Patton: Narcissist or Genius (WW2HRT_35-06)

foreign [Music] we've got a really great show for you tonight and as you see we've got two authors we brought in kelly morningstar i'll give a little bit more of an update on him later and then our very own jim sudmeyer all about the topic of patton endless discussion about patents so tonight when we leave you will already have affirmed what patent is is he a is he a madman is he really nuts is he a battlefield genius or is he all of those things wrapped in a piercing salted nut roll my spiritual affair with patent started in 1970. like many young people in my hometown my dad grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me to the state theater uh downtown wyndham minnesota the state theater packed a lot of my classmates and their dads were there as soon as i saw the big american flag go up i was spellbound i didn't ask my dad for candy or pop or popcorn i was enthralled with the portrayal by george c scott of patton so much so that when i when i got home after the two and a half three hour movie i started uh reenacting some of the combat scenes and trying some of the lines out on my mom now my mom was not too impressed with this and had a closed-door discussion with my dad but this was my first impression of patton and i was smitten now fast forward to uh to the 80s i'm in college university of minnesota and i'm reading about patent studying patent i'm in rotc i want to be the best of the best be all you can be and so i selected to be an armor officer and so studying patent one of the things you find out about patton is he's kind of a he's kind of an arrogant sob yet he is a thinking guy and one of the key things that we we discovered about him is that he thought about things and he planned things and he realized that there's an exigency in doing things immediately and quickly when you see the ground or you have the finger spits confused when you can touch things you can move things and uh he saw that that was was there was a lot of energy and for a guy that's uh going to sit on top of a 70-ton rolled homogeneous steel tank uh dealing death and destruction to nasty comedies coming across the north german plane there's nothing better than having that so my affair with the patent concept started then continued through my service in the military and to this day we'll see if someone can poke holes in it or not so let's go to our first author here kelly morningstar we brought kelly in from the great state of maryland kelly is a guy after my own heart in the sense of he served in the army a full career armor officer we tread a lot of the same ground together we never had met until he flew in a west point graduate and then following his military career he just was curious and started picking up degrees and to start decided to write about patton and of course as an armored guy and a guy that that served uh in the 37th armored regiment which uh he has no slack as a third battalion guy that was [ __ ] abram's uh regiment so thunder he was thunderbolt sex of course during world war ii fourth armored division did a lot of death and destruction on patton's behalf and of course a great legacy there so as i go forward in this introduction and and bring kelly up kelly your brother from another mother move out tanker let's give him a round of applause [Music] i've been invited here to speak to you today about the complex nature of general george s patton jr now i've come to have some understanding with a man from my years of research for this book patton's way of radical theory of war but let me begin by saying that if i was looking for a role model for being a husband a father a neighbor or even a mother's son i probably would look elsewhere i also have no doubt that patton exhibited the narcissistic characteristics that jim will tell you about in his uh excellent research all right as any dictionary will tell you to categorize someone as nuts as to say that they're crazy or insane which the law defines as having a mental illness of such severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality cannot conduct his affairs due to psychosis or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior despite all his flaws the patent i have come to know was not insane while i believe that few of any of us can hope that posterity will judge all of our life's actions as sensible i believe that patton governed his military career with deliberate calculation through careful study and practical experiment he rejected the accepted practices of his profession as unsuited to the evolving realities of modern war and instead he deliberately embraced radical principles of war and like most people who adapt radical principles and succeed he simultaneously confused and irritated observers my book details four radical tenets that constituted his style of warfare one a reliance on shock targeting the enemy's will rather than blunt force to destroy enemy forces two exploitation of combined arms mechanized maneuver rather than entry focused operations three the use of flexible mission orders command and control instead of rigid detailed top-down planning control and four the employment of the synthesized and layered intelligence systems to steer unfolding operations each of these tenants resulted from decades of purposeful study theorization and field testing and each broke with established us army doctrine consider the example of shock instead of following the established doctrine and shaping operations so as to create decisive battles patents sought to unbalance the enemy through shock that is to sustain rapid changes in position that threaten the enemy in other words instead of using maneuver to mass firepower to wear down the enemy's numbers patton used firepower to enable maneuver so as to continuously surprise the enemy with threatening advances in this way he deliberately embraced the chaos of war something that his peers would avoid at all cost while they sought to bring order to chaos through detailed plans and strict command and control patton sought to exploit opportunities that naturally arose in chaotic conditions during his breakout from normandy for example his aide charles codman explained general patton felt that this was the time to make an all-out effort by using highly mobile units widely separated moving in every direction he was convinced that we could create such confusion in german rear that they having practically no communications would eventually find themselves in a state of chaos so at the time patent was deliberately investing in chaos with his agile intelligence systems practice mission orders procedures and well-trained combined arms columns patton was confident that he could exploit the conditions of chaos faster than his enemy could react and he did when the germans attacked the city of mortaine patton was ready to encircle them before being ordered to halt when the germans escaped the filet gap patton was ready to cut them off before before being ordered not to in the end he went ahead and raced onto german border his main mission until his higher command cut off his gas now each maneuver would have shocked and frustrated the enemy and there will to fight but they looked too radical to patton's peers and they couldn't understand see the army schools taught them that the the only to pursue strategies of attrition as the highly influential general staff college instructor colonel w k naylor explained in 1922 quote warfare means fighting and that war is never won by maneuvering history shows that the surest way to take the fighting spirit out of the country is to defeat his main army in other words don't worry about trying to outmaneuver the enemy just find him and pile on accordingly after cutting off pat's gasoline of france in the fall of 1944 eisenhower announced the plan of battle is as follows the enemy has stretched the breaking point straining every nerve to stave off defeat we propose to keep on hitting him at every sensitive point until he cracks he's bound to crack if we keep on hammering him without let up this was like broad front strategy bradley was of the same mind as fall turned to winter and the snow and the casualties piled up he waged what he called quote sheer butchery around the city of akin and hurricane force but that was okay for bradley believed like eisenhower the daily enemy losses were double our own from his experience in world war one and his studies afterwards patton became convinced that this was too costly in lives he therefore proposed a new calculus of war sustaining shock through maneuver to frustrate the enemy's decision-making erode their morale and collapse their will this he said would cost fewer lives and his campaigns warm out on this slide you'll see that i know it's detailed but in comparison with hodges first army patton's infantry suffered four percent fewer wounded six percent fewer deaths but his tankers suffered a remarkably 33 percent fewer wounded and 43 percent fewer deaths now if you think long enough about this you come to conclusions right out of joseph heller's book catch-22 the same people were the ones who followed accepted practices that spent their men's lives freely as long as they appeared to purchase