Thanks to Patton, the 1970 film biography anchored by George C. The dog and doting master were reunited not, as Patton predicted, by reincarnation, but by a different kind of immortality: the movies. He suffered separation anxiety for some months before easing into retirement. The Army shipped Willie to the general s widow and daughters in California. He indulged his dog s every whim until December of 45, when Patton died from injuries sustained in a freak auto accident in Germany. The General Patton Internship was created in 2017 with the goal of increasing diversity in the Army, specifically in officers branching combat arms. dog tags made for Willie and once hosted a birthday party for his second in command. Patton was the ultimate alpha dog, with an unbridled some say pathological need to dominate. He was beside his master in 1944 as the general’s famous tank corps raced across Europe, liberating huge swaths of Nazi-held territory.Īs the Allies closed in on Berlin, Patton boasted, I will personally shoot that Hitler, and Willie hopes the little comes back as a fire hydrant! He became smitten with the breed and owned many Bullies in his lifetime. Born in 1885 to a privileged family with an extensive military background, Patton attended the Virginia Military Institute, and later the U.S. Soon after World War I, the young tank commander Patton acquired a Bull Terrier as a family pet. (Novem December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army best known for his command of the Seventh United States Army, and later the Third United States Army, in the European Theater of World War II. Patton, who carefully maintained an aura of eccentric genius, let them wonder. When the general named his Bull Terrier for William the Conqueror, his officers wondered if he believed the gun-shy pup to have been the fearless warrior-king in another life. Like his ivory-handled pistols and a creative use of highly descriptive profanity, a belief in reincarnation was part of the Patton mystique. Patton replied, But I did, dear boy, I did. Patton Jr., the brilliant but endlessly controversial bad boy of World War II, was once paid a compliment by a British colleague: You would have made a great marshal for Napoleon, had you lived in the 18th century. Such lessons can perhaps be drawn from the experience of Patton's superior officers, General "Black Jack" Pershing in the First World War and Eisenhower and Marshall in. There is today something of a vogue of looking for lessons in classics of military or political strategy and leadership that can be applied to business situations. It must be said from the outset that his was a style of leadership suited supremely to the exigencies of war. The remainder of this essay is devoted to an examination of Patton's leadership style. For the 1935 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. Indeed, the film as a whole gives an accurate picture of General Patton, from his semi-delusional belief that he was a reincarnation of military geniuses of the past, to the notorious episode in which he slapped a soldier suffering from what was then called battle fatigue (in modern language, post-traumatic stress syndrome).Ībove all, the film captures the lead-from-the-front style of America's first great practitioner of blitzkrieg-style armored assault. Greg Bradsher, Senior Archivist at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The backdrop is perhaps Hollywood contrivance, but the speech, including its notably salty language, was true to the man (see for example Essame, 1974, p. Scott as Patton steps out onto a stage in front of an enormous American flag and directly addresses the audience as though they were his troops. Scott in the title role.Ī generation of Americans with no direct memory of the Second World War - indeed, whose outlook was shaped by the contemporary debacle in Vietnam - were introduced to Patton through the film's arresting opening sequence.
#General patton movie
The immediate reason for the survival of Patton as a symbol of military leadership is undoubtedly the 1970 movie "Patton," starring George C. PattonĪs the Second World War fades out of the living memory of all but an older generation of Americans, no military leader in that war retains a more vivid image in the popular mind than General George Patton.
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The Leadership Style of General George S.