Patton’s Predecessor Promoted Over Him: The Outrageous Scandal That Infuriated the U.S. Army! 

March 5th, 1943. Major General Lloyd Fredendall was meeting with Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower at Second Corps headquarters in Tunisia. Eisenhower had flown in personally to deliver news that would end Fredendall’s combat career. He was relieved of command effective immediately. His replacement, Major General George S. Patton Jr.

, would take over the next day. Fredendall was ordered to return to Alers, then to Washington. The order was verbal, delivered with cold professionalism. Eisenhower didn’t need to explain why. Two weeks earlier, Fred and Doll’s core had been shattered at Karine Pass in the worst American defeat of the North African campaign.

 Thousands of American casualties. Entire units routed in panic. Fredendall had spent those two weeks blaming everyone except himself. His subordinate commanders were incompetent. The intelligence was inadequate. The troops were green and panicked under fire. Eisenhower’s decision made clear what he thought of those explanations. Fredendall packed his belongings.

 He believed his career was over. He had no idea what was coming. February 14th, 1943. German field marshal Irwin Raml attacked through Cassarine Pass in central Tunisia. The objective was simple. Smash through American lines, capture supply depots, and prove American forces couldn’t fight German veterans. Fredendall’s second corps defended a 70mile front with 30,000 men scattered in small groups.

 Commanders had conflicting orders. The defensive line had gaps large enough to drive entire panzer divisions through. When Raml attacked, American positions collapsed within hours. Entire battalions broke and ran. Equipment was abandoned. Soldiers fled in vehicles on foot and complete panic. By February 22nd, the Germans had advanced 50 m.

 American casualties exceeded 6,000 killed, wounded, or captured. Hundreds of tanks and vehicles were destroyed or abandoned. It was one of the worst American defeats of World War II. And Fredendall had been nowhere near the fighting. He had built his command post in a canyon far behind the front lines, by most accounts, 80 to 100 miles from forward positions.

 He had a company of engineers working for over 3 weeks, blasting it out of solid rock while frontline troops dug foxholes with no overhead cover. While engineers were setting off dynamite to clear Fredendall’s view in Speedy Valley, 30 m away, his men were hearing a different kind of explosion. The sound of German 88s tearing through thin American armor.

One man was building a fortress for himself. His soldiers were digging their own graves with shallow foxholes in the frozen Tunisian mud. He rarely visited forward units. He gave orders by phone to commanders he never met. When Eisenhower visited on February 20th to assess the disaster, what he saw convinced him Fredendall had to go.

 Not just relieved, removed immediately before he could do more damage. George Patton landed in Tunisia on March 6th, 1943. He had been commanding in Morocco when Eisenhower called with urgent orders, “Take command of second core. Fix it. Do it fast.” Patton arrived wearing polished boots, ivory-handled pistols, and an expression of barely controlled fury.

 He immediately toured every unit in the core. He fired commanders on the spot. He enforced uniform regulations that Fredendall had ignored. He visited frontline positions that Fredendall had never seen. Within two weeks, second Corps was a different army. Discipline replaced chaos. Aggressive patrolling replaced defensive cowering.

 The same soldiers who had run at Casarine stopped German attacks and began winning engagements. The contrast couldn’t have been more obvious. Same units, same equipment, completely different results. The only variable was leadership. Patton wrote in his diary that Fred and Doll’s command arrangements were the worst he had ever seen in his career.

The elaborate underground headquarters, the scattered units, the absence of any forward command presence. It was professional malpractice. But Patton also noticed something else. Fredendall had already left Tunisia. He was on a plane to Alers, then Washington, and nobody was talking about what would happen to him.

Lloyd Fredendall’s flight from Tunisia to Washington took 3 days with stops in Alers in Morocco. He traveled alone except for his aid, no ceremonies, no press, just a quiet removal from theater. The plane landed at Bowling Field outside Washington on March 16th, 1943. Fredendall expected to be met by war department officials, possibly military police.

 He expected investigations, hearings, possibly a court marshal. What he got instead shocked him. A military band was playing. Reporters were waiting with cameras. A war department car was ready to drive him to a welcome ceremony. Fredendall stepped off the plane expecting the cold steel of a court marshal. Instead, he was hit by the brassy, upbeat notes of a military band.

