This series is heavily based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document that claims a secret Jewish cabal is plotting global domination. Despite the Protocols being exposed as a literary forgery as early as 1921, Ford uses his massive platform & wealth to legitimize these conspiracy theories for an American audience.

At its peak, the newspaper had a circulation of roughly 700,000, and Ford required his auto dealerships to distribute it. The 91-week series was later compiled into a four-volume book set that sold over 500,000 copies and was translated into 16 languages.

The articles blamed Jewish people for international banking control, labor unrest, and the "degradation" of American culture, including jazz and baseball. Ford's writings significantly influenced the Nazi party; Adolf Hitler praised Ford in Mein Kampf and later awarded him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938.

Following a 1927 libel lawsuit brought by lawyer Aaron Sapiro and a boycott of Ford products, Henry Ford will issue a public apology and close down The Dearborn Independent. He lied about the whole thing, claiming to be unaware of the articles' content—a claim widely viewed as disingenuous given his total control over the paper. Despite his retraction, The International Jew has remained a staple of Antisemitic propaganda worldwide for decades.

"Henry Ford was peaking as a global celebrity at the conclusion of World War I, having introduced the $5 workday, assembly line and Model T ‒ revolutionary changes that transformed the way people lived. Reporters staked out the gates of his Fair Lane mansion. Ford loved the limelight and he constantly made news, even running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan as a Democrat in 1918. He narrowly lost.

In the midst of his fame, Ford became a media mogul of sorts, forming the Dearborn Publishing Company and purchasing the sleepy Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper, which was dying of red ink. He published the paper under his name for the first time 100 years ago, in January 1919.

Under Ford, the Independent became notorious for its unprecedented attacks on Jews. But Ford’s anti-Semitism traveled far beyond the Dearborn borders. Showing the marketing expertise that had catapulted Ford Motor into one of the world’s most famous brands, Henry Ford’s lieutenants vastly widened the reach of his attacks by packaging the paper’s anti-Semitic content into four books.

Experts say “The International Jew,” distributed across Europe and North America during the rise of fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s, influenced some of the future rulers of Nazi Germany.

In 1931, two years before he became the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit News reporter in his Munich office, which featured a large portrait of Ford over the desk of the future führer. The reporter asked about the photo.

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.

Ford’s anti-Jewish campaign provoked protests and a boycott of Ford Motor automobiles in the 1920s. Ford offered an apology ‒ received by the public with great skepticism ‒ and closed the paper in 1927. It was too late, though, as copies of “The International Jew” spread widely before and after World War II, influencing generations of anti-Semites. The glowing imprimatur of Henry Ford lent credibility to the preposterous charges against Jews the books contained.

But what might have been lost to history as an ugly curiosity has proven to be a Pandora’s box, as the Internet age has given Ford’s anti-Semitic literature a powerful new life. Today, a century after Ford purchased the Dearborn Independent and 72 years after his death, his legacy of hate is stronger than ever ‒ it flourishes on the websites and forums of white nationalists, racists and others who hate Jews.

Today, “The International Jew” by Henry Ford plays a significant role in fomenting resentment as the United States grapples with rising numbers of hate crimes and anti-Semitic incidents, ascendant white nationalism and a gunman armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle who massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October. When he surrendered, the gunman told police he “wanted all Jews to die.”

An essay posted by the Anti-Defamation League on its website says that by resurrecting decades-old texts such as “The International Jew,” today's anti-Semites demonstrate the longevity of their beliefs, legitimizing them to both dedicated followers and potential recruits.

Because of Ford’s fame, “The International Jew” has been a “particularly powerful tool for haters trying to validate their hostile beliefs,” the essay adds.

Two examples of Ford’s influence online today: On Stormfront, a white nationalist online forum, a contributor has taken the screen name Dr. Ford and uses a photo of Henry Ford as a profile image. On the same forum, a participant whose screen name is AllisonRM wrote last year:

>“I'm currently reading The International Jew: Essays from the Dearborn Independent (Ford)… Read these great books!...We, the white race, need to encourage ourselves and our children.”

Heidi Beirich, an expert on extremism in the United States at the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said extremist websites contain thousands of references to Ford and “The International Jew.”

“In the world of the racist right, Henry Ford is almost a living, breathing human being, “Beirich said in an interview. She added that extremist leaders use Ford “as an inspiration” and “validator” to impress people while enlisting them to join the movement.

It’s not just extremist websites that are peddling Ford’s books. Shoppers can buy “The International Jew” by Henry Ford on the websites of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Walmart.

“This is a wonderful book that should be required reading for all Americans,” wrote Tara, in a five-star Amazon review. “Sadly, many people like to label Henry Ford as an anti-Semite, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

And then there are the ads. After I explored the availability of Ford’s anti-Semitic books on Amazon in connection with this story, ads for “The International Jew” by Henry Ford began popping up on my Facebook page. They appeared next to ads for what I was actually shopping for ‒ a winter coat.

Chapter 2: Transforming a Country Weekly

Starting with the issue of May 22, 1920, Ford began using the Independent to attack Jews. Every week for nearly two years, the paper published articles that assailed Jews for being sneaky and treacherous and conspiring to control the global financial system, a common Jewish stereotype. Ford also accused Jews of scheming to dominate such American industries as Hollywood, farming and liquor distribution.

“There is no other racial or national type which puts forth this kind of person,” the Independent said in June 1920. “It is not merely that there are a few Jews among international financial controllers ‒ it is that these world controllers are exclusively Jews.”

While anti-Semitism goes back centuries, Ford’s salvos were likely the most sustained printed attacks on Jews the world had ever seen. With his wealth and resources, Ford remains the most formidable anti-Semite in American history.

In 2019, many educated Americans have a vague understanding that Ford had anti-Semitic sentiments. Few people are aware of the details, though, of how Ford spent millions on his paper and the “International Jew” series of books.

The books spread like a virus, translated into 12 languages and distributed on three continents in the years after World War I. The books appeared as fascist forces were organizing, especially in Germany, one of the countries targeted by Ford’s agents.

In its first couple of years, Ford sold more than 200,0000 copies of “The International Jew.” His underlings deliberately declined to copyright the content, so other anti-Semites were free to publish the books. That is one reason Ford’s paper and books are widely available today, in printed form and online. With no copyright, it’s nearly impossible to stop their proliferation.

Chapter 3: Henry Ford, Publisher

After paying $1,000 for the Independent (about $18,000 in today’s dollars), Ford named his closest aide, Ernest Liebold, the newspaper’s general manager. Liebold was a hardcore anti-Semite.

“He hated everything Jewish, and he saw the publication as a vehicle for promoting his agenda,” Steven Watts wrote in “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century.”

Ford and Liebold then assembled a crack editorial team by raiding the Detroit News.

For top editor, Ford hired News’ executive Edwin Pipp, a liberal Catholic who had been a muckraking Detroit reporter known as a soft touch because he wrote stories about people down on their luck. William Cameron, a Canadian immigrant who was a star reporter and editorial columnist for the News, came aboard as the lead writer.

Experts have long debated the roles of these three in the production of the Independent, but a general consensus has emerged that Ford, not a skilled writer, talked over ideas with Liebold, who ordered Pipp and Cameron to transform them into stories. Some historians believe Cameron “undertook his assignment disgustedly,” as David Lewis wrote in “The Public Life of Henry Ford,” adding that Cameron ”was either unable or did not try to dissuade Ford from launching the attack.” However disgusted he might have been, Cameron remained a Ford aide into the 1940s.

In serving as the link between Ford and the rest of the world, Leibold was strategic and menacing. With Ford’s money, Liebold organized a network of spies, many with government intelligence backgrounds, to snoop around outposts of Jewish life in America, paying special attention to community leaders. The agents funneled the information to Liebold in Dearborn as grist for the Independent’s anti-Jewish campaign.

Henry Ford ordered that the Independent not be used to publicize him or the company, though the paper’s nickname was “The Ford International Weekly” and Ford forced his dealers to conduct subscription campaigns. Some dealerships threw a copy of the Independent into newly sold Model Ts. Circulation eventually reached 900,000, making it one of the biggest periodicals in the country.

The Independent carried a weekly column by Ford ‒ verbosely ghost-written by Cameron – that filled “Mr. Ford’s Page.” Ford commented on many everyday subjects, but virtually never used his column for the most blatant anti-Semitic content. The Independent’s attacks on Jews ran separately, often starting on page one, almost always without a byline.

Under Ford, the Independent was tabloid in form, cost five cents and ran 16 pages. Its motto: “Chronicler of the Neglected Truth.”

At the beginning, the Independent was unremarkable, filled with long-winded feature articles on national and international subjects such as farming in Europe, the Smithsonian Institute or a cure for leprosy. Most critics found the paper soporific, a Saturday Evening Post without the pizazz.

It was only months, though, before the Independent took a sinister tack. Ford’s pet peeves – distant capitalists, aliens who refuse to assimilate, Bolsheviks (all code words for Jews) ‒ began creeping into the Independent’s pages, according to Neil Baldwin’s 2001 book, “Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate.”

“His own page took on a strident tone as Ford lashed out against unnamed, hidden influences that continued to trouble him,” Baldwin wrote.

Circulation lagged in the early going and Ford lost the equivalent of $3.5 million in today’s dollars in the first year. Staffers knew changes had to be made. “Find an evil to attack,” Joseph J. O’Neil, a veteran New York newspaperman, urged Liebold in a memo. “LET’S FIND SOME SENSATIONALISM,” he typed with emphasis.

Beginning with the issue of May 22, 1920, Ford found his target. That issue of the Dearborn Independent kicked off a 91-week campaign of insults, criticism and lies directed at Jews from Dexter and Davison in Detroit to Krakow, Poland.

“The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” read the inaugural page-one headline.

“There is apparently in the world today a central financial force which is playing a vast and closely organized game with the world for its table and universal control for its stakes,” the article said.

In subsequent weeks, the Independent hammered Jews for scheming to take over Broadway theater, baseball, American agriculture and countless other domains. Ford’s paper also popularized an early 20th-Century forgery from Russia, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which similarly purports to show Jews are bent on world domination.