more enemy dead in the process the one who broke with that practice to save lives became something of a heretic whose sanity has since been questioned beyond the reductions in casualties patton's divergent way of war also delivered victories and without him the allies struggled in africa eisenhower failed to beat the germans to tunisia and then he suffered disastrous defeat at kazreen pass the allies slogged their way in the tunis montgomery got stuck in sicily mark clark repeatedly faltered in italy bradley and montgomery faced stalemate normandy montgomery failed in operation market garden bradley got stuck in the meat grinders at aachen and hurricane forest before being caught catastrophically flat-footed by the german attack out of the ardennes eisenhower had repeatedly sidelined patent during most of these periods only to turn to him during such crises after each of the two greatest reversals under his command kasryn passed in the battle of the bulge patton became ike's one man fire brigade it is no wonder he described patton as one of his guarn turns of victory even if he didn't understand his methods still patton's methods also confused most observers as bradley noted during the pre-war louisiana maneuvers patton broke all the old-fashioned rules smashing his mechanized forces ever onward dazzling speed and surprise yet he was criticized by the umpire generals for his unorthodoxy to umpires patton's use of intelligence and maneuver to exploit weak spots were judged to be unwillingness to grapple with the enemy his use of tanks indicated an inability to properly employ infantry his reliance on mission orders looked like a lack of command and control his speed of movement was termed rashness etc et cetera general leslie mcnair even pronounced quote this is no way to fight a war such misunderstanding continued during the war in his memoirs bradley complained quote pat did not give a damn about planning details and his attitude was reflected by his staff this opinion was later echoed by historians but when patton pushed two hundred thousand men and forty thousand vehicles through the narrow naked avranche in june 1944 bradley marveled every manual on road movement was grounded to the dust and he and his staff did what the whole world knew couldn't be done it was flat impossible yet out of the other end of the straw came divisions intact and ready to fight if anybody else could have done it nobody ever got that man's name patton of course surpassed himself in this maneuver when he maneuvered to defeat the germans in the battle of the bulge now you might ask if bradley his peers and historians would pause to think how could anyone accomplish such maneuvers without paying adequate attention to detail the answer is they couldn't likewise patton's peers and historians have often missed misattributed his success to clairvoyance or luck his staff knew better patton twice the division intelligence officer constructed an unparalleled intelligence system that included innovative air and ground reconnaissance unique incorporation of ultra signals intelligence and patton's personal interrogation of free french gorillas and all captured german generals with this system patton knew what he was doing his g2 oscar koch further explained many times the question has been asked whether patent possessed an intuition a sixth sense or whatever which contributed to the exploits of his commands and to his ability to catch the enemy unaware if one can call anticipation of the enemy reactions based on a lifetime of professional training and on thinking and application intuition he had it the most famous example of patent supposed clairvoyance was his anticipation of the german attack and the battle of the bulge but as you can see here it was anticipation born of months of deliberate investigation and analysis now such misperceptions have stood as lasting gifts to patton's critics liddell heart stanley p hershon for example cited the testimony of bradley and fourth armored division commander john wood that patton had nothing to do with the breakout from normandy because the key action the movement of tanks forward in eighth corps happened before patton's command was officially stood up they attributed the decision lead to armor the eighth corps commander troy middleton but middleton himself later wrote that the decision was made quote at patton's direction wood likely was unaware of this but bradley knew better similar skewed perceptions of caller popular misunderstandings of patton's operations in his three-day attack in campaigns in morocco his limited attacks in tunisia his end run in sicily and of course his running out of gasoline in france now however none of this is to say that patton did not suffer setbacks or make mistakes all commanders do his slapping of the hospitalized soldiers was of course despicable especially with what we know today about post-traumatic stress disorders but the two operational errors his critics routinely focus on are the two orders he publicly admitted to errors he publicly admitted the overly prolonged probing attacks against the fortifications of mets in the fall of 1944 and the hammerberg raid in 1945. now militarily mets is the more understandable of the two as henry yeah calculated when patton reached the outskirts of that citadel his gasoline already cut off the yid said the germans could have interposed no coherent military formations on patton's way on one september the entire german army had nine infantry battalions two artillery battalions ten anti-tank guns and ten tanks blocking third army patton fruitlessly begged eisenhower and bradley for support so that he could blitz the forts while they sat empty ike said no not until the clay area was stabilized as you see here on the map patton was forced to recall the second armored regiment's patrols from east of the mozilla river only 48 hours later german army group g had miraculously assembled 106 700 infantry and 78 000 panzer troops supported by two hundred thousand reserves in and around the mets fortifications patton did not know this he continued probing attacks to find a weak spot that no longer existed by the end of september he finally admitted the futility of further probes and paused to organize larger deliberate attacks that isolated the fortresses and finally captured the city on 13 december to sum the battle of mets is evidence that patton could not fight a set piece battle i.e he was a rash not a rational commander but consider that while fighting for the battle on this battle on the secondary front with no support pant's third army captured the citadel at mets at the cost of 9 000 casualties while reflecting reported 43 200 casualties on the germans and that during that same period montgomery with priority shafe support suffered 17 000 casualties in the failed market garden operation and then another eighteen thousand calories clearing the shelter and that hodge's first army slug through hurricane force in akin at the cost of over thirty eight thousand casualties and this was with priority efforts but let's concede for the moment that such comparative analysis is problematic because conditions varied well in his definitive study of patented mets john nelson ricardo concluded when viewed in isolation patton's final operations that met showed a good deal of skill he was more than capable of conducting a tedious set-piece attack against a fortified position in other words he was a rational commander now the second error the radar hamilburg was far less understandable in short patton sent 300 men in a task force bomb to liberate 900 pows in a camp 50 miles behind enemy lines they liberated the camp and were cut off and destroyed before making it back 32 men were killed 256 were captured including nearly all the free pows the mission itself was risky enough but patton compounded it by issuing an impossibly contradictory order directing baum to conduct a stealthy raid and a noisy diversion at the same time why would he do such a stupid thing was he madly seeking glory no i don't think so reliable intelligence had reported that hamill burke camp held his son-in-law colonel john walters patton decided to risk men's lives our love for his daughter beatrice such compassion drove patton to craft his way of war he was uphold by the carnage he witnessed during the great war and he experienced his own frequent injuries here you see a rare picture i dug out the archives when he was lieutenant he was burned badly by a defective oil lamp on the campaign in mexico in 1916 he was even shot in battle in world war ii world war one how did this affect him his daughter ruth ellen recalled him describing a knight reconnaissance in world war one while crawling across the battlefield he studied the many fallen soldiers are laying around him and he found himself struggling to repress sudden thoughts of their mothers suddenly she said the whole concept seemed unbearable and he decided the only way to survive under such stress was to try to think of soldiers as numbers not as individuals and that she said the sooner the allies won the sooner the slaughter of innocence would cease however no matter what he said he could never quite do that she said she included