Was General George Patton Murdered?

His Critics and Contradictions

General Patton was not loved by everyone, however. The tough talking and flamboyant Patton was not shy to lace his comments with  profanity and vulgarities. He held anti-Semitic views, and belittled the efforts of African American soldiers who were in his army—he was a particularly outspoken and complex individual. In a letter written just two months before his death, Patton referred to Jews as “sub-human.”

In some ways, his life contradicted the image he had created. There are numerous examples of Patton’s fair and kind dealings with black troops, and he fervently pushed his army to try and help Jews escape the death camps. A complicated person, he was both loved and hated, sometimes simultaneously. Many considered him to be a bigot and racist, but he was also known as a man of faith, and he held deeply religious convictions. His life was a constant balance of both good and bad emotions. 

Known as Old Blood and Guts—”his guts, our blood,” some GIs said—he was criticized “for his ruthless pursuit but also scorned because he raced his troops in swift flanking movements around an enemy, trying to save lives by avoiding bloody frontal assaults.” (“Patton: Loved, Hated, Appreciated” by Richard Sassaman.)

Slapping Incidents

His hard driving personality got him into trouble several times. A non-believer of PTSD then referred to as “shell shock,” Patton slapped two suffering soldiers, believing they were cowards. These two incidents occurred in August 1943 and were enough for Eisenhower to relieve Patton of his command temporarily. Because of this, Patton was devastated to miss out on participating in the June 1944 D-Day invasion.

Details of His Death – Another Contradiction

Sunday, December 9, 1945, was a cold and icy day in Bad Nauheim, Germany. Patton, along with his chief of staff, General Hap Gay, was driving to Rhine Palatinate to pheasant hunt. Private Horace Woodring was driving the General’s 1938 Model 75 Cadillac. At the last minute, Patton decided to sit in the back seat. He insisted that the shivering hunting dog, which had been in the Jeep following them, sit in the front next to the heater. Patton was concerned that the dog was cold and might “freeze to death” in the open Jeep.  

Just before noon, a two 1/2-ton Army truck traveling slowly cut in front of the Cadillac. The truck’s big right front bumper struck the right front side of the car, leveling its radiator and front fender. General Gay and the driver had braced themselves from the impending impact and avoided injury, including the dog. Patton, however, never saw the truck coming and was hurled through the air, slicing the top of his skull and ripping the skin off; his face smashed into the driver’s partition, and the impact broke both his nose and his neck. He was paralyzed from the neck down, and he had trouble breathing.

General Patton hung on for 13 days and with his wife by his side. On December 21, he told his favorite nurse he was going to die that day. Shortly after Beatrice left for dinner in the hospital mess, he passed away. His doctors stated his death was due to “Pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure.” A blood clot had stopped his heart. 

“Old Blood and Guts” may have lost his life because of his kindness to the hunting dog.

Murder Conspiracies

   Patton called for the U.S. to invade the Soviet Union after the war was over.

In Killing Patton,  co-author Bill O’Reilly said when interviewed, “We believe he was poisoned in the hospital” by the Russian secret service. It was no secret that George Patton hated communists and was vocal about his anti-Soviet positions. O’Reilly argues that Patton was murdered to prevent him from influencing the United States against the Soviet Union.

   Prevent Patton From Running for President in 1948

Historian Robert Wilcox, who authored the book Target Patton, said this regarding his exhausting research about Patton’s death: “He also knew secrets of the war that would have ruined careers. I don’t think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected president if Patton had lived to say the things he wanted to say.” Wilcox’s narrative reads like a fiction thriller, including extracts from a now deceased individual, Mr. Douglas deWitt Bazata. Bazata is described as a highly decorated combat veteran who was also a spy and an abstract artist.

Bazata details in his diary how the car accident was staged and that Patton had been shot with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck, while the other individuals in the car escaped without a scratch. Later, as Patton started to recover, the American authorities looked the other way while Russian spies poisoned him. This all seems unbelievable and not credible.

   Silence Patton’s Criticisms of the Allied Post War Efforts

Tim Shipman wrote an article for  The Telegraph claiming that U.S. leaders murdered Patton to prevent him from damaging the Allied War Efforts. Shipman argued that post-WW 2, the stage was set to realign the powers in Europe, and because of its significance in ending the war, the Russians had to play a large part.

The Other Side

Is it likely that Patton was murdered because his enemies were afraid of him? Were his secrets so vital that he lost his life? Military historian Kevin Hymel said it is not likely that Patton had enemies so scared of him that they wanted him dead. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Rick Atkinson, agreed with Hymel, noting that Patton died from complications from a “fender bender.” That was all.

 “You’ve got to look at what Patton’s situation was,” said Carlo D’Este, the author of Patton: A Genius for War. “He was a quadriplegic, he was going to die anyway, he was totally immobilized, he couldn’t move. What is the point of assassinating him, and where did Stalin come from anyway? Sure, somebody could have snuck in the hospital, but why would you bother?  You need to verify facts. That certainly raises a red flag with me.”

Martin Blumenson

The late Martin Blumenson, a leading historian of WW 2 and who was considered an expert on Patton, never made any suggestions that his death was from anything other than an accident. “His wife Beatrice was by his side within a day – lingered for 13 days- and she read to him. She left for dinner in the hospital mess, and 20 minutes later, he had died. “Pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure failure.” (Patton – The Man Behind the Legend, Blumenson).

Even Patton’s grandson, Robert Patton, rejects the suggestion of assassination. “The theory is he either died naturally or from a blood clot,” he said. “You’re paralyzed, and this is what happens.” In all these years, no close member of the Patton family has ever come forward and said that the General was murdered.

Summary

To believe that George Patton was murdered, one has to underline the significance of the rumors surrounding his death. Some journalists want us to think that Beatrice Patton’s refusal to have an autopsy of her husband was suspicious. If she had suspected foul play, this writer believes she would have demanded an autopsy. And she did not. Other rumors suggest the driver was “whisked off,” and specific archival files related to the accident were missing. Despite the rumor, the driver had not vanished and was thoroughly interviewed. As far as the missing files, that is a mystery, but not enough to raise my suspicions.

Was the accident staged, and did the driver intentionally run into Patton’s car? In this fairy tale, a spy quickly slipped into his car and shot him with a low-velocity projectile, breaking his neck. The details add up to a simply far-fetched story of weirdness.

The underlying theme behind the murder scenarios is about preventing General Patton from talking and exposing certain top secrets about the Soviets. Patton’s famous quote, “We are waging war with the wrong enemy,” leads some to believe he suggests that Russia was our enemy. It was well known that George Patton had vigorously pushed the idea of not stopping the war but continuing it and invading Russia. The problem is that few people in authority were listening to Patton, so where’s the motive for murder?

Final Comments

In recent years researchers discovered a yellowed medical form which revealed that Patton knew death was near. On the  handwritten part of Patton’s toe tag reads: “December 19 – Death ra[tt]les – Given atropine & oxygen. [Dec.] 21 – [Death rattles] – Resting quietly but told nurse that he was going to die. Died at 1755 with sudden stop of heart. Myocardia failure- spinal cord damaged- 3rd cervical vertebrae- No autopsy- Permission refused by Mrs. Patton on death certificate.”  

General George Patton would have loved the attention derived from these murder conspiracies. There is always a chance that Patton was murdered, but I think it is just that — a chance, but a slim one.

A few weeks before he died, Patton expressed his own assessment of himself , saying:

” Another war has ended, and with it, my usefulness to the world. ”

                    General George Patton