Chapter 4: Jews and Others Fight Back

The Independent ‒ put out by Henry Ford, Dearborn-born and bred, legendary Tin Lizzie wizard, American folk hero and one of the world’s richest men ‒ shocked Jewish Americans and many other citizens of diverse backgrounds. It wasn’t long before they began to counterattack. The Independent was controversial from coast to coast in its day.

Pipp, whose Catholic conscience would not allow him to run an anti-Semitic journal, quit and began publishing his own paper, Pipp’s Weekly, that was often critical of Ford. Cameron took Pipp’s place. Ford’s wife, Clara, and Edsel, his only child, put off by the anti-Jewish articles, reportedly distanced themselves from the Independent.

As the Independent launched its anti-Semitic campaign and sent the paper, unsolicited, to libraries and schools across the nation, protests broke out. Some cities attempted to ban the paper, but such moves raised First Amendment issues. Jews organized Ford Motor boycotts. Former President William Howard Taft, a future U.S. Supreme Court chief justice, slammed Ford in a speech. Later, he joined outgoing President Woodrow Wilson and dozens of other VIPs in signing a petition that denounced the Independent.

“God help Henry Ford. God forgive him,” said well known New York Rabbi Stephen Wise, who called Ford the “most contemptible little liar that ever lived.”

Louis Marshall, a New York lawyer and towering figure in the American Jewish community, played a key role in combating Ford and the Independent. His first move was to send Ford a telegram, saying the articles “constitute a libel upon an entire people.”

The Independent was unimpressed. “Your rhetoric is that of a Bolshevik orator,” it fired back, linking Jews and Bolshevism, a common anti-Semitic trope.

In Detroit, Rabbi Leo Franklin, the head of Temple Beth El and an outspoken foe of discrimination, found himself caught between Ford and Marshall. Franklin was a Ford friend and former neighbor who had received yearly Model T’s as a gift. Marshall, in Manhattan, urged a more militant approach toward Ford in Detroit that Franklin was slow to adopt. Franklin eventually returned his 1920 Model T and told the Detroit News that Ford “has fanned the flames of anti-Semitism throughout the world.”

Chapter 5: An Independent Target Sues and Ford Shuts the Paper

After nearly two years, Ford suddenly halted the attacks in December 1922. Just as unexpectedly, he resumed them in 1924 when he went after Aaron Sapiro, a young Jewish activist from California who had become a leader in the farm co-op movement.

Sapiro fought back. He filed a $1 million libel suit against Ford, igniting weeks of sensational coverage in the national press. The case came to trial in 1927, though juror misconduct led to a mistrial.

Ford, freed from being forced to testify under oath, a position from which he had embarrassed himself in the past, issued an apology to Sapiro and eventually settled out of court with him. Ford also took back all of his attacks on Jews and withdrew “The International Jew,” though that proved to be much easier promised than done.

In his apology, Ford called himself “deeply mortified” by the attacks, but blamed underlings, denying he knew about the articles in advance. He relieved Liebold and Cameron from their posts at the Independent, but kept them on the company payroll for years. Few close observers ‒ or average Americans ‒ believed Ford was so removed that he hadn’t been aware of prominent articles in his own newspaper that had sparked an international outcry.

In an editorial headlined “Forgiveness without Fawning,” the Detroit Jewish Chronicle echoed many other papers in casting doubt on Ford’s claim that he had been unaware of the paper’s content.

“That Mr. Ford does not accept personal responsibility for the anti-Semitic articles is also obvious,” the editorial said. “His action in this respect is what is commonly known as ‘passing the buck.’”

Ford closed the Independent in December 1927. But the damage had been done.

“Ford’s well-publicized decision was disingenuous,” wrote Victoria Saker Woeste in “Henry Ford’s War on Jews,” because he knew that even after closing the paper, his hate literature already lived on in hundreds of thousands of copies of “The International Jew."

Chapter 6: Why?

Why did Henry Ford ‒ the entrepreneur Fortune magazine in 1999 named “Businessman of the 20th Century” ‒ spend so much time and money attacking Jews?

Searching for clues, because Ford never discussed his anti-Semitism in depth, historians often have focused on his childhood amid the farms of what are now the streets of east Dearborn. While only a long walk from Detroit in the 1860s and ‘70s, Ford grew up isolated from Jews and most other minorities, and 19th-Century rural America was a place where ancient Jewish stereotypes were widespread.

Experts also point to Ford’s close friend, Thomas Edison, who had a complex history of remarks about Jews, and Ford’s close relationship with Ernest Liebold, whose anti-Semitic views were well known. Historian Douglas Brinkley wrote that Ford’s “increasingly vicious anti-Semitism appears to have grown out of his antipathy toward powerful bankers.”

Ford’s criticism of Jews and hatred of Wall Street were “the foibles of the Michigan farm boy who had been liberally exposed to Populist notions,” wrote historian Richard Hofstadter.

“Ford disliked Jews who he believed exercised disproportionate control over the institutions that were vital to the rural-mercantile economy he wanted to build,” wrote Victoria Saker Woeste.

