The Russian general is used to such supplicant behavior. During the war, he ordered his troops to shoot any of their comrades who ran from the Germans, and any Russian village that was thought to have collaborated with the Nazis was burned to the ground. Zhukov is so feared that other Russian generals have been known to tremble in his presence.

Patton does not tremble.

“He was in full dress uniform much like comic opera and covered in medals,” Patton later wrote to Beatrice of Zhukov. “He is short, rather fat and has a prehensile chin like an ape but good blue eyes.”

As Russian tanks rolled past the reviewing stand, Patton noticed Zhukov gloating over the new Soviet IS-3 model tank.4 Looking up at his American counterpart, the Russian general delivered a taunt: “My dear General Patton,” he crowed. “You see that tank? It carries a cannon which can throw a shell seven miles.”

Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov with General Eisenhower

Patton’s face remained impassive, his tone calm and sure. “Indeed? Well, my dear Marshal Zhukov, let me tell you this: if any of my gunners started firing at your people before they had closed to less than seven hundred yards, I’d have them court-martialed for cowardice.”

Patton’s aide Maj. Van S. Merle-Smith will later state that he had never before seen “a Russian commander stunned into silence.”

Yet in his publicly stated belief that the Russians are America’s new enemy, and should be treated as such, Patton stands alone. Indeed, American troops are either going home or being sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese, leaving fewer and fewer GIs to fight “the Mongols,” as Patton calls the Russians—not that the Truman administration has any intention of doing such a thing.

Among those departing is Sgt. John Mims, Patton’s driver for the last four years. The two have traveled thousands of miles together, and Mims’s caution at the wheel has kept Patton from being injured, despite navigating battlefields and avoiding artillery shells. “You have been the driver of my official car since 1940,” Patton writes in a farewell commendation to Mims. “During that time, you have safely driven me in many parts of the world, under all conditions of dust and snow and ice and mud, of enemy fire and attack by enemy aircraft. At no time during these years of danger and difficulty have you so much as bumped a fender.”

Another driver will soon be assigned to the general, but Mims can never truly be replaced, and Patton is so upset about his leaving that he originally fought to keep him in Europe. Only when he was reminded that Mims has a young wife at home did Patton relent and sign the travel orders.

But even more disturbing to Patton is that all his peers are going home to bigger and better jobs. While Patton spends his days reluctantly getting rid of the Nazi presence in Bavaria, Ike will soon be army chief of staff, Gen. Omar Bradley is already in Washington heading up the new Veterans Administration, and, of course, Gen. Courtney Hodges is off to fight in the Pacific.

It seems there is no place for George Patton in a peacetime army. The one job he really wanted, that of commandant of the War College at the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania, has been given away to Gen. Leonard T. Gerow, a close friend of Eisenhower’s who helped plan and lead the D-day invasion.

As their turbulent meeting stretches on, Dwight Eisenhower finally calms down a bit and gets to the main point: shockingly, his plan is to take away the Third Army from George S. Patton.

With this decision, Eisenhower can effectively terminate the press furor over Patton’s remarks and place someone in charge of the Third Army who will be less sympathetic to the Nazis.

“Your greatest fault,” Eisenhower tells Patton, “is your audacity.”

The words are meant to sting, but both men know that Patton considers audacity his greatest asset.

Then the meeting takes another turn. Instead of simply relieving Patton of active command, Eisenhower suggests instead that Patton assume control of the Fifteenth Army.

It is a face-saving solution, meant to ensure that Patton does not return to America in disgrace. Yet to a fighting man such as Patton, the notion is absurd. The Fifteenth is a paper army, tasked with the job of writing the war’s history.

But Patton has no choice. As he walks out of Eisenhower’s office, he finds the same reporters who published the stories leading to his downfall now waiting in the corridor for news of his fate.

Eisenhower tells them nothing. Patton also says nothing. He would normally have stayed and had dinner and drinks with Ike; instead, Patton rushes to the train station across from the IG Farben Building to catch a 7:00 p.m. train back to Bavaria.

The humiliation slowly sinks in: Patton’s beloved Third Army has been wrenched from his grasp. One of the greatest fighting forces in the history of war will now be commanded by another man. Under Patton’s leadership, that spectacular assemblage of men, tanks, and big guns led the liberation of France, rescued Bastogne, crossed the Rhine, and would have freed all of Eastern Europe if Eisenhower had not halted Patton’s advance.

“I’ve obeyed orders,” Patton tells an aide over dinner on the long nighttime train ride. “I think that I’d like to resign from the Army so that I could go home and say what I have to say.”

But powerful people do not want this to happen. George Patton knows too much—and saying what he knows would be a disaster.

He must be silenced.

25

JOSEPH STALIN’S PRIVATE VILLA

SOCHI, RUSSIA

OCTOBER 17, 1945

AFTERNOON

Joseph Stalin is down but not out.

The sixty-six-year-old Russian dictator is taking a rare vacation at his favorite hideaway. At his direction, the lavish mountain home has been painted forest green, so that it is completely camouflaged within a grove of cypress trees.1 Despite this cloak of invisibility, Stalin is on guard as he strolls alone in the palm-tree-lined courtyard. Trademark pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, he is obsessively contemplating his future—and that of the Soviet Union.

“The Boss,” as Stalin is known, desperately needs time away from Moscow. The fresh air and quiet of this retreat one thousand miles due south of the Russian capital are more than a mere tonic to the overworked despot. Unbeknownst to the Americans and British, Stalin suffered two minor heart attacks at the Potsdam Conference, which he concealed from the public. Despite the ailments, Stalin was able to continue negotiating the future of Europe.

The stress of the war, combined with years of working sixteen hours a day while puffing on a pipe filled with strong tobacco, is taking a savage toll on Stalin’s body. He is afraid that any sign of weakness might lead to an attempt to oust him from power. Only his personal physician, Vladimir Vinogradov, knows the full extent of his health problems. But even at leisure, Stalin is a workaholic and finds vacationing to be a nuisance. Now, as he takes two months away from the Kremlin, spending his days in gardening and long walks, he still receives dozens of reports from Moscow each day.

And these reports trouble him deeply.

Stalin’s absence is causing a furor. TASS, the official Soviet news agency, has simply explained that “Comrade Stalin has departed for vacation to rest,” but few in Moscow or around the world believe there is not more to the story. Foreign diplomats and the international press scurry to learn the truth about what’s happening in Sochi, as rumors fly.2

There are rumors that Stalin will soon quit his job, to be replaced either by Marshal Georgy Zhukov or perhaps by foreign affairs commissar Vyacheslav Molotov. “Stalin may leave his post,” the Chicago Tribune is reporting. “The ambitious aspirations of Marshal Zhukov to become a dictator have full backing of the army, while Molotov is backed by the Communist Party.”