There are several well-known car brands in our world today, but probably none that have the historical significance and reputation of the Ford Motor Company. Founder Henry Ford rose from an engineer to the sole manufacturer of the first mass-produced and affordable automobile. Today, the Ford brand lives on as an icon in the industry, but there was more than one side to the engineering genius that was Henry Ford. He held some very positive social views, that the common people should be able to afford their own automobile for example, and in many ways he was a generous family man and philanthropist. Unfortunately, he was also rabidly anti-Semitic, convinced that there was an international Jewish conspiracy that had the aim of taking down America. Ford’s views would become so radical and so highly circulated that they would even find their way as far as Hitler and his vicious Nazi Party in pre-Second World War Germany. Henry Ford is one of a handful of people from the past century who changed the world. The delicate balance of greatness and madness continue to define Ford’s legacy to this day.
Since the days of prehistory, the primary modes of transportation had been some combination of horses pulling a carriage. The roots of this transport can be traced back to the Celts and the ancient Mesopotamians. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that the tide began to finally turn. The end of the nineteenth century saw human inspiration at an all-time high and various kinds of motorised transportation began to emerge. The true automobile surge came in America after the turn of the twentieth century, when Henry Ford began to revolutionise the means and standards of production in his factories. This may be an important point in history, but it is also important to understand the long journey that the automobile took to get there, in order to appreciate the full impact that Ford made, not only on the marketplace, but on society itself.
The world has always been vast and wild and the question of how to best travel efficiently from one area to another has often been the subject of thought and innovation. Humans have been utilising horse and carriage combinations for thousands of years.
The use of horses was still the most efficient answer to the concern of travel, both local and long distances, until the eighteenth century. The old ways of travel may have sustained the world at the time, but using a horse-drawn carriage brought its own difficulties. A horse requires rest, food, water, husbandry, and care; to properly maintain a horse can be both expensive and time consuming. Naturally, when a more efficient mode of transportation was on the horizon, the days of the horse and buggy were numbered.
One of the early pioneers of the automobile industry hailed from Paris, France, in the commune Boulogne-Billancourt in the western suburbs. Louie Renault spent long hours working in his father’s tool shed, until one fateful Christmas Eve in 1898. That day, Louis Renault finished his automobile. He had saved money from his time in the military, so that he could purchase a De-Dion three-wheeler and modified it into a four-wheeler. The De-Dion was a motor-powered tricycle, but the addition of the fourth wheel drastically changed the landscape of motorised vehicles. The Renault was able to climb hills easily and could speed along efficiently, with no clanking belts or chains. Louie drove it to a Christmas party in order to show it off. The partygoers were quite impressed and they ordered a whopping twenty-four cars on the spot.
Louis was ready to go into business for himself. With his brothers, he established the Renault Frères Company and they manufactured automobiles on their family land in Billancourt. The older brothers handled the business side of things, while Louie dedicated his time to the design and manufacturing angle of the company. Sixty of the Renault vehicles were sold over six months. To purchase a Renault cost well over $1,000 (approximately $27,000 in 2016 or £21,500, which made it rather expensive for the average consumer of the era. The brothers were smart with their profits and reinvested their money into the business. Within a few years, they managed to double the size of the business and employ over one hundred people. Louis was a demanding perfectionist, but he expected excellence from himself as well as his employees. The Renaults were able to obtain various achievements in auto racing, which had become a popular attraction at the turn of the century amongst the well-off Parisians.
In the 1901 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris car race the Renaults won the first four places. In the Paris-Berlin race, the first three places, and in 1902 Marcel Renault won against Mercedes and Panhard. The many achievements gained by the Renaults provided their vehicles with a good amount of prestige and popularity throughout France. In 1903, tragedy struck when Marcel Renault was killed after losing control of his race car, but the company continued to move forward despite the loss of one brother, with Louis taking on more responsibilities. Louis continued to develop new ideas and one of those was to adapt their automobile to better fit the lives of the consumer.
In 1904 they released a roomier vehicle that comfortably seated four passengers. It was a move that would pave the way to the future of the company, for it was the following year that their business model would suddenly change. A Paris taxi company put in an order to Renault for a whopping 250 automobiles. Three years later the company had sold over 1,000 taxis around Europe. Renault soon became the largest auto producer in France, selling over 3,000 vehicles. Louis began to create models for specific sections of society, everything from an economy two cylinder, two-seater car, to a Coupe de Ville and a limousine for luxury.
In 1886 German Karl Benz introduced his Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which is often regarded as the first modern automobile, but it would be Gottlieb that first brought his design to America. In 1888 Gottlieb Daimler and Steinway & Sons came to a distribution agreement that would bring Daimler vehicles to the United States of America. The first American-made car was the Duryea automobile, built by the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1893. The open-air car featured a gasoline-powered one-cylinder engine.
Ransom Olds was also experimenting during the time that Henry Ford was beginning to work with motor carriages. A fire destroyed the Olds factory in 1901 and only a curved-dash model vehicle survived. Olds used the remaining car as a prototype and through some strategic subcontracting he managed to produce over 400 cars that year. The Oldsmobile was designed for a larger consumer base, not just the wealthy. It was extremely economical and sturdy.
Henry Ford entered the marketplace with his vehicles in 1908, but automakers quickly encountered an issue, thanks to the Seldin patent. George B. Seldin was a patent attorney that had the ingenious idea of getting a patent on all gasoline-powered vehicles, so it become impossible for anyone to produce a gas-powered vehicle without paying a healthy royalty to Seldin. This hiccup was nothing more than an annoyance and didn’t stop the industry from experiencing plenty of growth. Henry Ford would challenge the Seldin monopoly in court and in 1911 he won his final victory over it, freeing all automakers from the confines of Seldin’s patent.
The automobile began to change from a novelty item for the wealthy into a viable transportation option for the ordinary citizen, thanks to the efforts of Henry Ford. Slowly, but surely the streets were becoming filled with noisy cars rather than horse drawn carriages. There was a new enthusiasm in developing motorised vehicles as a means of transport for all. There were more than eight million cars on the road by 1926, and by 1929 forty-five million Americans were using cars as a means to vacation across the country. The number of service stations would increase tenfold throughout the 1920s, along with roadside restaurants and motels. Los Angeles, California, was the first major city to be built around the use of the car and helped to develop a ‘car culture’ that would spread across the nation.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the car allowed families to escape the dustbowl by heading out West in search of a new life. The car was such an important part of American life that by the 1930s, citizens owned more cars than either telephones or bathtubs. The roads began to get paved and citizens were put to work, building bridges and tunnels to accommodate the intense growth of traffic on the roads. The 1939 World’s Fair was centred largely around the automobile industry, with several major companies showing off their new innovations and advances. The start of the Second World War halted the progress of the car for a time, but not before Henry Ford revolutionised the industry.
