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George Van Horn Moseley 1883 - 1960

George Van Horn Moseley was born on September 28, 1883 in Evanston, Cook County, Illinois United States, and died at age 77 years old on November 7, 1960 in Atlanta, Fulton County, GA. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember George Van Horn Moseley.
George Van Horn Moseley
September 28, 1883
Evanston, Cook County, Illinois, United States
November 7, 1960
Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, United States
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George Van Horn Moseley's History: 1883 - 1960

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  • Introduction

    George Van Horn Moseley (General) MG George Van Horn Moseley Born September 28, 1874 Evanston, Illinois Died November 7, 1960 (aged 86) Fulton County, Georgia Allegiance United States of America Service/branch Emblem of the United States Department of the Army.svg United States Army Years of service 1899–1938 Rank US-O8 insignia.svg Major General Commands held Third United States Army 1st Cavalry Division Battles/wars Spanish–American War Pancho Villa Expedition World War I Awards Distinguished Service Medal (2) Legion of Honor Croix de guerre Order of the Bath Belgian Order of the Crown Order of the Crown of Italy George Van Horn Moseley (September 28, 1874 – November 7, 1960) was a United States Army general. Following his retirement in 1938, he became controversial for his fiercely right-wing anti-immigrant and antisemitic views. These views were not shared by his son James Willett Moseley, nor James Moseley's former wife Sandra Moseley (Amanda S. Stevenson) nor their daughter Elizabeth Barber Moseley or his seven grandchildren by Elizabeth Moseley who all turned out to be Liberals who loved Jewish people and immigrants and were Democrats and despised General Moseley's reactionary anti-Semitic and anti-Immigration politics. George Van Horn Moseley was born in Evanston, Illinois, on September 28, 1874. He was graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1899 and was commissioned second lieutenant in the cavalry. He served in the Philippines twice, from 1900 to 1903 and 1906 to 1907, where his assignments included commanding a troop of the 1st Cavalry and serving as Aide-de-Camp to Generals J. M. Bell and J. M. Lee. In 1901 Moseley, accompanied by only one other officer, without escort and under conditions of great danger, penetrated a major Philippine insurgent stronghold. 2nd Lt. Moseley and 1st Lt. George Curry convinced Brigadier General Ludovico Arejola to sign the peace agreement in Taban, Minalabac (Philippines) on 25 March 1901. The honor graduate of the Army School of the Line in 1908, he also was graduated from the Army Staff College in 1909 and the Army War College in 1911. During World War I, Moseley served as assistant chief of staff for logistics (G-4) on the staff of the American Expeditionary Force headquarters. Moseley married the wealthy twice married Mrs. Florence Barber DuBois in July 1930. They had one child, James Willett Moseley. General Moseley held camp and Washington assignments from 1920–1929. He was a member of several important commissions, including the Harbord Commission to investigate Armenian issues. After commanding the Second Field Artillery Brigade, in 1921 he was detailed as assistant to General Dawes in organizing the newly created Bureau of the Budget. In 1921 he was promoted brigadier general, Regular Army. Commanding the 1st Cavalry Division (1927–1929), he successfully interceded, under fire, with principals in a 1929 Mexican insurrection. His actions stopped stray gunfire from Juarez, Mexico, from endangering life and property in adjacent El Paso, Texas, and precluded further incidents. In 1931 he was promoted major general, Regular Army. He was the executive for the Assistant Secretary of War, from 1929 to 1930 and Deputy Chief of Staff of Army from 1930 to 1933. He served as General Douglas MacArthur's Deputy Chief of Staff during the 1932 Bonus March on Washington, D.C., in the course of which he recorded his fears of a Communist conspiracy against the United States. His racist beliefs were considered psychotic by his entire family and his second wife Florence Barber Moseley divorced him. In 1934, he asked MacArthur to consider the immigration issue in terms of military manpower, contrasting a group of "southern lads" of "good Anglo-Saxon stock" with their counterparts from the North with names "difficult to pronounce" that "indicated foreign blood". Moseley linked the latter to labor problems and "so much trouble in our schools and colleges." MacArthur expressed skepticism in response to Moseley's argument that "It is a question of whether or not the old blood that built this fine nation ... is to continue to administer that nation, or whether that old stock is going to be destroyed or bred out by a lot of foreign blood which the melting pot has not touched." He was Commanding General of the 5th Corps Area, from 1933 to 1934 and 4th Corps Area from 1934 to 1936. His final assignment was as commander of the Third United States Army from 1936 to 1938. He proposed a "worldwide policy which will result in breeding all Jewish blood out of the human race." His son James W. Moseley had so many Jewish friends that his father left him a dollar in his Last Will! Luckily, he never met me (his daughter-in-law) because I learned Yiddish, love and respect Jews and my attitude would've given the nasty old man a heart attack. (Amanda S. Stevenson, mother of Elizabeth). In 1951, the president of Piedmont College in Georgia invited Moseley to speak. Students and faculty protested because of his racist views. TIME called him a "trumpeter for Aryan supremacy." One faculty member was fired for speaking in opposition to the speaking engagement. Calls for the president's resignation followed. Almost the entire faculty and 9 trustees resigned in the next two years and enrollment fell by two thirds. But they named a street after Moseley and made sure it was in an African-American neighborhood. In 1959, Moseley was one of the founders of Americans for Constitutional Action, an anti-Semitic successor to America First. He also had a secret right-wing group called, The American Revolutionary Army. (I read Moseley's letters.) In retirement he lived at the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. He died on November 7, 1960. (Jim said he cursed the Jews, had a heart attack and died. (Oh, Goody!) Moseley had three sons. He married Alice Dodds in 1902 and married Florence Barber DuBois in July 1930. Alice was mother to George & Francis, Florence was mother to James Willett Moseley. She died in 1951 of stomach cancer. Moseley's son, Colonel George Van Horn Moseley, Jr. led the 502d Parachute Infantry Regiment into Normandy in 1944 and broke his leg. Francis L. Moseley was an inventor and Vice President at the Hewlett-Packard Company. His grandson George Van Horn Moseley III warned the government about the Japanese taking over too many industries and was immediately murdered in D.C. according to his Japanese wife. James W. Moseley was a longstanding figure in the UFO enthusiast community. James lived off his mother's trust fund and never worked a day in his life. After he forced his wife to divorce him in 1965 he spent the entire rest of his life never hearing the words "I Love You." He lost 11 million dollars through bad investments. He bragged that he had seven grandchildren and gave them nothing.
  • 09/28
    1883