Chapter 7: Ford Family and Company Win Praise for Reparations

The response to Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism by the Ford family and Ford Motor Co. has received considerable praise from Jewish organizations and other observers.

“The Ford family and Ford Motor Company embarked upon correctives even before the Old Man passed away, Neil Baldwin wrote in “Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate.”

On its website, the Anti-Defamation League says:

In the decades following Ford's death in 1947, the Ford family and the Ford Motor Company have engaged in numerous projects and endeavors in the public interest, including many that have been supportive of Jewish concerns.

In 1997, for example, the Ford Motor Company sponsored the first screening of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," commercial-free, on national television. Ford Motor is credited with extending economic credit to the young state of Israel and supporting Jewish charities at home and abroad.

Today, two generations of the Ford family are well represented on the board of one of the country’s most elaborate historical complexes, The Henry Ford, in Dearborn, formerly called Greenfield Village, which Henry Ford founded. The chairman of the board is S. Evan Weiner, of the Edward C. Levy Co. in Detroit, who is Jewish.

In November, Weiner welcomed a largely Jewish crowd of several hundred people in the museum during a one-day collaboration with the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan: “The Henry Ford…Through a Jewish Lens.” The program examined Ford’s bigotry and, through pop-up exhibits, celebrated Jews as American innovators.

Steven Watts, a historian at the University of Missouri and author of “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century,” spoke about Ford’s exalted place in American culture, but added: “It’s hard to find a more blatant anti-Semite in American history.”

Larry Gunsberg, an officer at the Jewish historical society, told the Jewish News that he found the event “an excellent way for the community to embrace the generational change in the Ford family.”

On the “My Jewish Detroit” website, historical society President Risha B. Ring said, “This monumental conversation is long overdue.”

Chapter 8: Ford and the Führer

Henry Ford’s hate campaign took a disturbing turn in the 1920s and ‘30s, when it intersected with Adolf Hitler’s path to power. The collision produced what the 21st Century calls synergy.

Copies of “The International Jew” began re-appearing in the 1930s in the U.S., South America and Europe, especially in Germany, where the Nazi Party was poised to take power. Books wound up on a table in the office of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party in Munich.

“Hitler’s ravings and public speeches against Jews frequently were based on Ford’s anti-Semitic literature,” Ford expert David Lewis wrote.

One leading Nazi, Baldur von Schirach, the Reichsjugendführer (Hitler Youth leader) in the 1930s, became an anti-Semite after he read “The International Jew” in German, von Schirach testified at the Nuremberg war-crime trials. Found guilty of crimes against humanity for helping to send thousands of Viennese Jews to their deaths, von Schirach served 20 years in Spandau prison.

“If Henry Ford said that Jews were to blame, why, naturally we believed him,” von Schirach is quoted as saying in Baldwin’s “Henry Ford and the Jews.”

Von Schirach added: “You have no idea what a great influence this book had on the thinking of German youth.”

Numerous historians have noted that Ford is the only American mentioned in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” memoir. After asserting that Jews were increasingly exerting control over American labor, Hitler wrote, “one great man, Ford, to their exasperation, still holds out independently.”

Experts on Hitler have noted Ford’s literature influenced Hitler’s writing in “Mein Kampf.” Reading “The International Jew,” which became a hit in Germany after being published in German in 1922, helped push Hitler further into “conspiratorial anti-Semitism,” Thomas Weber wrote in “Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi.”

“Henry Ford is important for having provided to Hitler confirmation, coming from the very heart of America, of an idea that had been brewing in his mind,” Weber wrote. The idea was that Jews’ control of global finance was behind the world’s problems.

“Henry Ford thus turned into an anti-Semitic icon for Hitler.”

In summer 1938, with the German Wehrmacht having marched into Austria, and despite years of deflecting charges he was an anti-Semite, Ford accepted a 75th birthday present from Hitler. It was the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, the highest award the regime bestowed on foreigners.

The golden Maltese cross, surrounded by four small swastikas, was presented to Ford in Ford Motors’ Dearborn offices by Fritz Haller, the German vice consul in Detroit.

News reports about the birthday present from Hitler triggered a bitter backlash across the nation. Ford apologized, again. And again, people laughed when they read his words.

“Acceptance of a medal from the German people does not, as some people seem to think, involve any sympathy on my part with Nazism,” Ford said.

“Those who have known me for many years realize that anything that breeds hate is repulsive to me.”

We can’t know what was in Ford’s heart when he said those words. Perhaps he was genuinely remorseful. Perhaps he accepted the medal to avoid embarrassing an international diplomat, or for business reasons.

Or perhaps anti-Semitism infected him to the bone, and his apology was as cynical as it seems to many. What we do know is that this chapter of his life, which lasted less than a decade, reverberates a century later in a crude hatred that seems impossible to eradicate. It’s an ugly side of the patriarch of one of America’s greatest families and founder of one of its best-known companies.

And the ugliness won’t go away. In November, a reader left this Amazon review of “The International Jew”:

“It's just amazing how enlightened Henry Ford became while living in a world of jew contrived deception ramping up in the USA. The European converted (fake) zionist jew has conquered amerika. Judaism = communism.”