Henry Ford was born on 30 July 1863, in Greenfield Township, Michigan. The son of farmers, he never completed the eighth grade, but from a young age Henry showed a serious interest in the then modern study of mechanics. His parents supported his ambitions by constructing a workbench for him in the already cramped kitchen. Henry spent a lot of time at his workbench, tinkering and teaching himself all about how things worked. Life on the farm was very isolating to Ford and this gave him a great perspective later in life on the need for affordable transportation for the common person and how the new idea of a horseless carriage could transform the world.
Ford worked as a machinist throughout his twenties, until he got the opportunity to work for Thomas Edison. Henry Ford began his career as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in 1891, where he rose to the rank of Chief Engineer in 1893. It was during this time that Ford would experiment with gasoline engines and self-propelled horseless carriages, such as his quadricycle. Ford eventually crossed paths with Edison himself in 1896 and was given encouragement to move forward with a second vehicle. Ford launched his quadricycle and tested it around Detroit on 4 June, 1896. The horseless carriage featured 28in bicycle wheels, no brakes, and could reach top speeds of up to 20mph. The quadricycle wasn’t quite the vehicle Ford envisioned and had a few major flaws, such as the inability to go in reverse and a propensity to overheat.
Ford decided that it was time to branch out on his own and on 5 August, 1899, he founded the Detroit Automobile Company. He began to produce automobiles, backed by Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy. America had the railroads, but other transportation methods were terribly inconvenient. During this time an automobile-manufacturing boom hit the city and over fifty more companies sprung up that same year, with more to follow the next year. The majority of these companies would inevitably fail. The Detroit Automobile Company produced cars for two years, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Ford attributed this to a poor quality product that was overpriced. Henry Ford was beginning to form a vision for the automobile industry and it required him to have more control over all aspects of production.
The next venture that Ford undertook was far more successful, but in order to attract backers he had to do something bold. Ford built a race car in secret to help build publicity for himself. On 10 October 1901, Ford took on famous racing driver Alexander Winston in a one-on-one sweepstakes race. Ford had no money or reputation to hire a real driver, so he put himself behind the wheel. It was a risky venture, to be sure, but Henry Ford was never afraid to take the risks necessary to succeed. He also didn’t fear the potential failure; in fact it seemed to drive him on. On the sixth lap, Ford closed the gap and his rival’s engine overheated; Ford won by nearly a mile. It was as a result of this spectacle that Ford was able to forge the Ford Motor Company.
The journey started with Ford & Malcomson Ltd., which was a partnership he formed with coal dealer Alexander Y. Malcomson. The two leased a factory and made a deal with the Dodge Brothers, John and Horace, and Ford began work on designing his inexpensive automobile. After some shifting around of investors, the company would be rebranded on 16 June 1903 as the Ford Motor Company. Ford managed to get the then famous racing driver, Barney Oldfield, to drive his Ford 999 model across the country, which is what it took to get a brand recognised at the turn of the twentieth century. Ford would also find good promotion in backing the early days of the Indianapolis 500 race in the coming years. The Ford Model N was introduced to the marketplace and sold for two years from 1906 for a price of $600 ($15,127.50 in today’s terms). The relative success of this car emboldened Ford and he went back to work, developing an even better model for the masses.
Henry Ford was driven, and sure of his own vision, but not everyone felt the same way. He duped backers by producing parts for cars he never intended to build. Ford used their money and time instead to work on perfecting his magnum opus, the Model T. He had no time for investors or their ideas, in fact he blamed the investors for the past issues he had had. Ford harboured a hatred for the rich and for his own investors.
In 1907 Henry Ford walled off a corner of his factory, wide enough only for the chassis of a car. There was one door that remained locked at all times. Ford put his engineers and team in the secret room to have them develop a new suspension system and engine. Ford himself wasn’t shy about getting his hands dirty and worked side by side with his men. His passion and drive took centre stage, far above any position or prestige that he held at the time. It wasn’t until later in life that his ego would inflate to a dangerous level.
Ford kept introducing new car models into the marketplace. The Model K was too heavy and expensive, the Model N was lighter, but had an engine in four pieces instead of one block. He kept working his way through the automobile alphabet, working towards the T, where he would finally realise his vision for the people’s automobile, something that would connect the country and close the gaps in society.
In October of 1908, after two years of intense development, the Ford Model T would emerge. The car featured new innovations such as a four-cylinder twenty horsepower engine, a much-improved transmission, and a magnetic generator that powered the ignition and lights. The Model T also featured an open top design at first, with an optional add-on cover. The original colour scheme of the car was green, but that would soon change to only black. The Model T weighed 1,200lbs and could reach speeds of up to 40mph. The old horse-drawn carriages could take up to ten hours or more to travel forty miles, so the mobility that the Model T offered was vastly improved. Wells Fargo and Company was one of the more well known stagecoach companies that would transport people across the often dangerous territories, but even those could only travel an average of 5mph with teams of four to six horses. The official Wells Fargo website also adds that the drivers had to stop every twelve miles to change out the horses and every forty-five miles to allow the drivers and passengers to eat.
It was with the introduction of the Model T in 1908 that Ford began to really solidify his position in the marketplace and in the history of the automobile in America. The Model T featured the very first left-side steering wheel, among other innovations that made it the first mass-purchased automobile. The Model T helped to revolutionise the marketplace, primarily because it was so easy to drive and to repair. The four-cylinder vehicle would cost the consumer a whopping $825, which would presently translate to $20,392 (or £14,128) in today’s market. This was the first time that a mass market of consumers in America could actually afford their own automobile. Prior to that it was a privilege frill of the wealthy citizens, with the average cost of a vehicle running around $2,000, which is $53,225.79 (£42,189.75) in today’s money. The average annual salary in the United States at the time was only around $450, or about $10,000 (£7,900) today, so the price of a car made all the difference. ‘I’m going to democratise the automobile,’ Ford is said to have declared in 1909. ‘When I’m through, everybody will be able to afford one, and about everybody will have one.’ It was thanks to this great attitude towards the public that so many could finally realise their dreams of mobility. The Ford Model T gave the citizens the ability to travel outside of their own towns and opened up the country in a way that it hadn’t been previously. The added control it gave people over their lives and locations made a huge impact, but if automobiles were going to become the norm, they would need to keep dropping in price to meet the needs of the consumer. Not only did the price start low, but Ford kept dropping it year after year, bringing the cost of the basic touring car down to only $360, or $8,572 (£5,939) today. The sales rose to 472,000 units by 1914, making the Model T so prolific that most Americans of the era actually learned to drive in it.
