use the same method then to get involved in world war one when he gets on pershing's staff and he goes over with pershing to world war one and then eventually uses his position on purging staff to end up being commander of one of the first american tank brigades so it's perhaps fitting that while in mexico he took part in the first motorized action in the history of warfare traveling in three dodge touring cars patton and his men launched a raid on villa's henchmen when the smoke cleared at the end of a brief fire fight three of his bodyguards lay dead patton ordered their bodies to be strapped to the cars for the drive back to headquarters pershing well he was apparently impressed reportedly saying this pattern boy he's a real fighter [Music] so it's important to note that while this was all going on pershing's family dies in a house fire i think in california and in the aftermath of that pershing actually gets to know patton's sister and is briefly engaged to pat and sister and it's only because of world war one and the separation that ensues that they never get married on the 6th of april 1917 the united states of america declared war on germany and entered world war one pershing was given command of the american expeditionary force and once again he took george patton at his side pershing offered him an infantry battalion but by that time patton had become fascinated by tanks and pan he was a cavalry guy initially uh he was expert swordsman had actually designed a new cavalry sword for the us cavalry had um trained like a lot of the officers and how to fight with swords so he was kind of considered the military's foremost expert on cavalry swords and on on fencing and things like that but he's a guy that's always thinking of the next thing and he can already see by the time the us enters the war 1917 tanks are on the scene mostly used by the allies germany had very very few tanks of their own and so he sees what's on the horizon so he wants a tank command and it's that same tank command expertise that's going to get him a prominent position in world war ii they were powerful yet unreliable weapons that were still in their infancy since they'd been unleashed by the british at the somme in september of 1916. patton he became the first officer assigned to the american expeditionary force tank corps and was one of the first americans to learn how to operate a tank and personally taught the first cruise to be assigned to the tank corps the american expeditionary force tankor finally went into action in september of 1918 with patton riding into battle clinging to the outside of one of their machines an interesting thing too patton also was a trained pilot he could fly uh and he actually went on scouting missions in a plane and he would fly over the enemy positions to to scout things out and to figure out like his attacks with his tank brigade and things of that nature and he actually rides into battle on the back of one of the tanks and it's actually there that he gets severely wounded in the leg later that same month though he would be badly injured in an act of near suicidal bravery world war one tanks they were seriously underpowered they were unreliable and they were totally vulnerable without infantry support so when his tanks became isolated during the musargon offensive patton called for volunteers to help him storm the german lines only five men stepped forward they were quickly cut down by a hail of german bullets patton himself he was badly injured by a piece of shrapnel which hit him in the thigh he continued to direct the battle from a shell hole though and he later refused medical treatment until he had completed and submitted his report all very patent-like things to do and patton initially before he ever went into combat there was a point in his life where he was concerned about what would happen when he came under fire like you know part of him wanted to be very brave and he was a brave guy but part of him wonder in the back of his mind will i be able to handle this what's gonna happen when i actually face fire and so he was out on a shooting range and he was he was the guy that was out there that had like down below that was like replacing the targets that they were shooting at and at one point he popped his head up while they were firing just because he wanted to see what it was like and see how he would handle being under fire nuts when you think about it but that's patton and he found that he was pretty cool under fire and and that gave him a lot of confidence then when he went on to the battlefield for the first time patton's injuries while they weren't life-threatening they were serious so by the time he'd recovered sufficiently to return to combat well the armistice had been signed and the guns had fallen silent while patton's time at the front lines had been brief he had done more than enough to demonstrate that he possessed the kind of raw courage he expected and demanded of those who served under him [Music] with the grey war it an end pattern returned to the united states of america where he found a good deal to keep him busy he learned to fly drove the latest automobiles sailed his yacht mixed with high society kept a stable of horses and won hundreds of trophies and ribbons in numerous sporting events such an extravagant lifestyle would ordinarily be well out of reach for a major salary however in 1910 patton had married beatrice aya the extremely wealthy heiress of a boston industrialist the batons well they had enough money to do pretty much whatever they wanted george never wavered from his belief that he was destined to be a great soldier he maintained a special interest in armored warfare and some visionaries were proclaiming that tanks would become the decisive weapon in any future conflict heinz gaderian in germany and charles de gaulle in france argued that tanks