1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
United States Army
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The United States Armed Forces are the federal armed forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, from the time of its inception, the military played a decisive role in the history of the United States. A sense of unity and identity was forged as a result of victory in the First Barbary War. Even so, the Founders were suspicious of a permanent military force and it played an important role in the American Civil War, where leading generals on both sides were picked from members of the United States military. Not until the outbreak of World War II did a standing army become officially established. The National Security Act of 1947, adopted following World War II and during the Cold Wars onset, the U. S. military is one of the largest militaries in terms of number of personnel. It draws its personnel from a pool of paid volunteers. As of 2016, the United States spends about $580.3 billion annually to fund its military forces, put together, the United States constitutes roughly 40 percent of the worlds military expenditures. For the period 2010–14, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the United States was the worlds largest exporter of major arms, the United States was also the worlds eighth largest importer of major weapons for the same period. The history of the U. S. military dates to 1775 and these forces demobilized in 1784 after the Treaty of Paris ended the War for Independence. All three services trace their origins to the founding of the Continental Army, the Continental Navy, the United States President is the U. S. militarys commander-in-chief. Rising tensions at various times with Britain and France and the ensuing Quasi-War and War of 1812 quickened the development of the U. S. Navy, the reserve branches formed a military strategic reserve during the Cold War, to be called into service in case of war. Time magazines Mark Thompson has suggested that with the War on Terror, Command over the armed forces is established in the United States Constitution. The sole power of command is vested in the President by Article II as Commander-in-Chief, the Constitution also allows for the creation of executive Departments headed principal officers whose opinion the President can require. This allowance in the Constitution formed the basis for creation of the Department of Defense in 1947 by the National Security Act, the Defense Department is headed by the Secretary of Defense, who is a civilian and member of the Cabinet. The Defense Secretary is second in the chain of command, just below the President. Together, the President and the Secretary of Defense comprise the National Command Authority, to coordinate military strategy with political affairs, the President has a National Security Council headed by the National Security Advisor. The collective body has only power to the President
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Armoured warfare
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Armoured warfare, mechanised warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a component of modern methods of war. The premise of armoured warfare rests on the ability of troops to penetrate defensive lines through use of manoeuvre by armoured units. Under these conditions, any sort of advance was very slow. Tanks were first developed in Britain and France in 1915, as a way of navigating the barbed wire, British Mark I tanks first went to action at the Somme, on 15 September 1916, but did not manage to break the deadlock of trench warfare. The first French employment on 16 April 1917, of the Schneider CA, was also a failure, in the Battle of Cambrai British tanks were more successful, and broke a German trenchline system, the Hindenburg Line. Despite the generally unpromising beginnings, the military and political leadership in both Britain and France during 1917 backed large investments into armoured vehicle production and this led to a sharp increase in the number of available tanks for 1918. The German Empire to the contrary, produced only a few tanks, twenty German A7V tanks were produced during the entire conflict, compared to over 4,400 French and over 2,500 British tanks of various kinds. Tactically, the deployment of armour during the war was typified by an emphasis on direct infantry support. The tanks main tasks were seen as crushing barbed wire and destroying machine-gun nests, theoretical debate largely focussed on the question whether a swarm of light tanks should be used for this or a limited number of potent heavy vehicles. Though in the Battle of Cambrai a large concentration of British heavy tanks effected a breakthrough, the manoeuvrability of the tank should at least in theory regain armies the ability to flank enemy lines. Following the First World War, the technical and doctrinal aspects of armoured warfare became more sophisticated and diverged into multiple schools of doctrinal thought, during the 1920s, only very few tanks were produced. There were however, important theoretical and technical developments, various British and French commanders who had contributed to the origin of the tank, such as Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, theorised about a future use of independent armoured forces, containing a large concentration of tanks. Especially Liddell Hart wrote many books about the subject, partly propagating Fullers theories, such doctrines were faced with the reality that during the 1920s the armoured vehicles, as early road transport in general, were extremely unreliable, and could not be used in sustained operations. Mainstream thought on the subject was more conservative and tried to integrate armoured vehicles into the infantry and cavalry organisation. To save weight, such designs had thin armour plating and this inspired fitting small-calibre high-velocity guns in turrets, J. Collins, after Fuller refused the function. The unit carried out operations on Salisbury Plain and was observed by the major nations, the United States, Germany
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Division (military)
