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.
[3][6] "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.
[10] 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".
Senator Josh Lee (D-OK) said Davis' support of the new group represented "the diabolically cunning betrayal of the American people."
He continued:[12] The record of this man Davis shows conclusively the great financial stake he has in a complete Nazi victory in the European war.
Much of the gasoline sending showers of fiery death into the defenseless heart of London was sold to the German government by this man Davis....
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".
[14] The same day, Wheeler scheduled Davis to testify before the Senate Interstate Commerce Subcommittee about the "peace place" described by Marshall.
[3] A document in the papers of British Security Coordination, the British intelligence center headquartered in New York City, records that Davis was involved in a scheme to provide fuel in support of Nazi Germany's attacks on Atlantic shipping besides other activities in support of the German war effort and states that "The swiftest way to put a stop to this scheme was to remove Davis from the scene."
[18][19] A few years after his death, Davis was named in Assistant U.S. Attorney General O. John Rogge's Nazi Report.
Their older son Joseph was living in Bronxville, N.Y., engaged to wed Doris Jane Meyer in November.