would return mobility to the battlefield punching through enemy positions to create havoc in the rear pattern he was thinking along similar lines and he got the chance to test out some of his ideas in 1941 when the u.s army held vast war games across the states of louisiana and carolina yeah so let's back up for a minute because inner war period is a real stale time in patton's military career here's a guy who had risen all the way to the rank of colonel but the problem is that when you have a vastly expanded army this happens in every major war like this the american civil war world war one and world war ii you have these vastly expanded armies you go from you know american civil war you've got i don't know five ten thousand people in the regular army and then you go to an army of over a million in the union army and so everybody goes to vastly inflated ranks people who were lieutenants and captains are suddenly generals same thing goes with world war one patton is a colonel in the volunteer army but in the post war regular army he reverts i think back to the rank of captain and then goes back up to major but he's stuck there for decades afterwards and so as you get toward 1940 he's still not even back up to the rank that he had in 1918 and he's thinking am i ever gonna get the chance you remember he always wanted to be a general he thought three stars was like the minimum acceptable for him in his lifetime uh but then 1941 comes along uh 1939 is when the war starts and so he sees this opportunity again but again america is on the sidelines and he's chomping at the bit for a chance and when he demonstrates the capabilities of armored warfare he gets his chance by getting placed in command of an armored division and then eventually a whole core in north africa more than 400 000 soldiers and 1 000 aircraft took part in mock battles held over 30 000 square miles with germany once again at war with britain and russia and no guarantees that america would be able to remain neutral it was a much needed opportunity to test out tactics and equipment it also served as a test of the men who would lead america's armies into battle the battles they weren't real but they were a close enough approximation for 61 men to lose their lives however despite these losses the u.s army gained valuable experience and patton staked his claim to arguably be the u.s army's finest exponent of armored warfare and about this time we're seeing armored warfare demonstrated with germans the germans blitzkrieg and how they use armor especially on the western front and so the united states needs needs a tank guy and that's what puts patton at the forefront funny thing is too uh it's important to mention here that by the time world war one rolls around patton's 60 years old he's on the edge of being retired out of the army so you can understand why the guy thought he was never going to get his chance a lot of other guys his age weren't given a chance it's it's his expertise his special expertise with armor that gives him that chance when other people might not have if he had been an infantry guy if he had taken up pershing's offer to command an infantry battalion uh he probably doesn't even play a factor in world war ii [Music] on the 7th of december 1941 japan attacked the united states of america at pearl harbor four days later germany declared war on america and with that world war ii became a truly global war with plans for a 1942 allied invasion of western europe having been shelved the allied high command instead chose to strike at hitler's vichy french allies in north africa three separate task forces were launched with general george patton taking command of 35 000 men of the western task force sailing for casablanca from virginia if patton had any fears or doubts well he certainly wasn't showing them as he wrote in his diary when i realize what i am i am amazed but on reflection who is as good as i am i know of no one apparently he was fairly modest too the amphibious landings of the 8th of november were largely unopposed and despite some fierce resistance as patton's men pushed inland the vichy french signed an armistice later that day yeah it's interesting that operation torch which is what this is uh patton's first opponent are the french the people he fought alongside in world war one the people who really are our allies but the vichy french were collaborating with the german government so he's facing french soldiers on the western part of africa far more formidable than the french however was germany's irwin rommel and his africa corps on the 14th of february 1943 they attacked in force striking u.s troops in tunisia's atlas mountains by the 20th of february the immediate crisis it was over but the americans had been pushed back 50 miles huge amounts of equipment had been abandoned and 4 000 americans including patton's own son-in-law had been captured by the germans with morale on the floor eisenhower sacked the commander he held responsible and placed all american troops in tunisia under patton's command patton immediately subjected his men to an intensive drill routine and a strict disciplinary code if you've ever seen the movie patton there's huge chunks of that movie that are very very accurate the biggest inaccuracy is the portrayal of patton himself mainly the voice i mean the the attitude is there i think george c scott captured who patton was perfectly just didn't have patton's voice patton actually had a very kind of high-pitched voice it didn't sound anything like george c scott but um just scenes like patton showing up in africa taking command of the core uh and just kind of instilling discipline right away absolutely right he makes omar bradley his second in command bradley had been sent there by eisenhower to kind of be his liaison to patton but patton makes bradley's second in command and bradley will