Craig Symonds
Subject: The 80th Anniversary of the Nazi Germany Surrender – How the Allies Won the War
Bio: Professor of History at the US Naval Academy
Reading: Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings is here
Darren Schwartz
Subject: Patton (1970)
Bio: What Happens Next Culture Critic
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and culture.
Today’s topic is the 80th anniversary of the Nazi Germany Surrender – How the allies won the war.
This is the second of a two-part series with Craig Symonds who is the author of the book Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings. Craig is a Professor of History at the US Naval Academy.
I want to learn from Craig about the unexpected challenges of the allied invasion at Normandy. And I want Craig to explain what distinguished the great allied generals on the battlefield.
Our second speaker today will be our What Happens Next Culture Critic Darren Schwartz. We are going to review the movie Patton that starred George C. Scott that won multiple Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.
D-Day the amount of work that was involved in the planning was incredible and contingency plans. Mike Tyson said everyone has got a plan until they're punched in the nose. The actual invasion, you could see the planning documents being tossed as nothing was working out as planned. Tell us about military planning and the problem of getting punched in the nose.
Craig Symonds:
The phrase that is most often used among the American military is no plan survives first contact with the enemy. You must plan, you must have a vision, a template, a blueprint available to you so that you know what you need and where you are going. And you devise as many possible contingencies as you can.
We landed on five beaches in Normandy. We did have drops behind the lines. We had amphibious assaults on the beach that landed at the wrong place on Utah Beach. They found themselves pinned down on Omaha Beach. These things had to be dealt with on the scene by creative junior officers and enlisted men. You have to be sufficiently flexible to recognize that not everything's going to go according to plan so that you have options available to you other than what's written down in the four-inch thick, single spaced planning document for D-Day.
Larry Bernstein:
The Desert Fox, German General Rommel did not direct his junior officers with a specific plan. Instead, he gave them objectives.
I want you to take that hill. The reason I want you to take that hill is because I am worried about that road next to the hill. And so, focus on the ultimate objectives, do not worry about the tactics of how we achieve that objective. And figure out how best to achieve that goal and objective.
Were the junior officers informed about D-Day as to core objectives? Not only the landing, but what do we do afterwards? Where are we going? What are we trying to achieve? How do we think about the goals and objectives of that battle?
Craig Symonds:
Rommel tended to give his subordinates an objective and leave to them with as much advice and information as he could provide the way to get it done. That whole process of leadership and the issuance of command is the essence of what is taught at American War Colleges, both Army and Navy war colleges and the Air University as well for many years. So that's not unique to him, and it has proven to be very resourceful.
It becomes evident immediately, the junior officer needs to know not only what the objective is but why is it an objective? What is our overall goal? And if you bring the junior officer, and I don't necessarily mean the second lieutenants, but I do mean the majors, captains, and certainly the colonels into understanding here's the overall picture.
Here's how the pieces fit together, and if you can see why this objective we've assigned to you, how that piece fits the puzzle, you will be better prepared to make your own decisions about how to execute the orders I'm about to give you. A commonplace way of approaching giving orders to a subordinate by a good leader. Now, not every commander is a good leader, and there are those who say, do what I tell you. When I say jump, there are commanders like that, but hopefully they do not make it to flag rank.
Larry Bernstein:
We mentioned Rommel’s role at the Kasserine Pass and in Tunisia and as the leader of the Afrika Korps, but he's also the one responsible for coastal defense at D-Day. How did Rommel see this problem? As an American thinking about D-Day, I don't ever think about it from the German perspective. How did Rommel decide to defend the allied invasion?
Craig Symonds:
There's two ways to try to defend yourself from an amphibious invasion from the sea. One is to try to make sure the landing is not successful. You defend at the beach, you sink the ships offshore, you attack the transport vessels bringing in the supplies. You fight them on the beach, drive them into the sea, don't let them get a foothold because once they get a foothold, they'll expand that foothold. And now you're in a defensive mode. That's one way.
The other way is to let them come ashore, allow the landing to happen, and then counterattack furiously so that you then drive them into the sea. And the Germans could not agree among themselves about which was the better way to go. Rommel was an advocate of defending at the beach, the Atlantic Wall, which he was charged with building pillboxes and gun emplacements and impediments to vessels landing along the beaches of Normandy. And this hope and expectation was that it would so attrit the landing forces that they could be defeated at the beach.
General Von Rundstedt, who was his superior, thought it would be better to hold back the panzers, the armored units, which was the heart of the Wehrmacht, hold them back from the beach until the Germans knew for sure where that landing was taking place. And for a long time, Hitler himself believed the landings at Normandy might be a feint and that the real attack would take place in Calais. There was a hesitancy to commit those forces into the fight.
Larry Bernstein:
The last major continental battle in the West was outside of Dunkirk. The British were horrified to have left so much military stock behind, and the Germans thinking this was such a successful operation expelling them from the beach.
