In the decades following Ford's death in , the Ford family and the Ford Motor Company have engaged in numerous projects and endeavors in the public interest, including many that have been supportive of Jewish concerns. In , for example, the Ford Motor Company sponsored the first screening of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," commercial-free, on national television.
Ford Motor is credited with extending economic credit to the young state of Israel and supporting Jewish charities at home and abroad. The chairman of the board is S. Evan Weiner, of the Edward C. Levy Co. The collision produced what the 21st Century calls synergy. Found guilty of crimes against humanity for helping to send thousands of Viennese Jews to their deaths, von Schirach served 20 years in Spandau prison. In summer , with the German Wehrmacht having marched into Austria, and despite years of deflecting charges he was an anti-Semite, Ford accepted a 75th birthday present from Hitler.
News reports about the birthday present from Hitler triggered a bitter backlash across the nation. Ford apologized, again. And again, people laughed when they read his words. Perhaps he was genuinely remorseful. Perhaps he accepted the medal to avoid embarrassing an international diplomat, or for business reasons.
Or perhaps anti-Semitism infected him to the bone, and his apology was as cynical as it seems to many. What we do know is that this chapter of his life, which lasted less than a decade, reverberates a century later in a crude hatred that seems impossible to eradicate.
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Topic: Michigan Government. Tweet Share Email. The Dearborn Independent, February 20, Artifact Legal document. Date Made 06 January Summary In , Aaron Sapiro--a farm cooperative organizer--filed a libel lawsuit against Henry Ford and his associates for articles published in the The Dearborn Independent. Creators Sapiro, Aaron, The Dearborn Independent, December 13, Date Made 13 December Keywords Newspapers Editorial cartoons.
The Dearborn Independent, March 15, Date Made 15 March Keywords Newspapers. The Dearborn Independent, March 22, Date Made 22 March The Dearborn Independent, August 29, Date Made 29 August Artifact Photographic print. Date Made Creators Losh, B. Gift of Ford R. Dearborn Independent Newspaper for September 9, Date Made 09 September Artifact Photomechanical print. Creators Unknown.
Smith, Smith, View in our Collections on thehenryford. Creators Vinje, A. Dearborn Independent Newspaper for November 10, Details. Summary Affordable cars promised freedom for average Americans. Artifact Postcard. Creators McEachren, W. Dearborn Independent Newspaper for April 14, Details. Earl B. Dearborn Independent Newspaper for April 14, Date Made 14 April Dearborn Independent Newspaper for November 10, Date Made 10 November Creators Harris and Ewing.
Dearborn Independent Newspaper for September 9, Details. Summary Litter, fire, and lack of sanitary facilities became concerns as more campers hit the road in the early 20th century. Keywords Photographic prints Photographs Campgrounds Camping. Factory Air Pollution, circa Factory Air Pollution, circa View in our Collections on thehenryford. Summary In the s, the source of air pollution was easy to recognize. Summary The search for a practical helicopter was difficult, particularly because of the challenges in controlling such an aircraft.
Hemp, Harvested and Stacked, Lexington, Kentucky, Summary Beginning in , the Henry Ford-owned weekly newspaper The Dearborn Independent ran a series of front-page articles that denounced all things Jewish. Creators Gifford, Ralph I. Creators McClure, Louis Charles, Covered Bridge across a Stream in Lexington, Kentucky, Creators V. Portrait of Zane Grey, circa Portrait of Zane Grey, circa View in our Collections on thehenryford.
Dearborn Independent Newspaper for August 9, Date Made 09 August Creators Beasley, Gertrude, Workers Harvesting Potatoes in Colorado, Creators Ford Motor Company. Object ID P. Date Made 27 October October Keywords Newspapers Sapiro, Aaron, Location Not on exhibit to the public.
Artifact Trade card. Keywords Trade cards Advertising Newspapers Dearborn independent. Artifact Book. Date Made November Summary Henry Ford published the weekly The Dearborn Independent from to as a forum for his views.
Keywords Articles Books Antisemitism Judaism. Artifact Printing press. Date Made circa Ford addressed his newspaper to the "common people. Ford himself had been born and raised on a farm outside of Dearborn and was extremely proud of his origins.
