Customer Reviews

Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production Of Hate

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Henry Ford was a great White American hero, and Neil Baldwin is a John 8:44 jew.

Is Baldwin a Jew?

How it then possible for this text to impartially represent the truth?

When listening or reading it is vitally important to understand the motives of the source before forming your own opinion.

I think I was the last person in the United States to become aware of Henry Ford's anti-semitism.

I make it a practice to study one person a month and I decided as a business builder, Henry Ford was worthy of my attention and study.

I found this particular biography and thought, "OK, this has a completely different approach, let's try it on."

I found Baldwin's passion and zealousness for his topic and his particular slant to be very powerful. As is frequent in such writing, it also became a barrier because every action Ford took became, through Baldwin's eyes, a matter of Ford being the Personification of Evil.

I am not condoning Ford's thoughts, beliefs or behaviors. I am believing that not every action he took was a result of some undercurrent of Anti Semitism.

That said, this book is worth a read due to the level of research Baldwin has done both in this biography and the biography of one of Ford's friends and role models (and less rabidly Anti-Semitic although there was some there) in Thomas Alva Edison.

I just had this thought: I wonder how many business leaders remain staunchly racist... yet it has gone deeply underground in this age.

I wonder how many business (and political leaders) continue to harbor less than transformed thought?

Something to think about... and continue to stand against.

Neil Baldwin's "Henry Ford and the Jews" is a compelling look at how a genius at one thing --- the mass production of a good automobile --- could become such a dangerous buffoon when it came to another thing --- the mass production of an idea. At some point, our title character ceased to be just "Henry Ford, automaker" and instead became Henry Ford, wealthy and powerful symbol of international antisemitism. Baldwin's portrait of Ford in all his horrible glory is fascinating.

This book by Baldwin gave a searing history of automobile icon
Henry Ford.Baldwin very capably shows one of the pioneers of
American industry to be devoutly anti-semite.Ford himself was the
financier behind a anti-Jewish newspaper that was published in
Michigan.Ford was a fan of Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a portrait of Ford on thew wall in his office.Henry Ford received an award
from Hitler and showed up in person to receive it bringing with him many guests.Charles Linberg and Thomas Watson of IBM declined
the same award.Ford was also able to sell Ford products to the
Nazis receiving a monopoly on the Nazi vehicle market in the military.This book is packed with documented of Henry Ford's
anti-semite activities.Read this you will become better informed.
This is a good book. Buy it.

This book by Baldwin gave a searing history of automobile icon
Henry Ford.Baldwin very capably shows one of the pioneers of
American industry to be devoutly anti-semite.Ford himself was the
financier behind a anti-Jewish newspaper that was published in
Michigan.Ford was a fan of Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a portrait of Ford on thew wall in his office.Henry Ford received an award
from Hitler and showed up in person to receive it bringing with him many guests.Charles Linberg and Thomas Watson of IBM declined
the same award.Ford was also able to sell Ford products to the
Nazis receiving a monopoly on the Nazi vehicle market in the military.This book is packed with documented of Henry Ford's
anti-semite activities.Read this you will become better informed.
This is a good book. Buy it.

For all his business acumen, Henry Ford was a vicious, rabid anti-Semite and this book does an excellent job in documenting his lifelong crusade against the Jewish people. Ford didn't even try to hide his anti-Semitism and it's amazing that there is still a huge portion of the population that has no clue about the racist and discriminatory practices of the Ford Motor Company and the beliefs of its founder and guiding force.This book is indeed very important in that it exposes the truth about Ford and his company for the current generation. Well-written and well-researched. An excellent book.

This book reveals a legacy of hatred and tyranny that lives on through the Ford Foundation even today. Henry Ford planted the seeds of hate long ago. The book is both telling and horrifying at the same time!

This book is both a great read and a scary commentary.

YES - The essential facts put forward by Baldwin are correct: Ford was a major anti-semite and he gave money to the German Nazis, helping them into power.

Yet, Baldwin's research is pathetic... a great deal of it was his imagination. He fails to present facts put forward by Kurt Ludecke's I KNEW HITLER; or Bennett's WE NEVER CALLED HIM HENRY; with any accuracy - he simply makes up what he wants.

For example, Baldwin states that the day after Nazi fund raiser Kurt Ludecke visited Ford, and Ludecke was turned away, a telegram to Lukecke arrived the NEXT DAY stating that Ford wouldn't give money through Ludecke to Hitler. Yet - READ Ludecke's I KNEW HITLER - the only primary source available on Ludecke/Ford. In this ONLY first hand account, Ludecke writes that several WEEKS (not ONE day) passed between his meeting with Ford and arrival of the telegram in question.

Baldwin has failed here as he does throughout the book to provide an accurate account of events. He makes no mention of the difference in Ludecke's primary source account and his own secondary account. Baldwin has shown himself as incompetent.

I have researched this subject for over 2 years. Baldwin makes a
serious error on virtually every page. His errors show an incredible degree of sloppy research. He seems to have only half-read his sources. His book is a joke as a serious work on Ford, anti-semitism, German inter-war history, and Hitler A far, far, better book is Albert Lee's Henry Ford and the Jews (1980). Interestingly, in the forward of Baldwin's book he writes that he put Lee's book (the one with the SAME title which inspired him) on the "shelf" while writing his book. YET, he quotes Albert Lee's: Henry Ford And The Jews, often throughout his book. How on the shelf could that book have been, since he was citing it so often?

Baldwin is a professor of poetry, not a historian, and his lack of understanding of the sort of research that goes into such a work is evident to anyone who has bothered to read the sources he cites. Baldwin constantly takes liberties; invents events that didn't happen; embellishes, and novelizes. He fails to demonstrate that his work is anything but the work of someone who should stay with what he has done very well in the past: writing books on poetry.

This is, bottom line, an appallingly ill-researched book - one of the worst I've ever seen that claims to be a serious work.

The only thing good that can be said about this book is that it helped to bring Henry Ford's support of anti-semitism, Nazis and so forth to the public's attention - but that is all.

If the material were not so important to discuss, I would give this book 1 star. As it is, I give it 2 because he did make an attempt (albeit pathetic, as it is) to take on a very hot subject.

Again... the broad facts in Baldwin's book are very correct, but the specifics are nearly all wrong. Baldwin wrote a historical fiction novel masquarading as a historiograhy.

Bottom line: get Albert Lee's Henry Ford and the Jews (1980) instead of this ill-researched "novel."

Neil Baldwin's look at Henry Ford and his anti-semitic views is an important one. Most people know something about Ford's anti-semitism. However, with this book one gets a full picture of the nature of his prejudice, the way it was expressed, and it's root causes. In addition, Mr. Baldwin has added to the value of this story by covering, in some detail, the responses of various members of the Jewish community to this very big problem. Mr. Ford was an extremely influential American, and as such, it was very important for Jewish leaders to respond to the outrageous and harmful ideas that were expressed in publications (such as The Dearborn Independent) that he was associated with. However, leaders differed with regard to how to best deal with this problem, and indeed it was something that had to be handled carefully.

In some ways, this is a very sad story, for it shows us some of the worst aspects of a man who was and still is revered by many. It also reminds us of how prevalent anti-semitism was in America during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, this is an important story, and Neil Baldwin has told it in a book that combines good writing with outstanding scholarship. I don't think that will disappoint the serious reader.