to him men were always individuals people responsibility always his aide codman studied patton closely during world war ii and he observed quote the simple truth of the matter is that all his life general patton had been obsessed with an almost neurotic aversion to suffering and cruelty in any and every form this empathy led patton to order the populations of the town's nearest of the concentration camps he liberated to tour the camps treat the inmates dig their graves and tend their memorials as such as seen here patton however felt duty bound to hide such personal feelings from his troops and other observers patton's lifelong study of great commanders had convinced him of what john keegan would later argue that commanders who quote carry forward others to the risk of their lives must reveal only as much of themselves as their followers required all else had to be concealed behind a mask of command patents and masks included a consciously constructed gaudy costume of polished helmets riding breeches ivory-handled pistols a uniform designed purposefully to motivate a generation of young recruits who were reared on dime store novels and comic books yet as a 1941 life magazine cover story reported the costume earned him the nicknames general flash gordon and the green hornet the soldiers who tend to be skeptical of commanders in general and flashy commanders in particular love patton as one officer in tunisia wrote the old soldiers in knew him as gorgeous georgie or flash gordon rejoiced at his coming even though they feared his rashness they knew he would demand much but that there would always be a pat on the back for every kick in the pants and that their interest would be his interest the archives and memoirs that i had covered for 15 years were filled with such statements while visiting wounded american soldiers in british hospitals under secretary of war robert patterson no fan of old blood and guts noted with surprise when asking a patient what unit he was in men from other armies invariably named a regiment or division very few knowing what army they were in or the name of the commanding general but a third army man always replied israel's third army and he not only knew who commanded it but he usually had a personal anecdote about patton i believe this was not because of patton's persona but rather because of his success as the major explained i knew i was with a winner he had the reputation of being a winner from afr from africa and sicily in the popular mind however this reputation became one with his appearance a navy lieutenant recalled that upon seeing patton you get the same feeling as when you saw babe ruth striding up to the plate here's a big guy who's going to kick the hell out of something few however had the opportunity to separate the man from the character pat's stenographer corporal joe rossovich was one of those he first saw patton clad in slippers and wearing pincenez glasses as he thoughtfully drafted a speech before rehearsing it with purple fury pat then paused and looked at rasa vinci he said that the performance we had just watched was exactly that a performance a put up show calculated and rehearsed act of bravado he was convinced he said that the young men of america needed such toughening because they had grown soft you have to shock them out of their ordinary habits of thinking with the kind of language you just heard in this speech rossovich added i had the occasion to see that i was serving two men rather than one general patton was the fusion of two men who lived in different worlds one was his own world of calm efficiency discipline and order the other was the world of his immediate environment our world of extreme tension and nervous strain bradley for one recognized patton as quote an actor almost everything he did was designed to create a dramatic effect ten years before the war patton explained in an article a cold reserve cannot beget enthusiasm it then appears that a leader must be an actor his act included the stage outburst of anger scripted in the language of the barracks he wrote the greatest gift the general can have is a bad temper under control a bad temper gives you a sort of divine wrath and is only by the use of divine wrath that you can drive men beyond their physical ability in order to save their lives now of course it was sometimes hard to keep that under control the act inevitably attracted criticisms eisenhower wrote he talks too much and too quickly and sometimes creates a very bad impression moreover i fear he's not always a good example to subordinates who may be guided by only his surface actions without understanding the deep sense of duty courage and service that made up his real personality george marshall once said pat was not only indiscreet he descended to almost buffoonery at times doctors and work correspondents frankly despised the image of patton and projected their feelings on others andy rooney for example wrote many of the soldiers in patton's army hated him he was a loud mouth borer got too many american soldiers killed for the sake of enhancing his own reputation as a swashbuckling leader in the napoleonic style uh he couldn't have been more wrong patton in fact recognizes critics and admitted i have somewhat of an impish nature and frequently like to shock people in fact i've shocked so many people so efficiently that has militated against my success in time however patton's image largely eclipsed the man close associate general albert wiedemeyer explained the american people were given a picture of him only as a swashbuckling intrepid combat leader but he had a scholarly bent and a profound knowledge of strategy tactics military and political techniques this then is the nature of the complex nature of george patton as a duality of costume and genius providing fodder for critics and grist for students at the one extreme british author charles whiting wrote in essence patton was neither a great man or a great soldier if he had not lived it would not have mattered one little bit nor was he a great captain he initiated no new tactics such as gadarians and von manstein's concept of blitzkrieg it was that paragraph that sent me on a 15-year mission writing my book as a career army officer and a military historian i beg to differ with mr whiting patton's record even if overshadowed by his character was historically significant both as the great captain and the theorist in my book i examined the army patton lived in the doctrine he was told to follow what he thought and wrote about that doctrine how he challenged it in his actions in peace and war from these pieces i reassembled his way of war analyzing her practice scrutinized his legacy in the end i found patton to be a thoughtful deliberate man who constructed and practiced a radical and advanced form of warfare often in conflict with his peers and superiors who could not see the method behind the image thank you very much now we've got dr james sudmire jim is one of our members on on the board for the world war ii round table and don patton our glorious leader in his infamous wisdom came up with his idea of let's do bookends on patton some people really think he's great some people think he's nuts let's have a great debate and then we said no let's let's have a discussion let's be minnesota nice passive aggression we'll do some stuff like that so with our with our own james sudmeyer a minneapolis native uh been around the country packing up degrees uh phd chemistry from princeton and he's also a screenwriter he likes movies and he writes movies he's in fact working on one right now i'm going to spill the beans a little bit for you about brothers in armor and it's about the fourth armored division that special relationship between creighton abrams and and cohen which had a rocky start but a couple of guys that figured out how to be in combat together and carrying forward and reading each other's minds and being successful taking care of their troops taking care of their equipment and getting to ultimate victory now the one thing that became very apparent to me with jim and looking at his book and studying his face is i think he's the long-lost brother uh of our own steve daubenspeck so afterwards we may just have uh you know do one of those kind of things and you guys can you know see if they're they're related or not but with no further new i'm gonna are no further ado i'm gonna bring up james and uh he's gonna talk about his book patton's madness the dark side of genius let's give him a round of applause thank you mark for your very kind introduction today i want to talk to you about my book which came out five years ago originally in paperback today i believe it's more relevant than ever first of all i'd like to take a brief survey how many of you have seen the movie patton almost everybody the image of patton is amazing when the movie first came out at least i saw the movie at least three times when it first came out i had a bad case of hero worship there's a lot to like in the patent image the man is powerful forceful flamboyant charismatic witty he looks really good in his tailor-made uniforms and expensive boots on the home front he was inspiring a morale builder in those dark days