The Ford Model T would remain the industry giant with a total number of over 15 million cars produced by the time it was discontinued in 1927, to be replaced by the Model A. The burgeoning film industry would adopt the car as a comedic device, often using the Ford Model T in their chase scenes. The inclusion of the vehicle in the movies would help to put the car in front of a large number of Americans and would help to solidify it as a staple in the marketplace. The Model T held the record for the most produced car until it was dethroned in 1972 by the Volkswagen Beetle. The irony that the Beetle was Adolf Hitler’s version of an accessible car that the German people could afford is one that will be clear by the end of this chapter.
Among the innovations that Henry Ford was responsible for, the modern assembly line and the way that his workers were treated were the most notable. Henry Ford is often credited with the invention of the assembly line concept, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, assembly lines have been used throughout history, as seen in the fourteenth century Venetian shipbuilding complex. The Venetian production system was unmatched for the era, because their process could build a large merchant ship in just one day. Ford took the concept and modernised it for the industrial age. On 1 December 1913, Ford opened the first assembly line system to mass-produce his automobiles. Determined to always be in the lead of the automobile industry, Ford reduced the time that it took to produce a vehicle from twelve hours to only two and a half hours. His goal was to produce 1,000 cars per day. The parts could be created quickly enough, but assembly was time consuming. Ford’s assembly line concept made his dream a reality. The idea of each person doing a dedicated task helped the workforce become specialised, and therefore more efficient, in his or her job. This took the skillset of each worker down to one specific job, instead of many, which affected them when, and if, they chose to move on and work somewhere else. There were some that felt the assembly line removed the skill from the process and served to dehumanise the worker. The turnover rate in Ford’s factory was high, because the work was so repetitive. The cost to retrain and make a worker efficient was so high that Ford needed to take drastic action to maintain his process and costs.
The method by which Henry Ford treated his work force is also something to note. It was a vast improvement compared to the rough conditions that workers had experienced previously. Ford expected dedication and hard work, but he felt that to keep turnaround low it was necessary to raise the wages paid in his factory. In the year 1913 Ford had to hire 52,000 workers, but managed to retain only 14,000. The efforts required to train new workers were expensive and time consuming, causing issues with the workflow in the factory. Henry Ford made history on 5 January 5 1914 when he doubled his worker’s wages to $5 per day (approximately $119 or £82 today). This doubling of wages was a move that was unheard of for the era and made Ford’s factory the place that all of the top talent wanted to work. Ford also reduced the hours in the workday from nine to eight. The announcement had a huge impact, because the very next day over 10,000 workers lined-up outside of Ford’s factory looking for work. The move made international news, spawning thirty-five articles in the New York Times alone. On the other side of this coin, Ford was actually viciously opposed to labour unions.
A brief history of Ford’s efforts towards the workforce could seem like a win-win for everyone, except that, as with so much of Henry Ford, digging a little deeper unveils a more complicated view of the man and his methods and how they often seemed to circle back to his distrust of immigrants. The $5 per day wasn’t a wage that you would just walk off the street and get. It was actually an incentive wage and wasn’t guaranteed unless you met Ford’s rigorous requirements. Ford required his immigrant workforce to attend the company English school in order to become fully ‘Americanised’. It took six months to graduate ‘the pageant of the Ford melting pot’. The workers who completed the forced cultural appropriation training would all dress in stereotypical clothing from their country of origin and jump into a literal large pot and get stirred-up. The workers would then emerge wearing a proper American-style suit and a straw hat. It must have been quite a spectacle. The idea of Americanisation was far from something that Henry Ford invented. In fact, Americans had been practising a form of cultural assimilation when it came to Native Americans for hundreds of years prior to that. The idea behind it was to ‘civilize’ the Native Americans and adapt them to the European-American way of life, customs, clothing and education. This bigoted and ignorant process would effectively nullify their culture.
The Ford Sociological Department would also be sent to invade the personal lives of the workers to investigate the cleanliness of their homes. In KGB-like fashion, they would grill the workers to find out whether they sent money back to anyone ‘back home’, if they were really married, did they have any boarders in the house, and would even check to see if their water was clean. Henry Ford tried to socially engineer immigrants to force them to become his vision of an American citizen. It turns out that Ford actually used his $5 a day wage as a way to strip the foreign culture out of immigrants. After two failed inspections a worker was fired. That level of invasion of privacy and social engineering would be unheard of in today’s world.
Henry Ford eventually embarked on a massive public relations campaign, even going to the lengths of establishing the Ford Motion Picture Department to produce in-house features. It was in 1914 that they released their first movie in theatres titled How Henry Ford Makes 1000 Cars A Day. The self-promoting film presented Henry Ford as a simple everyman with simple tastes. Henry Ford was portrayed as hard working, like his workers, and a plain man that just likes to work on his farm.
The real Henry Ford was a peculiar dichotomy, he was a very wealthy man that was often photographed with his many celebrity friends and yet he enjoyed a reputation in the press as the everyman industrialist. This treatment would cause the ego of Henry Ford to grow. When it came to dealing with his employees, his ego would never allow him to fire anyone himself; that could damage his image. Instead, he would have the unsavoury task done on the sly. An employee could come in for work one day and their desk would have simply disappeared. Ford came to enjoy the power that he held over others, a position that would swell his own self-importance and convince him that his own judgement and opinions were impeccable and not to be questioned.
Henry Ford begrudgingly handed over the Ford Motor Company to his son Edsel in 1918, but that was far from the last time he would be involved in the decision making process. Ford would retain a high level of control in the company, eventually even tricking the stockholders into selling their shares to him and Edsel, which placed the control of the company back in the hands of the Ford family. Truly, Henry Ford would let Edsel only ostensibly run the company, while he continued to control and manipulate every aspect and even take the opportunity to humiliate Edsel from time to time.
The 1920s in America were full of change. There was new youthful music, dancing clubs and prohibition. The change was all over the roadways. There were suddenly so many cars, where there had been virtually none before. The roadways were often clogged and congested, but this new era brought an enormous amount of change. The automobile industry boom fuelled the rubber and oil industries, created gas stations, roadside motels, restaurants and of course the inevitable road construction and expansion. The sudden boom and use of the car changed vacation habits and even the way cities were set up. The younger generation had embraced the idea of the car as a tool of leisure and escape, a fact that the old fashioned thinker Henry Ford wasn’t fond of. The new generation of consumers would demand more detailed and flashy cars, along with new features. The Roaring Twenties were full of flash and style, a trend that Ford had no intention of carrying over into his own vehicles. The flagrant consumerism seemed to make him uncomfortable. ‘The American of a generation ago was a shrewd buyer’, Ford said, ‘but nowadays the American people seem to listen and be sold.’
