The Enigmatic Henry Ford
An Analysis of Anti-Semitism
Adam Josefczyk
HST 485
12/12/2010
Christian theology teaches that in the nature of man, there is a glaring irony. On one hand, man was created in the image of a personal, loving, good God, therefore possessing many attributes of God and an inherent dignity, value, and purpose. At the same time, however, after Adam and Eve’s disobedience and sin and the subsequent Fall of man, human beings have been inherently sinful creatures ever since. Thus, there is an irony, a paradox, inherent to the fundamental nature of man. The testimony of history illustrates how man is both capable of serving the Lord in amazing acts of love and self-sacrifice and also capable of horrendous evil and atrocities. History is full of examples of this incongruent complexity. Perhaps there aren’t many better case studies of this contradiction than the life and thought of Henry Ford. Few individuals better embody this contradiction.
Ford, as has been well established, is famous for proclaiming his lack of use for history, declaring “History is more or less bunk.”[1] This itself is an ironic statement, given that it was stated by, as John Heitmann proposes, “the man who possibly did more to alter the history of the twentieth century than any other.”[2] Before delving into deeper analysis of the incongruity, irony, and apparent contradiction that is Henry Ford, one must note that this irony is central to his relation to Jews and anti-Semitism. Unfortunately for his reputation and legacy, the “Flivver King” has received substantial notoriety for his anti-Semitism. As Victoria Saker Woeste asserts in her article, “Insecure Equality: Louis Marshall, Henry Ford, and the Problem of Defamatory anti-Semitism,” “During the 1920s, Henry Ford gained as much fame for his anti-Semitic views as for his cars.”[3] This notoriety has increased especially recently as the 21st century has seen the emergence of several influential works that are highly critical of Ford’s views toward Jews.
The publication of Neil Baldwin’s Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (2001) and Max Wallace’s The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich (2003) have sought to systematically expose, summarize, and explain Ford’s anti-Semitism. Baldwin and Wallace are not alone in their exposition and account of the private and public statements, publications, and events that allow one to readily label Ford an anti-Semite, nor are they unreasonable to suggest the larger implications and consequences of the widely-disseminated positions and ideologies of a man who was voted the most popular in America. This paper will attempt to give a brief summary of this account, the ground on which Wallace, Baldwin, and others acknowledge Ford’s anti-Semitism; place it in its proper historical context of late 19th and first half of the 20th century America (particularly the tumultuous inter-war years of the decade of the 1920s); and use this discussion of both ideas and context, worldview and history, in order to highlight the complexity and irony of Henry Ford.
In addressing Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism, one must examine both the private and public statements of the man. Upon what grounds does the historian have to label Ford an anti-Semite? Henry Ford left a primary source, the Dearborn Independent, his newspaper and mouthpiece that makes this task much easier. As Woeste summarizes the role and impact of Ford’s newspaper: “The Dearborn Independent, published dozens of articles between 1920 and 1925 naming prominent Jewish Americans as conspirators in a plot to overthrow governments all over the world. Though hardly the first of their kind, the accusations in the Dearborn Independent represented the broadest, most sustained published attack on individual Jews and Jews as a group in the nation's history.”[4]
Historian Jacqueline Fellague Ariout, a resident of Dearborn, MI sheds insight into transition of the Independent from a small town weekly newspaper begun in 1901 with a “parochial” outlook and a circulation of only seven hundred to when Ford purchased it in late 1918 and transformed it into a trumpet for his ideas and a vehicle of hate-speech. In her article, “The Dearborn Independent, A Mirror of the 1920s,” Ariout explains Ford’s motivations behind purchasing the newspaper:
The auto magnate planned to use the paper as a forum to rectify what he felt were misrepresentations and unwarranted criticisms by the press on issues such as his profit sharing plan, his pacifism during World War 1 and his failed 1918 US Senate campaign. According to Ford R. Bryan, in Beyond the Model T, Ford believed ‘the press could not be trusted to tell the truth as he saw it, [so] he would publish his own paper.’ Ford also planned to use the Independent as an outlet for his ideas on social issues. In announcing his publishing plans, Ford declared, ‘I am very much interested in the future not only of my own country, but of the whole world. And I have definite ideas and ideals that I believe are practical for the good of all, and intend giving them to the public without having them garbled, distorted, or misrepresented.[5]
Ford believed that the mainstream press, permeated by Jews, could not be trusted to accurately portray his views, so he engaged in his own publication in order to present the “truth” to Americans whose interests he believed he represented, championed, and defended. Woeste writes that Ford “intended to make the Independent the common folks' primer on American culture, literature, and political philosophy, filtered through his small-minded dogmatism.”[6]
Historians agree that though it maintained as many as 900,000 subscribers in 1926, it is doubtful that the Independent ever turned a profit. Ford dealers were pressured into selling or buying large quotas of subscriptions, and salesman were sent door to door. However, economic interest was not Ford’s goal in purchasing this paper.[7] The Independent’s goal was to broadcast Ford’s worldview, ideologies, and social views to a world which revered the man who had revolutionized industry with his combination of assembly line mass production, high wages, and accessibility of the automobile. The paper, regardless of the validity of its propositions, assertions, and arguments was given instant credibility because of Ford’s status. Max Wallace declares that the “best illustration of [Ford’s status] was a nationwide poll in which Ford ranked as the third greatest man in history behind only Napoleon and Jesus Christ.”[8] Wallace continues, “It is difficult, nearly a century later, to portray accurately the magnitude of Ford’s fame and influence.”[9] Before working out a deal with Calvin Coolidge in which Coolidge promised to support several of Ford’s interests and initiatives, Ford considered running for the presidency in 1924. Several polls during the Harding administration showed that faced with the choice of Ford or President Harding, Ford would triumph by a 2 to 1 margin.[10]
