Henry Ford

As founder and owner of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford Sr. made a positive, lasting contribution to American industry and culture

The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on

Though Ford publicly apologized twice for publishing The International Jew, online antisemites continue to use his name to promote it.

Just before Ford was to take the stand, he was injured in an auto accident. While he recovered, Ford operatives demanded a mistrial after a juror spoke to a news reporter.

On July 16, 1927, an out-of-court settlement of the Sapiro suit was announced.

I do not subscribe to or support, directly or indirectly, any agitation which would promote antagonism against my Jewish fellow citizens.

Ford Werke used forced laborers, including prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates, in its operations.

Henry Ford had no influence at Ford Werke.

On Ford’s 75th birthday in 1938, Hitler sent him personal greetings. He awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.

Ford’s apology was published in multiple newspapers on July 8, 1927, but it did not run in The Dearborn Independent.

The first installment of The Dearborn Independent’s antisemitic series was published on May 22, 1920.

This series was intended to increase profits and spread his antisemitic ideas to the newspaper’s readers.

In January 1922, Ford ordered The Dearborn Independent to stop running “The International Jew” series.

Decades after his death, the antisemitic literature published under Ford’s name is still available in both print and digital formats.

After some controversy about the alleged bribery of a jury member, the judge declared a mistrial.

Hitler also praised Ford in his antisemitic political treatise, Mein Kampf (1925).

Ford learned about the Protocols in June 1920 when his business secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, received a copy.

Henry Ford purchased the small-town weekly in November 1918 to provide a forum in which to rectify what he felt were misinterpretations of his opinions by the press, and as an outlet for his ideas on social issues.

The first publication under Henry Ford's ownership was issued on January 11, 1919.

Despite its vast circulation, with subscriptions exceeding 900,000 at its peak in 1925 and 1926, The Dearborn Independent was not a commercial success during the Ford era, losing $5 million in 8 years.

Ernest Liebold, who had purchased the Independent, a weekly newspaper in Ford’s hometown, in late 1918 on Ford’s behalf.

Ford dodged service in the Bernstein case

In late 1922, The New York Times reported the “rumor” passing through Berlin that Henry Ford was bankrolling Adolf Hitler

“I still think this is a phony war made by the international Jewish bankers.”

According to Pipp, Brasol met privately with Liebold and Ford himself on multiple occasions.

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.

was presented to Ford in Ford Motors’ Dearborn offices by Fritz Haller, the German vice consul in Detroit.

“Find an evil to attack,” Joseph J. O’Neil, a veteran New York newspaperman, urged Liebold in a memo.

“Henry Ford is important for having provided to Hitler confirmation, coming from the very heart of America, of an idea that had been brewing in his mind,”

Some historians believe Cameron “undertook his assignment disgustedly,” as David Lewis wrote in “The Public Life of Henry Ford,”

“Hitler’s ravings and public speeches against Jews frequently were based on Ford’s anti-Semitic literature,” Ford expert David Lewis wrote.

has been made the medium for resurrecting exploded fictions, for giving currency to the so-called Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, which have been demonstrated, as I learn, to be gross forgeries

I hereby approve of the attached

it has been impossible for me to devote personal attention to their management or to keep informed as to their contents

while Ford was in a hospital, supposedly prevented from testifying by a road accident, his private security force engineered a mistrial.

As Victoria Saker Woeste, author of Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech, points out

Henry Ford is the only American referred to favorably

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.

The apology didn’t signify a change in attitude.

prompting yet another apology from the old man, in 1942.

Brasol sent a copy of the Protocols to automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, who was convinced that they were authentic.