he puts together an ad hoc force of tanks and trucks and says bust through the line. get behind the german lines. rescue this camp and bring everybody back. and people were, like, is he doing this to rescue the soldiers, or is he trying to get his son-in-law back? well, patton orders one of his assistants who knows john waters to partake in it so that, you know, he'll be able to identify him and make sure they get him out of there. it doesn't work to patton's advantage. he also doesn't order any air cover for this attack. i think that's very telling that he's trying to keep this thing secret, you know. he says one of the reasons was that mcarthur had done a great rescue of a p.o.w. camp behind the lines in the philippines. i think he wanted to do something similar. i think it was really about john waters. is these troops make it to the camp. they liberate it. they think there's going to be about 300 guys there. there was about 5,000. the germans are overcrowding in their prisons. and john waters goes out the gate, and a panicky german guard shoots him in the butt. so they've got to bring him back into the hospital -- i'm sorry,

back into the prison, into the prison hospital where he's going to remain. patton feels incredibly guilty about this. the next morning they go to leave the camp, this rescue force. and the germans had surrounded overnight. and just poured artillery fire on him. it was called task force bomb. bomb had to surrender. big black eye for 3rd army. they do kind of cover it up. bradley realizes how bad patton feels about it. says nears no punishment needed. you're punishing yourself enough for it. about two weeks later they finally liberate john waters. so this is john in a hospital in frankfurt. you can see he looks very hollowed cheeks. he's definitely been living the poor life for the last four years. but patton said when he visited him, he had had some potato soup and was feeling better, he was getting his energy back. but i like to use the story of john waters to talk about sort of a larger facet of war. a lot of people talk about the stress on soldiers in combat. that has its place. but it is also kind of like throwing a rock in a pond. there's an effect larger than that. and the reason i bring this up is, you know, john was married

to patton's oldest daughter. and in 1952, john goes off to fight in korea. and little "b" dies of a heart attack. and so patton's wife, beatrice, comes to her place to get the furniture and clear everything out. and behind every bookcase and drawer and everything, they just find liquor bottle after liquor bottle. and they realize she had been a closet alcoholic. and the patton family believed it started with the capture of her husband in tunisia, that that's how she dealt with the stress. i always think that is a perfect microcosm to the larger stress that combat brings to everyone. now, this is what's called mooseberg prismoos mooseburg prison. this is where they brought a lot of prisoners. patton rolls into here a few weeks later. and the troops go nuts. they're happy they've been

liberated. they identify patton is their liberator. he comes in after a few tanks go crashing through the fence. patton says it was a bittersweet moment. they praise him to high gloorry, but yet he writes if i hadn't launched that raid, all these guys would have been stuck here all those extra weeks. he gives a speech. he says don't go running into the countryside eating whatever you want inspect your bodies can't take it. and by the way, stay out of my way, i'm still killing germans. and they loved it. a good example of research and sometimes the things you find out when you've finished your rye research is just as interesting as what you find out during your research. when my book came out, i got a call from this gentleman right here and said, you know, i was in that picture. i remember patton rolling in. he said it was two jeeps and a tank. and i believe this crowd of men here is the actual tank. but he said the first person patton shook hands with was a british raf officer, royal air force officer. and so i noticed when i looked at the picture that that guy's not wearing an american hat.

that is a british officer's hat. i assume that's him. you know, that's the kind of stuff that kind of brings history alive. you deal with documents and pictures and things like that. and then you've got people coming to you saying i remember that. and then your fear is that they tell you got it wrong, but he didn't. when the war ends, patton is actually in czechoslovakia. he is just bored. he misses the war. but he has to come home on a war bonds tour. so he goes back to what's called green meadows, massachusetts, where he and beatrice live and visits with his grandkids. gives a number of war bonds speeches, gets in a little bit of trouble because he's speaking with wounded veterans on his left and right. and he says people always praise those who died in war. well, these guys here are just as big a heroes as those who are dead. a lot of people took offense to that. he said he was belittling the memory of the dead. of course in patton's mind, he wasn't. he was praising the ones that were wounded. he said two things in his speech. he said everything was odd when he flew over boston when he arrived. all the houses had roofs.