The popularity of Ford is briefly highlighted in order to allude to both the context and irony of Ford’s position in American society at the time the Dearborn Independent began to churn the presses of its anti-Semitic publications. For the first sixteen months of its operation, under the editorship of former Detroit News editor, Edwin Pipp, “the Independent was barely distinguishable from any other weekly newspaper. It supported Prohibition, prison reform, and the Versailles Treaty, printed innocuous articles about local issues, and mentioned Jews not at all.”[11] However, the May 22, 1920 issue of the Independent, “The Ford International Weekly” launched the paper in an ominous direction which would define its legacy and that of its owner.[12] That edition fired an opening salvo of a huge bold headline, declaring, “THE INTERNATIONAL JEW: THE WORLD’S FOREMOST PROBLEM.”[13]
As Wallace informs, “For the next ninety-one weeks, each edition of the Dearborn Independent—promising its readers to serve as the ‘Chronicler of the Neglected Truth’—added further embellishments to the picture of a Jewish conspiracy so vast and far reaching that the tentacles of the Jews supposedly touched every facet of American life.”[14] As Robert Rifkind reiterates in his 2008 article “Confronting Anti-Semitism in America: Louis Marshall and Henry Ford:”
On May 22, 1920, the Dearborn Independent, a weekly journal owned by Ford, published the first of the extended series of anti-Semitic articles for which it soon became infamous. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had recently surfaced in the United States, broadcasting its paranoid fantasy of a Jewish cabal orchestrating international banking, Bolshevism, and Zionism in a diabolic plot to take over the world. The Dearborn Independent disseminated the main themes of this potent myth and domesticated it for an American audience.[15]
Woeste writes that this series on the The International Jew, which would be organized and published further as a four volume pamphlet, “was the paper’s most important mission, which made it eternally inglorious.”[16]
Even when the Independent, now under the charge of Editor W.J. Cameron, took a break from publishing articles on “The Jewish Question” in light of Ford’s consideration of political office and questions over the harm negative publicity was wrecking on sales of the Model T, the Independent articles lived on in another form.[17] Woeste explains, “In November 1920 the Dearborn Publishing Company had begun to issue the articles in pamphlets sold in sets of four volumes and priced at one dollar per set. This collection, titled The International Jew, put the Ford name—and the stamp of approval of American industrialism's towering figure—on the Protocols. [Ford’s general secretary Ernest Liebold] did not copyright the work, thereby permitting all comers to translate and publish it. In short order it appeared in twelve languages on three continents.”[18]
The seven year campaign of the Dearborn Independent which began in 1920, experienced a few multi-year hiatuses from direct attacks on the International Jew and deliberations on “The Jewish Question,” the question of how such a small numerical minority with no homeland could wield so much disproportionate influence and greed throughout the world. Even during these short breaks, whether precipitated by public relations concerns or other interests, Ford still made snipes at money lenders and war-mongers, indirect jabs at the Jews who he believed controlled the puppet strings of the economy and foreign affairs. The Independent applied the so-called Jewish Question to all facets of society; in addition to finance, big business, banks, government, and foreign relations, the Independent argued that Jewish influence permeated and poisoned agriculture, the media, journalism, even baseball and jazz music.[19] The Independent asserts, “Whichever way you turn to trace harmful streams of influence that flow through society, you come upon a group of Jews.”[20] Further, the The International Jew pamphlet scathingly reports that “the International Jew and his satellites” are “the conscious enemies of all that Anglo Saxons mean by civilization.”[21]
It is important to note, as will be further explained by a discussion of the context of Henry Ford’s beliefs and assertions, that the Dearborn Independent does not represent the first time Ford’s anti-Semitism appeared on the public stage. Wallace traces back the public origins of Ford’s anti-Semitic remarks to the summer of 1919, marking it as Ford’s entrance or “first public sortie in a hate-filled but distinctively American campaign that was to dominate his attention for the next eight years.”[22] In July 1919, Ford “announced to the New York World that ‘International financiers are behind all war…they are what is called the international Jew: German Jews, French Jews, English Jews, American Jews…the Jew is a threat.’”[23]
As afore-mentioned, the magnitude of what was published in the Dearborn Independent and proclaimed whether on purpose or inadvertently by Henry Ford throughout his life is intensified and proliferated exponentially by the sheer fact that it was stated under the name of Henry Ford. As Wallace mentions when discussing the New York World interview, it “might have been dismissed as the ravings of a crackpot” had it come from any other figure. However, “these words were uttered by the man who was arguably America’s most respected and celebrated figure.”[24] Rifkind echoes this sentiment, declaring, “More ominous still, the Dearborn Independent appeared under the aegis of Henry Ford, a man who not only had virtually unlimited financial resources and a vast marketing organization at his disposal, but was himself a titanic and quintessentially American figure. Emblematically, in the novus ordo secularum of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the years would be counted “A.F.”—After Ford.[25]
As Wallace and Rifkind assert, Ford gave an instant and powerful credibility to both anti-Semitism and the dangerous Protocols.