Craig Symonds:
What's interesting about Dunkirk is that the British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay who coordinated the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 is also the Sea Commander at D-Day. Here is a perfect opportunity for him to turn this thing around. You may have driven us off the beach in 1940, but here we come back again, and this time we are a lot stronger. We have sea support and air superiority.
The Germans, although it looked like a tremendous success driving an entire British army off the continent of Europe; they let most of those men get away. And it is possible they could have prevented that had they applied the kind of counterattack in force, both on the ground and in the air that Von Rundstedt was arguing for in 1944. Instead, Hitler held back the Panzers not only because they were running low on gas, but also because Gehring, the head of the Luftwaffe said, “I can do this with air power alone,” which was not true. There are few battles that can be won by airpower alone no matter how many times my Air Force friends tell me they can.
Larry Bernstein:
During D-Day, in the evening before, paratroopers were dropped behind enemy lines to cause havoc. And the Germans did not place a lot of stock in this approach because of the Battle for Crete. The British, because of Ultra had been aware that the Germans were planning to land a substantial number of paratroopers to take the Heraklion airport, and they placed machine guns in appropriate places and gunned down a substantial number of German paratroopers. And when Hitler heard about the casualty rates, he thought that the allied forces, if they did choose to use this, would find it to be an extremely poor approach. Tell us about the role of paratroopers.
Craig Symonds:
The German occupation at Crete at the time was celebrated as a great German victory, and they did take the island and use of paratroopers at that scale was unprecedented, and the Germans took terrible casualties in doing it, but it was eventually successful. Now, you can argue that in terms of cost benefit analysis, that is not the way you want to win battles. It is just too costly.
Hitler was aware that the allies were likely to use paratroops coming in behind the landing beaches, which is exactly why they had “the asparagus” which were wooden poles left in open fields that would interfere with landing military gliders.
On the allied side, not everybody thought this was a wise use of scarce resources. Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who was the British Air Marshal in command of the Air Force of the D-Day landings worried constantly that this would be too costly. He went to Eisenhower to say, I'm not sure that we should do this. We could have as many as 70% casualties, which would be apocalyptic. Eisenhower as the indispensable man at the center of all this had to make the decision, and he decided that it was worth whatever risk it might take to make sure that the troops landing on the beach had somebody watching their backs, and that would be the paratroopers. There is still an argument today, and I'm not sure where I land on it, about whether this operation could have been successful without the paratrooper, or the glider drops.
Larry Bernstein:
I want to delve into the idea of the role of an importance of individuals at D-Day. In your book you highlight the importance of George Marshall, Eisenhower, Churchill, et cetera. You mentioned that the big winner of this war was the American industrial complex, and that complex does not depend on any specific individual. How should we think about the role of individuals and the role of the individual versus the machine?
Craig Symonds:
Napoleon is often credited as saying it is not men that matter in war, but the man, by which he meant himself. That the commander the one at the center of the storm, the one making the decision, that person is the person who determines victory and defeat. I'm not buying into that.
I said that Eisenhower was the indispensable man was not just that he was at the center of the storm, but that he had the temperament and the personality and the patience and the empathy to deal with individuals like Churchill, Montgomery, Patton, Mountbatten, the difficult individuals who surrounded him from a dozen nations.
Eisenhower never commanded forces in battle in the way we think of as a military general being in charge of a battlefield. He had the temperament that was absolutely essential, and he always portrayed this calm, smiling exterior. He had a subordinate who said, Ike’s smile is worth four divisions. It may well have been because Eisenhower could bring confidence to the troops. and if he was smiling on the outside, we know he was roiling on the inside because he smoked four packs of unfiltered camels every day. So, here's a guy who's suffering through the crisis of the western world while portraying the smiling visage that keeps everybody in place. That's why I say that Eisenhower was the indispensable man for D-Day in the same way that George Washington was the indispensable man in the American Revolution.
Larry Bernstein:
General Stan McChrystal at one of my book clubs explained what it was like to be the lead commander in Iraq. He said he had a big screen with cameras showing what it looked like on the ground so he could make orders on the fly. He said he gave a lot of deference to the commanders on the ground because he did not know exactly what was going on but would make suggestions along the way.
When I read your biography on Nimitz, what struck me was how little communication went on between Nimitz and his field commanders. Today I imagine with secure lines and GPS the Head of the Pacific Command can be giving out orders and be analyzing in real time every decision.
In the book, Neptune, you describe Operation Torch and Eisenhower's role, but he is not even on the continent. He is locked up in a cave in Gibraltar. Here we are going to have this huge battle, and the leader is in the dark to what's happening. And even with D-Day, he goes to sleep in England not knowing what happened in the morning. Tell us about the change in battle, the role of the commander, and how in the last century they were completely in the dark.
Craig Symonds:
When a task force left, let's say Pearl Harbor, it went immediately into radio silence because even if the Japanese couldn't break what was being said in a radio message, they could triangulate the location of the radio transmission and thereby know where the Americans were located at any given moment. It was a rule that when a task force left on a mission, it operated under complete radio silence until they made contact with the enemy, by which time the enemy knew where they were, and then you could make reports and receive messages.
