Henry Ford, Who He Was, What He Did What He Was Like and the Effect He Had

Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. He didn’t even invent the assembly line. But more than any other single individual, he was responsible for transforming the automobile from an invention of unknown utility into an innovation that profoundly shaped the 20th century and continues to affect our lives today.

In December 1999, Ford was among 18 included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th Century, from a poll conducted of the American people.

What is perhaps less known about Henry Ford is that for several years he sponsored the publication of articles in the Dearborn Independent newspaper and was the publisher of several books that attacked and demonized Jews, spreading hatred throughout the American Midwest. One must question the legacy of a man who, on the one hand, so powerfully embodied the success of the “American dream” but who, on the other, also harboured deep-seated prejudices against American Jews and Jews in general.

In 1938, Ford was awarded Nazi Germany's Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a medal given to foreigners sympathetic to Nazism.

He gave Hitler 50,000 marks from 1933 to 1944 every year on Hitlers Birthday he Built factories in Germany and Russia to support the war and to make Money

Hitler had a picture of Ford behind his desk throughout the War

On December 20, 1922 the New York Times reported4 that automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was financing Adolph Hitler's nationalist and anti-Semitic movements in Munich. Simultaneously, the Berlin newspaper Berliner Tageblatt appealed to the American Ambassador in Berlin to investigate and halt Henry Ford's intervention into German domestic affairs. It was reported that Hitler's foreign backers had furnished a "spacious headquarters" with a "host of highly paid lieutenants and officials." Henry Ford's portrait was prominently displayed on the walls of Hitler's personal office:

The wall behind his desk in Hitler's private office is decorated with a large picture of...