Killing Patton: The Strange Death Of World War II's Most Audacious General Quotes
"The real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared."
"Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all the time."
"An Army is a team; it lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team."
"Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge."
"Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men."
"The truth is far different. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. is paralyzed from the neck down."
"The general whom Nazi Germany feared more than any other, is already dead."
"Patton’s fiery determination to speak the truth had many powerful men squirming."
"Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American."
"The autumn air is chill and damp. As he does each morning at just about this time, Adolf Hitler emerges from the artificial light of his concrete bunker into the morning sun."
"Time alone in the fresh air allows him to manage the discomfort without wrinkling the noses of his staff, which would be an acute embarrassment to the exalted leader."
"The official cause of death is not the cyanide that he was forced to swallow, turning his mucous a dark brown as his body lost its ability to breathe."
"I must so seriously question your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness."
"The shortage of gasoline, guns, and bullets that ground George S. Patton to a halt outside Metz still afflicts all the Allied forces up and down their five-hundred-mile front lines."
"Nicotine and caffeine are the only ways Eisenhower can manage the stress."
"In his lifetime, Stalin will murder millions of people. Some will be shot, others will be denied food and ultimately die of starvation, millions will be sent to die in the deep winter snows of Siberia, and many will be tortured to death."
"He will do so without compassion or guilt, all the while living a life of luxury and debauchery in stark contrast to the rigors of the Communist lifestyle his government imposes."
"For even though Stalin and his American counterpart, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often treat Churchill as a drunken fool, the British leader is a most astute man."
"Britain’s global empire has been almost completely lost during the war—he seeks to regain some of the lost territory by dividing control of Europe between the Soviet Union and England."
"They will live in constant fear of being hauled off to Mokotów Prison, in Warsaw, where some of them will be tortured in a most horrific manner: skulls crushed, fingernails ripped off, torsos beaten with everything from brass rods to rubber truncheons."
"Horace Walpole’s prediction has come to pass. Instead of France, as it was in Walpole’s time, it is Stalin and the Soviet Union who are now dictating terms to Churchill and Great Britain."
"Her days of dancing on the front lines are most assuredly over. The German threat against Moscow is no more."
"The American people know none of this. Despite FDR’s upper-crust mannerisms, his public policies have done much to benefit the working class, and the folks love him."
"And so the Central Intelligence Agency is born."
"But there is a far greater truth behind Roosevelt hiding his affliction: America is not ready for a paralyzed president."
"Patton knows that ever since the time of Julius Caesar, when Germanic tribes battled the Romans, the Germans were fond of going on the offensive and employing unique tactics to gain the element of surprise."
"It is sad and shocking to think that victory and the lives of thousands of men are pawns to the ‘fear of They,’ and the writings of a group of unprincipled reporters, and weak-kneed congressmen. But so it is."
"When I came out, I don’t think anyone could tell that I had just been killed. I feel like death, but I am not out yet. If they will let me fight, I will."
"The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster."
"They’ve got us surrounded. The poor bastards."
"But don’t worry, help is on the way from Patton."
"They are not lost; they are defeated. They have done all they can to stop the German offensive, and their units have been decimated. They fought against hopeless odds to buy time for the 101st to get to Bastogne. Now they retreat from the front in droves. Their grimy, frostbitten faces are lined with grief after seeing their buddies blown to bits."
"The morale was high throughout the entire period I was with them despite the extremely trying conditions."
"Any man who moans is shot in the head. Any man whose breath can be seen on this cold Sunday afternoon is shot in the head. Any man who flinches or cries out when he is kicked is shot in the head."
"I have all I can get. If I wait, I will lose surprise."
"You will probably get nervous tomorrow morning and want to withdraw, so you had better wait for any withdrawal order from me."
"If this situation gets to the point where I think it necessary to withdraw, can I do that on my own, or do I need permission from you, sir?"
"Sir, this is Patton talking. The past fourteen days have been straight hell."
"Faith and patience be damned! You have just got to make up Your mind whose side You are on."
"For three years my chaplains have been telling me that this is a religious war."
"Give me four days so that my planes can fly, so that my fighter bombers can bomb and strafe."
"I am sick of this unnecessary butchering of American youth."
"All of this probably sounds unreasonable to You, but I have lost all patience with Your chaplains."
"I do not even insist upon a miracle, for all I request is four days of clear weather."
"What the hell does he think I’ve been doing for the last week?"
"Dead Americans now lie frozen in the fields outside Bastogne, their faces turned the color of "claret," from the blood pooling after death."
"A clear cold Christmas, lovely weather for killing Germans—which seems a bit queer, seeing whose birthday it is."
"George S. Patton relishes war. He finds it glorious, and thinks there is no finer test of a man’s courage."
"War is never far from the minds of Americans, even on a unique day in the nation’s history."
"Our constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet."
"We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away."
