Gord's Notebook : Henry Ford' Dark Side : Antisemitism & " The International Jew" & Hitler

UPDATE: July 1, 2009 -12:40 PM

Nazi Germany medal awarded to American industrialist Henry Ford in 1938 for His efforts to expose the Jewish Conspiracy and the help he had given to Hitler & the Nazi Regime. Ford had set up subsidiaries of his corporation in Germany help the Nazi war effort.

Henry Ford's antisemitic articles were published as..."The International Jew (which) was translated into sixteen different languages, including Arabic, and printed worldwide.

From France to Russia, anti-Semitic and nationalist groups eagerly bought up the publications of the famous American. A prominent Jewish attorney, after completing a world tour in the mid-1920s, stated that he had seen the brochures in the "most remote corners of the earth." He maintained that, "but for the authority of the Ford name, they would have never seen the light of day and would have been quite harmless if they had. With that magic name they spread like wildfire and became the Bible of every anti-Semite."

If The International Jew was the Bible, then to the Nazis Henry Ford must have seemed like a god. His anti-Semitic publications led many Germans to become Nazis. Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth movement, stated at the postwar Nuremberg War Crimes Trials that he had become an anti-Semite at the age of seventeen after reading The Eternal Jew (title of The International Jew translated for the German editions). "You have no idea what a great influence this book had on the thinking of German youth," von Schirach said. "The younger generation looked with envy to the symbols of success and prosperity like Henry Ford, and if he said the Jews were to blame, why naturally we believed him."15 One of Hitler's lieutenants, Christian Weber, boasted that Ford would be "received like a King" if he ever came to Munich.

Hitler's admiration for the auto magnate, the New York Times reported, was made obvious by the large picture of Henry Ford on the wall beside Hitler's desk in the Brown House. In an adjoining room there was a large table covered with books, most of which were copies of the German translation of The International Jew.

Quote from: The Religious Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous
and the Twelve Steps by A. Orange Chapter 18: Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism

There are at least two basic ways of looking at American history. One is that of the National Mythology of a democratic & prejudice free idealized America. The second is the real history of America stripped of its over-arching romanticized & idealized mythology.

For example the industrialist Henry Ford is depicted in the first instance as an honorable hard working American who believed in equality of opportunity & the acceptance of all Americans no matter what their religion or race. Ford is seen as the idealized archetype representing the American Dream of prosperity & ingenuity & the entrepreneurial spirit.

But Henry Ford had a dark side in which he expressed in public in his newspaper The Dearborn Press his paranoid fantasies concerning " the World Wide Jewish Conspiracy". This part of the history of Henry Ford is buried beneath the Myth of Henry Ford as taught in American schools or as promulgated by the US media. Americans in general do not want to look at the unsavory parts of its past& so are always in the process of actively rewriting American history to fit in with their idealized romantic & sentimental beliefs about America. If American's were to accept that Henry Ford was a fanatical anti-semite they would also have to accept that anti-semitism was common among Americans in the 1920s & 1930's.

Using this newspaper Ford expressed his belief in a Jewish World Wide Conspiracy. Ford's antisemitic views were shared through the newspaper & the publication of over 91 articles on the so-called Jewish Conspiracy with millions of Americans and with large numbers of people outside America. Ford's antisemitic articles became quite popular in Germany to the extent that Adolph Hitler claimed that Henry Ford's article & The International Jew inspired him & was further proof to Hitler of the reality of the Jewish Conspiracy.

Henry Ford also set up factories in Germany to help the Nazis build its war machine as it were.

In the last post we saw how Father Coughlin was among the first people to use the Radio effectively for promoting his message of hate especially against the Jews.

During the 1930's President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also (FDR)realized the importance of the radio as means to directly inform the American citizenry about the financial problems facing the nation while explaining his various policies which were part of The New Deal as a way to revitalize the country.

Meanwhile the purveyors of hate such as Father Coughlin in the United States & the Nazis in Germany & the Fascist in Italy used the radio to promote their views & policies to the citizens of their respective countries.