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was a deliberate “hoax concocted by a czarist official” in Russia in order to justify pogroms and other acts of violence against Eastern European Jews. The Protocols claimed to be “the confidential minutes of a Jewish conclave” convened at the end of the 19th century, whether stolen from Zionist headquarters in France or from the First Zionist Congress held in 1897 in Switzerland.[26] Though by the 1920s, they had been exposed as a hoax, by the time they had arrived on “American shores” coinciding with a large influx of European immigrants and Jews, the Protocols had already been used to persecute European Jews. “‘It is no exaggeration to say that they cost the lives of many thousands of innocent persons and that more blood and tears cling to their pages than to those of any other mendacious document in history.”[27] As afore-mentioned, when Ford put his stamp of approval on the Protocols, based The International Jew pamphlets upon their claims, and as Liebold disseminated them for translation across national boundaries, they gained both an unfortunate and unprecedented credibility and accessibility.
When a reporter from the New York World confronted Ford on the fact that the London Times had proven the Protocols to be a forgery and plagiarism and that they should be universally dismissed, Ford uttered a poignant response that Wallace and Baldwin note is eerily similar to that expressed by Hitler about the same exact topic. Ford replied, “‘The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. Indeed they do.’”[28] Further, the Independent asserted that the document of the Protocols itself was of little importance compared with the magnitude importance of the conditions which it accurately reflected.
After its brief hiatus from articles directly addressing the Jewish Question, the Independent carried an April 23, 1924 headline of: “Jewish Exploitation of Farmer’s Organizations Monopoly Trams Operate Under Guise of Marketing Associations.” The following related series condemned a young Jewish attorney named Aaron Sapiro as the head of a “conspiracy of Jewish Bankers” forcing American farmers into cooperatives. Sapiro, unlike others before him, successfully brought a libel suit against Ford to trial and initiated a series of events and an apology which still escape full explanation or rationalization by historians. Ford’s editor, Cameron, took full responsibility for the words of the Independent, offering himself as a scapegoat.[29] As Woeste writes, “Cameron claimed that Ford did not even know who Aaron Sapiro was, but that testimony was swiftly impeached by the former Independent employee James Martin Miller, who recalled that Ford had said, ‘We are going to expose Sapiro.' Even before Sapiro took the stand, press coverage had turned decidedly in his favor.”[30]
Though a mistrial was declared after finagling by Ford’s inner circle of Harry Bennett and Liebold, the trial had made international headlines and seemed to be taking a toll on Ford’s reputation and the sales of Ford automobiles on the brink of the Great Depression. To the surprise of many, including American Jewish Committee President Louis Marshall, whose outrage against Ford’s campaign of anti-Semitism had been sparked long ago, Ford sent emissaries to Jewish congressman Nathan Perlman, who in turn sent them to Marshall, with the message that “‘Ford and his family were anxious to put an end to the controversies and ill feelings’ occasioned by the Dearborn Independent campaign.”[31] As Rifkind accounts, “
The result was that on June 28 Marshall drafted, and on June 30 Henry Ford signed, a statement released to the press by Ford through the prominent journalist Arthur Brisbane, expressing Ford’s mortification to discover that the Dearborn Independent was “resurrecting exploded fictions” about Jews and “giving currency to the so-called Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,” which, Ford’s statement said, “have been demonstrated, as I learn, to be gross forgeries.” “I deem it my duty as an honorable man,” Ford’s apology concluded, “to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews . . . by asking their forgiveness, . . . by retracting so far as lies within my power the offensive charges laid at their door by these publications,” and by withdrawing the publications from circulation and making it known that they have “my unqualified disapproval.”[32]
