Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General (7 page)

In the Wolf’s Lair, Skorzeny and Hitler finish their small talk. The moment is warm. Hitler laughs frequently as Skorzeny recounts his escapades in Hungary. Skorzeny served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard many years ago, and the two men are well acquainted. But Skorzeny knows his place, and he turns to leave before overstaying his welcome.

“Don’t go, Skorzeny,” Hitler orders him.

Skorzeny turns around, puzzled. Clearly, the Führer has something else he would like to discuss. From the sound of it, perhaps there is another pressing issue that requires Skorzeny’s expertise.

“In December, Germany will start a great offensive which may well decide her fate,” Hitler continues. “The world thinks Germany is finished, with only the day and the hour of the funeral to be named. I am going to show them how wrong they are. The corpse will rise and throw itself at the West.”

The Führer has done away with those who might be disloyal to him and is building his battle plans around loyal worshippers such as Otto Skorzeny. So even without Erwin Rommel and his unmatched prowess as a battlefield commander, Hitler is confident of success. The goal of the offensive is to split the British and American armies. It helps that his tank commanders will not have to face George S. Patton and his Third Army, because the secret offensive is deliberately being launched too far north for Patton and his sharp tactical mind to reach the battlefield in time to engage.

Hitler then tells his fellow Austrian the details of the coming offensive. Skorzeny and his men are more than capable of playing a pivotal role in this surprise attack known as Operation Watch on the Rhine, but that is not how Hitler intends to use them.

The coup de grâce will be another operation that will demonstrate to the world that the Nazis have indeed regained the upper hand. That will take place far from the bloody battlefields. Hitler’s orders are quite simple: “Operation Greif”
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will see Skorzeny and his men infiltrate enemy lines by dressing in American uniforms and pretending to be U.S. soldiers. They will speak English and will sow confusion by spreading false rumors, capturing vital bridges, and killing Americans caught by surprise. Chief among the rumors is one that is meant to cause fear and distraction at the highest levels of Allied leadership: that Skorzeny is en route to Paris to kidnap Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe.

“I am giving you unlimited power to set up your brigade. Use it, colonel!” Hitler says triumphantly.

Skorzeny’s face breaks into a broad smile as he realizes that he has just risen in rank.

“Yes,” Hitler beams. “I have promoted you to Obertsturmbannführer!”

Hitler extends his hand. Once again Skorzeny’s meaty paw envelops the Führer’s.

“Good-bye, Skorzeny,” Hitler says. “I expect to hear great things of Operation Greif.”

Otto Skorzeny’s eyes shine. He is only too happy to accept the challenge.

3

T
RIANON
P
ALACE
H
OTEL

V
ERSAILLES,
F
RANCE

O
CTOBER
21, 1944

E
ARLY AFTERNOON

Just as Hitler is briefing Skorzeny, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower lights a cigarette in his first-floor office. His headquarters, a white stone French château one thousand miles west of the Wolf’s Lair, is spotless and regal. The only challenge Eisenhower should be facing right now is how best to celebrate a major turning point in the war. The American army has spent weeks leveling the city of Aachen. At 10 a.m. this morning the famous resort town became the first German municipality to fall into Allied hands. There is widespread hope that this marks the beginning of the end for the Nazi war machine, and that the fighting will end by New Year’s Eve.

Eisenhower smokes and paces. The fifty-four-year-old general played football back in his West Point days, but now he carries a small paunch and walks with his shoulders rolled forward. For security purposes, there is not a situation map tacked to the plywood partition in his office. Instead, he carries details of the German, British, and American armies in his head.

Eisenhower endures a daily barrage of worries. If anything, his life since becoming supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe has been one headache after another, punctuated by moments of world-changing success. But new expectations torment Ike. His boss, the four-star general George Marshall, has set in stone New Year’s Eve as the last day of the war. Ike believes that the proposed deadline will be impossible. Hence the deep frown lines on his high forehead.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his generals, including Omar Bradley (far left)

Marshall is back in Washington, thirty-five hundred miles from the front. He is chief of staff of the army and chief military adviser to President Roosevelt. No other officer in the combined Allied armies has more power and influence than this lean, tough-talking Pennsylvanian.

Marshall’s return to the United States came after a weeklong tour of the European Theater of operations. Now he has cabled Eisenhower his great displeasure about the strategic situation. The “October Pause” that enrages George Patton infuriates Marshall, too. He is demanding an end to the stalemate. Everything possible must be done to attack deep into Germany and end the war by January 1.

Per Marshall’s orders, this is to include the use of weapons currently considered top secret, and the placement of every single available American, British, and Canadian soldier onto the front lines. Nothing must be held back.