Henry Ford wrote letters to Hitler supporting him and gave Hitler and his Nazi Party financial help. But Ford went further by using his newspaper the Dearborn Press to spread the lies of the notorious anti-semitic forgery " The Protocols of the Elders of Zion " . Hitler claimed Henry Ford,s views & articles in the Dearborn Press attacking the Jews inspired him.

Henry Ford was in fact fanatically anti-Semitic. Besides financing Hitler and the Nazis in Germany he also helped the fanatical anti-Semitic popular radio personality Father Coughlin who as we have seen used his radio-program in the 1930s to spread the most vicious lies against the Jewish people .

For most people in Western Civilization Anti-Semitism up to recent times was just part of one's upbringing it came with their mother's milk as it were. To not be anti-Semitic at least to some extent was seen as odd. In the same way racism of all sorts and sexism and homophobia etc. were just part and parcel of our so-called enlightened civilized society.

And at Crooks & Liars.com "To attack Obama's New Deal, Beck invokes Henry Ford -- the Nazis' friend" By David Neiwert Thursday Feb 12, 2009

That would be the Henry Ford who in 1920 began publishing The International Jew -- one of the most infamous anti-Semitic screeds in history. This text first raised to national prominence the notorious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion hoax -- and indeed may have been responsible for its subsequent wide distribution in Hitler's Germany as well.

Speaking of Hitler, here's what he had to say about the speculation in 1923 that Ford might run for president:

I wish I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections ... We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement in America ... We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The book is being circulated in millions throughout Germany."

As the ADL notes:

Though Ford apologized for The International Jew and closed the Dearborn Independent, he later accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler's Nazi government in July, 1938.

Ford also probably did more than any American to help build the Nazi war machine in the 1930s. As Christopher Simpson describes in his book The Splendid Blond Beast, Ford invested heavily in German jobs during the Depression rather than American jobs, setting up a Ford auto factory in Cologne and investing elsewhere as well. At one point, Ford's German division made plans to purchase an 'Aryanized' firm called Stoewer-Werke AG -- part of the Nazi program to convert former Jewish-owned companies into fully 'Aryan' operations. Ford's cooperation was touted by the Nazis as proof of the "global reach" of the worldview behind Aryanization.

Ford also invested in proto-fascist organizations in America. It was reported (but never proven) that he was a secret investor in the German-American Bund, which turned out after the war to have had an abundance of Nazi connections, including being basically underwritten by the Nazi Party; and he was a major supporter of America First, whose leading members after the outbreak of war held a gathering where they planned to lead the Vichy-style occupational government after the Nazis inevitably defeated the U.S.

And as Corporate Watch points out that Henry Ford was helping the Nazis by setting up factories "In Germany ... General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM's plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps...."

Henry Ford was no Oskar Schindler
Ford Motor Co. and the Nazi War Efforts ,Corporate Watch

The following is excerpted from a report printed by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974:

The activities of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler prior to and during World War II...are instructive. At that time, these three firms dominated motor vehicle production in both the United States and Germany. Due to its mass production capabilities, automobile manufacturing is one of the most crucial industries with respect to national defense. As a result, these firms retained the economic and political power to affect the shape of governmental relations both within and between these nations in a manner which maximized corporate global profits. In short, they were private governments unaccountable to the citizens of any country yet possessing tremendous influence over the course of war and peace in the world. The substantial contribution of these firms to the American war effort in terms of tanks, aircraft components, and other military equipment is widely acknowledged. Less well known are the simultaneous contributions of their foreign subsidiaries to the Axis Powers. In sum, they maximized profits by supplying both sides with the materiel needed to conduct the war.

