Nearly 70 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, Lieutenant General George Patton took command of the American 3rd Army in France. For the next 30 days, they rolled toward the German border.

Patton almost did not get a chance at his summer of glory. After Patton turned in brilliant service in North Africa and Sicily, fellow officers — and his German enemies — considered him the most gifted American field general of his generation. But near the conclusion of his illustrious Sicilian campaign, the volatile Patton slapped two sick GIs in field hospitals, raving that they were shirkers. In truth, both were ill, and at least one was suffering from malaria.

Public outrage followed the shameful incidents. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower put Patton on ice for 11 key months.

Tragically, Patton’s irreplaceable talents were lost to the Allies in the soon-to-be-stagnant Italian campaign. He also played no real role in the planning of the Normandy campaign.

In early 1944, a mythical Patton army was used as a deception to fool the Germans into thinking that “Army Group Patton” might still make another major landing at Calais. The Germans apparently found it incomprehensible that the Americans would bench their most audacious general at the very moment his audacity was most needed.

When Patton’s 3rd Army became operational seven weeks after D-Day, it was supposed to play only a secondary role — guarding the southern flank of the armies of Gen. Omar Bradley and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery while securing the Atlantic ports.

Despite having the longest route to the German border, Patton headed east. The 3rd Army took off in a type of American blitzkrieg not seen since Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s rapid marches through Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War.

Throughout August 1944, Patton won back over the press. He was foul-mouthed, loud and uncouth, and he led from the front in flamboyant style with a polished helmet and ivory-handled pistols.

In fact, his theatrics masked a deeply learned and analytical military mind.

Patton sought to avoid casualties by encircling German armies. In innovative fashion, he partnered with American tactical air forces to cover his flanks as his armored columns raced around static German formations.

In 30 days, Patton finished his sweep across France and neared Germany. The 3rd Army had exhausted its fuel supplies and ground to a halt near the border in early September.

Allied supplies had been redirected northward for the normally cautious Gen. Montgomery’s reckless Market Garden gambit. That proved a harebrained scheme to leapfrog the bridges of the Rhine River that would devour Allied blood and treasure and accomplish almost nothing.

Meanwhile, severing Patton’s supplies proved disastrous. Scattered and fleeing German forces regrouped. Their resistance stiffened as the weather grew worse and as shortened supply lines began to favor the defense.

Historians still argue over Patton’s August miracle. Could a racing 3rd Army really have burst into Germany so far ahead of Allied lines? Could the Allies ever have adequately supplied Patton’s charging columns given the growing distance from the Normandy ports? How could a supreme commander such as Eisenhower handle Patton, who at any given moment could — and might — let loose with politically incorrect bombast?

We do not know the answers to those questions. Nor do we quite know the full price that America had paid for having a profane Patton stewing in exile for nearly a year rather than exercising his leadership in Italy or Normandy.

We know only that 70 years ago, an authentic American genius thought he could win the war in Europe — and almost did. When his 3rd Army stalled, so did the Allied effort.

Patton died from injuries sustained in a freak car accident not long after the German surrender. He soon became the stuff of legend but was too often remembered for his theatrics rather than his authentic genius, which saved thousands of American lives.

Seventy years ago this August, George Patton showed America how a democracy’s conscripted soldiers could arise out of nowhere to beat the deadly professionals of an authoritarian regime at their own game.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University.