General George S. Patton and the Battle of the Bulge
By Stanley Weintraub

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Inevitably, as the enemy advance divided Bradley’s army group, he would diminish into a minor player. His northernmost forces would be closer to Montgomery’s command than to Bradley’s own headquarters in Luxembourg City. “George,” Eisenhower instructed Patton at Verdun, with a diplomatic nod toward Bradley to keep him in the picture although Patton was now much on his own, “I want you to command this move—under Brad’s supervision, of course—making a strong counter­attack with at least six divisions. When can you start?”

“As soon as you’re through with me,” Patton claimed. “I can attack the day after tomorrow morning.” He had thought his moves out the night before, and did not mention that he had left three alternative plans with his deputy, Maj. Gen. Hobart Gay, in Nancy. All he had to do was telephone a code word to activate his troops. But he reminded Eisenhower that of the six divisions asked for, he had only three.

Patton noted in his diary that it “didn’t enter Ike’s head” that the other divisions called for “exist only on paper.” They had been battered in the Hürtgen Forest, above the Ardennes, in November and were still refitting. He had only the reliable 4th Armored and the 26th and 80th Infantry divisions.

Patton’s aide, Lt. Col. Charles R. Codman, recalled “a stir, a shuffling of feet, as those present straightened up in their chairs. In some faces skepticism [showed]. But through the room a current of excitement leaped.” Taking tens of thousands of men facing eastward, swiveling them north, and moving them—with their armor and supplies set up for a different thrust, and over inadequate and icy roads—to counterattack two days later seemed logistically unsound. Patton was confident he could do it.

Turning toward Bradley as he described his plans for the southern shoulder of the Bulge, Patton contended, “Brad, the Kraut’s stuck his head in a meat grinder. And”—he turned his fist in simulation—“this time I have hold of the handle.”

Others at the table raised worries. Patton spurned their concerns. He was taking the war directly to the enemy. He would have preferred to lure the Germans forty or fifty miles farther, then chop them off.

“Don’t be fatuous, George,” Eisenhower warned, reining in tartly what he assumed was Patton’s bragging. “If you try to go that early, you won’t have all three divisions ready, and you’ll go piecemeal. You will start on the twenty-second, and I want your initial blow to be a strong one! I’d even settle for the twenty-third if it takes that long to get three full divisions.”

In two hours the redispositions were settled. Eisenhower walked to the door with Patton. “Funny thing, George,” he joked, referring to his new five-star super-rank, “every time I get another star, I get attacked.” His fourth had come just before the Kasserine Pass embarrassment in Tunisia early in 1943.

“And every time you get attacked, Ike,” Patton retorted, “I have to bail you out.”

Bailing out the Bulge would be one of Patton’s finest hours, justifying his belated fourth star, granted only when the war was nearly over. Bradley, who had vaulted over his unpredictable partner, and Eisenhower, who held Patton back, continued to have mixed feelings about entrusting crucial operations to him. Yet both continued to demonstrate confidence in the overcautious Maj. Gen. Courtney Hodges, who had bollixed up the First Army situation on the northern flank of the Bulge. In effect, his shattered divisions were now going into receivership under the domineering Montgomery.

“I trust,” Ike would grumble to General of the Army George Marshall as late as March 12, 1945, “that the secretary of war will wait for my recommendation before putting Patton’s name for promotion. There is no one better acquainted than I with Patton’s good qualities and likewise with his limitations. In the past, I have demonstrated my high opinion of him when it was not easy to do so. In certain situations both Bradley and I would select Patton to command above any general we have, but in other situations we would prefer Hodges.” The difficult Ulysses S. Grant might not have made the cut in Eisenhower’s army.

Tags: Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, World War II

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