later be his superior in western europe his methods were far from universally popular but they got results and within a month patton was on the offensive defeating the formidable german 10th panzer division at the battle of el guitar patton rapidly built himself a reputation in north africa but it was here that he began his rivalry with bernard montgomery the commander of the british eighth army while patton was bold aggressive and often acted on gut instinct montgomery was by nature a far more cautious man who put great stock in meticulous planning patton believed eisenhower deferred to montgomery far too often a feeling that was only strengthened when the british commander was given the go-ahead to plan the invasion of sicily yeah and understand eisenhower's predicament here eisenhower is the reason eisenhower has the job that he ends up having uh with supreme allied command uh in europe is his ability to be diplomatic he's a very skilled diplomat he is probably one of the few guys who can handle a multinational coalition but it's in his tendency to want to be diplomatic that he probably defers to the british more than he should at the expense of people like patton it's understandable why he felt he had to do that but it wasn't necessarily always the best military decision to do that that's why he defers to montgomery in the invasion of sicily he defers to montgomery with market garden when patents trying to attack the siegfried line on and on [Music] the invasion of sicily was to be a joint operation conducted by the british eighth army led by montgomery and the u.s seventh army commanded by george patton much to patton's discussed though montgomery's plan placed the main emphasis on the british contingent and cast the americans in the supporting role so montgomery's supposed to attack right up the eastern part of the island of sicily to get to messina and patton's role is to protect montgomery's flank on the left and basically just guard his flank while montgomery gets all the glory and patents having none of that this is what you get fumed patton when your commander in chief eisenhower ceases to be an american and becomes an ally the invasion force landed on the beaches of sicily on the 10th of july 1943. by nightfall the allies had put 80 000 men and 300 tanks ashore the next day patton himself came to inspect the beachhead wading in through the surf even as artillery shells exploded around the beach while it soon became clear that the germans would not be able to hold sicily they fought a fierce rearguard action as they began to evacuate their army to the italian mainland as montgomery's army became bogged down patton decided to take a loose interpretation of his orders he was expected to support the british but i mean surely the best way to do this would be to hit the german's heart a loose interpretation of the orders i like that but he's right what better way to protect your flank than to just destroy the germans on your flank right and he ends up beating montgomery into messina drove the seventh army on his goal now was to beat montgomery to the city of messina in the north of the island he was driven not just by his personal ambition but by a desire to prove that the american soldier was the best in the world and there's a reason for that because after the events that had taken place in north africa before patton got there when the americans first really have an opportunity to demonstrate what they can do against the germans they get their butts kicked and so there was a understandable perception by the british and others that the germans were just gonna mop the floor with the americans the americans weren't up to par and so patton's out to change that patents out to convince the the british that the americans can fight and fight well if they're properly led the sicily campaign was fought at a blistering pace in blazing heat casualties well they were inevitable on august 3 1943 patton visited the wounded at a field hospital when he discovered that one of the patients was physically unhurt but suffering from shell shock he exploded with rage patton slapped the unfortunate man dragged him from the tent and kicked him in the backside and then threatened to shoot him for cowardice unfortunately for patton this extraordinary display had been conducted under the noses of a number of journalists patton didn't seem to realize he'd done anything wrong but striking a subordinate was a court-martial offence eisenhower ordered patton to apologize i need to back up for a second um because the journalists i my understanding is they kept this relatively quiet for a while i think it was the doctor the military doctor who was there who actually reported it up the chain of command and so eisenhower had dealt with it with patton privately i think sometime later it came out i want to look this up because i want to get the timeline of events correct here yeah here so there's a couple of things first of all there were two incidents the first ones on the third was a little more minor and some of the other men who were present didn't really think much of it that was the one where he he grabs the guy and kicks him in in his butt uh and you kind of see uh that's the one that gets portrayed in the movie patent there was a more severe incident uh the second time and they actually know the names of both of these soldiers uh private paul bennett was the second one that's the one that patton actually pulls his gun and threatens to shoot the guy and had to be kind of uh pulled down off of him and that was the one that gets reported to the higher ups it was the second core surgeon colonel richard arnest that submitted a report of the incident to the chief of staff of second core who submitted it to lieutenant general omar bradley who was commander of second core and then bradley out of loyalty to patton did nothing