Ford ignored the new marketplace and the inevitable happened…sales began to fall. The sales of Chevy/GM, by contrast, had tripled and were available in a variety of fresh, new colours. Ford didn’t want to make anything but the Model T. He held strong to the idea that his own vision was all that mattered, and it began to hold him back in the marketplace. The Model T had already become obsolete in the new world. Ford asserted, ‘The only problem with a Ford car is that we can’t produce it fast enough’.
Edsel Ford saw the need to make some major changes and finally went toe-to-toe with his father. The sleek Ford Model A was the first Ford car to be available on an instalment plan. Edsel was behind it, but Ford took the credit in the press. Edsel had to push to get it made. The Model A revived the company’s sales, with 700,000 cars sold in the first year alone. The relationship between Henry Ford and his son soured at this point, and would never properly recover. Henry couldn’t face that his baby, the Model T, was now obsolete; but the country was going through a major period of change. Rural America began to disappear, as more people were living in cities than on the farm.
The 1929 Stock Market crash deeply affected the city of Detroit and the auto industry. A wave of poverty and unemployment began to move across the country and soon the consumer was no longer there. In four years the automobile marketplace lost ninety per cent of its previous business. Ford tried to keep the workers solvent and raised wages to $7 per day, but Model A sales weren’t there anymore, so the layoffs came. The mayor of Detroit, Frank Murphy, estimated in the early 1930s that a third of the 200,000 people in the bread lines were laid off by Ford’s factories alone. Unemployed citizens would wait hours for just a small ration of bread during the difficult economic times. The former employees of Ford were hungry and would even take to the streets with other unemployed workers in hunger marches. An article published in Fortune at the time noted that ‘Declining sales have changed Mr Ford from one of the greatest U.S. money-makers to one of the greatest money losers.’ Ironically, the very same Fortune magazine would name Henry Ford as businessman of the century in 1999.
Henry Ford hated the idea of a labour union. He hated that they were a challenge to his power and his absolute authority over the way he chose to run his factory.
Ford employed a young man named Harry Bennett, an ex-Navy man, to control the River Rouge factory floor with his gang of armed toughs that kept strict grips on the employees. Bennett was a small man at only 5ft 7in, and weighing a spry 145lbs. Ford wanted the 24-year-old to act as his muscle at his Rouge factory. The men there were gritty and tough to manage and Ford needed someone who answered directly to him that could strong-arm the employees into subservience. Bennett wasn’t a disappointment; he and his men ruled the plant with an iron fist and loaded weapons.
Bennett kept a basement office at the Rouge, which included a secret door that could be opened by using a button underneath his desk. In this secret room, Bennett and Ford would have their meetings, with a guarantee of the utmost privacy. Bennett was a company man through and through, once boasting, ‘I am Mr Ford’s personal man.’ His dedication to Henry Ford was second to none. ‘If Mr Ford told me to blacken out the sun tomorrow, I might have trouble fixing it. But you’d see a hundred thousand sons-of-bitches coming through the Rouge gates in the morning, all wearing dark glasses.’
Bennett played the role of a gentleman gangster, recruiting a variety of athletes, ex-military and even ex-cons to his Ford enforcement department, dubbed the Service Department. The men, adorned with suits, fedoras and guns, used the threat of physical violence to keep the workforce in check. The rules in the factories became strict and overbearing. The workers weren’t allowed to talk to each other or even sit down. The workers became accustomed to the absurd rules that they even learned to speak to each other without moving their lips, hoping to avoid a beating at the hands of Bennett and his men. The workers referred to it as the ‘Fordization of the face’.
The National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, was passed in 1935. This new legal foundation gave workers the right to organise into unions, giving them the power to negotiate working conditions and wages. The Ford Motor Company was one of the last big companies to fight the unions. Bennett was authorised by Ford to take care of the union by any means necessary. The Service Department thugs attacked the union representatives when they came to the factory to hand out pamphlets. Images taken by photographers on the scene were soon published around the United States, showing evidence of the brutal nature of the battle that the unions were fighting. The restrictions in the Ford factory got out of control for a time. At one point, if men were seen talking in groups they were assumed to be unionising, were often beaten and subsequently fired. In April of 1941, 50,000 Ford workers protested outside the Rouge plant, pressing Ford to give in to the union demands for pay and conditions. Ford reportedly fumed that he would rather shut down his factory than give in to the union demands, but even Ford couldn’t ultimately stop the union. Ford’s son Edsel would step in as the voice of reason and strike a deal with the union, a move that Ford would resent.
Bennett became the trusted right-hand man of Henry Ford, which was likely a sore spot for his son, Edsel. When one man threatened Edsel’s life, Bennett assured him that he would handle the situation and the man turned up dead shortly thereafter. Bennett was clearly not a person to be crossed. Henry Ford eventually had Bennett spy on his son, who was living a lush extravagant lifestyle, which Ford hated. Edsel, an only son, soon began to see Bennett as a rival for his father’s affections, something that he gave out in very short supply as it was.
The Henry Ford who employed Bennett to control his workers was a far cry from the younger Henry Ford, who had been an eager pioneer and business mogul. No, this Ford was increasingly paranoid and angry. Ford felt that the world he knew was gone and that the country had lost control; he would often comment about how he yearned for yesterday. Ford didn’t mellow as he aged either, he continued to insist that the Jews were persecuting him and Edsel became concerned for his father’s state of mind and his ability to run the Ford Motor Company. Ford did suffer two mild strokes, one in 1938 and another in 1941; in 1945 however, he had another, far more severe, stroke that left him in a state of mental confusion. Edsel had died of stomach cancer on 26 May 1943, aged 49, so his son, Henry Ford II, took over as president of the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford died on 7 April 1947 at the age of 83.
Around a million Jews lived in the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century; half were located in New York City. This is a stark contrast to the previous Jewish population in America, which had been 50,000 only a half-century before. The population would continue to grow rapidly with 1.75 million Jews immigrating to America between 1900 and 1924. The power and influence of the Jewish community in society and in politics began to grow significantly during this time, as they began to represent 3.5 per cent of the American populace. This was a huge change from the less than 1 per cent that Jews had represented prior to this era. In fact, the primarily East Coast Jewish population was such a presence that when Theodore Roosevelt was running for his first full term presidency in 1904, his campaign released pamphlets in Yiddish.
The Jewish presence had become so noticeably large in America that by the time the First World War rolled around, the armed forces began to cater especially to the Jewish population, trying to incite them to get involved in the war effort. On 9 April 1917, the Jewish Welfare Board was established, a mere three days after America officially declared its war on Germany. The purpose of the JWB was to support Jewish soldiers during wartime and to recruit and train rabbis, in much the same way that priests and pastors were provided to support the Christian soldiers.
It was during the time between the First World War and the Second World War that anti-Semitism would grow rapidly in the United States. The conditions of the Great Depression would exacerbate the growing resentment, and even violence, towards the American Jewish population, due to a perception that wealthy Jews and Jewish bankers were responsible for the stock market crash.
Another major opposition to the Jews at the time was the Ku Klux Klan. The first rise of the KKK was reactionary following the loss of the South to the North in the American Civil War. The KKK would only last for five years during that volatile era of American history, but would rise again in 1915 and last all the way to 1944, near the end of the Second World War. The original incarnation of the KKK was directly opposed to African American leaders and advancement, and while the second version was no fan of African Americans, their focus was more on the recent immigrants to the United States, focusing on Jews and Catholics. The numbers of the Klan grew exponentially, clocking in at over 4 million, far surpassing the entire Jewish population of America at the time.
One of the darker stories of anti-Semitism to come from pre-war America was the lynching of a Jewish businessman, Leo Frank, in Atlanta back in 1915. Frank was accused of murdering a worker in the pencil factory that he managed. The then governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton, commuted Frank’s sentence to life in prison instead of death row. This pardoning of a Jew incited a rabid mob that proceeded to break into the jail, drag Frank out into the street, and hang him. Evidence that was later brought to light showed that the very man who accused Frank of the crime, the pencil plant janitor Jim Conley, might have been responsible for the crime himself. Frank was given a posthumous pardon for the murder in 1986.
Although there were isolated examples of actual physical violence, the climate had certainly turned against the Jewish immigrants in the United States. The results of a 1938 Gallup poll revealed that fifty per cent of Americans, when questioned, answered ‘yes’ to having a low opinion of Jews. That is where American society was at the onset of the Second World War.
This was an era when the New International Encyclopaedia had the following entry describing Jews as a race:
Among the distinguishing mental and moral traits of the Jews may be mentioned: distaste for hard or violent physical labor; a strong family sense and philoprogenitiveness; a marked religious instinct; the courage of the prophet and martyr rather than of the pioneer and soldier; remarkable power to survive in adverse environments, combined with great ability to retain racial solidarity; capacity for exploitation, both individual and social; shrewdness and astuteness in speculation and money matters generally; an Oriental love of display and a full appreciation of the power and pleasure of social position; a very high average of intellectual ability.
The fact that an entire race of people is ‘defined’ or stereotyped in such a manner is yet another example of the way society at the time thought of the Jewish people; as their own race that required a separate definition.
It was in the year 1918 that Henry Ford had Ernest G. Liebold, his private secretary, purchase The Dearborn Independent, a local weekly newspaper based in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford invested a whopping five million dollars in the newspaper, which allowed him to project his own voice and views into the populace. The original editor of the paper refused to print Ford’s anti-Semitic essays, so he fired him and hired a new editor who would be happy to comply. In the paper, Ford would publish articles about a vast and secret worldwide conspiracy of Jewish control and manipulation. During its peak the circulation of the newspaper was a staggering 700,000 readers. It was sold by subscription and more than 7,000 Ford dealerships nationwide were required to carry it, thus ensuring that Ford’s right-wing mouthpiece had a wide reach. It was far from the only anti-Semitic paper, but this one had a circulation across the country.
The Dearborn Independent would publish its very first anti-Semitic article titled: Anti-Semitism – Will It Appear in the United States? The article, which does not list any specific author, addresses what they call the ‘Jewish Question’ in the United States. The article proceeds to define what they consider to be the four types of Jews and complains that anyone who questions the very presence and intentions of Jews in America (the Jewish Question) is considered to be hateful and anti-Semitic:
It is not recognition of the Jewish Question. If it were, then it could be set down that the bulk of the American people arc destined to become anti-Semites, for they are beginning to recognise the existence of a Jewish Question and will steadily do so in increasing numbers as the Question is forced upon them from the various practical angles of their lives. The Question is here. We may be honestly blind to it. We may be timidly silent about it. We may even make dishonest denial of it. But it is here. In time all will have to recognise it. In time the polite ‘hush,hush’ of over-sensitive or intimidated circles will not be powerful enough to suppress it. But to recognise it will not mean that we have gone over to a campaign of hatred and enmity against the Jews. It will only mean that a stream of tendency which has been flowing through our civilisation has at last accumulated bulk and power enough to challenge attention, to call for some decision with regard to it, to call for the adoption of a policy which will not repeat the mistakes of the past and yet will forestall any possible social menace of the future.
A selection of these anti-Semitic articles and editorials would later be collected into book format in 1920 under the title The International Jew – The World’s Foremost Problem. Ford would go on to distribute half a million copies of his anti-Semitic opus through his car dealerships and nationwide subscribers to the Dearborn Independent. The International Jew was a book that Adolf Hitler himself would own and would become a bestseller in Nazi-era Germany. The book would also spawn a second volume in April of 1921, Jewish Activities in the United States: Volume II of The International Jew.
Ford’s anti-Semitic book may have been a smash-hit in Nazi Germany, but there was certainly a vocal resistance to it back home in America. The International Jew, along with other similar publications and pamphlets, inspired the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America to publish an anti-propaganda statement titled The Peril of Racial Prejudice. The document was signed by dozens of clergy, authors, journalists and even politicians. In fact, the first name at the top of the list was the then sitting President, Woodrow Wilson, himself. The document expressed a cooperative concern about the rampant spread of anti-Semitic materials and sentiment:
The undersigned citizens of Gentile birth and Christian faith, view with profound regret and disapproval the appearance in this country of what is apparently an organized campaign of anti-Semitism, conducted in close conformity to and co-operation with similar campaigns in Europe. We regret exceedingly the publication of a number of books, pamphlets and newspaper articles designed to foster distrust and suspicion of our fellow-citizens of Jewish ancestry and faith-distrust and suspicion of their loyalty and their patriotism.
These publications, to which wide circulation is being given, are thus introducing into our national political life a new and dangerous spirit, one that is wholly at variance with our traditions and ideals and subversive of our system of government.