In the apology, “Marshall had Ford confess to having delegated the responsibility of running his newspaper to trusted subordinates who betrayed him” by publishing articles and editorials that in no way represented his views.[33]
In addition to the apology, Ford settled out of court with Sapiro and agreed to Marshall’s terms to take further steps to prevent further distribution of The International Jew pamphlets. According to Baldwin and Wallace, however, the widespread dissemination of these pamphlets did not cease, especially the German version published by Theodor Fritsch and other Nazis who loved the work and were quick to use it as a recruiting tool to establish credibility for their own ideas. The long term consequences of the role that The International Jew and the work of Henry Ford played in fascist movements overseas, particularly, Nazi Germany, aside, both Ford and especially Liebold were quite evasive as to actually taking concerted action to stop circulation.[34]
Woeste argues that though the apology restored Ford’s “iconic status, [and] has since obscured the damage the Independent inflicted on American Jews,” stating that “contemporary observers greeted Ford's statement as a historic act of repentance, and historians have viewed it uncritically ever since.”[35] Though Woeste’s assertions are debatable, particularly in light of Baldwin and Wallace’s work, she alludes to the central irony that will be elaborated upon as to the confounding figure and image of Henry Ford. Many in the Jewish community, as well as those nationally who were ready to wipe the smudge off an American hero and put this episode behind them, were quite apt to accept the apology even in light of its inherent irony. As Wallace notes, Ford had given numerous personal interviews throughout the decade which reiterated the charges levied against Jews in the Independent.[36] Baldwin argues that by the point of the apology, “Jew hatred was [an] entrenched, persistent strain on Ford’s psyche.”[37] Wallace speaks to the incongruity of the apology, recognizing the fact that every press release with each issue of the Independent stated, “‘The Dearborn Independent is Henry Ford’s own paper and he authorizes every statement incurred therein.’”[38] Further, Wallace notes, “His own autobiography expounds at length about the ‘Jewish Question.’ Yet, here was Henry Ford boldly assuring the world that he knew nothing of the attacks against the Jews, and that he had always been free of prejudice.”[39]
Before delving further into the irony or self-contradiction that seems to define Henry Ford’s relationship to the Jews and anti-Semitism, one must address the context in which this relationship and these ideas were forged. It is the moral responsibility of any aspiring historian to place history and ideas in their proper context. This is not to exonerate the historical actor or remove responsibility; however, it is essential to both insight and fair honorable historical treatment. To give Ford and others a free pass is dishonest and reeks of fallacious cultural relativism. However, in order to more clearly understand his position and arguments, one must realize the cultural and social context out of which they flowed.
In addressing the context in which Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism emerged, it will be insightful to examine the society and culture he grew up in as well as discuss the environment of inter-war period. Baldwin begins his work be recounting the influence that McGuffey Readers wielded on a young impressionable Henry Ford as well as those who grew up with him in rural, Midwestern post-Civil War America. The dominant textbook in American schools for nearly a century, McGuffey anthologies championed ideals of “hard work, thrift, and rugged conformity” and Calvinist Protestant Christianity.[40] “McGuffeyland” was a “pure and pastoral domain, where a boy worked with his own two hands and benefited directly from the products of hard labor, far removed from urban dens of cosmopolitan iniquity.”[41] Unfortunately, McGuffeyland was also a place where Jews were maligned for their rejection and persecution of Christ and epitomized by the villain Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Henry Ford grew up in this environment and was a true believer in the value of hard work, success, and order and was taught to despise laziness and drunkenness. Ford grew up and situated himself in Nativist America, a culture which both championed obedience to strict morality, yet fostered great prejudice against those “others” who were not WASPs, namely Catholics, immigrants, and Jews.
