WAs Gen G.S. Patton Right?

Question

When in 1945 He said we should take Berlin then Turn our Armies East and attack the russsians.I believe we could have beat them and avoided the cold war.

Answer 1

Yes and ....no.

Can we have done it ?? Yes, without a doubt.
By not doing it, we created the Cold War, and believe it or not , that may have been the best thing to happen to this country post WWII.

Why ? Simply, it was an US vs. THEM
maxim, the country thrived and technology took a giant leap forward by virtue of our competition (The USSR).

Let's look at the world post cold war - do we only have "one"
specific competitor ? No. It used to be the US and the USSR dictated policy throughout the world, now we don't. We certainly don't have the clout or influence we used to.
In the days of the cold war there's two things we didn't have that we have now:

1) Terrorism
2) Our country is disdained throughout the world.

I sometimes sit and wonder if we watching the fall of the modern Roman empire.

Answer 2

I don't think so. First, our Allies would never have gone for it. France had manpower but would not fight alongside the Nazis; Britain was drained of both men and money and none of the Commonweath nations would have joined w/o Britain.

Second, Truman never would have gotten the American people onboard with a war against the Russians. Remember, by 1945 people had been seeing the Russians as allies for years. Turning on them (likely by surprise) would have gone against the sense of "fairplay." Plus, war weariness was already becoming apparent. A war against the Russians (along with the Japanese) would have been very bloody and long.

Third, the Russians were at the pinnacle of their wartime power. If the Germans couldn't beat them in 1941-42, what makes you think we could in '45 with supply lines many times longer?

Fourth, I think there would have been problems with the troops. After fighting the Germans since Normandy and especially after seeing the concentration camps, would they suddenly accept the Nazis as allies?

Patton was an effective wartime commander, but I don't think he would have done well during peacetime. I've often thought that his death was timely in that his reputation is relatively positive today. Had he lived, I think he would only have tarnished it.

Answer 3

With the war on terror raging right now the Cold War seems almost quaint, dosen't it? But I am old enough to remember what a threat Russia was to us for so long and Gen Patton had the foresite to see it.
War should be avoided unless it is absolutely necessary for the defense of the country and during 1945 war with Russia was not necessary.

Answer 4

From a political stand point that was not feasible-the rest of his plan was to recruit the Wermacht into the anti-Russian alliance and the French in particuliar would have had a problem with that. From the military strength side of it-it would have been longer and bloodier then I think he imagined, GEN Patton did not suffer from lack of self-confidence. If you research WW2 and look at the Eastern Front and German military assignments you would see that the vast majority of the Axis military machine was deployed against the Russians (75% to 80%) and about 90% of the "premier" German troops and equipment was deployed there-that is the Waffen SS units, most of the Tigers and King Tigers, German jet attack aircraft (yes they had jet bomber/attack aircraft also) and so on. The Germans thought they could defeat the Russians and the "two front war in Europe" wasn't started until two years after the Russian campaign started. To be honest I do not think the combined Allied forces could have defeated Russia at that time, with German help it would have closer but I think at best we could have pushed them back and maybe held a line somewhere in Europe or slightly into Russia proper but not defeated them. Russian armor (T34/85) was barely second to the Germans in quality, superior to anything the Alies had in quality and quantity and the Russian Air Force was behind somewhat in quality but had more of a quantity and were not that "bad" lots of Russian made copies of Allied aircraft including the P51 (Yak-9 I think it was called). Russian manufacturing areas were out of range or would have required an extremely long flight over hostile territory meaning heavy losses and even higher loss of crews when aircraft were damaged or lost. Best plan would have been to have the Allies keep moving forward instead of stopping and letting the Russians have Eastern Europe and take most of Gemany, as agreed to by the political leadership against Churchill's advice, but once it was agreed to then it was done. Many German units and military leaders have stated they had no intention to fight the Americans or British hard once they enterred Germany proper because they would have preferred having them take Germany then the Russians. In short I doubt that we could have beaten them once we gave up the territory we did and even then we still had the Japanese to contend with since the Pacific was still hot; since Russia was not at war with the Japanese it is possible they would have "allied" with them and we would have been in much more trouble there; we beat the Japanese with nuclear weapons but the political fallout from usng them in a war with the Russians we started would have been much greater.

Answer 5

In 1945 USSR had 590 divisions,and few months before that
in their final attack against Berlin they fielded 600 Guns and 200 tanks per kilometre of front...
I always liked George but on this I think he erred and not on the side of caution...

Answer 6

At the end, the Russians themselves, as well as others, turned into democratic peoples. So war wasn't necessary-it was done even better. But at that time, one may understand that way of thinking, especially when the Soviet Union was massacring those soldiers who thought escaping Stalinism could be achieved by joining Nazi units, and Communist Yugoslavia was massacring any units which were not Communist, including those who resisted Nazi occupation and saved US and other Allied pilots (including Soviet) who had to bail out over Yugoslavia.

Answer 7

It would have been a long hard war but yes it could have been won. America was tired of war and wanted the end to come soon so that war sould have been very unpopular...sound familiar!

Answer 8

Indeed George Patton was correct, but then as today, the politicians had no gonads and were unwilling to allow the military to do as it was capable. Patton would have wiped the Russians out, but the world situation would have crapped their pants if he had been allowed to do what he wanted.
Just as General Petraeus is handicapped by idiot politicians today.

Answer 9

do you comprehend of Pattons ties to teh conflict; Lee and and Stuart? i comprehend you're no longer camparing the two as there is no evaluation or everybody that has or ever will close to to Marse Lee. a great-uncle, Waller T. Patton, perished of wounds won in Pickett's fee for the duration of the conflict of Gettysburg. yet another relative Hugh Weedon Mercer replaced right into a accomplice everyday.dying on the conflict of Opequon (the third conflict of Winchester), Patton's grandfather left at the back of a namesake son, born in Charleston, West Virginia while it replaced into nonetheless component to Virginia. the 2nd George Smith Patton (born George William Patton in 1856, replaced his call to honor his late father in 1868) replaced into one in each of four infants. Graduating from the Virginia militia Institute in 1877, earlier taking on a occupation as an lawyer, Patton's father served by way of fact the 1st city point District lawyer of Pasadena, California and the 1st mayor of San Marino, California. that's rumored that Patton's mom saved paintings of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson of their lounge; Patton popular them as she study to him from her rocking chair. he's quoted as asserting, "till i replaced into old adequate to comprehend greater suited, i presumed those have been graphics of God the father, and God the Son." God Bless Marse Lee, You and the Southern human beings.

Answer 10

Yes.

Stalin was more evil than Hitler.

In fact, Hitler and Stalin conspired together to invade Poland.

Course, the US population was tired of war and almost didn't want to finish the war against Japan...