of world war ii he was the american general most feared by the germans our best broken field runner our best at combined arms the american blitzkrieg which my colleague kelly morningstar has described so very well but sometimes the reality does not hold up to the image for example patton's voice i wonder how many of you have actually heard the great general's voice i'm going to play for you one of the few remaining film clips with his voice we're not just going to shoot the bastards we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks we're going to murder those lousy hun bastards by the bush that's the gravel voice of george c scott now here comes patton you must remember this that from breast through various towns and southern germany and austria whose names i can't pronounce but whose places i have removed his high pitched almost squeaky voice patton tried to compensate by the use of excess profanity and various macho behaviors how did patton's colleagues and biographers regard him general eisenhower in a letter to general george c marshall described patton as my mentally unbalanced general world war one historian lengle described patton as brilliantly insane his principal biographers blumenson and desta diagnosed him as dyslexic having a reading disorder although as soon as patton learned to read at age 12 having been homeschooled he became a voracious reader martin blumenson also suggested that he had add attention deficit disorder although he focused like a laser on his studies especially military history dan crosswell who spoke here last year diagnosed patent with bipolar disorder what we used to call manic depressive but there were good reasons for patton's up and down mood swings not the sudden randomness of bipolar disorder patton's grandson jim tottenham suggested to me that it was all about his repeated brain injuries of which there were many and ironically ptsd disease that patent never believed in all these are guesswork non-scientific diagnoses i wanted to get beneath the patent image and find out what makes him tick i read everything there is on patent to try to discover this his personality development starting in his first three years is the key to his performance as a leader and a general in later life mine is the first and only scientific diagnosis of patent making use of the psychiatrist bible the dsm-5 now what is the dsm-5 it is a very thick book cataloging all known mental disorders and personality disorders with a set of categories for each by the way personality disorders are people who know reality when they see it to diagnose sometimes it's just as simple as checking the boxes this highly respected book is a consensus of thousands of psychiatrists psychologists and psychoanalysts and is constantly updated and revised patton's upbringing was dominated by memories of his grandfather colonel george patton the first and his great uncle colonel tasewell both were graduates of virginia military institute vmi the west point of the south both died of wounds received while fighting heroically for the south in the civil war young george's father george patton ii also attended vmi where he was valedictorian but had no wars to fight in his time which disappointed the family young george patton iii vowed to save the family honor now out in california where he lived ruth and annie wilson had money the huge ranch and vineyard they lived on near present-day pasadena stretched all the way from santa monica to riverside at a dance george patton ii met annie wilson the eldest daughter of benjamin wilson a one-time mayor of los angeles and he introduced him to her younger sister ruth before long patton decided to marry ruth and he was bitter and never got over it after the marriage george ii joined the sisters living in the ranch house and when the baby they call georgie came along aunt annie played an increasing role in his mothering much to ruth chagrin arrival of a baby sister when georgie was 21 months old allowed ruth to surrender the boy to her the keep of her sister annie leaving the boy feeling abandoned georgie soon became what i call in the book the spoiledest boy in the world with a 1300 acre ranch he had a choice of 100 ponies he had three parents doting on him and was never disciplined because he learned how to play one parent off against the other on annie thought that georgie was too delicate to go to school and thus he was homeschooled until age eleven georgie never learned the rough and tumble of playing with other boys and never in his life had a best buddy his father and his aunt read to him daily about napoleon frederick the great alexander the great they read from homer they read from the bible all the great literature classics mostly military history and stories of his own ancestors glory on annie also taught him to believe in reincarnation georgie vowed starting at age eight that his mission in life was to rescue the family tradition by dying in battle a hero's death which he did not fear and he never wavered from that ambition he had some trouble in west point he took him five years because he flunked mathematics instead of four but after graduating from west point patton realized that for his career he would need big money and the easiest way to get that was like his father to marry a rich girl over her father's objections he married beatrice ayer a wealthy heiress from boston when they got married in 1910 they were worth about 50 million dollars in today's money they joined high societies horsey set the fox hunters and the polo players they hung out with actresses and celebrities and royalty patton was the richest officer in the u.s army he flaunted his wealth giving him a big advantage over his fellow officers he was able to say and do outrageous things and take more risks than anybody else because he didn't need the money now any of you have served in the military know that brown nosing or bootlegging seeking special favors from superior officers is strictly taboo patton the people user freely brown knows anybody who could help him and he got away with it general george pershing the top commander in the 1915 mexican expedition and in world war one became his first target patton very quickly became his aide and they went for long rides in the mexican desert together he even introduced perishing to his sister nita a tall auburn-haired beauty and they became romantically involved patton got promoted very quickly to colonel in world war one and got special treatment because of his connections with the top brass patton cultivated every new army chief of staff that came along like general george c marshall patton told him you can come live in my house until you get settled you can ride my horses play with my squash court and that's what happened you'd think that when patton married the wealthy beatrice he would have been very careful about his marriage vows that was not the case gene gordon 30 years younger than patton was the half-niece of his wife jean was a debutant spoke french fluently lost her dad at an early age and vacationed with the patton family in hawaii in 1935 right under beatrice's nose the affair with patents started and continued for the rest of both of their lives while gene was in europe with patton during the war as a red cross donut girl beatrice had to stay home after patton's death beatrice had a bitter confrontation with gene a few days later in a new york apartment wearing a negligee and surrounded by photos of patton gene committed suicide using natural gas from the kitchen stove pat was famous for dumping on subordinates he sent a letter to his wife during world war one saying i think i killed one man here he would not work so i hit him over the head with a shovel the statement was recorded by his principal biographers bloomington and desta but without any comment it happened on the same day that patton was severely wounded with a gunshot and was flat on his back for the next three months so nothing ever came of it if the incident were untrue it's hard to believe that patton would have bragged about it because it could have ended his career of course most of you know from the movie about the slapping incident patented labeled as cowards men suffering from what we now recognize as ptsd actually there were two incidents a week apart in sicily the first soldier slapped private cool turned out to be suffering from malaria later on he recovered invaded omaha beach with a big red one division and survived the war to his dying day patton never regretted these slapping incidents here's an example of the abuse of a subordinate officer and there were many in my book there are four or five other examples major general terry allen was tough as nails shot in the face in world war one a great fighter and beloved by his men in north africa the germans had air superiority patton visited alan one day and saw some slit trenches he asked which one is yours and ellen pointed one out patton went over and urinated on it now try using it he said ellen's bodyguards unclicked the safeties of them with sub-machine guns patton heard this and wasted no time leaving here's my question why did a great man like patton have to dump on people like this is this effective military leadership