Target (62 page)

Gay spells Sergeant Joe Spruce’s name “Scruce” three times in the statement so the spelling appears intentional. Could it be that Spruce—one of those who seems to have disappeared since the accident—is really “Scruce”?

Patton was famous in those days. His death generated big headlines and multiple-page special sections in newspapers across the country—not to mention his subsequent place in 20th Century military history.

Who had access to reports now missing.

Starring George Kennedy as Patton, Sophia Loren as his love interest, and Max von Sydow as the assassin.

I later found evidence of this in Bazata’s diaries. Talking about the 1979 dinner, he writes that she had asked to report the story eight years prior.

Kent’s recollections further complicate what happened at the accident scene. He says Gay told him they were on the autobahn when the truck that caused the accident suddenly appeared from a side street; that Patton was injured when Woodring swerved and hit a ditch.

Bazata’s limited and confusing entry says Patton’s son challenged him on a point concerning the railroad tracks near his father’s accident and on why his father’s intelligence people had no knowledge of Bazata’s claimed meetings with his father.

However, he told me that he thought Patton had died “before others could get to him.”

Malij is a mystery. He’s mentioned in the foreword as having been executed by the NKVD for what Skubik suspects was involvement in the Patton killing but he mentions him nowhere else and I have not been able to find anything further on him.

OSS was formally disbanded by President Truman, October 1, 1945. While it took longer for it to go into effect, many agents stayed on under the newly formed War Department SSU, which had firmly supplanted OSS by the summer of 1946 and was eventually absorbed by the CIA when it was established September 18, 1947.

The KGB was the successor to the NKVD.

The two had always been friends, and, indeed, Eisenhower, seeking a combat role, had come hat in hand to Patton earlier asking for a tank assignment.

A little over 125 million in 1933, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, as opposed to 300 million today.

U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Joseph E. Davies, was shameless in his adulation of Stalin and refusal to report the devastating famine and horrible atrocities occurring in the USSR in the 1930s. Similarly, the
New York Times’s
Pulitzer prize winning Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, another Stalin lover but one with tremendous influence, continually omitted the Soviet Union’s failed and devastating economic policies and Stalin’s brutal purges and gulags from his reporting about Russia.

The source of the report was Whittaker Chambers, a
Time
magazine editor and former member of the U.S. Communist Party who would become nationally known in the later trial of Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and other Soviet agents accused of espionage by Chambers who had been their courier.

Pilot fish stick close to sharks and enjoy a symbiotic relationship wherein they consume parasites in exchange for protection from predators.

Oppenheimer’s security clearance was revoked during the Eisenhower administration.

Some say Eisenhower made the decision; others that it came from higher up. Why the decision was made is in dispute too—to save American lives or facilitate the Soviet Union’s taking of Eastern Europe?

The United Nations was a Roosevelt dream and one of the reasons he wanted Russia handled with kid gloves. Roosevelt believed that Russia’s participation in the United Nations was vital and he therefore did not want to antagonize them for fear they would shun it.

Like Patton, White had a history of the ailment that killed him—in White’s case, it was heart trouble.

His family and others who looked into the story dispute the official ruling.

The investigation involved possibly uncovering a sexual relationship between Mrs. Roosevelt and the friend, an army sergeant, according to the
Secret Army
authors.

He was the candidate of the Progressive Party.

Or something similar, according to Gloria Pagliaro.

Even in blowups I cannot make it out.

In one letter he wrote that he consulted a general about the feasibility of getting married to Angela’s mother. The general said he thought it would be “ok.”

After the war, he and others came up with further excuses—there was fear the joining Brits and Americans might fire on each other, the Brits had seeded the area with time bombs (roundly challenged), and the Germans, determined to get out, might destroy the tanks closing the gap (called ridiculous by most).

Various figures are given by scholars of the battle. Rohmer in
Patton’s Gap
says 250,000. Breuer in
Death of a Nazi Army
indicates fewer than 40,000. The consensus seems to be 100,000, given, for instance, by such authors as Allen in
Lucky Forward
and Axelrod in
Patton
.

The Germans there whom he should have subdued snuck away and helped repel him at Arnhem.

Trench foot is an infection caused by long bouts of standing in wet conditions.

He predicted the December 1941 attack in a 1937 paper he wrote while serving as an intelligence officer in Hawaii. D’Este in
A Genius for War
, 361-362, writes that the report was “chillingly accurate.”

The museum also apparently knew about this car because the build sheet for it is referenced in their 11-page “The Patton Cadillac” publication.

Estimates vary from 14,000 to 22,000 in the Soviet Union’s Katyn Forest.

Another reason why having the original car to examine is important.

According to Farago.

Eisenhower left Europe in November 1945—just weeks before Patton’s accident.

It should be noted here that mistakes are made in every war. Bad commanders are fired and replaced until sucessful ones emerge. Lincoln fired several until he found Grant. But Patton, even in success, was passed over for promotion and medals several times.

Different plots failed.

Munn’s sources included British actor Peter Cushing, movie legend Orson Wells, and American stuntman Yakima Canutt, a personal friend of Wayne’s.

Formerly classified U.S. intelligence documents I found at the National Archives, dated 30 November 1945, 4 December, 12 December, as well as others through March 1946, indicate there was heightened spy activity in Patton’s general area and a belief on the part of the Russians by sources quoted in the documents, that “the Soviet is preparing for war and that in a Soviet-American war, America could not win.” The Soviets were very bold at this time.

Keyes had dinner with Patton and spent the night at Patton’s headquarters but left early before seeing Patton, who Farago says was perturbed at missing him (p. 220). In the
Patton Papers
, p. 817, Keyes’ reproduced letter to his wife the day after the accident says, “Had a fine visit with [Patton], and yesterday morning after breakfast I started home, and he and Hap Gay were to start for Mannheim. . . (omission Blumenson’s) in a few minutes to go hunting.” It remains to be determined whether he knew about the hunting trip from the night before or heard it from someone that morning before he left.

The use of “retire” instead of “resign” here is probably just a slip in word usage. Patton’s writings show that although he wavered slightly while at Bad Nauheim, he had finally made up his mind before leaving to resign rather than retire.

Technician 5th class.

His papers and other documents show several dates within that time frame.

Customary for someone applying for his position.

Bazata never clarified.

According to Richard Dunlop, one of his biographers.

Some records may have survived the purge with Putzell. According to an OSS source I talked with, Putzell burned all of his papers just before he died in 2003. Their content, whether Putzell’s or from the original purge, will never be known either.

He had also lost a child earlier.

Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow in 2006.

The originals were only seen by a few, such as his wife, who is dead. Although the Library of Congress has copies of the original penned pages up to March 24, 1945, they do not have originals after that. When I asked Daun van Ee of the library’s staff where the later originals were, he said, “That’s all we got.... The family has the originals and donors always withhold so we do not know what has been taken out or covered up.”

He had not.

Nixon confirmed the assassination attempts on Chaing and Syngman Rhee.

Notorious Soviet spies working inside British intelligence.

Sir William Stephenson, the British intelligence chief instrumental in getting Bill Donovan appointed head of the OSS.