Trivia

While a young lieutenant during Prohibition, he and one of his closest friends set up a still on their army base to produce their favorite alcoholic beverages. His friend's name: Lt. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Was a first cousin six times removed of George Washington.

George Kennedy, who went on to portray Patton in Brass Target (1978), served under him in World War II.

Commanded the famous US Third Army which, by the end of World War II, had captured or killed over one million Axis soldiers.

Was dyslexic. Since dyslexia was largely unknown when he was a young cadet, he constantly berated himself for being stupid because he sometimes failed tests and had to study much harder than other cadets.

Was one of the wealthiest officers in the army. When he was a junior officer, this was a source of resentment from high-ranking officers, as he liked to brag about his nicer living quarters and often drove his flashy new cars on base.

Participated in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden (the same Olympics that brought Jim Thorpe lasting fame) in the modern pentathlon. He was an exceptional marksman, fencer and horseman, and an excellent runner. Placed fifth overall, partly due to judges' determination that he missed the target/ he contended that he hit the same point on the target twice. He used a .38, which created larger holes than his competitors' .22s. He was also selected to represent the FUS in the modern pentathlon at the 1916 Summer Olympics, which were scheduled for Berlin, but ended up being canceled because of World War I.

His grandfather, George S. Patton, was a colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and fought under General Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia.

Pictured on a 3¢ US commemorative postage stamp, issued in his honor (11/11/1953) (his 68th birthday).

Due to concerns that he was mentally ill, his telephones were tapped and his residence bugged. Soon the wiretappers heard him expressing violently anti-Soviet views and even suggesting that ex-members of the Wehrmacht should be rearmed and used to help the United States Army force the Red Army "back into Russia". In one conversation with General Dwight D. Eisenhower's deputy, McNarney, he allegedly said, "In ten days I can have enough incidents happen to have us at war with those sons-of-bitches and make it look like their fault.".

Designed his own army uniforms, and came up with designs for uniforms for the tank soldier, but the army turned them down.

Planned his battles using the ancient wars in Europe as a guide.

Unlike George C. Scott's deep gravelly growl in the film Patton (1970), Patton himself actually had a fairly high-pitched speaking voice.

Following his death, he was buried in the American Army Cemetery and Memorial at Hamm, Luxembourg.

He proposed invading the Soviet Union at the end of World War II, in order to drive the Soviets out of eastern Europe.

Fearing that Europe was going to go Communist, he was highly critical of the denazification program after VE Day.

As commander of the Third Army, he ordered the killing of German soldiers in the act of surrendering or after being taken prisoner because he said they could not be trusted. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower reprimanded him for ordering his troops to kill POWs, Patton responded, "If you order me not to, I will stop. Otherwise, I will continue to influence troops the only way I know, a way which so far has produced results." Eisenhower then told Patton to continue any way he saw fit, but to be cautious lest the murder of prisoners boomerang against him. On his part, Patton did not believe killing prisoners was wrong, as he believed it saved his soldiers' lives: "Some fair-haired boys are trying to say that I kill too many prisoners. Yet the same people cheer at the far greater killings of Japs. Well the more I killed, the fewer men I lost, but they don't think of that." Referring to the fact that American soldiers and Marines fighting the Japanese took no prisoners (giving no quarter was the modus operandi on both sides during the Pacific War), Patton was convinced that he was not doing wrong. Killing soldiers in the process of surrendering and the bloody dispatch of prisoners eliminated logistical problems that would otherwise have slowed down Patton's Third Army, which sometimes advanced at the rate of 60 miles a day. Eisenhower, who was given the overall Allied command in Europe as he was a masterful politician, was wary about Patton's killing of POWs, as such a practice could be seen as antithetical to a democracy based on the rule of law.

He showed utter contempt, even hatred, for Jewish survivors. He also expressed a kind of admiration for the Nazi prisoners of war under his watch and bitterly criticized attempts to bring Nazi leaders to justice for war crimes. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower finally fired him, Patton blamed Jews and Communists for his problems.

Though he commanded many Jewish soldiers, he refused to permit Jewish chaplains in his headquarters.

In every battle he fought, he always had more soldiers, tanks, fuel, supplies and air support than his opponents.