more than lock the report in his safe because remember bradley is still under patent at this point um but our nest already sent it also sent the senate up another chain uh through the medical chain and the surgeon general of allied force headquarters submitted it to eisenhower on the 16th and um so eisenhower sent somebody to investigate what happened uh and then that's when eisenhower decides to deal with it and um patton's seventh army was broken up at that point anyway but you know by this point everything was over uh in sicily um and then eisenhower uh it says here he wrote a letter on the 17th of august to patton this is i clearly understand that firm and drastic measures are at times necessary in order to secure the desired objectives but this does not exclude excuse brutality abuse of the sick or exhibition of uncontrollable temper in front of subordinates which is all very reasonable for eisenhower to say i feel that the personal services you have rendered the united states and the allied cause during the past weeks are of incalculable value but nevertheless if there is a very considerable element of truth in the allegations accompanying this letter i must so seriously question your good judgment and your self-discipline discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future your future usefulness so big deal big big deal eisenhower is questioning this and he's saying listen is this stuff true because if it is i'm questioning your fitness for command moving forward but he keeps it pretty quiet and it says it says here word of the slapping incident spread informally among soldiers even before eventually circulating to war correspondence so this part about correspondence being present for it i don't know one of the nurses who witnessed the august 10th incident apparently told her boyfriend who was a captain in the seventh army public affairs detachment and it's through him that journalists hear about the incident so maybe there's a source that says that journalists were present but i'm thinking that it eventually got to them through other channels and it had already been dealt with by eisenhower by the time it got leaked in the press jais begged the witnesses not to report on the incident and hoped that that would be enough to protect his most dangerous weapon in the war against the nazis while patton won his race to messina and threw the nazis out of sicily his vicious temper came back to bite him as word of his assault so see here november 23rd this is what september october three months after the incident leaked out in the press there was little more eisenhower could do patton he was removed from his command and with that it seemed as if his career it might be over wait was that an a-10 warthog that they showed in that video it might be over [Music] yeah i don't think that's a world war ii plane [Music] the invasion of italy was a natural result of the conquest of sicily patton who was ill-suited to inactivity he could only watch on in frustration of even greater importance than the campaign in italy was the long-awaited invasion of western europe this would take place in june of 1944. it was one of the most difficult operations of the war but patton would have no direct role to play in the invasion instead though he was used as a decoy given command of an entirely fictitious army intended to fool the germans into believing that a second invasion force was preparing to strike the ruse it totally worked not entirely true the way he just portrayed that either it wasn't a second invasion force the idea was that they were convincing the germans that patton was the commander of the invasion force and that it was going to come at calais don't want to get into all the details of this we've talked about it before but it was a fictitious army with inflatable tanks and constant radio traffic being issued i mean they played this ruse up big time and patna patton had his own headquarters orders were constantly being given the germans were convinced that patton was in command of an army that was going to attack at calais and all along eisenhower always intended to use patent but he was going to use him once they had established their foothold in normandy then they would unleash patent and that's exactly what they ended up doing the germans never imagined i should say there was a second invasion of france coming uh down i think in southeastern france off the mediterranean but patton was never intended to have any part in that and that the allies would leave their best defensive general back in britain while such a vital offensive was being fought in france [Music] patton's greatest fear was that the war would be over before he could get back into it he didn't have worried though while the success of the initial allied invasion exceeded expectations the british and the americans made slow progress as they attempted to push inland it wasn't until the end of july that the americans finally punched a small hole through the german lines that's important and people don't remember that that despite the initial success of operation overlord the beginning part the actual d-day landings which were just the first part of operation overlord operation neptune i think that part was called um despite the initial success it was really slow going for the better part of six weeks they're pushing forward they're pushing forward but they're going really slow and then the breakout happens and that's when you throw patton in there and that's when patton uh and others just run roughshod over central parts of france omar bradley commander of the u.s ground forces knew that this was the moment to get patton back into the fray bradley regarded patton as difficult to control unpredictable and vulgar but he recognized his talents patton was given command of the newly formed third army a highly mobile force equipped with