all the bridges were complete. you know, this looks nothing like europe. this is so odd. and then in the middle of his speech, he was talking about something. he says, you know, when i was younger, i weighed a lot less. and the whole audience laughs. what are you laughing about? i've got more brains now. so he definitely had fun talking in front of people. this is the last photograph patton ever took. after he goes to the united states, he goes back to europe. and he kind of spends a nostalgia tour across europe of all the places he liberates. he goes up to stockholm, sweden, where he was in the olympics and he meets up with some of his fellow olympians and they have a pistol shoot and he wins. they said wow, george, in 1945, you won the 1912 olympics. the swedish apparently puts on a drill, a precision drill motorcycle team goes through some paces for him. and he whips out his camera, and

he takes this photograph. ten days later, he's going to be in a car accident that's going to break his neck and result in his death. so the army sends the camera home and beatrice develops the last roll of film. and wrote underneath this photograph in the photo albums, "this is the last picture my husband took." so that's the majori photograph just want to share with you. this is where patton had the famous car accident. where this car is is where the truck that hit him was. and he was traveling this way, you know, towards the horizon. and the truck is going to turn into this sort of driveway here. the little red brick building. and that's where they hit. and what happened was, there were two trucks. there was a railroad train crossing right here. and on the other side were two trucks. the first truck stalled out. the second truck pulled out from behind. so the second truck didn't see what was in front of him until it was too late. the accident happened about 35 miles an hour. patton is the only one hurt. breaks two vertebrae in his neck. tells happgay who was in the car

with him, i think i'm paralyzed. rub my fingers. he said, i think i'm paralyzed. rub my fingers. that's when he realizes how bad patton is. and he tells the mp officer at the intersection, you're in charge. take command of everything. there have been a lot of rumors that, you know, that this was a conspiracy, that someone shot him in the side of the neck, but the oss, it's all bunk. the big conspiracy theory -- there was a show on the history channel recently about it, some guy's written a book called "target patton." i actually helped him with some of his research. his theory is that the kgb had captured some oss officers. and they told bill donovan, we'll give them back if you kill patton because patton wants world war iii with russia. i've got news for you. every other general in the u.s. army wanted war with russia at the end of world war ii. patton is the one they focus on. so the deal was that this oss guy was standing on the side of the road. and he was going to shoot some sort of special air gun that was going to hit patton in the head

and kill him. why he would be driving with the window down on december 20th -- or december 9th, i have no idea. and so when that failed, they bring him to a hospital in hilg hidelburg. it's an x-ray room at an american army base. and the russians s squirted so sort of poisonous gas through the window. of course, there was a nurse there every second patton was there. how they did it, i don't know. i think it's that same thing you see with jfk. somebody of such great importance that a simple car accident just can't do this, you know? he did linger -- i shouldn't even say linger because his voice was energetic and everything for those nine, ten days in between. and if he had seen somebody shoot him, patton, pretty smart guy, i think he would have noticed it. but he spent his time, beatrice flew in from boston. she would read books to him and letters, a lot of letters poured in. they kind of verbally kind of worked on some of his diary

entries and stuff like that because he knew he wanted them to get published. he asked her to leave the room. and that's when he expired. he didn't want her in the room when he died. oddly enough, when he was in the united states visiting, he cornered hiswo say good-bye to you now because i'm never going to see you again. i have a feeling i will see your mom, but take care of yourselves. they were, like, dad, what are you talking about? the war is over. he says nope. everybody has so much luck. soldiers use theirs up faster than anyone else. he said, as the war was going on, the enemy shells were landing closer to me. and i escaped too many close calls, and my number is going to be up. and everything he said to the daughters was accurate. he did not see them again, but beatrice did fly to germany. he died on december 20th, 1945. he never made it to '46. and his plan was to come home to green meadows and actually turn it into a museum. he had actually had some army engineers sketch plans for what

it would look like. but he ends up dying here in hidelburg. then a debate ensues, you know, where should patton be buried? obviously back home in arlington cemetery or back at his estate. and the french government offers to bury him with napoleon. napoleon's tomb. there's a number of french generals buried with napoleon, but the offer went to the patton family. so while beatrice is debating this, jeffrey keys who visited patton in italy said he really should be buried with his men. and beatrice said that's it. you're right. exactly. they end up burying him in luxembourg. george meeks' assistant was a pallbearer. he cried through the whole ceremony. planes would fly and dip their wing during the funeral. the train would slow down 20 years after that after they passed by the cemetery. patton was buried in a common grave. but over the years, so many people trekked through just to see his grave, they had to move it to the front of the cemetery. i had mentioned jean gordon, the

