Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Oron J. Hale Papers, 1891-1991, Accession #12800, 12800-a, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The collection is a bequest from the Estate of Oron James Hale.

Biographical Sketch

Oron James ("Pat") Hale, Corcoran Professor of History at the University of Virginia, was a member of the history department from 1929 until his retirement in 1972. He was born the second son of William Robert and Frances I. (Putnam) Hale on July 29, 1902 in Goldendale, Washington, and was called "Pat" throughout his life. He graduated cum laude , Phi Beta Kappa in 1925 from the University of Washington in Seattle and later earned an M.A. (1928) and a Ph.D. (1930) at the University of Pennsylvannia in Philadelphia.

Hale's scholarly research in Europe on diplomacy and the press was pursued in the late 1920s and early 1930s in London, Paris, Berlin, and Munich where he, together with his wife Annette Van Winkle Hale whom he had married on August 7, 1929, experienced firsthand the rise of Hitler and the advent of National Socialism that drove Europe and eventually the United States to war. Hale, commissioned in the rank of Major in 1942, served with the Intelligence Division of the War Department General Staff in Washington and in 1945, with the end of hostilities, participated in a special mission of the War Department's Historical (Shuster) Commission in Germany interrogating the surviving political and military leaders of the defeated Third Reich, including such notables as Goering, Keitel, Doenitz, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Ley, Jodl, and von Papen.

Hale's return to Charlottesville in 1946 as Professor of European History was short-lived. In 1950, he was back in Germany to serve first as Deputy Commissioner (to George Shuster) and then as Commissioner for Bavaria under the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy, whose task it was to phase out the U.S. military occupation as Germany moved toward the restoration of its sovereignty.

Shortly after resuming his academic career at the University of Virginia (1952), Hale became chairman of the history department (1955-1962) and was instrumental in the development of a special fellowship program and history professorship that led to the appointment of his old friend and former University of Virginia colleague, Dumas Malone to serve as the first holder of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation chair. Also during this period, Hale helped organize and establish within the Southern Historical Association, the European History Section, which he chaired in 1958-1959 and, within the American Historical Association, the Committee on War Documents which he chaired in 1957 and again in 1964 when it incorporated into the Conference Group for Central European History. A highlight of Hale's involvement with the War Documents Committee was the leadership he provided in the committee's successful effort to have millions of captured Nazi government documents, then stored in the United States, declassified and microfilmed prior to their being returned to the German Federal Republic.

After resigning the department chairmanship in 1962, Hale was appointed to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey (1963-1964) and then served as visiting summer professor at Harvard, Duke, and the Universities of Missouri and North Carolina. In 1965, he became William W. Corcoran Professor of History at the University of Virginia where he continued his work while caring for his wife, Anne, until her death in 1968.

Hale was the author of numerous articles, commentaries, and reviews on matters of German history. He was a regular contributor to The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal of Modern History, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Journal of Central European Affairs, The American Historical Review, and The Richmond Times-Dispatch. His books include: Germany and the Diplomatic Revolution, 1904-1906 (Awarded the "George Louis Beer" prize of the American Historical Association in 1931); Publicity and Diplomacy, 1890-1914 (1940); The Captive Press in the Third Reich (Winner of the "Polk Award" in journalism in 1964); and The Great Illusion, 1900-1914 (published as part of the William L. Langer, series, Rise of Modern Europe, 1971).

In recognition of his academic achievements and government service, Hale received the Outstanding Civilian Award from the U.S. Department of the Army, 1964; the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the German Federal Republic, 1969; the Thomas Jefferson Award from the University of Virginia, 1969; an honorary Litt.D. from Hampden-Sydney College, 1958; and in 1986, a "Festschrift" of original essays published in his honor by his former graduate students.

In July 1970, Hale remarried to a long time friend, Virginia Zehmer. Despite a stroke suffered in 1973 and the implantation of a pacemaker, Hale kept busy in retirement traveling, hunting, playing golf, refurbishing ancestral gravesites, and being involved in the social activities at his residence community in Richmond. In his late years, he again devoted himself to the care of his wife, Virginia, who died in 1989--three years before he was to succumb on July 19, 1991. He is buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery in Charlottesville.

Scope and Content

The collection contains ca. 18,000 items (15 shelf feet) and consists of personal letters, office correspondence, and records relating to Hale's academic activities and associations; declassified copies of intelligence reports and data, together with routine correspondence, memoranda, and administrative documents affiliated with his government service in Germany; manuscript drafts and copies of his published writings; genealogical data; photographs (ca. 2000 items) of family members, friends, and travel scenery; and personal miscellanea.

Interesting documents within the collection groupings include: (I) Correspondence : Hale's 1945 letters to his wife reporting on the aftermath of Germany's defeat in his vivid descriptions of the devastation of cities and towns they had lived in or had visited before the war and of the suffering being experienced by their old friends and colleagues. (II) Academia : A series of "Oral History" interviews that Hale gave to Charles Moran of the University of Virginia in 1976 that focus on his academic career and his government service and that reflect on the historically dramatic events with which he was involved. (III) Government Service : Copies of the U.S. War Department 's 1945 interrogation reports of high-ranking former German officials (some 22 of whom Hale interviewed) who set forth, from their personal perspectives, fascinating accounts and analyses about the war, its conduct, Hitler's leadership, and the reasons for Germany's defeat; State (Land) Commissioner of Bavaria office documents of the period 1950-1952 that give some flavor of Hale's role in implementing the United States policy of introducing and nurturing democratic concepts among the defeated German populace. (IV) Publications : German documents that served as a basis for published articles by Hale that include a copy of an memorandum regarding the biological future of the German people written by Martin Bormann, Nazi leader and Hitler's private sectretary; a 1923 copy of a letter of admonishment to Adolf Hitler from Gottfried Feder, Nazi Party economist; and photostatic copies of Hitler's tax returns which had been maintained in the Munich Finance Office from 1925-1935 and which were later part of the documents seized by the Allies during the war. (VII) Miscellany : Anne Hale's diary of pre-war Germany in which she records the attitudes and behavior of the German people in the period of rising Nazi power; memorabilia that include copies of Nazi SS documents pertaining to some of the security measures taken to protect Hitler following the assassination attempt on his life of July 20, 1940; a copy of a 1947 letter that Rudolph Hess wrote to his sister from his jail cell; and a variety of documents and letters bearing original and facsimile signatures, including those of Hitler, Ribbentrop, Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer .