Hilter Ford Association

[hypnodoc]

Ford and Adolf Hitler admired each other's achievements.[39] Adolf Hitler kept a life-size portrait of Ford next to his desk.[39] "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933.[39] In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, the Nazi government awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal for foreigners.[39]

Ford disliked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and did not approve of U.S. involvement in the war. From 1939 to 1943, the War Production Board's dealings with the Ford Motor Company were with other officials in the organization, such as Edsel Ford and Charles Sorensen, much more than with Ford. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ford initially refused to convert his factories to war work.[40] During this time, Ford did not stop his executives from cooperating with Washington, but he did not get deeply involved. Focusing on his pet projects, he watched as the work progressed.[41] After Edsel Ford's passing, Henry Ford resumed control of the company in 1943.

After years of the Great Depression, labor strife, and New Deal, Ford suspected people in Washington were conspiring to wrest the company from his control.[42] His attitude inspired background chatter in Washington about how to undermine his control of the company, whether by wartime government fiat or by instigating some sort of coup among executives and directors.[43] In 1945, "with the company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy,"[44] Edsel's widow led an ouster and installed her son, Henry Ford II, as president.[44]

The Dearborn Independent

The non-Ford publication The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. Articles from The Dearborn Independent, 1920

Grand Cross of the German Eagle, an award bestowed on Ford by Nazi GermanyIn 1918, Ford's closest aide and private secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, purchased an obscure weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent for Ford. The Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927, during which Liebold was editor. The newspaper published "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which was discredited by The Times of London as a forgery during the Independent's publishing run. The American Jewish Historical Society described the ideas presented in the magazine as "anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor, and anti-Semitic." In February 1921, the New York World published an interview with Ford, in which he said "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on." During this period, Ford emerged as "a respected spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice," reaching around 700,000 readers through his newspaper.[45]

During the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s, the Protocols was reprinted and published in Germany, along with anti-Jewish articles first published by The Dearborn Independent and reprinted in translation in Germany as a set of four bound volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. Vincent Curcio wrote of these books that "they were widely distributed and had great influence, particularly in Nazi Germany, where no less a personage than Adolf Hitler read and admired them." Ford is the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany, and modeling the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the model T."[46]

On February 1, 1924 Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Hitler, at his home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Wagner (son of the famous composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause but was apparently refused.[47]

While Ford's articles were denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews (Volume 4, Chapter 80), but blamed the Jews for provoking incidents of mass violence.[48] None of this work was written by Ford, but he allowed his name to be used as author. According to trial testimony, he wrote almost nothing. Friends and business associates have said they warned Ford about the contents of the Independent and that he probably never read the articles. (He claimed he only read the headlines.)[49] But, court testimony in a libel suit, brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, alleged that Ford did know about the contents of the Independent in advance of publication.[50]

A libel lawsuit brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to anti-Semitic remarks led Ford to close the Independent in December 1927. News reports at the time quoted him as being shocked by the content and having been unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page," William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval.[51] Investigative journalist Max Wallace noted that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon undermined when James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro."[50]

Michael Barkun observed, "That Cameron would have continued to publish such controversial material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that 'I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval.'"[52] According to Spencer Blakeslee,

The ADL mobilized prominent Jews and non-Jews to publicly oppose Ford's message. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his presidency early in 1921, Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their antisemitic campaign. A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in 1927, recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston, ADL.[53]

Ford's 1927 apology had been well received. "Four-Fifths of the hundreds of letters addressed to Ford in July of 1927 were from Jews, and almost without exception they praised the Industrialist."[54] In January 1937, a Ford statement to the Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as the International Jew."[54]

[GOLDIE]

they had some of this in the movie ford the car and the man or something similar.

I saw it years ago.

Ian