“One cannot help but feel that Berlin marks the final epitaph of what should have been a great race.”
UNUSUALLY DEPRESSED, his joie de vivre having temporarily abandoned him, Patton tried to settle down to live with the grim fact that he had fought his last campaign. Was then his destiny fulfilled? Had he accomplished all that had been reserved for him? Or would there be one last battle still, one last meeting of arms to decide the fate of civilization?
The Potsdam Conference was in session, and Harry Truman, Clement Attlee, and Joseph Stalin were trying to remake and reorder the new world. But Patton suspected that the results they accomplished would be different from and much less perfect than those he wished to see.
As he told Beatrice later:
At Potsdam I was just a visitor but later had long talks with George [Marshall] and Harry [Stimson]. Hap Arnold is the only one who understands the Mongols except me. But the rest are waking up.
Major General Floyd Parks, who commanded the U.S. troops in the Berlin Military District, telephoned during the evening of July 19. The Secretary of War, he said, was to review the gd Armored Division and wanted very much to have Patton with him.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, July 21, 1945
I left here at 0630 and got there in two hours and a half. We could have gone faster but for the fact that if one flies over Russian occupied territory, they shoot at you – nice friends. The review was great . . .
Drove to Potsdam and saw the palace you, Nita, my self, and the family visited in 1912 . . .
The place was not hurt but all the furniture and rugs have been taken by the Mongols.
We also saw Berlin which is not nearly as much bashed in as represented.
The Mongols are a bad lot, even the U.S. sector has their guards in it, and I had to have a pass. However, I did not need it. I just pointed to my [Russian] medal and the world was mine . . .
Berlin gave me the blues. We have destroyed what could have been a good race and we [are] about to replace them with Mongolian savages. And all Europe will be communist.
It’s said that for the first week after they took it, all women who ran were shot and those who did not were raped. I could have taken it had I been allowed.
Harry [Stimson] looks tired . . .
George [Marshall] was most friendly, almost gushing.
I also saw the President who was nice.
We now have Wacks. Mine is a secretary.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to sister Nita, July 21, 1945
I am very much afraid that Europe is going to go Bolshevik, which, if it does, may eventually spread to our country.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Codman, July 21, 1945
One cannot help but feel that Berlin marks the final epitaph of what should have been a great race. I really do not see how they can recover, particularly in view of the activities of some of our Allies, and I am not at all sure that we are not stepping out of the frying pan into the fire by concurring in what is going on. However, this is a personal opinion which probably nobody else shares.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, July 24, 1945
Felix [of Luxembourg] spent the night. He is very gloomy over the future of Europe. So are all thinking men who are not running for office.
Patton was happy to go to Prague to receive a decoration from the Czech government at the hands of President Bene§.
A young officer being tried for killing prisoners of war cited Patton’s instructions in his defense. Queried by the theater Judge Advocate, Pat-ton replied:
I made it a habit to talk to every division prior to its going into battle. In all these talks, I emphasized the necessity for violent offensive action, and also the necessity for the proper treatment of prisoners of war, both as to their lives and property. My usual statement was . . . “Kill all the Germans you can, but do not put them up against a wall and kill them. Do your killing while they are still fighting. After a man has surrendered, he should be treated exactly in accordance with the Rules of Land Warfare, and just as you would hope to be treated if you were foolish enough to surrender . . . Americans do not kick people in the teeth after they are down.” . . . I have no apologies or excuses to make for any statement which I have made to troops in combat.
To the editors of a division history, he wrote:
Divisions have souls which they inherit. They have characteristics which they pass on . . . [I] urge you to transmit to future members, those magnificent fighting qualities which you have ever demonstrated.
He flew to Frankfurt on August 1 to accept Eisenhower’s invitation to dinner. They dined alone,
and I learned some interesting facts, particularly what impelled him to order us to halt short of the Moldau River when we could so easily have advanced that far . . . The same hold order of course applied also to the Ninth and First Armies.
