Dwight D. Eisenhower and Pete Hegseth, it appears, would not have gotten along well. They almost certainly would have disagreed on one particular military matter — the editorial independence of the venerable Star and Stripes newspaper.

As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and others have recounted in recent days, the latest round of turmoil at the government-funded military newspaper is reminiscent of a standoff during World War II between Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower and his subordinate, Gen. George Patton.

Patton, the story goes, was so incensed by the disheveled, wiseacre soldiers in Bill Mauldin’s popular “Willie and Joe” comic strip in Star and Stripes that he threatened to jail the cartoonist over it. Mauldin’s chief offense was poking fun at the general’s crackdown on frontline soldiers with facial hair, or “beardos,” as Hegseth calls them today.

Eisenhower told Patton to leave Mauldin alone, and the battle was over. But there appears to be no one with as much clout to give a similar order to Hegseth, who — like his boss in the White House — has little regard for a free press.

In January, the Pentagon rescinded a longstanding directive that Stars and Stripes should be free of military censorship and that the “calculated withholding of unfavorable news is prohibited.”

In a social media post, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell explained that getting rid of the policy was necessary to end “woke distractions that syphon morale” and to adapt the paper “to serve a new generation of service members.”

Soon, the Pentagon banned Associated Press reprints and — trampling the memory of Mauldin — comic strips. Then the firings began.

This spring, the Pentagon dismissed Jacqueline Smith, the paper’s ombudsman (a job created by Congress), after she publicly criticized the department for meddling in the editorial content.

More recently, the department fired correspondent Lara Korte, editor in chief Erik Slavin and publisher Max Lederer. Korte and Slavin were fired for talking to CBS News about the Pentagon’s editorial interference at Stars and Stripes, and Lederer — a 34-year veteran of the paper who’d already announced his retirement — was let go for similar complaints.

Hegseth and his boss were upset by recent reports by Stars and Stripes on the war with Iran, including one that focused on the duress and shortage of basic supplies endured by sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln on their extended duty in the Persian Gulf.

Another offending report, penned by Korte, explored the difficulties that military families have faced dealing with military bureaucracy after they were evacuated from bases in the Middle East.

It didn’t matter that other news outlets had reported on those stories, too. The Pentagon under Hegseth didn’t want to see unfavorable coverage in a paper heavily read by military personnel and their families.

None of this is surprising coming from an administration whose leader popularized the phrase “fake news” and successfully convinced followers that any coverage that casts a critical eye on Trump, his business dealings or his official action is made up and biased.

Hegseth has run the same drill at the Department of Defense, barring reporters from areas of the Pentagon long open to the media and regularly taking news outlets to task for news coverage he doesn’t like. Like Trump, he states coverage is false — but rarely offers evidence to refute established facts.

Eisenhower recognized the folly of expecting Stars and Stripes to serve up censored or sanitized news to readers who are asked to fight, shed blood and even die to protect our nation and its constitutional rights, including a free press.

Trying to shield the armed forces and their families from the truth — especially in an era when the truth is readily accessible in multiple media — is a fool’s errand. Discipline isn’t maintained by lying to the troops; it’s maintained through the trust invested by the troops in their leaders. Break that trust, and the strength of our military breaks with it.

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