The reader gave “The International Jew” five stars." https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/henry-ford-and-jews-story-dearborn-didnt-want-told

NOT MY LINKS

The Poison Pen: Henry Ford and “The International Jew” --> https://ajhs.org/the-poison-pen-henry-ford-and-the-international-jew/

1: Victoria Saker Woeste’s Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech (2012) details the 1927 libel lawsuit Sapiro v. Ford, which challenged Henry Ford's extensive antisemitic propaganda campaign. Woeste argues the case was a "lost opportunity" to establish legal protections against group-based hate speech in America. Woeste's research suggests that Ford's apology was a strategic retreat that allowed him to escape a lasting legal judgment while his propaganda continued to spread worldwide.

2: The Christian Nationalist Crusade announces resurrection of The International Jew, late 1940s, Antisemitic Literature Collection, P-701

3: Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate, by Neil Baldwin - Neil Baldwin's Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (2001) is a historical biography that explores how the pioneering industrialist became a central figure in American antisemitism. The book details Ford's use of his vast resources to disseminate hateful propaganda, primarily through his personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.

Baldwin examines the origins of Ford’s prejudice, the Jewish community's response, and the lasting international impact of his rhetoric. Baldwin traces Ford’s views back to his rural Michigan childhood and the influence of the McGuffey Readers, which contained stereotypical depictions of Jews.

From 1920 to 1927, Ford’s Dearborn Independent published a series of 91 consecutive anti-Jewish articles. These articles were later compiled into the four-volume set, The International Jew. Ford was instrumental in popularizing The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a debunked forgery alleging a global Jewish conspiracy

The book highlights the struggles of Jewish leaders, such as Louis Marshall of the American Jewish Committee, who fought against Ford’s influence through legal and social channels. Baldwin documents how Ford’s writings were translated into German and became a significant influence on Adolf Hitler and the early Nazi party.

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

>"Dear Wolff (In German: Liebes Wolffchen)

>In reference to your telegram of 12 May, our sanitary inspector reports to me that the altitude experiments carried out by the SS and Air Force at Dachau have been finished. Any continuation of these experiments seems not to be necessary.

>However, the carrying out of experiments of some other kind, in regard to perils on the high seas, would be important. These have been prepared in immediate agreement with the proper offices; Major Weltz (Medical Corps) will be charged with the execution and Captain Rascher (Medical Corps) will be made available until further orders, in addition to his duties within the Medical Corps of the Air Corps.

>A change of these measures does not appear necessary, and an enlargement of the task is not considered pressing at this time. The low-pressure chamber would not be needed for these low-temperature experiments. It is urgently needed at another place and therefore can no longer remain in Dachau.

>I convey the special thanks from the Supreme Commander of the Air Corps to the SS for their extensive cooperation. I remain with best wishes for you in good comradeship and with Heil Hitler!

>Always yours, E. Milch."

Generalfieldmarschall Erhard Milch sent this secret letter (Nuremberg Document PS-343) to SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the chief of Heinrich Himmler’s personal staff. In this correspondence, Milch confirmed that the high-altitude experiments at Dachau had concluded but expressed a critical need to begin freezing (hypothermia) experiments to aid the Luftwaffe.

Milch noted that high-altitude research at Dachau, conducted by Sigmund Rascher, was finished and saw no further reason to continue that specific work. He emphasized the importance of starting new experiments concerning "perils on the high seas"—specifically how pilots might survive immersion in cold water after being shot down.

Milch requested that Dr. Rascher remain available for these tasks under the command of Oberstabsarzt Weltz, though Rascher would technically remain attached to the Air Force. This letter served as a formal link between the Luftwaffe leadership and the SS, facilitating the transition from pressure chamber torture to the lethal freezing experiments that began in August 1942.

The letter was used during the Nuremberg Trials (specifically the Milch Case) to prove that high-ranking military leaders were not only aware of but actively requested these medical crimes. These experiments involved submerged victims in ice water for hours to record death rates and test "rewarming" methods, often involving forced sexual contact or boiling water.

Erhard Milch was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg, largely due to his role in the slave labor program and his administrative facilitation of these experiments. Erhard Milch was the Secretary of State for Aviation and second-in-command of the Luftwaffe under Hermann Göring.

Dachau: High Altitude Experiments - https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/high-altitude-experiments

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

"During World War II, Nazi doctors conducted as many as 30 different types of experiments on concentration-camp inmates. They performed these studies without the consent of the victims, who suffered indescribable pain, mutilation, permanent disability, or in many cases death as a result. At the Nuremberg "doctor's trial," which brought 23 German doctors to trial immediately after the war, prosecutors found 15 defendants guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity; seven were hung. Here are some of the most notorious experiments-------> https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiside.html

1: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, by Robert Jay Lifton - This is a seminal psychiatric study of how German physicians transitioned from healers to killers during the Holocaust. Based on a decade of research and interviews with former Nazi doctors and survivors, Lifton explores the "biomedical vision" that framed genocide as a necessary medical procedure to "heal" the Aryan race.

