On December
9, 1945, General George S. Patton Jr.—the audacious commander whose Third Army
raced across Europe—set out for a pheasant hunt near Mannheim, Germany. In the
back seat of his 1938 Cadillac staff car, driven by PFC Horace Woodring, Patton
sat beside Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Hobart “Hap” Gay. At 11:45 a.m., near a
railroad crossing a slow-turning 2.5-ton U.S. Army truck cut across their path.
The low-speed collision—barely 20 mph—sent the unrestrained Patton slamming
forward into the steel-framed glass partition.
He suffered a
severe spinal cord injury. Bleeding from a deep scalp laceration, Patton
remained conscious. He lay in traction
for twelve days.
On December
20 a blood clot traveled to his lungs. He died in his sleep at 5:55 p.m. on
December 21, 1945, at age 60, from a pulmonary embolism. On Christmas Eve he was buried, at his own
request, among the men of his Third Army in Luxembourg American Cemetery.
A conspiracy
theory surrounding General Patton's death alleges that his December 9, 1945,
low-speed car accident was deliberately staged as part of an assassination
plot, rather than a tragic mishap, with the goal of silencing his outspoken
anti-Russian views. Believers in this
theory claim Patton was a loose cannon who might expose scandals, run for president
in 1948, or spark WW 3, making him a threat to U.S., British, or Soviet
interests.
President
Warren G. Harding’s sudden death in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, quickly
became one of the most puzzling episodes in United States
presidential history. Stricken during a cross-country political tour he had
been suffering for weeks from exhaustion, chest pains, shortness of breath, and
what his doctors variously called ptomaine poisoning, pneumonia, and an
overstrained heart.
That evening
at the Palace Hotel, Florence Harding read aloud a flattering article about her
husband as he appeared to be recovering, when he reportedly shuddered and collapsed,
dying almost instantly at age fifty-seven. An official bulletin, signed by five
physicians, attributed his death to a stroke, but no autopsy was performed
because the First Lady refused one and ordered immediate embalming, a decision
that fueled suspicion.
In the
absence of conclusive medical evidence, rumors flourished: whispered tales of
suicide, whispers that Florence had poisoned him because of his extra-marital
affairs, or that political enemies silenced him as many scandals involving political
corruption such as Teapot Dome were closing in.
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