Henry Ford: Industrial Strength Anti-Semite

There was so much hogwash vilifying the Jews back then. My voicing a Jewish grandmother on the “Rugrats” cartoon series, terrified my mother. She told me that Minka’s rendering resembled Anti-Semitic caricatures promoted by the Nazi propaganda film “The Eternal Jew” when she was young, and she feared the kids’ show fomented anti-Jewish feelings.

I can understand her reaction—the 20’s were one of the toughest, touchiest of times for the Jewish people.

Over the years, there have been many Hitler biopics, even in Germany, touching on negative propaganda. Why no in depth look at Ford's war against the “International Jew?”

Interesting that the German government has gone to great lengths to educate its citizens about the Holocaust and uses the schools, films and television to drive home the message that this must never happen again.  They take hate speech very seriously. Yet, we're still undecided about how to deal with hate in this country.  It's a debate I hope our film brings to the forefront.

The fine line between freedom of speech and defamation continues to smear. Henry Ford did raise the minimum wage, hire blacks and handicapped workers at his factory. What changed his position on empowering the downtrodden?

This is mostly another demonstration of the skill of Ford's PR people.  Ford introduced the $5 a day wage (double the prevailing rate) not because he wanted to improve his employees’ lives, but because he was convinced by his board that this would solve the absenteeism problem at his main Model T factory.  Ford couldn't meet demand unless he found a way to keep people working in the brutish, dangerous and dehumanizing conditions of his Highland Park, MI. plant.  The catch with the wage doubling was that 50% of a worker's pay would be held in escrow for a year and they would only get the payout if they had perfect attendance and submitted to home inspections by Ford's Sociology Department who would make sure they were leading upstanding lives. 

“Big Brother” in action.

Yes, and during that time he imposed many other restrictions on his largely immigrant workforce. The employees had to learn to speak English.  He set up schools and made sure they attended.  He insisted that they all become citizens and disavow their cultural origins.
At the graduation ceremonies from the Ford English School, there was a gigantic melting pot up on the stage, and the workers who were about to graduate would walk down into this melting pot on a ladder dressed in their native, ethnic costumes – whether it was from Italy or Poland or Greece or wherever.  They would do a quick change and then come out dressed in business suits or plain American dresses, with each worker waving a flag to show their new loyalties.

What a horrifying little class skit!

Henry Ford was not just building Model T's; he was also building men in his own image. He really was trying to be a god.  He saw the newspaper as a tool to transform Americans in the way he’d transformed his workforce. His PR people knew the benefit of casting Ford as a benevolent and farsighted leader.  If only.

Did folks forgive Ford's foibles because they liked his cars?

Ford's Model T transformed, not only America, but the world.  Ford was very much a populist.  Ordinary Americans admired and loved him, despite the outrageous things he said.  They'd say, “Well, that's just Henry.” 

Sounds like a sitcom: “That Darn Henry!”

It’s true. He almost single-handedly brought about a revival of square-dancing in America in the 1920s, the only pure form of dancing in his view. Ford thought new forms of dancing, music, women’s use of cosmetics, shorter hemlines, and the movies coming out of Hollywood were all immoral. An older, white, Christian, rural demographic followed his every word.  In some minds, Jews were responsible.

In 1918, Ford bought the Dearborn Independent, with the idea of transforming it into an influential, nationally distributed weekly. He hired reporters, editors, and a business manager, redesigned the Independent’s antiquated presses and recast them in Ford Motor plant facilities.  Ford intended to use the newspaper, backed by company money, to promote his vision of America, engineering an efficient, morally upright population that disavowed war, tobacco, alcohol, jazz, and theater.  Most of all, he wanted to expose the plague of Jewish influence on government and finance throughout the U.S.

Ernest Liebold, the man he elected to run the paper, saw his targeted readers, a largely, rural and white population, as a political base that would pave the way for a Ford Presidency.  Ford was a populist hero of mythic proportions who had an agenda and knew how to manipulate his image.   His PR people saw the benefit of casting Ford as a benevolent and farsighted leader.  If only.

He seemed more like a petulant power monger, who played fast and loose with the truth.

Ford was a man of contradictions.  He confessed his ignorance beyond manufacturing automobiles, but that never prevented him from speaking out about of world affairs.  As he eventually became a billionaire, he felt it was his right to share his opinions with the world, and reporters found that what he said made good copy. He usually didn't make any sense in his interviews and reporters would have to ask his spokesperson, William Cameron, editor of The Dearborn Independent, what Ford meant. 
Befuddled tho he was, you’re about to tell me his influence was far from benign.

Between 1920 and 1922, the Independent attacked many leading Jews by name and blamed Jews for everything from the Bolshevik Revolution and the First World War to bootlegged liquor, degenerate music like jazz, and scandalous movies.  These inflammatory articles accused the Jews of conspiring to enslave Christians and destroy the “Anglo-Saxon” way of life.

Oy! So how did Sapiro come into this?