It seems that when Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin were in Teheran in the fall of 1943, Churchill was convinced that even in the unlikely event of the Allies being able to make a landing on the Continent, they would never be able to cross the Rhine River, and he therefore persuaded FDR to go along with him in asking Stalin to have the Russians capture Berlin and Vienna and gave the Russians a line about a hundred miles west of Berlin. Later when we were going along well and could easily have taken Berlin, Churchill asked Ike to do it, and Ike replied by stating that it was Churchill’s fault that the line had been established where it was. I believe this was a great mistake on his part because, had we taken the country to the Moldau River and Berlin, we would have saved a great deal of agricultural Germany and prevented what I believe historians will consider a horrid crime and great loss of prestige in letting the Russians take the two leading capitals of Europe.
Telling Beatrice of his evening with Eisenhower, Patton said he “learned the inwardness of quite a few things. He did not have a bed of roses either.”
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, August 6, 1945
I am much upset about [opposition at home to] universal service. If we don’t have it, we are sunk and soon too. The President now talks of doing it [being prepared] with the N. [National] G. [Guard] – will we never learn?
If there ever was a war breeder, it is the Europe of today. Russia is just like the French Republic of 1870. Germany is out. The Checks hate every one. The French are communistic. The British fools. And we, God knows.
Diary, August 8
Gay and I flew to Hanau to inspect and say goodbye to the 6th Armored Division . . . Only 2,500 of the original . . . men were present. In spite of this, the soldiers, more than 12,000, put on a really good show, which proves that the spirit of a unit is something beyond and outside the personnel composing it. Also, that troops who are veterans are good in any unit. However, this virtue of being a veteran does not last after the man has got soft and forgotten his military training, so we cannot base our trust in any future army on the fact that we have some eleven or twelve million veterans to call upon.
At the close of the ride around and before the march past, the massed colors of the division were brought to the front, and I had an opportunity to decorate them and also some officers and men. The ceremony was new to me and very pretty. I will try to have it repeated in other units.
At the close of the Sicilian Campaign I talked to a group of officers from each division . . . to obtain from the men who did it, the means they used to fight, because having studied war since I was about sixteen years old, I have only come across some twelve books which deal with fighting, although there are many hundreds which deal with war. This is because the people who fight either are killed or are inarticulate.
With this end in view, I talked to a selected group . . . and intend to repeat it...
Of course, the horrid thought obtrudes itself that, in spite of my efforts – which will probably be filed and forgotten – the tactics of the next war will be written by someone who never fought and who acquired his knowledge by a meticulous study of the regulations of this and the last World War, none of which were ever put into practice in battle. However, I console myself with the thought that I have, in so far as the ability within me lay, done my damndest.
But it seems very queer that we invariably entrust the writing of pur regulations for the next war to men totally devoid of any but theoretical knowledge. In this war we were also unfortunate in that our high command in the main consisted of staff officers who, like Marshall, Eisenhower, and McNarney, had practically never exercised command, I think it was this lack of experience which induced them to think of and treat units such as divisions, corps, and Armies as animated tables of organization rather than as living entities.
Lieut. General Bishop Gowlina of the Polish Army came to see me and stayed to lunch. He is a very bright man, speaks perfect English, and hates the Russians with reason. He told me some of their methods . . .
According to the Bishop, more than two million Poles have been taken to Russia for slave labor. In every case . . . they split families . . .
The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European but an Asiatic and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese and, from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of a bitch, a barbarian, and a chronic drunk.
Strange to say, I had a letter from General Sibert [12 th Army Group G–2] on the question of the Russians, so that apparently for the first time in his career, he is on a good scent.
After the Bishop left, a Mr. G. A. Kemper whom I used to know in Hawaii . . . called. He is now mayor of a town in the British zone and states . . . that he came to Germany in 1936 as a representative of Woolworth . . . Being not a Nazi, according to himself, he was run out of business but was not jailed. He made some remarks which to me sounded sensible to the effect that our military government is handicapped by the necessity of using dug-out Germans – that is, Germans who are so definitely anti-Nazi that they have not held any office since 1933, and are therefore not only inexperienced in current methods of government but are more or less old, whereas the whole cry is for youth.
Under our rules, which demand the total deNazification of Germany, we have to remove everyone who has ever expressed himself in any way as a Nazi or who has paid party dues. It is very evident that anybody who was in business, irrespective of his real sentiments, had to say he was a Nazi and pay dues. The only young people who were not Nazis came out of the internment camps and are therefore either Jews or Communists. We are certainly in a hard position as far as procuring civil servants is concerned.
