Y1806

In the smoking ruins of Germany in the spring of 1945, the most feared officers of the Nazi war machine discovered that the American privates guarding them had no intention of playing along with their delusions of grandeur. The final collapse of the Third Reich produced one of the most extraordinary cultural collisions of the … Read more

BAVARIA, Germany — A column of American tanks rolled into a small village square outside Munich on the afternoon of April 23, 1945, and found twelve men in black uniforms waiting for them, backs straight, hands empty, eyes forward like they were on parade. They were Waffen SS officers, the death’s head insignia still sewn … Read more

LUXEMBOURG — Inside a top-secret Allied interrogation facility known as Camp Ashcan, the captured architects of Hitler’s war machine sat stiffly before American intelligence officers in the summer of 1945, and what they revealed about one Allied general would reshape how history judges the Second World War. The German high command, men who had conquered … Read more

Western Germany, May 1945 — A convoy of polished black Mercedes-Benz staff cars rolled to a stop at a United States Army checkpoint, and the men who stepped out expected to be greeted as honored guests rather than defeated enemies. The lead vehicle disgorged an SS general in an immaculate black uniform, his boots shined … Read more

Third Army headquarters confirmed Thursday that Gen. George S. Patton Jr. personally confronted a captured German general who refused to surrender the Bavarian city of Kronach, asking him during a private afternoon meeting whether six days of brutal urban combat had been “worth it” — and receiving a one-word answer that aides described as the … Read more

FREISING, Germany — Twenty-two Wehrmacht officers stood in the gravel courtyard of a requisitioned German garrison headquarters on the morning of May 8, 1945, and refused to raise their right hands to the American flag climbing the pole above them. Within hours, the decision would bring Lt. Gen. George S. Patton himself through the garrison … Read more

A furious General George S. Patton Jr. launched a multi-front campaign to correct the historical record after a British general publicly claimed credit for a victory won by Patton’s Third Army, confronting the officer directly, appealing to Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, and personally assuring his troops that their sacrifices would not be erased from … Read more

BERLIN — In the shattered heart of the defeated Third Reich, a confrontation between two of the most formidable military commanders of the Second World War laid bare the raw tensions of an alliance already fracturing, as General George S. Patton Jr. forcefully rebutted a thinly veiled accusation of cowardice from Marshal Georgy Zhukov during … Read more