General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book – Telegraph
Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General “Wild Bill” Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname “Old Blood and Guts”.His book, “Target Patton”, contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton’s Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.Mr Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph that when he spoke to Mr Bazata: “He was struggling with himself, all these killings he had done…. He earned four purple hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre three times over for his efforts.After the war he became a celebrated artist who enjoyed the patronage of Princess Grace of Monaco and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.He was friends with Salvador Dali, who painted a portrait of Bazata as Don Quixote.He ended his career as an aide to President Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign.Mr Wilcox also tracked down and interviewed Stephen Skubik, an officer in the Counter-Intelligence Corps of the US Army, who said he learnt that Patton was on Stalin’s death list.