During the 1920's and 1930's, the Big Three automakers undertook an extensive program of multinational expansion...By the mid-1930's, these three American companies owned automotive subsidiaries throughout Europe and the Far East; many of their largest facilities were located in the politically sensitive nations of Germany, Poland, Rumania, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, and Japan...Due to their concentrated economic power over motor vehicle production in both Allied and Axis territories, the Big Three inevitably became major factors in the preparations and progress of the war. In Germany, for example, General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM's plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps....

Ford was also active in Nazi Germany's prewar preparations. In 1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin whose "real purpose," according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was producing "troop transport-type" vehicles for the Wehrmacht. That year Ford's chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle (first class)....

The outbreak of war in September 1939 resulted inevitably in the full conversion by GM and Ford of their Axis plants to the production of military aircraft and trucks....On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored "mule" 3- ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich's medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as "the backbone of the German Army transportation system."....

Power, Ignorance, and Anti-Semitism:
Henry Ford and His War on Jews by Jonathan R. Logsdon at ©The Hanover Historical Review 1999 Business & the Holocaust

Anti-Semitism has been described as being a disease of the soul. It is a prejudice that has gained particular notoriety in the 20th Century- the century of Treblinka and Auschwitz. However; this phenomenon of hate has not just been confined to the continent of Europe. In 1920, a small newspaper in Dearborn, Michigan began publishing a series of articles entitled: "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." The newspaper was owned by the famous automobile manufacturer; Henry Ford. Through a combination of influence, power; and ignorance, he was able to unleash the largest and most damaging campaign against Jews ever waged in the United States.

A Titan of Industry--and a Bigot
By Hardy Green at Business Week Jane. 21, 2002

HENRY FORD AND THE JEWS
The Mass Production of Hate
By Neil Baldwin

In the occasion of his 75th birthday, in 1938, Henry Ford received a medal, the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, from Adolf Hitler. Such was Hitler's regard for the carmaker that at one time he kept a portrait of Ford in his office and expressed his admiration in the second volume of Mein Kampf. Some of this sentiment had to do with Ford's automotive achievements, which the Fuhrer mimicked with a grand plan for German motorways filled with "people's cars--inspired by the American model." But autos aside, the two men also shared an idée fixe: that Jews were responsible for the evils of the world.

For much of the 20th century, Henry Ford was America's most notorious anti-Semite--something that's largely forgotten today. Neil Baldwin, executive director of the National Book Foundation and author of Edison: Inventing the Century, redresses that with Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. It is a provocative, carefully wrought history that is far from the diatribe suggested by its subtitle. Baldwin's publisher had proposed a full biography of Ford, who was an Edison protégé. But Baldwin could not set aside his distaste for Ford. Then came a major media event: the 1997 television broadcast of the Holocaust film Schindler's List, sponsored solely by Ford Motor Co. (F ) The irony of this sponsorship inspired Baldwin to write a book tightly focused on what he calls "an inadequately told story in American history."

Henry Ford Invents a Jewish Conspiracy at Jewish Virtual Library

In the period from 1910 to 1918, Ford became increasingly anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor and anti-Semitic. In 1919, he purchased a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He installed Charles Pipp as editor and hired a journalist, William J. Cameron, to listen to his ideas and write a weekly column, “Mr. Ford’s Page,” to expound his views.

Ford wanted to assert that there was a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. He blamed Jewish financiers for fomenting World War I so that they could profit from supplying both sides. He accused Jewish automobile dealers of conspiring to undermine Ford Company sales policies. Ford wanted to make his bizarre beliefs public in the pages of the Dearborn Independent. For a year, editor Pipp resisted running anti-Jewish articles, and resigned rather than publish them. Cameron took over the editorship and, in May 1920, printed the first of a series of articles titled “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.”

For the next 18 months, Cameron ran the “International Jew” as a series, and later collected the articles and published them as a book. Ford’s aide Liebold hired former military intelligence investigators to assist Cameron in gathering so-called “evidence” that “proved” Jewish control of world finance; Jewish organization of radical political movements; and Jewish manipulation of diplomacy to cause wars in which Christians died to enrich Jews. The investigators dredged up rumors that president Woodrow Wilson took secret orders over the phone from Justice Brandeis and that a Jewish member of the Federal Reserve Board personally thwarted Ford’s plan to purchase nitrate mines from the Federal government.

