The movie “Patton” was an excellent film. George C. Scott did an excellent job of portraying Patton. The big wigs in Hollywood must have thought so as well because Scott won an Academy Award for the role. Apparently Scott was a Marine for a time, so this probably did help him in acquiring the part. Scott actually gave back the Oscar and told them to donate it to the Patton Museum in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The producers were lucky to still have Omar Bradley around in order to make sure it was historically accurate and for the most part it was. My biggest gripe with the movie is that it didn’t give enough background as to how Patton rose up through the ranks of the Army, first through the cavalry and his relationship with Pershing in World War I where Patton first started to make a name for himself. In the beginning though it kind of made it seem like he woke up one day and was automatically a two star general. You don’t just roll out of bed one day and boom you’re a success. Patton was also a part of the crew that broke up the Bonus Army march with Macarthur. The way Patton admired his comrades in battle it’s surprising he dealt with them in such a manner, but that’s just a part of following orders. Maybe it’s hard to satisfy me and there definitely is too much information that you can put in a movie. If too many factoids and trivial things are put in there it can even bore a well-versed historian. Still, I would have liked to have heard more about Patton’s visionary nature of being able to appreciate the tank way before it’s glory days. In fact according to a program called “Man, Myth, Machine” on the history channel it stated that Patton was the leader in building the first tank corps division of the army when many generals were still skeptical of the ability of tank warfare to get the job done.
Apparently Patton was quite upset as most professional soldiers are that the military budget was cut during the peacetime period following World War I. Along with this of course the tank division that was Patton’s baby in a sense was dissolved. George didn’t sit on the sidelines though; he knew his opportunity or destiny as he liked to call it would come again. Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if that truly wasn’t Patton’s destiny in a sense to lead the Third Army in the Battle of the Bulge using the Sherman M4 tanks (aptly named aren’t they given the way Sherman marched through Atlanta.) against the German panzer Tiger and Panther tanks because many other generals may not have had the stomach for all that carnage that ground warfare can bring and may have wanted to do it through the air for the most part. Naming tanks after Civil War generals is a nice gesture that we picked up from the British.
They did talk about the inclement weather that Patton and his men had to deal with while working their way through the Battle of the Bulge. However, there wasn’t enough emphasis put on exactly what Patton and men like Admiral Anthony McAuliffe had to put with in order to take the Belgian city of Bastonge specifically. Hitler himself, not Rommel, not any other commanding officer order twelve armored divisions down there to help fight off Patton and McAuliffe so their fear of Patton was definitely real on the German and this was also supplemented by the fact that they did use Patton as a decoy for a time during all the controversy that was swirling around him.
They did mention some of the past history as far as Patton coming from a stock of war heroes; however they did not mention some of his flaws or issues if you will. One of these flaws was the fact that Patton suffered from dyslexia. The dyslexia got to be so bad that he even failed a math course while he was at West Point. It’s unclear as to whether he did so poorly in the class because of the disorder or if he just didn’t like mathematics. Really, given the way he used to read volumes of war history daily it was probably distaste for quadratic equations. No wonder the fact that he struggled at math was not mentioned because that would certainly take from some of the mythology or mystique that surrounds the name of George S. Patton. It was mentioned how wealthy he was and they did hint on his aristocratic background a tad. This was probably one of the things that led to the resentment of him by some of his peers. The feud with General Bernard Montgomery was certainly real. Patton never missed an opportunity to take a pot shot at Montgomery whenever the opportunity arose. Grabbing the newspaper headlines the next day was something that is still of paramount importance today, so that hasn’t changed. Omar Bradley and his troops sure seemed to have to take the brunt of the onslaught in order for Patton to get all the glory and beat Montgomery to Messina. That’s what you get when you were a subordinate to Patton though, he’d get the rib eye steak and someone like Bradley when end up eating crow. On that note the scene where Patton prematurely gives himself a third star before senate confirmation is classic Patton, then you’ve got Mister play it by the book Bradley saying he should hold off until the process is finished. Once again, this is another contrast in their styles and personalities. You can tell that Bradley had the up most respect for the guy or else he wouldn’t have been involved with this movie. The scene at the end where Patton almost gets plowed over by the ox cart actually did happen. The truth of the matter is though that they did not document the car accident that he broke his neck in and died from complications of a year later or so. They ended up burying him in Luxembourg with the rest of his men who died while fighting in the third army which is really the way it was meant to be whether you believe in fate or not. One of the commentators on the history channel said watching Patton in that tank you almost got the impression that he didn’t realize he was in a tank and maybe he thought he was back on horseback with Pershing’s cavalry. He liked to ride horses his whole life and probably missed that element of it while having to sit in a tank or a jeep. In today’s media driven world there probably would have been more of a firestorm over the incidents that involved the slapping of the soldier who claimed to have battle fatigue and the comment about the British and Americans being the two countries who should rule the world. Patton would have been fired shortly after hitting the kid, the American Civil Liberties Union would drag him into court and sue him and maybe the United Nations would pass a resolution denouncing the off the cuff remarks about world domination.
That remark about joining the Republicans and Democrats is kind of the same way in which people joined the Nazi Party certainly is an interesting thought. The process of not going along with the de-Nazification process was another thing that got Patton into hot water. Looking back it now makes me wonder with how carefully Eisenhower was watching over Patton whether Eisenhower was just playing a good diplomatic role to the rest of the world by limiting Patton’s role or whether Ike was worried about his own future as well. It had always been my impression that the presidential candidacy talk, draft movement business just kind of fell into Eisenhower’s lap. Once again this was a contrast in styles with Eisenhower being more of the diplomatic type and Patton being the pure soldier. It was a hard job trying to keep the entire continent of Europe in one peace and maybe Patton’s brain just wasn’t wired to think that way and Omar Bradley’s was and this is why it was a good move to make Bradley Patton’s superior for a time.
