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Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production Of Hate
How and why did this quintessential American folk-hero and pioneering industrialist become one of the most obsessive anti-Semites of our time-a man who devoted his immense financial resources to publishing a pernicious forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion? Once Henry Ford's virulent media campaign against the Jews took off during the "anxious decade" following World War I, how did America's splintered Jewish community attempt to cope with the relentless tirade conducted for ninety-one consecutive weeks in the automobile manufacturer's personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent? What were the repercussions of Ford's Jew-hatred extending deeply into the 1930s? Drawing upon previously-uncited oral history transcripts, archival correspondence, and family memoirs, Neil Baldwin answers these and other questions, examining the conservative biases of the men at the inner circle of the Ford Motor Company and disentangling painful ideological struggles among an elite Jewish leadership reluctantly pitted against the clout and popularity of "The Flivver King."
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 23, 2016
I had heard rumors of Henry Ford's antisemitism, but Baldwin thoroughly documents how deep and destructive it was. The book is easy to read and instructive. Ford's overt antisemitic publication effort was 1920-1927. Thereafter, he remained an anti-semite, but kept it quieter. Nonetheless, Hitler kept the publications made under Ford's oversight on his table and had Ford's portrait on the wall. Ford received a special Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle in 1938. Ford also brutally prevented unionization of the Ford plants 1937-1941, at the same time that the Ford plant in Germany was making vehicles for the Third Reich. Given all of this, why did not the Ford brand become anathema? Baldwin fleshes this out, but certainly Ford's grandson, Henry Ford II, played a critical role in the rehabilitation of the Ford name. If only some of Woodrow Wilson's relatives could have done something to prevent his name on buildings at Princeton from becoming controversial.
April 7, 2021
This account of the poisoning of one man's mind sheds light on the rise of fascism within the United States and makes this book relevant to the extraordinary political and social situation Americans find themselves in today.
May 9, 2018
Neil Baldwin's Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate focuses on the auto tycoon's long-running campaign of antisemitism, which evolved from half-believed private ramblings to a systematic hate campaign run through Ford's private paper, The Dearborn Independent. The book offers a fair amount of biographical detail on Ford, showing him to be an odd mixture of industrial genius and intellectual dunce who chased fads and thought his every word deserved to laminated (like certain imbeciles running our country today, except for the "genius" part). But Baldwin also examines how deeply ingrained antisemitism came in American culture, showing that Ford grew up reading textbooks that casually slurred Jews and how the era's evangelical revivalism and post-WWI Red baiting made it acceptable. Baldwin spends time on the outraged response by America's Jewish Community, the embrace of Ford both by America's far right and foreign fascists (the Nazis considered him a kindred spirit), his disingenuous apologies and his continued dealings with Nazi Germany up to 1945. It's a really chilling, and sadly relevant example how a plutocrat's private prejudices, writ large through media, business dealings and campaign checks, can poison an entire country's discourse.
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April 22, 2022Technically this book is a DNF at about the halfway point, for the simple fact that as enlightening as it is, reading this book in gentrified, de-industrialized Detroit is rather depressing: for better or for worse, Ford's legacy is unavoidable here, and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Baldwin provides a clear and concise overview of Henry Ford's grotesque personality and anti-Semitism, plus his relationships with other racists of his times, such as John Kellogg and Thomas Edison; his brief business entanglements with the Dodge brothers and other early automakers; and his influence on labor reform. The part that still gets to me is his groundbreaking $5 minimum wage applying only to employees who took Americanization classes and lived 'respectable' lives. So in addition to a deep dive into one of the most prolific anti-Semites of the early 20th century, this book has something for automotive history buffs, folks interested in the history of labor, and folks who may simply be curious about the network of 20th century figures who either directly or indirectly facilitated Ford's violent racism. Again, I did not finish this book...but I still highly recommend it!
February 27, 2009
An important book to expand knowledge about american anti-semitism pre-WWII.
December 18, 2016
Proof that some of the most inventive minds are not immune to some of the basest prejudices and paranoid delusions toward those who seem alien to them.
August 14, 2021
During the 1920’s and 1930’s anti-Semitism was on the rise not only in Europe but in America as well, and not just due to the KKK; Henry Ford was a major instigator as well, aided and abetted by E.F. Liebold and W.H. Cameron and the radio broadcasts of Father Charles Coughlin. Baldwin’s book delves into Ford’s psyche to show how this came about and also chronicles the efforts of courageous individuals and organizations within the Jewish community to combat Ford’s propaganda.
He was not an educated man, not going beyond high school; he was brought up on the McGuffey Readers and their anti-Jewish stereotypes, and regarded history as “the bunk”. He expected all who worked for him to conform to his idea of what the ideal American should be – white, Christian, preferably male. Jews, of course, did not fit in with this.