 It was a sound that didn’t belong to a man who had just presided over a massacre.To anyone who knew the truth, that music must have sounded like a funeral durge for military accountability. The official story released to the press was carefully worded. Major General Fredendall had returned from North Africa after distinguished service in combat.

 He would be assuming new duties commensurate with his experience in rank. There was no mention of being fired, no reference to Casarine Pass, no explanation of why a core commander had left his command in the middle of a campaign. George Marshall had built the US Army from 200,000 men in 1939 to millions by 1943. He had selected commanders, designed training programs, and created the mobilization system.

 His reputation was built on competence and accountability. Within days of Fredendall’s return, the narrative being pushed in Washington was extraordinary. Fredendall was a combat veteran with valuable experience. His insights would be invaluable for training armies still being mobilized. Reporters who tried to ask about Cassine Pass were deflected.

 Operational details couldn’t be discussed for security reasons. Fredendall’s failure at Cassine was Marshall’s failure. Now Marshall faced an impossible choice. He could court marshall Fredendall and admit publicly that his judgment had been catastrophically wrong. Or he could quietly shove Fred and Doll somewhere he couldn’t do more damage.

Marshall chose the second option. But there was a complication. Fredendall had powerful friends in Congress. Representatives and senators from his home state were already asking questions about why he had been brought home. They wanted assurances his service was being properly recognized. Marshall faced an awkward situation.

Eisenhower had recommended Fredendall for promotion to Lieutenant General back in November 1942 before Cassine pass. The recommendation was sitting in the War Department awaiting approval. Now Marshall had to decide whether to proceed with a promotion for a general who had just been fired for incompetence.

 Marshall decided to proceed. Fredendall would be promoted to Lieutenant General and assigned to command second army, a training organization in the United States. The promotion would move forward as if Casarine had never happened. When Eisenhower heard about the recommendation, he was stunned. He had just fired Fredendall for incompetence.

Now Marshall was promoting him. On June 1st, 1943, Lloyd Fredendall was promoted to Lieutenant General. The ceremony took place at the War Department with full military honors. Marshall himself pinned on the Third Star. The official citation praised Fredendall’s leadership in North Africa, his combat experience, and his contributions to developing American tactical doctrine against German forces.

It made no mention of Cassin Pass. It contained no hint that he had been relieved of command and disgrace less than 5 weeks earlier. Fredendall was now the same rank as George Patton, who had salvaged the situation in Tunisia. The man who caused the disaster wore the same three stars as the man who fixed it.

 The promotion announcement reached Tunisia within days. Officers who had served under Fredendall’s failed command read the news in stars and stripes with disbelief and fury. Imagine being a sergeant in the first armored, sitting in the dust of a defeated camp, holding a greasy copy of Stars and Stripes. You see the face of the man who sent your friends to die from a hole in the ground.

 And above his head is a new star. That wasn’t just a promotion. It was a middle finger to every man who had actually bled in the past. But the bitterest reaction came from Patton himself. He had just finished court marshalling officers for failures at Casarene. He had relieved commanders for not being aggressive enough, for not visiting frontline positions, for command arrangements that scattered forces.

Fredendall had done all of these things on a massive scale. And his reward was a third star. While the third star was being pinned in Washington, letters started reaching the War Department from the dust of Tunisia. Fredendall had been assigned to command Second Army, a training organization in Memphis, Tennessee.

 He would never see combat again. The anger in those letters was raw. How could the general responsible for the worst American defeat of the war be promoted while subordinates were court marshaled? Why were the men who followed his orders being destroyed while he wore three stars in Memphis? Marshall’s response was always the same.

 General Fredendall’s record speaks for itself. His current assignment makes the best use of his experience and abilities. Personnel decisions are based on the needs of the service. What Marshall couldn’t say publicly was the truth. Fredendall’s congressional connections made firing him politically dangerous.

 His powerful friends in Wyoming had made clear that any public disgrace would trigger investigations and hearings. Marshall had shielded the institution.The decision established a precedent that would haunt the army for the rest of the war. Political connections could protect incompetent generals from the consequences of their failures.

The contrast with other Cassine commanders made Fredendall’s promotion even more grotesque. Major General Orlando Ward commanded the first armored division under Fredendall at Casarine. Ward had protested Fredendall’s orders to scatter his division across 70 mi. He had warned that the dispositions were indefensible.

