Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the
Rise of the Third Reich. New York: St.Martin's Press, 2003. 465 pages.
Holocaust researcher Max Wallace takes on American anti-Semitism and
the 1930s isolationist movement in this dual biography of Henry Ford and
Charles Lindbergh, and concludes that these two "actively chose to impair
the Allied war effort, jeopardizing the survival of democratic Europe."
The most valuable contribution of this book is its treatment of the role
Ford Motor Company played in Germany in the 1930s. In this sense, it follows
a line of inquiry that began with "IBM and the Holocaust" (2001) by Edwin
Black. The history of Ford Motor Company and IBM in Nazi Germany remains
instructive for today's debate over globalization issues.
It is less useful to look at Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh as
individuals. Ford was anti-Semitic, mostly during the 1920s and early 1930s,
while Lindbergh was isolationist and mildly pro-Nazi until the U.S. declared
war on Germany. Isolationism was not extremist -- a Gallup poll conducted
on April 26, 1941 found that only 19 percent of Americans supported U.S.
entry into the war against Germany and Italy. Until Pearl Harbor, even
Roosevelt had never advocated direct intervention in Europe. Lindbergh may
have been naive in retrospect, but all he ever did was some public speaking.
It seems a bit unfair to lump him in with Henry Ford, whose factories in
Germany were churning out troop carriers for the Nazis as late as 1941.
ISBN 0-312-29022-5
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