plenty of armor he was ordered to go back and break through the german lines patton quickly got to work squeezed his armor divisions through the narrowest of gaps in the german lines reformed them on the other side and within a matter of days his third army was tearing through open country into brittany the speed of patton's advances often worried his superiors since he was a risk taker who rarely worried about the danger of an attack to his flanks hitler himself actually thought he'd sniffed out an opportunity to exploit the allied breakout he would launch a counter-attack and cut off patton's armoured spearheads now this idea well it did have its merits in theory but the german army lacked the strength to execute the operation in practice it was instead the germans who found themselves in danger of being completely encircled at filets patton believed he was in a position to slam the jaws of the trap shut bradley a far more cautious commander than patton ordered the third army to halt at argentina imagine being patton who is an offensive guy you know attack first attack third attack second attack third ask questions later being commanded by a former subordinate in omar bradley who's cautious and who's putting the the news or the putting the uh the leash on him and holding him back how frustrating that must have been for patton but a guy like patton who's as aggressive as he is needs someone like that to reign him in a little bit uh but also recognize when to unleash him he was furious but he complied with the order even though he suspected bradley had been influenced by montgomery [Music] hitler's failed counter-attack led to the near collapse of the german army in france with that patton was free to launch his blitzkrieg assault his philosophy was relentless attack and unrelenting pressure that kept the enemy constantly off balance and minimized the third army's casualties patton argued that if he was properly backed he could cross the river rhine in a matter of weeks but patton found himself once again in competition with montgomery as each man attempted to secure enough supplies to keep their army moving the problem with any offensive force moving rapidly over enemy occupied territory is always logistics and supplies it was the problem with the union army and in the american civil war that's why you know as much as people constantly talk about oh it was so much more challenging for robert e lee because he had little to work with and less men and less supplies which is all true but it that understates the challenges of being an army that has to march hundreds of miles into enemy territory and keep supply lines open and feed an army an army moves on its stomach right that's one of the reasons why julius caesar was such a brilliant leader is that he was able to move his men through deep into enemy territory and keep the logistics part going keep them fed that's the problem here is that the further you move away from the ocean from the ports and right now they don't have any deep water ports they're still using these mulberry ports right they don't have like um antwerp which is the major port that they need so supplies are still limited they're they're fueling by a pipeline that they've laid from england across the english channel when they got across so there's a limited amount of gasoline limited amount of supplies and the further patent goes the more the supplies get limited and so they can't do both market garden which is montgomery's plan to go up in the netherlands and get across the rhine around the siegfried line siegfried line is the german's defensive position at the german border at the rhine river they can't do that and give patton the supplies he needs to attack the siegfried line directly so they've got to put him on hold as patton complained my men can eat their belts but my tanks have got to have gas although there were such disagreements amongst the leading allied generals they were united in the belief that hitler's armies were all but beaten germany's fuhrer however had one last surprise in store on the 16th of december 1944 the germans launched a vast counter-attack aimed at a thinly-held section of the american lines at ardennes this was the beginning of the battle that would become famous as the battle of the bulge the sudden and furious assault badly rattled most allied commanders but patton recognized at once that hitler had made a serious strategic error let the sons of go all the way to paris if they like he joked then we can really cut them off and chew them up yeah absolutely they'll further it's called the battle of the bulge because there was a bulge in the line where they broke through everywhere but bast stone they were trying to get to antwerp and um so you've got that situation where patents sees okay the further they go the more cut off they are from supplies now we can cut them off and surround and destroy them which had been a common tactic that had been working a lot in world war ii especially on the eastern front and so patton saw that as a win really eisenhower summoned his senior commanders to an emergency conference where he asked how long it would take patton to divert his third army to the ardennes patton told him he could have three divisions there within 48 hours this seemingly fantastical claim was met with a mixture of laughter and disbelieving stares it's one of my favorite scenes in the movie when they're asking around ike wants to know who can help and and the the british are like oh there's nothing we can do and patton says i can have three divisions ready in 48 hours and they'll like they're like you're nuts you're in the middle of an attack now you're going to pull out move 100 miles and go into another attack and patton says i don't know how much of these exact lines are true but he says he'll do it because they're good soldiers and because