Fredendall overruled him. When the German attack came, Ward’s scattered units were defeated in detail exactly as he had predicted. Ward fought desperately to contain the breakthrough, moving constantly between units, trying to organize a coherent defense. After Casarine, Patton relieved Ward in early April 1943 during the follow-up battle of Elgatar.

Patton felt Ward had become too cautious, traumatized by the disaster Fredendall’s orders had created. Ward was reassigned to administrative duties as chief of field artillery. Though he later returned to combat with the 20th Armored Division in 1945 and had a distinguished post-war career, the relief effectively ended his wartime command trajectory at the moment when Fredendall was being promoted.

 The purge of Karine era officers continued even after the army started winning under Patton. Regimental commanders who had followed Fredendall’s orders were court marshaled for the failures those orders caused. Battalion commanders were relieved for not holding positions that Fredendall had made impossible to defend.

 These officers had no congressional protection. They had no political connections powerful enough to save them. They paid the price while Fredendall was promoted. Patton watched this unfold with disgust. He was a man who believed in a mystical ancient code of the warrior. To him, Fredendall wasn’t just a bad general.

 He was a sin against the profession of arms. Every time Patton had to salute a man like Fredendall or see him wearing the same three stars, it was a reminder that even in the middle of a worldending war, the Old Boys Club was the one thing that remained bulletproof. He told his staff that the army was punishing the wrong people.

 The core commander who caused the disaster was safe in Tennessee wearing three stars. The division and regimental commanders who tried to salvage his mistakes were being destroyed. It was a lesson about military politics that Patton never forgot. Competence mattered less than connections. Taking responsibility was career suicide.

Blame could be deflected downward as long as you had friends in Washington. Dwight Eisenhower watched Fredendall’s promotion from North Africa with carefully maintained public silence. He had recommended Fredendall’s relief. He had sent Patton to fix the disaster. He knew exactly how badly Fredendall had failed.

 But Eisenhower didn’t just stay silent. He actively participated in the coverup. He wrote to Marshall supporting the idea of giving Fredendall a hero’s welcome. His reasoning was brutally political. If the American public learned a core commander had been fired for incompetence, it would destroy national morale. Better to hide the failure than risk public confidence in the army.

 Eisenhower never protested the promotion. He didn’t write dissenting memos. He made his views known only to his immediate staff. Years later, Eisenhower’s chief of staff explained why Eisenhower was supreme allied commander in a theater where American, British, and French forces had to work together. He couldn’t afford a political war with the War Department over personnel decisions.

 If he challenged Marshall’s handling of Fred and he would create enemies in Washington who could undermine his authority in theater. So Eisenhower made a cold calculation. He would work within that system rather than fight it. This decision would shape his command style for the rest of the war.

 When other generals failed, Eisenhower would relieve them quietly, reassign them to non-combat positions, and let the War Department handle the public relations. He would never again try to hold failed commanders publicly accountable. The lesson was clear. Military competence mattered less than political survival, and Eisenhower chose to survive.

The real explanation for Fred and Doll’s promotion wasn’t military merit. It was congressional politics. And the smoking gun was hidden in a family tree most people had never examined. Fredendall’s family had deep connections to Wyoming political machinery. His father had been a protege of Senator Francis E.

 Warren of Wyoming. Warren was the father-in-law of General John J. Persing. This family tree of military and political power made Fredendall untouchable. Marshall himself was General Persing’s former aid and protege. He could not easily move against a man whose family was so closely tied to Persing’s own father-in-law.

When word reached Washington that Fredendall might be court marshaled orpublicly disgraced, those relationships activated. Phone calls were made to the war department. Meetings were requested with Marshall. Questions were asked in congressional committees about whether General Fredendall was being made a scapegoat for institutional failures in training and doctrine.

 Marshall understood the threat. Congressional investigations into North African command decisions could expose problems across the entire mobilization system. The disaster at Casarine had many fathers. Making Fredendall the sole scapegoat could trigger examinations that would embarrass everyone. Better to quietly promote him, assign him where he couldn’t do damage, and move on.

 The public would never know the details. The army would maintain its image of competence, and congressional friends would be satisfied their man was being treated fairly. It was cynical political calculation masquerading as personnel management and it worked perfectly. Fredendall kept his stars, his pension and his reputation.

