Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General

by Bill O'Reilly

  The Germans counterattacked at sunrise the next morning. The strength of the Nazi reprisal was terrifying. Swiftly and efficiently, they destroyed the American column and began rounding up the POWs for their return to Oflag XIII-B. Many who were not prisoners of war before the rescue attempt now found themselves in German captivity. Wehrmacht soldiers used dogs to hunt down the Americans now scattered across the countryside. Captain Baum was burned when a rocket hit his tank, and suffered a gunshot wound to the groin, yet he managed to evade the Germans for almost twenty-four hours before being captured and led into captivity.5

  Nine days later, the American Fourteenth Armored Division liberated the POW camp. Patton’s initial raid, which had cost thirty-two men their lives, was all for naught.

  George Patton immediately visited his son-in-law at a hospital in Frankfurt, where Colonel Waters had been taken to recuperate from his wounds.

  Upon seeing Patton, the colonel burst out, “Did you know I was at Hammelburg?”

  It was the first question out of Waters’s mouth, because he well knew that many considered him to blame for a horrible waste of American lives. Thirty-two Americans had been killed, and almost three hundred more wounded or taken prisoner. In addition, sixteen tanks, twenty-eight halftracks, twelve jeeps, and a medical vehicle known as a Weasel were destroyed.

  “Not for sure,” came the answer from his father-in-law.

  * * *

  Patton has sworn a professional oath of honor that does not allow lying, cheating, or tolerating those who do so. Covering up the real reason for Task Force Baum was not the first of George S. Patton’s untruths. One lie, in particular, broke his wife Beatrice’s heart and almost cost him his marriage, and may now be coming back to haunt him. For the beautiful young woman with whom he was secretly unfaithful has once again entered his life.

  The year was 1935. The place was Hawaii. Jean Gordon was visiting the Patton family on her way to the Orient. A willowy unmarried young woman who spoke fluent French, she was the daughter of Beatrice Patton’s half sister, and thus the general’s niece by marriage. She also served as maid of honor at the wedding between Patton’s daughter Beatrice and John Waters. Patton was old enough to know better, a career soldier and the father of three children who had long enjoyed the love of a wife who understood his unusual temperament. Beatrice was a remarkable woman in her own right, capable of making conversation in German, French, Spanish, and Italian. She had written a book, and had a passion for music and drama. And her ferocious passion for her husband was such that, on one occasion, she physically attacked an officer who had disparaged her beloved Georgie. Patton had to pry her off the man when she knocked him down and was banging his head on the tile floor.

  When the eighteen-year-old Jean began flirting with her husband, Beatrice was unaware. George Patton was flattered. So it was that when Beatrice Patton fell ill shortly before a planned journey from one Hawaiian island to another, Jean went in her place. There was no chaperone to prevent what occurred next.

  Jean Gordon in her Red Cross uniform

  When a heartbroken Beatrice learned of the tryst, she told her daughter Ruth Ellen, “It’s lucky for us that I don’t have a mother. Because if I did, I’d pack up and go home to her now.”

  That might have been the end of it, because for all intents and purposes the relationship between George Patton and Jean Gordon seemed to have run its course.

  But in the summer of 1944, Jean arrived in England as a Red Cross volunteer and wasted no time in reconnecting with Patton. When Beatrice learned that Jean was in England, she wrote to her husband that she was aware that Patton’s former lover had returned to his side, but Patton denied spending time with the young woman. Still, once the Third Army began its drive across France, Jean managed to get assigned to the task of Red Cross “donut girl” for the troops, visiting them and providing them with donuts, hot coffee, and conversation. She became a regular at Patton’s headquarters, where she often spoke fluent French with the general.

  Infatuated, Patton confided to a West Point classmate, “She’s been mine for twelve years.”

  On March 31, 1945, Beatrice wrote to her husband wondering why Jean Gordon was still in Europe. Patton replied, “I am not a fool. So quit worrying.”

