The new documentary Silence Patton: First Victim of the Cold War claims that General George Patton was murdered, possibly by the KGB, because he was vociferous in his desire to oppose the former Soviet Union.
Writer-director Robert Orlando said his goal was to “prove to the viewer that he was silenced because his views didn’t go along with the status quo.”
Patton died Dec. 21, 1945, as a result of injuries he suffered when he was traveling as a passenger in a car that was crushed by a two-ton truck. The rest of the people involved in the crash only sustained minor injuries. Patton hated Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader, and his hatred made him enemies in the U.S. and Great Britain as well as the Soviet Union. He is supposed to have said, “Tin politicians in Washington have allowed us to kick the hell out of one bastard (Adolf Hitler) and at the same time forced us to help establish a second one (Stalin) as evil or more evil than the first.
The film’s website quotes Orlando saying that Dwight Eisenhower, the head of Allied Forces, would not permit Patton and his Third Army to seize Berlin, which allowed the war to extend longer; the Russians eventually seized Berlin. The website features an essay that says:
“Is it possible as some say that the general’s freakish collision with an Army truck, on the day before his departure for the U.S., was not really an accident? Or was Patton not only dismissed by his peers, but the victim of an assassin’s bullet at their behest?”
Orlando said, “Gen. Patton is a towering historical figure of great consequence who shaped the history of the West. My goal with ‘Silence Patton’ will be to dig deeper into the narrative and prove to the viewer that he was silenced because his views didn’t go along with the status quo.”