Woeste connects this socio-cultural upbringing to Ford’s decision to purchase the Dearborn Independent. She explains:
In reconfiguring the Independent, Ford created a media voice that he alone controlled, one that both spoke in the vernacular of his limited ken and ignored his increasingly unflattering press coverage. The paper created a nostalgic picture of the late nineteenth-century America in which he had come of age. The family farm, the one-room school, and racial and ethnic homogeneity all dovetailed with a profoundly conservative and Christian Fundamentalism. Independent articles extolled the virtues of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, superimposing anachronistic aspects of their political ideas on postwar culture. [42]
Further, as Woeste notes, the paper “attacked” those “modernist impulses of its time, inveighing against new cultural trends that Ford personally abhorred: smoking, drinking, jazz, newfangled dancing styles, and what he believed was the disproportionate influence of Jews on politics, culture, entertainment, diplomacy, industrial capitalism, and the state.”[43]
Personally, Ford was also influenced intellectually by the mystical spiritual work of the Social Darwinist Orlando J. Smith and his seminal work, A Short View of Great Questions. This work drew from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and “is noteworthy because both writers share a philosophical brand of anti-Semitism in their conviction that the Jewish race obstructed the integration of purer, ideal values of classical antiquity into the modern-day world.”[44] Further, Smith, whose work Ford religiously followed and viewed as his inspiration, advocated a racialism and ideal of racial progress characteristic of Social Darwinism. Soon after coming in contact with the work of Smith, the “compensation” theory and work of Emerson would also strike a deep chord with Ford. Emerson consented to a racial inheritance theory that did not leave the Jews untouched. In his essay, “Race,” Emerson wrote, “Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments.”[45]
When placing Ford’s anti-Semitism in the context of the “Zeitgeist—the civilization and spirit of the times,” one can readily see how his friend and employee John McCloud attributed the roots of Ford’s anti-Jewish bias to “‘the social atmosphere of the time…and boyhood influences.’”[46] Ford’s America was one in which Jeffersonian ideals of agrarian society and hard-working honest farmers were opposed and victimized by Wall Street elites, money speculators, financiers, many of whom were Jewish. Much of this nativism and anti-Semitism of late 19th and early 20th century America begrudged immigrants, particularly Jews, for not “wanting” to assimilate into American culture. They were viewed as non-American, a parasitic people without a nation of their own who preyed off the hard work of others. As this period of industrialization, ironically escalated and accelerated no more than by Ford himself, wrought tumultuous change and with it anxiety and fear, the Jews provided an easy target to blame for “otherwise inexplicable trends in the culture of modernity.”[47] Add in the chaos, horror, repercussions, and disillusionment of the Great War, and the extreme nationalism and Social Darwinist ideas that were taking root in Western cultures across, and you have post-World War 1 American society that Woeste terms “a wasp’s nest of xenophobia, restrictive immigration policies, and racial division.”[48] As Ariout notes, “The 1920s was [a] decade of insecurity, reaction, and distrust, a result of immigration controls, prohibition and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.”[49] The Independent and its owner “mirrored such a contradictory decade.”[50]
That last statement alludes to the central irony that should now be coming into focus. The International Jew declared, “The Jew is the world’s enigma.”[51] In fact, Henry Ford is the enigma. The man who championed and desired to preserve his rural Nativist roots also did more to accelerate industrial age mass production and the assembly line than any other. If this basic contradiction is hard to rationalize, his incongruent relationships with Jews and his anti-Semitism are even more inscrutable. It would be one thing if Ford’s anti-Semitic statements and views as embodied in the Dearborn Independent and The International Jew lined up with his relationships. On the contrary, Ford saw no contradiction in having friendships with individual Jews while spewing hatred about their people. Ford maintained numerous close relationships with Jews ranging from his neighbor Rabbi Leo Franklin to Albert Kahn, the architect whom he hand-selected to build his Rouge River plant out of such admiration for his work. When accused of hating the Jews, Ford once responded, “‘I am not a Jew hater. I have never met Hitler; I have never contributed a cent directly or indirectly, or in any other way to any anti-Semitic activity anywhere. Jews have their place in the world structure, and they fit it nobly. I have Jewish friends—many of them—in my business associations.’”[52]That statement, recorded in the December 1933 issue of The American Hebrew strikes one as odd and absurd when lined up against statements voiced in the Independent and throughout his life.
