George S. Patton was among the most famous American generals of World War II, a household name alongside Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. He led armies to victory in North Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany, and his final campaign ended just inside Czechoslovakia. Yet his last months were marked by controversy, depression, and anger, and his death in December 1945 at age 60 has fueled speculation ever since.
Patton was brilliant but difficult. He often stated his opinions bluntly and frequently clashed with Allied authorities. During the invasion of Sicily in 1943, he gave a public order that his troops should take no prisoners. After 73 Italian prisoners of war were executed near Biscari, two soldiers were tried for war crimes. The investigation was dropped on the orders of General Omar Bradley, who wanted to protect Patton’s reputation.
Just weeks later, Patton slapped a U.S. soldier suffering from combat fatigue at an evacuation hospital. He did it again days later with another soldier, calling him a coward and saying he ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. The incidents were hushed up, but they damaged his standing with some commanders.
Near the end of the war, Patton ordered a task force to go 50 miles behind German lines to liberate a POW camp at Hammelburg. The mission was a disaster. Of 314 men and 16 Sherman tanks that set out, only 35 men returned, with no tanks or vehicles. It later emerged that Patton’s son-in-law, Colonel John Waters, was held at the camp. The press attention was unwelcome to Eisenhower, and the episode was quietly buried.
Patton also became increasingly hostile toward the Soviet Union. He did not want to stop his army at the Bavarian-Czech frontier and allowed some units to push into territory that would become Soviet-controlled. He once said of the Russians that he had no desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it took to kill them.
Many Allied leaders disliked him. Bradley disliked Patton intensely. Sir Alan Brooke, the British chief of the imperial general staff, called him a dashing, courageous, wild, and unbalanced leader, good for operations requiring thrust but at a loss in any operation requiring skill and judgment. President Harry Truman compared him unfavorably to other egotists like MacArthur and Custer.
After Germany’s surrender in May 1945, Patton demanded a transfer to the Pacific. He was denied. Instead, he was ordered back to Germany as military governor of Bavaria. He was bored and restless in the role. He viewed denazification as unimportant and remained obsessed with the Soviet threat. He said the United States had won the war against Germany but failed in the liberation of Europe.
Patton made several public statements that embarrassed Eisenhower and Truman. He said that being in the SS meant no more in Germany than being a Democrat in America. He also suggested that a man who dies in battle is frequently a fool, a remark made before an audience that included many bereaved mothers and wives. His comments bordered on anti-Semitism and angered sections of the American press.
He was relieved as military governor and given command of the Fifteenth Army, a paper army in Germany. He took the job happily but continued to criticize U.S. policy. Both American and Soviet intelligence services tapped his phone, so concerned were they by his behavior.
On December 9, 1945, Patton was invited on a pheasant hunting trip near Mannheim. He rode in his 1938 Cadillac staff car, driven by Private First Class Horace Woodring. Major General Gay was with him. A jeep carrying the hunting gear and a dog drove ahead.
At a railway crossing, the Cadillac was held up by a passing train. After it passed, the driver pulled away and noticed two U.S. Army trucks parked half a mile ahead. One truck began moving toward them. As it passed, it suddenly veered left into the Cadillac’s path. Woodring had no time to react. The collision threw Patton forward into a railing behind the driver’s seat. He was bleeding heavily from a laceration running from the bridge of his nose to the top of his scalp.
Patton was paralyzed from the neck down. His vertebrae were severely dislocated. Specialists were flown in, and his wife came from America. About a week after the crash, he began to improve slightly, and preparations were made to fly him to the United States. But on December 20, he suddenly deteriorated. He died the next day of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure. He was buried at the U.S. cemetery at Hamm, Luxembourg, among the fallen of his Third Army.
The truck driver, Technical Sergeant Robert Thompson, seemed unconcerned after the crash. He grinned constantly, and Woodring believed he and two companions may have been drinking. Thompson was 50 miles from where he was supposed to be. No charges were filed. The accident was treated as routine.
For 30 years, no one suggested murder. The conspiracy theory only appeared in 1974 with the publication of a novel called *The Algonquin Project* by Frederick Nolan. It was fiction, loosely based on Patton’s death. A film, *Brass Target*, followed in 1978. From those fictions grew the assassination theory.
In 1979, a former OSS operative named Douglas Bazata claimed he had been asked by OSS director William Donovan to kill Patton. His story was full of inconsistencies. He claimed to have jammed a window open at a Roman ruin so he could shoot Patton with a special gun. When that failed, he said, Patton was finished off in the hospital with poison. No autopsy was performed, which fueled suspicion, but none was needed in a routine accident case.
Records related to the accident were later reported missing from the National Archives. That added to the mystery. Several books have since elaborated on the alleged plot, including a theory that the Soviet NKVD killed Patton. But no concrete evidence has ever been produced that contradicts the original witness statements.
In the end, the evidence points to an accident. Patton died because of a chain of unfortunate circumstances. When great people die in ordinary ways, some reach for the fantastic because they cannot accept the mundane. The conspiracy to kill Patton is a fictional book and movie plot that took on a life of its own. Until real evidence of foul play appears, Patton’s death must remain what it was: an accident.