These were the themes that would occupy his thoughts, poison his mind, and increasingly embitter his outlook during the remaining few months of his life: the managers like Eisenhower and Bedell Smith had been and still were the prominent and powerful persons, and they no longer needed the fighters like Patton; the Russians were unscrupulous beasts who would dominate Europe because they knew what they wanted and because the United States, the only nation strong enough to oppose them, was uninterested, even unaware of their purpose and methods; and denazification was wrong.
Eventually he would come to abhor the American immediate postwar policies, which he believed were the result of a conspiracy of international bankers and labor leaders and Jews and Communists, all of whom were working for the downfall of the United States. Too many changes, it seemed to him, were transforming the world into something alien to his upbringing and social outlook.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, August 10, 1945
Well the war is over. We just heard that Japan had quit. Now the horrors of peace, pacafism, and unions will have unlimited sway. I wish I were young enough to fight in the next one. It would be . . . [great] killing Mongols.
I suppose poor George [his son] is all broken up. I would be in his case. Tell him that if I am here in June [when he graduated] I will get a special dispensation and have you and he over for ten days and we will drive all over the campaigns. It would be fun . . .
Last time a war stopped I wrote a poem . . . Now I feel too low. It is hell to be old and passe and know it.
Diary, August 10
Another war has ended and with it my usefulness to the world. It is for me personally a very sad thought. Now all that is left to do is to sit around and await the arrival of the undertaker and posthumous immortality. Fortunately, I also have to occupy myself with the de-Nazification and government of Bavaria . . .
I have arranged to have wood cut by the Germans and by prisoners of war so that all the cities of Bavaria will have sufficient wood to heat at least one room for every family. This project is proceeding quite well except in the case of the Displaced Persons who are too worthless to even cut wood to keep themselves warm.
We have also started, by the use of German prisoner of war Signal personnel, to restore German commercial telephone lines. In addition to this, we are working to re-establish railway, canal, and road communications – primarily as a means of redeploying our own troops . . .
I have to occupy myself with inspecting every division, particularly those ordered to the United States . . . I have inspected some ten or twelve divisions at the rate of approximately three a week. In every case, I make a speech along .. . [the same] lines.
It often appeared to be an empty exercise, for even here the old magic was gone. According to George Fisher, who accompanied Patton on one of these trips, the division was lined up and waiting at the airfield when Patton’s plane landed.
With the precision of a familiar maneuver the General hit the ground, strode a few paces, and mounted a platform that had been set up for the purpose . . . Patton, resplendent as always, proceeded to give the troops the works.
He never talked very long and he certainly followed no conventions of finished oratory. He would start off rather slowly, and his squeaky, high-pitched voice did not carry very well . . .
I had the personal feeling that the General regularly got himself punch-drunk with profanity. His sulphurous son-of-a-bitching, I thought, was a habit he had permitted himself to form in days when there might have been some reason for him to strike a pose . . .
The reaction of the troops was somewhat mixed. There were many, of course, to whom roughness of oral intercourse was normal and habitual, and it was Patton’s habit to act as if this were true of every man in uniform . . .
Stripped of bitching and damning, Patton’s farewell to the troops came down to something like this: You have served with the greatest group of soldiers ever assembled anywhere at any time . . . Never forget that you are heroes. And if any civilian— here one must fall back into Pattonese – and if any goddamned civilian ever tries to make fun of your uniform, you are to knock the son of a bitch down ...
Patton was eternally ready to fight; and if there was no enemy in front of him, there were still some lily-livered civilians back home to be attended to.
But . . . these men who were on their way back home had their own notions about how the civilian situation in the States should be handled. They were willing enough to have their Army commander remind them of the glories of their service under him, but as for the future – well, they had come to a parting of the ways with Patton and all that he stood for ...
Patton was forever preaching a gospel of warfare that was somehow alien and antipathetic to young Americans who had reluctantly and only temporarily suffered themselves to become soldiers. If in North Africa and Sicily they had listened gravely to his words, it was because they had to . . . [Later] they began to see that Patton was a consistent winner. That was the true basis of Patton’s esteem among the rank and file of Third Army. As the war progressed, he was . . . an eagerly followed commander – not because of his theatrics but simply because he had demonstrated beyond question that he knew how to lick Germans better than anybody else.