In addition to the striking irony of his apology, Ford followed that admission by meeting with Louis Marshall right as he shut down the Independent on the last day of 1927. Ford told Marshall, “The Independent no longer exists…that he had destroyed every copy of the pamphlet, The International Jew, which he could find, that he never had anything against the Jews as Jews, and that the ending of the entire affair afforded him the greatest satisfaction.”[53]
However, right after repudiating the Jewish articles in the Independent, Ford uttered a statement to John McCloud which immediately stood in stark contrast to the repudiation sentiment he conveyed to Marshall. McCloud asserts that “‘with respect to this lawyer whom he knew, [Ford said] that he was a Jew. He said it in the most vindictive fashion I’ve ever heard Mr. Ford express himself. I realized then that when he said that, he characterized the man as being a Jew, and that was the worst possible thing he could say of a man.’”[54] Further, the words of his trusted editor of the Independent speak to the fact that Ford did not suddenly undergo an ideological conversion. Following the retraction and apology, a befuddled Cameron asserted, “‘The whole thing is a mystery to me. I know Ford too well not to be absolutely sure that the views set forth [in the articles] are still his views and that he thinks today as he always did.’”[55] Further, years after his death, it was discovered that in a diary-like notebook from 1930, Ford had written, “‘The Jew is out to enslave you.’”[56]
Ford did not view these competing statements or beliefs as a contradiction. He seemed to think that he could at once publicly attack Jews and yet, simultaneously be acting on their behalf as their friend. Baldwin notes that Ford told a friend who took him aside after the retraction of the articles and asked why he published them in the first place, “‘I don’t hate Jews. I want to be their friend.’” He then explained that he engaged in his publications and anti-Semitic speech in order to wake them up to their own flaws, noting that “The Jews have gone along during the ages making themselves disliked.”[57] The International Jew pamphlet itself alludes to this idea, contending that “the Jews of the United States can best serve themselves and their fellow-Jews all over the world by [dropping] their far too ready cry of ‘anti-Semitism,’ by adopting a franker tone than that which befits a helpless victim, and by seeing what the Jewish Question is and how it behooves every Jew who loves his people to help solve it.”[58]
The key to Ford’s “logic,” readily admitted in The International Jew, was that there were good and bad Jews (the International ones) and that he was exposing the bad in order to better the whole race.[59] As The International Jew reasons, “The public discussion of the Jewish Question is not anti-Semitism. Publicity is sanitary.”[60] In fact, many of Ford’s actions as employer and the social causes he supported actually were quite generous and open-minded. Wallace writes that, shy and gentle, Ford showed little intolerance on most other issues and on some was quite enlightened, supporting women’s suffrage, equal pay for equal work, and anti-lynching laws. Ford’s plant was once the largest national employer of blacks, and many including famous boxer Joe Lewis, spoke very highly of their former boss. Additionally, the five-dollar work day was shockingly “progressive.” Further, in accordance with his notion that he was friend to many Jews, there is no evidence of discrimination in hiring policies related to Jews, even at the height of the Independent’s crusade.[61] Ford had once told journalist Arthur Brisbane, “No one can charge that I am an enemy of the Jewish people. I employ thousands of them.” Not only did Ford employ many Jews, as late as 1916, he was praised by a Jewish newspaper as an “example to other Christian employers” for allowing his Jewish workers time off to observe High Holidays.[62]
After the retraction, Ford never publicly mentioned the Jews by name. However, as Wallace notes, his “public statements began to take on a code-like quality” in which “international financiers” was his favorite term.[63] A telling example occurred in April 1938, when as special guest of honor of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, Ford gave his first public speech in many years, one that he vowed would be his last. Ford declared, “‘Mr. Toastmaster, ladies and gentlemen, we are all on the spot. Stick to your guns and I will help you, with the assistance of my son, all I can.’”[64] Reporters asked for an elaboration—Ford replied, “They’re after us, they’re trying to kill competition. The Powers at be. Not so much the Government as the people behind the Government.”[65] Baldwin writes that interpretations and debates over the cloudy and elusive language from the “Oracle of Dearborn” continued into the wee hours of that night. The debate continues.
Yet another odd episode occurred in 1938, after Ford became the first American to receive an award created by Adolf Hitler, the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Public outrage over Nazi actions against Jews had already ignited, and Ford was widely denounced for accepting “Hitler’s medal.” Ford refused to give the medal back, yet after the public relations fallout began to affect the economic bottom line of Ford Motor Company, he called upon his old “friend” Rabbi Franklin in order to make a statement condemning the persecution of Jews in Germany. Ford asserted, “‘Those who have known me for many years realize anything that breeds hate is repulsive to me.’”[66] Even during World War II, a Ford statement to the FBI during their investigation of Charles Lindbergh speaks once again to the incongruity of Ford’s statements. Ford told the FBI, “When Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews,” alluding to the fact, Wallace reasons, that “the old man’s anti-Semitism was as virulent as ever.”[67]
Referring back to the afore-mentioned relationships with prominent Jews, Rabbi Franklin himself was very confused by Ford. He repeatedly defended Ford against the accusations of other Jewish leaders like Marshall, “continuing to believe that Ford did not harbor hate toward individual Jews or toward Jews as a race.”[68] Interestingly, Kahn may have come closer than many others to putting a finger on Ford’s enigmatic ways. Baldwin writes, “Just before Albert Kahn’s death on December 8, 1942, [this] prolific and introspective artisan put forth a final doubt about the paradoxical Henry Ford, who, Kahn at last conceded with a measure of understatement, ‘once had a prejudice against Jews….He is a strange man. He seems to feel always that he is being guided by someone outside himself. With the simplicity of a farm hand discussing the season’s crops, he makes vast moves.’”[69]
