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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 he was the 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. Early life Davies was born in Watertown, Wisconsin to Welsh-born parents Edward and Rachel (Paynter) Davies. He attended the University of Wisconsin Law School from 1898 to 1901, where he graduated with honors.: 9  Upon graduation, he returned to Watertown and began a private practice. He served as a delegate to the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in 1902.: 10  He moved to Madison in 1907, and became chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.: 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.: 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.: 11  At the President'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.: 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 of the Dominican Republic engaged Davies to work for him when he tried to settle his country's debt. 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. He had a daughter with her named Eleanor Tydings Ditzen. They were divorced in 1935. His second wife was General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, whom he married in 1935, shortly before undertaking his duties as US Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Post owned Camp Topridge on Upper Saint Regis Lake; when they returned from the Soviet Union, she built him a dacha at the camp. The couple divorced in 1955. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Davies was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union by Franklin D. Roosevelt and served from 1936 to 1938. His appointment was made in part based on his skills as a corporate lawyer (chairman, FTC), and international lawyer, his longtime friendship with FDR since the Woodrow Wilson days and for his political loyalty to Roosevelt. 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." 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 by reports 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'. He went on numerous tours of the country, carefully prearranged by Soviet officials. In one of his final memos from Moscow to Washington D.C., Davies assessed: Communism holds no serious threat to the United States. Friendly relations in the future may be of great general value. Davies attended the Trial of the Twenty One, one of the Stalinist purge trials of the late 1930s. He was convinced of the guilt of the accused. According to Davies, "the Kremlin's fears [regarding treason in the Army and Party] were well justified". His opinions were at odds with much of the Western press of the day, as well as those of his own staff, many of whom had been in the country far longer than Davies. The career diplomat Charles Bohlen, who served under Davies in Moscow, later wrote: Ambassador Davies was not noted for an acute understanding of the Soviet system, and he had an unfortunate tendency to take what was presented at the trial as the honest and gospel truth. I still blush when I think of some of the telegrams he sent to the State Department about the trial.(p.51) I can only guess at the motivation for his reporting. He ardently desired to make a success of a pro-Soviet line and was probably reflecting the views of some of Roosevelt's advisors to enhance his political standing at home.(p.52) Davies even claimed that communism was "protecting the Christian world of free men", and he urged all Christians "by the faith you have found at your mother's knee, in the name of the faith you have found in temples of worship" to embrace the Soviet Union. After Moscow, Davies was assigned to the post of Ambassador in Belgium (1938–1939) and Minister to Luxembourg concurrently before being recalled to the United States following the declaration of war in 1939. Davies served as a special assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Mission to Moscow Davies' work in the Soviet Union resulted in his popular book, Mission to Moscow. The book—published by Simon & Schuster in 1941 which sold close to 700,000 copies worldwide in many languages—consists of letters, diary entr.... 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