Joseph E. Davies

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Joseph E. Davies

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Joseph Edward Davies (born November 29, 1876 in Watertown , Wisconsin , † May 9, 1958 in Washington, DC ) was an American lawyer and diplomat .

Life

Lawyer and politician

Davies was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, the son of Welsh immigrants Edward and Rachel Davies. His mother is said to have been the first woman to be ordained in the state of Wisconsin. He studied law at the University of Wisconsin . After graduating, he opened a law firm and was prosecutor in Wisconsin from 1902 to 1906. He was Chairman of the State Central Committee of the Democrats in the state of Wisconsin in 1910 .

In the election campaign for the 1912 presidential election , he led Woodrow Wilson's campaign in the western states. After his victory, Davies became chairman of the Bureau of Corporations , a forerunner of the Federal Trade Commission . He headed this authority, which was supposed to smash the large trade monopolies in the interests of consumer protection, from 1915 to 1916.

After Davies lost a re-election for the Senate in 1917 , he practiced as a lawyer again, interrupted by a secondment as an economic expert of the US delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . He specialized in corporate law and was able to win over politicians and trade unionists as well as large corporations as clients. For former shareholders of the Ford Motor Company he won a sensational lawsuit against the tax authorities, for which he received the then record fee of two million dollars. He also tried to negotiate a debt moratorium with the US government on behalf of the dictator of the Dominican Republic , Rafael Trujillo .

In the 1932 election campaign , Davies supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and, after his victory, was one of the closest circle to the White House .

In the diplomatic service

Ambassador to Moscow

In August 1936, Davies accepted Roosevelt's offer to become ambassador to Moscow. As a side entrant in the diplomatic service, Davies was rejected by the diplomatic corps, who saw him as a political favorite of Roosevelt. But Roosevelt also had political reasons for the appointment, as Davies, unlike other diplomats, shared Roosevelt's convictions and foreign policy strategy.

Davies began his service in Moscow on January 25, 1937. There he succeeded Ambassador William C. Bullitt , who had called for a tougher policy towards Stalin. Davies, on the other hand, was supposed to implement Roosevelt's more lenient attitude towards Stalin. He came to Moscow with the task of avoiding conflicts and instead looking for ways to work together. His instructions were to forge friendly relations, settle the debt issue, negotiate a trade agreement, and get an overview of the military and economic strength of the Soviet Union. Davies was to remain the only American ambassador in Moscow to support Roosevelt's policy of uncritical friendship. Roosevelt and many American diplomats hoped that the Soviet Union could develop into a pluralistic society and become a friend of the United States. However, there were different opinions as to how this could be achieved. The embassy's Soviet Union experts, above all George F. Kennan , Charles E. Bohlen and Loy W. Henderson , were critical of Stalin and saw in the Soviet Union a totalitarian system that was modernizing itself in order to crush democratic states like the USA. They recommended a policy based strictly on American interests. They valued Davies' competence extremely little. As a result, Davies relied more on journalists than on his Stalin-critical staff.

The historian Dennis J. Dunn characterizes the foreign policy approach, for which Roosevelt, Davies and Harry Hopkins in particular would have stood, as a peculiar amalgam of Woodrow Wilson's idealism that the future belongs to democracy, Machiavellianism and Rooseveltism, which assumed that the USA and the Soviet Union moved towards each other socially and politically. The conviction that Stalin was a man of the people modernizing his country convinced the Rooseveltians to tolerate and excuse Stalin's extreme measures. Davies also believed that the Soviets were basically Russian-speaking Americans who would ultimately become democratic capitalists. In addition, Roosevelt and Davies believed that a closer American-Soviet relationship could create a counterweight to Hitler's Germany and secure peace in Europe.

Davies had hoped to be sent to Berlin by Roosevelt as a reward for his service as ambassador . Instead he received the post of ambassador in Brussels and left Moscow on June 11, 1938. Together with his wife Marjorie, Davies had bought large quantities of Russian art during his stay, which Stalin permitted export, and which were to form the basis of the Hillwood Museum in Washington, DC. In November 1939 he returned to Washington.