The Dearborn Independent would make a point of running stories that attacked certain prominent members of the Jewish business community by name. The newspaper would blame the Jews for anything from the First World War to illegal bootlegging, Jazz music and even the Bolshevik Revolution. Henry Ford’s mouthpiece would make a misstep when they published the inflammatory The Story of the Sapiro Boys. The paranoid articles would accuse the agricultural cooperative movement, which was headed by Aaron Sapiro, of defrauding American farmers in the name of a mythical international Jewish conspiracy that was looking to takeover and seize the agricultural and horticultural resources of America and try to starve American citizens.
Henry Ford firmly believed what was quickly becoming a national consensus at the time, that all of the money dealers in the world, from Wall Street to the Bankers, were Jewish and seeking total control over all Americans. He believed that Jews cheated everyone in business and were merciless profiteers. Jews became a symbol of manipulation and control to Ford, and the source of all the problems of the world. ‘If there is one quality that attracts Jews, it is power’, Ford wrote in The Dearborn Independent. ‘The Jews are the scavengers of the world. Wherever there’s anything wrong with a country, you’ll find the Jews on the job there.’ The Jewish people have been the popular scapegoats for the world’s problems for a long time, without much of a pushback from more progressive individuals. It’s only after the horrific events of the Second World War and the Holocaust that the world was able to recognise the evils of anti-Semitism in any serious way.
Ford made a distinction between what he saw as the two types of Jews, the poor Jew and the ‘International Jew’. The International Jew is seen as a predatory archetype that Ford describes as a ‘rich exploiter of his race’. Henry Ford believed that there was a complete justification for what he considered to be an intelligent and rational form of anti-Semitism based on his own paranoia about the International Jew:
The Jew is again being singled out for critical attention throughout the world. His emergence in the financial, political and social spheres has been so complete and spectacular since the war, that his place, power and purpose in the world are being given a new scrutiny, much of it unfriendly.
Ford seemed to operate on the philosophy that if an idea, no matter how bad or wicked, is popular enough or thought to be true by enough individuals then it’s valid. This is the same logic that would create a horrific reality for so many in Germany years later under the rule of the Nazi regime.
Ford would also reprint an inflammatory and notorious anti-Semitic text from 1903 that had its origins in Russia, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This forged set of documents detailed the vast, imaginary, international Jewish conspiracy that Ford himself would adamantly assert was real. The basic idea was that there was an elite group of wealthy and powerful Jews who controlled the fates of the world. An abridged version of the documents would be included in article form in The Dearborn Independent and eventually in the contents of his book, The International Jew.
Despite the fact that The Times of London had already exposed The Protocols of the Elders of Zino as completely false in 1921, Ford would continue to publish the contents of the document. The Protocols would go on to be taught as absolute fact in children’s classrooms throughout Nazi Germany. In fact, prior to the Second World War, the National Socialist Party would reprint The Protocols twenty-three times. In his public apology that was issued in 1927 (discussed later in this chapter), Ford would acknowledge The Protocols as ‘gross forgeries’.
On 29 May 1920, Ford published an editorial on the topic of the German outlook on the topic of Jews and the blame he felt they carried for the state of things in Germany after the First World War. He starts the article by stating:
Humanity has become wise enough to discuss those forms of physical sickness over which it formerly drew the veil of shame and secrecy, but political hygiene is not so far advanced. The main source of the sickness of the German national body is charged to be the influence of the Jews, and although this was apparent to acute minds years ago, it is now said to have gone so far as to be apparent to the least observing. The eruption has broken out on the surface of the body politic, and no further concealment of this fact is possible. It is the belief of all classes of the German people that the collapse which has come since the armistice, and the revolution from which they are being prevented a recovery, are the result of Jewish intrigue and purpose. Ford didn’t believe that Jews had any place in German society,
The Jew in Germany is regarded as only a guest of the people, Ford wrote, ...he has offended by trying to turn himself into the host. There are no stronger contrasts in the world than the pure Germanic and pure Semitic races; therefore, there has been no harmony between the two in Germany; the German has regarded the Jew strictly as a guest, while the Jew, indignant at not being given the privileges of the nation-family, has cherished animosity against his host.
One pervasive theme throughout Ford’s writing is something he calls the ‘Jewish Question’. He discusses in-depth his feeling that Jews weren’t being discriminated against or singled-out due to their religion, but rather due to the attitude of inclusiveness involved in Jewish culture and various attributes that he considers a part of their genetic make-up as an ethnicity.
In today’s world the question of political correctness is often a hot-button issue, especially in America. There is a firm divide between people who believe in sensitivity and dignity for all and those who believe speech, and the way we address things like gender, sexuality, race and religion, should not be altered at all with modern terminology or progressive ways of thinking. This can often lead to labels and attitudes that many find offensive. It’s clear from Ford’s writing that racial sensitivity was an issue of debate even back in the 1920s, particularly when it pertains to anti-Semitism:
The chief difficulty in writing about the Jewish Question is the super sensitiveness of Jews and non-Jews concerning the whole matter. There is a vague feeling that even to openly use the word ‘Jew,’ or to expose it nakedly to print, is somehow improper. Polite evasions like ‘Hebrew’ and ‘Semite’, both of which are subject to the criticism of inaccuracy, are timidly essayed, and people pick their way gingerly as if the whole subject were forbidden, until some courageous Jewish thinker comes straight out with the good old word ‘Jew’, and then the constraint is relieved and the air cleared.
There is extreme sensitiveness about the public discussion of the Jewish Question on the part of Gentiles...the Jew still remains the enigma of the world.
Ford was increasingly obsessed with his conspiracy theories. He was convinced that the ‘Jewish Question’ comes down to the power and control that he claims the Jews were seeking around the world:
Is there a Jewish Question in Russia? Unquestionably, in its most virulent form...Whether you go to Rumania, Russia, Austria or Germany, or anywhere else that the Jewish Question has come to the forefront as a vital issue, you will discover that the principal cause is the outworking of the Jewish genius to achieve the power of control.
Ford goes on to describe his view of the Jewish people:
The Jew is the world’s enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world’s finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne. There are ancient prophecies to the effect that the Jew will return to his own land and from that centre rule the world, though not until he has undergone an assault by the united nations of mankind.