i read some of the books on management dale carnegie tom peters and so forth if you were running a hardware store let's say is that how you would treat your employees humiliating belittling degrading them would that lead to better performance i don't think so or did this behavior point to some basic insecurity in patton's psyche now patton has a reputation for being a brilliant strategist how did he live up to this reputation in open field with disorganized enemy he was magnificent as he blitzed some 500 miles across france also the next spring during the palatinate campaign my colleague kelly morningstar focused on this in his book which is sure to become the authoritative source on patton's method of war the liberation of bastogne halting the german surprise attack through the ardennes forest and rescuing the surrounded 101st airborne i think most people agree was his finest moment to which i devoted an entire chapter in my book he anticipated it using some of his own intelligence sources as my colleague has said he planned for various contingencies he organized logistics on a massive scale for example commandeered a freight train to bring all the third army supplies 140 miles north but there were other cases he didn't do that well for example when he came up against the hardened defenses like fort drian the most impregnable fortress in all of europe as my colleague mentioned for weeks he kept banging up against the fortifications this resulted in hundreds of his men killed eventually he bypassed it but could have done so a lot sooner except for his ego which compelled him to try and conquer the legendary for uh fortress there were other times when he used poor judgment wasting blood and treasure the most famous being the hamelberg raid in which 25 of the raiders and an unknown number of prisoners were killed and 245 raiders taken prisoner in a misguided attempt by patton to liberate his son-in-law from a german prison camp but there was one battle not as well known at brolo in sicily which i'm going to talk about today in sicily you have syracuse on the lower right and that's where field marshal on montgomery and all the british forces land the americans came in around the area around jayla the goal was to destroy the german and italian forces before they escaped to mainland italy through the streets of messina monies attacked bogged down behind the 11 000 foot volcano mount edna and patton made a beeline for the capital city of palermo where he got it not only he got a her as welcome he got access to a deep water port however now to beat montgomery to messina all this ground was mountainous some mountains as high as 4000 feet cut by deep river valleys perfect for defense the germans had blown all the bridges and tunnels and mined all the roads and beaches the job was going to be up and over the mountains carrying all the ammunition food and water with some 400 pack burrows and horses some of the trails were so steep that animals slipped and fell to their deaths now major major general lucian truscott ii and his elite third infantry division were very well suited for this job why his men were conditioned to run four to five miles an hour with full packs double that of regular infantry were fighting in the august heat mostly at night and malaria running rampant the division got stuck for days behind the enemy's defense of 2200 foot mount san fertillo so tosca decided that his men would make an amphibious end run around this choke point using about a dozen u.s naval landing craft the amphibious double pincer would require precise timing to bring together the land and sea forces at the same instant truscot's timing was superb leading to the capture of sixteen hundred enemy soldiers right here couple days later the americans were stuck behind massel ridge this gave patton to do another amphibious end run he also saw an opening for some publicity by bringing along a half dozen top war correspondents riding in the ships to witness the double pincer the only trouble was patton's timing turned out to be faulty here via google earth you can see the landing place patents and run the 900 foot mountain here called monte chapala or an english mount onion the village to the left here is brolo and over here you can see nassau ridge where the americans were fighting their way towards brollo and messina about three o'clock in the morning this is where the sea forces came in the 650 soldiers of task force bernard plus reporters they expected to see the american land forces fighting the german troops retreating leftward towards messina when nobody was there the americans took the high ground soon they were discovered by the enemy and for the next 24 hours the attackers became the targets now you can see on the back of chapala peak there's a road and there are some trails switchbacks and so forth leading to the top my wife and i were there a couple years ago and decided to try and climb to the top we went about halfway up the road and discovered that it was blocked by a fence here we are we walked up this path to monte chipolo one battalion that came in on amphibious ships they had some tanks they had some artillery and they were supposed to meet with prescott's third infinity division right in brolo and cut off the germans who were trying we're all trying to go east to messina he thought that truscott could get here in fighting their way up nassau ridge and so forth which is very tough ground he thought that they should be able to get here in 24 hours tresca said no it's going to take 48 hours well patton had already had a one day delay because some germans had shot up some of his lst landing craft he had to replace that back in palermo so um he wasn't about to delay any further and he said nope we're going ahead otherwise i'll find somebody else to replace you and he said this to the great lucian truscott and uh so he said okay i'll go ahead i'll give the order but it turned out to be an absolute disaster these men from task force bernardo sat up here at night they were radio for help they were getting some fire from naval cruisers offshore and they were trying to bring him in on on the germans you know 1725 colonel bernard battalion from west counter-attacking need navy and air on 702 504 immediately or we are lost at one point they actually got strafed or 16 guys got killed by an american air force so there was one hell of a battle going on here and eventually the americans came in here the germans escaped and 177 good young american men died needlessly here on this hill it must be absolutely full of shrapnel and unexploded ammunition so this place what 75 years later is still red hot with ammunition that was expended here it was a disaster it was one of patton's worst moves and it was all because of his ego and the reporters who came along for the ride were sickened when they saw the carnage the next morning and patton decided this is great this is the american men are the greatest fighters in the world on to messino narcissus narcissus was the handsome young man in greco-roman mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in the water until his death never knowing the love of another human being narcissistic personality disorder has nine criteria in the dsm-5 number one is grandiosity or exaggerated achievements number two fantasies of success power beauty vanity which patent had in abundance three social climbing need to associate with the upper crust four need for excessive admiration headlines publicity criterion five a sense of entitlement special treatment believe that you don't have to be obey the same rules as other people six exploitation of others people user seven lack of empathy empathy is the ability to feel what it's like to walk in another person's shoes number eight envy of others and feeling that other people are envious in return and finally arrogance snobbishness racism feeling superior to other human beings now if you have five of these nine criteria you have a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder npd in my opinion and i give many examples in the book he's a perfect fit he meets all nine of the nine criteria he suffered from overt pathological narcissistic personality disorder with like other npd suffers the emotional maturity of a toddler now what is it like to be a narcissist you may have known some have you ever known somebody is cocky conceited arrogant stuck up prima donna big shot full of himself often he is the funniest best dressed best looking most engaging person in the room he makes you feel like you don't exist there are two kinds of people he has use for those who can pump up his ego because it has to be pumped constantly and those he can put down that also helps pump up the ego he tends to overclaim his victories overestimates his abilities he doesn't think about the downside he thinks about the carrot and not the stick he's apt to take excessive risks any mistakes he made will be blamed on other people therefore he does not learn properly he is very satisfied with himself even though he's making life hell for almost everybody around him he feels real good about himself like patton he's not a team player someone like patent had to be kept on a short leash frequently