An early article in the Independent claimed that the real United States was located outside of the cities. Likewise, rural Americans looked affectionately to Ford as one of their own. Significantly, it was rural publications that had defended Ford after his disastrous trial testimony.
Stevenson had ridiculed Ford's efforts at being a public educator. However; the rural communities still largely admired and believed in Ford. They were the true Americans in his eyes and they would understand him when he proclaimed in his pages that the world was sick and showing tokens of delirium. The recent World War; the Bolshevik Revolution, the urbanization of America, the economic slump-- these things seemed to be jeopardizing the American way of life as Ford saw it.
However; he was convinced that all of this was traceable to one source, and he was going to reveal it to the nation. Pipp had known Ford for several years prior to his tenure at the Dearborn Independent. However; he soon began to notice a change in the man. Ford was "bringing up the Jews frequently, almost continuously in conversation, blaming them for almost everything At first he talked only about the 'big fellows' and said he had nothing against Jew in ordinary walks of life.
Later he stated; 'They are all pretty much the same. O'Neil of the New York World. Ford proclaimed that "The international financiers are behind all war. I believe that in all these countries except our own the Jewish financier is supreme Here the Jew is a threat. However; even with this audacious announcement, few could foresee what Ford had in mind for dealing with this "menace.
Ford gave an unenthusiastic Cameron the job of actually writing the articles. Ford named Cameron as his replacement. By , only two of the Independent's original eight staff members were still working for Ford.
The Protocols was a work that purported to be a transcription of plans concocted at an Zionist conclave. At this secret meeting, high ranking Jewish officials, the "Elders of Zion," came up with 24 Protocols which were designed to enslave the Christian world through various sinister means. The Tenth Protocol represents a typical excerpt, proclaiming that it was the duty of Jews "to wear everyone out by dissentions, animosities, feuds, famines, inoculation of diseases, want, until the Gentiles see no other way of escape except to appeal to our money and power.
If The Protocols appeared outlandish, it may have been because they were a Russian forgery plagiarized from a German novel which, itself, was plagiarized from a French political satire.
Nilius' work was designed to deflect the misery of Nicholas II's policies onto a scapegoat--the Jews of Russia. This work was, in turn, further elaborated on in by a group of Czarist officers living in Berlin and re-titled The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The Protocols made their way to Detroit in the hands of a certain Madame Pacquita de Shishmarov, who had invented a false genealogy for them in order to pass them off as genuine. After they had gained exposure through Ford's efforts, many readers were decidedly unimpressed. Taft stated that the tales of Baron Munchausen were the only things in literature that should be classified with The Protocols, "for they are nor much more preposterous.
They have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now. Madame de Shishmarov had brought The Protocols to Ford's attention through the efforts of his personal secretary and general manager of The Dearborn Independent, Ernest G.
Liebold had been discovered by the Ford Industry as a teller at a Dearborn bank in He soon rose through the ranks and became responsible for; among other duties, signing Ford's checks, responding to Ford's mail, controlling access to Ford, and acting as Ford's personal spokesman to the press. Liebold, whose father had emigrated from Germany, possessed a cold, rigid, "Prussian" personality. Ford once related that Liebold made his eight children march around the dinner table in military fashion and, when they had reached their places, would shout "Sitzen sie!
According to Frank Black, an associate on the Independent, Ford liked Liebold because he carried out orders: "He was one of the persons Mr. Ford could ask to do things he wouldn't ask other people to do. Ford knew the others weren't hard enough His anti-Semitism was no secret at the Ford Company. He once had a box full of swastika pins shipped to his office from Germany.
Ford poured thousands of dollars into the operation, which was designed to investigate the private lives of prominent and suspected Jews. In other cases, liberal Gentiles were investigated in the effort to trace their "Jewish backers. Others were quite prominent in government affairs, such as C. Daniels, brother of the former Secretary of the Navy, and Dr. Liebold would often correspond with the agents in coded messages. Ford says, 'OK. Liebold was X, while Ford was, presumably, No. The budget for the agency was quite extravagant.
