What Would Patton Say about the Present War?
By Victor Davis Hanson

The following is adapted and excerpted from a lecture delivered on July 23, 2004, on board the MV Heidelberg during a Hillsdale College cruise on the Rhine and Moselle rivers.

The Nature of the Enemy

Patton always realized that armed forces serve political ends and create an immediate reality on the battlefield that politicians argue over for years – that there are times when audacious commanders can create favorable diplomatic situations impossible to achieve by politicians even after years of negotiations…he understood that the new Germany was an ally, and the old Soviets were now the new enemy of freedom.

Applying Patton’s thinking to today’s situation, we can first recognize the so-called “war on terror” as a misnomer. There has never really been a war against a method other than something like Pompey’s crusade against the pirates or the British effort to stifle the slave trade. In fact, wersquo;re no more in a war against terror than Patton was fighting against Tiger and Panzer tanks. Patton, who understood the hold of a radically triumphalist Nazism on a previously demoralized German people, would have the intellectual honesty to realize that we are at war with Islamic fascists, mostly from the Middle East, who have played on the frustrations of mostly male, unemployed young people, whose autocratic governments can’t provide the conditions for decent employment and family life. A small group of Islamists appeals to the angst of the disaffected through a nostalgic and reactionary turn to a mythical Caliphate, in which religious purity trumps the material advantages of a decadent West and protects Islamic youth from the contamination of foreign gadgetry and pernicious ideas. In some ways, Hitler had created the same pathology in Germany in the 1930s.

Patton would also agree that the remedy for this disease includes aid and reconstruction – helping the defeated to re-build under democratic auspices that would allow real reform. In fact, he was sacked as pro-consul largely because he was said to be too interested in jump-starting German reconstruction at the price of accommodating Germans once affiliated with the Nazi party. But Patton would insist that it is only by military defeat and subsequent humiliation first that the supporters of terrorism against the West will understand the wages of their support for Islamic fascism.

Always Audacity

In matters of tactics, Patton was famous for believing that American armies, being militias of the season, were not equipped immediately to go head-to-head in hard slogging with veteran professional militaries such as the German Wehrmacht of World Wars I and II. Speed, victory and firepower were our forte – not slow wars of attrition.

Patton grasped that air power had revolutionized armored warfare, a sort of mobile infantry at the beck and call of land forces. Thus the old infantry doctrine – that the infantry incrementally goes ahead to clear mines and pockets of resistance, and then the tanks follow, fanning out in a large triangle with the flanks protected – was a recipe for disaster: It meant that the enemy might retreat on a broad front – as the deflation of the bulge in January 1945 attests – harvesting a continuing crop of frontline troops. His idea was rather to have rapid armored wings sweep out, bypass points of resistance, and cause psychological turmoil from the rear that could collapse enemy fronts. American Sherman tanks – poorly armed and protected – nevertheless were faster, lighter, used less fuel and were more easily maintained than German armor. Speed, audacity and numbers might allow them to achieve results impossible even for their individually superior German counterparts. The way war had evolved in 1944 made this possible: Sherman tanks had radios that were connected with airborne P-47 anti-tank dive-bombers – tactical air power now being worth an entire armored division in Patton’s eyes.

When Patton went operational on August 1, 1944, he traveled nearly 400 miles in little more than 30 days. Bradley and Eisenhower complained that he was bypassing resistance, was violating pre-Normandy planning, and was not part of the strategic effort to hit German industrial centers in the Ruhr. Patton answered back that his success was having a psychological effect in causing the collapse of entire armies and offering new potential alternatives – with only brief windows for critical exploitation – that might change accepted realities and vault the Allies across the Rhine before the shortened days, poor weather, stiffening German resistance and extended Allied supply lines could come into play to stifle the American advance by autumn. His lesson? When there is an opportunity for exploitation – one quarter of Fallujah taken or Mr. Sadr reeling – hesitancy and conventional thinking can forfeit unforeseen advantages and offer a collapsing enemy a reprieve that will end up costing far more casualties later. Beware of a false sense of forbearance that can turn deadly.

Patton had two phrases that he used almost ad nauseum. The first, from Danton, was: “Audacity, always audacity, still more audacity.” The second was “the unforgiving minute,” a phrase from Kipling that referred to certain times in war when the collective will of a people or an army can without warning collapse – critical moments that must be capitalized on…Patton knew that if the Panzers were saved from near death, they could be ready to kill again and under far more favorable circumstances. That is exactly what happened at the Falaise Gap. Later at the Seine River, near the Siegfried Line, and when attacking the Bulge, Patton saw that a sweeping hook, rather than a head-on assault, might bring on a total collapse, but only if risks were taken and old plans ignored in light of new realities. Again, the conservative, doctrinaire approach of cautious attack proved the far more costly tactic.

In the 2003 Iraq War, Americans drove 400 miles from the Kuwaiti front up to Kurdistan, often bypassing resistance on the way to Baghdad. Never has an armored column traveled so quickly with so few casualties. It was comparable to Patton’s march from Normandy to the Siegfried Line. And the same institutionalized army critics of such Patton-like tactics emerged, decrying vulnerable flanks, oblivious to the protection offered by 1,000 planes in the sky. Indeed, Patton was often evoked as we moved quickly, creating conditions of shock and awe, demoralizing the enemy who crumbled and fled. But again, these are fluid, not permanent, situations. If an enemy is demoralized but not destroyed, he may well come back encouraged and with less respect, interpreting magnanimity as weakness or incompetence. Fallujah and Najaf are proof enough of the tragedy that can follow when a defeated enemy is not completely crushed.

Mobilizing Public Support

Today, millions in the Islamic world are watching the West struggle against Islamic fascism. Perhaps deep down inside they prefer, logically and with some idealism, to live under Western-style freedom and democratic auspices. And yet nationalism, pride, religion and ethnic solidarity war with reason, combining to produce far greater resentment against a powerful America, even when it brings the very freedom that the Arabs for decades have said they wished. A modern Patton would not be bothered by such inconsistency. Rather he would make sure that he had not only defeated the terrorists and their supporters, but had done so in such damaging fashion that none in the Middle East might find such a repugnant cause at all romantic, bringing as it did utter ruin as the wage of the wrath of the United States.

Patton, who was both learned and yet not smug about the power of the primordial emotions, understood perfectly the irrational nature of warfare and the effect that utter defeat or glorious victory has upon an otherwise rational people. No wonder he hated war defined as a purely bureaucratic enterprise or a purely material and industrial challenge, inasmuch as neither can change the hearts of men that need to be changed. Instead, they usually increase the body count and rarely lead to lasting peace. We should remember wild-eyed George Patton in our Fallujahs to come.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a fellow in California studies at the Claremont Institute and a distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College. He has authored, co-authored or edited 14 books, including Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq and Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. Currently, he is a weekly columnist for National Review Online and serves on the editorial board of Arion, the Military History Quarterly and City Journal.

Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College (www.hillsdale.edu).

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Starry to be Honored on International Commander’s Wall

General Donn A. Starry was formally recognized as the latest member of the International Commander’s Wall on May 18 as part of the U.S. Armor Association’s annual banquet.

His portrait will join those of five other legendary armor leaders including General Creighton Abrams, General George S. Patton Jr., Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, General Musa Peled, and General Israel Tal.

General Starry’s acceptance speech will appear in the September – October issue of Armor Magazine.

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Share Your Stories

Author Michael Green is seeking stories from retired tankers regarding wartime service for the book War Stories of American Tankers World War I till Present. Green said stories can range in length from “a few hundred words up to a couple thousand words.” Send your stories to his attention at greenm48@yahoo.com.

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