put on probation by eisenhower patton's biggest errors and scandals occurred when he was not in the doghouse as shown in appendix a in my book what does this diagnosis offer it means that patton's irrational behavior becomes rational easily understood no longer does he have to be the enigma we can appreciate him as a fellow human being what is my take-home lesson here's a great quotation by rick atkinson that i learned from morningstar's excellent book unlike many he was comfortable with ambiguity two contradictory things can be both be true at the same time likewise i think we could do with less hero worship and more appreciation of the human being however flawed he was the sins of macarthur another certified npd are offset in the eyes of many by the remarkable job he did rebuilding japan after the war making it into a first-rate democracy also i think most of us are willing to forgive any abuses of the great general patton because of his substantial contribution to winning world war ii i personally like to put more focus on the real heroes the ordinary foot soldiers and therefore i dedicated my book to all the dog faces of world war ii who lived with the terror of war and without the glory and to the replacements who performed their duty often without a single buddy many as you know came into the front lines in the middle of the night nobody wanted to befriend them because by the next morning chances were they'd be dead and finally to the combat leaders who made the tough calls and took action not expecting to be in the history books they did their jobs and this especially includes the company commanders platoon leaders squad leaders who normally had the highest casualty rates we'll forever be in their debt thank you do we have ed and he's up oh look at that well this is a private first class dr edwin albrecht he is our world war ii vet and with no further ado ed take it away and tell us about your world war ii story thank you all right i'm a i'm a junior in high school in uh in 1941 when uh when pearl harbor was attacked so that put us in on a war footing and from then on uh i was i continued with my education i wanted to get a high school diploma and so i stayed stayed in in school until i i graduated some of my classmates quit school right away and went and joined the navy or joined the joined the marines but i wanted that high school diploma and so i uh in march of of 44 then uh or march of 43 i turned 18 years old registered for the draft and the draft board delayed me until i graduated from high school and so after after graduation then i uh i got my draft number and on july 15 of 1943 then i was inducted into the army at fort snelling and so i went through the induction process and took the army general classification test and from that they determined i should be in the air corps and they sent me to jefferson barracks missouri and so it started uh basic training uh when the air corps and at that time i took uh more general classification tests to determine what part of the air corps i should be in and i qualified for meteorology school and also when i was at jefferson barracks i uh made application for the army specialized training program and i passed that and got into the astp at fargo north dakota so i was at the university of north dakota studying a pre-engineering course the army wanted engineers and so that was our course of study and so we started in about october of 1943 and we continued through the winter until march of 1944 so on the 15th of march the army closed down the whole astp program and and all these students were sent into various infantry divisions throughout the country and i was sent to the 42nd rainbow division and it was uh near muskogee oklahoma and so then i i got i got to start basic training in uh with the 42nd division and i started out then with 17 weeks of basic infantry training which carried me to about may and then after that training the army needed replacements for some of their uh units and so they took uh they took some of the men from the rainbow division and and shipped them out to various units and uh i think being 18 year old at that time it was not being sent to front line duty and so we stayed behind and then so i had to start infantry training all over so i took another basic infantry course with the with the rainbow division and k company this time and so i i was given a b.a.r for the for the for the firepower for the squad so there's seven uh 12 men in a squad and then uh you have the the bar man which represents the firepower and so i carried the ber so the the unit weighs about 19 pounds and then the ammo that you carried was six cartridges of 20 20 shells each and so we carry you carry that on a belt around your waist and so you have a 19 pounder rifle plus the weight of the ammunition and then besides that then you got your canteen of water and some of your other supplies and so anyhow we went through basic training and that took us into the fall of 44. the division built orders then to deploy to the east coast and so we had to pack up all our equipment and then ship it to uh to new york then we went to camp kilmer new jersey and after uh being processed there probably when we probably got some shots there and some uh and got some equipment and uh some new clothing and so then we we were at camp kilmer there for a few days and then we they did give us a 12-hour pass into new york city so i got into new york city there and i in the times square and i got to the uso uh a building there and uh so at the uso and i got to a telephone i called my folks so we had a three minute call and then uh and then they had to hang up so well anyhow we left uh we left on the general black you know the whole regiment about uh what four thousand men that shipped out of uh new york city and so we sailed past the statue of liberty heading out into the uh ocean and as soon as we got into the out and out of the out of the port and into the ocean uh currents like the boat started to its movement of rocking and uh of course then you started getting this awful feeling and queasy and so i got seasick for a few days and then and so we were in a convoy headed for marseille france and so we went through the straits of gibraltar and the mediterranean and we left on november 24th and we got to marseille france on december 8th and we um we left marseille and we went out about 10 miles and camped while we're while we're getting things ready to move northward and we uh we we went northward by rail we had we we were on the these rail cars that the french called the 40 and 8. so they held 40 men or eight horses and we went northward to strasbourg and then we were there a few days and then we were deployed into uh north western france near into the hatton area and this area is a point of france that kind of jets out toward germany and it's kind of on a point there so so we were there and uh the germans started an attack called norwind on our lines at hatton and um the 222nd regiment was was on the on on the front line and our area our battalion and uh and the 242nd were in reserve so if uh if the germans broke through then we would be called uh up for action to repel the germans so but that didn't happen because the 222nd held their ground there and the germans released their attack and uh and we were kind of so well we got to rest for a bit so but we were on this uh point in hatton and it's kind of jetted out where the germans were on three sides of us so we pulled back one night and we uh we made a march on ice covered snow-covered roads about 10-12 miles back toward hagenov france so we set up a defense line on the motor river uh so after marching all night we had to dig a foxhole after uh after your feet were so sore you could hardly stand on them but you still had to dig a foxhole so we did we did get through that and of course our our meals were k rations and so we had k rations for breakfast and for dinner and the k rations were mostly crackers and a little canned meat a chocolate bar and some kind of a uh some it was some kind of a fruit bar but it was pretty good and uh and then at night we did get a hot meal but um well anyhow on the uh we're on the motor river and um our first assignment there was to to go to a factory building and so a squad of 12 men that cross this little bridge over the motor river and it went into this factory building yeah as a to for defense and now the sergeant in charge left me in this area with uh with all these windows of course they're broken out but all these windows faced a huge open field in front of us he left me there and he took the rest of the men to another area in the in in the uh factory i don't know where and i learned out later that those men got captured but anyhow we uh i'm in this area then by myself and then we're looking out on this uh field and in the distance so you can see this movement these white clad figures moving toward us and of course there are german soldiers with their army white uniforms and so they're slowly advancing and i hear them jabbering with each other in german and so they get closer and they got to about they were 30 yards in front of the building and then i thought that's close enough so then i i was going to