The spy system of the Kaiser's German Government had nothing on it. The most notorious employee of Ford's detective agency was Boris Brasol, a Russian monarchist who had immigrated to the United States in Brasol was a rabid anti-Semite who once boasted that he had written books "which have done the Jews more injury than would have been done to them in ten pogroms. In , Brasol and his fellow Black Hundred members had attempted to blame the gang related murder of a youth named Andrey Yuchinsky on an innocent Jewish boy.
The boy, Brasol claimed, had killed Yuchinsky in order to drain his blood for ritual purposes. After a two year ordeal, the boy was finally declared innocent by the courts, much to Brasol's eternal disappointment.
After arriving in America, Brasol was able to gain a high level of influence in the U. He was appointed to a position in the Department of Justice during the tenure of Henry C. He was utilized by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer as an "authority" on Russian radicalism. Brasol also had connections to Dr. Harris Houghton, a member of U. Army intelligence. It was Dr. As an anti-Semite, he verged on the psychotic.
He would later become a writer for the anti-Semitic priest, Charles Coughlin, and a Nazi agent, visiting German officials "to give rather than receive advice. Attorney General George W. Finch first came to Liebold's attention when he claimed to have discovered that Jews were responsible for the abduction of women used in prostitution and burlesque.
He was soon employed to study the shady operations of finance and "big money. Finch was eventually fired by Liebold for his expenses. He claimed, for example, that he needed an expensive fur coat to infiltrate the money--obsessed Jew he was investigating. Jacobsen was convinced that he was involved in a serious "cloak and dagger" operation.
On June 11, , Jacobsen wrote to Liebold from Berlin: "I will ask you to use a great deal of care in communicating with me, and use all possible care that the letters are not intercepted, because while I dislike to think of myself as a coward, on the other hand I have no delusions about what the Jewish Revolutionary Party in Germany will do to me if they find me communicating with the Hohenzollerns on behalf of Mr.
Ford in order to secure information that will show the Jews up. If that happens, I am certain that you will not hear from me any more One of Ford's agents, a Russian immigrant named Serge Rosdionov, went to Mongolia in an effort to find 13 additional Protocols "in the original Hebrew. Perhaps the most bizarre investigation and that is saying a lot was conducted years later by Ford himself. After he committed the crime, Booth had fled to California and went by two possible names, John St.
Helens or David E. A mummy in Tennessee, often used as a circus attraction, allegedly represented his true remains. Ford accepted this account, but believed that Jewish bankers were the ones actually behind the assassination plot. He became obsessed with this theory and traveled to 14 states in an effort to prove it. The articles that began to pour out of Dearborn were, not surprisingly, quite remarkable for their bizarre accusations.
According to Ford and his lackeys, the Jews were responsible for everything that was wrong with society. A look at some of the article titles gives a good indication of their content: "The Scope of the Jewish Dictatorship in the U. According to the Independent, Jews concocted "nigger gin" that led to "Negro outbursts and subsequent lynchings. Jewish professors were the ones who corrupted "Anglo-Saxon" minds at college. Jewish film producers saw nothing wrong with making lewd "sex" films: "This Oriental view is essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon, the American view.
Leonard had no scars because "he will not let anyone hit him. Ford and his paper offered quite an interesting history lesson for a man who thought the American Revolution had occurred in Christopher Columbus was actually financed and later betrayed by "secret Jews" from the Spanish Court.
Benedict Arnold had been "set up" to betray his country by a Jewish aid named David Franks. The Soviet Union was referred to as "the present Jewish government of Russia. Ford was trying to wake up the "boob Gentiles" in an effort to save America from Jewish domination.
In order to prove that these things existed, the paper would precede many of the articles with a "Protocol" similar to what was being described. This proved that the Jews were conspiring to make slaves of Christianity and gain world domination, because it had all been adumbrated by The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Dearborn Independent articles made a point of slandering individual Jews by name. For example, Bernard M. Baruch was labeled the "Pro-Consul of Judah in America," a "Jew of superpower" who took a leading role in Jewish activities to bring America's downfall.
When reporters asked Baruch to comment on the charges, he replied, tongue in cheek, "Now boys, you wouldn't expect me to deny them would you? Other Jews did not have the opportunity to be as flippant. Alexander Pennington Cronkite in The army had officially ruled Cronkite's death to have been a tragic accident. Rosenbluth, in the meantime, had gone to work for Hoover's American Relief Administration throughout Europe and Russia.
However; when the Independent discovered that Rosenbluth had been present when Cronkite was killed, it labeled him both a "dirty German Jew spy" and, in light of his Russian service, a Bolshevist agent.
As a result of a steady stream of articles in Ford's paper; Rosenbluth was put on trial by the Justice Department. He was eventually cleared of all charges, but, in the mean time, had been labeled the "American Dreyfus" by the press.
Some Jews responded to the ridiculous charges with legal suits. Gest was livid, saying to the press, "I'll make that Peace Ship Henry pay dearly for what he said, and more, I'll make him eat his own words. Gest will be ignored. The Dearborn Independent was sold in newsstands and on the street. It also had displays at State Fairs, received advertisement through two promotional films, "The Dearborn Independent" and "Romance of Making a Modern Magazine," and was even hawked at churches and schools.
However; street sales only averaged. Ford felt that the paper needed a "boost" in order for it to reach as many Americans as possible. Therefore, the Ford General Sales Manager sent out a memo instructing dealers to think of the Independent as a "standard Ford product. Some dealers sent free subscriptions to family, friends, and names picked randomly from a phone book. Most simply factored the subscription fee into the price of a Model T, giving all of their Ford buyers an automatic subscription.
Not all dealers, however; actually sent out the papers. Recalled Ford employee Jack Davis, "We had many Jewish dealers and they used to throw the things in the trash without even untying the bundles. They weren't the only ones. There were a lot of other dealers who were disgusted with the whole thing. Some Ford dealers gave up their business rather comply with the directive. Most, however; tried to make due as best they could.
One unfortunate dealer in Virginia wrote to the company that his Jewish landlord was threatening him with eviction over the articles. An unsympathetic Liebold wrote back: "Does it not appear to you that a Ford agent should own his own building to place him beyond the exertion of such pressure!
We naturally expect, and our agents must also feel, that the Jews will endeavor to make victims of them whenever possible. When Ford first gained control of the Independent in , it was distributed only in Dearborn. When the first anti-Semitic article appeared, it had a circulation of 72, per week.
By , the figure had increased to , In , the Independent reached its peak with , subscribers. The largest daily newspaper in America at the time, the New York Daily News, had a circulation of only 50, more. In the meantime, certain members of the press began to keep track of Ford and his activities. Hapgood had visited Ford in Detroit and was shocked by what he found.
On any subject unrelated to the manufacture of automobiles, Ford's head seemed to be "full of wheels," while his overall mentality was like "that of a child. The most active opponent of Henry Ford in the press, however; was his own former editor. After resigning from his position on the Independent, E. Pipp formed his own newspaper entitled Pip p's Weekly. Despite the Independent's large circulation, Ford often pointed out that he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on it annually due to its low price and lack of endorsements.
Ford implied that such things did not bother him; he would gladlydonate millions if it meant exposing the public to the truth. Pipp, however; revealed that Ford recorded these as "business losses," deducted them from his taxes, and reduced his income tax accordingly. It was Pipp's belief that Ford's anti-Semitism was largely the result of the company he kept with shady Jew-baiters such as Liebold and Brasol.
However; Pipp also believed that Ford used anti-Semitism as a tool for possible political ambitions. Various polls in newspapers had revealed that Ford stood a good chance of winning the office of President if he chose to run. A survey of college students had even ranked Ford as the third greatest man who ever lived, behind Jesus Christ and Napoleon.
He knew the feeling existent in thousands of small towns because he was a small town boy himself. Jews responded to the charges Ford leveled against them in various ways. Some, such as author and lecturer John Spargo, instructed fellow Jews to "leave him alone; let him talk. Invite him to the Town Hall and let him tell you why he is opposed to the Jews, if he will. Declaring Ford a "mad hatter;" Untermyer violently proclaimed that he was "densely ignorant" on every subject except automobiles and was "blinded by a depth of bigotry that belongs in the dark ages from which he has not yet emerged Why can't the people realize that a cheap, petty, ignorant man who has grown rich can get just as crazy as any poor devil of an inmate of a lunatic asylum?