Lifton’s primary theory suggests doctors created a "second self" to function in death camps like Auschwitz while maintaining a "normal" domestic self. This dissociation allowed them to participate in atrocities without losing their sense of being "good" people.

The Nazi ideology viewed the Jewish population as a "cancer" or "infection" in the Germanic "body politic". Doctors justified mass murder as a form of "surgical" intervention required for racial purification. The belief that the state is a biological organism and the physician's role is to ensure its health by eliminating "unfit" or "poisonous" elements.

Josef Mengele was the archetypal fanatic who viewed himself as a "biological revolutionary" and internalized Nazi ideology most completely. Eduard Wirths, the chief doctor at Auschwitz, described by some as "decent" or "kind," who nonetheless organized the camp's entire death machinery

>"...if Hitler wanted to be Commander in Chief, then he should have remained it to the bitter end.—He gave us the orders. He said, 'take the responsibility!'—And then when the time comes to face the responsibility, we are left to answer for it ...

>It is not fair. He should have shouldered his responsibility as a soldier to the very end. ... He deceived us! He did not tell us the truth! That is my absolute conviction, and nobody can tell me differently! If he did not deceive us by deliberate lies, then he did it by deliberately keeping us in the dark and letting us fight under a false impression!"

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE does not necessarily have any connection to the Question: This is a vintage French anti-Nazi propaganda postcard titled "Voila pour ton Espace Vital," featuring a caricature illustration by artist Paul Barbier, an illustrator of satirical WW2 propaganda. The cartoon depicts a soldier kicking Adolf Hitler, mocking the Nazi concept of Lebensraum (living space). It serves as a historical artifact of French resistance and satire during the Nazi occupation.

>"Why learn about the Holocaust? To see the past is to see possibilities. Everything that happened must have been possible. Learning about the Holocaust is learning about the darkest of possibilities. The better we understand it, the more capable we are of preventing similar catastrophes."

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE does not necessarily have any connection to the Question: This image is a linocut artwork titled "Lviv Ghetto" created by Polish artist Jonasz Stern in 1945. The graphic depicts a scene from the Lviv Ghetto during Ww2, showing figures in the foreground and a train in the background. Jonasz Stern (1904–1988) was a survivor of the Holocaust, specifically the Janowska concentration camp in Lviv. The work is part of a cycle of graphics focusing on the tragic events of the Holocaust, characterized by a stark, monochrome, and expressive style.

In Fact, the Reverse is True.

Behind this joke is a cruel criticism of Austria's ability to forget: to forget the fact that like the Federal Republic, the Republic of Austria was a successor state to the Third Reich; to forget the role many individual Austrians played in the worst crimes of the Nazi era; to forget the wild scenes of jubilation that greeted Hitler during his triumphal tour of Austria following the Anschluß; and to forget the shameful way in which many Austrians participated in, and often profited from, the destruction of Austria's Jewish community.

For decades, Austria was able to hide from both itself and from the world this darker side of its history thanks to the convenient myth, first propagated by the Allied Powers in 1943, that Austria had been the “first victim of Nazism.”

The myth of Austrian victimhood became the basis of a resolutely impenitent official historical narrative, one that denied any Austrian responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich, neglected the legal pursuit of the perpetrators of atrocities, and paid relatively paltry sums of compensation to the victims of Nazism and their families." https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/war-guilt-and-world-politics-after-world-war-ii/austria/4133A1D2D3674D14D98FB25987AE9DB4

"It (Austrian State Treaty) was signed in Vienna, at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union) and the Austrian government. The neighbouring Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia acceded to the treaty subsequently. It officially came into force on 27 July 1955." ALL THE DETAILS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_State_Treaty

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Austria victim theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria_victim_theory

According to Speer, Which of the “Vassal’s" in Hitler’s Inner Circle Was “the Most Dangerous of Them All”?

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE does not necessarily have any connection to the Question: This painting is titled "Quartet for the End of Time" (1995) by the artist Samuel Bak. Samuel Bak is a Holocaust survivor born in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1933. His work frequently explores themes of persecution, war, and the dehumanization experienced during the Holocaust.

Bak's art often uses allegorical visual language, featuring broken figures, damaged objects, and surreal landscapes to represent scenes of mass death and destruction rather than straightforward depictions.

This specific work references a musical composition of the same name written by Olivier Messiaen while imprisoned in a Nazi POW camp, further connecting the theme of music to survival in tragic circumstances.

This operation Is the most rapid & concentrated period of mass murder during the Holocaust.

"From May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officials, under the guidance of German SS officials, deported around 440,000 Jews from Hungary. Most were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where, upon arrival and after selection, SS functionaries killed the majority of them in gas chambers.

Thousands were also sent to the border with Austria to be deployed at digging fortification trenches. By the end of July 1944, the only Jewish community left in Hungary was that of Budapest, the capital." https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/deportation-of-hungarian-jews

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Deportation of Hungarian Jews Begins: https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/deportation-of-hungarian-jews-begins

1: Operation Höss: The Deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, May–July 1944, by Ian Baxter - "Operation Höss or Aktion Höss was the codename for the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews and their murder in the gas chambers of Birkenau extermination camp.