D-Day with Eisenhower at Southwick house and near Portsmouth where he had to count on his subordinates carrying out what they call the commander's intent, without a lot of oversight, and to give orders to his subordinate, here's the commander's intent, here's what I want to achieve, here's the objective. Here are the tools to get that done.
Now, get your staff together and figure out a plan to do it. Eisenhower had to count on the months of rehearsals and staff meetings that had taken place in Britain to apply to the actual battle front when the bullets began to fly.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned Eisenhower's temperament, but he also was a good speaker and could write well, and he gave a famous speech moments before D-Day began, and he prepared a letter if D-Day were to fail.
Craig Symonds:
The speech was recorded to be played onboard the ships as they headed toward the landing beaches, and this is where he used the phrase, you embarked on a great crusade and invokes the help of Almighty God in this undertaking. It's the speech you would expect him to give delivered in that Midwestern American slow drawl, very effective onboard the ships. He did write two letters, one saying, we have affected a landing on the Coast of France, and it has been successful. Our hearts go out to those who were lost, but he also prepared one for we have attempted a landing on the coast of France today and it was unsuccessful. It is entirely my responsibility. It was my decision and my responsibility.
It's hard to imagine somebody like MacArthur writing such a letter, but Eisenhower was prepared to take the full responsibility for any failure. He expected success but you must be prepared for the lack of it.
Larry Bernstein:
When the Americans, British, Canadians and Poles land, they face stiff resistance; they must improvise on the beaches. Things do not go as planned. Tell us about the role of the naval guns and its importance of winning the day at D-Day.
Craig Symonds:
The initial deployment of naval gunfire at Normandy was disappointing. It was brief, only 50 minutes. In the Pacific they would bombard an island for days or even weeks before landing to make sure they had taken out the defensive positions. But one element of the D-Day landing is surprise.
So, this had to be short, but it also had to be overwhelming. The idea was not that the naval gunfire will take out the defenses, but that it will create a psychological mood among the defenders that all this ordinance is landing on us at once. The naval gunfire support - 14-inch shells from American battleships and bombs from American and British bombers landing all over the place. They would hide in their bomb proofs, cowering, shaking, so that when the American GIs came ashore, they would be successful rather quickly.
The other argument was that the naval gunfire shells and the bombs would create ready-made foxholes. The beach would be covered with these pockmarks of bomb craters that they could use to protect themselves. Well, that did not work either.
I'm shifting to aerial bombing here, but the planes flying perpendicular to the coast and not wanting to hit the landing craft as they headed towards shore flew just a couple of hundred yards too far inland, one or two seconds too long and blew up lots of cows in Normandy and not many German defenses and left no ready-made foxholes for the landers.
On Omaha Beach, the men who came ashore found that the guns had not been taken out, the defenders had not been stunned. German rapid fire machine guns were just hell, and they could not get inland. There is a 16-inch-high berm of shingle at the high tide mark where the waves had deposited the high tide material and they cowered under that and could not get any further without all of them being killed.
What was clear was what those troops needed was close aimed gunfire. Not 14-inch shells blasting up the countryside, but smaller five-inch shells from destroyers fired from close in on specific sites to allow these soldiers to get out from behind that berm and up onto the high ground. And that's when they called for 13 destroyers and ordered them to get as close to the beach as you can and try to provide close gunfire support for those troops on the beach.
Larry Bernstein:
Was it effective?
Craig Symonds:
If you visited Omaha Beach, and I recommended everybody do that, the drop there is gradual at low tide. It's only one foot of drop for 50 feet of horizontal terrain. They could not get as close as they would like, and when they did get close, they had only an inch or two of water under their keels but being close enough to figure out where some of those German strong points were located. Now, that is not an easy task because the Germans are well camouflaged. You might be able to pick up a little movement of a brush and say, “there might be a gun in there,” but what worked is troops on the scene figuring it out as they go.
The few tanks that had managed to get ashore were shooting at a particular spot. Now the destroyer crews couldn't tell what was at that spot, but the tankers must know what they're doing, so they aim their five-inch shells into that spot and boom, took it out. Then the tanks moved to another spot. And what emerged not with any radio communication not with any coordination, but just on the fly, was the tankers were using their shells almost as lasers. Here, shoot at this spot. The destroyers followed suit, took out the pillboxes, and that is what allowed the men to get up from behind that berm, up the hill, and onto the high ground.
Larry Bernstein:
The weather was a problem. They had to delay the initial invasion on the fifth and push it up to the sixth. There were different tidal effects that would make it impossible to start again until two weeks later. Tell us about the weather in June 1944 and the role it played in this battle.
