YouTube Gold: Patton’s Victory At Arracourt Explained

The war in Ukraine, so far anyway, has seen a smaller but better trained, equipped and motivated force of Ukrainians just give the much larger Russian army fits.

It reminds one that, in war, things don’t always go according to plan. To borrow from Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until they get hit.

By World War II, the Germans in particular had mastered the elements of what the Allied countries called Blitzkrieg (Hitler himself said this was a silly word and it was apparently not used by the Germans) and the Wehrmacht refined armored tactics to an unprecedented degree. They had the best tanks, tactics and generals.

But it wasn’t enough.

By 1944, things had really turned against the Germans and General George S. Patton had become a serious opponent.

The US relied on the inferior Sherman tank but at Aracourt, Patton’s forces decimated the Germans.

Why?

Several things. The Germans had lost many of their best soldiers and fuel was becoming a problem.

And, as so often in war, luck played a role. This is not a well-known battle of World War II, but it was critical to the Allied victory.