The only difference is that is that one is locked up for the public safety while the other is permitted to roam at large to the great peril of the public.
The matter; however; only got as far as Liebold. Regarding The Protocols, Liebold responded, "If you will carefully read our articles, you will find that we have at no time guaranteed their authenticity.
We have merely stated what they contain and have paralleled this with what actually took place and are leaving it to the mind of the public to judge. In their understandable anger and frustration, Jews began to boycott Ford products in droves. Humorist Will Rogers quipped that the boycott "may not be a complete success yet-- but it will be as soon as someone learns how to make a cheaper car. Every effort on the part of Jews to meet with Ford and clear things up, however; was ignored.
Many members of the Protestant community were just as baffled by the attacks sanctioned by Ford. Taft, and future President Warren G. These public figures, along with numerous other statesmen, clergymen, writers, lawyers, and professors, signed a document in protest of recent anti-Semitism in the United States that was clearly aimed at Ford. How much of the article is due to Mr.
Ford's initiative and how much he has yielded to the representatives of others in consenting to its publication, one cannot say. But of course he is responsible for the effect Others, Jews and Gentiles alike, protested Ford's paper by preventing its public distribution. Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Cincinnati all temporarily barred the paper from public sale.
The American Civil Liberties Union found itself in a particular bind. In some cities, its branches condemned the sale of Ford's paper as promoting anti--Semitism. In others, the ACLU felt compelled to protest bans on the paper as a violation of Ford's freedom of speech. Certain cities allowed the Independent to be sold, but instructed news criers to refrain from quoting its anti-Jewish references.
On the corners of Broadway in New York, however; news vendors could be heard shouting, "Read all about the traitor Ford! Read all about the liar Ford! In Michigan, a bill was passed by the House, but defeated in the Senate, which would have made it illegal for a newspaper to attack a religious sect.
Ford is nowhere seriously considered except as a cause of merriment. However; this statement seriously underestimated the power of Ford's message on the rural elements of the country. Rabbi Leo Franklin of Detroit underscored its effect when he stated that Ford's publications "have smirched the name of Jews in the minds of the great majority, and especially in the small towns of the country, where Ford's word is taken as gospel.
A number of ministers sent letters of support and encouragement to Ford and requested copies of his articles. Colonel Charles S. An emerging factor in the country at the this time, whose anti-Semitism seemed to mirror Ford's own, was the Ku Klux Klan. The Grand Lodge Order of B'rith Abraham announced their belief that Ford was behind the organization and was their sponsor.
Klansmen used his publications in speeches and distributed them at rallies. An official Klan announcement in proclaimed that the Klan knew of "no better fitted man in America for the office of president than Henry Ford. The article presented the Klan in a sympathetic light as a misunderstood organization. The Independent had received a personal thank you note from the Imperial Emperor King Kleagle for that particular article.
The relationship between Ford and the Klan was perhaps best summed up by Patrick H. O'Donnell, in a editorial for the Chicago anti-Klan publication Tolerance. O'Donnell pointed out that Henry Ford, "by reason of the prestige of his great name and fortune," had fanned the flame of anti-Semitism and made racial hatred bear the false semblance of respectability.
He has sown broadcast a motive for the Klan's existence. He must stand accused of having sedulously nurtured the development of the Ku Klux power. Futile indeed is it for Henry Ford to declare that he is not of the Invisible Empire after he has furnished by his intolerant publications its strongest weapon and its rallying cry. In the two years since, however more than one hundred hate publications had been established. One morning early in , William Cameron arrived at his news office to find Henry Ford waiting for him.
Put all your thought and time to studying and writing about this money question. The Jews are responsible for the present money standard, and we want them on our side to get rid of it. Ford officially announced his intentions to the press while in Washington D.
He explained that The Dearborn Independent campaign "leads us naturally into the money issue, because the 'International Jew' is the greatest money merchant in the world. Pipp provided two alternate motives.
One was that the articles stopped as the result of a conference Ford had with Gaston Plantiff, who was his representative in New York City. While Ford sales had been satisfactory as a whole, they had dropped dramatically in areas with a large Jewish constituency.
Others had already pointed this out, including Ford's own son, Edsel. However, Ford greatly respected Plantiff and listened to him when he brought up the problem. Another, perhaps even more important, factor involved Ford's hopes for a possible Presidential bid.
It appeared that Ford, in trying to appeal to popular sentiment through anti-Semitism, had overlooked the electoral vote. In , New York had the most electoral votes with 45, while Ohio had 20, Illinois had 29, and Pennsylvania had 38; there were more in these four states than in the whole solid South.
They are human and would not fall for putting their greatest enemy into a high office. Upton Sinclair offered another explanation. Apparently, Ford's detectives had begun to investigate Jewish film producer William Fox in their ongoing efforts to connect Jews in the entertainment industry with the decline of morals.
In the mean time, Fox had decided to conduct an investigation of his own. He soon reported to Ford that he had footage from "hundreds of cameramen all over the country" of accidents and fatalities involving defects in Ford automobiles. Fox planned to go through the footage and put the "best" clips into the newsreels. Henry sent word to William that he had decided to stop the attack on Jews. Still other, somewhat less likely, possibilities have been suggested.
These include the influences of Ford's good friend Thomas Edison and of Ford's son Edsel, as well as a private request from President Harding through mutual friend Judson C.
For those who thought that Ford's paper was totally through with the subject of Jews, however, Ford had issued a foreboding statement in his January 17 address: "We have enough material on the 'International Jew' to keep up the campaign for five years. We have had offers of a great deal more important material since I have been in Washington. Pipp warned in his publication, "The old hatred is there, the old influence is there, and all we have to say to the Jews is, if Ford ever gets into power, look out!
Part of the reason that Ford persisted in his beliefs was because he felt, incredibly, that his articles were not anti-Semitic. He had once laughed at a news dispatch which announced that he was trying to "make peace with the Jews," explaining that he had never made war on them. Ford's old friend and neighbor, Rabbi Leo Franklin, denounced Ford's actions in the press even as he vainly tried to communicate with Ford on a personal level.
For several years, Ford had annually presented Franklin with a Ford automobile. However, Franklin returned Ford's gift, writing to Ford that: "You are determined to continue the series of articles that must inevitably tend to poison the minds of the masses against the Jews. Under such circumstances, I cannot in self-respect continue to be the beneficiary of your well-meant courtesy. You claim that you do not intend to attack all Jews, but whatever the thought in your own mind, it stands to reason that those who read these articles -inspired and sanctioned by you- will naturally infer that it is your purpose to include in your condemnation every person of the Jewish faith I sincerely hope, however, that conditions will so adjust themselves as to eventually convince yourself that Mr.
Ford's position is correct No man can follow a principle unless he is ready and willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary. Has anything come between us? He said, 'Hey you're Henry Ford, aren't you. It's all right. It tells the truth about"' After Ford opened the River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Black employees commonly labored in its foundry and forge, which were some of the most dangerous places to work. Segregation was common in many American companies during the time when Jim Crow laws were still in place in much of the nation.
A striker fighting with Ford Motor Company security men during the strike at the auto plant in Dearborn, Michigan, c. By the time Ford began hiring more Black workers, his stance toward immigrants had changed. This started during World War I as he and other white American-born citizens became increasingly suspicious of German and Italian immigrants as possible enemies of the state. This surveillance was also motivated by fears of unionization.
Ford opposed anything he saw as union organizing. This violent opposition to unions helps explain why the Ford Motor Company was the last major auto manufacturer to sign a contract with the United Auto Workers union in But there was another reason, too: Ford believed unions were part of an international Jewish conspiracy. As waves of immigrants arrived in America in the late 19th and early 20th century, fears and biases grew in the public sphere. Ford, one of the wealthiest and most successful entrepreneurs in the world—and a major proponent of antisemitic conspiracy theories—gave legitimacy to some of these more virulent biases.
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