History UsefulNotes / GeorgeSPatton

The next objective for the Allies was Sicily, as a stepping ground for invading Italy, during which he was placed in a supporting role to Montgomery thanks to the latter's machinations. The British 8th Army got bogged down, while Patton's 7th Army maneuvered across western Sicily through Palermo and then took Messina, the primary objective of the entire invasion. He was eventually sidelined by General UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower for nearly a year however, due to losing his cool and slapping a pair of soldiers he accused of cowardice, who were suffering from what was then known as "Battle Fatigue", but would would later be understood as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite Patton issuing a formal apology to the soldiers and doctors involved both in person and in speech, these "Slapping Incidents" as they would come to be called ended up leaking to the American homefront, which resulted in harsh criticisms and many questioning whether he should be sent back to the United States. Ultimately, it was decided he would remain, due to his "aggressive, winning leadership in the bitter battles which are to come before final victory" meaning he would be better off on the front lines than any role he could serve at home. However, the incident did cost him a leading role in the upcoming Operation Overlord (At least according to Patton; Eisenhower claims the decision for who would lead Overlord was made long before the "Slapping Incidents" were made public), as Allied command felt they needed a commander with a level head and more control over his impulses to lead such a delicate and pivotal operation; thus, General Omar Bradley was named commander of Overlord's forces. Still, Patton still served a crucial role in command of the U.S. Third Army, training the inexperienced unit in preparation for the fighting on the European mainland in the months leading up to the invasion.\\\

Like many historical figures, Patton has [[ValuesDissonance received criticism]] in recent years for his racism. Among other comments, he often doubted the fighting abilities of Black soldiers and used racial slurs in conversation; he also once referred to Jewish Holocaust survivors as "the greatest stinking mass of humanity."[[note]]It isn't clear if this comment was meant to be disparaging towards the survivors themselves, or more a commentary on the absolutely ''horrifying'' state that said survivors were in after their multi-year stay in the Nazi concentration camps.[[/note]] It's fair to say that Patton, while hardly ''progressive'' on race, was probably no more or less racist than most Army officers of his era. And if Patton was privately prejudiced, he had no problem serving alongside nonwhite soldiers. He organized the Army's first Black tank unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, and even introduced racially integrated rifle companies into the Third Army at a time when segregation remained the norm. His views are best summed up by his inelegant but forceful praise of his soldiers that "I don't give a damn who the man is. He can be a Nigger or a Jew, but if he has the stuff and does his duty, he can have anything I've got."\\

By the autumn of 1944, supply problems caught up with the Allies. They were advancing too rapidly and far ahead of their schedule; in September, they found themselves liberating towns they had not expected to reach until ''spring 1945''. Faced with pressure from civilian leaders to end the war quickly, Eisenhower had a choice to make: Patton, ever straightforward, proposed pushing through the German Siegfried line directly east of Berlin, then making a mad dash across Germany to seize the capitol before defenses could be mounted, similar to how he operated in France. While this plan was more likely to succeed due to sheer attrition and numbers, both of which the Allies had a surplus of and Germany was running out of fast, it was unknown how long such an operation it would take...and how many lives it would cost, and the word "attrition" tended to make the Allied civilian leaders a bit squirrely, likely evoking images of the horrendously bloody and slogging trench warfare of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI...which probably explains why they weren't completely on board with Patton's idea. Montgomery on the other hand proposed an ambitious airborne assault in the Netherlands called Operation Market Garden, which would involve seizing a bridge across the Rhine River into Germany, and taking the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, cutting the Wehrmacht off from its only real supply line. While the operation was a ''huge'' gamble, it held the prospect of ending the war by December 1944, and with much fewer projected losses than Patton's plan. Tempted by the idea of getting his men HomeByChristmas, Eisenhower went with Monty's plan, ordering Patton to stay put and wait to support him. Unfortunately, poor logistics, heavy delays, and a refusal to believe credible intelligence reports of strong German forces on the British drop zones led to Market Garden failing miserably, and Allied priorities shifted to the Scheldt Estuary.\\\

Born in California, Patton came from a military family, with his grandfather having served for the Confederates during the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar. He attended the Virginia Military Academy and West Point, Patton's first taste of fighting came during [[UsefulNotes/TheMexicanRevolution The Hunt for Pancho Villa]], where he participated in America's first ever military action that used motor vehicles, and shot down three of Villa's men with [[CoolGuns his custom made]] [[BlingOfWar ivory handled]] [[RevolversAreJustBetter revolvers]] (it's not known if he got the kills as several other soldiers were firing as well, but he did definitely hit and wound all three of them). Afterwards, he served with the American Expeditionary Force in World War I as a tank officer.\\

* An alternate version of him appears in Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/Timeline191'' novel series, an AlternateHistory where the Confederacy won the Civil War, where he leads Confederate troops in an invasion of the U.S. as part of that world's version of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII

Recognizing that they were no longer defending all of Western Europe, and that the Allied supply train was currently beleaguered with its own problems, even before the abortive Operation Market Garden threw everything up in the air,[[labelnote:*]]Compounded by the fact that many units at the very front lines of the operation were mainly paratroop regiments, who were [[GlassCannon geared more towards fast assault and harassing the enemy behind their own lines]] than holding frontlines themselves, and were not equipped to take a defensive stance should the enemy initiate a large-scale attack, and that many were still trying to resupply and refill their ranks from the disastrous Market Garden.[[/labelnote]] the Germans attempted to launch an offensive in December 1944 through the Ardennes Forest, the exact same invasion route they took in 1940. At first, they were incredibly successful, routing newly arrived American G.I.'s. However, at Bastogne, one of the major town to the German objective of Antwerp, they ended up facing elite American airborne divisions, including the 101st "Screaming Eagles," which were resting in the area. Patton saw immediately what was happening and took his Third Army, which was already heavily engaged 100 miles to the south, to relieve the paratroopers at Bastogne. Disengaging the majority of his force and reorienting it for a forced march over what could only be called "roads" in the most generous sense of the word amid one of the harshest winters in Europe's history, while still keeping the Germans to his front tied up and unable to move, attacking the main German force in their flank, and relieving Bastogne before the 101st Airborne and remnants of the 10th Armored Division were overwhelmed is rightly considered Patton's greatest achievement and one of the most brilliantly-executed operations in history. This ended up tapping the Germans of their remaining reserves and in May 1945, Berlin fell to the Russians. The war in Europe was over.\\\

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[[caption-width-right:350:''We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks!'']]

'''George Smith Patton, Jr.''' (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) is one of America's most celebrated military officers and most notable of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, along with one of the most controversial.