  When, soon after, Patton learned that Jean Gordon was also having an affair with a young officer serving in a safe headquarters position, the general, as competitive as ever, ordered the young man transferred to frontline combat.

  * * *

  Late on the afternoon of April 17, Patton flies to Paris. His son-in-law has been moved to a nearby hospital, and he sits with Waters for a long discussion. The controversy surrounding the Hammelburg incident seems to be blowing over. Dwight Eisenhower reprimanded Patton, but little else is being done. It appears there will be no further repercussions.

  Patton sits for breakfast the next morning with his old West Point classmate Gen. Everett Hughes. The two men are very close, and it is to Hughes that Patton confides his relationship with Jean Gordon.

  The waiter hands Hughes a copy of the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes. Hughes smiles at an announcement printed in the paper, but says nothing as he hands the newspaper over to Patton.

  Patton suddenly grins broadly as he reads the news that President Harry Truman has just nominated him for the rank of four-star general. He leans back in his chair as those all around him in the dining room who’ve already read the news wait to see his response.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

  * * *

  The biblical David was also a great general. He was said to be “a man after God’s own heart,” despite the fact that he slept with his best friend’s wife, lied about the act, and then ordered the husband sent to the front lines so that he might be murdered in battle.

  Yet David ultimately paid a steep cost for his behavior, losing a son at a very young age and eventually losing his entire kingdom.

  Like David, George Patton knows himself to be a flawed yet God-fearing man. His recent bouts of duplicity have also cost more lives than the duplicities of of King David. But as Patton flies back to his headquarters in a plane newly decorated with insignia denoting his four-star rank, it appears that he will not endure the divine punishments that befell David. In fact, Patton has weathered the storm unscathed.

  But as the devout general well knows, David once thought the same thing, too.

  * * *

  Patton’s single-engine L-5 Sentinel propeller plane flies low over the German countryside, en route to his headquarters. It is the quickest way to travel from one place to another, allowing the general to visit several of his units each day. Suddenly another aircraft drops down on him like an avenging angel. Guns blazing, the Spitfire fighter bears the markings of the British Royal Air Force, and attacks head-on.

  Patton’s L-5 is an American-made plane. Yet with its wings mounted above the fuselage and the slow speeds caused by its fixed landing gear, the L-5 also bears a distinct resemblance to the German Fi-156 Storch.

  Tracer bullets fly past the right side of Patton’s L-5. The small plane has no weaponry, and thus no chance of fighting back. The Spitfire misses on the first pass, almost colliding with the L-5 as it roars past, but is soon banking high into the sky and coming around behind them for another strafing run.

  It is either a case of mistaken identity or a bold attempt to murder George Patton in broad daylight.

  Patton reaches for his camera. He snaps several pictures of the RAF plane, even as his pilot takes desperate evasive measures that make the Spitfire miss them a second time. Patton is so terrified that he forgets to take the lens cap off the camera. His aircraft is no match for the Spitfire, which was so famously effective at defeating German Messerschmitt fighter planes during the Battle of Britain.

  But the pilot who has been assigned to fly General Patton on this April morning is extremely good at his job. He pushes the stick forward, pressing the L-5 down almost right against the earth. Just one
slip of his fingers and the plane will nose into the ground.

  The Spitfire comes in low and shoots again. The shots miss, and the careless Spitfire pilot realizes too late that his angle of attack places him too low to the ground. A split second later, the British fighter plane crashes into the German soil.

  “It flew so close to the ground that it could not pull out and crashed,” Patton writes in his journal that night. “The planes in this group had RAF markings on them, and I believe they were probably a Polish group flying for the RAF. Why there were out of their area, I don’t know.”

  George S. Patton has lived to fight another day. “Four other planes were circling over us, but did not engage in the attack.”

  Patton must now contemplate an obvious nagging question: Was the Spitfire attack an accident?6

  21

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  APRIL 20, 1945

  MIDNIGHT

  The man who will be dead in ten days is marking his fifty-sixth birthday.

