41845358-Antisemitism

172 ANTISEMITISM
dependent, Mr. Henry Ford’s newspaper. Much of the anti-Semitic propaganda
once disseminated by this journal is still [late 1930s] current in Germany.” 129 It
was all too fitting for Fritsch to gloat that the banner of antisemitism had been
passed from Ford to the Führer: “Adolf Hitler under the symbol of the
swastika took over the fight against Judah in the spring of 1933.” 130
There are some striking parallels between Ford and Hitler, aside from
taboos on tobacco, alcohol, and meat. Both believed that: Race is the decisive
factor in history; superior and creative races are engaged in a life-and-death
struggle with degenerate, evil races; and history and biology necessitated
maintaining Aryan/Anglo-Saxon purity. Both maintained that: Commercial
and financial Jews were a grave threat to agrarian virtues; Jewish influence on
culture was baneful and corrupting; Jews controlled the press and used it to
undermine religion and morals to further Jewish domination. For both Ford
and Hitler, Bolshevism and Judaism were synonymous, and both claimed that
Jews made the revolution and were ruling Russia. Both also held that Jewish
capitalists and Jewish labor organizers worked hand in glove to enslave and
exploit in the manner of the Protocols. In Ford’s rendering, “You probably
think the labor unions were organized by labor, but they weren’t. They were
organized by those Jewish financiers. ... It’s a great thing for the Jew to have
on hand when he comes around to get his clutches on an industry.” 131 Ron
Rosenbaum notes perceptively that while historians have searched out “an exhaustive
array of nineteenth-century German anti-Semitic predecessors to
Hitler, there is perhaps an even more important American source of Hitler’s
hatred of Jews. A crucial source of his vision of a Jewish world conspiracy and
a perhaps crucial source of funding for Hitler’s own conspiracy to seize
power: Henry Ford. It’s remarkable how easily—or conveniently—Ford’s
contribution to Hitler’s success has been lost to memory in America. It wasn’t
lost to Hitler. ...” 132
Faced with libel suits for slandering Jews and trying to avoid taking the
witness stand, in 1927 Ford agreed to out-of-court settlements and a public
apology and retraction of his antisemitism. In the 600-word statement, Ford
admitted the spuriousness of the Protocols: “I confess that I am deeply mortified
that this journal ... has been made the medium for resurrecting exploded fiction,
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, and for contending
that the Jews have been engaged in a conspiracy to control the capital
and the industries of the world.” 133 That all sounded solemn and heartfelt—“a
death blow” to antisemitism, exulted the Jewish Forward—but it turned out to
be only a tactical turn in Ford’s antisemitic course. 134 Until World War II,