Killing Patton

On Christmas Eve 1944, Hitler is directing the German offensive from the “Adlerhorst,” a bunker complex in western Germany. “The Fuhrer’s physical condition continues to deteriorate” (174): His left hand shakes, he suffers from irritable bowel syndrome and an irregular heartbeat, and he is addicted to cocaine and methamphetamines.

Hitler hears news that Germans have not yet captured Bastogne. His Second Panzer Division has run out of fuel just three miles short of the Meuse River. Moreover, the elite First SS Panzer Division, the spearhead of the attack led by Hitler’s greatest tank commander, Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper, also out of fuel or ammunition, has been forced to halt within two bridges of the Meuse. Pieper and his men have no choice but to abandon their vehicles and retreat on foot. Though the fighting continues for another month, the defeat of Pieper effectively ends “Operation Watch on the Rhine,” exhausting Germany’s capacity to launch offensive operations, making its defeat on the Western Front all but inevitable.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had a daughter, Svetlana, with a woman named Natasha Alliluyeva. Unable to handle Stalin’s numerous affairs and hard drinking, Natasha committed suicide when Svetlana was five. Svetlana called her father “a very simple man, very rude, very cruel… There was nothing in him that was complicated. He loved me and wanted me to be with him” (186-187). This love, however, was possessive. When Svetlana fell for Jewish writer and filmmaker Alexei Kapler, Stalin sent him to the Gulag for ten years. This incident led to Svetlana’s estrangement from her father.

During World War II, Stalin has been making efforts to re-assert traditional Russian patriotism. He evoked the memory of famous pre-Soviet Russian war heroes like Mikhail Kutuzov, who had helped defeat Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. He also introduced a winter holiday—a festive celebration of New Year’s Day that featured a decorated fir tree and a white-bearded figure called “Grandfather Frost”—to the officially atheist USSR. Stalin saw these gestures as necessary to rally the Soviet people in the face of the German invasion of 1941.

As the Battle of the Bulge reaches its climax, Soviet forces are making further headway into Eastern Europe. The Soviet Red Army pushes into Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia and Hungary, laying the groundwork for a final strike towards Berlin. Soviet-backed communists prepare to seize power in Greece, a move that reneges a previous deal between Churchill and Stalin that Greece would remain in the British sphere of influence.

By Boxing Day 1944, a week after the start of Third Army’s efforts to relieve Bastogne and 101st Airborne Division, Patton’s forces are still bogged down in bitter attritional fighting. As Patton’s “tank divisions continue to take heavy casualties” (196), British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery refuses to send his forces to assist.

To break the impasse, Major Hugh Gaffey, Commander of the Fourth Armored Division, requests permission to launch a direct attack on Bastogne. Lt. Colonel Creighton Abrams of the 37th Tank Battalion of Fourth Division spearheads the attack. He chooses the most direct route to Bastogne, surprising and overwhelming German defenders and blasting a path to Bastogne. This is the final nail in the coffin of “Operation Watch on the Rhine.”