Ford also apparently believed in the nonsense about Jews taking over the world’s governments and economies contained in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a forgery published in Russia in the 1890’s. He spread these ideas through the “Dearborn Independent”, a failing newspaper he bought for that purpose; and through a booklet called “The International Jew” which compiled all the newspaper articles.
Though Ford was called to account for all this by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, and issued an apology in 1927, it is doubtful that the apology was sincere, based on his later utterances. It wasn’t until after Ford’s death in 1947 that his family and company took concrete steps to disavow his legacy.
Anyone interested in the history of anti-Semitism in America should read this book. Baldwin, writing in 2001, expresses the hope that the worst of it has passed. Sadly, the current political climate in America is encouraging a resurgence, with poisonous propaganda on the Internet and attacks on synagogues, Jewish businesses and individuals. It seems to go in cycles. George Santayana’s observation that “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it” seems particularly apropos.
**** review by Chuck Graham ****
He was not an educated man, not going beyond high school; he was brought up on the McGuffey Readers and their anti-Jewish stereotypes, and regarded history as “the bunk”. He expected all who worked for him to conform to his idea of what the ideal American should be – white, Christian, preferably male. Jews, of course, did not fit in with this.
Ford also apparently believed in the nonsense about Jews taking over the world’s governments and economies contained in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a forgery published in Russia in the 1890’s. He spread these ideas through the “Dearborn Independent”, a failing newspaper he bought for that purpose; and through a booklet called “The International Jew” which compiled all the newspaper articles.
Though Ford was called to account for all this by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, and issued an apology in 1927, it is doubtful that the apology was sincere, based on his later utterances. It wasn’t until after Ford’s death in 1947 that his family and company took concrete steps to disavow his legacy.
Anyone interested in the history of anti-Semitism in America should read this book. Baldwin, writing in 2001, expresses the hope that the worst of it has passed. Sadly, the current political climate in America is encouraging a resurgence, with poisonous propaganda on the Internet and attacks on synagogues, Jewish businesses and individuals. It seems to go in cycles. George Santayana’s observation that “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it” seems particularly apropos.
**** review by Chuck Graham ****
December 11, 2020
Not finishing for now due to lack of time, but as interesting as this has been thus far, I do agree with other reviews that the organization is a little all over the place and hard to follow. Way too many people are introduced at length and then never mentioned again! Might pick up again in the future.
October 31, 2008
Really boring. About a third into the book, I got it: Ford was antisemitic.
November 17, 2008
long and repetitive. baldwin made too many assumptions and the connections between people he introduced seemed extremely distant. he would give ridiculously long biographies about individual people and then mention them and ford together once. did not enjoy!!
August 28, 2018
I’m not sure that a book like this that contains an obviously *important* message against hate speech and its chilling results can ever be an entertaining page-turner. But those who persevere through this meticulously researched book will likely discover new facets and relevance for this somewhat familiar tale of Ford’s anti-semitism.
This is yet another reminder that hate speech, and endorsing more extreme versions through a lack of censure by those in power, cannot be retracted.
I would say that this is timely, but sadly there is hatred in every time, not just this one.
This is yet another reminder that hate speech, and endorsing more extreme versions through a lack of censure by those in power, cannot be retracted.
I would say that this is timely, but sadly there is hatred in every time, not just this one.
June 11, 2023
The book was informative about Ford himself. Interestingly, a relative who was alive at the time heard that Ford did "teshuva," meaning he sincerely apologized. I didn't get that impression from the book. I wanted to hear more about the Warburgs, Strauss who supposedly pushed pasteurization, and more details about the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and the connection to Jews. But I suppose that is another book.
March 15, 2019
Having encountered a lot of examples of casual anti-Semitism in the various works of popular fiction I’ve been reading from the first half of the 20th century, I took the opportunity, finding this 2001 book at a used book sale, to read a direct study of prejudice in action. I was hoping to find from this book the origins of Ford’s anti-Semitism and the influence of the articles published as “The International Jew” in The Dearborn Independent, a Ford-owned newspaper.
The book is not especially well organized. Baldwin jumps from summarizing an anti-Semitic article from The Independent in one paragraph to the views of its critics in the next with little transition. There are occasional multi-paragraph quotes describing Ford which are immediately followed by Baldwin’s text, leaving the reader to page to the notes in the back to discover just who was being quoted in the extended description, often giving no other context but a source and date. He does cover the material, however, and gives a good summary, not only of Ford’s role in American anti-Semitism, but also of the structure and attitudes of the Jewish-American community at that time and of anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi figures within the US in the 20s and 30s.