open fire so i put my rifle up to my shoulder and was going to fire and uh of course uh it didn't fire it just clicked and so i realized at that point i was uh no good to anybody at that point and so i i left that area and dashed out the the back uh entrance of that factory and across the uh across that little river and back to my uh uh company lines and then so i got back to the company lines and uh of course there there was some uh there were several wounded men but we had to leave behind and so we had to leave them in the basement of a building there and of course the captain said this place is crawling with germans and they have to get out of here and so we got we had to pull back through hell companies lines and and then we got back to a place of more a little safer and then the next morning the elk company attacked this uh german position where i were where i was in that factory building and uh and drove them back and um and then of course we we got to leave the area and got to go back to another town for a rest and at that point we we were able to get a shower and get some new clothes and so so we got outfitted in this town and we we spent a little time there and then uh it comes into march coming coming up to the march 15th is when the big push into germany to end the war and so we moved up into a line of departure in that in that area on a map it would have been the wingdin area and so so we were there in the early morning and then and we uh we lined up what you call a skirmish line so we're spread out laterally about i suppose about 10 yards apart well there was a big artillery barrage on the german lines that we could see uh the smoke coming up from the explosions and so that lifted and we started to move out so we started moving toward the german lines and we we we just went for a short while and we had to stop and we got a report there were snipers ahead and we we waited and eventually they got the snipers and so they started to move forward again and so we started slowly moving forward and then all of a sudden i felt a tremendous blow on my back and i just i i went a few steps further but i couldn't go on anymore and so i went down and you and a little while later i i woke up and then here that the ground was burning around my feet so the leaves and and the twigs were on fire and so i kind of i had to kind of crawl away from that area and eventually a uh a medic came and eventually they got me back to a field hospital and so i was in this field hospital and just it was full of wounded men laying on cots in the in the hallways and and all over and so we uh i spent uh a little time a week or so we finally got into a room and got a cot and then they put us on the penicillin which would only last three hours so it was new and it was a new way of treating infection and so we were on this penicillin for around the clock every three hours and so we got through that i can't remember if i was up and walking around or if i just laid in bed all the time and i can't remember how we got fed there or wha but anyhow we left there eventually and they they were sent back to dijon france at to a general hospital and so we were so i was at this general hospital in in about a month after i got hit they there they did surgery and uh that i had i suppose they took some of the shrapnel out but there's still some in there in the chest and so i had that surgery and then i got got physical therapy and they finally uh they shipped me out uh i went to sharebird we we got on a hospital ship and to head for the states and we got out into the english channel and of course it started getting seasick again and then eventually uh after we got our sea legs and we started then the trip went pretty good so we landed in charleston south carolina and from there they sent us to spokane washington where they treated uh chest injuries and so i i was at spokane for a while and then after i had physical therapy and was uh was pretty well healed uh they gave me a three-month delay on route uh to camp mccoy wisconsin so i got to spend the summer at my home and then i reported to camp mccoy in probably september and then from camp mccoy they sent me to fort sam houston in in texas and i was there a few days and they from there they sent me to hatch new mexico to guard german prisoners and they were prisoners from the north african campaign and so we uh we used to take those prisoners uh we used to take them out in the cotton fields and they would uh pick cotton so and then so i was there probably uh from i would say october to march so in march my uh my number came up for discharge and uh so i was discharged from fort bliss and uh then i headed for home so i got to to be home with them in in march and it was there till september that then for them from [Music] and then yeah i was at hatch new mexico i came back home and then i had the summer to to do what i wanted but then i i applied for optometry school and so i applied for the gi bill of rights and then i got accepted into optometry school in chicago and so we we went uh of course there was a three semesters to make up a year of college well we went straight through the summer so and we made up three semesters in the summer and that way we got uh we got four years in three and so we got out uh in september 49 those graduated and we looked around for a for a place to practice optometry and i ended up in walmart minnesota so i started out in uh january 1950 and i retired in february of 1998. and so i i raised a family of four and uh in the wabash all those years and that we had we had good years so and now and of course i've been retired since 98 and of course that's uh has been a very very pleasant time of life so so that's about the whole story ed the question we have for you is when you raised your bar up at that factory window we call this a pucker factor moment what was going through your mind when you pulled the trigger on your bar what was the first thought well the first thought it it wouldn't fire so i realized that i could not be of use in that area anymore and so the only thing to do is to get out of there and so i like i went out the the back way where i came in and across the uh the river and i got back to my uh company lines well that was pretty sharp right there you skedaddled you really you did it was not a place to hang around i i think upstairs you were talking to the youth about that night march where you marched 12 miles to go set up positions on the motor river what kind of language was used during that night march as you were talking to one another yeah there were a lot of guys falling down so the language was was not the best did you learn any new words right yeah well uh ed uh we're we're extremely proud of you and we're very thankful and tickled that you could be with us here tonight um and uh we just uh thank your daughter diane mcmurray for setting up the zoom on your end and we just uh appreciate your service and and diane uh has also served at the va for 38 years as a nurse and so let's give them both a round of applause [Applause] okay folks question and answer so i'm going to invite if we can bring the house lights up i'm going to invite both authors to take their battle positions at the table we have a question that's addressed to both of you when abe bauman spoke at the round table he highlighted how haphazard the planning was for the hamelberg raid did either author interview abe or anyone else related to the rape when i was in the 37th tank regiment uh i got assigned to do a history of the hammer bro raid as i wrote about a 50-page paper in which i i talked to people who were in the war but not on that raid and people who had been with um with third army uh one of them was was one of the fourth armored division commanders it's interesting about the haphazard nature of it because it was third army was headed towards hamelberg and then they got orders to divert and go on a different angle so patton realized that his army was as close as it was going to get to hamleburg and that's why he rushed to try to get somebody to make a diversion before they got too far separated but as i explained from a military point of view it was inexcusable because he tried to do any in his instructions to bomb were divergent they were diametrically opposed missions a raid and a diversion which are completely different ones noisy one stealthy it was the most um inexcusable order i ever saw patton give and um one that's hard to explain except he let his emotions rule his uh his met his military sense can we use the british term cocked up okay yeah the other thing can i just initially he wanted to send um creighton abrams with his combat command and abrams wanted to take the entire combat command patton said no it's also interesting that bradley denied knowing anything about this but his a chet henson said oh yeah i was there when patton briefed bradley about it and bradley told patton that you can do this as long as you don't get decisively engaged and that instruction don't get decisively engaged apparently drove the decision to reduce the size of the raid from a full combat command to a small task force and uh i think that instruction the only willingness to tell pat not to do it allow