Patton's personal residence as military governor of Bavaria was a palatial house on nearby Lake Tegernsee. It had a swimming pool, bowling alley, and two boats, and had once been owned by Max Amann, the publisher of Hitler's "Mein Kampf". It is also of interest that Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler's wife had lived in another house on the lake, as had the wife of the infamous Waffen SS Kampfgruppe commander Jochen Peiper.

He had zero sympathy for the Holocaust victims living in wretched, overcrowded collection camps under his command. He was unable to imagine that people living in such misery were not there because of their own flaws. The displaced Jews were "locusts", "lower than animals", "lost to all decency". They were "a subhuman species without any of the cultural or social refinements of our times", Patton wrote in his diary. A United Nations aid worker tried to explain that they were traumatized, but "personally I doubt it. I have never looked at a group of people who seem to be more lacking in intelligence and spirit." Patton was no friend to Arabs, either; in a 1943 letter, he called them "the mixture of all the bad races on earth.".

He kept emaciated, barely alive Holocaust survivors under military guard and put Nazi sympathizers in with them. He appointed former SS soldiers, whom he believed were most qualified to oversee an "orderly administration" of the DP camps, to positions of authority. With food scarce and malnutrition rampant, he refused to provide extra rations to Jewish survivors lest he be seen as giving them preferential treatment over Nazi prisoners.

Visited the Buchenwald death camp for the first time on 4/15/45, according to his autobiography, but he didn't make a special trip to see this. This was only a side jaunt, suggested by General Walton Walker, after Patton had flown to Weimar to visit what he thought was going to be his next Command Post. Harry Peters, a Jewish soldier from Chicago, who was with Patton's Third Army, told his nephew, Phil Cohen, "Patton was more concerned with saving the Lipizanner Horses in Austria than the Jews left in the camp." According to Cohen, "Patton had to be ordered to go to the concentration camps because he considered the horses more valuable.".

Anthony Cave Brown noted in "Bodyguard of Lies Volume II" (1975) that "Patton was relieved of command of the 3rd Army by Eisenhower just after the end of the war for stating publicly that America had been fighting the wrong enemy - Germany instead of Russia".

Quite strangely, despite Patton's openly hostile remarks about the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin held him in very high regard, on one occasion commenting that none of the senior Red Army commanders were comparable to Patton in regards to armoured and mechanized warfare.

Designed and built his own version of the tank, but the army turned this down.

Was a virulent anti-Semite.

Signed documents as "George S. Patton Jr." when, in fact, he was George S. Patton III.

Commanded the US Seventh Army, which invaded Sicily. It was here that he slapped a soldier in the field hospital, and was relieved of command.

The Oscar-winning Patton (1970) failed to mention one of the most controversial incidents in Patton's military career, when he diverted troops to liberate a German POW camp housing his son-in-law. As recounted in the book "Raid: The Untold Story of Patton's Secret Mission", he sent a mobile force of about 50 vehicles and approximately 300 men to liberate the camp, which was approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) behind enemy lines. With no air support and no additional ground support, the task force liberated 300 American officers, including Patton's son-in-law, Captain John Waters, and 1,200 enlisted men. The mission was not authorized by Patton's superiors and is seen by some contemporary historians as indicating that he was emotionally unstable, particularly when considered in light of his two slapping incidents and his anti-Semitism. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had known Patton since 1918 and considered him a friend, respected his military genius and leadership abilities but was wary about his inability to control his emotions. Cautiously, Ike had appointed Major General Lloyd Fredendall to command the army in North Africa instead of Patton in 1942, then had to replace Fredendall with Patton when Fredendall proved inadequate. At the time, he cautioned Patton about avoiding "personal recklessness" when he gave him the command, and counted on the presence of General Omar N. Bradley to be a calming influence on the mercurial general. Conscious of why Bradley was assigned to him, Patton insisted that Bradley--who had earlier commanded his own corps--be assigned as Deputy Corps Commander. Bradley essentially was there to ensure that Patton didn't say or do anything untoward, and together they proved a great success. By the end of the war, Bradley was in overall command of First Army, the great force that invaded France on D-Day. Free of Bradley's calming influence, Patton was on his own when he launched his foolhardy raid--it was actually not necessary, as Waters and the other prisoners were not in any danger. It likely was influenced by paranoia on Patton's part, rooted in his own orders to his troops to kill German prisoners.

