Gen. Patton vs. A Polite Society... When Life and Death Was on the Line

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By the final year of World War Two, American forces were closing in on Nazi Germany, and General George Patton stood at the center of that push. Historian Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Soul of Battle, discusses why Patton’s approach to leadership was shaped by his belief that the slow use of power in a conflict of that scale cost more lives than it saved. Hanson walks through Patton’s record in Europe, the end of the war, and the moral reasoning behind the choices he made when entire nations were at stake.