Eisenhower must find a way. Orders are orders, and his success has been largely based on obeying them—unlike George Patton’s. So Ike smokes one cigarette after another. A few top American generals are coming over for dinner tonight. The celebration of the victory at Aachen can wait until then.

Across the hall, pale autumn light floods the glass-walled foyer, where a bronze bust of German air force commander Hermann Goering has been turned to face the wall. Eisenhower smokes another cigarette. He doesn’t have a favorite brand, and doesn’t know how many packs he smokes each day. The number is actually four, as evidenced by his yellow-stained fingertips and the nicotine stench from his trademark waist-length “Ike” jacket. His breath reeks of cigarettes and the countless pots of coffee he drinks each day.

Nicotine and caffeine are the only ways Eisenhower can manage the stress. He certainly can’t play golf in the midst of war. And right now, it’s still several hours too early for either a weak scotch and water, time alone in his upstairs apartment with a dime-store cowboy novel, or perhaps even a furtive romantic liaison with Kay Summersby, his personal chauffeur. At age thirty-six, the divorced Irish brunette who wears a captain’s rank has been assigned to Ike for two years.

At first she was merely his driver, a member of Britain’s all-volunteer Mechanised Transport Corps assigned to guide Eisenhower’s official Packard sedan through the blacked-out streets of London. Eisenhower admired her confidence behind the wheel and arranged for Summersby to be transferred permanently to the U.S. military’s Women’s Army Corps, where she was commissioned as an officer.

The turning point in their relationship came in June 1943, when the American colonel to whom Summersby was engaged got blown up by a land mine in Tunisia. It was Eisenhower who held Kay in his arms as she sobbed in grief. A spark passed between them in that moment, and the relationship deepened. Now the former fashion model has become Eisenhower’s chief confidante. She travels with him everywhere, and even sits in on high-level meetings, which makes her privy to top-secret war strategy. The two chatter and laugh constantly, passing the rare moments away from the pressure of the war by riding horses or playing bridge. Summersby has even gotten Eisenhower in the habit of taking tea each afternoon at 4:00 p.m., just like the British. He is so used to her constant presence that recently, while back in America for a short leave, Ike infuriated his wife, Mamie, by calling her “Kay” on two different occasions.

Kay Summersby

The close relationship between Summersby and Eisenhower goes on in secret—most of the time. But as John Thompson of the
Chicago Tribune
noted, their fondness for each other surfaces publicly now and then. “I have never before seen a chauffeur get out of a car and kiss the General good morning,” Thompson told American major general James M. Gavin when asked if the rumors were true.

No less than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt can see the sparks between Summersby and Ike. After the landmark Tehran Conference
¹
in 1943, FDR confided to his daughter, Anna, that he thought Eisenhower and his chauffeur were sleeping together.

In many ways, Eisenhower is a victim of his own success. Even though he has never once fought in battle, he has risen through the ranks and accrued power through intellect, shrewd diplomacy, and, most of all, finding ingenious ways of turning the outrageous demands of men such as George Marshall into reality.

The problem is his forces are as stuck and immobile now as they were a month ago. The shortage of gasoline, guns, and bullets that ground George S. Patton to a halt outside Metz still afflicts all the Allied forces up and down their five-hundred-mile front lines.

If there is one positive about the situation, it is that for the first time in ages, George S. Patton is not at the top of Eisenhower’s long list of problems in need of solving.

*   *   *

August 3, 1943, more than a year prior. Patton is visiting the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital near the Sicilian city of Nicosia. He is exhausted after three straight weeks of managing the American attack on Italy, pushing his army past the unharvested fields of grain and the vineyards where ripened grapes dangle in enormous bunches. American and British forces are racing from the southern shores of Sicily to Messina, in the island’s north, where they hope to trap and capture the German army before its soldiers can flee to the Italian mainland. The fighting has been tough, with thousands killed on both sides. Patton’s army has captured more than twenty thousand German and Italian soldiers, as well as thousands of Sicilian peasants forced to fight for the Nazi cause. Always determined to win, Patton is more driven than ever because operational priority has been assigned to his archrival, British general Bernard Law Montgomery.
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Monty was given a plum landing spot in Sicily, on the coastal plains near Syracuse. British leadership, who had operational control of the battlefield, ordered Patton’s army to slug it out with the Axis defenders in the rugged Sicilian mountains.

This, Patton cannot allow. Nor can he stand to hear any more British gossip about Americans being inferior soldiers. He is determined to beat Monty into Messina and win glory for his army, despite the obstacles thrown in his way. “This is a horse race in which the prestige of the U.S. Army is at stake. We must take Messina before the British,” he writes to one of his commanding generals. “Please use your best efforts to facilitate the success of our race.”