    Birthday

    September 28, 1883
    Birthdate
    Evanston, Cook County, Illinois United States
    Birthplace
  • Military Service

    General Moseley's awards included the Distinguished Service Medal (one oak leaf cluster); Commander, Order of the Crown (Belgian); Companion, Order of the Bath (British); Commander, Legion of Honor, and Croix de Guerre with Palm (French); Commander, Order of the Crown of Italy. He was also a recipient of the Philippine Campaign Medal, Mexican Service Medal and the World War I Victory Medal.
  • 11/7
    1960

    Death

    November 7, 1960
    Death date
    Unknown
    Cause of death
    Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia United States
    Death location
  • Obituary

    While still on active service, Moseley expressed controversial opinions in public. In 1936, he proposed that the Civilian Conservation Corps be expanded "to take in every 18-year-old youth in the country for a six-month course in work, education and military training." In the late 1930s, when admitting refugees from Nazi persecution was a matter of national controversy, Moseley supported admitting refugees but added the proviso "that they all be sterilized before being permitted to embark. Only that way can we properly protect our future." That was an example of his irrational reasoning that embarrassed his family for generations. Moseley retired from the Army in October 1938 with a statement that described the New Deal as a growing dictatorship: "We do not have to vote for a dictatorship to have one in America ... We have merely to vote increased government responsibility for our individual lives, increased government authority over our daily habits, and the resultant Federal paternalism will inevitably become dictatorship." Secretary of War Harry Woodring called his statement "flagrantly disloyal." In April 1939 he attacked Jews and said that he foresaw a war fought for their benefit. He attacked President Franklin D. Roosevelt for appointing Felix Frankfurter to the U.S. Supreme Court. He predicted that the U.S. army would not follow the orders of FDR's leftist Administration if they "violate all American tradition." He described fascism and Nazism as good "antitoxins" for the United States, adding that "the finest type of Americanism can breed under their protection as they neutralize the efforts of the Communists." Time reported his view that "more money should be spent on syphilis prevention and less on national defense" Two months after leaving the military, he questioned the President's proposed increases in military spending: "Much of our present weakness is in the fear and hysteria being engendered among the American people for ... political purpose. ... A nation so scared and so burdened financially is not in a condition to lick anybody. And then, who in hell are we afraid of? With Japan absorbed ... with the balance of power so nearly equal in Europe, where is there an ounce of naval or military strength free to threaten us?" He became increasingly more outspoken and instead of the language of Social Darwinism expressed anti-Semitic and conspiratorial views overtly. In Philadelphia, he told the National Defense Meeting that Jewish bankers had financed the Russian Revolution and that "The war now proposed is for the purposes of establishing Jewish hegemony throughout the world." He said that Jews controlled the media and might soon control the federal government. All of the General's relatives has literally hundreds of Jewish friends and laughed at his political views. In June 1939, Moseley testified for five hours before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said that a Jewish Communist conspiracy was about to seize control of the U.S. government. He believed the President had the authority to counteract the planned coup and could do so "in five minutes" by issuing an order "to discharge every Communist in the government and everyone giving aid and comfort to the Communists." He said the President could use the army against "the enemy within our gates" but did not seem willing to do so. He said he held no anti-Semitic views (that's funny) and that "the Jew is an internationalist first ... and a patriot second." He praised the "impressively patriotic" German-American Bund and said its purpose was to "see that Communists don't take over the country." Among Moseley's supporters who attended the hearing were Donald Shea, head of the American Gentile League and James True of America First Inc. (The America First people paid him huge amounts of money as their spokesman until he died.) The Committee found a prepared statement he read into the record so objectionable it was deleted from the public record. A few days later, Thomas E. Stone, head of the Council of United States Veterans, charged Moseley with treason and wrote that his praise of the Bund "abets a foreign government in the preparation of disruption against the eventuality of possible future hostilities, and that this he is acting in treason to our national safety." Moseley held anti-immigrant views throughout his life. In his unpublished autobiography, he quoted approvingly from Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race. He used the language of Social Darwinism to describe the problem the United States faced: Watch a herd of animals. If a member of the herd becomes unfit ... the unfortunate is recognized at once and driven out of the herd, only to be eaten by the timber wolves. That seems hard–but is it, in fact? The suffering is thus limited to the one. The disease is not allowed to attack the others. ... With us humans, what we call civilization compels us to carry along the unfit in ever increasing proportions. He described the Jew as a permanent "human outcast." (Omitting Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all of Jesus's disciples of course.) They were "crude and unclean, animal-like things ... something loathsome, such as syphilis." Following the Nazi invasion of France he wrote that in order to match the Nazi threat, the U.S. needed to launch a program of "selective breeding, sterilization, the elimination of the unfit, and the elimination of those types which are inimical to the general welfare of the nation." In December 1941, Moseley wrote that Europe's Jews were "receiving their just punishment for the crucifixion of Christ ... whom they are still crucifying at every turn of the road."
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George Van Horn Moseley
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