American industrialist and automotive pioneer Henry Ford played a significant role in circulating and popularising modern anti-Semitic prejudices. In 1920, Ford used his privately owned newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to publish a series of anti-Semitic articles under the umbrella title ‘The International Jew’. This extract contains Henry Ford’s view of the situation in Germany:

“The Jew in Germany is regarded as only a guest of the people. He has offended by trying to turn himself into the host.

There are no stronger contrasts in the world than the pure Germanic and pure Semitic races; therefore, there has been no harmony between the two in Germany. The German has regarded the Jew strictly as a guest, while the Jew, indignant at not being given the privileges of the nation-family, has cherished animosity against his host.

In other countries, the Jew is permitted to mix more readily with the people, he can amass his control unchallenged, but in Germany the case was different. Therefore, the Jew hated the German people; therefore, the countries of the world which were most dominated by the Jews showed the greatest hatred of Germany during the recent regrettable war. Jewish hands were in almost exclusive control of the engines of publicity by which public opinion concerning the German people was moulded. The sole winners of the war were Jews…

Jewish influence in German affairs came strongly to the front during the war. It came with all the directness and attack of a flying wedge, as if previously prepared. The Jews of Germany were not German patriots during the war, and although this will not appear a crime in the eyes of the nations who were opposed to Germany, it may throw some light on the Jew’s assertion of patriotic loyalty to the land where he lives. Thoughtful Germans hold that it is impossible for a Jew to be a patriot…

The principal Jewish influences which are charged with bringing about the downfall of German order may be named under three heads: (a) the spirit of Bolshevism which masqueraded under the name of German Socialism (b) Jewish ownership and control of the Press (c) Jewish control of the food supply and the industrial machinery of the country. There was a fourth, “higher up,” but these worked upon the German people directly.

So suddenly have German eyes been opened, so stormily wrathful has been the reaction, that the word has gone out through German Judaism to retire to the second trench. There has been a sudden and concerted abandonment of office wherever the office made direct contact with the public; there has, however, been no abandonment of power.

What will happen in Germany is not now known. Some regrettable things have already happened. But the Germans will doubtless prove themselves equal to the situation by devising methods of control at once unobjectionable and effective… [But] Judaism is the most closely organised power on earth, even more than the British Empire. It forms a State whose citizens are unconditionally loyal wherever they may be and whether rich or poor.”