Aaron Sapiro’s story intersected with the industrialist’s evolving sense of America’s place in the postwar world. Playing on the crushing boom and bust cycles that plagued American agriculture after the war, these articles attacked the agricultural cooperative movement Sapiro inspired as alien to the individualist spirit of American husbandry.  The pieces in the Independent accused Sapiro of defrauding American farmers to advance an international Jewish conspiracy.

The attacks all but dared Sapiro to sue for libel.  “Jewish Exploitation of Farmers’ Organizations,” shrieked a typical headline.  Full of outright errors, as well as anti-Semitic innuendo, the articles distorted Sapiro’s career, impugned his motives, and accused him of professional malpractice.  Sapiro demanded a retraction in early 1925, but the Independent’s editors ignored him, responding  with several more offensive articles.  Three months later, Sapiro filed suit in federal court requesting damages of $1million, an immense amount at the time.  By contrast, Ford earned that sum in two and a half days.  The national press took immediate notice, describing the case as a “David-versus-Goliath” contest.

This is a great set up for Sapiro’s long censored success story. I’m getting riled up just listening to you.

We'll talk about the impact The Dearborn Independent had when it landed in the offices of Jewish clergy, lawyers, intellectuals and activists like a series of perfectly timed grenades.  Jewish Americans who fought bravely in the military faced degrading treatment from their commanders and a cold shoulder from fellow citizens upon their return. The first of these sobering developments was the rise of hate literature directed at Jews in Germany. This was particularly disturbing to German-American Jews, who made up the vast majority of the Jewish population in this country at the time.

Sapiro was keenly aware of all these forces and knew that he was putting himself at risk challenging Ford and popular American opinion.

Ford’s need to wield his power and control over his workers, the unions, often led to violence. Was Sapiro every physically threatened?

I don't believe so.

So, spoiler alert:  I won't tell anyone: did Sapiro win the trial?

Yes and no.  Ford knew he wasn't going to win and was afraid to testify.  He was brazen as long as he hid behind his phalanx of lawyers, his newspaper and his security detail, but he didn't have the courage to sit in the witness stand and face Aaron Sapiro.  To keep from being called on the stand, he had Harry Bennett, his chief thug, engineer a mistrial.

How?

We'll reveal how he did this in our film.

You’re such a tease. How did the mistrial sit with Sapiro?

Even though Sapiro was confident he could prevail in a new trial, he didn’t welcome the expense or the time it would take.  He graciously accepted Ford’s offer of an apology and the promise that he’d shutter The Dearborn Independent if he dropped his lawsuit. Sapiro even bought a Thunderbird–he showed no hard feelings.  But forcing Ford to apologize and shut down The Dearborn Independent only gave him fleeting vindication.

Do you meant to tell me that the Ford-instigated anti-Jewish sentiment did not subside?

The Dearborn Independent was shut down but millions of copies of the collection of articles in book form continued to be published as The International Jew in Germany and South America because Ford hadn't copyrighted the books. 

Arrgh! What became of Aaron Sapiro and his work after the truth of the trial was suppressed?

Sapiro returned to California, but never reengaged with the field that won him his reputation and fame. He slipped into obscurity during the Depression and died in 1959.

A bittersweet tale that must be told!

It's my goal to reveal the courage it took for Aaron Sapiro to challenge the richest and most famous man in America.  As Aaron said, he wanted to show Ford that “one Jew is not afraid to fight him for his bigotry and his malice, right in his own jurisdiction, under his own battlements and in the face of his own horde of detectives and able lawyers.”  It was a trial of the century and one that shows what it takes to stand up to hate – even today. 

I’m tearing up, cheering inside, and getting goosebumps, like I do at the end of any great spellbinder. How would Sapiro’s and Ford’s families feel about this material coming to light now?

Sapiro’s remaining family is overjoyed at the possibility. Not sure about the Fords, but, to its credit, the Ford Motor Company has gone to great lengths to show its support for the Jewish people, as the sole sponsor of the television airing of “Schindler’s List,” and through its generous donations to Jewish causes and by continuing to do business with Israel after the Six Day War.  It looks like the next CEO of Ford could be the very able, Mark Fields, the current Chief Operating Officer, who happens to be Jewish.
My intent in this film isn't to tarnish Ford's legacy but to highlight the life of Aaron Sapiro and reemphasize why it's important to challenge hate, no matter what the personal cost. That said, we cannot let the good works of the current company act as a self imposed censorship board to keep us from telling this important but largely forgotten and suppressed story.  We welcome the opportunity to interview Henry Ford’s living heirs to discuss his legacy. Reconciliation is important.
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And I’ll have to reconcile myself to waiting for Michael to bring Aaron Sapiro's story to big and small screens everywhere.

For more information about “The Trial of Henry Ford” contact Michael Rose Productions: TrialofHenryFord@gmail.com, or (310) 391-2020  And/or: log on to the International Documentary Association website to make a tax deductible donation to this project. http://documentary.org/fsp/3598