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A division is a large military unit or formation, usually consisting of between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers. Infantry divisions during the World Wars ranged between 10,000 and 30,000 in nominal strength, in most armies, a division is composed of several regiments or brigades, in turn, several divisions typically make up a corps. In the West, the first general to think of organising an army into smaller units was Maurice de Saxe, Marshal General of France. He died at the age of 54, without having implemented his idea, victor-François de Broglie put the ideas into practice. He conducted successful practical experiments of the system in the Seven Years War. The first war in which the system was used systematically was the French Revolutionary War. It made the more flexible and easy to manoeuvre. Under Napoleon, the divisions were grouped together into corps, because of their increasing size, napoleons military success spread the divisional and corps system all over Europe, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, all armies in Europe had adopted it. In modern times, most military forces have standardized their divisional structures, the peak use of the division as the primary combat unit occurred during World War II, when the belligerents deployed over a thousand divisions. With technological advances since then, the power of each division has increased. Divisions are often formed to organize units of a particular type together with support units to allow independent operations. In more recent times, divisions have mainly been organized as combined arms units with subordinate units representing various combat arms, in this case, the division often retains the name of a more specialized division, and may still be tasked with a primary role suited to that specialization. For the most part, large cavalry units did not remain after World War II, in general, two new types of cavalry were developed, air cavalry or airmobile, relying on helicopter mobility, and armored cavalry, based on an autonomous armored formation. The former was pioneered by the 11th Air Assault Division, formed on 1 February 1963 at Fort Benning, on 29 June 1965 the division was renamed as the 1st Cavalry Division, before its departure for the Vietnam War. After the end of the Vietnam War, the 1st Cavalry Division was reorganised and re-equipped with tanks, the development of the tank during World War I prompted some nations to experiment with forming them into division-size units. Many did this the way as they did cavalry divisions, by merely replacing cavalry with AFVs. This proved unwieldy in combat, as the units had many tanks, instead, a more balanced approach was taken by adjusting the number of tank, infantry, artillery, and support units. A panzer division was a division of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS of Germany during World War II
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Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine
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The Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine was a phase in the Western European Campaign of World War II. This roughly corresponds with the official United States military European Theater of Operations Rhineland, German forces had been routed during the Allied break-out from Normandy. The Allies advanced rapidly against an enemy that put up little resistance, but after the liberation of Paris in late August 1944, the Allies paused to re-group and organise before continuing their advance from Paris to the River Rhine. The pause allowed the Germans to solidify their lines—something they had been unable to do west of Paris, while Montgomery and Bradley each favored relatively direct thrusts into Germany, General Eisenhower disagreed. The rapid advance through France had caused considerable logistical strain, made worse by the lack of any major port other than the relatively distant Cherbourg in western France. Although Antwerp was seen as the key to solving the Allied logistics problems, as the campaign progressed, all the belligerents, Allied as well as German, felt the effects of the lack of suitable replacements for front-line troops. There were two major obstacles to the Allies. The first was the natural barriers made by the rivers of eastern France, the second was the Siegfried Line, which fell under the command, along with all Wehrmacht forces in the west, of Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt. Although the breakout from Normandy had taken longer than planned, the advances until September had far exceeded expectations, Bradley, for example, by September had four more divisions than planned and all of his forces were 150 miles ahead of their expected position. One effect was that insufficient supplies could be delivered to the fronts to maintain the advance. Much war material still had to be brought ashore across the invasion beaches, the availability of Cherbourg had been valuable until the breakout, but then the shortage of transport to carry supplies to the rapidly advancing armies became the limiting factor. Although fuel was pumped from Britain to Normandy via the Pluto pipeline, this still had to reach the fronts. The railways had been destroyed by Allied attacks and would take much effort to repair. In an attempt to address this shortage of transport, three newly arrived U. S. infantry divisions—the 26th, 95th, and 104th—were stripped of their trucks in order to haul supplies. Advancing divisions of the U. S. 12th Army Group left all their artillery and half their medium artillery west of the Seine. Four British truck companies were loaned to the Americans, unfortunately,1,500 other British trucks were found to have critical engine faults and were unusable, limiting assistance from that quarter. The Red Ball Express was an attempt to expedite deliveries by truck, the 6th Army Group advancing from southern France were supplied adequately from Toulon and Marseille because it had captured ports intact and the local railway system was less damaged. This source supplied about 25% of the Allied needs, the U. S. supply organization—Communications Zone —is perceived to have failed to expedite solutions and to have been far too bureaucratic, employing 11,000 staff
6.
