George Howard Earle

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George Howard Earle (1937)

George Howard Earle (born December 5, 1890 in Devon , Chester County , Pennsylvania , †  December 30, 1974 in Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania) was an American politician and from 1935 to 1939 the 32nd  governor of the US state of Pennsylvania.

Early Years and Rise in Pennsylvania

After attending the Delancey School , George Earle studied at Harvard University between 1909 and 1911 . Later he also studied law. Before the First World War, he worked with his father in the sugar industry. Earle served in a Pennsylvania infantry regiment on the Mexican border during a border conflict with Mexico in 1916. During the First World War he served in the US Navy to combat German submarines, and as an officer on a submarine fighter he was awarded the Navy Cross .

After the war, he set up a sugar refinery in Philadelphia called Flamingo Sugar Mills . He also became the director and vice president of the Pennsylvania Sugar Company . Until 1932 he was also active in the banking business and in various other companies. He became politically active for the first time that year when he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidential campaign. After his election victory, Roosevelt reciprocated and appointed Earle as his envoy to Austria in 1933 . There he got to know National Socialism and was one of the first to warn the American government of the dangers of this movement. After only one, albeit politically turbulent, year in Austria, Earle resigned from his post in 1934 because he was nominated by the Democratic Party as a candidate for the upcoming gubernatorial election. Then he also won the actual elections. This made him the first Democratic governor of Pennsylvania since Robert Emory Pattison , who served until 1895.

Governor of Pennsylvania

George Earle took up his new office on January 15, 1935. During his four-year tenure, Pennsylvania introduced a petroleum and cigarette tax for the first time. Another law allowed the emerging film industry to show films in cinemas on Sundays as well. That had been forbidden until then. At that time the foundation stone was laid for an organized motorway administration. The previously existing private police units in the mining and steel industry were abolished. During his tenure, the first civil rights laws were introduced.

Earle's tenure also overcame the aftermath of the great economic crisis that had struck the country since 1929. This was also achieved with the help of the federal government and President Roosevelt's New Deal policy. In Pennsylvania, however, the government has also taken its own steps, based on federal policy, to overcome the crisis. It was then that the first employment offices came into being in the country. The working week for women was limited to 44 hours. Towards the end of his tenure, his party hit the headlines in Pennsylvania on allegations of corruption. Parts of the party leadership were also involved. Although Earle was not personally involved in these matters, it also damaged his reputation. Although he was not allowed to stand for re-election in 1938 according to the constitution, he did apply for a seat in the US Senate . Because of the negative headlines of his party he was defeated in these elections, as his party lost the post of governor to the Republican Arthur Horace James in the same year .

Further life

After the end of his term of office, George Earle was appointed envoy, thus representative of the US ambassador , in the Bulgarian capital Sofia in 1940. He received a special mandate from Roosevelt to prevent Bulgaria from entering the war on the part of the Germans. In 1943 Roosevelt appointed him his special envoy for the Balkans, based in Istanbul , and officially he was naval attaché . The German defense chief Wilhelm Canaris contacted him in Istanbul . In plain clothes Canaris visited Earle in his hotel in Istanbul and informed him of the resistance plans to eliminate Hitler. In the event that the Nazi elite were disempowered, he offered a ceasefire in the West, but the Wehrmacht should continue to fight the Soviet Union . But after his failed efforts to win the White House over to this plan, Earle had to tell Canaris that Roosevelt was still sticking to the demand for "unconditional surrender". Earle also maintained secret contacts with the ambassador of the Third Reich in Ankara, the former Chancellor Franz von Papen , who in turn was a contact for the German resistance. The security service (SD), which saw itself in competition with the defense, escaped these contacts. Earle was probably due to his private life in their field of vision: a "Jewish cabaret dancer" was supposedly his lover.

While working in Istanbul, Earle received material about the Katyn massacre from the Polish embassy, ​​which was subordinate to the government in exile in London . Through his contacts in Sofia , he also came into possession of a report by the Bulgarian forensic doctor Marko Markow , a member of the International Medical Commission , who examined the mass graves of Katyn in Berlin in spring 1943 at the invitation of the Foreign Office . Earle came to the conclusion in his report sent to Roosevelt that the perpetrators were to be found on the Soviet side. In a personal conversation in 1944 Roosevelt explained to him: "This is all German propaganda and a German plot." ( This is entirely German propaganda and a German plot. ) Earle repeatedly warned the president of the danger of Stalin trying to subjugate Central Europe to his rule, but Roosevelt ignored the warnings.

After the end of World War II, Earle announced that he would publish his report on Katyn himself. But Roosevelt forbade him in writing. He had Earle transferred to the governor's staff of American Samoa . In 1952 Earle testified about the conflict with Roosevelt before the Katyn Commission of the US House of Representatives ( Madden Commission ) , which was chaired by MP Ray J. Madden . Earle later accused Roosevelt in newspaper articles of having completely misunderstood Stalin's intentions and thus complicit in the establishment of Stalinist regimes in the Eastern European countries occupied by the Red Army .

George Earle died in 1974. He was married twice and had four children.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 233.
  2. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, pp. 233-234.
  3. ^ FDR's Tragic Mistake , in: Confidential , August 1958, pp. 15-19.
  4. ↑ Franz von Papen: The truth one alley. Innsbruck 1952, p. 594.
  5. ^ Reiner Möckelmann : Franz von Papen. Hitler's eternal vassal. Darmstadt 2016, p. 300.
  6. ↑ Big things by Ciceri , Der Spiegel , February 19, 1949.
  7. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 236.
  8. ↑ Thomas Urban : Katyn 1940. History of a crime. Munich 2015, p. 166.
  9. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. Hearings before the Selected Comitee Part VII. Washington 1952, p. 2204.
  10. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 382.
  11. ^ George Sandford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940. Truth, justice and memory. London / New York 2005, p. 162.
  12. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 386.
  13. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. Hearings before the Selected Comitee Part VII. Washington 1952, pp. 2196-2215.
  14. ↑ George H. Earle, FDR's Tragic Mistake, in: Confidential , August 1958, p. 57.
personal data
SURNAME Earle, George Howard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Devon , Chester County , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1974
Place of death Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania