The Plot Against America

Work, is a nonfiction bestseller, and the Ford name and legend are known throughout the world. Polls show him running ahead of President Harding in popularity, and is spoken of as potential Republican presidential candidate; in the fall of 1922 considers presidential run. Adolf Hitler, in 1923 interview, says, 'We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement in America.' In mid-twenties, a suit for defamation filed against him by a Chicago Jewish lawyer is settled out of court, and in 1927, he retracts his attacks on Jews, agrees to discontinue anti-Semitic publications, and shuts down Dearborn Independent, a deficit enterprise that had cost him close to $ 5 million. When Lindbergh flies the Spirit of St. Louis to Detroit in August 1927, he meets Ford at Ford Airport and takes him in the famous plane for his first flight. Lindbergh interests Ford in aviation manufacturing. The two meet afterward numerous times, and in a 1940 Detroit interview Ford explains, 'When Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews.'

1931-1937. Competition from Chevrolet and Plymouth and impact of Depression produce large company losses despite innovation of Ford V-8 engine. Poor labor relations at River Rouge plant caused by speedup, job insecurity, and labor espionage. Efforts by United Auto Workers to organize Ford, along with General Motors and Chrysler, meet with violence and intimidation by Ford; Detroit vigilante group beats up labor organizers at River Rouge. Ford Company's labor policies condemned by National Labor Relations Board and considered worst in auto industry.

1938. In July, on his seventy-fifth birthday, accepts Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler's Nazi government at a birthday dinner in Detroit for fifteen hundred prominent citizens. (Same medal awarded to Lindbergh in October ceremony in Germany, causing Interior Secretary Ickes to tell a December meeting of the Cleveland Zionist Society, 'Henry Ford and Charles A. Lindbergh are the only two free citizens of a free country who obsequiously have accepted tokens of contemptuous distinction at a time when the bestower of them counts that day lost when he can commit no new crimes against humanity.') Suffers first of two strokes.

1939-1940. With outbreak of World War Two joins his friend Lindbergh in supporting isolationism and America First Committee. Shortly after Ford is appointed to America First executive committee, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jewish director of Sears, Roebuck and Company, resigns because of Ford's anti-Semitic reputation. For a while meets regularly with anti-Semitic radio priest Father Coughlin, whose activities Roosevelt and Ickes believe Ford is financing. Lends financial support to the anti-Semitic demagogue Gerald L.K. Smith for his weekly radio broadcast and his living expenses. (Some years later, Smith reprints Ford's International Jew in a new edition and maintains into the 1960s that Ford 'never changed his opinion of Jews.')

1941-1947. Suffers second stroke. Company converts to defense production as war approaches; during war, produces B-24 bomber at huge Willow Run facility, where Lindbergh is hired as consulting adviser. Because of illness, Ford no longer able to run company and resigns in 1945. Dies April 1947, and 100, 000 mourners view the body. Vast fortune in company stock goes mainly to Ford Foundation, soon the world's wealthiest private foundation.

Other Historical Figures in the Work

BERNARD BARUCH (1870-1965) Financier and government adviser. As director of War Industries Board under Woodrow Wilson, mobilized nation's industrial resources for World War One. Member of the White House circle during Roosevelt administrations. Appointed by Truman as U.S. representative to U.N. Atomic Energy Commission in 1946.

RUGGIERO 'RITCHIE THE BOOT' BOIARDO (1890-1984) Newark crime figure and local rival to racketeer Longy Zwillman; his influence strongest in the city's Italian First Ward, where he owned a popular restaurant.

LOUIS D. BRANDEIS (1856-1941) Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to cultivated immigrant Jewish family from Prague. Public interest and labor attorney in Boston. Early organizer of Zionist movement in America. Appointed by President Wilson as associate justice of Supreme Court, but only after intense four-month controversy in Senate Judiciary Committee and around the country, which Brandeis attributed to his being first Jew nominated to the court. Served twenty-three years, until 1939.

CHARLES E. COUGHLIN (1891-1979) Roman Catholic priest and pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan. Regarded Roosevelt as a Communist and fervently admired Lindbergh. In the 1930s, disseminated strongly anti-Semitic ideas in a weekly nationwide radio broadcast and his periodical Social Justice, which was barred from the U.S. Mail during the war for violating the Espionage Act and ceased publication in 1942.

AMELIA EARHART (1897-1937) In 1932, set transatlantic record of fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes for flight from Newfoundland to Ireland; first woman to make unaccompanied flights across Atlantic and across Pacific from Honolulu to California. Her plane lost somewhere over the Pacific in 1937 attempt to fly around the world with navigator Frederick J. Noonan.

MEYER ELLENSTEIN (1885-1963) After careers as a dentist and a lawyer, chosen by fellow Newark city commissioners in 1933 to be mayor of Newark. The city's first and only Jewish mayor, served two terms, 1933- 1941.

EDWARD FLANAGAN (1886-1948) In 1904, emigrated from Ireland to the U.S., where he began studies for priesthood; ordained 1912. In 1917, to provide for the welfare of homeless boys of all races and religions, founded Father Flanagan's Home for Boys in Omaha. Became national figure in 1938 because of popular film about Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan.

LEO FRANK (1884-1915) Manager of Atlanta pencil factory, found guilty of murdering Mary Phagan, a thirteen- year-old employee, on April 26, 1913; assaulted with a knife while prisoner and later forcibly removed from jail by local citizens and lynched, August 1915. Anti-Semitism believed to have played important part in dubious conviction.

FELIX FRANKFURTER (1882-1965) Roosevelt-appointed associate justice of U.S. Supreme Court, 1939- 1962.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS (1897-1945) An early member of the Nazi Party, in 1933 became Hitler's propaganda minister and culture czar, responsible for overseeing the press, radio, movies, and theater, and mounting public spectacles such as parades and mass rallies. Among the most devoted and brutal of Hitler's associates. In April 1945, with Germany destroyed and the Russians entering Berlin, he and his wife killed their six young children and together committed suicide.

HERMANN GORING (1893-1946) Founder and first head of the Gestapo, or secret police, and responsible for creation of the German air force. In 1940 Hitler named him as his successor, but dismissed him near war's end. Convicted at Nuremberg for war crimes and sentenced to death, he committed suicide two hours before execution.

HENRY (HANK) GREENBERG (1911-1986) Slugging first baseman for Detroit Tigers in 1930s and 1940s; fell two home runs short of Babe Ruth's record in 1938. Hero to Jewish baseball fans, he was first of two Jewish players elected to baseball's Hall of Fame.

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST (1863-1951) American publisher, considered the foremost proponent of the sensational, jingoistic 'yellow journalism' addressed to a mass audience; his newspaper empire flourished into the 1930s. Originally aligned with Democratic populists, became increasingly right wing and a bitter enemy of FDR's.