Craig Symonds:
June of any year is usually a benign month. That is one reason why it was selected as the invasion date. But the allies had an advantage over the Germans. The Germans had submarines out in the North Atlantic that could deliver early weather reports that moved generally west to east and then up the channel. But the allies had far better weather stations in Iceland and elsewhere.
It looked like that entire week was going to be impossible for large-scale forces to get across the channel Major James Stagg, the meteorologist on staff, reported that June 5th looked bad, so Eisenhower postponed the landings for 24 hours.
Then at 3:30, Stagg comes in the next morning smiling. There is going to be a break in the weather. It's not going to clear, but there's going to be a long enough gap that we should be able to take advantage of it. It'll still be windy. It'll still be waves of six, eight feet going across the channel. So it is iffy, but it can be done, and it's Eisenhower's call. Montgomery is being Montgomery. I say, go, let's do it. Most of the others look at Eisenhower knowing it's his call to make, and he gets up and strides around a bit and then stops and turns to the rest of the staff and says, “okay, we'll go.”
And that's it. Once that is decision is promulgated all the various elements all the way from Scotland’s Firth of Forth, all of this begins to come together in this area south of the Isle of Wight, known as Area Zebra, and now it's too late to recall it once it's all in motion.
One of the ways they wanted to get equipment ashore was to offload material from the big LSTs. The LST landing ship tanks are so valuable, so important, so scarce that instead of going right up on the beach on D-Day, they were going to offload the material onto something called a Rhino Ferry, essentially a big raft and carried ashore on this raft to protect the LSTs from being taken out on the first day.
The rafts have about 18 inches of freeboard, and the waves are four to six feet, so you can do the math, it was very difficult. An even bigger problem is that to get tanks ashore with the infantry on day one, the allies created something called a DD tank, a duplex drive tank that was wrapped in a waterproof canvas shroud that could be dropped off the end of an LCT landing craft tank three miles offshore and swim ashore with a little propeller that stuck out the back of the canvas shroud. It worked in practice, they managed to do it, but four- to six-foot waves, the canvas shrouds were compromised. Most of those tanks at Omaha went to the bottom. They worked better on the British beaches. They were screened by a headland, but off-Omaha, most of those tanks went to the bottom, which is why there were only a very few of them on the shore when the destroyers came in and used them to point out the targets for their five-inch shells.
Larry Bernstein:
Did the weather serve to the benefit of the Germans or the allies?
Craig Symonds:
The weather probably served the allies more because the Germans looking at what information they had about the weather concluded that this week was not a likely week for an allied invasion. Famously, Rommel went home to celebrate his wife's birthday, bringing her a pair of shoes from Paris as a birthday present. It may be that the surprise element of landing in this break in the storm caught the Germans by even more surprise than they would have confronted under other circumstances.
Larry Bernstein:
There are so many ways of telling the story of D-Day. I've read John Keegan's book on The Five Armies of Normandy. I've now read your book Neptune. Ambrose wrote a book on D-Day, which is more like an oral history. Tell us about histography of war and the different approaches that are used and why you chose to write the book that you did.
Craig Symonds:
I chose to write the book I did because I wanted to emphasize the importance of the Navy's role. That's why I didn't call it Overlord. I didn't call it D-Day. I called it Neptune, which is code name for the Navy's role, and that embraces all of the planning, preparation, design and construction of the landing craft, getting them to Britain, the practice sessions along the beach, and then getting them across the channel and then sustaining them on the other side of the channel with repeated round trips by those LSTs to bring all the material ashore.
A lot of the story in the historiography of D-Day focuses on the landing itself. If you see the wonderful movie Saving Private Ryan, that first 20 minutes is searing where those the ramp drops the troops run ashore. They've run across that horrifying beach, but that is not really the beginning of the story.
That's the culmination of the story as far as the Navy is concerned, and I wanted to make sure that the Navy got its due. They weren't just the bus drivers that brought them into the beach. They played an intrinsic and crucial part in the execution of the whole D-Day operation.
Larry Bernstein:
What role did D-Day have in the ultimate victory in the war?
Craig Symonds:
D-Day is essential. I'm a navy man. But wars are won on the ground, and until you can get an army on the ground that can defeat your foes army on the ground, you are not going to win that war. So, it had to take place sooner or later.
Let me play a counterfactual game with you. Let's suppose that Eisenhower says, no, the weather is too bad. We can't go on the 6th of June. The next opportunity given the tide tables for those beaches is the 18th. The 18th by coincidence, was the day that storm came up channel that wrecked the artificial harbor, so it could not have been done on the 18th. Then you're looking now at July, by which time Soviet armies are on the outskirts of Berlin. So that changes the whole dynamic of the war. Not who wins but which armies win it. It changes the post-war attitudes of the former allies: the British, the Russians, and the Americans. So a lot hangs on getting that army ashore on that day, on the 6th of June, 1944. Had it not happened that day, counterfactual alternatives are not happy.
Larry Bernstein:
You were speaking ill of Montgomery. What are your thoughts on Monty?