• • •
Denazification was proceeding satisfactorily. All the clergymen in the American zone had been screened by mid-July, and those without Nazi affiliations were cleared. The work of eradicating Nazi street names and memorials was practically complete. Former Nazis had been excluded from industrial concerns and businesses, as well as removed from the professions. By early August, telephone, telegraph, and radio workers were almost all checked. Soon the German financial institutions would be similarly purged.
On October 11, Stimson was quoted in the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune as saying that the Nazi party in the American zone had been eradicated and that German administrators, “purged of Nazi membership and influence” were gradually superseding American military administrators.
On the same day, Patton was suggesting that Eisenhower pass “a word to the people responsible for civil government” to go more slowly on denazification. Too many trained administrators, Patton said, were being removed and too many inexperienced and inefficient officials were being put into office. As for Nazism, he repeated his observation:
It is no more possible for a man to be a civil servant in Germany and not have paid lip service to Naziism than it is for a man to be a postmaster in America and not have paid at least lip service to the Democratic Party or Republican Party when it is in power.
His refusal to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans on the one hand and Nazis on the other – to say nothing of his slander of the American civil-service system – indicated that he had missed the whole point of the struggle insofar as American public opinion was concerned. His failure to understand a large part of the moral foundation underlying the American support of the war effort would lead to his downfall and disgrace.
All he could see was the little German, the man in the street, whose only responsibility for Nazism was his unwillingness to comprehend its evil.
“I am raising the devil,” he wrote Beatrice, “to get enough wood cut to keep the people from freezing this winter.”
Four days later, Eisenhower reminded the Third and Seventh Armies that “Nazis should not be allowed to retain wealth, power, or influence merely because they do not hold public office.”
Diary, August 18
In a letter from Beatrice today she stated that Gerow is to get [that is, to be Commandant of] the [Army] War College. This is too bad, as he was one of the leading mediocre corps commanders in Europe and only got the Fifteenth Army because he was General Eisenhower’s personal friend. With the War College gone, there is nothing open to me so far as now seems available. However, things have looked gloomy before and something has always turned up.
At the request of General Juin, I flew to Paris and today returned to the French at the Invalides six sets of colors taken from the French in the war of 1870. It was quite a colorful ceremony . . . There was a crowd of several thousand people and much cheering for Patton. On the way back, Charles de Vaux, the son of Mme. de Vaux, my old friend at Langres, was very nearly shot by the escort when he rushed out to shake my hand.
At dinner with General Juin the remarkable statement was made by him to me that, “It is indeed unfortunate, my General, that the English and the Americans have destroyed in Europe the only sound country – and I do not mean France – therefore the road is now open for the advent of Russian Communism.”
The use of the atomic bomb against Japan was most unfortunate because now it gives a lot of vocal but ill-informed people – mostly fascists, communists, and s.o.b/s assorted – an opportunity to state that the Army, Navy, and Air Forces are no longer necessary as this bomb will either prevent war or destroy the human race. Actually, the bomb is no more revolutionary than the first thro wing-stick or javelin or the first cannon or the first submarine. It is simply, as I have often written, a new instrument added to the orchestra of death which is war.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, August 18, 1945
I was particularly sorry you were not around yesterday. Juan asked me to come to Paris to hand back some French flags we had taken from the Germans . . .
Yesterday he and I drove to the Invalides in an open car with much screaming of sirens . . .
We then drove to the Arch de Triumph where there was a large crowd, quite a few thousand . . . After playing both national anthems, I took a wreath which cost me $100.00 and kneeling on one knee put it on the tank. Then they played “to the dead.” Then I signed the Golden Book – France is full of them.
I think giving Gerow the W. C. [War College] is a joke. He was the poorest corps commander in France . . . I guess there is nothing left for me but the undertaker. However, after when the future seemed bleak I have lit on my feet – heres hoping. I can always resign.