i order them too and uh and then there's that scene where they they actually do it and patton is like oh man i'm proud of these men but patton he was entirely serious he'd anticipated eisenhower's request and his staff were already making preparations to disengage the part of the third army in order to wheel it around they would then race to the rescue along narrow icy roads the battle of the bulge gave the allied high command a shock but as patton had predicted it accomplished nothing and cost hitler his last reserves now the river rhine was the last significant obstacle that the western allies had to tackle the main crossing was to be launched by montgomery and he spent two months planning every last detail of the operation which called for an airborne assault a huge artillery bombardment and even the assistance of specialized u.s navy vessels montgomery's crossing was launched on the 23rd of march by which time patton had already stolen his thunder by quietly sneaking a division across under the cover of darkness and establishing a bridgehead on the other side he phoned bradley to let him know what he'd done but don't tell anyone he said because the crowds haven't realized yet yeah and patton unzips his fly and pees in the river right in front of everybody because he wants them to see that he does this just to show what he thinks of the germans uh yeah and by the way that airborne operation if you've ever seen band of brothers you see that scene where captain nixon comes back from making a combat jump and he talks about how he's gonna have to write letters home to all the guys because the plane he was on got hit that was operation varsity which was the airborne drop the u.s 17th airborne and others the airborne drop behind german lines associated with the crossing of the rhine [Music] with the defeat of germany patton tried and failed to secure a posting to the far east in order to play a part in the war against japan instead he was appointed as governor of bavaria a political post to which he was not well suited and he actually very briefly served as the supreme allied commander in europe uh i think eisenhower was out uh was was out of the country briefly and he was next in line based on who was actually still in country i don't remember when that happened but it happened real briefly he fell out with the russians refused to remove nazi personnel from key administrative positions on the basis that there was nobody else qualified to do the job and got tricked by a reporter into agreeing that nazis joined the party in more or less the same way as americans became democrats or republicans patton's political abilities didn't really compare to his military abilities and he once again succeeded in outraging the press his subsequent apology was deemed insufficient and he was removed from his post for the second time but at this point although he didn't know it he had only a few months left to live now he um he actually was was given command of another army an army that basically just had administrative people in it they were like going through photographs and and doing collections of stuff but he was already thinking about writing a book and he kind of more or less accepted that this was going to be it and he had made plans to go home and i think he was just a couple of days away from going home when the accident happened on december 9 1945 patton was being driven towards a hunting expedition when the vehicle he was traveling in was struck by a truck traveling in the opposite direction nobody else was hurt but patton was paralyzed and that's the crazy part about that accident it was a slow speed accident and nobody else in the car was hurt but patton went forward at just the right angle and hit it just the right spot that it broke his neck and paralyzed him from the neck down the injured general he was rushed to hospital where he died 11 days later he was buried in europe alongside the fallen soldiers of his beloved third army he died of a pulmonary embolism um it wasn't necessarily directly related to the broken neck but it was because of him laying immobilized and complications of all of that they were actually putting him in a full like cast of the upper part of his body and they were going to fly him home because they were worried about the bad press of patton dying in germany they wanted him to at least die in the states patton had always wanted to die in battle but instead he lost his life as the result of a low speed collision in peacetime now not everybody accepts the official version of patton's demise and it has been suggested the pattern may have been assassinated by russians possibly even in collusion with the us government this would have been as a result of his outspoken opposition to the soviet union when he died he was 60 years old so i really hope you enjoyed that video if you did yeah good stuff and there's a lot more to patton's life than just that obviously but i thought that would be a fun one to tackle uh for one of their biographies just because he's somebody that i've read a lot about and find to be a fascinating person listen there were parts of his character that were not to be admired he was definitely incredibly anti-semitic [Music] but fascinating and certainly a great general on the battlefield if not perfect i certainly wasn't perfect in any way but let me know your thoughts use the comment section below check out the original if you would there in the description thank you to all of our patrons we'll see you again soon

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 40,337

Keywords: general patton, george s. patton, reaction video, famous people, simon whistler, historian reacts, general patton big boi, general patton documentary, general patton slaps soldier

Id: Gv7FicYrPOU

Length: 47min 58sec (2878 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022