Killing Patton

In late January 1945, the SS is trying to destroy evidence of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, as “Hitler has ordered that the murders be stopped and that all proof of his atrocities be destroyed” (225). Red Army is closing in on the camps: They have taken Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and are now in Warsaw, at the doorstep of Auschwitz. Soviet forces are determined to reach Berlin before the western Allies.

As part of the cover-up, Nazis march prisoners—Jews and “asocials,” or communists, socialists, and gay men—out of the camps, shooting them for any delay. The prisoners consist of the twenty percent of those forced into concentration camps who were used as slave labor rather than being sent straight to the gas chambers to be murdered. Some of the prisoners are children marched out were subject to the inhumane medical experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele. When the Soviets finally liberate Auschwitz on January 27, they find “corpses everywhere” (237) and survivors resembling “living skeletons” (237).

Helena Citrónová, a Slovakian Jewish woman who became one of the survivors of Auschwitz, was first sent there in 1942. After an SS guard, Franz Wunsch, fell in love with her after hearing her sing, he protected Helena and her sister Rozinka from being killed, though Rozinka’s children, who were also in the concentration camp, were murdered.

Auschwitz prisoners nicknamed one section of the camp “Canada” because this is where the Nazis would put anything valuable stripped from the prisoners; the goods would either be sent back to Germany or stolen by the camp guards. Wunsch got Helena and Rozinka jobs in “Canada”—this was typical, and many women whom camp guards wanted sexual access to worked there, enjoyed better rations and access to water, and were allowed to grow out their hair. Rozinka started to fall for Wunsch, while Helena would later testify on his behalf at his war crimes trial.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, Helena and Rozinka journey back to Slovakia. On the way, they witness Soviet soldiers raping other women in a barn. Millions of women suffered a similar fate at the hands of Soviet soldiers in the last years of the war. Like many other displaced people in Eastern Europe—and Jews in particular, Helena finds that Soviet citizens have seized and occupied her home.

By March 1945, the Allies are preparing to cross the Rhine River and push into the German heartland. Eisenhower gives the task of leading the thrust towards Berlin to Montgomery rather than to Patton, who instead gets Southern Germany, a less significant sector. Of course, “the decision makes George S. Patton furious” (256), especially since it is a political one—it diffuses tension between the UK and US over the fact that the Supreme Allied Commander, Eisenhower, is American.

Montgomery plans to cross the Rhine in the north on March 23. In the south, Patton hopes to beat him to this symbolic milestone, getting revenge for Montgomery wrongly taking credit for saving US forces at the Battle of the Bulge. Eisenhower favors a “broad front” assault into Germany, whereas Montgomery prefers a “single thrust” through the north. Eisenhower eventually backs down and accepts the latter strategy.

Meanwhile, on March 13, Patton’s Third Army captures 60,000 prisoners and destroys the Siegfried line of fortifications near the German border. On March 23, Patton is the first Allied commander to cross the Rhine.