girl patton had an affair with. after his death, beatrice went to her brother-in-law and said, you know, i'd really like to have a meeting with jean gordon. could you have it be a surprise? don't tell her that i'm asking for this. sure. so jean gordon shows up in the office. and there's beatrice. and she kind of stands there. and, you know, jean gordon is shocked. and beatrice lays out an hawaii curse on her. and it's one of these may your flesh run off your skin. da, da, da. and just freaks her out. she screams and runs out of the room. two weeks later jean gordon commits suicide, puts her head in the oven and turns the gas on. and carlo deste. she did leave a note and said i'm going to be with george before you. so 1953, beatrice passes away. actually, she's on horseback and falls off. she had had a blood clot to the brain much like her husband. the children want to bury her with him in the luxembourg

cemetery. the military says of course, no. only the soldiers are allowed to be buried there. no spouses, no one else. so they cremate her, bury her in the yard. and about four years later they dig it up and put some of the ashes in an envelope. and they go to the cemetery just as it's closing. and they sprinkle her ashes over george's and rub it into the ground. so they were together at last. one thing about my buddy, george, he was not sort of a pillar of social awareness. he definitely didn't like anybody who wasn't white. the real reason eisenhower canned him from 3rd army was not really much for comparing the nazis to democrats and republicans, was he left a lot of the jews still in their camps after liberation and put ss guards on the camps. at first, this was a good idea because these people had been starving to death for years. we need to regulate their food intake and all this kind of

stuff, you know. it's very famous that patton threw up when he first went into one of these concentration camps and was just disgusted with nazi philosophy. he wrote about it extentively. and so as they're trying to, you know, re-establish these are what are called at this point displaced persons, they bring in a whole bunch of mobile port-a-potties and say okay, you guys need to assemble these so you have sanitary facilities. of course these people haven't had any decent treatment in years. so the equipment just stands there. and patton, in his impatience, says, okay. these people are beyond help. we can't help them. we need to set them on fire. that's the kind of line that brings eisenhower down to patton's command for a personal inspection and sees that there are ss guards in front of these, you know, old prisons and stuff. and patton says a few inappropriate things to eisenhower. and eisenhower is, like, george, shut up. and eisenhower realizes, i can't do this anymore. i've got to relieve patton. his public statements are a

disgrace also. eisenhower tells his son, i did not fire patton for what he said. he said, i fired him for what he's going to say next. he really was going off of the jaw. but i digress. this is a rabbi, these are three rabbis that wanted to be present at patton's funeral. and they said, we know about the things he said. however, what he did in world war ii saved thousands of lives. he made the war go by faster, liberated our camps, saved so many of us that despite his prejudices, we are still going to pay tribute to him. so that's why they are there. all the patton family members, none of them know. they always love to tell this anecdote about willie that patton had captured a bust of adolf hitler.

and they trained willie, they put it in the background, and willie would pee on it. i thought that was a cool trick to teach a dog. now, this next little series of photographs are sort of a then and now. from patton's photographs. this is the temple of himura in sicily. and patton had a penchant for having his staff officers stand in paragraphs because he wanted

to give perspective so you have an idea. and so you've got, like, three pillars, one that's really destroyed, the fourth and then the next. so that's what it looks like ted. this had been a colony, a greek colony in sicily. and it's actually very well kept. if you drive a his officers who had been with him in world war i. and if you look closely, there's a clock here on the wall. and a train schedule. right there. so i found that about two years ago, it's a defunct train station now. it's a little obscure town. they moved the clock. you can see where the old one was. you can see where the schedule was. this is the church patton went to for christmas eve mass in luxembourg. and it was after the mass that he was told by a chaplain that he went and sat in the front row right side pew. wrote him a ain letter afterwards and said, by the way, where you sat is the exact same spot that kaiser wilhelm sat in world war i in 1918. this is actually in an alley in luxembourg city. so when i snapped this picture basically my back was up against the wall of the alley taking it. that was very hard to find, actually.

