Certainly American wars are… Europeans have the envious luxury of being invaded by short men with outsized ideas every so often…
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It's almost like there hasn't been a movie about Patton yet!I’m sorry, but I think he could have done also differently if he just would like to do so. But Patton clearly isn’t giving his best effort here. I hope he was not like that all the time.
Edit: I sense some nice ingredients for a good movie here
I fully agree that a perfect human being should regard people who did him or her well in the past, with compassion. In fact they should treat everyone with the kindness they deserve, friend or foe. But in the real world we're not asking military leaders to be Buddhas. We're asking them to be mentally strong when faced with shock and pain, to keep their cool amidst human suffering, to inflict enormous suffering on others without hesitation if that is required by their mission, and most importantly (by a long margin!!) we're asking them to be obedient servants of the government appointed above them.
Human compassion, jeez, I wouldn't even know where to rank that at all in the list of virtues desired from military leaders. The military has dedicated chaplains to care for the feelings and souls of the soldiers, so that the higher officers explicitly don't have to do that.
You have to be realistic what to expect. It's not reasonable to judge a general like Patton by the standards of common men. We expect them to be so much more, in certain fields, than common men, that we have to be lenient with their shortcomings in other fields.
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Patton is an interesting study. He is from another era. On his bedside table are military strategy and the Bible and he knows them both like the back of his hand. When the great mobilization of the US began, Patton wasn't pushed into staff duties like many older generals because both George Marshall and Eisenhower knew his value. An effective battlefield commander and a political nightmare to manage.
Patton slapping that (PTSD) soldier in Sicily - in any other army in the entire world no one would have batted an eye. In Russia that soldier would have been shot by a political commissar, in Germany 50,000 soldiers were summarily executed for minor infractions / cowardice.
But the Patton story was sold to the press and created maybe the most important lie of the war, Operation Fortitude - the fact that Patton controlled a mythical army group, FUSAG, poised to land at the Pas de Calais was so cunning the Germans based their entire strategy upon it.
That same mindset pushes US vets off Federal lands.
Patton slapping that (PTSD) soldier in Sicily - in any other army in the entire world no one would have batted an eye. In Russia that soldier would have been shot by a political commissar, in Germany 50,000 soldiers were summarily executed for minor infractions / cowardice.
But the Patton story was sold to the press and created maybe the most important lie of the war, Operation Fortitude - the fact that Patton controlled a mythical army group, FUSAG, poised to land at the Pas de Calais was so cunning the Germans based their entire strategy upon it.
That same mindset pushes US vets off Federal lands.
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Talking about American inductees . . .
Nixon's invasion of Cambodia is directly influenced by Nixon watching, and loving, the hard-line anti-commie stance taken in Patton. He wanted to be like Patton, so he went on the offensive.
How a film influenced Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia
Popular culture plays an underestimated role in shaping policymakers' world views and choices.
www.japantimes.co.jp
This lead to a bump in American troop levels to the war-profiteering Vietnam War, causing more years of war and pain, and laying the ground for the Killing Fields to come; all because unscrupulous men whose ego demands they save the planet from (insert reason here) are easily swayed by pretty lies.
And US army vets from Vietnam . . . God bless 'em because no one else will.
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Wanting to accomplish a mission and carry out legal orders regardless of casualties is one thing.
Riding down a former comrade who literally saved your life, along with innocent women and children, with a cavalry sabre requires the sort of soldier who does well in armies that click their heels and goosestep, to paraphrase another famous American movie (Seven Days in May).
Speaking of Patton. His reputation sure survived intact. Everyone focuses on his slapping incident as the low point of his career, and completely ignore the incredibly stupid meatgrinder attack on Metz that he insisted on in 1944. It's kind of like how Saint Bradley got a pass for that needless slaughter in the Huertgen Forest.
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What was illegal about McArthur ordering his aide, Eisenhower, to take action; which he did by summoning Patton and his mounted troopers?
A superior officer giving an order doesn't automatically make it a legal order and Eisenhower makes clear in his memoirs that he tried to talk MacArthur out of it several times without success, because everyone knew it would get ugly for all involved and was horribly unethical, militarily speaking.
Aside from whatever creative interpretation MacArthur made of President Hoover's orders (given Hoover's later shock at what MacArthur ended up doing, it seems fairly likely to me that he hadn't expected an infantry bayonet charge, cavalry charge, gas and 6 tanks used on unarmed American citizens peacefully exercising their constitutional rights), it's also a fact that MacArthur's police action carried on for multiple days and Hoover told him to stop after the first day, which he ignored completely.
You may remember this same guy later wanted to turn the Korean War into WW3 by attacking China directly, undertook questionable fait accomplis in the Pacific solely to ensure his personal popularity in the Philippines, ran post-war Japan as his own private fiefdom, etc.
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So the United States is just bad and should always be seen in the worst possible light?
Andre, you wound me. I love the United States of Freedom. I don't love General 'I always wear a hat to hide my bald spot and giant ego' MacArthur. I struggle to imagine any scenario where his dad isn't a General and he still becomes important.
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The first slapping incident passed, as I recall, with a mild rebuke from Eisenhower. It was after the second incident - and after an American newspaper columnist put out the story - that Patton was disciplined.
