New book claims General Patton was murdered

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General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book

George S. Patton, America's greatest combat general of the Second World War, was assassinated after the conflict with the connivance of US leaders, according to a new book.

By Tim Shipman in Washington click here
Last Updated: 5:09PM GMT 21 Dec 2008

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.

But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".

His book, "Target Patton", contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.

Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.

Mr Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph that when he spoke to Mr Bazata: "He was struggling with himself, all these killings he had done. He confessed to me that he had caused the accident, that he was ordered to do so by Wild Bill Donovan.

"Donovan told him: 'We've got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he's out of control and we must save him from himself and from ruining everything the allies have done.' I believe Douglas Bazata. He's a sterling guy."

Mr Bazata led an extraordinary life. He was a member of the Jedburghs, the elite unit who parachuted into France to help organise the Resistance in the run up to D-Day in 1944. He earned four purple hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre three times over for his efforts.

After the war he became a celebrated artist who enjoyed the patronage of Princess Grace of Monaco and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

He was friends with Salvador Dali, who painted a portrait of Bazata as Don Quixote.

He ended his career as an aide to President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign.

Mr Wilcox also tracked down and interviewed Stephen Skubik, an officer in the Counter-Intelligence Corps of the US Army, who said he learnt that Patton was on Stalin's death list. Skubik repeatedly alerted Donovan, who simply had him sent back to the US.

"You have two strong witnesses here," Mr Wilcox said. "The evidence is that the Russians finished the job."

The scenario sounds far fetched but Mr Wilcox has assembled a compelling case that US officials had something to hide. At least five documents relating to the car accident have been removed from US archives.

The driver of the truck was whisked away to London before he could be questioned and no autopsy was performed on Patton's body.

With the help of a Cadillac expert from Detroit, Mr Wilcox has proved that the car on display in the Patton museum at Fort Knox is not the one Patton was driving.

"That is a cover-up," Mr Wilcox said.

George Patton, a dynamic controversialist who wore pearl handled revolvers on each hip and was the subject of an Oscar winning film starring George C. Scott, commanded the US 3rd Army, which cut a swathe through France after D-Day.

But his ambition to get to Berlin before Soviet forces was thwarted by supreme allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, who gave Patton's petrol supplies to the more cautious British General Bernard Montgomery.

Patton, who distrusted the Russians, believed Eisenhower wrongly prevented him closing the so-called Falaise Gap in the autumn of 1944, allowing hundreds of thousands of German troops to escape to fight again,. This led to the deaths of thousands of Americans during their winter counter-offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

In order to placate Stalin, the 3rd Army was also ordered to a halt as it reached the German border and was prevented from seizing either Berlin or Prague, moves that could have prevented Soviet domination of Eastern Europe after the war.

Mr Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph: "Patton was going to resign from the Army. He wanted to go to war with the Russians. The administration thought he was nuts.

"He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers.

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Why am I not surprised by this allegation?

CONSPIRACIES!! !

Peace.

Khan_Sama, thank you for that thought-provoking post.

no good deed goes unpunished.

'Eisenhower's Death Camps'
"Call it callousness, call it reprisal, call it a policy of hostile neglect: a million Germans taken prisoner by Eisenhower's armies died in captivity after the surrender."
http://www.whale.to/b/bacque1.html

Yes, and it's something people today are uncomfortable talking about. Some people equate every German serving in the Wehrmacht with Nazism, and openly wish they all would have died.

Patton actually had a respect for the the German organisation...
A little out of step with most, at that time, who wanted revenge via simple, satisfying, slaughter...

Bacque's claims should be taken with several grains of salt.

If you wish...

I have had a very in depth discussion in another forum...
Circumstantial evidence beyond Bacque's exposé was enough to convince me, at the time, that criminal acts were perpetrated, not only on the
German P.O.W.s, but on the helpless civilian population via man made starvation...

But then, if you know me, you know I have no respect of the truth nor that I have any meaningful objectivity...

Perhaps we should agree to disagree at this point, to save the inordinate time/energy it would take to have an in depth conversation in this thread dedicated to Patton...

I was simply proffering one possible reason why some might want Patton assassinated if he threatened to expose the truth, whatever that is...

You'll find an overview of academic criticism on Wikipedia.

<sigh>
If we must...

Yes, I know...
Been there...
Done that...

In no particular order (I haven't the energy for another major meticulous confrontation on the subject...lol)

There seems to be a comprehensive discreditation program in evidence, imo...
Not surprising when you consider the enormity Of James Bacque's claims...

James Bacque has said he has been neutered by wikipedia and has had to defend himself elsewhere:
"Wikipedia reviews and criticizes only Other Losses, and in such a biassed way, that I finally tried to correct their many errors. Starting in March, 2006, I tried repeatedly over many weeks to correct the errors, but found that within a day at first, then within hours, and finally within minutes, some Wikipedian editor had expunged my corrections, replacing them with ever more hostile and denigrating allegations."
http://www.whale.to/b/bacque.html

There has also been archival evidence unearthed in Russia supporting Bacque's claims after the review against him...
"These Soviet reports, supplemented by personal testimonies from German veterans who survived, make it clear that the camps were indeed horrid variants of the gulag. The Soviet documents do not, however, produce a causal link between the Soviets and the charges that Bacque has stated previously about the American mistreatment of prisoners." <bait>
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=34874

There has been admissions by Ambrose himself that proper due diligence was not performed with his rebuttal of Bacque's claims...

Also:
"Wikipedia quotes Stephen E. Ambrose as saying that Other Losses is "... spectacularly flawed ..." without saying that Ambrose also wrote that "You have made a major historical discovery which will ... span the oceans and have reverberations for decades, yea centuries to come. You have the goods on these guys ..." "
http://www.whale.to/b/bacque.html

<ding ding>
<end of round one>

Generally agreed, at the same time though, if we had not only reserved the camps for SS members only, but made them the equivalent of the camps the Turks herded the Armenians into I think the Euro Right Wing would not exist as it does today. Furthermore, the middle eastern situation would be much differant as well.

Getting back to the subject at hand, these conspiracy theories have been floating around since before I was born. It doesn't change a thing even if it were true.

but if proven true somehow, it does open your eyes wider to the evils of this wicked world.

Indeed...
I mean..."true dat"...

The amount of ignorance floating around is staggering...
And the self-righteousness/sanctimoniousness of so many, moreso...

Regarding:
"...if proven true somehow"...
Often it boils down to using one's noggin and life experiences to weed out BS rather than finding a definitive nicely framed and glazed truth...

We don't need something like this to point out that there evil people in this world. Take a look around. What concerns me the most is that people focus on the famous and blow off the fact that there are many unknown people that are treated worse, and no one cares.