A few months after the series began, Ford’s operatives introduced him to a Russian émigré, Paquita de Shishmareff. She showed Ford a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, now well-known as a malicious forgery created by the Russian czar’s secret service at the turn of the century that purportedly recorded a series of lectures by a Jewish elder outlining a conspiracy to overthrow European governments. Ford passed the Protocols to Cameron, and the Independent turned its attention to bringing this “blueprint” for world domination to the public.

The Independent charged that the national debt was Jewish-inspired to enslave Americans, and that German Jewish financier Paul Warburg had emigrated to America “for the express purpose of changing our financial system” by creating the Federal Reserve. The paper labeled Jews an “international nation” with had an unfair advantage in business over Christians, who relied on individualism to get ahead. The paper even described American Jewish aid for oppressed Jews overseas as part of the conspiracy.

THE INTERNATIONAL JEW,
THE WORLD'S FOREMOST PROBLEM Abridged from the original as published by the world renowned industrial leader,
HENRY FORD, SR. by G. F. Green.London, February, 1948.

Note similarities between Jewish cabal conspiracy & ann Coulter's Godless Liberals.

The Churches & Jewry
...Jews have actually invaded, in person and in program, hundreds of American churches, with their subversive and impossible social ideals, and at last became so cocksure of their domination of the situation that they were met with the inevitable check.

Clergymen ought to know that seven-eights of the economic mush they speak from the pulpit is prepared by Jewish professors of political economy and revolutionary leaders. They should be informed that economic thought has been so completely Judaized by means of a deliberate and masterly plan of camouflaged propaganda, that the mass-thought of the crowd (which is the thought mostly echoed in "popular" pulpits and editorials) is more Jewish than Jewry itself holds.

The Jew has got hold of the Church in doctrine, in liberalism, so-called, and in the feverish and feeble sociological diversions of many classes. If there is any place where a straight study of the Jewish Question should be made it is in the modern Church which is unconsciously giving allegiance to a mass of Jewish propaganda. It is not reaction that is counselled here; it is progress along constructive paths, the paths of our forefathers, the Anglo-Saxons, who have to this day been the World-Builders, the Makers of cities and commerce and continents; and not the Jews who have never been builders or pioneers, who have never peopled the wilderness, but who move in upon the labors of other men. They are not to be blamed for not being Builders or Pioneers, perhaps; they are to be blamed for claiming all the rights of pioneers; but even then, perhaps, their blame ought not to be so great as the blame that rests upon the sons of the Anglo-Saxons for rejecting the straightforward Building of their fathers, and taking up with the doubtful ideas of Judah.

From chapter JEWRY IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

...They find that "freelove" doctrines make exhilarating club topics, but that the Family -- the old-fashioned loyalty of one man and one woman to each other and their children -- is the basis not only of society, but of all personal character and progress. They find that Revolution, while a delightful subject for fiery debates and an excellent stimulant to the feeling of superman-likeness, is nevertheless not the process of progress.

The trouble with the colleges has progressed along precisely the same lines that have been described in connection with the churches. First, Jewish higher criticism in the destruction of young men's sense of respect for the ancient foundations; second, Jewish revolutionary social doctrines. The two always go together. They cannot live apart. They are the fulfillment of the Protocol's program to split non-Jewish society by means of ideas.

It is idle to attack the "radicalism" of college student -- these are the qualities of immaturity. But it is not idle to show that social radicalism ("radicalism" being a very good word very sadly misused) comes from a Jewish source. The central group of Red philosophers in every university is a Jewish group, with often enough a "Gentile front" in the shape of a deluded professor. Some of these professors are in the pay of outside Red organizations. There are Intercollegiate Socialist Societies, swarming with Jews and Jewish influences, and toting Jewish professors around the country, addressing fraternities under the patronage of the best civic and university auspices. Student lecture courses are fine pasture for this propaganda, the purpose being to give the students the thrill of believing that they are taking part in the beginning of a new great movement, comparable to the winning of Independence.