Grandfather of Helen Patton, Robert Patton and James Totten.

The orders from above--Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted him to confiscate the houses of wealthy Germans so Jewish survivors could live in them-- embittered him. His beloved Third Army was decaying as troops decamped for home, discipline vanished, and "the displaced sons-of-bitches in the various camps are blooming like green trees", he wrote a friend. He saw journalists' criticism of his handling of the Jews and the return of Nazis to high official positions as a result of Jewish and Communist plots. The "New York Times" and other publications were "trying to do two things", he wrote, "First, implement Communism, and second, see that all businessmen of German ancestry and non-Jewish antecedents are thrown out of their jobs." As reports on the conditions in Bavaria began to alarm President Harry S. Truman, Eisenhower came down from Frankfurt on 9/23/45 to join Patton on a tour of the camps where Jewish refugees were housed. He was horrified to find that some of the guards were former SS men. During the tour, Patton remarked that the camps had been clean and decent before the arrival of the Jewish DPs (displaced persons), who were "pissing and crapping all over the place." Eisenhower told Patton to shut up, but he continued his diatribe, telling Eisenhower he planned to make a nearby German village "a concentration camp for some of these goddamn Jews.".

On 9/8/45, while inspecting a prison camp for former Nazis and Waffen SS members, he said it was "sheer madness to intern these people". A Jewish-American officer immediately reported the remark to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

During a speech in Boston on 6/8/45, he said the fact that a soldier was killed in action often made him a fool rather than a hero. What exactly he meant is unclear, but this remark enraged those who had lost relatives in the war and telegrams and letters soon began to flood into the War Department demanding an apology. They did not get this.

He had hoped to be involved in the expected invasion of Japan. His name was included in a list of six generals submitted by the War Department for consideration by General Douglas MacArthur, but the Supreme Commander rejected him out of hand.

His biographer Carlo D'Este suggested that his melancholy and increasingly extraordinary behavior may have been due to brain damage resulting from a series of head injuries caused by a lifetime of falls from horses and road accidents--the most serious being an accident in Hawaii in 1936 that had resulted in a two-day blackout. However, he concluded that we will never know, for after his death his wife Beatrice refused to allow an autopsy on the body despite a request from the United States Army.

As a military governor in the American-occupied zone of West Germany in July 1945, he accused the US Treasury Secretary of "Semitic revenge against Germany".

His refusal to denazify Bavaria after World War II has been called treasonable.

Letters from World War I show he already held anti-Semitic views as a young man.

Smoked cigars and a pipe.

He went on record as saying that the Allies had a moral obligation to support the countries being swallowed up by Stalin.

Father of George S. Patton IV

Posthumously inducted into the UIPM [Modern Pentathlon] Hall of Fame (inaugural class) (2017).

Two of his men were tried in connection with the killing of dozens of Italian and German prisoners of war in southern Sicily on 7/14/43, which came to be known as the Biscari Massacre. Both claimed that they were following orders not to take prisoners that Patton himself had set forth in a fiery speech to their division a month earlier. Patton denied responsibility, and he was exonerated of any crime.

Although he had many black soldiers under his command--notably the 761st Tank Battalion, a segregated armored unit known as the "Black Panthers" that won distinction on the battlefield--he nevertheless saw African-Americans as inferior and disparaged their performance in combat.

He had wanted to push on to Berlin, but General Dwight D. Eisenhower rejected the idea, deeming the cost too high for a city already allotted to the Soviets by the terms of the Yalta agreement. Patton's supporters claim that the Cold War may have unfolded differently had the West taken the capital, but this largely ignores the military situation on the ground in eastern Europe.

In the early 1990s, it was revealed he had covered up the killings of concentration camp guards by American soldiers.

He has been held responsible for the American defeat in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest from September through December 1944.

His decision to launch a headlong attack straight into the fortifications of Metz in late September 1944 was heavily criticized. The last of the forts defending the city was not taken until mid-December.