"Arbeit Macht Frei—'Work Will Set You Free.' This is a lie. Nothing will set them free but death or the liberation of the camps."
"Because if they’ve learned anything from their time in the death camps, it’s that just when things can’t seem to get more horrific they always do."
"Life there was squalid and claustrophobic, but at least they were free."
"That number, they were soon told, was their new identity. They no longer had a name."
"Being so alone, a hug meant more than anybody could imagine, because that replaced the human worth we were starving for."
"Judaism," Adolf Hitler tells the German people on the twelfth anniversary of the day he became chancellor, "began systematically to undermine our nation from within."
"However grave the crisis may be at the moment, it will, despite everything, finally be mastered by our unalterable will, by our readiness for sacrifice and by our abilities."
"All throughout Eastern Europe, Joseph Stalin and the Russian military machine have taken advantage of the mass Nazi deportations of Jews to steal homes and farms and give them to the Russian people."
"Peace is going to be hell on me," he writes to his wife, Beatrice. "I will probably be a great nuisance."
"We are the eighth wonder of the world," Patton says of the Third Army. "And I had to beg, lie and steal to get started."
"I am getting soft?" Patton asks Beatrice rhetorically.
"The whole atmosphere down there was debilitating. In the long hours of the night it could be deathly silent, except for the hum of the generator ... Then there was the fetid odor of boots, sweaty woolen uniforms, acrid coal-tar disinfectants."
"It does not suit us to let ourselves be slaughtered like sheep. They may exterminate us, but they will not be able to lead us to the slaughter."
"Brave king, wait but a little while. The days of your suffering will be over. Behind the clouds the sun of your good fortune is already rising and soon will show itself to you."
"The history of the world is but a biography of great men."
"There was no change by February 15, he would give up and take poison."
"If that clothesline should break, promotions in the United States Army would be considerably stimulated."
"Sometimes I feel that I may be nearing the end of this life. I have liberated ‘J.’ and licked the Germans. So what else is there to do?"
"It seems very unfortunate that in order to secure political preference, people are made vice presidents who were intended neither for the party nor by the Lord to be presidents."
"Like David, George Patton knows himself to be a flawed yet God-fearing man."
"It is either a case of mistaken identity or a bold attempt to murder George Patton in broad daylight."
"Eva Braun wanted to numb the fear that had awoken in her heart. She wanted to celebrate once again, to dance, to drink, to forget."
"The stories of their savagery will become legendary."
"The Germans were worse than this in Russia. This is simply revenge."
"But everyone assembled knew that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun would soon kill themselves."
"Patton takes a break from writing letters in his office near Bad Tölz as Gen. Hobart "Hap" Gay, Patton’s longtime chief of staff, enters through the open door."
"Sometimes you have to put on an act, and I’m not going to let any Russian marshal, general or private tell me what I have to do."
"Stalin believes that 'atomic bombs are meant to frighten those with weak nerves.'"
"Simply put, Joseph Stalin is determined to rule the world."
"Patton said of the German capital, 'You who have not seen it, do not know what hell looks like.'"
"In his own way, Patton is still fighting battles."
"The Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. It's a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans."
"Patton believes that the man to his left, President Truman, has allowed more than twenty thousand American POWs to remain in Russian hands."
"My soldiers are fighting men and if I dismiss the sewer cleaners and the clerks, my soldiers will have to take over those jobs."
"You have been the driver of my official car since 1940... At no time during these years of danger and difficulty have you so much as bumped a fender."
"Stalin's reasons are simple: Patton defied Russian authority when he invaded Czechoslovakia back in May, during the waning days of the war."
"Patton is becoming more and more certain that the only way he can speak freely about these issues is to leave the military."
"Stalin is already making plans to replace Zhukov as deputy minister of defense, and to humiliate Molotov before firing him as commissar of foreign affairs."
"The powerful Wild Bill Donovan also loathes Patton."
"You are a good soldier, son. I’ll see to it that your CO is told what a fine MP you make."
"The poor thing is going to freeze to death in your goddam truck," he yells to Sergeant Scruce, referring to the hunting dog.
"I don’t want a damned thing, Captain," Patton tells him. "I was just saying Jesus Christ, what a nice way to start a vacation."
"I certainly think it is worth going into the army just to get a military funeral. I would like to get killed in a great victory and then have my body born [sic] between the ranks of my defeated enemy, escorted by my own regiment, and have my spirit come down and revel in hearing what people thought of me."
"I felt like a kid who had lost his father," he later remembered, "because that’s how I felt about him. I had every admiration in the world for the man. I just thought he was the greatest."
"Many refer to the West Point class of 1915 as 'the class the stars fell on.'"
"The practice of a presidential invocation did not begin until 1937."
"Scientific racism was discredited after World War II."
"Heedless of approaching darkness and strong enemy defenses, he brilliantly led his battalion on to a further objective."
"I have come to know there is a real difference between the regular soldier and officer, and Hitler and his criminal group."