The revolutionary forces which head up in Jewry rely very heavily on the respectability which is given their movement by the adhesion of students and a few professors. It was so in Russia -- everyone knows what the name "student" eventually came to signify in that country. The Jewish Chautauqua, which works almost exclusively in colleges and universities, together with Bolshevism in art, science, religion, economics and sociology, are driving straight through the Anglo-Saxon traditions and landmarks of our race of students. These are ably assisted by professors and clergymen whose thinking has been dislocated and poisoned by Jewish subversive influences in theology and sociology.

Chapter 6.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE "JEWISH PROTOCOLS"

The documents most frequently mentioned by those who are interested in the theory of Jewish World Power rather than in the actual operation of that power in the world today, are those 24 documents known as "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."

The Protocols have attracted much attention in Europe, having been the center of an important storm of opinion in England, but discussion of them in the United States has been limited.

Who it was that first entitled these documents with the name of the "Elders of Zion" is not known. It would be possible without serious mutilation of the documents to remove all hint of Jewish authorship, and yet retain all the main points of the most comprehensive program for world subjugation that has ever come to public knowledge.

--------------------

See article from: Anti-Defamation League about the revival of anti-semitic articles by Henry Ford originally published in his newspaper the Dearborn Press in the 1920s "The International Jew/Anti-Semitism from the Roaring Twenties Revived on the Web "

...The Dearborn Independent

The Dearborn Publishing Company published The Dearborn Independent newspaper. At the peak of its popularity, the Dearborn, Michigan paper, owned by auto magnate Henry Ford Sr., boasted a circulation of 700,000. The Dearborn Independent first attacked Jews in its May 22, 1920 issue and continued to do so in 91 subsequent editions.

Many of the paper's anti-Semitic articles were reprinted by the Dearborn Publishing Company in four paper-bound volumes: The International Jew, the World. s Foremost Problem (November, 1920); Jewish Activities in the United States (April, 1921); Jewish Influences in American Life (November, 1921); and Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States (May, 1922). Collectively known as The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, these volumes were later published in a variety of languages and disseminated widely in the United States and abroad.

For decades, The International Jew has been in the public domain. It can be reprinted by anyone who wishes to do so. In the late 1950s, anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith edited and published an abridged version of The International Jew culled from the original Dearborn Independent articles. The complete text of Smith's version now is easily found at many hate sites on the World Wide Web.

...The International Jew and The Protocols

Having heard in advance about the Dearborn Publishing Company's plan to attack Jews, E.G. Pipp, editor of The Dearborn Independent, resigned in disgust in April, 1920, and was replaced by William J. Cameron. Ernest Liebold, Henry Ford Sr.. s personal secretary, began to collect anti-Semitic material. Liebold passed this material to Cameron, who oversaw the articles that compose The International Jew, likely writing many of them himself. "When we get through with the Jews," Liebold was quoted in court as saying, "there won't be one of them who will dare raise his head in public."

A version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most notorious political forgery of modern times, found its way into Liebold's hands. Taken by the gullible as the confidential minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders, The Protocols has consistently been held up by anti-Semites as proof that Jews are plotting to take over the world. Even though it has been thoroughly discredited, The Protocols continues to circulate among anti-Semites.

Liebold passed the text of The Protocols on to Cameron, who modernized Brasol's translation and used it as the foundation for The International Jew. Each of the chapters in Gerald L.K. Smith's version of the International Jew begins with a quotation from The Protocols, and one chapter "An Introduction to the Jewish Protocols is devoted to it entirely. One Dearborn Independent article lauded The Protocols as "too terribly real for fiction, too well-sustained for speculation, too deep in its knowledge of the secret springs of life for forgery." "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on," Ford stated in 1921. "They have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now.