Battle of the Bulge
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The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign of World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, the surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war, the battle also severely depleted Germanys armoured forces on the Western Front, and they were largely unable to replace them. German personnel and later, Luftwaffe aircraft, also sustained heavy losses, the Germans officially referred to the offensive as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein, while the Allies designated it the Ardennes Counteroffensive. The phrase Battle of the Bulge was coined by contemporary press to describe the bulge in German front lines on wartime news maps, once that was accomplished, the German dictator Adolf Hitler believed he could fully concentrate on the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The offensive was planned by the German forces with utmost secrecy, with minimal radio traffic and movements of troops, intercepted German communications indicating a substantial German offensive preparation were not acted upon by the Allies. The Germans achieved total surprise on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance. The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line, columns of armor and infantry that were supposed to advance along parallel routes found themselves on the same roads. This, and terrain that favored the defenders, threw the German advance behind schedule, improved weather conditions permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines, which sealed the failure of the offensive. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were left severely depleted of men and equipment, the Germans initial attack involved 406,000 men,1,214 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns, and 4,224 artillery pieces. These were reinforced a couple of later, bringing the offensives total strength to around 450,000 troops. Between 67,200 and 125,000 of their men were killed, missing, for the Americans, out of 610,000 troops involved in the battle,89,000 were casualties. While some sources report that up to 19,000 were killed, British historian Antony Beevor reports the number killed as 8,407. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II, after the breakout from Normandy at the end of July 1944 and the Allied landings in southern France on 15 August 1944, the Allies advanced toward Germany more quickly than anticipated. The Allies were faced with several military logistics issues, - troops were fatigued by weeks of continuous combat supply lines were stretched extremely thin supplies were dangerously depleted. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff chose to hold the Ardennes region which was occupied by the U. S, the Allies chose to defend the Ardennes with as few troops as possible due to the favorable terrain and limited Allied operational objectives in the area. They also had intelligence that the Wehrmacht was using the area across the German border as an area for its troops. The speed of the Allied advance coupled with a lack of deep-water ports presented the Allies with enormous supply problems
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Western Allied invasion of Germany
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The Western Allied invasion of Germany was coordinated by the Western Allies during the final months of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. This is known as the Central Europe Campaign in United States military histories, by early 1945, events favored the Allied forces in Europe. The failure of this offensive exhausted Germanys strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe, additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. On 7 March, the Allies seized the last remaining bridge across the Rhine at Remagen. During Operation Lumberjack and Operation Plunder in February–March 1945, German casualties are estimated at 400,000 men, on the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army had liberated most of Poland and were within striking distance of Berlin. The Soviets also pushed deep into Hungary and eastern Czechoslovakia, and these rapid advances on the Eastern Front destroyed additional veteran German combat units and severely limited German Fuhrer Adolf Hitlers ability to reinforce his Rhine defenses. As such, with the Western Allies making final preparations for their powerful offensive into the German heartland, forty-nine of these divisions were American,12 British, eight French, three Canadian and one Polish. Another seven American divisions arrived during February, along with the British 5th Infantry Division and I Canadian Corps, as the invasion of Germany commenced, General Eisenhower had a total of 90 full-strength divisions under his command, with the number of armored divisions now reaching 25. The Allied front along the Rhine stretched 450 miles from the mouth at the North Sea in the Netherlands to the Swiss border in the south. The Allied forces along this line were organized into three army groups, in the north, from the North Sea to a point about 10 miles north of Cologne, was the 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Within 21st Army Group the Canadian 1st Army held the left flank of the Allied line, with the British 2nd Army in the center and the U. S. 9th Army to the south. Holding the middle of the Allied line from the 9th Armys right flank to a point about 15 miles south of Mainz was the 12th Army Group under the command of Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Bradley had two American armies, the U. S. 1st Army on the left and the U. S. 3rd Army on the right, as these three army groups cleared out the Wehrmacht west of the Rhine, Eisenhower began to rethink his plans for the final drive across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany. Originally, General Eisenhower had planned to all his forces up to the west bank of the Rhine. The main thrust beyond the river was to be made in the north by Montgomerys 21 Army Group, 1st Army as it made a secondary advance northeast from below the Ruhr River. If successful, this movement would envelop the industrial Ruhr area. Facing the Allies was Oberbefehlshaber West commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, although Kesselring brought an outstanding track record as a defensive strategist with him from the Italian Campaign, he did not have the resources to make a coherent defense. During the fighting west of the Rhine up to March 1945, busch—whose main unit was the German 1st Parachute Army —was to form the right wing of the German defenses
8.
