William Rhodes Davis (February 10, 1889 – August 1, 1941) was a United States businessman whose oil interests involved him in furthering the strategic interests of Nazi Germany.
Early years
Davis was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 10, 1889, into a family of limited means. His father was a policeman. He claimed to be a relative of Cecil Rhodes on his mother's side and of Jefferson Davis on his father's side, assertions which remain unproven. He held menial positions on railroad trains and eventually became a locomotive engineer.
His career in the oil industry began in 1913 when he organized a small company in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and became a "wildcatter". He volunteered for the U.S. Army during World War I and was discharged as a second lieutenant in 1920. He saw action in France and later claimed to have been wounded, albeit the only injuries he received occurred when he jumped from a moving train. He worked as an oil broker in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and late in the 1920s was party to a complicated conflict between several independent oilmen and Standard Oil that revolved around settling thousands of colonists on land in Peru.
German involvement
In 1933 he built an oil refinery in Hamburg, Germany, and developed business interests for a short time in England and somewhat longer in Germany. He served as the principal negotiator of the arrangement that allowed Germany and Italy to build up their oil reserves in the years before World War II using expropriated Mexican oil, until the British blockade put an end to the enterprise. "He is said", according to the New York Times, to have won the arrangement thanks to an introduction to Vicente Lombardo Toledano, a "powerful Mexican labor leader", provided by his longtime friend John L. Lewis, head of the CIO.
He was involved in many legal battles in the course of his career. In one instance, a British judge called him "an unscrupulous and ruthless financier" and said "I do not accept him as a witness of truth."
In 1940, Davis arranged for multiple contributions, evading the restrictions of the Hatch Act, to finance the October 23 radio address in which John L. Lewis attacked President Franklin D. Roosevelt and backed Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, all without Willkie's knowledge. The following spring, Willkie heard Davis had disparaged him and inquired as to the truth of what he had heard. To Davis' reply he wrote: "I have your very impertinent letter. I had written as one gentleman to another concerning a statement that had been attributed to you. Your replies are merely cheap inferences."
During the 1940 U.S. elections, Davis used funds provided by the German government to contribute approximately $160,000 () to a Pennsylvania Democratic organization to attempt to defeat Sen. Joseph Guffey, a Democrat and a prominent critic of Germany, and to attempt to bribe the Pennsylvania delegation to the 1940 Democratic National Convention to vote against Roosevelt, moves which both failed. The German government allocated $5 million (equivalent to $ million in ), stored at the German embassy, to support Davis's efforts.
Controversy
In December 1940, Verne Marshall, head of the No Foreign War Committee, claimed that Davis, upon returning from a trip to Germany in 1939, presented the State Department with a peace plan representing Göring's views and called for President Roosevelt to serve as mediator between the warring nations. Marshall criticized FDR for failing to take advantage of the opportunity, but most viewed the plan as an attempt to impose a "German peace". The German government denied any knowledge of such a plan.
On December 31, 1940, in reaction to Davis's role in forming and financing the No Foreign Wars Committee, U.S. Senator Josh Lee (D-OK) said Davis' support of the new group represented "the diabolically cunning betrayal of the American people." He continued:
Davis asserted his loyalty to the United States and said he hoped a negotiated peace could end the war. He distanced himself from Marshall and the No Foreign War Committee while expressing sympathy for its aims. He asked Sen. Burton Wheeler, a prominent isolationist, to call him before a Senate committee so he could defend himself against "an organized nation-wide campaign ... by financial and competitive interests".