| Joseph Edward Davies | |
|---|---|
| 2nd United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union | |
| In office November 16, 1936 – June 11, 1938[1] |
|
| President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | William C. Bullitt |
| Succeeded by | Laurence A. Steinhardt |
| 7th United States Ambassador to Belgium | |
| In office May 14, 1938 – November 30, 1939[1] |
|
| President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | Hugh S. Gibson |
| Succeeded by | John Cudahy |
| 14th United States Envoy to Luxembourg | |
| In office May 14, 1938 – November 30, 1939[1] |
|
| President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | Hugh S. Gibson |
| Succeeded by | John Cudahy |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 29, 1876 Watertown, Wisconsin |
| Died | May 9, 1958 (aged 81) Washington, D.C. |
| Resting place | Washington National Cathedral |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Emlen Knight, Marjorie Merriweather Post |
| Children | Eleanor Davies (Cheesborough, Tydings, Ditzen) (1904–2006); Rahel Virginia Davies (Walker, Fitch, Broun) (1909–1977); Emlen Knight Davies (Grosjean, Evers) (born 1916)[2] |
| Profession | Lawyer |
Joseph Edward Davies (November 29, 1876–May 9, 1958) was an American lawyer and diplomat. He was appointed by President Wilson to be Commissioner of Corporations in 1912, and First Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 1915. He was the second Ambassador to represent the United States in the Soviet Union and U.S. Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg. From 1939 to 1941 Davies was Special assistant to Secretary of State Hull, in charge of War Emergency Problems and Policies. From 1942 through 1946 he was Chairman of President Roosevelt's War Relief Control Board. Ambassador Davies was Special Advisor of President Harry Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes with rank of Ambassador at the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
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Davies was born in Watertown, Wisconsin to Edward and Rachel (Paynter) Davies. He attended the University of Wisconsin Law School from 1898 to 1901, where he graduated with honors.[3][3]:9 Upon graduation, he returned to Watertown and began a private practice. He served as a delegate to the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in 1902.[3]:10 He moved to Madison in 1907, and became chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.[3]:10
Davies played an important role in ensuring that the western states and Wisconsin gave Woodrow Wilson their vote at the 1912 Democratic National Convention. Wilson made Davies head of his entire western campaign.[3]:10-11 As a reward for being critical in winning Wilson the election, Wilson named Davies head of the Bureau of Corporations. Davies was instrumental in the formation of the Bureau's successor organization, the Federal Trade Commission, and served as its first chairman from 1915 to 1916.[3]:11 At President's Wilson's request when Senator Paul O. Husting of Wisconsin suddenly died in 1917, Davies retired from the FTC in order to run for the open seat in a special election. He lost to Republican Irvine Lenroot in a pivotal election which denied Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.[3]:14 President Wilson appointed Davies to serve as an economic advisor to the United States during the Paris Peace Conference following World War I.
After the electoral loss, Davies went into private legal practice in Washington D.C.. In 1933 Rafael Trujillo engaged Davies to work for him when he tried to settle his country's debt.[4]
Davies most famous law case was when he defended former Ford Motor Company stockholders against a $30,000,000 suit the US Treasury Department brought against them for back taxes. Davies proved his clients did not owe the government anything but that his clients were to receive a $3,600,000 refund. The case – which took three years to litigate (from 1924 to 1927) - brought him the largest fee in the history of the D.C. bar, $2,000,000.
Davies represented politicians, labor leaders and minority groups but his specialty was as an antitrust attorney. His corporate clients included Seagrams, National Dairy, Copley Publishing, Anglo-Swiss, Nestle, Fox Films and many others. In 1937 his law firm was: Davies, Richberg, Beebe, Busick and Richardson, in DC.
In 1901 Davies married Mary Emlen Knight, daughter of Civil War Colonel John Henry Knight, a leading conservative Democrat and business associate of William Freeman Vilas and Jay Cooke. They were divorced in 1935. His second wife was General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, whom he married in 1935; the couple divorced in 1955.
Davies was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union by Franklin D. Roosevelt and served from 1936-38. His appointment was made in part based on his skills as a Corporate lawyer (Chairman, FTC), and international lawyer, his long time friendship with FDR since the Woodrow Wilson days and for his political loyalty to Roosevelt.[5]
Davies had been asked by FDR to evaluate the strength of the Soviet Army, its government and its industry and to find out if possible which side the Russians would be on in the "coming war."[6]
While Davies' predecessor, William Christian Bullitt, Jr. had been an admirer of the Soviet Union who gradually came to loathe Stalin's brutality and repression, Davies remained unaffected[7] by news of the disappearance of thousands of Russians and foreigners in the Soviet Union throughout his stay as U.S. Ambassador. His reports from the Soviet Union were pragmatic, optimistic, and usually devoid of criticism of Stalin and his policies. While he briefly noted the USSR's 'authoritarian' form of government, Davies praised the nation's boundless natural resources and the contentment of Soviet workers while 'building socialism'.[8] He went on numerous sanitized tours of the country, carefully prearranged by Soviet officials. In one of his final memos from Moscow to Washington D.C., Davies assessed:
Davies attended some of the Stalinist purge trials of the late 1930s, and despite widespread evidence to the contrary, was convinced of the guilt of the accused, although he was a lawyer himself. His opinions were at odds with most of the non-Stalinist press of the day, as well as those of his own staff, many of whom had been in the country far longer than Davies.[10] The career diplomat Charles Bohlen, who served under Davies in Moscow, later wrote:[10]
When a campaign began in the U.S. to intervene on behalf of Ruth Rubens, an American woman who had disappeared in Moscow and was being held in Butyrskaya Prison, the U.S. embassy staff was so upset about Davies’s inaction on behalf of those being arrested and liquidated that they contemplated mass resignation.[11] Instead, they decided to initiate inquiries on Rubens's behalf. When Davies, who was out of the country, returned to Moscow, he apologized to the Soviet ambassador to the U.S. — and to FDR — for his staff’s attempts to help Rubens.[11]
