Why Patton Missed the Middle of World War II

George Patton made quite the splash on Sicily. When Allied troops first stormed onto the small, rocky island just off the coast of Italy in July 1943, Patton was seething over the secondary role his US Seventh Army had been assigned, limited to supporting Bernard Montgomery’s British forces. But when Montgomery’s progress was stalled by rugged terrain and a tenacious German defense, Patton seized the opportunity, marching his troops to the northern coastline and capturing the capital of Palmero and 53,000 Italian prisoners. He then drove his forces to Messina, beating Montgomery to the campaign’s prized objective.

The triumph for Patton was soon tarnished by controversy. In August, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Patton’s superior, learned of two separate incidents involving Patton’s visits to field hospitals on Sicily. In each case, Patton encountered an uninjured American soldier and slapped each man after accusing them of cowardice (one suffered from malaria and the other psychological trauma).

When the incidents became public, it caused an uproar among Patton’s critics and a headache for Eisenhower, who had more than just a public relations problem on his hands. Patton had also made a series of politically provocative statements in public, rankling British and American officials alike. There were other signs that Patton lacked the temperament for large-scale command, and the general was eventually reassigned from the Mediterranean Theater to a training role in England, far removed from the public eye. His one-time subordinate, Omar Bradley, was given command of American ground forces for Overlord.

Over the course of the war, the US Army battled the Germans for thirty months, from North Africa to the outskirts of Berlin. But from the time of the slapping incidents in Sicily to the deployment of what would become his famed US Third Army in Normandy, nearly a full year would pass before Patton commanded men in combat again. Eisenhower essentially sidelined his most capable field commander for more than a third of the war in Europe.

Patton’s absence would have consequences. In the latter part of 1943, just weeks after the Sicily campaign ended, the Allies invaded German-occupied Italy, and the subsequent nineteen-month slog up the Italian peninsula became one of the most punishing campaigns of the war. The Germans staged a brilliant resistance, melding stout defensive lines and interlocking fortifications into the mountainous Italian interior, while the Allies were hindered by miserable weather and poor command decisions. Patton’s aggressive leadership and drive was keenly missed.

It was most notable at Anzio, the seaside town where the Allies landed 36,000 troops in January 1944, well behind German lines. It was a bold plan that depended on the landing force outflanking the German defenses and joining the drive to liberate Rome. But those leading the operation feared a German counterattack might drive the assault troops back into the sea and instead, ordered the men to halt their advance and fortify positions around their beachhead. That gave the Germans precious time to summon reinforcements and eventually pin the troops down at Anzio for an agonizing four months. “I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat on shore,” Winston Churchill later lamented, “but all we got was a stranded whale.”

The later decision by General Mark Clark to liberate Rome—mostly abandoned by the Germans at that point—and chase headlines rather than the fleeing German army was another costly blunder. By May 1945, when the last German holdouts had finally surrendered in northern Italy, the Allies had suffered 300,000 casualties.

Patton, of course, would return to the fighting after the invasion of Normandy and blaze a path through France, Belgium, and Germany, but his glaring absence in Italy was unquestionably a detriment to the blood-soaked campaign there. Did Eisenhower make the right call in removing Patton from the theater? Should he have relieved an underperforming commander and replaced him with Patton, as he did months earlier in North Africa? And how would the campaign have fared had Patton been unleashed?

Difficult questions to be sure. Patton is not without flaws, and his physical abuse of two enlisted men was inexcusable and deserving of reprimand, if not more. I am also reluctant to be overly critical of Eisenhower, who had to navigate extraordinary military and political responsibilities as Supreme Allied Commander. But Patton was arguably the single most effective fighting general of the war, and with hundreds of thousands of lives in Italy in the balance, the questions seem to be worth asking.