Davies and the Moscow Show Trials

The second and third great show trials of former leaders of the Bolsheviks and the beginning of the Great Terror took place during Davies' time in Moscow . In contrast to his diplomats, Davies defended the Stalin show trials in public. In his book Mission to Moscow it was stated:

“All of these trials, purges, and liquidations, which seemed so violent at the time and shocked the world [were] clearly a part of a vigorous and determined effort of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only revolution from within but from attack from without. They went to work thoroughly to clear up and clean out all treasonable elements within the country. All doubts were resolved in favor of the government. "

“All of these trials, purges and liquidations, which at the time seemed so brutal and shocked the world, were clearly part of an energetic and determined effort by the Stalin government to protect itself not only from a revolution from within, but also from an attack from outside . They set to work to clean up thoroughly and purge the country of all treacherous elements. All doubts could be dispelled in favor of the government. "

- Joseph E. Davies : Mission to Moscow (1941)

Davies began working on Mission to Moscow after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and, with the help of three ghostwriters , compiled his dispatches and reports from Moscow, diary entries and correspondence. Historians have therefore agreed with Kennan and Bohlen that Davies was a disgrace to American diplomacy because, blinded by Stalinist propaganda, he closed his eyes to the reality of the Soviet Union and sent biased reports to Washington. Historian David Mayers points out that this criticism ignores statements by Davies that do not identify him as a blind ignoramus. In his private Moscow notes, Davies sympathized with and criticized the defendants in the show trials

"The defendants [have] no rights as against the government. … The door is opened wide to coercion, duress, and tyranny. All through the trial I fairly itched to crossexamine and test the credibility of witnesses and possibly break down their testimony through their own contradictions. "

“The defendants have no rights vis-à-vis the government. ... The door to coercion and tyranny is wide open. During the whole process I was itchy to cross-examine the witnesses in order to check their credibility and to break their testimony through their own contradictions. "

- Joseph E. Davies

Mission to Moscow , on the other hand, presented a revised, intentionally distorted version of his reports and letters as an ambassador. The book and the later film were created as part of a major propaganda campaign with the aim of getting the public to support the Soviet Union and the Allies against Germany. During his time in Moscow, Davies had assumed that the confessions and testimony were largely untrue and interpreted the show trials as part of a power struggle within the Soviet leadership. Four years later, he changed his mind. The book contains a postscript in which Davies remarks that he only became aware of the importance of the show trials after the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, as there was no fifth column of Germans in the Soviet Union . In addition to this postscript, which justifies the show trials, there are still other passages in the book in which Davies states the reality of terror.

David Mayers states that Davies was a more complicated personality than is generally assumed. Mayers points out that Davies was not a diplomat, but had made his career within the Democratic Party. He offended the diplomats on the spot, attended receptions in particular and was busy buying icons. On the other hand, however, his private correspondence suggests that he was not only aware of the realities of terror in the Soviet Union, but also of the dangers that Hitler's Germany posed in Europe. For Davies, cooperation with Stalin was in the American interest in international security. Dennis Dunn concludes that Davies was preoccupied with reality, moral issues, and the facts, but that his romanticizing approach and effort to please Roosevelt colored his perspective and interpretation of Stalin's Soviet Union. As a staunch Rooseveltian, he saw direct parallels between the policies of Roosevelt and Stalin and believed that Soviet policies absolutely had to be excused in order to achieve the higher goal of democratization.

Mission to Moscow appeared three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor . It has sold over 700,000 copies and has been translated into thirteen languages. A paperback edition appeared in 1943. It was meant to help the American public see an ally in the Soviet Union. An opinion poll commissioned by Davies himself showed that it was mainly his view of the show trials that had impressed the public. In 1943 the book was filmed under the same title " Mission to Moscow " under the direction of Michael Curtiz , the subtitle was: " An American's Journey into the Truth " ( One American's Journey into the Truth ). Although it was a feature film in which Davies was portrayed by Walter Huston , the film gave a documentary feel, as if it were based on secret government documents. In retrospect, the film gained a reputation for being overt Stalinist propaganda.

