George Howard Earle papers

George H. Earle III was a governor of Pennsylvania (1935-1939), Minister to Austria (1933-1934), Minister to Bulgaria (1940-1942), and was in the Navy during World War II (1942-1945) where he served as Assistant Naval Attaché to Turkey (1943-1945). He finished his public and military service as Ass...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Boettiger, Anna Roosevelt 1906-1975 (Creator), Earle, George Howard 1890-1974 (Creator), Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) 1882-1945 (Creator), Truman, Harry S. 1884-1972 (Creator), Wedemeyer, Albert C. (Albert Coady) 1896-1989 (Creator)
Collection:George Howard Earle Papers
Collection Number:3260
Format: Manuscript
Language:English
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Online Access:Link to finding aid
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Physical Description: 0.4 Linear feet ; 1 box
Access: The collection is open for research.
Summary: George H. Earle III was a governor of Pennsylvania (1935-1939), Minister to Austria (1933-1934), Minister to Bulgaria (1940-1942), and was in the Navy during World War II (1942-1945) where he served as Assistant Naval Attaché to Turkey (1943-1945). He finished his public and military service as Assistant Governor to Samoa (1945) before retiring to private life. On 28 March 1947, Earle testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that while he served as Attaché to Turkey, he was also serving at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request as an undercover representative of the president and reported directly to President Roosevelt on Balkan matters. The collection is comprised of seven letters including three wartime letters to Earle from Franklin Roosevelt, copies of Earle’s testimony before three different House committees, a transcribed interview of Earle, and an article that Earle authored in 1960. Most of the materials describe Earle’s opinion during World War II that Russia posed a larger threat to the United States than did Germany, and they describe his post-war view that Russian Communism continued to threaten the United States. The materials also provide some insight into the conflict between Earle and Roosevelt that emerged as a result of Earle’s position on Russia during the war.
The collection spans from June 1944 to March 1960 but most of the material dates from 1944 to 1952. This collection includes seven pieces of correspondence including three letters from President Franklin D. Roosevelt spanning June 1944 to March 1945, one letter from Roosevelt’s daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger dated 24 March 1945, one letter from President Harry S. Truman dated 28 February 1947, and two letters from retired U.S. Army General A.C Wedemeyer from the 6th and 8th of December 1958. Of particular interest in the correspondence are two letters: a letter from Franklin Roosevelt dated 24 March 1945 in which Roosevelt forbids Earle from publishing anti-Russian material. The second is a letter from Truman dated 28 February 1947 in which Truman states that the United States is “perfectly safe as far as Communism is concerned.” Also included in the collection are copies of Earle’s 1947 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, his 1948 testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and his 1952 testimony before a House Special Committee investigating the Katyn Massacre. None of the material Earle gathered as evidence of Russian culpability in the Katyn Massacre is part of this collection. The remaining pieces of the collection include a broadcast transcript from the American Broadcast Company’s radio program Town Meeting in which Earle appeared as a guest to discuss the Russian threat. There is also an article that Earle published in the March 24th, 1960 edition of Human Events titled “Roosevelt’s Fatal Error and How I Tried to Prevent It.” The article discusses secretive contact that Earle had with splintering German officials who offered to assassinate Adolf Hitler in exchange for American cooperation in keeping the Russian Army out of Germany and Central Europe.