Talk:Joseph E. Davies

Dates?
Was he ambassador from 36-38, or 37-38? The article text and info box have contradictory dates. Malick78 (talk) 12:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The explanation lies in the book Mission to Moscow. The act making of him the ambassador to the USSR was signed November 16, 1936. Davies then made different contacts with the Department and other officials in the US to prepare his mission. He sailed on January 5 to (little more than a week later) Bremen, Germany, stayed a few days in Berlin (January 14-17) to arrive in Moscow by train January 18 (night) or 19. So it is true that he officially was ambassador 36-38 and equally true that it was practically 37-38. He immediately met Soviet authorities of Foreign affairs on January 19, but met president Kalinin only January 25, date retained in the info box. Dominique Meeùs (talk) 20:14, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

My mother arrived with her father, J. Davies, on January 19th 1937 in Moscow. I have a wonderful picture of them as they got off the train. Terveuren (talk) 18:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent additions
Recent edits to this page have included cut-and-pastes from copyrighted material. Simply stating that you have permission from the holder of copyrighted material to use the material word-for-word is not enough. Please see Donating copyrighted materials. It is much easier to just paraphrase material from several sources and cite to it. There also have been additions that cite research and interviews that editors or their family members have conducted. For that, please see Wikipedia is not the place for original research. In addition, please stop adding long CV's to articles. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not the place to post résumés. Cheers --BaronLarf 19:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

My primary concern about the article is that it relies so heavily upon secondary sources, often in implausible ways. For example, the article states: "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.[12]"  The reference is to:  "Tzouliadis, Tim, The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia Penguin Press (2008), ISBN 1594201684". If the incident between Davies and his wife took place, it would have had to have been in their bedroom, in the middle of the night. Historians are not normally privy to bedroom conversations, and I wonder how Mr Tzouliadis found out about it. (I have read the same story, in almost the same words, in National Review's online edition.) Merely quoting an unsubstantiated allegation does not make it any more convincing. It can be quoted a thousand times, and it is still unsubstantiated. I am also concerned about the part concerning Ruth Rubens. The article makes it seem that Mrs Rubens was left to rot in Soviet custody. Such was not the case. In the interest of fairness and accuracy, the article should have added some important relevant facts, namely that 1) Ambassador Davies did confer with Soviet Foreign Affairs Commissar Maxim Litvinov about the matter; and 2) Mrs Rubens was subsequently released. -- From DougRees — Preceding unsigned comment added by DougRees (talk • contribs) 19:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * If you have documentation that Tzouliadis is inaccurate in some respects, please add it to the article. Plazak (talk) 19:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You miss my point. How could Tzouliadis know what transpired between Davies and his wife in their bedroom? The burden of documentation should surely be upon an historian to substantiate statements of that sort, rather than upon others to refute them. If Ms Post was the source of the story, why wasn't she referenced, rather than Tzouliadis? I did not say that the article's statements about the Ruben case were inaccurate, merely that they were incomplete in a highly misleading way.-- From DougRees — Preceding unsigned comment added by DougRees (talk • contribs) 19:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I understand you only too well. We have here a reported fact documented in a book issued by a major publisher which received numerous positive reveiws by mainstrean news outlets. But you don't like that fact, so you speculate that the author may be mistaken. Sorry, but you'll have to provide some documentation, at least as good, if you want to delete documented facts from this wiki article.  Plazak (talk) 02:41, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, "Plazak", you want "documentary evidence". Here it is:

"In the Nightmare" by Ronald Radosh, in "National Review Online" (http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NmIzNDRhNjY1NjE4Y2E4NjE5ZWIwZjllZTJkZDExY2E=): "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 embassy staff was so distraught about Davies’s inaction that they contemplated mass resignation. 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 her."

Wikipedia: "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.. 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."

"In the Nightmare": "When Davies’s wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was woken up at night by gun blasts across the street as NKVD agents murdered prisoners, her husband would explain that she was hearing the sound of drilling for Stalin’s new Moscow metro."

Wikipedia: "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."

You guys are into plagiarism BIG TIME!!!-- From DougRees — Preceding unsigned comment added by DougRees (talk • contribs) 19:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for discovering an additional source that further confirms the two events as described in the article. Contrary to your original premise that the Wikipedia descriptions are inaccurate, you have confirmed their accuracy. The duplicate wording, of course, should be either put in quotes and footnoted, or changed to eliminate plagarism.  Thanks.  Plazak (talk) 17:00, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't "further confirm" anything. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article merely copied from Radosh's review of Tzouliadis' book (with a few lame attempts at paraphrasing). So now, instead of Tzouliadis speculating about what Davies may have said to his wife in their bedroom in the middle of the night, we have Radosh writing about such speculation in a review of Tzouliadis' book. What kind of "historical scholarship" is this??? You seem to think that a tertiary source can buttress a secondary source.-- From DougRees — Preceding unsigned comment added by DougRees (talk • contribs) 19:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

At the light of the above discussion, can I suggest that the article breaches all the principles of Wikipedia? It relies on one source (Touliadis) and ignores everything else. The problems with Touliadis's book - it is simply considered as unreliable (indefensible) by historians. So, what we have at the end, is pure and simple cold war propaganda (the author of the article did not even notice that Touliadis's book is a vendetta against Roosevelt). I suggest the rewriting (it means deleting) most of the article - getting rid of all the stuff that the above comments correctly identified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Redjsteel (talk • contribs) 00:45, 10 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The article certainly cites numerous sources beside Touliadis. There are several paragraphs that cite only Touliadis, but this is not atypical of a Wikipedia article.  If Touliadis is considered unreliable by historians, a properly cited statement of this should be placed in the article.  If you have a verifiable source that particular statements in the article regarding Davies are false or unreliable, those would be particularly valuable additions.  The statements cited to Touliadis appear to meet the Wikipedia standard WP:Verifiability, and they should not be deleted unless someone can up with citations at least as good that call them into question.  Plazak (talk) 15:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Well it is long time since the last response. Tzouliadis is an unreliable source. He is not a historian. The reviews in journals are quite damning.This is from War in History 2009 September: "What we have instead is a reheated compilation of Cold War-era historiography, memoirs (Thomas Sgovio, unsurprisingly,  features prominently), newspaper reports, and American embassy briefings, prone to speculation and occasionally grotesque inaccuracy." The article also points out the ideological agenda. So, if there is no objection I will delete everything that is only referenced for Tzouliadis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Redjsteel (talk • contribs) 00:12, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

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Source on Davies' relationship with Trujillo
If anyone needs more information on this subject, it can be found in The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945 by Eric Paul Roorda. RedPlanetoid (talk) 05:42, 6 July 2019 (UTC)