by Robert Orlando, 2021, Kindle Edition, Humanix Books

I was asked to present this book for our men’s book club and, unfortunately, I didn’t like it much. Rather than a history book, it seems to be more of a long opinion piece. There is no new information gleaned from any in-depth research, but the author frequently offers a description of a particular campaign or event with no underlying facts or supporting detail.

Orlando also relies on quotes from other authors to support his case. One of the authors he quotes quite a bit is Victor Davis Hanson whom he quotes so often that I felt I may as well read the book by that author (although Hanson is far from my favorite author).

The one bit of information that I gleaned from the book that I thought had some value was Orlando’s opinion that Patton’s death was not a conspiracy and the reason why. This information, however, was related on one page and did not, in my opinion, redeem the entire book.

As to whether or not Patton could have stopped the Cold War, the argument seems to be that if Patton had been allowed to get to Berlin before the Russians, we would have been able to stop the Russians from controlling Eastern Europe and we would have avoided the ensuing Cold War. In addition to this being pure speculation, this argument ignores the prior agreements that we had negotiated with the Russians (whether good or bad), and the counter argument is that, if we had kept the Russians out of Berlin, we might have precipitated either a continuation of WWII (with a new enemy), or we would have started a new “hot” war. There are so many what-ifs involved in this scenario that I believe it is not particularly meaningful to speculate as to what would have happened if Patton had had his way.