The International Jew by Henry Ford
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is an unusual book to give a rating to or write a review about. I’d read quite a bit about this book before ever reading this book. (And I’m currently reading two interesting books on the man. They are Max Wallace’s The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich and the second one is Neil Baldwin’s Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production Of Hate.) And yes, as this book is written, it’s reprehensible. And there’s no doubt Henry Ford was anti-Semitic to whatever degree. But there are several alleged variables that make it hard to take this seriously as his own writing and hence, specifically his own stance. I have read a number of books on Ford and especially as he relates to his right hand man, his personal secretary of a sort, and ultimately an editor of the newspaper he owned (where this man oversaw the majority of the essays allegedly written by him and attributed to him). This man, Ernest Liebold, was a German, part of the Detroit-area German “American” community, and considered by many reliable sources to be a literal future Nazi (as Ford would become one of Hitler’s biggest financial supporters during his rise to power), allegedly sent from Germany to influence one of the most powerful men in the world. In various biographies and histories, one will read that Liebold got so much power that no one could get to see or talk to Ford without getting through Liebold first. Many sources say – including even Wikipedia – that Ford didn’t even write the articles attributed to him. Rather, he verbally expressed his opinions to Liebold and to the main editor, one William Cameron. It was thus left up to these two men to take what Ford apparently said aloud, and shape those opinions into publishable articles – which they did virtually the entire time. And subsequently, some sources allege that Liebold himself was the “author” of many of these articles, taking cues from Ford, if not literally making some opinions up while attributing them to Ford who apparently signed off on all of them without reading them.

To add to the confusion, there were many Jews in that Detroit area where Ford lived and worked and indeed, his neighbor and apparent good friend was an active Jewish rabbi whom Ford had over for dinner every week. So it may seem to some that Ford’s anti-Semitism was certainly valid, unjustifiable, and frankly odd as hell, because he liked and hung out with various Jews, as friends. When the newspaper started publishing seriously anti-Semitic stuff, some of them were put off, naturally offended, and by some accounts, Ford found this perplexing, confusing, and couldn’t understand why they’d be upset about his little paper. I believe this is even brought up in one or both of the books I’m currently reading.

The fact is the more you learn about Ford, the more you find while he had a few good ideas from time to time, such as his infamous massive one involving better pay and working conditions, he seemed a bit of an out of touch dunce, oblivious to the world, easily maniputable – kind of like Donald Trump today. Basically clueless. So just as Trump is killing people around the world at the moment by urging them to inject themselves with bleach (if not drink it) to “cure” the current COVID-19 pandemic, which is literally batshit insane, so too did Ford go around in a daze, believing discredited crap to be authentic – just like The Donald – and some allege that’s how The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – already discredited by the London Times, among others – came to be published in his paper, thus confirming for and influencing Hitler, his creepy pals, and countless of Jew hating Americans. Totally irresponsible and absolutely stupid. And again, some attribute this to Liebold, the German Nazi-to-be, and less to Ford whom they claim was too clueless to know better. One has to recall that even though this infamous book had nearly universally and publicly been declared a hoax with the true author having been identified by differing sources as one of two primary culprits (although most feel it was ultimately the work of the Russian government), there were still those who were so “out of it” or naive that they continued to fall for that hoax years later, as one biography on Allen Dulles stated that a German “informer” he had while stationed in Switzerland had gotten the book to him and he was so shocked and horrified at this international “Jewish plot” that he immediately fired off a top secret memo, going above his boss, sent directly to the White House, where it presumably died the death it deserved. Thus, an example of how even allegedly knowledgeable and powerful people could be suckered by that despite it’s having been discredited if they weren’t already familiar with it…

And on and on. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all trying to absolve Ford from his sins or claim he did not have a serious bias against the Jewish people as a whole. But the fact that he liked individual Jews as friends to have over regularly for years while his crap got published and distributed to the world by one or two men with definite agendas who allegedly wrote up things Ford said and constructed articles out of them, but since there don’t appear to be any surviving types of evidence of these sayings, one might wonder if Liebold just didn’t make half this shit up and since Ford didn’t even proof, edit or read the stuff published under his name, but simply signed off on it, it’s not so clear cut that he even knew what the hell he was seemingly doing, which would go on to impact millions around the world. Of course, everything attributed to him in the worst of ways could indeed turn out to have been true and accurate, and I wouldn’t be surprised, but when you start finding out details of who basically controlled and influenced him, who had total access to him and wrote things on his behalf in his name AS Ford and with Ford allegedly a Trump-like dittohead, it is also possible to speculate as to how much he actually knew the stuff coming out under his name and attributed to him was as reprehensible as it was, as damning as it was, influenced far too many people against the Jews in the worst possible ways, etc. I’m not sure if we’ll ever really know… It does make for some fascinating questions and speculations though.

In any case, this is an important historical book to read, if for no other reason than to see some of the truly awful things written about the world’s Jews which ultimately lead others to commit the most unspeakable horrors, and regardless of Ford’s actual awareness or not, ultimately he is responsible for this, this was his “fault,” and his legacy needs to always maintain that ugly truth. Recommended as a historical piece, but certainly not something to agree with or act on – unless you’re a KKK member, Neo-Nazi or the like, but since I think most of them are likely illiterate, I don’t know that they’ll be reading this to begin with!

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