Gen. George Patton, “Old Blood and Guts,” is one of the most renowned leaders in American military history, known for both his expertise in mobile tank warfare and his brash behavior and mercurial temper. The conventional wisdom is that Germany viewed him as the most dangerous Allied commander; that they tracked his movements around the Mediterranean after the Allied victory in North Africa as an indicator of the Allies’ next move; and that his role as commanding general of the fictious First Army Group in Britain deceived German strategists about where the D-Day landings would occur.
However, many of the senior enemy officers were veteran masters of mobile warfare on the Eastern front and were well qualified to render judgments on him that often markedly differ from the legends most people have heard. Harry Yeide, a national security adviser and the author of Fighting Patton—which draws on original German reports and recollections and accounts from Vichy France—discusses how America’s enemies viewed Patton.
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