Silence Patton (2018) User Reviews

Eye Opener

[darwinsom · 8/10 · 29 November 2018]

I was very worried this might be a screed with iffy facts. Instead I found it a fascinating convincing and prescient film. Talking heads are used only as necessary, real footage is most of it. Sappy lol Patton in the hospital is like a music chorus. I'm not a military fan unless it's fiction but this was well made. As a child raised in a family that turned FDR into a God it's a revelation. Ignore your fear of being manipulated

No Conspiracy to Assassinate General Patton

[robstoddard · 6/10 · 6 February 2019]

I thought the entire premise of the title of the movie/documentary was to prove a conspiracy theory to silence General Patton? So, in my opinion, the film misses the mark. Charles Province summed the conspiracy theories all up when he said, "They didn't kill Patton...but they were glad he was dead." They being the Russians and the president and the military high command i.e. FDR, Truman, George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, and Omar Bradley. Certainly Eisenhower was thinking about his political future at the end of the War which explains a lot about him (Patton mentions this many times in letters to home and in his book, "War As I Knew It"). The Russian's played our leaders like fools. And we didn't learn our lesson about de-Nazification when we instituted de-Baathification in Iraq. General George S. Patton was right in so many ways...its a damn shame. We have the same problem today: with a certain brainless leader who knows more than his generals and national intelligence advisors.

"They didn't kill him, but, by God, they were glad he was gone"

[evening1 · 7/10 · 30 May 2023]

The US was a savior of civilization, but if we'd listened more to George S. Patton, we might not have had the Cold War.

After tide-turning victories in World War II, the mercurial general was sidelined from participating at D-Day after word got out that he'd slapped a couple of GIs with shellshock, a condition he equated with cowardice.

But that didn't keep Patton's mouth shut. Having witnessed the results of Russian genocide during the war (i.e., the Katyn massacre), he hated and mistrusted Stalin. He argued for a strong US troop presence in places like Berlin and Prague to block Russian incursion after the war. But his pleas went unheeded, and "we lost the Cold War right then and there," we're told, and hell rained down on those vulnerable municipalities, with some 2 million women raped in Berlin alone. Patton decried "tin" politicians in DC who'd "allowed us to kick the hell out of one despot while forcing us to help establish one as evil or more evil than the first."

Patton was going to state his case for mistakes made once he made it back on American turf, and he was being viewed as a nuisance and a liability by establishment pols scrambling to set up a geopolitical post-war new order. Then, on Dec. 9, 1945, Patton's chauffeured sedan was hit by a two-ton Army truck at a railroad crossing in Manheim, Germany.. The accident was scarcely investigated, and everyone else in the vehicles walked away unscathed, but Patton was left a quadriplegic, dying shortly thereafter and buried with his men in a military cemetery in Luxemburg.

Thank you, Old Blood and Guts, for my freedom.

Best bio on Patton yet...

[tbuestrin · 10/10 · 25 February 2020]

Amazing insight on one of the US's greatest military leaders. While often a loose canon...history has proven him right. His battle skill and tactics were far superior to any of those in the coalition or of the Germans.

But even more telling is how he was correct about Stalin and communism. While FDR was weak and clearly outmaneuvered by Stalin, Patton was silenced for speaking the truth. Churchill...arguably the greatest leader of the 20th century...knew that FDR was creating a disaster that would resonate to this day.

Imagine Patton running the army in today's terms...you think the PC police and the media were bad in the 40's...he would have never made it past Brigadier General in today's terms. Great documentary.

A slog. A conspiracy movie without supporting facts. A waste of my time.

[iammostlikelyspam · 2/10 · 26 December 2018]

Made me think that it could have been made by the aging and addled filmmakers of B&W BBC true crime shows of the 1970's collaborating with the people that made "In Search Of....".

Somehow an attempt to silence Patton was clumsily accomplished by a traffic accident (and maybe more...) two weeks after the war...

How unimaginative those assassins were. Apparently sneakiness just wasn't in our silencing bogeymen's DNA "Blood n Guts" could have been whacked by faking...... fanatic German snipers, unwilling to give up,. a tragic plane crash.... unexplored ordinance while reliving a battle....something resembling wartime dysentery.... but, a paralyzing crash (always easy to predict) and a coup de grace. Not any spinal shock symptom common in these types of injuries Please....

