Patton, George, Jr.

Patton, George (Smith), Jr. (1885–1945) soldier; born in San Gabriel, Calif. Descendant of an old Virginia family, he graduated from West Point (1909); he placed fifth in the military pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics. He was an aide to Gen. Pershing in the punitive expedition to Mexico in 1916 and then accompanied him to France in 1917; there he learned from the French and British how to employ the new weapon, the tank, and he distinguished himself by leading his tank brigade through battle. Unconventional to the point of flamboyance, he held to his notion that tanks were the weapons system of the future and by April 1941 he was commander of the Second Armored Division; by January 1942 he was commanding general of I Armored Corps, and in October 1942 he directed the amphibious landings near Casablanca and the ensuing campaign across North Africa. By July 1943 he commanded the U.S. Seventh Army in the Allied invasion of Sicily; he excelled militarily there with a bold campaign that beat the British into Palermo, but the notorious incident in which he verbally abused two ailing soldiers, one of whom he also slapped, nearly cost him his career. He was eventually assigned to lead the Third Army, which led the breakout from Normandy in July–September 1944; after diverting his forces to relieve the Americans trapped in the Battle of the Bulge, he crossed the Rhine in March 1945 and advanced through the heart of Germany into Czechoslovakia. A staunch anticommunist, after the German surrender Patton argued for a combined Allied-German campaign against the Soviet Union. When he then argued for keeping former Nazis in administrative and other positions, he was removed from command of the Third Army. Severely injured in an automobile accident on Dec. 9, 1945, he died 12 days later. Probably the most admired and the most controversial of all American generals in World War II, he was known for carrying ivory-handled pistols, for racy language, and an intemperate manner, but he was also regarded as one of the most successful American field commanders of any war. The 1971 film, Patton, starring George C. Scott in the title role, provoked renewed interest in this complex man.