<DIV><p>&ldquo;It would be as hard to give up all thought [of being a soldier] as it would be to stop breathing,&rdquo; wrote George S. Patton in October 1945; &ldquo;The great tragedy of my life was that I survived the last battle.&rdquo; But Patton would not see the year out: in December he would die as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident in Germany. His unexpected death sent shock waves through the American and Russian commands. It seemed plausible that America&rsquo;s greatest general may have been a victim of foul play. In the seven months following the German surrender, Patton had openly and provocatively criticized the Soviet Union and appeared to have transformed from a staunch anti-Nazi to a Nazi sympathizer. <I>The Last Days of Patton </I>by Ladislas Farago, a follow-up to his bestselling <I>Patton: Ordeal and Triumph</I>, attempts to reconstruct the last months of Patton&rsquo;s life in order to determine if the general did indeed try to provoke a war with the Soviet Union and whether he failed to sufficiently de-Nazify the area of Germany under his jurisdiction. Farago also investigates the possibility of a conspiracy to murder Patton and reveals the role other prominent men, including Eisenhower, Montgomery, Marshall, and MacArthur, had in censuring and ultimately removing Patton from active service. <I>The Last Days of Patton</I>, originally published in 1981, is the story of the general&rsquo;s final battle&mdash;a professional soldier caught up in the changing politics of the emerging Cold War and new reality of the atomic age.</p></DIV>