On the origins of Ford’s anti-Semitism, Baldwin draws no specific conclusions. He details passages in McGuffey’s Readers, from which Ford learned to read and with which he had a collector’s obsession as an adult, and another book by Orlando J. Smith, “A Short View of Great Questions”, which Ford cited as a great influence on his thinking. He also implies strong influence from two employees who had close access and long relationships with Ford, E. G. Liebold and William J. Cameron, who both seem, in this account, to have influenced Ford with their own strong prejudice against Jews. In a 2003 afterword, Baldwin is more candid in stating his opinion: seeing Ford as a man who demanded control of everything in his life, the author thinks that Ford needed to find some agency to blame for those areas, such as war and financial fluctuations, which affected his life and business but over which he had no control; through cultural influences and the opinions of Liebold and Cameron, Ford determined that agency to be the Jews.
I suspect there is often an element of self loathing in prejudices of this type. Henry Ford seems the quintessential apostle of the modern, if not its very God as “Brave New World” hints. Yet, he saw himself as a man of the land, a bucolic out of a Currier and Ives print. He spent a great deal of time collecting items from America’s past and re-creating his idealized America in Greenfield Village. Baldwin considers this streak of rural nostalgia ironic in a man who literally set the pace for the 20th century, but I think it may bear more on the book’s subject that its author admits. Just as the self image Ford was willing to reveal to himself and the public was that of a simple man who loves the land and the people who work it, he was aware of some counter force working against this world, a force for urbanization and absentee corporate ownership, and one drawing America into an involvement with the rest of the world. My feeling is that he could not admit to himself being a major part of the force that was destroying his idealized pastoral America, and so projected it unto a convenient Other.
As for Ford’s influence, Baldwin seems determined to show that The Independent articles, which were quickly translated and reprinted in Germany, had an influence on the anti-Semitism of the nascent Nazi party. This seems ridiculous to me; I cannot believe that the Old World needed any guidance from the New as regards this particular vice. There is really nothing in this book on how Ford’s beliefs may have influenced the Gentile common man in the US. The examples Baldwin does cite, from both the US and abroad, indicate that the fact of Ford’s anti-Semitism probably was felt as lending support and justification to those, great and obscure, who were already inclined to such beliefs. I close with two very similar quotes from very dissimilar sources to show this effect:
The first is from G. K. Chesterton written after meeting Ford in 1922, the second from Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth, at his war crimes trial in 1947.
In his afterword, Baldwin mentions a book of the same tile by Albert Lee. He says he went ahead with writing his own book because he disagreed with some of Lee’s conclusions, and mentions specifically that Lee thought Cameron, who actually wrote much of “The International Jew” an unwilling hired pen. Baldwin documents Cameron’s later presidency of the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, an organization that sold copies of “Protocols”.
The book is not especially well organized. Baldwin jumps from summarizing an anti-Semitic article from The Independent in one paragraph to the views of its critics in the next with little transition. There are occasional multi-paragraph quotes describing Ford which are immediately followed by Baldwin’s text, leaving the reader to page to the notes in the back to discover just who was being quoted in the extended description, often giving no other context but a source and date. He does cover the material, however, and gives a good summary, not only of Ford’s role in American anti-Semitism, but also of the structure and attitudes of the Jewish-American community at that time and of anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi figures within the US in the 20s and 30s.
On the origins of Ford’s anti-Semitism, Baldwin draws no specific conclusions. He details passages in McGuffey’s Readers, from which Ford learned to read and with which he had a collector’s obsession as an adult, and another book by Orlando J. Smith, “A Short View of Great Questions”, which Ford cited as a great influence on his thinking. He also implies strong influence from two employees who had close access and long relationships with Ford, E. G. Liebold and William J. Cameron, who both seem, in this account, to have influenced Ford with their own strong prejudice against Jews. In a 2003 afterword, Baldwin is more candid in stating his opinion: seeing Ford as a man who demanded control of everything in his life, the author thinks that Ford needed to find some agency to blame for those areas, such as war and financial fluctuations, which affected his life and business but over which he had no control; through cultural influences and the opinions of Liebold and Cameron, Ford determined that agency to be the Jews.
I suspect there is often an element of self loathing in prejudices of this type. Henry Ford seems the quintessential apostle of the modern, if not its very God as “Brave New World” hints. Yet, he saw himself as a man of the land, a bucolic out of a Currier and Ives print. He spent a great deal of time collecting items from America’s past and re-creating his idealized America in Greenfield Village. Baldwin considers this streak of rural nostalgia ironic in a man who literally set the pace for the 20th century, but I think it may bear more on the book’s subject that its author admits. Just as the self image Ford was willing to reveal to himself and the public was that of a simple man who loves the land and the people who work it, he was aware of some counter force working against this world, a force for urbanization and absentee corporate ownership, and one drawing America into an involvement with the rest of the world. My feeling is that he could not admit to himself being a major part of the force that was destroying his idealized pastoral America, and so projected it unto a convenient Other.