Kahn’s statement may prove quite prescient. Both Baldwin and Wallace contend that given the incongruity of Ford’s thought someone else may have used his authority and credibility as their mouthpiece through which to accomplish their own agenda. After all, Ford at times conveyed the feeling of a very simple thinker in some regard, one who did not articulate his own ideas quite well. In discussing difference in style and mental framework of Ford and Lindbergh, Baldwin states, “Henry Ford’s views were stimulated by proudly held instincts and hunches. He was not a writer. His inspirations and dicta as previously shown, emerged into the public and published spheres crafted by other men—unless, case in point, at that newspaper publisher’s dinner, they were quick enough to catch The Boss , on the run or in a playful mood.”[70] Wallace notes the irony inherent to the fact that, though a brilliant expert in some areas, business and operations, Ford was quite ignorant in others. Wallace writes that Ford believed himself an expert in other fields, quite content with his version of history, despite the fact that he was “so ignorant of history that he believed the American Revolution took place in 1812 and that Benedict Arnold was a writer.”[71]
This rationale offered by Baldwin and Wallace makes Kahn’s statement that Ford may have been “guided by someone outside himself” even more credible. A key in the process of explaining the “inscrutable Henry Ford” may lie in the figure of Ernest Gustav Liebold, Ford’s personal secretary who rose to a position of unequalled power and influence over Ford, his name, his paper, and his empire.[72] Wallace, who contends that evidence may show that Liebold was actually German spy who supported the Nazis and hated the Jews, reasons, “Each of Ford’s biographers in turn have trotted out one unsatisfactory theory after another to explain what transformed a once progressive thinker into a narrow-minded racist. There may in fact be no defining incident that can be pinpointed as the indisputable source of his anti-Semitism. However, there is little doubt about who was most responsible for fueling it.”[73] Wallace offers this hypothesis with the supporting testimony of Edwin Pipp and Rosika Schwimmer. Pipp, the Independent’s first editor, had no doubt who ‘started Mr. Ford against the Jews.’ Pipp wrote, “‘The door to Ford’s mind is always open to anything Liebold wanted to shove in it, and during that time, Mr. Ford developed a dislike for the Jews, a dislike which appeared to become stronger and more bitter as time went on.”[74] Pipp speaks of a “poison being fed” to Ford until it “oozed into his system until it became part of his living self.”[75]
Rosika Schwimmer, the Hungarian Jew behind the failed Peace Ship expedition, is often blamed for Ford’s anti-Semitism. Accusers reason that the embarrassment her Peace Ship caused Ford’s reputation caused Ford to hate Schwimmer, and by extension and generalization, the Jews as a people. But in fact, she offers a more accurate explanation, reiterating Pipp’s sentiment by noting, “‘Someone had tried to harness Ford’s pacifism into the wagon of anti-Semitism…This is the grossest exhibition of his mental dependence on others in questions where his intuition fails to serve as a flashlight… Like managers of a puppet show, they have succeeded in connecting wars and Jews in Ford’s mind…administering the anti-Semitic poison.’”[76] Wallace alludes to the “entirely conceivable” possibility of Liebold engineering and manipulating a link between “Ford’s pacifist efforts and hatred of the Jews.”[77]
Liebold’s own words may in fact implicate him as the one holding the puppet strings over Ford and his mind. Baldwin notes that Liebold once declared, “Somebody had to know and understand Mr. Ford who knew what he meant when he was talking about things, or you wouldn’t know what Mr. Ford was driving at. He sometimes used different phraseology than other people do, so you had to know what he meant.”[78] Liebold seems to have inserted himself into role of Ford’s agent.
Liebold’s role as the manipulating force behind the voice of Ford may go great lengths to explain some of the incongruity inherent to the character and person of Henry Ford. However, Ford remains an enigma. The irony of Ford cannot be understated. Though 119 prominent non-Jewish Americans including Presidents Wilson, Taft, and Harding signed an anti-hate anti-racism manifesto many believe was aimed at Ford, even at the height of the Independent’s scathing anti-Semitism Ford was voted the most popular man in America.[79] And, even if Liebold does deserve much of the blame and responsibility for the Independent and all of the dreadful consequences wrought through the transmission, dissemination, promulgation, and influence of The International Jew, this does not completely absolve Ford of any liability. Even if Ford was a somewhat ordinary racist with extraordinary resources, the old adage reminds one that with great power comes great responsibility.
Ford was not alone among the public and business moguls in vilifying the “international banker Jews.” However, as Baldwin notes, “the difference was that Ford willfully set about to acquire an outlet with which to express his philosophy: the Dearborn Independent newspaper. Ford had the determination and money to promulgate his views indefinitely and made a conscious decision to do so, and no one was permitted to impede him.”[80] Further, Wallace notes that even if Ford’s motivation behind his anti-Semitic campaign carried out through the Independent remains murky and inconsistent, the negative consequences of anti-Semitism were shockingly evident by the end of World War II. If one eyewitness account can be trusted, Ford himself may have been among the most shocked by the Holocaust and, sadly, his reaction stands as perhaps the most “ironic.”[81] In May of 1946, the U.S. government “released a public information film entitled “Death Stations” documenting the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by American troops a year earlier. While watching the graphic footage from the death camps, 82 year old Henry Ford suffered a stroke. As John Heitmann testifies in his chapter on Ford, all human beings are “persons of contradictions,” but with Henry Ford, the “appearances were cloudy” and “the inconsistencies were stark.”[82]
Works Cited
Alexander, Michael. "Review: Henry Ford and the Jews." The Jewish Quarterly Review, 2004: 716-718.