Craig Symonds:
Oh, Monty. Monty's a showman. The troops loved him. He told King George VI, he says, my beret is worth two divisions because when troops see my beret, they know I'm there and they fight harder. That’s his attitude about himself. He just exuded confidence. He exuded egocentrism, but it worked for him. He was very popular with the troops.
He made mistakes in the war. The bridge too far may have been one of them. He failed to take Cannes, which he said he would take in 24 hours for several weeks. So, his actual performance on the battlefield didn't quite live up to his own self-importance.
His highlight was El-Alemein where he won the battle and that was a clear turning point. This is the battle that led Churchill to say, “It's not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”
When he was raised to the peerage after the war, he became Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. That was his great victory. But he is difficult for Eisenhower to deal with because given Montgomery's attitude about himself, he thinks he's smarter and more effective than any American, smarter than Eisenhower, certainly smarter than Bradley, whom he disdained. Bradley disdained him right back thinking he was a little more than a show pony. But you have these disparate characters, each of whom brings a different strength to the overall army. And Monty's confidence and showmanship was useful to the British in its darkest days, and his success at Alamein gave a boost to the British public that it absolutely needed. It's easy to make fun of Montgomery because he's a character.
Larry Bernstein:
Tell us about De Gaulle, his bad behavior, his use of language, his anger, frustration, his self-absorption that minimized his role in D-Day and the days that followed.
Craig Symonds:
Let me begin by saying a couple of words in support of De Gaulle. He was a French Brigadier General who refused to accept the idea that the Army of France had surrendered. Just no, I will not accept that and established himself as the leader of what subsequently comes to be known as the Free French.
What made him obnoxious in that role was his constant insistence that France must be treated as an absolute co-equal with Britain, America, and Russia as one of the allies. And he was largely successful in that at the post-war creation of the United Nations. France's inclusion in that the Big Four who divide Berlin and Germany among them. That happened because General De Gaulle continued to insist that France was a player. Sometimes he pushed so hard that it was unrealistic. France's contribution in terms of divisions and manpower was relatively small compared to that of the other allies. But his insistence that France be treated as a great power went a long way toward making it happen. I'll say that in his behalf, but he was impossible to deal with because of his assertions that you can't have a meeting without me. You haven't asked my opinion about this yet. Why are you informing of me of this after the fact? That was annoying to Anglo-American decision makers, but from a French point of view that is what De Gaulle needed to do.
Larry Bernstein:
Wrap it up.
Craig Symonds:
It's important to remember that D-Day itself, June 6th, 1944, the landing, even the expansion of the toehold on the continent did not mean victory for a month. The allied forces were still encased in the small enclave around Northwestern France, and it's the breakout operation Cobra and then the race across France to Paris.
Paris fell the 25th of August, and it looked like the war was now going to be ended by Christmas. Eisenhower bet Montgomery five bucks that it would be over by Christmas. No, it wouldn't. There's still the Battle of the Bulge to come, which lasts from December into January. There's getting across the Rhine, and then fighting through Germany, not only town by town, but block by block. There's a lot of fighting yet to go. And yet it all began with that landing on Normandy on June 6th, 1944, without which all that followed would not have been possible.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks Craig. We are going to continue with our What Happens Next Culture Critic Darren Schwartz to discuss the movie classic, Patton.
We have a new review, the movie Patton that came out in 1970. Can you give us a short synopsis?
Darren Schwartz:
Patton was made in 1970 and it stars George C. Scott as the iconic General George Patton who commanded troops in World War II. It is a psychological study about his ego and how he clashed with his superiors. The critics loved it when it came out. Audiences absolutely loved it. And over 50 years later it is still an amazing movie. The other night I watched two-thirds of it, fell asleep, then I watched the rest in the morning. But it was fantastic.
Larry Bernstein:
This movie comes out 25 years after the war and it is the difference between 9/11 and today. It was still a very current phenomenon.
Darren Schwartz:
It came out at the height of an anti-war sentiment and a lot of actors turned it down because of that. George C. Scott refused to sign on until Francis Ford Coppola was hired back. Coppola was fired because he wanted that opening scene in front of the flag. If you remember anything about the movie, you remember that. And it was so egocentric that Coppola said it must start the movie to frame how insane this guy was.
George C. Scott, who was anti-war, said, I am not going to do it unless you bring him back and we make sure the movie talks about how this guy is flawed.
Larry Bernstein:
George C. Scott has a strange relationship with the academy. He wins the Oscar for best actor and refuses it.
Darren Schwartz:
Not only did he refuse the Oscar he refused the nomination in advance of any nominations.
He said, do not nominate me. I am not going to accept the nomination. And they nominated him, and he said, do not give me that Oscar. They gave him the Oscar. He did not show up. They sent the trophy to his house. He sent it back.
During the award show, he was at home watching a hockey game. He did not believe actors should compete against each other and hated the commercial aspect of awards. Patton was the opposite. It is such an interesting dichotomy. Patton was the ultimate red-blooded, meat-eating American. And Georgie Scott said, Hollywood's a meat grinder. I am not going to participate.
