Was Patton right?

June 6, 2018 By Richard Jack Rail

This being D-Day, it’s inevitable that thoughts turn to WWII. The slaughter. The sacrifices. The magnificent courage of going forward into the teeth of machine-gun fire and artillery barrages onto open beaches. In perhaps its only redeeming virtue, war brings out the heroism inherent in the human breast. You can get into some interesting discussions online, and WWII always come up.

Specifically, the ending of WWII. Patton wanted to take out the Russians while we were already there, and today a lot of people think he was right. But he wasn’t right. At least, not in the sense he meant................ Read more

My Take - I don't know what this author is thinking, but his analysis is all wrong. We had the troops, we had the tactics, we had the technological advancements, we had the atom bomb and unlike the Germans - we had the Dodge truck.

Why the Dodge truck? That was what made the Russian army work. Because of sending the Russians huge numbers of Dodge trucks they had something they never had before and the Germans didn't have. The ability to transport men and materials quickly over vast areas. The German army was still marching to battles and using a huge number of horses for transportation. Something that's never talked about in documentaries.

Secondly, American air power was invincible compared to the best the Russians had. Their air froces would have been destroyed within the first weeks of any conflict. Their tanks were far better, but that could change over night with the tank technology from the Germans and American production capabilities. We could take the German tank technology and turn it into thousands of advanced tanks within months, and possibly even in weeks.

The Russian leaders weren't great military geniuses as this writer suggests. They just simply wasted thousand and thousands of Russian soldiers against a diminishing German army. Plus the Germans didn't really fight the air war in the Eastern front because they used their best planes and men in the Western front, which of course made it impossible for Germany to stand against Russian forces.

Patton was right! Patton and the western allies would not only have won, they would have driven the Russians all the way back to Moscow in six months or less. Turning Patton loose in the North European plan with his tanks and strategic genius would have been devastating against Russia.

Furthermore, after the fall of Japan, American forces would have landed on Russia's East coast, and I would think with little resistance since during the Germany's second summer offensive Stalin released divisions he'd been holding back in fear of a Japanese invasion. Plus, there and no natural barriers to prevent an American army from driving west and catching Russian forces in a vice.

One more point. Russia was incapable of feeding itself, and once we advanced into Russian oil fields, they would have been incapable of fueling itself. They industrial capacity was largely destroyed, and no matter what they were accomplishing, that would have ground to a halt.

Russia was incapable of withstanding an onslaught against an American army that could feed itself, fuel itself, arm itself with the latest technology and defend itself indefinitely......and attack on more fronts quickly and effectively, none of which the Russians could have withstood except over a short period of time.