and then finally, this is a castle in france near laval. this is near the breakout when everything is going basically patton's way. he said this castle had only been captured twice before 3rd army took it. and it dated back, i think, to cardinal rischelieu fighting. i try to take people to patton's spots. i think it's great because you yourself can find yourself in the footsteps of patton. so with that, we're going to open it up to questions. i was told to remind anybody who wants to step up to the microphone to ask, and i'll do my darnedest to try to answer you. unless no one has any questions. yes, sir. testing. >> hello. >> there you go. >> in the movie, the first part of the movie, is a speech. >> yes. >> is that an accurate representation, and when and

where did it occur? >> "a," it was an accurate depiction. they did edit out a lot of lines. there was a lot of profanity in it. he would also, along with that sort of inspirational stuff from the speech, he would talk about the importance of a truck driver, you know. he said, think about the front-line soldier. it's the truck driver bringing the supplies is just as important as the front-line soldier. so there was a lot of practical information in these speeches also. the importance of staying dry, things like that. and he basically gave it all around england prior to the invasion of normandy. so it wasn't in really one exact place. and it got mixed results. a lot of women, a lot of army nurses and wacs did not like it. they thought it was too aggressive. other soldiers ate it up. but yes, it's very accurate. in fact, i think charles province has a copy of the whole thing because some lieutenant typed it up while patton was giving up. and he tribed it in a book called "the unknown patton." and sidenote, when francis ford

coppola wrote the script for the movie, he finished writing it and said this guy is so unique and interesting, i can't do a conventional biography. he goes, i got it. i'll put i gre speech. and so he hands the script in to 20th century fox, and they say, this is the stupidest idea we've ever seen, and they fired him. and they brought on another writer. and they said the script was so bad that they went back to coppola's original. and coppola was actually working, fixing film machines when he saw them putting the uniforms and costumes together. he said, what are you doing? they said oh, we're making this movie "patton." he was, like, wow, i wrote that. and later coppola goes to make "the godfather," and it's over budget, behind schedule. they're getting ready to fire him when he gets the academy award for writing "patton." so they said well, we can't fire the guy now. so he stays on and makes the movie. coppola says when he goes around the country and gives talks, he tells film students the stuff you get fired from in your 20s is the stuff you get lifetime

achievement awards for when you're older. thank you. yes, ma'am. >> is patton as devout as the movie, you know, perspective in the movie was? >> sure. >> and did he say that he read the bible every day. >> goddamn day. yes. one of the great things about that movie is the quotes are accurate. they just place them in different places just because it works better. when he rolls into palermo and he gets the notice not to take it, he says, what do they want me to do, give it back? that was a city in germany. in the movie they use his exact lines, just not in the right places. i did see where he said that. that was a stars and stripes story where he made that line about every day, you know what i'm talking about. but yes, very devoted. he was raised a protestant, but when he was born, they thought he was going to die. and they had an irish catholic

nurse. and she baptized him a catholic because she thought he was about to die on the delivery table. then when he got stronger, they had a protestant baptism. it's said that because of his catholic roots that were accidental almost, that he made sure all the chaplains in 3rd army were catholic because he liked their sort of marshal spirit, things like that. could quote the bible like that. knew the bible very well. and definitely feared god. you know, when things went bad, god, why are you doing this to me? when things went well, he thanked god for them. i'm sure his church attendance went down. you know the famous prayer in the movie, that was actually long before -- about a month before the battle of the bulge. and he called the chaplain in. he said, we need all these guys praying, you know. they're not doing enough. and that's kind of the origin of the prayer. it really was patton's idea. and then he asked the chaplain, how many of these guys are going to sunday services? and he said, well, not enough, sir. and that was an element of the patton prayer was to get

soldiers to go to church more to pray for the success of 3rd army. so yeah. it was very real about him and the lord. yes, sir. >> during the movie, there was a big point made about his belief in reincarnation. >> mm-hmm. >> one, is that true. and two, could you elaborate on that any more? >> yes, very true. in the movie in north africa, he drops to one knee and recites some poetry. the poem is called "through a glass and darkly." he kind of looks up at bradley and says you know who wrote that? i did. that poem is actually about 12 stanzas long. and in it each different stanza is about him in a different life in a different army in previous lives. when he goes to fight world war i and he first arrives in france, they tell him where his tank training area is going to be. he starts going down this road. and he sees some officers that

know the area. he says, listen. down there to the left, are some barracks, right? and they said no. well, actually, yes, there's some old roman barracks there. and if i keep going up to the road to the right is a mess hall, right? and they're like -- well, actually, there's an old roman mess hall up there. it was kind of eerie. i know some historians theorize that he read so much history that as he got older, he put himself in it. but, you know, here he is in world war i. and then there's a well-known story with charles codman towards the end of the war. they pull into a town calls reagansburg. and they're crossing the river. i think it was the danube. and patton says you know, i remember crossing this river and there was this big rock to the right of us. and napoleon was standing there going come on, let's go, we've got to get into russia. and codman starts cracking up. the old man is nuts. what's he talking about? and about two days later codman goes for a drive along the river and comes across this giant boulder. how did the old man know that?