Ford and his newspaper were getting a lot of negative feedback about his articles highlighting what he considered the threat of the ‘International Jew’, and he was less than sensitive to their concerns in reply. When faced with mass criticism of the outright racist and hateful nature of the articles in his newspaper, Ford actually managed to take the stance of the victim:
This series of articles is already being met by an organized barrage by mail and wire and voice, every single item of which carries the wail of persecution. One would think that a heartless and horrible attack were being made on a most pitiable and helpless people – until one looks at the letterheads of the magnates who write, and at the financial ratings of those who protest, and at the membership of the organizations whose responsible heads hysterically demand retraction. And always in the background there is the threat of boycott, a threat which has practically sealed up the columns of every publication in America against even the mildest discussion of the Jewish Question.
The Jewish Question in America cannot be concealed forever by threats against publications, nor by the propagandist publication of matter extremely and invariably favorable to everything Jewish. It is here and it cannot be twisted into something else by the adroit use of propaganda, nor can it be forever silenced by threats. The Jews of the United States can best serve themselves and their fellow-Jews all over the world by letting drop their far too ready cry of ‘anti-Semitism...’
It could be assumed that Henry Ford was a brilliant man, because of the immense impact that his business had on the world, but to do so would be getting ahead of ourselves. Ford was cunning, ruthless, driven and certainly inventive. It’s not uncommon for someone to be highly gifted in an area of life and ignorant in many others. Henry Ford was an under-educated farm boy and a lot of his ideas about society and the world may have been skewed by this fact. Evidence of Henry Ford’s lack of comprehension came to light in 1919, when he sued the Chicago Tribune for libel.
The strides that Ford made for his workforce and the immense, self-promoting marketing campaign he embarked on certainly worked wonders on his public image. Henry Ford was used to being the darling of most columnists and writers, so much so that he couldn’t deal well with anything but being unconditionally beloved. When Henry Ford opposed American military action in Mexico, he began to find criticism in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune was in support of drafting men into the National Guard, even vowing to hold jobs for anyone called to duty, while the pacifist Henry Ford refused to do so. An article with the headline: ‘Henry Ford is an Anarchist’ called Ford an ‘ignorant idealist’ and an anarchist-enemy of the nation. This accusations enfuriated Ford and he decided to fight back in court.
Ford took the Chicago Tribune to court, seeking one million dollars in damages. The trial began in the summer of 1919 and took fourteen weeks to present each side. It was during this trial that the ignorance and weak character of Henry Ford became evident. One observer, author John Tebbel, reflected on Ford’s testimony: ‘He was virtually illiterate, obviously, and his philosophy was unashamedly out of the cracker barrel.’ This was a very telling insult to Ford’s intelligence. The use of the term ‘cracker barrel’ refers to the old barrels of crackers that would be in the local country stores during the late nineteenth century. The stereotype is that the plain and simple country folk would gather there to talk, much like the ‘water cooler’ is used as a reference today. Cracker barrel philosophy was thought to be the inane ramblings of ignorant rural citizens.
The primary lawyer for the Tribune, Elliott K. Stevenson, began to ask Ford a number of questions on American history, in order to establish his level of ignorance and validating the newspaper’s position on his intelligence. Among the absurdities, Henry Ford was found to believe that the Revolutionary War occurred in 1812, and thought that notorious traitor Benedict Arnold was a writer. It has been said that copies of Ford’s testimony were printed and sold near the courthouse, inspiring an immense amount of laughter and mockery from the public. The entire experience served only to show a wilful ignorance in Ford. Ford refused to read in front of the jury, making excuses about forgetting his glasses and that his eyes watering; when asked if he wanted to leave the jury with the impression that he was illiterate, Ford is said to have replied: ‘Yes, you can leave it that way.’ Throughout the eight days of questioning, Henry Ford would often lose interest and wander around the courtroom, looking out the windows and fidgeting. He was clearly out of his league in the proceedings.
The jury, which consisted primarily of farmers, did find for Henry Ford in the end. They awarded him the amount of six whole cents after a ten-hour deliberation.
In 1927, Jewish lawyer and farm cooperative organiser Aaron Sapiro brought a lawsuit against Henry Ford accusing him of defamation for his many years of clearly anti-Semitic articles in The Dearborn Independent. This was the third lawsuit of this kind that had been raised against the newspaper, but the only one that would end up going to trial. Ford would not testify at the trial, but instead faked a car accident and hid out in the hospital to avoid it. Ford would then issue a less than sincere apology and shut down The Dearborn Independent for good. The final issue was published on 31 December 1927.
Ford wrote a statement of apology to be released on 30 June 1927, regarding ‘Charges Against Jews Made in His Publications, The Dearborn Independent and a Series of Pamphlets Entitled The ‘International Jew’. In this apology letter he defers responsibility of the newspaper’s anti-Jew articles to his underlings and basically denies the reality that he was the mastermind behind the racist newspaper:
For some time past I have given consideration to the series of articles concerning Jews which since 1920 have appeared in The Dearborn Independent. Some of them have been reprinted in pamphlet form under the title ‘The International Jew’. Although both publications are my property, it goes without saying that in the multitude of my activities it has been impossible for me to devote personal attention to their management or to keep informed as to their contents. It has therefore inevitably followed that the conduct and policies of these publications had to be delegated to men whom I placed in charge of them and upon whom I relied implicitly.
In an even more nervy move, Ford goes on to paint himself in a sympathetic manner towards Jews, while subsequently claiming that he had no idea that his newspaper was publishing his own editorials and collecting them in book format for distribution at his own dealerships and worldwide readership:
To my great regret I have learned that Jews generally, and particularly those of this country, not only resent these publications as promoting anti-Semitism, but regard me as their enemy. Trusted friends with whom I have conferred recently have assured me in all sincerity that in their opinion the character of the charges and insinuations made against the Jews, both individually and collectively, contained in many of the articles which have been circulated periodically in The Dearborn Independent and have been reprinted in the pamphlets mentioned, justifies the righteous indignation entertained by Jews everywhere toward me because of the mental anguish occasioned by the unprovoked reflections made upon them.
Henry Ford ordered the remaining copies of his horrible anti-Semitic book to be burned and the production of future copies ceased. The sad reality is that by then, Ford had already used his considerable authority and influence as a cultural icon to legitimise his racist ideals. A lot of Jewish organisations at the time accepted Ford’s apology as sincere, especially since he shut the paper down, but it would later be revealed in the accounts of those that knew him that Henry Ford still firmly held his views behind closed doors, as evidenced by his ongoing involvement financially and publicly with the Nazi Party.