Special Envoy 1943

Alongside Harry Hopkins, Davies was Roosevelt's closest political advisor on issues relating to American-Soviet relations. He acted as a liaison between Roosevelt and the Soviet embassy in Washington.

In May 1943 Davies was sent to Moscow as a special envoy with a personal letter from Roosevelt to Stalin. Roosevelt wanted to develop a personal relationship with Stalin and therefore invited him to a meeting without Churchill. Davies was also asked, because of his good relationship with Stalin, to narrow down the damage that Ambassador William Harrison Standley had done. Standley had put pressure on the Soviet leadership in press conferences. Since Standley also considered Davies to be incompetent, he felt offended by his posting and offered his resignation on May 3, 1943. Roosevelt had actually wanted to replace Standley with Davies, but Davies' health did not allow this. The mission was overshadowed by the discovery of the mass graves at Katyn. In view of the war situation, the British and Americans chose to ignore the possibility of Soviet responsibility. Before his departure from Washington, Davies declared that the Germans had committed the massacre .

What exactly happened in Moscow is controversial. The diary that Joseph Davies kept in 1943 was revised again in 1954 by one of his colleagues. Davies arrived in Moscow on May 19 and was admitted to Stalin the next day. During the conversation, Stalin agreed to meet the American president in person and set out his foreign policy ideas. There are indications that Davies' visit played a role in the dissolution of the Comintern and the appointment of a new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church on May 29 1943 played. Stalin agreed, possibly misleadingly, to meet in Alaska .

Back in Washington, Davies discussed further American foreign policy. He thought Stalin was trustworthy. In his estimation, Stalin was no longer a communist, but a socialist who had said goodbye to the idea of world revolution . On September 27, 1943, Davies met again with Roosevelt to explain Stalin's position to him. Roosevelt agreed to the Soviet claim to eastern Poland and the Baltic states . Davies was sent to Mexico City to convey this to the Soviet ambassador there, Konstantin Oumansky , a confidante of Stalin. Davies also appealed to President Harry S. Truman in May 1945 for understanding for Stalin. Truman's request to go to Moscow as an intermediary was refused by Davies. But he traveled to London to inform Churchill that Truman wanted to meet Stalin alone before the Potsdam Conference . As a member of the American delegation, Davies took part in the Potsdam Conference. He was directly involved in the formulation of the concessions to the Soviet Union regarding the Neisse border and the reparations formulas.

Davies was also an adviser to Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He got into conflict with Churchill because he warned of a Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.

With Truman's foreign policy shift, which was formulated in the Truman Doctrine in 1947 , Davies left the White House advisory group. Truman now saw Davies' praises of the alleged democracy in the Soviet Union and Stalin's alleged fight for world peace as completely naive.

Retired

During the Cold War , Davies was targeted by the Committee on Un-American Activities , which, at the instigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy, investigated the infiltration of the American government apparatus by communists and sympathizers of the Soviet Union. The committee found that the book Mission to Moscow and the film of the same name were "Pro-Soviet Propaganda". He also had to be accused of fundamentally failing to understand Stalin's intentions.

In 1952, former diplomat George Howard Earle before the Madden Commission , the committee of Congress to investigate US authorities' reactions to the news of the Katyn massacre , blamed Davies for the White House's misjudgments. According to Earle, Davies made Stalin "St. Nicholas" ( Santa Claus ).

Marriages

Joseph E. Davies was married twice. From 1901 to 1935 with Mary Emlen Knight (1878-1971), daughter of an officer, member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Democratic Party. With her he had three daughters. From 1935 to 1955, Marjorie Merriweather Post , heir to General Foods , art collector and one of America's richest women at the time, was his wife.

