The Last Days of Patton - Ladislas Farago

"It
would be as hard to give up all thought [of being a soldier] as it
would be to stop breathing," wrote George S. Patton in October 1945;
"The great
tragedy of my life was that I survived the last battle." But
Patton would not
see the year out: in December he would die as a
result of injuries sustained in
an automobile accident in Germany. His
unexpected death sent shock waves through
the American and Russian
commands. It seemed plausible that America's greatest
general may have
been a victim of foul play. In the seven months following the
German
surrender, Patton had openly and provocatively criticized the Soviet
Union and appeared to have transformed from a staunch anti-Nazi to a
Nazi
sympathizer. The Last Days of Patton by Ladislas Farago, a follow-up to
his bestselling Patton: Ordeal and Triumph,
attempts to reconstruct the
last months of Patton's life in order to
determine if the general did indeed
try to provoke a war with the
Soviet Union and whether he failed to
sufficiently de-Nazify the area
of Germany under his jurisdiction. Farago also
investigates the
possibility of a conspiracy to murder Patton and reveals the
role other
prominent men, including Eisenhower, Montgomery, Marshall, and
MacArthur, had in censuring and ultimately removing Patton from active
service. The Last Days of Patton, originally published in 1981,
is the story of
the general's final battle—a professional soldier
caught up in the changing
politics of the emerging Cold War and new
reality of the atomic age.