Henry Ford had conquered the automobile marketplace in America, with the majority of all car sales split between the ‘Big Three’: Ford, GM and Chrysler by the late 1920s. The American marketplace was an important mountain to climb, but once that was dominated, it was time for the ‘big three’ to set their sights elsewhere in the world; one such place was Germany. Ford had begun to have a German presence in 1912, when they began manufacturing parts in Hamburg. Ford soon began manufacturing in Berlin and on 1 April 1926, the very first German built Model T was assembled. Ford moved its manufacturing facilities to Cologne in 1931, and built a facility right on the banks of the Rhine, providing waterway access between it and other Ford facilities such as Manchester and Dagenham in Britain.
Meanwhile, a young Adolf Hitler was spending hours in his rented room, reading book after book, developing his thoughts on the world and society. One of the things he read was the work of one of the most wealthy and recognisable celebrities in America – Henry Ford. Hitler had access to the four volumes of The International Jew and he held Ford’s work in high esteem.
Hitler published his own manifesto on 18 July 1925, the now notorious book Mein Kampf, which translates as My Struggle. The 720 page book was dictated by Hitler while he was behind bars, serving time for his treasonous but failed coup attempt called the Munich Putsch. Hitler and his Nazi Party tried to seize power in Germany by force, a goal that they would later achieve more through political manipulation. Hitler’s jail time wasn’t spent the way one might imagine; as leader of the National Socialist Party, he was already something of a people’s folk hero in Germany. He received excellent treatment, had comfortable accommodation and enjoyed many visitors during his time in prison.
Mein Kampf would include plans for Germany’s future, observations on culture and, most importantly, groundwork for an anti-Semitic platform that would define the rest of Hitler’s life. There are early suggestions of genocide as an option for dealing with the Jewish people, whom he felt to be inferior. Mein Kampf is an important time stamp in the life of Henry Ford, because he is the one and only American mentioned by name in the hate text. Hitler mentions The Dearborn Independent newspaper articles on the Jewish conspiracy by name and heralds Ford as: ‘one great man, Ford, to their exasperation still holds out independently there even now’, referring to Ford’s resistance of his perceived Jewish control over the American economy and manufacturing. This mention is a powerful insight not only into how vicious and dangerous the anti-Semitic rhetoric propagated by Henry Ford was, but also how far reaching it was. It cannot be underplayed that Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism inspired Adolf Hitler himself; what a powerful and destructive legacy to leave in one’s wake.
If the connection between Hitler and Ford ended with The Dearborn Independent and a mention in Mein Kampf it would be more than enough to tarnish a legacy, but alas the story is far from over. Henry Ford and his son Edsel played a role in the Second World War that is certainly questionable and is the source of fierce debate. Ostensibly, the control of the German Ford plants were placed under German control during the war, as they would be nearly impossible to run from America during that era, but whenever vital elements such as rubber were needed, they went through the American Ford division.
The German government didn’t regard Hitler and his Nazi party as an idle threat. In fact, over a decade before Hitler managed to seize complete power, the German government was already taking steps against him and his ‘beer hall’ political movement. There was also a feeling among some areas of the German population that something wasn’t right with the National Socialist Movement. An article in the New York Times, which ran in December of 1922, bore the title ‘Berlin Hears Ford Is Backing Hitler’. The article details the concern brought to the attention of the American Ambassador in Berlin by the renowned German newspaper, Berlin Tageblatt, that Ford was financing Hitler. The feeling was that Hitler’s lavish accommodation in Munich, highly paid lieutenants and the funds the Nazi party was enjoying were more far-reaching than could be provided solely by contributions from local German citizens. The article goes on to note that Hitler and his men were seen driving two brand new automobiles, that the wall next to Hitler’s desk in Munich had a large portrait of Henry Ford, and owned many translated copies of Ford’s books in his chambers.
A 1931 interview given by Hitler to Detroit News reporter Annetta Antona generated another infamous quote about Henry Ford. During the interview, Antona asked Hitler why he had a portrait of Henry Ford next to his desk, to which Hitler replied ‘I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.’
Henry Ford would become the source of great controversy yet again in 1938 when he accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honour that the Nazi party could bestow upon a foreigner. The flashy medal consisted of an iron cross, flanked by four Nazi swastikas. There was a backlash to this in the United States, as the event was well publicised by newspapers such as the New York Times. Protestors could be found outside of Ford plants carrying signs with statements like: ‘Why Did Ford Get A Nazi Medal?’ The event also served to cause a few diplomatic issues between the United States and Germany at the time. The events were temporary, but the impact was definitely felt.
The Ford manufacturing activities in Germany would soon fall under the name Ford-Werke in 1939. The French and German Ford manufacturing facilities would go on to produce not only vehicles and weaponry for the Nazi German military forces throughout the Second World War, but would use forced labour to do so. In fact, the forced labour aspect was in effect long before the start of the war and even before Ford-Werke was separated from the American Ford Motor Company. Forced labour was far from unique in Nazi-controlled Germany. There are reports that upwards of 7.5 million people were forced to relocate from their various conquered homelands to Germany and to work without compensation in order to keep the Nazi war machine running smoothly.
A lawsuit was brought to court in New Jersey in 1998 by Elsa Iwanowa, one of the survivors that was ripped from her home and forced to work at Ford-Werke. The Ford Motor Company went to court and acknowledged Iwanowa’s claims and validated the forced labour, but denied any responsibility for the American wing of the company. The word at the time was that, even after the Second World War began, the American wing of Ford Motor Company still owned a majority stock in Ford-Werke. The lawsuit never got a chance to be fully realised, since it was dismissed in 1999. The statue of limitations to raise a suit of that nature had unfortunately expired.
When Henry Ford died on 7 April 1947, over one hundred thousand citizens made their way to his funeral and waited for several hours in a queue for a chance to view the body of the legendary Henry Ford. Today, Henry Ford is remembered as an influential industrialist and an American icon that changed the course of history. The people have turned Henry Ford into a heroic and immortal figure in history, often choosing to forget the very human and flawed man behind the brand name.
The image of the Ford Motor Company began to change when the grandson of Henry Ford, Henry Ford II, took over control of the company in 1945. One of his first acts as president was to fire Ford’s sketchy ‘muscle’ and head of the Ford Service Department, Harry Bennett. He then set out to surround himself with experienced executives who assisted him in taking the company from the emotional brainchild of one man to a well-respected and long-lasting corporate entity. In 1956, the Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation under the leadership of Henry Ford II.
The Ford Motor Company is a very different company today than it was a century ago. In one glaring example of this, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the company (at the time of writing this book) is a Jewish businessman named Mark Fields. The dark shadows of Henry Ford’s legacy have been left far behind and instead the memory of his technological innovations remain. It would be hard to blame the modern day Ford Motor Company for wanting to brush the history of its founder under the rug in lieu of a legacy of hatred and bigotry.