Near the end of the war (February 1945), Eisenhower ranked the capabilities of U.S. generals in Europe. Omar Bradley and Carl Spaatz he rated as the best. Walter Bedell Smith was ranked number 3, and Patton number 4, followed by Mark Clark, and Lucian Truscott.
Bradley himself had been asked by Eisenhower to rank all the generals in December 1945, and he ranked them as follows: Bedell Smith #1, Spaatz #2, Courtney Hodges #3, Elwood Quesada #4, Truscott #5, and Patton #6 (others were also ranked)
However, Patton was a ground commander. Spaatz and Quesada had been air commanders since the 1920s, having spent their military careers through the end of World War II in the Army Air Force, the forerunner of today's U.S. Air Force, which was not separated from the U.S. Army until 1947. It may be impossible today to make a fair comparison of commanders from two such different branches of the U.S. military.
Eisenhower's and Bradley's rankings probably included factors other than Patton's success as a battle leader. As to that, Alan Axelrod in his book Patton (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) quotes German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt as stating "Patton was your best" and, surprisingly, Joseph Stalin as stating that the Red Army could neither have planned nor executed Patton's advance across France. Even Adolf Hitler was impressed by Patton's ability, reportedly calling him "The most dangerous man (the Allies) have."
Patton was the best US field commander of the war, and he must have been a patient man because he was nearly as often as not given jobs that didn’t make any tactical or strategic sense. The taking of Sicily was an example of that. I don’t think there’s much to the way that campaign unfolded that can be taken as factual in that movie. Patton was given assignments in Brittany that made very little sense at all, before he was greenlighted on Cobra.
The scene in the movie where Patton was asked what he could do to relieve Bastogne was generally true to the events, but in reality Ike was there, and when Patton told him what he planned to do, Ike said, “don’t be fatuous, George”. Fatuous? Are you bleepin’ kidding me? Ike was ideal in the role he played, but from the perspective of field command, he was exhibit A for the Peter Principle.
imho Spruance and Halsey were the most important of the Pacific theater admirals; there were a great many of the best fighters of all kinds ever produced by the US who fought in the Pacific.
During WWII Bradley was best in his role as a grocer; his mean-spiritedness toward Patton during and after the war was one of his biggest failings. Patton would have got his fourth star before Bradley because of Bradley’s failure (and Patton’s success) at recognizing the seriousness of the last German offensive and preparing his own counterstroke, despite having been denied fuel and other supplies thanks to the machinations of that asshole Montgomery; instead Bradley (to whom Patton reported) was given his fourth a month or so before as a face-saving gesture.
Bradley’s near-admission of his own failure regarding the Bulge can be found in “A Soldier’s Story”, but is so vague that he seems to be saying that the Battle of the Bulge wasn’t all that serious in retrospect. He settles some scores in that memoir (with the US’ own air support post-Dday, and with Montgomery); after the WWII he did a lot for US veterans; during Korea he testified against MacArthur and in favor of his firing, as well as against fighting the Chinese.
Ike’s brilliantly insensitive bon mot upon relieving Patton of all command was to say that he wasn’t doing it because of what Patton said or did, but what he was going to say or do next. Patton was paralyzed by a car-truck collision, spent some weeks or months (I don’t know the length) slowly dying, then died. At his own request he was buried at the head of the dead of the Third Army.
Right-o. Ike and Bradley dissed him because he wouldn’t follow orders, or at least bitched about them, worked around them, undermined them, etc, and didn’t give a hoot in hell about allies.
Interesting that Stalin and Hitler had such respect. They would probably have had him shot. Still, Patton’s success was largely do to his “blitzkrieg” tactics, so he might have been more congenial with the Prussians in the Wehrmacht.