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murfmonkey 's review for:
(4.5 stars)
This is a fascinating, fairly short book that covers George Patton and the 3rd Army group during and after the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. The weather was awful and favored the Germans as they attacked and eventually surrounded U.S. troops in Bastogne. Patton got so frustrated with the weather that he asked his chaplain to come up with a prayer to hand out to the whole army to pray for better weather. The chaplain did; the soldiers prayed; and good weather came. Those are the facts.
The most interesting thing about the book is Patton himself who is undoubtedly the most colorful and interesting character in all of World War II. He was deeply religious, but horribly blunt and crude in his language. He was terribly vain, and yet always spoke of the achievements of the 3rd army by giving credit to the men over himself. He was undoubtedly an excellent combat leader, but a real failure at the end of the war when he was supposed to govern a section of Germany. He often said that the perfect ending for a warrior like him would be to get killed by the last bullet on the last day of the last battle.
Indeed, his hubris and vanity are seen in his one real crucial mistake when he sent off a section of his army to free a POW camp. The Germans caught the force and ended up killing or injuring a major portion of it, and there really was no tactical benefit to the move. He seems to have done it to get the glory for doing it and his son-in-law was a prisoner there.
Patton ended up dying in the most mundane way possible, a car accident in post-war Germany in which he broke his neck and was paralyzed. He died from the injuries after a few weeks.
Anyway, Patton makes for fascinating reading and this was a fascinating book.
This is a fascinating, fairly short book that covers George Patton and the 3rd Army group during and after the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. The weather was awful and favored the Germans as they attacked and eventually surrounded U.S. troops in Bastogne. Patton got so frustrated with the weather that he asked his chaplain to come up with a prayer to hand out to the whole army to pray for better weather. The chaplain did; the soldiers prayed; and good weather came. Those are the facts.
The most interesting thing about the book is Patton himself who is undoubtedly the most colorful and interesting character in all of World War II. He was deeply religious, but horribly blunt and crude in his language. He was terribly vain, and yet always spoke of the achievements of the 3rd army by giving credit to the men over himself. He was undoubtedly an excellent combat leader, but a real failure at the end of the war when he was supposed to govern a section of Germany. He often said that the perfect ending for a warrior like him would be to get killed by the last bullet on the last day of the last battle.
Indeed, his hubris and vanity are seen in his one real crucial mistake when he sent off a section of his army to free a POW camp. The Germans caught the force and ended up killing or injuring a major portion of it, and there really was no tactical benefit to the move. He seems to have done it to get the glory for doing it and his son-in-law was a prisoner there.
Patton ended up dying in the most mundane way possible, a car accident in post-war Germany in which he broke his neck and was paralyzed. He died from the injuries after a few weeks.
Anyway, Patton makes for fascinating reading and this was a fascinating book.