Did the OSS Assassinate General George S. Patton?

First comes the disclosure that my mother once dated George S. Patton’s nephew and had dinner with the General when came stateside, not long before his demise.  According to my mother, she was more interested in the nephew at the time and could have cared less about Patton.  She did though, get to see his famous pearl handle revolvers.

Since I was a senior in high school and was assigned the topic of Patton’s death as a term paper, I’ve been fascinated by General Patton and by his death.  I’ve always believed his death was a political assassination to prevent him from inconveniencing the Soviets.

A new book alleges that OSS head, “Wild Bill” Donovan ordered the assassination of General George S. Patton. Author Robert Wilcox unearthed the following from Donovan’s diary:

“…’We’ve got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he’s out of control and we must save him from himself’. …”

Donovan’s diary entry sounds a lot like Henry II’s comment that someone needed to rid him of Thomas a’ Becket.

“…The scenario sounds far fetched but Mr Wilcox has assembled a compelling case that US officials had something to hide. At least five documents relating to the car accident have been removed from US archives. The driver of the truck was whisked away to London before he could be questioned and no autopsy was performed on Patton’s body.
With the help of a Cadillac expert from Detroit, Mr Wilcox has proved that the car on display in the Patton museum at Fort Knox is not the one Patton was driving.

“That is a cover-up,” Mr Wilcox said.

George Patton, a dynamic controversialist who wore pearl handled revolvers on each hip and was the subject of an Oscar winning film starring George C. Scott, commanded the US 3rd Army, which cut a swathe through France after D-Day. But his ambition to get to Berlin before Soviet forces was thwarted by supreme allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, who gave Patton’s petrol supplies to the more cautious British General Bernard Montgomery.

Patton, who distrusted the Russians, believed Eisenhower wrongly prevented him closing the so-called Falaise Gap in the autumn of 1944, allowing hundreds of thousands of German troops to escape to fight again,. This led to the deaths of thousands of Americans during their winter counter-offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

In order to placate Stalin, the 3rd Army was also ordered to a halt as it reached the German border and was prevented from seizing either Berlin or Prague, moves that could have prevented Soviet domination of Eastern Europe after the war. Mr Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph: “Patton was going to resign from the Army. He wanted to go to war with the Russians. The administration thought he was nuts. “He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers.

I don’t think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected president if Patton had lived to say the things he wanted to say.” Mr Wilcox added: “I think there’s enough evidence here that if I were to go to a grand jury I could probably get an indictment, but perhaps not a conviction.” Charles Province, President of the George S. Patton Historical Society, said he hopes the book will lead to definitive proof of the plot being uncovered. He said: “There were a lot of people who were pretty damn glad that Patton died. He was going to really open the door on a lot of things that they screwed up over there.”…”