BOOK REVIEW: 'Target: Patton' Explores the Suspicious Car Crash That Led to Controversial General's Death
By David M. Kinchen
On Sunday, Dec. 9, 1945, a day before he was to return to the U.S., Gen. George S. Patton Jr., the highest ranking American general in occupied Germany, went on his last hunting trip. On the way to hunt birds with another American general, Patton's 1938 Cadillac Fleetwood limousine plowed into an army truck that had suddenly turned in front of them.
Robert K. Wilcox explores the accident and the widely held theory that the controversial general was assassinated in "Target: Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton" (Regnery, 444 pages, $27.95).
It's a thoroughly researched book that raises many questions about a general that many people are familiar with through the 1970 multiple Oscar-winning movie "Patton" starring George C. Scott as "Old Blood and Guts."
"Patton" the film was based in part by a book by Ladislas Farago, Wilcox tells us, one of the many writers who delved into the accident which left Patton with a broken neck and partial paralysis, although no one else in the big Caddy received more than a few scratches and bruises.
What was the driver of the 2 1/2-ton GMC Army truck, Specialist Robert L. Thompson, doing out on a Sunday morning and what happened to the two men who were in the truck's cab with him -- in violation of a regulation that limited the cab to a driver and a passenger?
Among the issues Wilcox raises are:
* What happened to the five known accident reports on the Dec. 9, 1945 crash involving a four-star general? The reports are nowhere to be found.
* Patton was making a remarkable recovery in a German hospital when he suddenly had a relapse and died on Dec. 21, 1945. The death certificate lists "pulmonary edema & congestive heart failure" as the cause of death. Why was there no autopsy?
* Patton's life had been threatened earlier in several odd incidents, including a fender bender and a road incident with a farmer's cart. Patton had been warned that he was on a hit list and he told his family that he didn't expect to leave Europe alive.
* What happened to the Cadillac that Patton was riding in? The car in the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky, is a 1939 export model that is made to look like the '38 Caddy that Patton used, according to a Cadillac expert Wilcox employed to examine the museum car. The museum car has a "Body by Fisher" emblem -- but the Series 75 car Patton used was built by Fleetwood.
* Why was Patton the only one injured in the crash? The driver of the Cadillac, Horace L. "Woody" Woodring, wasn't injured in those pre-seat belt, air bag days, nor was Gen. Hobart Gay, Patton's hunting companion.
* Why was truck driver Thompson spirited out of Germany?
Patton was 60 when he died, five years older than the Supreme Commander in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and -- in Wilcox's opinion, a far more experienced and talented leader. Unlike Eisenhower, he had been in combat in World War I and was the logical leader in the European theater since he was far and away the best general and the one most feared by the Germans, Wilcox writes.
But, as any viewer of the excellent film knows, Patton was a controversial leader, a loose cannon who pretty much said what he was thinking. He hated the Russians, the allies of the Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and free French armies, calling them the "degenerate spawn of Genghis Khan." He even suggested using SS troops to fight the Russians and was widely believed to be an anti-Semite, despite the fact that his intelligence chief, Col. Oscar Koch, was Jewish, as was his authorized biographer, Martin Blumenson.
Wilcox explores the relationship of Patton with his commanding officers, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Gen. George C. Marshall, the commanding general of the U.S. Army and William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency.
One of the theories Wilcox examines is singles out Donovan, a friend of FDR and an advocate of friendship with the Russians, as the one who ordered an assassination of Patton before he left Germany.
Patton had telegraphed his plans to resign from the Army, rather than retire -- he was independently wealthy -- allowing him to speak freely about the war and the mistakes he believed Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and other generals had made, Wilcox writes.
Despite the controversial soldier slapping incidents that many writers -- including Wilcox -- have said were blown out of proportion by reporters, Patton was extremely popular back in the States. His brilliant moves with the Third Army to resolve the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944--January 1945 had been well publicized and his drive across Germany had also been praised by many.
Wilcox is a harsh critic of Eisenhower, blaming him for allowing the Germans to put the Ardennes Offensive -- the Battle of the Bulge -- into play. He also faults Eisenhower's reliance on British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, not a friend of Patton's, and the man whose failure to secure the port of Antwerp, Belgium is cited by Wilcox as one of the reasons for the failure of Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne effort in military history, which was dramatized in the 1977 film "A Bridge Too Far."
A central figure in the book is Douglas Bazata, an OSS operative who specialized in "wet work", who said he had been asked by Donovan to assassinate Patton. Bazata said he didn't do the deed, saying the "accident" in Bad Nauheim near Germany's Black Forest had been staged by an acquaintance whom he did not or would not name. Since Patton didn't die in the crash, Bazata said the death of the general was caused by a "refined form of cyanide that can cause embolisms, heart failure and things like that."
Bazata himself is worthy of a movie with his background of decorated war hero, artist, and mercenary who said he was ordered by U.S. intelligence to assassinate Patton.
Wilcox says that Patton could have been killed by the Soviet equivalent of the OSS, the NKVD (later renamed KGB and now known as the FSB in post-Soviet Russia), an organization that specialized in both deadly car crashes and poisonings. Wilcox cites several Ukrainian operatives and others who said the Soviets had Patton on their hit list.
Investigative and military reporter Wilcox, author of "Black Aces High: and "Wings of Fury," has spent more than ten years investigating these mysteries, and in his new book he draws on the famous declassified Venona documents to probe the death of Patton.
"Target: Patton" is a book that anyone who is interested in World War II history should put on his or her must-read list. It reads like a spy thriller.
