Lucian Truscott Quotes
I have left too many white crosses across north Africa, Italy, and France, and I’ve seen too many young men wounded and maimed not to be in complete sympathy with any policy that designs to eradicate, root and branch, the evil force, Nazism, that loose this holocaust on the world.
The general was replacing George S. Patton as commander of the Third Army. Patton had opposed the deNazification policy of the allies and caused a great deal of public relations difficulty for the army command and the administration, as reporters would frequently print his views. Truscott was one of Patton’s loyal assistants. The minute he took over, the press wanted to find out if his views were the same as his former boss regarding the Nazis. They were quite different. Reporters had no story.
Lucian Truscott, Army General, Press Conference October 7 1945
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The military security people were so used to ferreting out communists in the 1930s that they had a hard time adjusting to the fact that the security risks or people who might have German connections or backgrounds. Many immigrant scientists were recruited for work on the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb and they only did security clearances. The military security people kept checking on any communist background they might have had as opposed to possible connections with fascist organizations. By the end of the war they had adjusted but then had to go back to looking for communists as the Cold War evolved.
This statement caused great consternation. NcNutt did try to explain that he was speaking personally and not for the Government, but there was a small proportion of America who had concluded that all Japanese should be killed. Such an concept which was unthinkable 5 years earlier was considered as a result of several factors: The Japanese had murdered many American prisoners of war. Killed millions of civilians throughout Asia including doing medical and weapons experiments on live human beings. They had practiced torture, compulsory prostitution and mass rape of conquered territories. At the same time, the Germans had tried to exterminate all the Jews and, with some Japanese help, did kill two-thirds. The concept of genocide had been introduced to Americans as the concentration camps were liberated. And American casualties in the Pacific had been heavy. Vengeance was desired by many. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Americans never considered genocide seriously.
He was shot in 1944 for his involvement in an attempt to kill Hitler
After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson drafted the Declaration of War that President Roosevelt would ask Congress to vote for. However, there was a small but very vocal group of extreme Republican conservatives who opposed assisting England against Hitler and saw German and Italian Fascism as positive forces. They would oppose any administration declaration of war against Germany and Italy who had not yet attacked any American facilities. The President realized that German and Italy had a Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan, and when we declared war against Japan, would have to ally with Japan or reneg on their treaty. So FDR removed Germany and Italy from the Declaration and Congress just declared war against Germany. In the next days, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the de facto situation was as Stimson had drafted it, but FDR had not given the right wing American Fascist sympathizers any issue to criticize the administration.
The Germans killed 22 million Russians, most deliberate murders and not collateral damage, in WWII.
He was a viscious anti-Semite who attracted to his party extreme right wingers, Nazi Sympathers and apologists for the Vichey Franch government. The party was rejected by the majority of French voters, but when his daughter took over the party, she was not an anti Semite but foudn it hard to shake the party's image which was alaysa associated with her name even when she actually kicked her father out of the party.
General Lucian King Truscott Jr. was a highly decorated senior United States Army officer, who saw distinguished active service during World War II. Between 1943–45, he successively commanded the 3rd Infantry Division, VI Corps, Fifteenth Army and Fifth Army. He and Alexander Patch were the only United States Army officers to command a division, a corps, and a field army in combat during the war.