When Davies’ wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was woken up at night by gun blasts from the basement of the building across the street (the guns belonged to Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, who were in the process of murdering prisoners), her husband would explain that she had merely heard the sound of excavation drills for Stalin’s new Moscow metro subway system. Davies also ignored reports of American citizens being arrested by Stalin's secret police.[11] Even after Americans living in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the embassy in Moscow to plead for new passports to leave Russia (Stalin had taken their original U.S. passports for 'registration' purposes years before), Davies was unmoved.[11] Though many were communists, others had moved to Soviet Russia as skilled auto workers to help produce cars at the recently-constructed GAZ automobile factory built by the Ford Motor Company. The American workers, suspected by Stalin of being 'poisoned' by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka Prison by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured and either executed[12] or exiled to Soviet gulags. Davies refused to lodge even a mild diplomatic protest, and later commented to the media: “The Soviet Union is doing wonderful things.[11] The leaders of the government are an extremely capable, serious, hardworking, and powerful group of men and women.”[11]
After Moscow, Davies was assigned to the post of Ambassador in Belgium (1938–1939) and Minister to Luxembourg concurrently before being called back to the United States following the declaration of war in 1939. Davies served as a special assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
During the 1930s, the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin began selling art treasures and other valuables seized from the Romanov family and other Russian citizens after the Russian revolution in order to earn hard currency
It was later alleged that many works of art from the Tretyakov Gallery and other collections were either donated or offered at nominal prices to Joseph E. Davies and his wife, who were both art collectors. Davies is also alleged to have purchased art expropriated from Soviet citizens well after the Russian Revolution, including victims of Stalin's Terror at discount prices from Soviet authorities.[13]
Davies' work in the Soviet Union resulted in his popular book, Mission to Moscow. The book—published by Simon and Schuster in 1941 which sold close to 700,000 copies world wide in many languages—consists of letters, diary entries, and Davies’ State Department reports between 1936 and 1938, which Roosevelt agreed for Davies to use.
In 1943, the book was adapted as a Warner Brothers movie in starring Walter Huston as Davies and Ann Harding as his wife Marjorie Post Davies. As part of his book contract, Davies retained absolute control of the script, and his rejection of the original script caused Warner Brothers to hire a new screenwriter, Howard Koch, to rewrite the script in order to gain Davies' approval.[14] The movie, made during World War II, showed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in an extremely positive light. Completed in late April 1943, the film was, in the words of Robert Buckner, the film's producer, "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation[15]...
The movie whitewashed the Moscow trials, rationalized Moscow's participation in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its unprovoked invasion of Finland, and portrayed the Soviet Union as a non-totalitarian state that was moving towards the American democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. As did the book,[16] the final screenplay portrayed the defendants in the Moscow trials as undeniably guilty. It also showed the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists.[17]
In May 1943 Roosevelt sent Davies on a second Mission to Moscow. He was gone 27 days and traveled 25,779 carrying a secret letter from the President to Stalin. Because of the war raging in Europe, Davies could not fly over Europe and so flew from New York to Brazil, to Dakar; Luxor, Egypt; Baghdad, Iraq; Teheran, Iran; Kuibyshev, Russia; Stalingrad, Russia and on to Moscow. He returned to the States via Novosibirsk and Alaska.[18]
FDR wanted to discuss matters with Stalin—one on one—and felt that setting up such a meeting could be done more easily through a mutual and trusted friend—Davies. In the letter, FDR was asking for a visit between himself and Stalin where they could talk over matters without restraint. It would only include an interpreter and stenographer. Prime Minister Churchill and Foreign Minister Eden had often met with Stalin and Molotov. FDR and Secretary Hull had not. Stalin agreed to a meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska on July 15 or August 15. He asked that Davies stress to FDR that Hitler was massing his armies for an all-out drive and that they needed more of everything through Lend-Lease.[19]
Davies was surprised to find much the same hostility and what he regarded as prejudice in the Moscow Diplomatic Crops (toward the Russians) as when he was in Moscow between 1937-1938. He urged them that public criticism of America's ally (Russia) might be harmful to the war effort.[19] Davies continued to ardently promote Stalin's interests and requests for assistance during the war, even going so far as to urge the forcible extradition of Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko to Stalin at the latter's request.[20]
Following World War II, the Davies took up residence at Tregaron, where they entertained extensively.
In 1945 Davies was made Special Envoy of President Truman, with rank of Ambassador to confer with Prime Minister Churchill and Special Advisor of President Harry Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, with rank of Ambassador at the Potsdam Conference. His papers from this period deposited in the Library of Congress were long classified documents.
Davies was divorced by his wife Marjorie in 1955. She sold her yacht, the Sea Cloud, to Trujillo. Davies continued to live at his Washington, D.C. home "Tregaron" (named after the village in Wales where his father was born) until his death from cerebral hemorrhage on May 9, 1958.
Ambassador Davies' ashes are buried in the crypt at the National Cathedral, in Washington, DC. He gave both the 50-foot baptistery stained glass window to the Cathedral in honor of his mother, Rachel Davies (Rahel o Fôn) as well as his collection of Russian icons and chalices for their newly formed museum - created by the Dean of the Cathedral, Frank Sayre (Woodrow Wilson's grandson). These rare articles were sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1976 after Davies' death to cover the Cathedral's debt.