General Patton's Notorious Slap

It may have cost many American lives.

George Patton, 1944

We think of political correctness as a recent thing, but the reality is that it’s been around a long time. In fact, it may have cost thousands of American lives in the Second World War.

If you’ve seen the 1970 movie “Patton,” you’ve witnessed the origin of this particular story. General George Patton, played by George C. Scott, slaps a soldier in a field hospital. He does it because the solider wasn’t physically injured but instead was suffering from what we today call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD. Patton was infuriated that a man with no visible injuries was taking up a bed and not fighting.

That was a movie, but the reality wasn’t much different. Patton may have slapped two soldiers and was almost instantly relieved of his command. He was replaced by an incompetent dimwit.

Well, not quite, but you could probably call anyone incompetent who tried to replace General Patton in the middle of a war. Patton had been sent to North Africa after one of the biggest American defeats, the Battle of Kasserine Pass. He shaped up the troops and jumped to the island of Sicily in the mid-Mediterranean. He was so successful that he had to slow down his troops so the British commander, General Bernard Montgomery, could catch up. Even with that delay, Patton pushed his soldiers to cover 200 miles in 30 days against well-trained and equipped soldiers.

The slapping took place in August of 1943, once Sicily was under control but before the mainland of Italy was invaded. The story didn’t get out until Thanksgiving. Private Charles Herman Kuhl of Indiana was supposedly the person slapped, but the military denied it after Kuhl’s name was spread around the world. However, he and Private Paul Bennett were the two men reportedly slapped.

Invasion of Italy, 1943—bad planning, worse commanders.

Whomever Patton slapped, it was a big deal. In the pre-Clinton and Biden days we were all considered equal under the law. Generals could order privates to do things because they outranked them, but beating was not allowed. If for no other reason, it was bad because there were a lot more privates than generals and most of their families could vote. Patton was without a command for eleven crucial months.

In his absence, the invasion of Italy was turned over to British General Montgomery and America’s Mark Clark, both of whom enjoyed seeing their pictures in newspapers. The invasion plan spread troops all to hell and gone around southern Italy instead of concentrating them on one weak point. A map if the invasion shows how the British Eighth Army was wasted on going up the toe of Italy’s “boot” and other British forces were sent into the arch to meet almost no resistance. The biggest Allied landing was at Salerno, near Naples. One part of it was landing Allied soldiers on opposite sides of a river, greatly limiting their fighting ability. Salerno was 180 miles from Rome. It took 260 days to get there. Patton could have done it quicker and better and probably with fewer casualties.

Rome was finally declared taken by the Allies on June 6, 1944, which of course was also D-Day, the day the invasion of France began across the English Channel. If George Patton had been in charge, Rome would have likely been taken in March of 1944 and enough progress would have been made by May to cancel the D-Day invasion or just make it easier. A move up through Italy would have split German forces and pushed them back against the Atlantic in France, instead of letting them reinforce the Wehrmacht in Germany.

Of course, if that had happened Dwight Eisenhower wouldn’t be remembered as so much of a hero. After all, he was great at planning but never saw battle. Did Ike use the slapping incident to get his way and invade France? Doubtful, but the families of the 4,500 Allied soldiers and sailors who died on D-Day might still like to know.