Who's In Charge Around Here?
Patton and his rival, Gen. Bernard Montgomery, greet each other on Sicily in July 1943. The two fought the Axis powers in Tunisia, Sicily, and the European theater.
Surviving Luftwaffe documents show that the Germans collected biographical data on hundreds of senior American and British air commanders, and the same was doubtless true for ground-force generals, although those records have perished. Jodl told interrogators that he routinely received lists of enemy commanders that included the leaders’ ages and experience.
It is true that by 23 March, the Germans had associated Patton with FUSAG, as they had been fed information to that effect, but they did not believe he was the commanding general. On 1 April, Foreign Armies West assessed, “The arrival of Ninth U.S. Army in Great Britain was reported in mid-March by reliable sources. The presence of two American armies (First and Ninth) in Great Britain is thereby established, and they are suspected to be subordinated to the 1st Army Group. In this connection, a believable report from Abwehr [military intelligence] indicates that the former commander of Seventh Army, Lt. Gen. Patton, has arrived in England with part of his staff. It seems possible that Lt. Gen. Patton, who commanded Seventh Army in the Sicily landings, has taken command of the First or Ninth Army in England.”
There is no evidence that the Germans paid any particular attention to Patton’s whereabouts. By contrast, during the months before D-Day, Abwehr bombarded its (double) agents in the United Kingdom with questions about Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s travels. Patton, though, apparently believed the Germans viewed him as a dangerous commander. He told some troops, “Don’t forget, you don’t know that I’m here at all. . . . Let the first b*stards to find out be the goddam Germans. Some day I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s that goddam Third Army and that son-of-a-b*tch Patton again!’”