General Herr, former Chief of Cavalry, replied to Patton’s letter:
Reference your Parthian shot about my not accepting command of the Armored Corps, I will counter by saying the Cavalry might also be in better position than it now is if you had not refused command of the 1st Cavalry Division. Anyway Marshall would never have given me the power that was essential to command, and am sure that I could never have tolerated him and his evasive methods.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Frederick Ayer, August 21, 1945
The advent of the atomic bomb was no more startling than was the act of the first man who picked up a rock and bashed out the brains of another man, thereby spoiling the age-old method of fighting with teeth and toe-nails. Certainly the atomic bomb was not as startling as the first cannon or the first gasoline motor or the first submarine. I am not decrying the intelligence of those who devised it, but I am decrying the lack of intelligence of those who will use it as a means of making our country defenseless. The only way to stop atomic bombing of a country by self-propelled bombs, which is what we will get at the beginning of the next war, is to be able to invade the country sending the bombs and destroy their place of construction. We have proved definitely that you cannot put factories out from the air. As a matter of fact, I know considerably more about the bomb than I am at liberty to state, but . . . the Germans had not progressed anywhere with theirs and they were using a different atom; namely, hydrogen.
He went to Salzburg as the guest of Clark and Keyes, then at St. Martin witnessed a demonstration by the dressage team from Vienna’s Spanish Riding School and their famous Lipizzaner horses.
On the same day that Bedell Smith telephoned to congratulate the Third Army on the progress of its denazification program, Patton’s chief of staff, Gay, was issuing a somewhat ambiguous memorandum to the Third Army G-5, the staff officer concerned most directly with the occupation and government of Germany. Gay told him to be sure to comply with the regulations and with the established policies but to use care and discretion; borderline cases who were good administrators or good technicians, he seemed to be saying, were to be given a break.
On August 22, Eisenhower reminded the Eastern and Western Military Districts to provide stateless persons with high standards of accommodations and to care for Jews in special Jewish centers. “Wherever necessary,” he said, “suitable accommodations will be requisitioned from the German population.”
More specifically on August 23, Eisenhower advised Patton that “obliteration” of Nazism was a major United States war aim and that a Joint Chiefs of Staff directive, which he cited, clearly prohibited the retention of Nazis for administrative necessity, convenience, or expediency. Denazification, he warned Patton, was “a most delicate subject both here and at home” which “our governmental representatives as well as newspapers have been quick to seize upon.”
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Col. Hugh H. McGee, New York, August 23, 1945
In my opinion and strictly for your private ear, we never had a better chance of producing another war than we have in Europe now. I have never seen so much vitriolic hatred, mistrust, and avarice as exists here today. Furthermore, as you know, a certain proportion of the people with whom we are dealing do not have Occidental minds which makes it even more difficult if not impossible to come to an understanding with them. I doubt if the top blows off very soon, but unless something very radical happens and happens within a reasonable time, the top will blow off, probably after we have redeployed our army.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, August 23, 1945
I feel very let down but am still very busy and will be for a month or two more . . .
The atomic bomb was most unfortunate and may be the means of destroying our country. Also the radio said this morning that C.I.O. Murray [the labor leader] wants a bigger “New Deal” – where in Hell do they think money comes from? or do they simply want to destroy our form of government and go communist? If they knew as much about Russia as I do, they would not be so crazy to be communists.
On the following day he wrote Beatrice that a man who said he knew William Wood, the husband of Beatrice’s eldest half sister,
came to see me to day with the most fantastic stories about the Mongols. The trouble is I am inclined to believe them. He is very anti-Jew. Is he a Jew? Can he be trusted?
Later that day he wrote again to Beatrice:
I heard a lot more about those unmitigated bastards the Mongols . . . No one takes the least interest except that the Germans and the Poles hope to fight on our side and soon. The M’s will not take over all Europe until we have reduced [our military forces] to about 6 divisions, then they will.
On August 26, the Third Army requested permission to discontinue arrests of Nazis in the lowest category of party officials coming under the regulation that required automatic detention; and to release those being held in prison awaiting trial – or as the letter said, “without trial,” which implied an un-American procedure.
