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Gen. George S. Patton Jr. ordered a captured German general who mocked American soldiers as soft “shopkeepers” to witness three days of front-line combat, a psychological confrontation that military historians now describe as one of the most unusual episodes of prisoner handling in the European theater. The German officer, identified as Generalmajor Heinrich von Kleist, … Read more

EISENACH, Germany — A defiant German lieutenant colonel who refused a direct order inside a Third U. S. Army prisoner enclosure learned on April 12, 1945, that the only authority remaining behind the wire belonged to Gen. George S. Patton, and that the general’s patience could be measured in seconds. The confrontation unfolded in a … Read more

Dwight Eisenhower was in his office in Washington when the telephone rang on December 21, 1945, and the voice on the other end told him George Patton was dead. The general who had been the most feared and most troublesome commander in the American army had died of injuries suffered in a car accident in … Read more

VERSAILLES — General Dwight D. Eisenhower came within a single unsigned letter of ending the career of Britain’s most celebrated field marshal, and the confrontation that finally broke the Allied command’s patience was triggered not by tanks but by a press conference held seventy-eight years ago this week in the frozen Ardennes. On January 7, … Read more

A captured German general’s sneering dismissal of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur as “desk generals” triggered one of the most extraordinary confrontations of World War II, when Gen. George S. Patton summoned the prisoner to his headquarters and delivered a blistering, hour-long dismantling of German military arrogance that left the Wehrmacht officer visibly shaken … Read more

General George S. Patton ordered the arrest of more than 40 Third Army officers and enlisted men in February 1945 after an investigation 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 a sprawling black market network that had diverted millions of dollars in food, fuel, medicine and equipment meant for frontline troops, according to military records and testimony from the period. The … Read more

LONDON — A profanity-laced confrontation inside a British officers’ club in southern England has escalated into one of the most consequential showdowns of the Allied war effort, after word reached Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. that senior British commanders had dismissed American troops as “Britain’s inexperienced little brother” and “children playing at warfare with … Read more