Patton, North Africa WWII

"When the great day of battle comes, remember your training...you must succeed, for to retreat is as cowardly as it is fatal.  Americans do not surrender.  During the first days and nights ashore you must work unceasingly, regardless of sleep, regardless of food.  A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.  The eyes of the world are watching us.  The heart of America beats for us.  God is with us.  On our victory depends the freedom or slavery of the human race.  We shall surely win."
    – General George S. Patton, upon the Torch Landings North Africa

For the Americans, there would not have been the same contribution to the Allied victory if it was not for the primary force of the Eisenhower, Marshall and Patton trio.  Marshall was the grandfather of

the American efforts in WWII, himself an old warrior and chairman of defense in America.  There came a point at the beginning of WWII – which goes a long way in understanding Marshall's significance – where it was assumed that he would be the only man who could likely lead the American troops on the channel crossing (D-Day Normandy) efforts against Nazi Germany.  FDR, however, finally gave in and elected Eisenhower as the Allied Commander of all efforts instead, because, "FDR did not think he would sleep well if Marshall was out of the country."  Eisenhower had gifts of military administration that ended up unsurpassed in all realms of all of the militaries in the WWII effort.  Eisenhower had never seen live battle and never would lead actual troops in any

battle in his life, but he was, as was unanimously seen by the British, the French, the Russians, and his own American counterparts, the only man they knew capable of sustaining an allied force, coordinating, smoothing over differences, making calculated judgements, and frankly, outsmarting, in many instances, all but Marshall and FDR themselves. (It is a very interesting sidenote that Eisenhower's eventual eight-year presidency would end up being the most peaceful two terms in Presidential history.  As the ex-Allied commander, he was committed in the extreme to peace, diffusing the Korean crisis, keeping the cold war cold and not escalating it, and moving toward some peaceful solutions in the middle east.  In military matters, Ike was his own greatest expert and could often by-pass the silly frenzy of politicians calling for war during his presidency, and thereby could act almost unilaterally toward peaceful solutions in crisis. Inaccurately, Ike is often perceived as a War President by many.  In complete truth, he held a fiery torch for peace, was a scholar of extreme talents, and was often the most tolerant of diverse views in his entire administration.)

If Marshall and Ike conceived of and administered the American strategy in WWII, it was Patton who best represented (besides maybe General Omar Bradley), the pure soldier as general on the ground...and who actually won the war.

His motto was shaped by two primary facts in WWII: 1) the Americans were fighting inside enemy territory; 2) The Nazi regime, justly, needed to be eradicated from power.  As he is often quoted as saying, "I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position.  We're not holding anything.  Let the Hun do that.  We are advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy."  It was this attitude of relentless attack which the Germans could not account for over and over again in North Africa, in France, and eventually in Germany itself.  Patton was the extreme case of the self-important General who believed so deeply in his own destiny that he created it as he went along.  His fellow commanders did not always trust that Patton was attacking out of commitment to the cause or commitment to his destiny, but it was this very enigmatic power that allowed Patton to understand and defeat his enemy (the enemy of course was almost in its entirety made up of such delusions.  The difference, as Patton would kindly point out, was that at least he knew and understood his own delusions of grandeur).

Because of the brilliance of this trio (and largely Churchill as well), the Americans saved Europe from generations of a new form of Middle Ages.  There was this moment in time when the combined powers of America, France, Britain and Russia held the world in their hands.  Russia quickly split from the cause; France nearly as quickly caved to pride and turned its nose to the prospect of American predominance, none of which would have been fully predicted in those early beach landings at Casablanca.