As for Ford’s influence, Baldwin seems determined to show that The Independent articles, which were quickly translated and reprinted in Germany, had an influence on the anti-Semitism of the nascent Nazi party. This seems ridiculous to me; I cannot believe that the Old World needed any guidance from the New as regards this particular vice. There is really nothing in this book on how Ford’s beliefs may have influenced the Gentile common man in the US. The examples Baldwin does cite, from both the US and abroad, indicate that the fact of Ford’s anti-Semitism probably was felt as lending support and justification to those, great and obscure, who were already inclined to such beliefs. I close with two very similar quotes from very dissimilar sources to show this effect:
There is something of the artist in [Ford], and he is a fighter… If a man like that has discovered that there is a Jewish problem, then there is a Jewish problem. It is certainly not due to anti-Jewish prejudice.
The younger generation looked with envy to the symbols of success and prosperity like Henry Ford, and if Henry Ford said that the Jews were to blame, why, naturally we believed him.
The first is from G. K. Chesterton written after meeting Ford in 1922, the second from Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth, at his war crimes trial in 1947.
In his afterword, Baldwin mentions a book of the same tile by Albert Lee. He says he went ahead with writing his own book because he disagreed with some of Lee’s conclusions, and mentions specifically that Lee thought Cameron, who actually wrote much of “The International Jew” an unwilling hired pen. Baldwin documents Cameron’s later presidency of the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, an organization that sold copies of “Protocols”.
September 21, 2018
Evcellent history. The definitive work on the subject.
August 21, 2021
This might be the most mundane book I’ve ever read.
November 13, 2021
Sad to learn about this American icon's rabid antisemitism.
May 8, 2025
It had a lot of great insight into Henry Fords opinions, but the book dragged a bit
January 13, 2024
I have always known that Ford was a rabid antisemite, but the facts contained in this book make him an even bigger monster, and quite frankly, a hypocrite. America is where it is today solely because of him. He was the one person that had the wherewithal and money to bring and publish “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” to the United States. This absolute heinous account of how the Jews are going to take over the world has led to the protests, riots, violence and downright hatred you see today. What is astounding is how so many people have bought into this crap. Ford took his hatred even further by including a antisemitic pamphlet in the glove box of every new Ford bought and publishing his own hate filled newspaper.
On the other hand, Ford’s hypocrisy is something you also see today in other bigots. Surprisingly Ford’s chief architect was Jewish as was his very good friend, neighbor and rabbi. So much so in fact that Ford gave the rabbi a new car every year as a gift. How do you equate this behavior to today’s hypocrites? Simple. Just listen to those idiots who condemn Israel and Jews in general for everything from world domination to control of banks yet always add that they have Jewish friends so that makes it okay to speak this way.
This may explain why the Ford family is so generous today towards the Jewish community today. They have to make penance for their forbearer’s sins. I often wonder if Ford would relish with delight what a fertile ground Dearborn has become today for antisemitism.
On the other hand, Ford’s hypocrisy is something you also see today in other bigots. Surprisingly Ford’s chief architect was Jewish as was his very good friend, neighbor and rabbi. So much so in fact that Ford gave the rabbi a new car every year as a gift. How do you equate this behavior to today’s hypocrites? Simple. Just listen to those idiots who condemn Israel and Jews in general for everything from world domination to control of banks yet always add that they have Jewish friends so that makes it okay to speak this way.
This may explain why the Ford family is so generous today towards the Jewish community today. They have to make penance for their forbearer’s sins. I often wonder if Ford would relish with delight what a fertile ground Dearborn has become today for antisemitism.
April 4, 2016
On the whole, a disappointment. The book seemed, in all but a few preliminary chapters, to be just as much about the Jewish resistance to Ford's (and his employee's) anti-semitism. Baldwin opened the intriguing question of whether Ford was 'genuinely', perhaps better stated as 'independently' anti-semitic, or whether he had been led by several key employees to arrive at an unthinking, uncritical parroting of anti-semitic ideas. Strangely, "Henry Ford and the Jews" left me feeling that I certainly did not know Henry Ford much better than I did before reading it, had gained little grasp about the influence of his anti-semitic publishing campaign, and perhaps most frustratingly, had little clearer sense of how Americans responded to his ideas.
Overall, a frustrating book that left me with more questions and very few answers.
Overall, a frustrating book that left me with more questions and very few answers.
July 9, 2011
I was really looking forward to reading this book... after all, who doesn't enjoy a book that examines the image of a squeaky-clean all-American hero? This book, however, is about as dry and featureless as a saltine in the Sahara.
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