George Earle

George Howard Earle III (December 5, 1890December 30, 1974) was an American politician and diplomat. He was a member of the prominent Earle family. Earle served as the U.S. Minister to Austria from 1933 to 1934, and as the 30th Governor of Pennsylvania from January 15, 1935 to January 17, 1939. Earle was one of just two Democrats that served as Governor of Pennsylvania between the Civil War and World War II.

Early life
Earle grew up on a Montgomery County estate as the son of a wealth family that traced its lineage in America to the arrival of the Mayflower. He received a degree from Harvard University and subsequently worked abroad in a family-owned sugar business. He enlisted in the military in 1916 and was assigned to the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa Expedition. After the United States entered World War I, Earle commanded the U.S.S. Victor, a submarine chaser which was also his private yacht. He earned the Navy Cross in 1918 after averting a fatal explosion. After the war, Earle returned to private business, particularly in the sugar industry. Though raised as a Republican, Earle joined the Democratic Party over disillusionment with the Republican Party's handling of the Great Depression. After campaigning for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 election, Earle served as Ambassador to Austria from 1933 to 1934. Earle looked warily upon the Nazi Party, and warned the FDR Administration of the potential danger of Nazi Germany.

Governorship
Although Pennsylvania had not elected a Democratic governor in over forty years, Earle defeated Republican Attorney General William A. Schnader in the 1934 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election. Though Earle faced a split legislature in the first half of his term, his party gained control of both chambers of the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1936 election.

In 1944, President Roosevelt assigned Earle to compile information on the Katyń massacre, the massacre of the Polish intelligentsia by the Soviet government. Earle did so, using contacts in Bulgaria and Romania, and concluded that the Soviet Union was guilty. After consulting with Elmer Davis, the director of the Office of War Information, Roosevelt rejected Earle's conclusion, saying that he was convinced of the responsibility of Nazi Germany, and ordered Earle's report suppressed.
When Earle formally requested permission to publish his findings, the President gave him a written order to desist.
Earle was reassigned and spent the rest of World War II in American Samoa.

After the war, Earle served as assistant governor of American Samoa, and then returned to the private sector. Ambassador Ralph Earle II is his son.