section_path: Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent
section_name: Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent
paragraph_text: Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent
  
  Ford was a conspiracy theorist who drew on a long tradition of false allegations against Jews. Ford claimed that Jewish internationalism posed a threat to traditional American values, which he deeply believed were at risk in the modern world. Part of his racist and antisemitic legacy includes the funding of square-dancing in American schools because he hated jazz and associated its creation with Jewish people. In 1920 Ford wrote, "If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball they have it in three words—too much Jew."
  
  In 1918, Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. A year and a half later, Ford began publishing a series of articles in the paper under his own name, claiming a vast Jewish conspiracy was affecting America. The series ran in 91 issues. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required to carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. Ford later bound the articles into four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, which was translated into multiple languages and distributed widely across the US and Europe. The International Jew blamed nearly all the troubles it saw in American society on Jews. The Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927. With around 700,000 readers of his newspaper, Ford emerged as a "spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice."
  
  In Germany, Ford's The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem was published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters". Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf. Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford,, to fury, still maintains full independence... the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany", and modeling the Volkswagen Beetle, the people's car, on the Model T. Max Wallace has stated, "History records that... Adolf Hitler was an ardent Anti-Semite before he ever read Ford's The International Jew." Ford also paid to print and distribute 500,000 copies of the antisemitic fabricated text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Historians say Hitler distributed Ford’s books and articles throughout Germany, stoking the hatred that helped fuel the Holocaust.
  
  On February 1, 1924, Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Hitler, at home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Wagner (son of the composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and antisemites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused. Ford did, however, give considerable sums of money to Boris Brasol, a member of the Aufbau Vereinigung, an organization linking German Nazis and White Russian emigrants which also financed the Nazi Party.
  
  Ford's articles were denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). While these articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews, they blamed the Jews themselves for provoking them. According to some trial testimony, none of this work was written by Ford, but he allowed his name to be used as an author. Friends and business associates said they warned Ford about the contents of the Independent and that he probably never read the articles (he claimed he only read the headlines). On the other hand, court testimony in a libel suit, brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, alleged that Ford did know about the contents of the Independent in advance of publication.
  
  A libel lawsuit was brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to the antisemitic remarks, and led Ford to close the Independent in December 1927. News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content and unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page", William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval. Investigative journalist Max Wallace noted that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon undermined when James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro."
  
  Michael Barkun observed: "That Cameron would have continued to publish such anti-Semitic material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that "I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval." According to Spencer Blakeslee, "he ADL mobilized prominent Jews and non-Jews to publicly oppose Ford's message. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his presidency early in 1921, Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their antisemitic campaign. A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in 1927, recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston, president of the ADL." Wallace also found that Ford's apology was likely, or at least partly, motivated by a business that was slumping as a result of his antisemitism, repelling potential buyers of Ford cars. Up until the apology, a considerable number of dealers, who had been required to make sure that buyers of Ford cars received the Independent, bought up and destroyed copies of the newspaper rather than alienate customers.
  
  Ford's 1927 apology was well received. "Four-fifths of the hundreds of letters addressed to Ford in July 1927 were from Jews, and almost without exception they praised the industrialist..." In January 1937, a Ford statement to The Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as the International Jew ". Ford, however, allegedly never signed the retraction and apology, which were written by others — rather, his signature was forged by Harry Bennett — and Ford never actually recanted his antisemitic views, stating in 1940: "I hope to republish The International Jew again some time."
  
  In July 1938, the German consul in Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner. James D. Mooney, vice president of overseas operations for General Motors, received a similar medal, the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, First Class.
  
  On January 7, 1942, Ford wrote another letter to Sigmund Livingston disclaiming direct or indirect support of "any agitation which would promote antagonism toward my Jewish fellow citizens". He concluded the letter with, "My sincere hope that now in this country and throughout the world when the war is finished, hatred of the Jews and hatred against any other racial or religious groups shall cease for all time."
  
  The distribution of The International Jew was halted in 1942 through legal action by Ford, despite complications from a lack of copyright. It is still banned in Germany. Extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites. Testifying at Nuremberg, convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as Gauleiter of Vienna, deported 65,000 Jews to camps in Poland, stated: "The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was... that book by Henry Ford, The International Jew. I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy."
  
  Robert Lacey wrote in Ford: The Men and the Machines that a close Willow Run associate of Ford reported that when he was shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps, he "was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, he collapsed with a stroke – his last and most serious." Ford had suffered previous strokes and his final cerebral hemorrhage occurred in 1947 at age 83.