Between 14 May and 9 July 1944, 420,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz from Hungary, or about 12,000 per day. On arrival some twenty-five percent were selected for forced labor while the remainder were immediately gassed. The name of this atrocity came from Rudolf Höss, who returned as the commandant of Auschwitz to increase the killing capacity and ensure the smooth running of the operation.

The specially built railway line into Birkenau from Auschwitz made transports to the camp more efficient enabling the SS to increase the daily killing capacity. After the war, SS Adolf Eichmann, who had organized the deportations from Hungary, boasted that Operation Höss was "an achievement never matched before or since."

This shocking book tells the story of this inhuman venture from its conception and planning, and though to the bitter, tragic end."

Unconditional Surrender of the German armies in Italy is signed at Caserta; Venice and Mestre are captured by the Allies; Blondi is executed; Dachua is liberated; Hitler sends his last message from the Fuehrerbunker as the chickens eye their new roosts:

At noon, three copies of Hitler's the last will and political testament documents are sent by courier to Grand Admiral Doenitz, General Schoerner, and the Brown House in Munich, respectively. (Payne)

"The mood in the bunker now zero-level. Despair was now written on everyone's face. All knew it was only a matter of hours before Hitler killed himself, and wondered what the future held for them after his death.

There was much talk of the best methods of committing suicide. Secretaries, adjutants, and any others who wanted them had by now been given the brass-cased ampoules containing prussic acid supplied by Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger, the SS surgeon who had joined the 'court' the previous October.

Hitler's paranoia stretched now to doubts about the capsules. He had shown his Alsatian bitch Blondi more affection in recent years than any human being, probably including even Eva Braun. Now, as the end approached, he had the poison tested on Blondi. Professor Werner Haase was summoned from his duties in the nearby public air-raid shelter beneath the new Reich Chancellery building nearby.

Shortly before the afternoon briefing on 29 April, aided by Hitler's dog attendant, Sergeant Fritz Tornow, he forced open the dogs jaws and crushed the prussic acid capsule with a pair of pliers. The dog slumped in an instant motionless to the ground. Hitler was not present. However, he entered the room immediately afterwards. He glanced for a few seconds at the dead dog. Then, his face like a mask, he left without saying anything and shut himself in his room."

From Hitler: Nemesis 1936-1945 by Ian Kershaw:

At the afternoon situation conference, General Burgdorf requests that Hitler's Air Force adjutant, Colonel Nicolaus von Below, be allowed to leave the Bunker. Hitler acquiesces, and requests that von Below perform one last service to his Fuehrer; deliver a message to Keitel. After the conference, he dictates what has been called the last message Hitler will send from the Bunker:

>"The people and the Armed Forces have given their all in this long and hard struggle. The sacrifice has been enormous. But my trust has been misused by many people. Disloyalty and betrayal have undermined resistance throughout the war. It was therefore not granted to me to lead the people to victory. The Army General Staff cannot be compared with the General Staff in the First World War. Its achievements were far behind those of the fighting front. The efforts and sacrifices of the German people in this war have been so great that I cannot believe they have been in vain. The aim must still be to win territory in the West for the German people."

The message will never be delivered as von Below will destroy it while wandering around behind enemy lines two days later. The version above—quoted from Payne—is recreated from von Below's memory, with no other corroborating documentation. (Payne, Kershaw)

Hitler shares his fears of being overcome with gas and captured by the Soviets with his pilot, Hans Baur:

>"The Russians know perfectly well that I am here in this bunker. I'm afraid they will use gas shells. During the war we produced a gas that could put a man to sleep for twenty-four hours. Our intelligence tells me that the Russians now have this gas too. The consequences would be unimaginable if they captured me alive." (Payne)

At 6 PM, Hitler announces to his staff that he and his wife, Eva, are going to commit suicide together unless some miracle intervenes. He then passes out vials of cyanide. At 9 PM, the news of the murder and the public humiliation of Mussolini and his mistress reaches the Bunker. Hitler vows that he will not share a similar fate.

Late in the evening, General Krebs radios General Jodl with three terse questions from Hitler:

>"Request immediate report. Firstly of the whereabouts of Wenck's spearheads. Secondly of time intended to attack. Thirdly of the location of the Ninth Army. Fourthly of the precise place in which the Ninth Army will break through. Fifthly of the whereabouts of General Rudolf Holste's spearhead." (Kershaw)

Heinrich Mueller, Bernd von Freytag-Loringhoven, Gerhardt Boldt, and Rudolf Weiss take their final leave of the Fuehrerbunker.

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers & criminals should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

1: Soviet Army officers observe the bodies of women who had committed suicide in a Vienna park at the end of WW2.

>"Whereas I have called Hitler an amoral type of person, I can regard Göring only as immoral and criminal. Endowed by nature with a certain geniality which he managed to exploit for his own popularity, he was the most egocentric being imaginable. The assumption of political power was for him only a means to personal enrichment and personal good living. The success of others filled him with envy. His greed knew no bounds. His predilection for jewels, gold and finery, et cetera, was unimaginable. He knew no comradeship. Only as long as someone was useful to him did he profess friendship."