him to do it those are the things that caught in the short timeline truncate timeline all played into this you know uh into not um sending a large enough force or even even tempting the mission in the first place it shouldn't have been done very good let's go to joe if i can chime in was the question did any of you interview abe did you mean a baum yeah so yeah the answer is yes i spent a week with abe and his family in 1985 i took him on a tour of all his old battlefields and i personally got to know during the writing of the screenplay i got to know personally bill nutto w.c henson he was a tank driver norm hoffner irv solotof robert zawada bob thompson milt cochill from minnesota tony de santo as well as a bomb and it was a great privilege to get to know all these guys either by email or by telephone or by knowing them personally and visiting them and uh it was one of the great honors of my life thank you thank you jim thank you kelly jim is there a movie available from the second author jim uh patent secret mission as mentioned i wish there was and uh maybe someday there will be it's not easy to find people who want to produce a movie that is such a downer in terms of our iconic hero and uh people don't don't want to go to the movie and i mean i guess the alamo has been made into movies but normally we like happy endings and this does not make this was not patton's finest moment and if anybody knows a producer we're ready to go okay i'm gonna go over to steve steve next question do you have one all right yes i have one qriket kelly uh kelly how do patents techniques compare with those of the german blitzkrieg or the german commanders well there's a couple things to keep in mind one is the blitzkrieg was never an official german doctrine okay blitzkrieg word was coined by time magazine to describe the way they saw the german attacks at france and and then to belgium and the netherlands robert cetino has written some very good books about this um the german marching to france was actually done the same rate that they uh marched into poland was in the same rate that they had marched into france from world war one you know they were hamstrung by by their faulty logistics systems and how fast they could actually move but there were a lot of similarities in mission orders there are a lot of similarities in the development of combined arms columns and not by accident patton studied scharnhorst and guineas now and the clausewitz and others he was followed them he followed hans von siek who became the the chief of staff of the german army after world war one the german army as you know from world war one in versailles was restricted to a hundred thousand men uh they had no tanks etc they realized han von seek realized they're still surrounded by the russians and by the french huge armies so how could they win they decided that they'd have to do it by maneuver by fast operating forces and patton agreed with him he said this is the this is because this is what technology is evolving into the way tanks can move in our wheeled vehicles etc he saw that idea of small professional you know fast-moving columns is successful a major difference was though the german plan was always to deliver a decisive battle you know break through at certain points and have pincer movements come together to create the decisive battle patton believed in unbalancing the enemy through sustained shock critically here though heinz guderian believed the same thing and when gadarian wrote akhtun panzer in 1937 he explained the kenesal knock the uh the cauldron battles the penciling off of creating a battle but when he executed the breakout through our dens in his attack on france he was ordered three times by higher command to stop so that the infantry columns could could catch up to his armor and he refused hitler called him deliberately and said stop and heinz gadarian refused he kept going until he hit the uh hit the the british channel the english channel and his personal example is what created what we perceived as blitzkrieg patton observed all that he was down at uh at fort benning reading all these reports and following the the dispatches from intelligence and pat kept saying he's doing what i think should be done you know so was he grafting his ideas from gadarian nobody saw a kindred soul as they were being executed did patton consider himself a reincarnation of hamlikar barca the famed carthaginian general so reincarnation of who hamlecar barker it i'm sorry i don't know who that is i don't know if he considered what he considered it's a tough one i i don't even think i could try this one myself it's too tough for me yeah i have read where he considered himself to be a soldier at zama which is one of hannibal's soldiers yeah but not handled but none not but he considered himself the incarnation of one napoleon's marshals that he had been in you know one in one of caesar's legions right the the question i get asked this question a lot was you know did he really believe it do you think he was reincarnated et cetera and i think that there is a level of familiarity with those stories from his youngest years before he could read he was doing rote memorization of poems about these great commanders and their stories and lives and things and i think it was so imbued in his psyche that when he was for example know coming out of normandy he'd go well caesar used this road when he went to england and you know he he could consciously remember it so clearly that it was like he had been there and i think that's important because there are analysts like john cemetery who talk about the uh you know achieving synthetic experience he says this is what claus was trying to get through in in on war was that claus was faced a dilemma he was the new uh you know superintendent of the war academy in in in uh prussia but they were done with war pro the the planet wars were over with yet they're still surrounded by enemies and clausewood said the only way to be proficient at war is to be experienced in it but how do you get experienced if you're not going to be fighting and what he wanted to do was he wanted to create an under base understanding of war and then have his students recreate the battles as if they were participating in them you know set up a battle do a war game and have the guys see it not as it occurred but as it's unfolding and ask them what do you see what decisions would you make why do you make those and if you do that enough he would gain the student would gain what he called synthetic experience you know it's so imbued in you that you can call it this is what malcolm gladwell talks about in the book blink you know that you you study so much that you have an intuitive knowledge now based off your learning patton wrote in his in 1930s the same exact idea that you must read the history as if you're a participant and do it enough to where you have felt like you've lived it and i think that that from an early age created his sense of of deja vu his sense of of reincarnation if i could just add i just i just want to say we need to retool that question for you instead of on dsm 5 on narcissism maybe it's on reincarnationism what do you think maybe it's a second volume to your award-winning well we'll get to work on that but um if i'm going to add just add one comment there's an excellent biography written by robert patton the grandson of the great general and he says that his grandfather frequently looked when he had a problem when he looked to the past for answers did not always serve him well now as as we come to a close i want to tell you something we work with the 3m auditorium is of the highest scientific value your seats have been triggered to answer several of the questions through the presentation so the first question on how you felt about george and how you felt about each of the authors presenting their case was he nuts or what was he a hot mess was he just absolutely a battlefield master well the first question military genius your seats told us ding ding ding yes he was okay second question was he mad was he uh a mad a mad hatter or was he just a crazy as a fruitcake what was he ding ding ding again you agreed on that third thing radical combat combat commander and yep your seats told us ding-a-ling ding ding okay so the last one was in our [ __ ] and survey says yes he was now the one question that was kind of posed but neither office neither officer neither of our lecturers directly addressed during their speech was was a was he a reincarnationist well big question mark there but the spirit in the room came up and guess what i'll be back when will i be back okay that was kind of my you know i had some fun okay so uh let's give our authors a round of applause and thanks support for this program provided by viewers like you thank you additional support provided through the katherine b anderson fund of the st paul foundation upcoming roundtable topics can be found at www.mn-ww2 roundtable dot o-r-g production services provided by barrows productions [Music] you

Channel: World War II History Round Table

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Length: 96min 8sec (5768 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 24 2022