Publications

literature

  • Otto Wenzel: Diplomatic misperception. Stalin's show trials in reports from the German and American embassies. In: Journal of the SED State Research Association (ZdF). Volume 23, 2008, pp. 72-94 ( PDF ).
  • Elisabeth K. MacLean: Presidential Address: The Outcast and His Critics - Joe Davies and George Kennan and Louis Brandeis. Online PDF of 2001 Proceedings of the Ohio Academy of History (OAH), Columbus, Ohio (US).

Web links

Commons : Joseph E. Davies  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rachel Davies. In: watertownhistory.org. Retrieved December 29, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Biographical information, unless otherwise stated, according to: Elizabeth Kimball MacLean: Joseph E. Davies. Envoy to the Soviets. Westport CT / London 1992.
  3. ↑ Elizabeth Kimball McLean, Joseph E. Davies: The Wisconsin Idea and the Origins of the Federal Trade Commission . In: Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , 7/2007, pp. 248-284.
  4. ↑ Elizabeth K. MacLean: Presidential Address. The Outcast and His Critics: Joe Davies and George Kennan and Louis Brandeis . Ohio Academy of History, 2001
  5. ↑ Robert D. Crass Weller: Trujillo. The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. New York 1966, pp. 181-182.
  6. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 67.
  7. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 68.
  8. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 2.
  9. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-506802-3 , p. 109.
  10. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 69.
  11. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , pp. 9 f.
  12. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 3.
  13. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , pp. 70 f.
  14. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , pp. 74 f.
  15. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 3.
  16. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 68.
  17. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 69.
  18. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-506802-3 , pp. 123 f.
  19. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 63.
  20. ^ Joseph Edward Davies (1876-1958) State Department website
  21. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 9780195068023 , p. 118.
  22. ↑ a b Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh: A Great Historic Mistake. The Making of Mission to Moscow. In: Film History. 16 2004, pp. 358-377, here p. 358.
  23. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-506802-3 , p. 119.
  24. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 9780195068023 , pp. 121 f.
  25. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-506802-3 , p. 122.
  26. ↑ Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh: A Great Historic Mistake. The Making of Mission to Moscow. In: Film History. 16 (2004), pp. 358-377, here p. 359.
  27. ^ David Culbert: Revisiting a Stalinist Puzzle. Mission to Moscow. In: American Communist History. 12, No. 2 2013, pp. 117–135, here p. 124 f.
  28. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-506802-3 , p. 109.
  29. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 65.
  30. ↑ Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh: A Great Historic Mistake. The Making of Mission to Moscow. In: Film History. 16 (2004), pp. 358-377.
  31. ↑ a b Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 1.
  32. ↑ a b Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 184.
  33. ^ David Culbert: Revisiting a Stalinist Puzzle. Mission to Moscow. In: American Communist History. 12, No. 2 2013, pp. 117–135, here p. 128.
  34. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , pp. 184-187.
  35. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , pp. 190, 193.
  36. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 194.
  37. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 254.
  38. ^ Dennis J. Dunn: Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin. America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998, ISBN 978-0-8131-5883-9 , p. 257.
  39. ↑ Elizabeth Kimball MacLean: Joseph E. Davies. Envoy to the Soviets . Westport CT / London 1992, p. 145.
  40. ↑ Elizabeth K. MacLean: Presidential Address. The Outcast and His Critics: Joe Davies and George Kennan and Louis Brandeis . Ohio Academy of History, 2001, p. 2.
  41. ^ David H. Culbert: Mission to Moscow. Madison 1980, pp. 265-276.
  42. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. US Government Printing Office, Washington 1952, Volume VII, pp. 2204-2205, 2214.
  43. ^ The Jane Addams Papers Project. In: ramapo.edu. digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu, accessed December 29, 2018 .
predecessor Office successor
William C. Bullitt US Ambassador to Moscow
January 25, 1937–11. June 1938 		Laurence Steinhardt
Hugh S. Gibson US Ambassador to Brussels
July 20, 1938-30. November 1939 		John Cudahy
personal data
SURNAME Davies, Joseph E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davies, Joseph Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Watertown , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1958
Place of death Washington, DC