he had never been here before. so i hope that elaborated nicely. >> a couple quick questions about the photography itself. >> yeah. >> how often was he taking photos? was he doing this all day long? was it sporadic? how -- can i ask them real quick and then i'll just sit down? >> yeah. >> how contemporaneously were they developed? and how did the military feel from an intelligence standpoint or about him taking all these photographs? >> okay. >> okay. >> got them. how often did he take the photographs? it varied. ironically, i would say he probably took the most in sicily while he was -- and then while he was in exile because he had nothing else to do but take pictures. and then during the sweep across france. the least amount of photographs are when he first takes command in tunisia to fight -- well, rommel, but to fight the germans, and the battle of bulge where he's so busy. in fact, he supplements his photographs with gun camera photographs from the air force and with maps. and when he first takes command

of 2nd corps, it's a lot of behind-the-lines stuff. and the irony is that in the movie "patton," the only time you see the camera is when he first takes command of 2nd corps and he's explaining why to omar bradley why they got their butts kicked and the camera is around his neck. and then the next scene was in the battle of the bulge when he's standing there in the snow and he says damn i'm proud of these men. he's got the camera. the times he took the least photographs is where you actually see the camera around his neck. how about the developing of the pictures? varied. he would either send reels home to beatrice or he would have army, you know, photo officers develop them in theater. and the quality would vary. there's a lot of them that are very poor quality. and what i did was i hired a photographer to take, to snap the photographs out of the photo albums themselves. when we would come to these very deteriorated photographs, he explained to me, he said, kevin, you know, the silver emulsion

that they used to develop a photograph was of a poor quality when he was in this part of the world because that's why this photograph looks that way. you know, some of them are very clear. and other ones, the images are so degraded, you can barely figure out what he's taking photos of. but like i said, it was varied because he would sometimes send the reels home, sometimes develop them in theater. i know he had engineers develop a quick rewind device for one of his cameras. the last one was how did the high command -- here's a soldier taking pictures on the battlefield. i've never seen anything positive or negative about it. i don't think that intelligent thinking had caught up with the technology in world war ii. a number of army historians assigned to 3rd army and other armys in europe told me that they were all given the same camera that patton had. it's called a lyca. it's actually german made. they produced them in switzerland and other places. so soldiers were issued cameras, historians and reporters were issued cameras on the front

lines. what would happen is in the development process, somebody would look at it. and if someone's patch is showing, they'd put a white mark over it. or if there was a street sign, they might white it out. so they would go through a censoring process and patton sometimes did and sometimes didn't. >> you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. for more information, follow us on twitter @c-spanhistory. >> each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the college professors. can you watch the classes here every saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern and sundays at 1:00 p.m. vietnamese strategy during the vietnam war with donald stoker, professor at the naval war college in monterey, california. the class is part of a course called strategy and war which examines the relationship between political goals and the use of military force. this is about 50 minutes. >> a couple of pieces of background first to think about this to set up for this.

always think about here, what is this war about? for the north vietnamese? what are their objectives? now, the vietnamese -- north vietnamese communist objectives are pretty clear. it's not as clear from reading as it should be. they want to take all of southeast asia. french indochina. it's the conquest of south vietnam. that's what they want. they tell us the first thing we need to do is figure out the nature of the war. again, for our purposes for this, when you start your study of this case study, you start investigating this case study, think about that. what is the nature of this war? one of my colleagues back in newport, he talks about this being a war within a war within a war. and it's interesting perspective to think of because you have a multilayered series of events and activities obviously that are going on here. and different ways of fighting

it. for the communists in many ways this is a revolutionary war. they want to expand communism in southeast asia. again, south vietnam is only the next stop on the road to that. and a regular warfare, guerrilla warfare is the how, but not all of it. of course, you have a regional war that develops here as well between north vietnam and the united states. and this, of course, spills over and allows cambodia and so on and south vietnam, the fighting in north vietnam as well particularly on the air side of it. a lot of this is conventional. again, it's not all. that's not the whole thing. it's only part of the picture. and you also have to keep in mind that the cold war context of what is going on here, because we don't -- when we think about vietnam, we don't automatically think about this being a coalitional war. we sometimes even overlook the south vietnamese role in it. some of the literature, for example. you almost think there's no south vietnamese army he'ding the book that there's pretty