Patton's Views on Post-War Germany

Patton was also very vocal in his resistance to US Treasury

Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.'s plan for post-war Germany,

believing that the Americans would be seen as too harsh if it were fully

enacted. It wasn't helped that Patton had made many remarks that

bordered on anti-Semitism, aggravating certain sections of the US

press against him.

Writing of the destruction of Berlin, which he visited in late July

1945, Patton said, quote, Berlin gave me

the blues. We have destroyed what could have been a

good race,

and we are about to replace them with Mongolian savages, and all

Europe will be communist, unquote.

Patton became more and more obsessed with the Soviet threat

and

angry that America was, in his view, unnecessarily punishing the

Germans instead of protecting Europe from the Soviets.

Elements of the press in America, as I have said, had become rather

anti-Patton. Small wonder that some people might have preferred

it if so famous a leader as Patton was silenced.

Ladies and gentlemen,

there was a very great lesson.

You must remember this.

We passed over a destroyed land.

Utterly destroyed.

You who have not seen it do not know what hell looks like

from the top. That's what Germany looks like.