On this chilly Tuesday morning, the cautious and finicky Montgomery is still ten days away from launching Operation Plunder, as the Rhine offensive is known. So Patton, sensing an immediate weakness in the German lines, has convinced Eisenhower to let him attack, two hundred miles to the south. The plan to invade southern Germany’s Palatinate region came to Patton in a dream. It was fully formed, right down to the last logistical detail. “Whether ideas like this are inspiration or insomnia, I don’t know,” he writes in his journal. “I do things by sixth sense.”
Patton’s military ambitions for the assault are many, among them the devastation of all Wehrmacht forces guarding the heavily fortified Siegfried Line.2
Privately, however, he admits that not all his goals are tactical. The war is now personal. Patton has endured countless slights and setbacks. Many are of his own doing, but just as many are clearly not. Patton, at heart, is a simple man who wears his emotions on his sleeve. This makes him extremely poor at the sort of political posturing at which rivals such as Montgomery excel.
The man who lives for battle wants to be judged by his actions, not his words. The war will end soon. Patton would love nothing more than for the spotlight to shine on his accomplishments at least one more time.
Doing so at Bernard Law Montgomery’s expense, of course, would make the experience all the richer.
“He advertises so damn much that they know where he is,” Patton sneers of Montgomery, contrasting their leadership styles by alluding to the German high command’s constant awareness of his rival’s location. “I fool them.”
At Patton’s command, the Third Army romps through the Palatinate on what Col. Abe Abrams of the Fourth Armored Division calls the “Rhine Rat Race.” They travel with ample supplies of metal decking and pontoons, allowing them to build temporary bridges across the Rhine—it is hoped, well ahead of Montgomery and his Twenty-First Army Group.
American armored divisions have already succeeded in crossing the Rhine, in the city of Remagen, eighty-six miles north of Trier. The incredulous Americans could not believe that the bridge remained intact, and crossed immediately. And while they were not able to advance beyond a small toehold on the Rhine’s eastern shore, the symbolism of the Allied achievement struck such fear into the minds of the Nazi high command that Adolf Hitler ordered the firing squad executions of the four officers he considered responsible for not having destroyed the bridge.3 The men were forced to kneel, and then were shot in the back of the neck. The final letters they had written to family and lovers were then burned.
Hitler then ordered the great commando Otto Skorzeny to assemble a team of swimmers who would float down the Rhine and attach explosives to the Remagen Bridge. The mission failed when all of Skorzeny’s amphibious commandos were discovered by sharp-eyed American sentries along the shore, and were either killed or captured.
The Allies still hold the bridge, but are unable to advance farther without the assistance of a greater fighting force.
George S. Patton understands the significance of Remagen. “Ninth Armored Division of the Third Corps,” he writes in his journal on March 7, “got a bridge intact over the Rhine at Remagen. This may have a fine influence on our future movements. I hope we get one also.”
But even if he can’t find an intact bridge, Patton is determined to beat Montgomery across the Rhine.
He has just ten days.
* * *
Two weeks ago, the Third Army captured the ancient German fortress of Trier, attacking quickly and suffering few casualties. His victory complete, Patton now takes the opportunity to visit the conquered city.
Many are convinced that the Second World War will be the war to end all wars, but Patton knows better. As a reminder to himself that war is inevitable, he has been reading Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars each night before bed. The memoir recounts Caesar’s battles in Gaul4 and Germany from 58 to 51 BC. The words rise up off the page for Patton, and he feels a personal connection to the action.
As he drives to the decimated Trier, he studies the ancient highway carefully, absorbing its every nuance. It is not the sight of the swollen Moselle River that mesmerizes him, or even that of Allied engineers scurrying to corduroy5 the muddy country thoroughfare before Allied vehicles accidentally tumble down the steep hillside and into the raging torrent.
No, it is the belief that he traveled this road two thousand years ago.
Patton is convinced that he was a soldier and a great general in his many past lives. He once stood shoulder to shoulder with Alexander the Great and Napoléon. He crossed the Alps on an elephant while residing in the body of the Carthaginian conqueror Hannibal. Patton also is quite certain that he once fought for the great Caesar as a Roman legionary, marching into battle on this very same road from Wasserbillig to Trier. Even as a biting wind chaps his exposed face, Patton can “smell the coppery sweat and see the low dust clouds” of legionaries advancing on the Germanic hordes along the Moselle.
Patton has no problems meshing his Protestant faith with his belief in reincarnation. He simply believes that he has a powerful connection with the supernatural. This belief was reinforced by two very prominent occurrences during World War I. On one occasion, he found himself pressed to the ground during a battle, terrified to stand and fight. He believed that he saw the faces of his dead grandfather and several uncles demanding that he stop being a coward. The other instance took place in Langres, France, once occupied by the ancient Romans. Though he had never visited the city, Patton was able to navigate his way without the help of his French liaison officer. He gave the Frenchman a tour of the Roman ruins, including the amphitheater, parade ground, and various temples dedicated to a deity. He also drove straight to the spot where Caesar had once camped, and pointed to where the Roman leader had once pitched his tent.
Now, like Caesar in 57 BC, Patton has conquered Trier.
Over the week that it took to reduce the strategically vital city to rubble, the Germans fought tenaciously. Twenty Allied bombing raids pounded the Wehrmacht defenders, until it became only a matter of time before the Germans fled, and tanks from the American Tenth Armored Division rolled past the ancient Roman amphitheater on the eastern edge of town. The fact that this structure remains standing while all else has crumbled is not lost on Patton. “One of the few things undestroyed in Trier is the entrance to the old Roman amphitheater which still stands in sturdy magnificence.”
Shortly after the conquest on March 1, Patton received a message from Allied headquarters. “Bypass Trier. It will take four divisions to capture it,” read the order.
“Have taken Trier with two divisions,” an acerbic Patton responded. “What do you want me to do? Give it back?”
One week later, Patton’s plan to invade the Palatinate was approved by Eisenhower.
Following the old adage that it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission, Patton does not plan on asking for permission to ford the Rhine, should the opportunity present itself.
* * *
Patton’s barbed sense of humor is not accidental. He is weary of the ineffectual leadership of General Eisenhower, who he believes consistently sabotages his success. He feels the same way about Omar Bradley, his immediate superior.
So Bradley’s February 10 order to go on the defensive was soul crushing for Patton. He will be sixty this year, making him “the oldest leader in age and battle experience in the United States Army in Europe,” by his own estimation. The war is winding down, but it has taken its toll on George Patton.