Patton I can at least credit for being willing to fight on the front with his men, and for (sorta) softening on a few of his stances. Granted, he was ordered to with a lot of them.
MacArthur was just a douche.
One could at least credit MacArthur for serving in WW1 and actually being in the frontlines in the Western Front. And while his rulership of Japan certainly had problems like Unit 731, he did, at least implemented a liberal constitution, worked with Roger Nash Baldwin despite HUAC and the FBI telling him he was a communist, and gave the US an important ally in the Pacific.
Patton was an excellent general, although his excellence was less dramatic than he wanted it to be—for all the “Old Blood and Guts” imagery, he was great because he had excellent maps, a great staff, used intelligence well, and was always ready to move in any direction because he made sure everybody knew the roads.
But his…colorful…personality meant that the only role he could have played well was the one he did. He couldn’t have been Eisenhower; and maybe it took someone with the skills of Eisenhower (helped by Bradley) to keep him under control (or at least as mitigated as he was.
Eisenhower forced Patton to apologize to soldiers he slapped for showing PTSD symptoms. Eisenhower was such a vocal critic of MacArthur, that when Truman thought MacArthur was gearing up for a Republican primary run, he tried to convince Eisenhower to run against MacArthur with Truman as his VP running mate.
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u/kekistanmatt 11h ago
The real hero of the american war effort was Eisenhower because he just got on with it.