  Adolf Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, is in the mood to dance, but the Führer merely slumps on the blue-and-white couch in the sitting room of his underground bunker. He stares into space, paying no attention to the playful Eva or to the sleek blue brocade dress hugging her thighs. She knows that the prudish Hitler doesn’t like her to dress provocatively, but on this occasion Eva does as she pleases.

  The two of them, along with three of Hitler’s female secretaries, sip champagne. It is the end of what has been another long and depressing day for the Führer.

  Adolf Hitler once dreamed of establishing Berlin as the world’s most cosmopolitan city, even though its citizens have long considered him to be an unsophisticated bore. Back in the days when Germany held free elections, the people of Berlin were almost unanimous in rejecting Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Even now, thirteen years later, Berlin is considered the least Nazi of all cities in Germany. To spite its inhabitants, Hitler had planned to rename the city Germania during the grand postwar rebuilding, thus wiping Berlin off the map forever.

  The advancing Russians know nothing about Germania. And they are also not waiting until the end of the war to wipe Berlin off the map.

  The armies of Joseph Stalin have the city almost completely surrounded. It is just a matter of time before it falls.

  Eva Braun

  Per tradition, Hitler was joined in the bunker for his birthday celebration this morning by the Nazi Party’s most elite membership: SS leader Heinrich Himmler, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, and chief of the operations staff Gen. Alfred Jodl, among them.

  But now these killers are gone—for good. They have paid their respects to Hitler and are running for their lives, desperate to get out of Berlin and save their own skins, planning eventually to adopt new identities.

  Only the most faithful followers remain. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, continues to prove his loyalty by remaining in the bunker. Hitler is glad. It has been said that Bormann is so threatening that he can “slit a throat with a whisper.” A testimony to his character comes from none other than Hitler, the most callous of men. The Führer deems Bormann to be utterly “ruthless.”

  Bormann is now upstairs on the top floor of the bunker, hard at work despite the late hour and the approaching danger.

  There is still time for Hitler to find a way out of Berlin. The Soviets are closing in, but some roads remain open. As recently as yesterday, the Führer was planning to escape to his Eagle’s Nest retreat, high in the mountains of southern Germany. He even sent some members of the household staff ahead to prepare for his arrival. But he has since changed his mind, deciding to stay in the bunker, hoping against hope that the phantom divisions seen only by him will somehow repel the Russians.

  As he does so often, Hitler takes solace in thoughts of Frederick the Great, who suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Kunersdorf in 1759. If Frederick could lose and then regain power, perhaps the Führer can find some miraculous way to do the same.

  At last, Hitler announces he is going to bed. He looks awful as he stands to walk the five steps into his bedroom: face pale, back stooped, eyes bloodshot from fatigue, and his entire body shaking. He is beyond medical help. His cocaine eye drops were administered this morning, but tomorrow he is sending Dr. Morell away, explaining that “drugs can’t help me anymore.”

  With those words, Hitler admits defeat. There will be no Germania. The Führer can hear Russian artillery falling on Berlin, the explosions resounding through the city, thundering closer and closer to the lovely park known as the Tiergarten, to the Reichstag, and then, inevitably, shaking the ground directly above him in the Reich Chancellery park. Hitler doesn’t know if the bunker’s thick roof can handle a direct hit, but he likes his chances inside his underground fortress better than on top, out in the open. Earlier today, he walked up the steps into the garden and spoke to a collection of young boys from the Hitler Youth, who had distinguished themselves in the face of Russian tanks. With the rumble of artillery as a backdrop, Hitler reviewed the rows of assembled young soldiers, his frail body all but swallowed up inside his brownish green overcoat. Despite his obvious palsy, he shook each and every young man’s hand. Then he exhorted them to save Berlin. “Heil Euch,” he barked as distracted words of praise before descending once again into the bunker—“Hail to you.”

  The ceremony marks the last time Adolf Hitler will ever see the light of day.

