Expert: Michel Cahier - 3/20/2009

Question
QUESTION: Did George Patton view Stalin as being more dangerous than Hitler? Or, did he view them as being equally dangerous?

Thank You1

ANSWER: I am not sure if he felt Hitler less or more dangerous than Stalin but I know what he said about the Russians  and it is this :

"The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinese or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and they are all out sons-of-bitches, barbarians, and chronic drunks."

So from that you will draw your own personal conclusions.


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QUESTION: If Russia fell and Germany won, would the U.S. have entered the war immediately?

ANSWER: this is pure conjecture and any answer to this question is pure guess and not historian  work. having said that I think that if Germany had won against Russia in 1941-42 the whole world would have stood still and quiet in awe and  fear. Hitler would have found supporters everywhere and everybody would have acclaimed  him for cleaning Russia of the Soviets, he would have been a hero and a semi-God as he already was for his people. the big guys in Wall Street would have rushed to help him rebuild Russia on a capitalistic way and he would have had a lot of financing as he already had in the 30s to rebuild his Army. Europe would  have probably followed suit as a semi-enslaved continent and nobody would have give a damn for the fate of the Jews. They would  have been slaughtered in silence as were the Tutsi and the Christian Sudanese more recently. One thing is sure, the world would be very different and we would probably all be speaking German instead of English. as I studied history and Nazism for a long time, I am pretty convinced that if Hitler had won against Russia the USA would never have declared war on Nazi Germany. History smiles to the victors and turn its back on the vanquished.

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QUESTION: Then do you think Patton was crazy wanting to take his 3rd army to Moscow after Berlin was taken? He actually wanted to get to Berlin first, so it wouldn't be divided with the Soviet Union.

I understand the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics/ USSR. But is Russia  the short way of saying Soviet Union?

Answer
Hello again Matt

Thank you for your interesting  questions about WW2. No Russia is not the short way to say Soviet Union. Russia is the way to say Russia as England is the way to say England.

Having said that as a Frenchman  I have the greatest admiration for G.Patton who I consider a genius and a man of extreme lucidity but subject to delusions and visions of grandeur. If his analysis were right, the means he proposed to achieve his goals were too often biased and unrealistic.

Furthermore like many men of this sort he had a tendency to air his views in a non conformist and undiplomatic way and this brought him a lot of enemies and woes. After he slapped in the face a soldier in 1943 he was deprived of the ultimate responsibility to lead the invasion of Normandy and was given the task of commanding  the U.S. Third Army, which was on the extreme right (west) of the Allied land forces.

Eisenhower distrusted  him and considered that he should be put on a short leash. Was it a good decision and was the idea to go to Moscow a crazy one ? I think that Patton could  have been given the task to  free the Czechs but one must not forget that  Berlin fell to the Russians much more than to the Allies and it would  have been suicidal to try to continue the war on a territory controlled  by the Soviets. To my knowledge Patton never wanted to go to Moscow in 1945 and was only pressing Eisenhower to push the "Soviet"borders of Central Europe  back" and to tell the Russians they would not be masters of Central Europe.

To my opinion it would have been a costly folly, the GI's had a lot to do in Germany to ensure peace and most of them had to get back home where wives, kids and relatives were expecting them. The war against the Nazi enemy was over, would it have been wise to start another war against the Soviet enemy ? I do not think so, the cold  war could begin and it did not take the lives of hundreds of thousands of good Americans. Eisenhower acted wisely and I think Patton was a bit of a lunatic. He was an extraordinary soldier, a brilliant tactician, I do not think he was a strategist or a wise politician.

In conclusion it would   have been a terrible mistake to underestimate the Soviet forces in 1945 as Hitler did in 1941. In 1945 the Red Army was triumphant everywhere in Europe, you don't take on a triumphant army