Diary, August 27
I attended the Military Government meeting at Frankfurt. There were a number of speeches by General Eisenhower and his various assistants, all of which were unrealistic and in every case the chief interest of the speaker was to say nothing which could be used against him. It is very patent that what the Military Government is trying to do is undemocratic and follows practically Gestapo methods. It is very probable, to me it seems evident, that the doctrines being executed or attempted are those promulgated by Morgenthau at the Quebec Conference which were not approved by either the Secretary of War or the Secretary of State. It was the meeting in which Morgenthau and later Roosevelt, copying him, stated that Germany was to be [de-industrialized and demilitarized and] made into an agricultural state. It is patently impossible for Germany to be an agricultural state. First, because there is not enough in Germany for the country to feed itself on such a basis, and, second, because if Germany has no purchasing power, we will not be able to sell our goods to her and, therefore, our markets will be very considerably restricted.
If any [news]paper opposed to the Democrats should get hold of the stuff that is being put out by those in charge of the Military Government of Germany, it could produce very bad results for the Democratic government [in Washington].
I stated that in my opinion Germany was so completely blacked out that so far as military resistance was concerned they were not a menace and that what we had to look out for was Russia. This caused considerable furore.
Referring to the Third Army letter mailed on the previous day, Patton proposed releasing some of the interned Nazis, “many of whom,” he said, “were either aged or pregnant.” Whether this was a joke or merely his extravagant language, it made a poor impression on his colleagues.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, August 27, 1945
I have been at Frankfurt for a civil government conference. If what we are doing is “Liberty, then give me death.”
I can’t see how Americans can sink so low. It is Semitic, and I am sure of it.
Diary, A ugust 29
Today we received a letter . . . in which we were told to give the Jews special accommodations. If for Jews, why not Catholics, Mormons, etc? I called up General Bull, Deputy Chief of Staff for Eisenhower, and called his attention to possible repercussions but got nowhere. He simply stated that he had investigated it and that the letter had considerable background. Naturally I intend to carry out the instructions to the limit of my capacity in spite of my personal feelings against them and in spite of my fear that in doing such things we will lay ourselves open to just criticism.
We are also turning over to the French several hundred thousand prisoners of war to be used as slave labor in France. It is amusing to recall that we fought the Revolution in defense of the rights of man and the Civil War to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles.
In a letter of instructions to the Third and Seventh Armies dated August 31, USFET warned that the care of displaced persons remained a major military objective. In many instances, Germans living near the DP camps were immeasurably better off. “Where this is so, military government is not doing its job.” No DPs were to be lodged in tents after September 15, even if German civilians had to be moved from their homes in order to make them available to the DPs.
On the same day, the Third Army issued a bulletin stating that denazification was causing hardships by paralyzing essential services. The removal of so many laboratory technicians from their jobs was provoking the spread of typhoid; the exclusion of so many forestry experts from employment was leading to a fuel shortage.
Something was obviously out of kilter. USFET and the Third Army seemed to be operating on different wavelengths.
Letter, GSP, Jr., to Beatrice, August 31, 1945
I am going to quit the army when I leave here or so I think now .. .
Ike and George [Marshall] and some others of the union know where people are going but they never tell me. I see no job that I could take. But I have been at a dead end before and have gotten out O.K. Something may turn up. Any how we have the boat and the new horses . . .
The stuff in the papers about fraternization is all wet . . . All that sort of writing is done by Jews to get revenge. Actually the Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. It’s a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans. So do our cousins . . .
I got Van S. Merle Smith for ADC. He plays squash and badminton and is a gentleman.
Diary, August 31
Today we received an order to investigate the possibilities of destroying the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s special home at Berchtesgaden, so that it would not become a Nazi shrine . . . If anything could make it a Nazi shrine, it would be to destroy it. Furthermore, the first thing our soldiers like to visit when on pass is this lookout. To date some 40,000 have seen it. I wrote a letter to General Eisenhower pointing out these facts and trust the order will not be enforced.
I also wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, on the question of the pro-Jewish influence in the Military Government of Germany. I dared do this because when I was in Washington, he showed me a great deal of correspondence he had had with the Secretary of State and Mr. Morgenthau prior to the Quebec Conference.
Diary, September 1, 1945
Father Bernard Hubbard, SJ, “The Glacier Priest,” spent last night with us and showed us his movies. He is very anti-Russian and anti-Semitic and talks very well when he forgets to advertise himself.
I decided to rewrite the letter to Mr. Stimson as I think that even when writing to him, I stuck my neck too far out.