Ariout, Jacqueline Fellague. "The Dearborn Independent, A Mirror of the 1920s." Michigan History Magazine 80, 1996: 41-47.
Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001.
Bolkosky, Sidney M. "Review: Henry Ford and the Jews." Michigan Historical Review, 2002: 128-130.
Dearborn Independent Co. The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem. Dearborn, MI: Dearborn Independent, 1920.
Heitmann, John. The Automobile and American Life. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 2009.
Higham, Charles. Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949. New York: Viking, 1983.
Konig, Wolfgang. "Adolf Hitler vs. Henry Ford: The Volkswagen, the Role of America as a Model, and the Failure of Nazie Consumer Society." German Studies Review 27, 2004: 249-268.
Lee, Albert. Henry Ford and the Jews. New York: Stein and Day, 1980.
Lewis, David Lanier. The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and his Company. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.
Marquis, Samuel. Henry Ford: An Interpretation. Boston: Little, Brown, 1923.
Rifkind, Robert S. "Confronting Anti-Semitism in America: Louis Marshall and Henry Ford." American Jewish History 94, 2008: 71-95.
Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003.
Watts, Steven. The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.
Woeste, Victoria Saker. "Insecure Equality: Louis Marshall, Henry Ford, and the Problem of Defamatory Anti-Semitism, 1920-1929." Journal of American History 91, 2004: 877-905.
[1] John Heitmann. The Automobile in American Life. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2009, 32.
[2] IBID.
[3] Victoria Saker Woeste. “Insecure Equality: Louis Marshall, Henry Ford, and the Problem of Defamatory Anti-Semitism, 1920—1929,” Journal of American History 91 December 2004: 877.
[4] IBID.
[5] Jacqueline Fellague Ariout. “The Dearborn Independent, A Mirror of the 1920s,”Michigan History Magazine 80 1996: 43.
[6] Woeste, 882.
[7] Ariout, 44.
[8] Max Wallace. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003, 10.
[9] IBID.
[10] Wallace, 28.
[11] Wallace, 11
[12] Neil Baldwin. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001, 69.
[13] Wallace, 11.
[14] IBID.
[15]Robert S. Rifkind. “Confronting Anti-Semitism in America: Louis Marshall and Henry Ford” American Jewish History 94 2008: 72.
[16] Woeste, 882.
[17] Woeste, 890.
[18] IBID.
[19] Wallace, 12.
[20] IBID.
[21] "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem,” The Dearborn Independent, November 1920, pg 6.
[22] Wallace, 7.
[23] IBID.
[24] IBID.
[25] Rifkind, 72.
[26] Wallace, 13.
[27] Albert Lee. Henry Ford and the Jews: Henry Ford and the Jews. New York: Stein and Day, 1980, 26.
[28] Wallace, 16.
[29] Wallace, 30.
[30] Woeste, 896.
[31] Wallace, 31.
[32] Rifkind, 84.
[33] Woeste, 889.
[34] Baldwin, 271.
[35] Woeste, 878.
[36] Wallace, 33.
[37] Baldwin, 32.
[38] Wallace, 33.
[39] IBID.
[40] Baldwin, 5.
[41] Baldwin, 6.
[42] Woeste, 882.
[43] IBID.
[44] Baldwin, 19.
[45] Baldwin, 47.
[46] Baldwin, 29.
[47] Baldwin, 35.
[48] Woeste, 881.
[49] Ariout, 44.
[50] Ariout, 44.
[51] Independent, 10.
[52] Baldwin, 273.
[53] Baldwin, 255.
[54] Baldwin, 244.
[55] Wallace, 126.
[56]IBID.
[57] Baldwin, 243.
[58] Independent, 46.
[59] Wallace, 129.
[60] Independent, 57.
[61] Wallace, 16.
[62] Wallace, 21.
[63] Wallace, 135.
[64] Baldwin, 281.
[65] IBID.
[66] Wallace, 147.
[67] Wallace, 289.
[68] Woeste, 885.
[69] Baldwin, 200.
[70] IBID.
[71] Wallace, 57.
[72] Heitmann, 32.
[73] Wallace, 22.
[74] Wallace, 24.
[75] IBID.
[76] Wallace, 26.
[77] IBID.
[78] Baldwin, 26.
[79] Wallace, 15.
[80] Baldwin, 326.
[81] Wallace, 359.
[82] Heitmann, 32.
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