Word: pattonism
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...things went wrong, Winterbotham notes, "Hitler invariably took remote control, which was a bonus, since most of his signals went on the air." This time Hitler's frantic radio orders gave Eisenhower "the master plan straight from the Fuehrer." With the Nazis trapped at Falaise, Eisenhower sent General Patton plunging east toward Germany. "Without Ultra," Winterbotham argues, "we might have had to meet the Russians on the Rhine instead of the Elbe, and they would have stayed...
...Patton's diaries and letters are full of shrewd, petulant and uncharitable observations. Toward Eisenhower, Patton was often privately savage, especially when he thought Ike was being too cozy with the British. He noted that Eisenhower had started wearing suede shoes, "à la British." To his wife Beatrice he wrote that Ike "spoke of lunch as 'tiffin' and of gasoline as 'petrol.' I truly fear that London has conquered Abilene." Because Eisenhower said he regarded himself as an Ally rather than specifically an American, Patton said he was "damned near to being Benedict Arnold...
...Genius. Churchill, Patton wrote after meeting him at Casablanca, "speaks the worst French I have ever heard, his eyes run, and he is not at all impressive." Montgomery, he thought, "was small, wonderfully conceited and the best soldier in this war." Harry Hopkins "was like a pilot fish for a shark [F.D.R.]," and King George "is just a grade above a moron, poor little fellow...
...Although Patton admired Omar Bradley, he referred to him as "Omar the Tentmaker." Of General Mark Wayne Clark he was almost invariably contemptuous and jealous. Patton's constant theme throughout the war was a kind of bewildered disappointment that men he regarded as his inferiors were surpassing him. "I can't see how people can be so dull and lacking in imagination," he wrote. "Compared to them, I am a genius. I think...
Early in his life, Patton spoke of winning a war so that the grateful nation would invite him home as a dictator. Eventually he understood that he was not suited for politics, but maybe it is just as well, as he did not return from the wars. He might not have known what to do with peacetime, and the nation might not have known what to do with Gorgeous George. ∙Lance Morrow