Larry Bernstein:
This was not George C. Scott's first rodeo. He had been nominated twice previously for best supporting actor in Anatomy of a Murder and the Hustler. My favorite George C. Scott role was in Dr. Strangelove when he plays the general who gets himself wound up to engage in nuclear war. George Scott is the general chewing the gum. And then he puts even more gum in while he is chewing a mouthful.
Darren Schwartz:
I loved it. At some point a couple of years ago, I watched, did an entire Kubrick retrospective from start to finish. Dr. Strangelove was fantastic, and he was just the insane, let's go kill everybody guy.
Larry Bernstein:
Let's go to the movie itself. General Omar Bradley is the consultant on the making of this movie and Bradley himself plays a central role in the film. Talk about the relationship between those two men.
Darren Schwartz:
Patton's just the bull in a China shop. And Bradley's constantly there as the voice of reason. And ultimately Bradley jumps over Patton and now Patton reports to Bradley.
Larry Bernstein:
We have several objectives for what we want in an Army leader. We want someone who is calm under pressure, is a good public spokesman, is someone who works well with our allies, and this is where Patton is at his weakest. What Patton does bring to the table is he wins battles. Most generals are cautious and unwilling to take chances and battles get bogged down. Patton excels at pushing ahead to the point of being in front of his logistical supplies.
Darren Schwartz:
Patton's ego and drive were highlighted when the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division were bogged down in the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne. And they said, “We need someone to get there and relieve this company before they get annihilated’. It is a critical battle. Patton said, ‘I can do it in two days”. His colleagues tell him that there is no chance you can pull out of the battle with these weary soldiers and make it in two days and win. And then he did.
Larry Bernstein:
In preparation for today's podcast, I read Patton’s autobiography and General Bradley's autobiography. The movie script follows very closely Patton's own autobiography, and it opens with Operation Torch and Patton meeting with the Sultan of Morocco and exchanging ribbons under much pomp and circumstance. Tell us about Patton’s love of clothes, his image building. Honestly, Darren, he reminds me of you.
Darren Schwartz:
He was a peacock. He was always dressed to the hilt in his military outfits. He was always wearing his helmet. And not only that he always had one of his aides polishing his helmet. When he saw soldiers that were not dressed to the nines, he would yell at them. He was obsessed with people wearing their helmets. He told the doctor, “Here’s your helmet?” He goes, “I'm a doctor. I won't be able to use my stethoscope.” He says, “Well, drill two holes in your helmet for your stethoscope”. So, he was obsessed with looking and being the part.
Larry Bernstein:
How did you feel about the representation of the Germans and how they felt about him?
Darren Schwartz:
They seemed to think that he was a brilliant lunatic. Rommel did seem to be a cooler and calculating personality, although clearly an atrocious Nazi. They hold Patton in high regard, and they were a little afraid of them.
Larry Bernstein:
The German senior command felt that Patton was America's top military general, and therefore most likely to be responsible for the invasion of Europe. And Ike had no interest in using Patton that way. So they thought they would use him as a feint. They created a fake army with fake airplanes and fake radio traffic. Patton would walk around London giving speeches about the upcoming invasion of Norway or Calais, which held a substantial number of German troops. Tell us about the feint of the invasion of Norway with Patton in command.
Darren Schwartz:
This was called Operation Fortitude, and it relied heavily on the Nazi belief that Patton was the number one general. There was an entire operation put together with fake troop movements and fake supply line movements. We let the Nazi’s know “Hey, we’re going to be invading over here,” so they didn't think we were coming to Normandy. And the interesting thing is, even after we hit Normandy, they still thought, “That's the diversion. We have to hold troops away from there because we think Patton’s still coming.” And that was clearly a major key to victory for the allies.
Larry Bernstein:
Patton wins a great victory in the invasion of Sicily, and he goes to a hospital and engages with the wounded. There is one man who has PTSD, and Patton slaps the guy.
Darren Schwartz:
Patton walks into the medical hospital. He is surrounded by doctors and nurses and says nice words to the soldiers. There's one soldier who is covered in bandages who's unconscious. Patton kneels to him and gives him a purple cross and lays it on the pillow, and whispers something into his ear. But Patton's getting emotional and there is no press there. He gets up and he looks at the next person who is just sitting there and crying.
He says, “What's wrong with you?” The soldier says, “I can't take it anymore”. And he just explodes on him.
Ultimately the word gets back to Ike, and he sends him a note, which is a private reprimand. He calls his behavior despicable. And at the same time, he did not understand how else he could have done it because he's just such a military guy and believed in fighting and courage.
Larry Bernstein:
He was required to make a public apology.
Darren Schwartz:
The whole group.
Larry Bernstein:
And the individual who was slapped. Not everyone can perform well under pressure and mental health is legitimate. Patton's behavior was beyond the pale. When they relieved him of command, the Germans heard the story that he had slapped a private and they refused to believe that the allies were going to put their top general down for something like that.
