Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, “Killing Patton” is selling well. But probably not among historians.
The book, which just debuted on USA Today’s Best-Selling list, contends that Patton was poisoned in a German hospital in a plot by Joseph Stalin.
But while this may be the stuff of good fiction – and indeed, O’Reilly is hoping to turn the book into a Hollywood movie – historians are giving the conspiracy theory a thumbs down:
From Media Matters:
Most historians stick to the long-held evidence that Patton died from complications after a December 1945 car accident that left him paralyzed.
“Premising an assassination plot on something so uncertain as a traffic accident doesn’t seem plausible,” said Jonathan W. Jordan, author of Brothers Rivals Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe. “The rapid onset of Patton’s death is not inconsistent with a pulmonary embolism ... There is no smoking gun pointing toward poison smuggled into his Heidelberg hospital room. Exhumation and testing of Patton’s body, while it would put the matter to rest, most likely would be a biological Al Capone’s Vault.”
Rick Atkinson, a historian and author of several books about World War II, agreed saying Patton’s death was from injuries suffered in “a fender bender, outside Heidelberg, in the fall of 1945.”
Robert H. Patton, the general’s grandson and author of The Pattons: A Personal History of an American Family, said both research and family lore discredit O’Reilly’s version of events.
The book was also panned by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen who chastised O’Reilly for ignoring Patton’s anti-Semitism:
How O’Reilly could have written 335 pages on Patton and not have mentioned his repellent anti-Semitism and its impact on the DPs (Jewish Holocaust survivors) is beyond me. It suggests — no, not anti-Semitism — a compulsion to make the facts conform to some predetermined conviction. The result is not history but clunky hagiography, a book that tells you more about O’Reilly than it does about Patton.
O’Reilly has always been good at projecting an image and making a story out of it. Instead of the Harvard-educated, multimillionaire he actually is, O’Reilly presents himself as a “simple man” “looking out for you” in the “No Spin Zone.”
It looks like he’s just done his thing one more time.
O'Reilly graphic by Nina Brodsky
A few of Billy’s colleagues can’t stand him, and they talk about him like a dog.
That have a lot in common.
With all my love,
Aunty Em
