Patton attracted controversy as military governor when it was noted that several former Nazi Party members continued to hold political posts in the region.[222] Privately, Patton expressed a soldier's respect for the Germans as adversaries and a resistance to removing Nazi Party members from power. "I had never heard," he wrote to his wife Bea, "that we fought to de-Nazify Germany—live and learn. What we are doing is to utterly destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe so that Russia can swallow the whole.... Actually the Germans are the only decent people in Europe."[227]
Patton, in his new role, oversaw the displaced persons camps in Bavaria, which contained a majority of Jews who had survived Germany's concentration camps in the Holocaust. He refused to have Jewish chaplains at his headquarters.[228] Patton decided to keep the Jews detained, according to his diary, because he thought releasing them could lead to violence and re-arrests.[229] He also resisted Eisenhower's orders to evict Germans from their homes in order to house Jews.[230] After Patton accompanied Eisenhower to a Yom Kippur service in one of the camps, he referred to the Jews at the service as a "stinking mass of humanity", and complaining about their hygiene, said: "This happened to be the feast of Yom Kippur, so they were all collected in a large, wooden building, which they called a synagogue. It behooved General Eisenhower to make a speech to them. We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. When we got about halfway up, the head rabbi, who was dressed in a fur hat similar to that worn by Henry VIII of England and in a surplice heavily embroidered and very filthy, came down and met the General…. The smell was so terrible that I almost fainted and actually about three hours later lost my lunch as the result of remembering it…. Of course, I have seen them since the beginning and marveled that beings alleged to be made in the form of God can look the way they do or act the way they act."[231] Patton also claimed that "There is a very Semitic influence in the press." "The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and the Communists are attempting and with good success the further dismemberment of Germany." Biographer Martin Blumenson, who was Third Army Historian and also edited Patton's papers, sums up this period tersely: "Clearly, he had become delusional."[232]
Patton continued to make numerous antisemitic comments. He remarked that displaced Jews were "locusts", "lower than animals", and "lost to all decency". In one diary entry, he wrote that Jews were "a subhuman species without any of the cultural or social refinements of our times."[233]
Patton, in his new role, oversaw the displaced persons camps in Bavaria, which contained a majority of Jews who had survived Germany's concentration camps in the Holocaust. He refused to have Jewish chaplains at his headquarters.[228] Patton decided to keep the Jews detained, according to his diary, because he thought releasing them could lead to violence and re-arrests.[229] He also resisted Eisenhower's orders to evict Germans from their homes in order to house Jews.[230] After Patton accompanied Eisenhower to a Yom Kippur service in one of the camps, he referred to the Jews at the service as a "stinking mass of humanity", and complaining about their hygiene, said: "This happened to be the feast of Yom Kippur, so they were all collected in a large, wooden building, which they called a synagogue. It behooved General Eisenhower to make a speech to them. We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. When we got about halfway up, the head rabbi, who was dressed in a fur hat similar to that worn by Henry VIII of England and in a surplice heavily embroidered and very filthy, came down and met the General…. The smell was so terrible that I almost fainted and actually about three hours later lost my lunch as the result of remembering it…. Of course, I have seen them since the beginning and marveled that beings alleged to be made in the form of God can look the way they do or act the way they act."[231] Patton also claimed that "There is a very Semitic influence in the press." "The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and the Communists are attempting and with good success the further dismemberment of Germany." Biographer Martin Blumenson, who was Third Army Historian and also edited Patton's papers, sums up this period tersely: "Clearly, he had become delusional."[232]
Patton continued to make numerous antisemitic comments. He remarked that displaced Jews were "locusts", "lower than animals", and "lost to all decency". In one diary entry, he wrote that Jews were "a subhuman species without any of the cultural or social refinements of our times."[233]