Darren Schwartz:
It totally fed into this using him as a feint.
Larry Bernstein:
The Chief of Staff of Operations for the Wehrmacht General Jodl said, “where is he?” He's in Malta. “Get me the map. What's he doing now?” He's in Cairo. “Oh, they must be planning something out there. Where is he now?” Oh, he's running the invasion. He's got his own army and they're going to attack Norway. Let's follow him. This is the guy who is going to run it. He is their best guy.
Darren Schwartz:
He did not know that he was going to be a decoy until much later. It was brilliant.
At the end of the day, it is about performance. He was a talent and you got to put your best players in the field.
Larry Bernstein:
Let's talk about Bradley, who is his subordinate and then becomes his boss.
Bradley's temperament and the way he behaves with his colleagues is different. Tell us about their relationship and why Ike chose Bradley over Patton for senior leadership.
Darren Schwartz:
Bradley gives credit to the people that have served him. That is the leadership of how we get the entire thing done, not personal glory. Ike recognized you need someone that can motivate troops but also delegate and work with our allies.
Larry Bernstein:
We just spoke with Craig Symonds at the beginning of this podcast, and we talked about the British General Monty. There was a lot of animosity between those two men. Tell us about how the film deals with that rivalry between Monty and Patton.
Darren Schwartz:
Monty wants glory and so does Patton. So, they're constantly rushing and competing. Patton believes that Monty is too conservative, he is too slow, he's too muddling and he needs too much help. They both had big egos and seemed like pain in the asses.
Larry Bernstein:
What was your favorite scene in Patton?
Darren Schwartz:
The shooting of the mules on the bridge. They are on the way to Messina and Patton's rushing, and there is a small bridge and two mules and a guy. Patton walks up and he is like, “Get these things out of the way,” and shoots the mules.
People freak out and he goes, “Dump them in the river”. So, they threw them over the bridge, and it was a startling scene. The producers were accused of killing the mules – there is a legend that an extra said, “Yeah, we killed them”. In real life they had fake horses where the bodies were made of rubber, but they were covered in real animal hide. Now, no one talked about where the animal hides came from.
Larry Bernstein:
In Patton's autobiography, he makes the point that one of the great advantages in battle is speed and sometimes there's animals on the road. They got to be pushed aside so that the tanks can get through rapidly. He has no time for donkeys.
Darren Schwartz:
The mules are not fast.
What was your favorite scene?
Larry Bernstein:
I like the relationship between Bradley and Patton and Bradley seemingly always bemused and shocked by Patton's behavior.
So, at one point there is a mud bath and the infantry, the tanks and the trucks got stuck in the mud and some of the soldiers have gotten into a fist fight. Patton says, “Stop that. Get out of the mud.” They stop fighting, they salute, and Patton takes on the responsibility of being a traffic cop. Bradley shows up and he cannot believe what he is seeing. There is nothing this guy will not do. He gets his hands dirty, he will get in the mud, he will resolve personnel decisions and logistical problems, and then he will continue to proceed on it and the troops see him do this. There is a recognition that this guy is in front ready to command in any way possible.
Darren Schwartz:
You could see the admiration, like you said on Bradley's face. Patton’s quote is that he “Would rather be remembered as a great soldier than a great general”.
Larry Bernstein:
One strange element of the film is that Patton believes in reincarnation. He is greatly influenced by ancient history, and so he knows that there has been a battle in this spot before and he recognizes how the terrain benefited one party over another so he can use that information to benefit his team in this time. Tell us a little bit about Patton's view of his own reincarnation and how it affects his views.
Darren Schwartz:
It makes him look a little insane. I don't think it has given him any tactical advantage at all. I think it's just this narcissistic insanity that he's been around and been in all these amazing battles. What's to say that he wasn't the piss boy in the siege of Masada. If you're constantly reincarnated and you're always great, I don't think that's the point of reincarnation. Did I ever tell you I did past life regression?
Larry Bernstein:
I don't even know what that term means, Darren.
Darren Schwartz:
You're hypnotized and you see what past lives you've had.
Larry Bernstein:
And what past lives have you had?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, I was a spiritual protector of an Indian village that was overrun by colonists. I didn't do a great job there. I was the female owner of Anastasia's Apothecary in the late 1800s. I was Anastasia. And I was a young criminal named Sean who murdered a cop in Georgia.
Larry Bernstein:
So I don't know, I would've thought you being a song, a dance man.
Larry Bernstein:
This movie's old, it was made in 1970 and my wife won't see an old movie. She thinks they doesn't stand up. This is the second movie we've done in the last couple of weeks that is from that period. French Connection was 1971, Patton is 1970. Contrast those two films, what stands up better over time?
Darren Schwartz:
Patton stands up much better. The war scenes were pretty real. And so overall, it's stood the test of time much better.