9th Armored Division (United States)
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The 9th Armored Division was an armored division of the United States Army during World War II. In honor of their World War II service, the 9th was officially nicknamed the Phantom Division. Outnumbered five to one, with its rifle companies surrounded for most of the time, clerks, cooks, mechanics. They were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for their heroism, after over two years of training throughout the country the 9th Armored Division, now commanded by Major General John W. Leonard, reached the United Kingdom in September 1944. The 9th Armored Division was one of several real U. S, the 9th was assigned to a camp on the British coastline opposite of the German defenses in Pas-de-Calais, ostensibly as part of the First US Army Group under Major General John W. Leonard. Returned to U. S.10 October 1945, the 9th Armored Division landed in Normandy late in September 1944, and first went into line,23 October 1944, on patrol duty in a quiet sector along the Luxembourg-German frontier. When the Germans launched their offensive on 16 December 1944. The Division saw its severest action at St. Vith, Echternach and its stand at Bastogne held off the Germans long enough to enable the 101st Airborne Division to dig in for a defense of the city. After a rest period in January 1945, the Division prepared to drive across the Roer River, the offensive was launched on 28 February 1945 and the 9th crossed the Roer to Rheinbach, sending patrols into Remagen. On 7 March 1945, elements of the 9th Armored found that the Ludendorff Bridge was still standing, when German demolition charges failed to bring the bridge down, they crossed it, disarming and removing the remaining charges, which could have exploded at any time. The Division exploited the bridgehead, moving south and east across the Lahn River toward Limburg, the Division drove on to Frankfurt and then turned to assist in the closing of the Ruhr Pocket. In April it continued east, encircling Leipzig and securing a line along the Mulde River, the Division was shifting south to Czechoslovakia when the war in Europe ended on 9 May 1945. Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division is cited for outstanding performance of duty in action from 28 February to 9 March 1945 in Germany. At 1500 hours that day a prisoner was captured who revealed that the bridge was mined for demolition and was to be destroyed at 1600 hours, at 1535 hours, one column of Combat Company B reached the western approach to the bridge. Although the destruction of the bridge was imminent, American troops unhesitatingly rushed across the structure in the face of enemy automatic weapons fire. An explosion rocked the bridge but did not destroy it, engineers scrambled down the abutments, cutting wires leading to other demolition charges and disposing of hundreds of pounds of explosives by hurling them into the river. Bulldozer tanks, working under heavy artillery and small-arms fire, filled craters at the approach to permit vehicular passage. Upon reaching the bank, troops of Combat Command B fought gallantly
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Sixth United States Army Group
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The Sixth United States Army Group was an Allied Army Group that fought in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Made up of field armies from both the United States Army and the French Army, it fought in France, Germany, Austria, and, briefly, Italy. Also referred to as the Southern Group of Armies, it was established in July 1944, in a lead role in Operation Undertone, its Seventh Army fought its way across the Rhine into Germany, captured Nuremberg and then Munich. Finally it crossed the Brenner Pass and made contact with the US Fifth Army at Vipiteno, the Sixth Army Group was originally created in Corsica, France as Advanced Allied Force HQ, a special headquarters within AFHQ commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers. Its initial role was to supervise the planning of the combined French and American forces which invaded southern France in Operation Dragoon, Dragoon was the operational responsibility of the Seventh United States Army commanded by Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch. Available to Patch were three corps and 24,000 Maquis of the Forces Francaises de lInterieur, the two French corps constituted French Army B commanded by Général Jean de Lattre de Tassigny which was later renamed French First Army. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander at SHAEF, the 63rd Infantry Division was the first Seventh Army unit to cross the Siegfried Line, and the first to get an entire division through it. The 3rd Infantry Division suffered the highest casualty count of all US divisions, the Army Group later advanced through Bavaria, and eventually into western Austria in the waning days of the war. Elements of Sixth Army Group linked up south of the Brenner Pass on 4 May 1945 with troops of the Fifth United States Army of the Allied 15th Army Group advancing north from Italy, after the end of the war the U. S. Seventh Army, remained as an occupation and defensive force in southern Germany for many decades and it also occupied part of Austria until that country was released from occupation in the mid 1950s. Order of Battle on 8 May represents a significantly different disposition in some instances than in the weeks, United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations. Washington DC, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, jackson, General Sir William & Gleave, Group Captain T. P. The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume VI, Victory in the Mediterranean, History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. Uckfield, UK, Naval & Military Press, toomey, Denis W. Montelimar, Slaughterhouse on the Rhone. Harry Yeide, Mark Stout, First to the Rhine, The 6th Army Group in World War II, in November 1944, the 6th Army Group reached the Rhine river at Strasbourg, France. Lt. General Jacob Devers wanted to cross the Rhine into Germany but the plan was vetoed by General Eisenhower
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George S. Patton
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General George Smith Patton Jr. was a senior officer of the United States Army who commanded the U. S. Seventh Army in the Mediterranean and European theaters of World War II, Third Army in France and Germany following the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Born in 1885 to a family with a military background, Patton attended the Virginia Military Institute. He studied fencing and designed the M1913 Cavalry Saber, more known as the Patton Sword. Patton first saw combat during the Pancho Villa Expedition in 1916, in the interwar period, Patton remained a central figure in the development of armored warfare doctrine in the U. S. Army, serving in numerous staff positions throughout the country. Rising through the ranks, he commanded the 2nd Armored Division at the time of the American entry into World War II, Seventh Army during the Allied invasion of Sicily, where he was the first Allied commander to reach Messina. Patton returned to command the Third Army following the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 and he led the relief of beleaguered American troops at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and advanced his Third Army into Nazi Germany by the end of the war. After the war, Patton became the governor of Bavaria. He commanded the United States Fifteenth Army for slightly more than two months, Patton died in Germany on December 21,1945, as a result of injuries from an automobile accident twelve days earlier. Pattons colorful image, hard-driving personality and success as a commander were at times overshadowed by his public statements. His philosophy of leading from the front and his ability to inspire troops with vulgarity-ridden speeches, such as an address to the Third Army. His strong emphasis on rapid and aggressive offensive action proved effective, while Allied leaders held sharply differing opinions on Patton, he was regarded highly by his opponents in the German High Command. A popular, award-winning biographical film released in 1970 helped transform Patton into an American hero, George Smith Patton Jr. was born on November 11,1885 in San Gabriel, California, to George Smith Patton Sr. and his wife Ruth Wilson. Patton had a sister, Anne, who was nicknamed Nita. The family was of Irish, Scots-Irish, English, and Welsh ancestry and his great grandmother came from an aristocratic Welsh family, descended from many Welsh lords of Glamorgan, which had an extensive military background. Patton believed he had former lives as a soldier and took pride in mystical ties with his ancestors, though not directly descended from George Washington, Patton traced some of his English colonial roots to George Washingtons great-grandfather. He was also descended from Englands King Edward I through Edwards son Edmund of Woodstock, family belief held the Pattons were descended from sixteen barons who had signed the Magna Carta. Patton believed in reincarnation, and his ancestry was very important to him, the first Patton in America was Robert Patton, born in Ayr, Scotland
United States
United States Army
