World War II History

Today in WW II History

World War II History for September 22

1941 - A Ukrainian militia squad does the Nazis’ dirty work, murdering 28,000 Soviet Jews near the town of Vinnitsa.

1943 - British submarine troops sabotage the Tirpitz, Nazi Germany’s preeminent battleship, as it sits in port at Norway’s Altenfjord.

Recognizing that a two-front war is straining the Reich’s resources, Joseph Goebbels suggests that Adolf Hitler agree to a separate peace with the Soviet Union, but Hitler declines.

1944 - Patton’s Third Army is halted as supply lines are stretched to the breaking point.

1945 - General George S. Patton told reporters that he did not see the need for “this denazification thing.” He compared the controversy over Nazism to a “Democrat and Republican election fight.”

Once again, “Old Blood and Guts” had put his foot in his mouth.

Descended from a long line of military men, Patton graduated from the West Point Military Academy in 1909 and served in the Tank Corps during World War I. As a result of this experience, Patton became a dedicated proponent of tank warfare. During World War II, as commander of the U.S. 7th Army, he captured Palermo, Sicily, in 1943 by just such means. Patton’s audacity made itself evident in 1944, when, as commander of the 3rd Army, he overran much of northern France in an unorthodox–and ruthless–strategy.

Along the way, Patton’s mouth proved as dangerous to his career as the Germans. When he berated and slapped a hospitalized soldier diagnosed with shell shock, but whom Patton accused of “malingering,” the press turned on him, and pressure was applied to cut him down to size. He might have found himself enjoying early retirement had not Generals Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall intervened on his behalf. After several months of inactivity, he was put back to work.

And work he did–at the Battle of the Bulge, during which Patton once again succeeded in employing a complex and quick-witted strategy, turning the German thrust in Bastogne into an Allied counterthrust, driving the Germans east across the Rhine. In March 1945, Patton’s army swept through southern Germany into Czechoslovakia–which he was stopped by the Allies from capturing, out of respect for the Soviets’ postwar political plans for Eastern Europe.

Patton had many gifts, but diplomacy was not one of them. After the war, while stationed in Germany, he criticized the process of denazification, or the removal of former Nazi party members from positions of political, administrative, and governmental power, probably out of naivete more than anything else. Nevertheless, his impolitic press statements questioning the policy resulted in Eisenhower’s removing him as U.S. commander in Bavaria. He was transferred to the 15th Army Group, but in December 1945 he suffered a broken neck in a car accident and died less than two weeks later at the age of 60.

Tirpitz, Patton, General, Third Army, Politics, Norway, Ukraine, Eisenhower, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1945

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