THE PATTON PAPERS VOL. 1 : 1885-1940 by Blumenson, Martin

Boston 1972, Houghton Mifflin, First US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, VG/VG condition, ( gift inscription on front free end paper), xx, 996 pages, illus, notes, glossary, index. Few generals have been more praised, hated, honored, and misunderstood than George S. Patton, Jr. A man of many masks, he is familiar as the great combat leader of World War II, commander of the Third Army and archetype of the sweeping field commander who, with his glorious tanks, swept across Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany. Yet many of the most intriguing sides of General Patton have remained hidden. Until now, no historian has had available to him the full range of Patton's complex mind, a mind as much tormented by doubts and driven by passions as it was inspired with dreams of military glory.To Martin Blumenson, the distinguished military historian, the Patton Papers have been opened, permitting a full-scale edition of all the significant documents - among them personal letters and diary entries. Mr. Blumenson has woven them into a stirring narrative which speaks with unparalleled clarity and force. Here, then, for the first time, is the opportunity to see Patton in all his aspects, as legend, soldier, and man.This book carries Patton's story to 1940. It shows the formation of the soldier and how'ie prepared himself for the unique leadership he exercised in World War II. Here is the youthful Patton, conscious of his heritage as a member of a military family and totally absorbed in the fulfillment of his destiny. One sees too the nature of Army life in those days, by turns exciting and monotonous, as the young Patton was shunted from one military post to another, during what he considered onerous years of peace.With his service under General Pershing in the Punitive Expedition in Mexico, and later in the tumultuous years of World War I, Patton finally found opportunities for military life as he wished it to be. Mr. Blumenson shows how Patton met the challenges of the Mexican campaign and how, during the World War, he switched from cavalry to tanks, organized and led the Tank Corps, and began to build for himself what was to become the Patton legend.In the two decades after the war, the Army passed through lean years, as appropriations .were cut to a minimum. Patton returned to the cavalry - but not to obscurity, for as Mr. Blumenson shows, he was often at the center of an ongoing controversy between supporters of a mechanized army and defenders of traditional cavalry units. Patton's positions in this debate, always forceful but often full of reservations, appear here in startling relief, and they amply suggest the complexities of the later hero of World War II.To all who would wish to understand the real Patton, the modern Army, and the course of twentieth-century history, the Patton Papers constitute an essential document. No portrait of General Patton can ever be the same again.