I can't say that I have any high regard for MacArthur - for one, an ego that would have been amusing if it weren't so dangerous, and for two he had as bad a case of Presidential fever as any man since Salmon Chase. But... he was personally brave, did good service in WW1, did - from all accounts - an exemplary job as Chief of Staff, did probably as good a job as commander of the Philippine Army as anyone could have, and very capably managed the Army-Air Force-Navy operations in SouthWest Pacific. In my opinion he did a better job of running post-war Japan than anyone else, military or civilian, could have done.
And the Inchon landing was simply brilliant, his desire to nuke China was deranged, and his removal by Truman was absolutely correct.
So I wouldn't put him at the top of my list for generals... but despite his many, very large faults, he had large gifts also. As complicated a figure as anyone else in the WW2 era., and I include Churchill, FDR and Stalin in that list.
I think having Arthur MacArthur as a father helped, if only because he would have known his way around the Army bureaucracy almost from birth. But if he hadn't been enormously talented he'd never have advanced - the sons of other famous fathers had middling careers.
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I think that second incident also involved him drawing his side arm and threatening to shoot the soldier himself. A general slapping a soldier is not great, but a general waving a pistol around in a hospital ward while threatening murder is a bit trickier, particularly when reported on in the press.
Frankly, nothing in Patton's career makes it surprising to me that he would have few qualms, or at least none expressed that I know of, about suppressing the Bonus Army. His orders came from the highest authority, and I suspect that he probably thought they should be forced out of their camp (though I have no hard evidence on this).
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According to the Wiki:
Thus we see that MacArthur, rather than disobeying the direct order of the commander in chief., may not have received it.
Eisenhower's objection was not to MacArthur's actions, but to MacArthur being personally present.
Joe Angelo did not approach Patton until the day after, but was unsuccessful in persuading Patton to support the marchers.
Patton could have received Angelo, listened and declined to support him, but the direct refusal is more in Patton's style.
The full Wiki entry is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
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An Army intelligence report claimed that the BEF intended to occupy the Capitol permanently and instigate fighting, as a signal for communist uprisings in all major cities. It also conjectured that at least part of the Marine Corps garrison in Washington would side with the revolutionaries, hence Marine units eight blocks from the Capitol were never called upon. The report of July 5, 1932 by Conrad H. Lanza in upstate New York was not declassified until 1991.
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At 1:40 pm MacArthur ordered General Perry Miles to assemble troops on the Ellipse immediately south of the White House. Within the hour the 3rd Cavalry led by Patton, then a Major, crossed the Memorial Bridge, with the 12th Infantry arriving by steamer about an hour later. At 4 pm Miles told MacArthur that the troops were ready, and MacArthur (like Eisenhower, by now in service uniform), said that Hoover wanted him "on hand" to "take the rap if ..."
At 4:45 pm. commanded by General Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six M1917 light tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch. The Bonus Marchers, believing the troops were marching in their honor, cheered the troops until Patton ordered[citation needed] the cavalry to charge them, which prompted the spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"
Shacks that members of the Bonus Army erected on the Anacostia Flats burning after attack by the regular army.
After the cavalry charged, the infantry, with fixed bayonets and tear gas (adamsite, an arsenical vomiting agent) entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River to their largest camp, and Hoover ordered the assault stopped. MacArthur chose to ignore the president and ordered a new attack, claiming that the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow the US government. 55 veterans were injured and 135 arrested. A veteran's wife miscarried. When 12-week-old Bernard Myers died in the hospital after being caught in the tear gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, and a hospital spokesman said the tear gas "didn't do it any good."
During the military operation, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th president of the United States, served as one of MacArthur's junior aides. Believing it wrong for the Army's highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there," he said later. "I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff." Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower wrote the Army's official incident report that endorsed MacArthur's conduct.
Although the troops were ready, Hoover twice sent instructions to MacArthur not to cross the Anacostia bridge that night, both of which were received. Shortly after 9 pm, MacArthur ordered Miles to cross the bridge and evict the Bonus Army from its encampment in Anacostia. This refusal to follow orders was claimed by MacArthur's assistant chief of staff George Van Horn Moseley. However, MacArthur's aide Dwight Eisenhower, Assistant Secretary of War for Air F. Trubee Davison, and Brigadier General Perry Miles, who commanded the ground forces, all disputed Moseley's claim. They said the two orders were never delivered to MacArthur and they blamed Moseley for refusing to deliver the orders to MacArthur for unknown reasons. The shacks in the Anacostia Camp were then set on fire, although who set them on fire is somewhat unclear.
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Joe Angelo, a decorated hero from the war who had saved Patton's life during the Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 26, 1918, approached him the day after to sway him. Patton, however, dismissed him quickly. This episode was said to represent the proverbial essence of the Bonus Army, each man the face of each side: Angelo the dejected loyal soldier; Patton the unmoved government official unconcerned with past loyalties.
Thus we see that MacArthur, rather than disobeying the direct order of the commander in chief., may not have received it.
Eisenhower's objection was not to MacArthur's actions, but to MacArthur being personally present.
Joe Angelo did not approach Patton until the day after, but was unsuccessful in persuading Patton to support the marchers.
Patton could have received Angelo, listened and declined to support him, but the direct refusal is more in Patton's style.
The full Wiki entry is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
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