Larry Bernstein:
When my son Jonathan was younger, I asked him if he would see the movie First Blood. He said, “Well dad, is it black and white?” I said, no, it's not that old. He said, “Dad, how about let's watch five minutes and then I have the right to pull the plug”. I said, fine. He was totally into it. I said,” Jonathan, what did you think?” He said, “If they allowed him to buy that sandwich, people didn't have to die”.
Darren Schwartz:
He said that?
Larry Bernstein:
Yeah. How do you think about persuading young people like that 10-year-old Jonathan to engage with older films to understand a different period?
Darren Schwartz:
I think the way to engage them is to say, “You can't watch this”. Beyond that, I got nothing
Larry Bernstein:
Jonathon was really into King Arthur. So, I got a DVD. He’s all excited. We had a Toyota minivan; I stick it in. He says “Dad, I think you need to pull over, people are getting naked and doing stuff”. Julie’s like “What’s wrong with you?”
Darren Schwartz:
Yeah, in Excalibur Uther asked Merlin to change him into the Duke so he could be with Igraine.
He jumps on his horse and rides on clouds and goes in, and they think it’s the Duke. He makes love to Igraine wearing armor. And the sister is watching from the other room. There is no worse scene you could have a child watching.
Larry Bernstein:
Was Patton nominated for many Oscars and what did it win.
Darren Schwartz:
Nominated for 10 Oscars. It won Best Picture, Director for Franklin Schaffner, Best Actor George C. Scott, Screenplay for Coppola and North. Art direction, Film Editing and Sound, and did not win, but nominated for Cinematography, Original score, and Special effects. For context, the best picture beat out Airport, Five Easy Pieces, Love Story and MASH. Airport was terrifying.
Larry Bernstein:
What were your thoughts on the score?
Darren Schwartz:
It was a little repetitive.
Larry Bernstein:
It reminded me of song in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Darren Schwartz:
That's the most musical I've ever heard you be, and it's not good.
Larry Bernstein:
Can you whistle the theme song from Patton?
Darren Schwartz:
Yeah.
Larry Bernstein:
How do you feel about the use of the score as a way of segueing between scenes?
Darren Schwartz:
I think it was great on the intermission. I did not know what to expect, and suddenly it said ‘Intermission’. I was looking around, does this mean for me? Why would you put intermission on a DVD?
Larry Bernstein:
Why do we need to be told to stop?
Darren Schwartz:
I did not feel right fast forwarding. I got up and walked around and I came back. I didn't make any popcorn. I wanted to get some Dots.
Larry Bernstein:
I figured; this is probably a good time to pause.
Darren Schwartz:
I'd been pausing multiple times anyway; I didn't need them to tell me to pause.
Larry Bernstein:
George C. Scott played Patton, but he was not the director's first choice. Who else did they consider for the role?
Darren Schwartz:
Burt Lancaster turned it down. He did not want to be part of a war movie. They are shooting this in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. Rod Steiger turned it down twice. After the movie came out, he said it was the biggest mistake of his career. Lee Marvin said no. And he also didn't want to be in a film that glorified war. And he also didn't want to be seen typecasting himself because he was in the Dirty Dozen. John Wayne turned it down. I could see Lee Marvin doing it, but no one could have done it better than George C. Scott. I mean he just seemed like he was born for the role.
Larry Bernstein:
In the Bradley-Patton relationship, Bradley tells Patton that he did not ask to be promoted into this new role. Patton is trying to articulate why it's still a good idea and says “Look, I don't want to go into politics. I know I am flawed. I cannot keep my mouth shut. I don't work well with others, so you really need to use me where I'm most effective, which is being aggressive in war, and you need to take care of all the rest”.
That is observant on Patton's part. Let's give him credit.
Darren Schwartz:
A hundred percent. Patton did not react and say, “I'm angry, I got bypassed”. He just wanted to make sure he still had a command. And I think that is what Bradley was waiting to hear. “Am I going to get pushback? Are you going to be undercutting me in the press?” You did not get the sense that Patton cared about any of that. He just wanted to maintain his ability to go fight and win wars. And I thought that was an incredibly special moment. He's an egomaniac, but he wants to win. He's a soldier, “Give me an order. I'm going to follow it”.
Larry Bernstein:
Darren? You are a creative. What are you doing outside of What Happens Next?
Darren Schwartz:
I just finished my memoir. It has been a wonderful process. The next step is, I am looking for a literary agent who specializes in memoirs. So, if anyone knows anybody, send them my way.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to Craig and Darren for joining us.
If you missed last week’s podcast it was part 1 of this series on the Nazi surrender also with Craig Symonds where we discussed the planning and preparation that went into the D-Day landings. Last week, Darren reviewed the movie classic Saving Private Ryan.
I would also like to make a plug for next week’s show with John Bolton who was Trump’s former National Security Advisor in his first term. We will discuss whether the US should stay in NATO.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, The 80th Anniversary of the Nazi Germany Surrender, here.
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