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Henry Ford Sr. was a long-time supporter of Frank Buchman.
He was also a long-time supporter of Adolf Hitler.
Ford had quite a
history of involvement with ultra-conservative and fascist causes himself.
During World War I, Ford wrote a series of viciously anti-Semitic articles for
The Dearborn Independent, which he then
published in book form as a hate-filled diatribe against Jews called
"The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem",
which basically blamed Jews for all of the problems of the world.
The International Jew is still reprinted and used and much
admired by neo-Nazis and White Supremacists even today.
In the early 1920s, this book was published in Germany under the
title The Eternal Jew.
It reportedly had a major influence on Adolf Hitler, and he almost
certainly plagiarized parts of it in Mein Kampf.
The admiration was mutual. Following Hitler's assumption of power,
Ford sent Hitler 50,000 Deutsch Marks every year on Hitler's birthday.
Ford's anti-Semitic views were well known during the period that
the Buchmanites bragged of Ford's support of their movement.
For more information on Ford's Nazi connections, see Who Financed
Hitler?, by James and Suzanne Pool. New York: Dial Press, 1978.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Cult or Cure?, by Charles
Bufe, page 30, footnote 16.
What happened was, at the end of 1918,
Henry Ford Sr. bought the small independent
country newspaper The Dearborn Independent
and, at great expense, turned it into a nation-wide newspaper
that was devoted to spreading his message.
Suddenly on May 22, 1920, the Independent lashed forth with a
violent attack on the Jews. The boldface headline on the front page
was a blunt and concise summation of the editorial's thesis:
"The International Jew: The World's Problem."
The first paragraph began: "There is a race, a part of humanity
which has never yet been received as a welcome part."
This people, the article continued, has ever been fouling the earth
and plotting to dominate it. In order to eventually rule the Gentiles,
the Jews have long been conspiring to form an "international
super-capitalist government." This racial problem, the Independent
said, was the "prime" question confronting all society.
The following ninety-one articles covered a wide field of topics
related to the international Jew. ...
In subsequent articles, Ford frequently accused the Jews of causing
a decline in American culture, values, products, entertainment, and even
worse, of being the instigators of World War I.
Who Financed Hitler; The Secret Funding of Hitler's
Rise to Power 1919-1933, James Pool and Suzanne Pool, page 87.
After Ford launched his attack on Jews in 1920, the Jewish community
responded by boycotting Ford's cars and other products. Other companies
who did a lot of business with Jewish firms, or who were
otherwise sympathetic to the Jewish community, joined the boycott.
Ford lost much business, but it was not enough to cripple the Ford industry.
Despite all of the attempts to silence Ford's campaign, his racist
ideas spread quickly throughout the world. Within a year and a half
Ford had turned the Independent into a notorious,
mass-circulated, anti-Semitic propaganda sheet.
Who Financed Hitler; The Secret Funding of Hitler's
Rise to Power 1919-1933, James Pool and Suzanne Pool, page 89.
Henry Ford Sr. came up with some more ideas that inspired the Nazis:
Unlike the traditional religious and social anti-Semitism which had flared
up at various times since the Middle Ages, Mein Kampf presented
a theory of racial anti-Semitism. The distinguished group of historians,
including Sidney B. Fay, William Langer, and John Chamberlain, who edited
the American edition of Mein Kampf, claimed that the use of racial
anti-Semitism as the integral part of a political program was Hitler's
"Copernican discovery."24
However, this harsh new philosophy was first propagated to the general
public, not by Adolf Hitler, but by Henry Ford.
24. Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, editors' fn., p. 155.
Who Financed Hitler; The Secret Funding of Hitler's
Rise to Power 1919-1933, James Pool and Suzanne Pool, pages 91-92.
And Ford declared that...
In contrast to the Jews, who are presented in The International Jew
as a race "that has no civilization to point to, no aspiring religion...
no great achievement in any realm...,"28
the Anglo-Saxons are portrayed as explorers, nation builders, and thinkers.
As Ford was fond of telling people, it was the Anglo-Saxons who overcame all
odds to establish a great new civilization on the American continent.
Their accomplishments throughout the centuries, Ford said, have proven that
the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to "master the world."
28. The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem,
abridged from the original as published by Henry Ford, in the
Dearborn Independent, ed. Gerald L. K. Smith (Los Angeles, 1964), p. 30.
Who Financed Hitler; The Secret Funding of Hitler's
Rise to Power 1919-1933, James Pool and Suzanne Pool, page 92.
[Curiously, Carl Jung wrote the very same things about the
Jews having built
no great culture or civilization, many years later.
Perhaps Carl Jung also read Henry Ford's diatribes.]
Henry Ford bundled his 91 articles together and published them in book form as
The International Jew.
Some of the chapters were:
- Are the Jews Victims or Persecutors?
- Jewish Gamblers Corrupt American Baseball
- Jewish Degradation of American Baseball
[Henry Ford was very upset
about "the commercialization of baseball". Some star
baseball players were beginning to receive what Ford considered to be
very large salaries ($125,000 for Babe Ruth's contract was mentioned),
and Ford blamed the Jews for all of it. It is funny that the fabulously
wealthy multi-millionaire Ford felt that Babe Ruth
should work for peanuts, but that he, Henry Ford, should not.]
- Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music
Yes, everybody knows how the Jews all moved out of New York City and went to New Orleans
and took over Basin Street...
- How the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing
- Liquor, Gambling, Vice, and Corruption.
Ford says that Jews control all of the mobs.
Silly me, I thought that Alfonso Caponé was
an Italian name, but what do I know?
- Jewish Hot-Beds of Bolshevism in the U.S.
- Jew Trades Link With World Revolutionaries
- Will Jewish Zionism Bring Armageddon?
- How the Jews Use Power — By an Eyewitness
- How Jews Ruled and Ruined Tammany Hall
- Jew Wires Direct Tammany's Gentile Puppets
- Dr. Levy, a Jew, Admits His People's Error
- Jewish Idea Molded Federal Reserve Plan
- Jewish Idea of Central Bank for America
- How Jewish International Finance Functions
- Jewish Power and America's Money Famine
The level of stereotyping and hatred is almost unbelievable. For instance,
Ford considered all of the Jewish garment makers to be Bolsheviks:
'Why the tendency of the Jew to the "needle trades"?
It is explained in his aversion to manual labor, his abhorrence of agricultural
life, and his desire to arrange his own affairs.'
(Page 91, Jewish Hot-Beds of Bolshevism in the U.S.)
...the "needle trades" being exclusively Jewish, all their abuses
are Jewish too. ... Bolshevism is not Russian but Jewish...
(Page 92, Jewish Hot-Beds of Bolshevism in the U.S.)
But in other chapters, Henry Ford declared that the Jews were cleverly controlling international
banking and finance, not busy making garments. And I never noticed Henry Ford
taking to the agricultural life either, out plowing the south forty behind his mule.
And Henry Ford sure insisted on arranging his own affairs.
The International Jew 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."14
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.
When news of the Jewish boycotts reached the Nazis, Hitler
declared that "the struggle of international Jewish
finance against Ford has only strengthened the sympathies
of the National Socialist Party for Ford and has given the
broadest circulation to his book,
The International Jew."16
And in 1923, when Hitler learned that Ford might run for
President, he said, according to the Chicago Tribune,
"I wish that 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 to
millions throughout Germany."17
...Not only did Hitler specifically praise Henry Ford in Mein Kampf,
but many of Hitler's ideas were also a direct reflection of Ford's racist
philosophy. There is a great similarity between The International Jew
and Hitler's Mein Kampf,21
and some passages are so identical that it has been said that
Hitler copied directly from Ford's publication.*
Hitler also read Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work,
which was published in 1922 and was a best seller in Germany,
as well as Ford's book entitled Today and
Tomorrow.22
There can be no doubt as to the influence of Henry Ford's ideas
on Hitler. Not only do Hitler's writings and practices
reflect The International Jew, but one of his closest
associates, Dietrich Eckart, specifically mentioned
the Protocols [of the Learned Elders of
Zion50]
and The International Jew as sources of inspiration for the
Nazi leader.23
* The International Jew was first published by Ford in
1920. Hitler did not begin to write Mein Kampf until 1924.
14. David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American
Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit, 1976), p. 135.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Quoted in John Roy Carlson, Under Cover: My Four Years in the
Nazi Underworld of America (New York, 1943), p. 210.
21. Lewis, op. cit., p. 143; Hitler, Mein Kampf,
editors' fn., p. 929.
22. Hitler's Secret Conversations, p. 228.
23. Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The myth of the Jewish
world-conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(New York, 1966), p. 183.
Who Financed Hitler; The Secret Funding of Hitler's
Rise to Power 1919-1933, James Pool and Suzanne Pool, pages 89-91,
and footnotes on page 501.
One New York Rabbi refuted Ford's ravings about the world-wide conspiracy
of wealthy Jews by stating that the Jews in New York were unable to
raise even $10,000 to help poor, starving, homeless Jews in
post-World-War-One Eastern Europe.
"How," he asked, "can we be taking over the world when we
do not have the power to supply even the most minimal help to our own people?"
Henry Ford's anti-semitic campaign brought him so much trouble that he ostensibly
backed off and declared that he was repudiating anti-Semitism and The
International Jew.
Ford met with some Jewish leaders and declared peace.
But Ford really just switched to using front men like Father Charles Coughlin,
the father of hate radio, to promote his opinions.
Father Coughlin republished, with the help of Henry Ford and his secretary Ernest Liebold,
more rabidly hateful anti-Semitic literature, The Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion.50
On July 30, 1938, on his seventy-fifth birthday, Henry Ford, dressed in an immaculate
white suit with a red sash draped across his jacket, was photographed having
the Grand Cross of the German Eagle pinned to his label by the Honorary vice-consul
of the Third Reich in Detroit, Fritz
Hailer.75
A year later, after Hitler's invasion of Poland, Ford confided to a young
acquaintance, "There hasn't been a shot fired. The whole thing has just
been made up by the Jew
bankers."76
In spite of all of that, Frank Buchman and his followers still happily bragged
about the support that they received from Henry Ford Sr.
Even more disturbing is the fact that a man like Henry Ford Sr. found Buchman's
teachings and philosophy so attractive.
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