 The army avoided congressional investigations. Marshall avoided admitting his judgment had been wrong. Everyone won except the soldiers who had died at Casarine and the competent officers whose careers were destroyed. Fred and Doll spent the rest of the war at Second Army in Memphis training infantry divisions.

 By all accounts, he was adequate at the job. Training required administrative competence, not battlefield judgment. No scandals emerged from his headquarters. But everyone who served under him knew his real history. The third star was political protection, not earned achievement. The cynicism this created spread through the officer corps.

 Men who had just survived Raml’s attacks in North Africa found themselves sitting in Memphis classrooms while Fredendall lectured them on modern tactics. The absurdity wasn’t lost on anyone. Some officers later credited Fredendall with teaching them valuable lessons about what not to do in combat. His failures at Casarine became case studies in how not to organize defensive positions, how not to command from the rear, how not to scatter forces.

In a twisted way, Fredendall’s greatest contribution to the war effort was serving as an example of catastrophic leadership. Officers studied what he had done wrong and resolved never to repeat those mistakes. The war ended in May 1945. Fredendall remained at second army until June 1946, then retired at the rank of lieutenant general with full honors.

 His official biography listed him as a distinguished combat veteran who had served his country with honor. The Casarine disaster was mentioned only briefly in official histories. Most accounts focused on Raml’s tactical skill and the inexperience of American troops. Fredendall’s name appeared in footnotes, not chapters.

 He lived quietly in California until his death in 1963 at age 79. He never wrote memoirs or gave interviews about Cassine. He never publicly addressed his relief or the promotion controversy. Omar Bradley’s 1951 memoir, A Soldier Story, contained one devastating paragraph about Fredendall. Bradley wrote that Fredendall had lived in a command post blasted out of solid rock 80 miles behind the lines while his troops lived in foxholes, that he had commanded by telephone rather than personal presence, and that his relief was completely

justified. Patton’s personal wartime diaries published after his death were more blunt. While Bradley estimated the bunker was 80 mi back, Patton, never one for understatements, recorded it as a full 100 miles from the men doing the dying. He called Fred and Doll a coward who sent men to die while building himself that bunker.

 He called the promotion a disgrace to the service. His official reports had been far more restrained to maintain military decorum. Eisenhower’s memoirs were more diplomatic, but equally damning. He wrote that Fredendall’s relief was necessary for the good of the service, and that the decision was one of the most clear-cut of the war.

 But none of these accounts changed the fact that Fredendall had retired as a three-star general with a comfortable pension while better officers had been destroyed for lesser failures. In the late 1950s, Marshall was interviewed by his official biographer Forest Pogue about his wartime decisions. They asked about the Fredendall promotion.

 Marshall’s answer was revealing. Marshall defended the decision on institutional grounds. Destroying Fredendall publicly would have required court marshal proceedings that would have exposed how unprepared American forces were in early 1943. The troops were green. The doctrine was untested. The training had failed against German veterans.

 Even Raml had noted this. Promoting Fredendall into a training role masked the fact that the entire system had been unprepared. It protected the institution’s reputation while removing him from combat. Marshall never said he regretted the decision, but the defensive tone suggested he knew the cost.

The consequences of this compromise echoed through the rest of the war. Establishing a system where failure could be survived with political protection, while ambitious officers learned that cultivating congressional relationships mattered as much as tactical skill. It was a system where failure led to promotion while success was optional.

 Where political connections mattered more than dead soldiers. where the system protected the guilty and punished the innocent. The soldiers paid the price. At Cassine Pass, over 6,000 Americans became casualties because of Fredendall’s incompetence. After the war, those casualties families learned that the general responsible had been promoted while their sons were buried in North Africa.

We often talk about political face saving as if it’s a victimless crime. But every star on Fred and Doll’s shoulder was paid for in agonizing installments by families in Wyoming, Illinois, and New York who were receiving telegrams that didn’t offer promotions. They offered only a flag and a hollow thank you.

 In Washington, they saved a career. In North Africa, they simply filled a cemetery. The man responsible for the disaster at Cassarine Pass retired with full honors, a three-star general’s pension, and a reputation protected by the most powerful men in the army. History is written by the winners. But sometimes it’s also edited by the people too embarrassed to admit they picked the wrong man.

 Because in war, competence is negotiable. But connections are forever.