"It would be as hard to give up all thought [of being a soldier] as
it would be to stop breathing," wrote George S. Patton in October 1945; "The
great tragedy of my life was that I survived the last battle." But Patton would
not see the year out: in December he would die as a result of injuries sustained
in an automobile accident in Germany. His
unexpected death sent shock waves through the American and Russian commands. It
seemed plausible that America’s greatest general may have
been a victim of foul play. In the seven months following the German surrender,
Patton had openly and provocatively criticized the Soviet
Union and appeared to have transformed from a staunch anti-Nazi to a
Nazi sympathizer. The Last Days of Patton by Ladislas Farago, a follow-up to his
bestselling Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, attempts to reconstruct the last months
of Patton’s life in order to determine
if the general did indeed try to
provoke a war with the Soviet Union and whether he failed to sufficiently
de-Nazify the area of Germany under his jurisdiction. Farago also investigates
the possibility of a conspiracy to murder Patton and reveals the role other
prominent men, including Eisenhower, Montgomery, Marshall, and MacArthur, had in
censuring and ultimately removing Patton from active service. The Last Days of
Patton, originally published in 1981, is the story of the general’s final battle
- a professional soldier caught up in the changing politics of the emerging Cold
War and new reality of the atomic age.
