Sunday, February 7, 2010

Conspiracy theory ... 1 - General George S. Patton

Unlike many war heroes who had no intention of ever becoming famous, George S. Patton decided during childhood that his goal in life was to be a hero. This noble aim was first inspired by listening to his father read aloud for hours about the exploits of the heroes of ancient Greece.

We are aware of General Patton’s accomplishments during World War II. But there are niggling factors after the war in 1945 which are also interesting;
Patton was not about to slow down or shut up after his military successes in Europe. No one knew quite what to do with him. He was a true hawk. One congressman even proposed that he be made Secretary of War, but Patton's lack of diplomacy guaranteed the suggestion was never taken seriously.

In Germany, while on occupation duty after a visit to the States during which he was welcomed with parades as a conquering hero, Patton's outspokenness got him into trouble yet again when he tried justifying the use of ex-Nazis in important administrative positions during the occupation of Bavaria. (In Sun Tzu's ancient treatise, The Art of War, he proposes, 'The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment one's own strength. Of course General Patton read it.)

Patton had also been willing to make known his view that the United States and Britain should re-arm the Germans and fight the Russians. He had great respect for German soldiers. Patton knew, along with many others, who the real enemy was going to be. And he was credited with saying, “We ought to keep going.”
Other comments that set alertness and esoteric interest among his enemies were that he had expressed his views to reporters that U.S. plans for post-war Germany were "foolish and stupid" and would lead to Soviet attempts to take over Western Europe. "I was intentionally direct because I believed that it was time for the people to know what was going on," he recalled before his death. Those enemies might not have all been Russians.

These comments and beliefs however, showed that Patton's temperament was somewhat of a liability in peacetime. In many ways, it would have been fitting for Patton the warrior to have died on the battlefield, but that was not to be. Despite the fact that throughout his military career he had constantly exposed himself to danger, it was a traffic accident, not a bullet, which took Patton's life. In December 1945, one day before he was due to return to the United States, Patton was severely injured in a road accident when his car was hit by a truck near Mannheim, Germany. Paralyzed from the neck down, George Patton died of an embolism on 21st December 1945.
Emboli are caused by clots from the venous circulation, from the right side of the heart, from tumors that have invaded the circulatory system, or from other sources such as amniotic fluid, air, fat, bone marrow, and foreign substances. Sudden death can occur as a result of embolism. Injecting AIR into a vein or artery is easily done.
He was buried in Luxembourg, a country which still considers George S. Patton its liberator.

Did the emerging USSR deem Patton to be far too dangerous to live? What if he returned to the US and countered his detractors by seeking political power? Was it possible that he, now a national hero, could become president of the United States? Patton was a student of war history and it’s generals, including Hannibal, the Carthaginian had been defeated by the Romans at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC after ransacking Italy for 14 years. Hannibal became a diplomatic force and a skilled trader in peacetime and guided Carthage to pay off the war reparations too quickly, and the Romans considered him such an ominous threat as to hunt him down and kill him. Could Patton have followed that idea? We’ll never know.

Surely a President Patton would have meant war against the USSR. When would agents of the Russians have better means and opportunity to murder him than in Europe? He would be unreachable back in the States. But was someone ELSE afraid of Patton? His murder would be unexplainable back in the States and not readily accountable to foreign agents. Was the USA also afraid of George S. Patton?
But then it was a simple car accident, wasn't it?

Addenda - April 2009
Robert Wilcox has written a book Target Patten, that feeds this particular theory; that Patton's sudden death was a planned assassination. One would suspect that the book is a result of constant conspiracy theories about Patton, and collusion between the Soviet union, the Communist Left in America and the US Government at the highest levels.

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