  That was hours ago. Now Eva Braun helps him to bed, assisting him as he changes out of his uniform and into his plain white nightshirt. Thanks to years of living nocturnally, his body is “bright white,” in the words of one secretary.

  Eva does not get in bed with her beloved Adolf. Instead, she steps back into the sitting room, closing behind her the door dividing the two rooms.

  Now that the Führer is asleep, it’s time to party.

  “Eva Braun wanted to numb the fear that had awoken in her heart,” Traudl Junge, one of the secretaries sipping champagne in Hitler’s sitting room, will one day remember. “She wanted to celebrate once again, to dance, to drink, to forget.”

  Eva beckons the three young women to follow. The group climbs the steps to the second floor. They sweep through the bunker, rounding up everyone, uptight Martin Bormann among them. “Even fat Theo Morell came up from the safety of his bunker, in spite of the constant thunder of artillery fire,” Junge will later write.

  The party marches through the secret underground tunnel connecting the bunker with the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler keeps a small apartment. The paintings have been removed from the walls and the furniture moved down into the bunker, but there is still a gramophone in the room, and one very special record: “Blood-Red Roses Speak of Happiness to You.”

  Eva Braun knows the words of the song by heart. She and Adolf Hitler have been listening to this record by the Max Mensing Orchestra over and over again. The Führer enjoys classical music and even the solos of Jewish pianist Artur Schnabel, but the dance orchestra sound of “Blood Red Roses” is their song.

  Champagne bottles are uncorked. The record player is turned up loud. Eva Braun whirls around the room, alone or with anyone who will dance with her. Blond and vivacious, she is the life of the party.

  A distant explosion makes the room shake. The party ceases, but only temporarily. So Eva Braun dances on, “In a desperate frenzy, like a woman who has already felt the faint breath of death,” Traudl Junge will remember. “No one said anything about the war. No one mentioned victory. No one mentioned death. This was a party given by ghosts.”

  * * *

  Three days later, Gen. Walther Wenck, commander of the German Twelfth Army, is up past midnight in his headquarters, a gamekeeper’s home known Alte Holle, or “Old Hell.” Located in a thick forest thirty miles west of Berlin, it is an ideal hiding place from Allied reconnaissance planes.

  The phone rings. Wenck answers and learns that Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Adolf Hitler’s arrogant chief of
staff, will soon be paying him a visit.

  Walther Wenck is a fine officer. At forty-three, he is the youngest man in the Wehrmacht to hold a general’s rank. As such, he bears the nickname the “Boy General.” Currently, Wenck has taken it upon himself to house and feed a half million war refugees who have fled Berlin. He does this without informing his superiors. Rather than drawing up battle plans, Wenck spends his days “like a visiting priest,” checking in on the children and sick to make sure they have food and medicine.

  In truth, the general is physically incapable of doing much else. Just two months ago, he was fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front, near the Oder River. His duties required him to direct his troops by day, then drive back into Berlin each evening to brief Hitler himself in the bunker. The pace was exhausting, and Wenck got little sleep. On February 14, while making the one-hundred-mile drive back to his headquarters after one such meeting, Wenck elected to take the wheel when his chauffeur collapsed from fatigue.

  It was late at night. Wenck himself soon fell asleep. The car plowed into a bridge parapet. Wenck’s chauffeur pulled the unconscious general from the wreckage and smothered the flames that were on the verge of engulfing his body. Wenck survived but suffered a skull fracture and five broken ribs. He was relieved of his frontline command, but with the Russians advancing so quickly, he was not afforded the luxury of a lengthy hospital stay. Instead, now wearing a corset and enduring the occasional blinding headache, he enjoys the quiet of the forest while guarding against an Allied attack that will never come.

  The Russians encircle Berlin without any accompanying pincer movement by the Americans or British, so Wenck’s Twelfth Army stands down west of Berlin. The general is preparing to surrender to the Allies rather than let his men fall into Russian hands.

  True to form, Keitel shows up at Wenck’s headquarters in his best uniform, complete with field marshal’s baton.