Michaela Hoenicke Moore on the American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles
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Max Wallace. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003. ix + 465 pp. $27.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-312-29022-1. Reviewed by Michaela Hoenicke Moore Published on H-German (May, 2004) On a recent fight to St. Louis (no less), while efforts to assist the Nazis is an important one and still reading the book under review, I was asked if should be told to a wider audience. But the ac‐ I would recommend it. My neighbor, a self-pro‐ count is lacking in interpretative focus and occa‐ fessed history-buff, could not help notice the strik‐ sionally in historical perspective. ing cover--Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford The book weaves together the genesis of next to Auschwitz-Birkenau and a swastika--and Ford's and Lindbergh's racial notions, their pro‐ the title that linked this "American Axis" to the fessional dealings with Germany and their private rise of the Third Reich. What follows is my am‐ admiration for the Third Reich. Wallace uses the bivalent endorsement. existing literature on his two fallen heroes as well The book was not written for an academic au‐ as Lindbergh's private papers and the Ford Com‐ dience to whom it will yield few new insights--in pany archives. Yet his account is not a biographi‐ spite of the somewhat sensationalist advertise‐ cal one. Overall Lindbergh emerges as more of a ment of new disclosures and revelations on the complex, real-life character from these pages; two protagonists. The author, Max Wallace, is an Wallace's portrait of Anne Morrow Lindbergh is investigative journalist and this accounts for both nuanced and at times even moving (p. 247ff.). By the strength and the weakness of his story. His contrast Ford's personality remains vague and style is dramatic and captivating, and I thorough‐ Wallace's explanation of how and why he ac‐ ly enjoyed reading the book. The narrative is or‐ quired his anti-Semitic views is not entirely con‐ ganized exclusively around the two central fg‐ vincing. In 1920 Ford began serializing articles on ures with a gallery of secondary characters rang‐ the "Jewish Question" based on the Protocols of ing from alleged Nazi spies and military attachés the Learned Elders of Zion in his newspaper the to slave labor victims in "supporting roles." The Dearborn Independent, outlining a worldwide sin‐ story of Ford's and Lindbergh's anti-Semitism and ister Jewish conspiracy as detailed in the forgery. racism, and their deliberate as well as unwitting Subsequently he published the collection as a H-Net Reviews pamphlet, The International Jew, and effectively who was behind all of this activity; too often the distributed it through the Ford Company's nation‐ argument is based on conjecture (131ff., 144, al and international network of dealerships. Wal‐ 318f.). Rather than focusing on how Ford came to lace reviews and rejects as deficient alternative be an anti-Semite (as if anti-Semitism were a con‐ explanations of how Ford--that "hitherto shy, gen‐ tagious disease one could only catch through close tle ... and in some respects quite enlightened" man personal contact), it is the story of the public and (p. 16)--had come to adopt these malicious lies. political consequences of Ford's anti-Semitism The author instead introduces as the real culprit that is really the more interesting one. Ernest Gustav Liebold, a Detroit-born German- No less frustrating is the reversal of the American, who became both the Dearborn Inde‐ above-outlined argument in chapter 2, "The pendent's general manager and Henry Ford's Fuehrer's Inspiration." Much is made of Ford's trusted personal secretary. A 1918 "most secret" portrait in Hitler's office in 1931 (p. 2) and Baldur military intelligence document reported that von Schirach's defense at the Nuremberg trial: "If Liebold is "considered to be a German spy" (p. 25), [Ford] said the Jews were to blame, naturally we although the investigation remained inconclusive. believed him" (p. 42). Surely, the Nazis did not Over the next three hundred pages Liebold re‐ have to rely on Ford as a teacher of anti- mains a shadowy fgure. Wallace insinuates that Semitism? Here, too, the claim of Ford's influence Liebold is both responsible for Ford's anti- on the Nazis is not contextualized.[1] Wallace in‐ Semitism and for his company's attempts to pre‐ stead offers the opinion by another historian em‐ vent and undermine the American war effort in phasizing "the role that Russian émigrés played in both World War I and World War II. laying the ideological groundwork for the Holo‐ But Liebold is also shadowy in that Wallace caust" (p. 63).[2] Wallace uses this point to explain neither develops his character and motivations the significance of the White Russian Boris Brasol (or the makeup of his anti-Semitism) nor the spe‐ who is the most direct link between Ford (via cific nature of his ties to Germany from 1918 Liebold, of course) and the Nazis and also the con‐ through 1941. He has contacts with Franz von Pa‐ duit for a possible fnancial donation to the NS‐ pen (pp. 131, 225), Kurt Ludecke (the Nazis' "chief DAP. The driving force behind Wallace's account fund raiser" in the 1920s, p. 49ff) and perhaps is the existence of links between people who Heinrich Albert, one of the members of the board move like chess fgures across board. The author of directors of German Ford Werke since the establishes far-flung connections between his two 1930s. By page 318 Liebold has evolved into protagonists and Germany, but much of the con‐ "probably a Nazi spy" but the evidence remains text is missing. Occasionally, the reason for the shaky and confusing, and consists of a few official lack of historical perspective is Wallace's unfamil‐ Nazi (p. 146) or older German contacts, the signifi‐ iarity with important secondary literature on his cance of which Wallace cannot fully illuminate. subject. The reference for his account of Ameri‐ This never explicitly-made line of argumentation can controversy over boycotting the Berlin then would read as follows: during World War I Olympics in 1936 is a 2001 article on China in the an unconfirmed German spy set Henry Ford up to National Review Online (p. 415f.). But the main develop anti-Semitic views which, by the time of problem of Wallace's book is not a failure to ad‐ World War II, would lead the Ford Company to here to academic standards of referencing or undermine the American military efforts against source criticism. At issue is a broader concern Nazi Germany. My problem is less with the validi‐ that historians and journalists share: we tell a sto‐ ty of this interpretation than with the lack of spe‐ ry in order to advance an argument, to give mean‐ cific and convincing evidence that it was Liebold ing to an otherwise confusing and chaotic assem‐ 2 H-Net Reviews blage of facts and events. It is in this endeavor Games (p. 112ff.) Not surprisingly, Lindbergh was that Wallace's meandering account falls some‐ deeply impressed not only by "the organized vital‐ what short. Instead we learn intermittently some ity of Germany" but more importantly by a state juicy tidbits that do not pertain to the author's im‐ that sought to realize his own ideals: "science and mediate subject matter: for example, Kurt Von‐ technology harnessed for the preservation of a su‐ negut once wrote an admiring piece in a student perior race" (p. 118). As a result of the exclusive paper on the isolationist "lonely eagle" (p. 275) focus on the aviator, the dramatic and complex and George W. Bush's maternal great-grandfather story of the Czechoslovak crisis is told with Lind‐ "has been described by a U.S. Justice Department bergh and his exaggerated reports on the German investigator as 'one of Hitler's most powerful f‐ air force playing the decisive role in tilting British nancial supporters in the United States'" (p. 349). policy towards appeasement (pp. 165, 167-171). Later chapters explore the relationship be‐ Wallace's chapter ignores the military, political tween the Ford Company (Dearborn) and its Ger‐ and diplomatic reality of the British situation in man subsidiary Ford Werke during World War II. 1938.[4] It is a story of "business as usual": the German Lindbergh, probably even more so than Ford, profits were "placed in an escrow account for dis‐ emerges at times in this book as an unsuspecting tribution to the American parent company after dupe of more sinister forces working in the back‐ the war" (p. 329). These profits, Wallace rightly ground (p. 208). I am not convinced that this con‐ highlights, were in part based on forced labor.[3] spiratorial approach to history serves Wallace's Wallace is also correct in challenging the notion-- endeavor to establish personal responsibility for offered as the conclusion of a recent investigation politically damaging actions. The point to make that Dearborn had conducted into the problem of about the problematic role of the two fawed he‐ wartime profits from its European, Nazi-dominat‐ roes concerns the impact of their anti-Semitic, ed subsidiaries--that Ford "had to use labor pro‐ racist, pro-Nazi public activities, speeches or pub‐ vided by the German government" (p. 335). The lications over the course of more than a decade German controlled Ford plants in Europe had, on American public opinion. The Roosevelt ad‐ even before the outbreak of the war and with the ministration, in the meantime, tried to rally the consent of Dearborn, turned into "an arsenal of same public around a program of aid to Britain Nazism" (pp.