The third and final volume of Kevin Hymel’s Patton’s War trilogy finds Lieutenant General George S. Patton on January 1, 1945, as the master of the battlefield in World War II Europe. Throughout the war, Patton showed the same kind of aggressive leadership and battlefield smarts that made his name synonymous with victory. Patton’s leadership was almost flawless as he led his men through enemy fire and one of the worst winters in European history. 

As with his previous volume, Hymel relies on Patton’s original diaries (not the transcribed, embellished versions historians have relied on for many years) and personal letters to tell the general’s story. Hymel also mined various archives to explain Patton’s encounters with soldiers, government officials, civilians, and reporters to expand on his narrative.

Throughout this three-volume work, Patton emerges not as a larger-than-life myth, but as a human being, one held back by the personal prejudices and antisemitism that ultimately proved to be his demise. Despite these personal failings, Patton was, above all, as Hymel reveals, a commander bent on winning, or, as the general himself might have put it, getting the enemy to dance to his tune. 
 

Kevin M. Hymel (pronounced Heemel) is a contract historian at Arlington National Cemetery and a Historian/Tour Guide of Ambrose Historical Tours, leading the “In Patton’s Footsteps” tour. For fifteen years he was the research director of and regular contributor to WWII History and WWII Quarterly. He is the author of four books, including Patton’s Photographs: War as He Saw It. His article “Fighting a Two-Front War,” in WWII History is being made into the Netflix movie “6888,” written and directed by Tyler Perry. Mr. Hymel served as a technical advisor to the film.