December 9th: Today in 1945 General George S. Patton was in a car accident that led to his death twelve days later. He was riding in a staff car that got cut off my a truck and his head slammed into the seat in front of him leaving him paralysed from the neck down. He had once commented:

The two most dangerous weapons the Germans have are our own armored halftrack and jeep. The halftrack because the boys in it go all heroic, thinking they are in a tank. The jeep because we have so many God-awful drivers.

Patton was the last of the legendary American fighting generals, renowned more for his ferocity than for his good sense. Of course the real history is more complicated, he was a brilliant tactical commander but clearly felt he didn’t need any tact. I suspect he was a prototype neocon, fiercely proud of America and incapable of seeing much nuance in the world. It would have been interesting to have seen him enter postwar politics, how would he have fared against Eisenhower for instance.

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