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE does not necessarily have any connection to the Question: This satirical cartoon by Stanislaw Toegel, titled My Name is Meier, was created in 1945 or 1946 while the artist was held in a German labor camp. The caricature mocks Hermann Göring's boastful claim that if a single British bomb fell on Berlin, his name should be "Meier" (a common German surname), implying he would gladly admit defeat.

Toegel was a Polish lawyer and army officer captured in 1939, who produced these anti-Nazi cartoons at great personal risk while forced to work in a paper mill. The image depicts a bloated Göring marching away from a bombed-out Berlin, carrying a swagger stick and flowers, while a small, nervous man labeled "Meier" follows behind him.

Although often cited as occurring on May 9, historical records and timelines from institutions like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum confirm he approached American lines on May 7, just as Germany signed its unconditional surrender.

Hermann Göring held a vast array of titles and powers within the Nazi regime:

Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe: Responsible for Germany's air war.

President of the Reichstag: A role he used to consolidate Nazi legislative control.

Head of the Gestapo: He founded the secret state police in 1933.

Prime Minister of Prussia: Governing the largest German state.

Hitler's Successor: Designated as the next leader in 1939, though Hitler stripped him of this title in April 1945 after Göring attempted to assume power via telegram.

Göring chose to surrender to American forces to avoid capture by the Soviet Army, which he feared would torture him. Surrendered near Kitzbühel, Austria, in the Bavarian border region. At the time of his capture, he was struggling with a long-term morphine addiction and possessed a significant cache of pills.

He was initially treated with some courtesy by his captors—including being presented with a steak dinner—before high-level Allied command ordered he be treated strictly as a war criminal. Following his capture, Göring was the highest-ranking Nazi official to face justice at the Nuremberg Trials. Found guilty on four counts, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. On October 15, 1946, hours before his scheduled execution, Göring died by suicide by swallowing a smuggled cyanide capsule.

"Herman Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, and Hitler's designated successor is taken prisoner by the U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria.

Göring was an early member of the Nazi Party and was wounded in the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. That wound would have long-term effects; Göring became increasingly addicted to painkillers. Not long after Hitler's accession to power, Göring was instrumental in creating concentration camps for political enemies.

Ostentatious and self-indulgent, he changed his uniform five times a day and was notorious for flaunting his decorations, jewelry, and stolen artwork. It was Göring who ordered the purging of German Jews from the economy following the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, initiating an "Aryanization" policy that confiscated Jewish property and businesses.

Göring's failure to win the Battle of Britain and prevent the Allied bombing of Germany led to his loss of stature within the Party, aggravated by the low esteem with which he was always held by fellow officers because of his egocentrism and position as Hitler's right-hand man. As the war progressed, he dropped into depressions and battled drug addiction.

When Göring fell into U.S. hands after Germany's surrender, he had in his possession a rich stash of pills. He was tried at Nuremberg and charged with various crimes against humanity. Despite a vigorous attempt at self acquittal, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but before he could be executed, he committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide tablet he had hidden from his guards." https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/herman-goering-is-captured-by-the-u-s-seventh-army

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CONTEXT: http://gooring.tripod.com/goo47.html

"In the final phase of his life he (Göring) suffered from profound illusion.

In April 1945 he had been dismissed with ignominy from all his posts, arrested, and bequeathed a curse. But when he heard of Hitler's death, he was, his wife recalled, "close to despair" and exclaimed, "He's dead, Emmy. Now I shall never be able to tell him that I was true to him till the end!" In much the same way as Himmler, he hoped to be accepted by the Allies as a partner in negotiations.

As General Bodenschatz has testified, soon after his capture by the Americans his main concern was the proclamation which he intended to make to the German people as soon as he had reached a satisfactory agreement with Eisenhower. His claim to the leadership of the Reich after Hitler's death was indisputable in his view. Even at Nuremberg he compelled his fellow prisoner the Grand Admiral Doenitz to admit that he owed his own 'nomination as the Fuehrer's successor solely to coincidence'.

And if Göring defended himself before the International Court of Justice with striking skill and some aggressiveness, behind which some of the old elemental force of his personality could be felt, it was because of his conviction that his role as leader placed greater responsibility upon him than upon the other prisoners.

Obstinately and at times not without success, he tried to command them, to influence their statements, and to establish a regime which Speer referred to angrily as "Göring's dictatorship." At last, after so many years, so many blows and humiliations, for a brief and fruitless span he had reached his goal: to be the First Man and "Nazi Number One." as he called himself."

From The Face Of The Third Reich, by Joachim C Fest:

FULL Göring BIO: https://gooring.tripod.com/goo47.html

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VIDEO - Thomas Kysor (2005): on Arresting Goering - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oSTDQDH5ZU

1: Rolf Wartenberg (left) escorts Hermann Goering following his arrest.

2: Detention Report Mugshot

3: Former Reichsmarshall Herman Goring shortly after his arrest by US forces, May 1945.