Very well done - great facts and historic perspective

[jserwach · 10/10 · 28 August 2019]

I've read literally dozens of books and seen the 1970 classic "Patton'' annually for decades. In "Silencing Patton,'' Robert Orlando builds on the story answering many of the "Why'' questions you may ask yourself during other stories about America's greatest general. The victors get to write the history of wars and each nation tends to focus on its own version of history when telling the colossal story that is the great World War II. "Silencing Patton" explains the backstory that made Patton controversial, feared and beloved in his own time and in the decades since.

This is one way to look at things, but not very objective

[bdctunes · 2/10 · 24 December 2018]

This documentary is full of adoration for Patton, and it is interesting. It also is a bit of an anti FDR propaganda film. At one point the narrator outright states the FDR had soviet spies in his cabinet. This is stated without any explanation and the more gullible viewer will swallow it hook line and sinker. To fully endorse this film, one pretty much has to be in the mindset that we should of pursued war against the USSR after defeating Germany, also be a big believer in the domino theory. There's a manipulativeness in this film, the way it drives home it's one sided point.

Spot on and very objective.

[mglennan-03569 · 10/10 · 1 February 2019]

I'm suprised this was allowed to be made in this day and age. Patton, was right about most of his statements and comments. Maybe tholis will encourage people to read the Patton papers along with other historical diaries, documents and data and stray away from the approved set of lies that is stamped as history.

Don't waste the time. Lacks any reasonable facts.

[pgrulke-09348 · 1/10 · 11 November 2021]

What a joke of a show. I watched the whole thing, but that was because it was like a train wreck in slow motion.

Vague, open-ended claims with zero factual backup, or statements like "it was said that...." fall out of the narrator's mouth left and right with shameless frequency.

It's as much a movie of Hero Worshipping as it is vaguely familiar to those ancient aliens shows: "Could it be....?" Well, sure, it "could be" but it's probably not.

Patton was a problem. He wasn't smeared. He was admired and feared, and was a horribly racist, narrow minded man who was drunk with power.

Sure, he was right about Stalin, but he himself spoke of world domination, saying that the Americans and British were destined to rule the world literally right after he helped defeat a man bent on the same thing.

He was a loose cannon with a genius for showmanship and strategy.

Remind you of anyone, oh, say between 2016 and 2021 and a bad comb over?

Patton was hugely dangerous.

Dopey

[nicksambidesjr · 1/10 · 15 March 2020]

Some historical fantasies never go away. And so it is with the Patton assassination theory. Not science, not history, just a far, far right-wing posthumous stab at FDR and Eisenhower that ignores hundreds of relevant facts. Allied Forces could never have matched Soviet forces without using the atomic bombs that ended Japan's involvement in the Second World War. And though we'll never know for sure, starting World War 3 right at the end of World War II probably wouldn't have gone over very well with anybody. That Stalin was a butcher worse than Hitler is horrifically lamentable, and it's never a bad idea to remind people of this -- especially if Trump people connect Vladimir Putin to Stalin, his political model -- but you'll find better history in the movie The Death of Stalin than you will here.

Well produced, but historically flawed

[arden66 · 3/10 · 17 July 2020]

As a television production this documentary is quite well put together with good narration and a lot of excellent and unusual photographs, however, it's a conspiracy film that goes so far as to use fabricated evidence. The script includes an alleged quote from Stalin encouraging his troops to rape German women. In fact, though such behavior was common, it was absolutely forbidden and Red Army troops that engaged in it were severely punished or even shot if it came to light. In a war against a hated enemy, it's not terribly surprising that some commanders would look the other way, but the commissars and military police certainly did not. Stalin was smart enough to know that if this behavior was encouraged it would be used against the Soviet Union after the war. Though he can certainly be blamed for many atrocities within the Soviet union and postwar Eastern Europe, the rape of German women is not one of them. I gave it two stars for production values, and an additional star for selecting excellent period Photographs. It deserves zero stars on content though

Poland

[luke_swierkowski · 5/10 · 10 April 2020]

Where is Poland in this documentary?? How can you skip Warsaw uprising,300 tys people murdered skipped, how role of Poland can be just skipped?? with some bloody term eastern Europe.. Sikorski Polish PM murdered in giblartar ahead of Yalta.

Enlightening!

[sidfargas · 19 January 2022]

This entire documentary was intriguing and most of its contents unknown to me. This really should have received more attention throughout the years. Patton's exit from this life is clouded in mysteries and genuine conspiracy. As usual Patton was right when he looked forward. He was a visionary as well as a brilliant strategist..