The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich

by Max Wallace

Book Overview

An award-winning journalist reveals how two of America's greatest heroes--Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh--almost brought democratic Europe to the verge of extinction. 13 photos throughout. 8-page insert.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312290225
• ISBN13: 9780312290221
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 465 Pages
• Weight: 1.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Superbly written, throughly documented, history

I cannot BELIEVE the negative reviews that this book has received on this site - and you shouldn't either! This is one of the most carefully researched, extensively footnoted, beautifully written, books on this subject ever published. The sources include entries from Lindbergh's journal, Lindbergh's speeches, FBI files, letters from German archives, Ford company records, and many other primary sources. Every assertion of fact is backed up with unimpeachable documentation. This is not in any way a hatchet job. Wallace goes out of his way to tell us what we do not know for sure, and to give his subjects the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. But, even so, what emerges is a damning portrait of Ford and Lindbergh. The degree of responsibility for the success of the Third Reich that must be borne by these two men will astonish you. The author, using polls from the time, deftly demolishes the utterly bogus argument that these two men were simply reflecting the prevailing attitudes of the majority of Americans, as anyone who had actually read the book would know. When Wallace, near the end of the book, expands his scope to address the reasons such admittedly poorly educated (and in Lindbergh's case, incredibly naïve and, in my opinion, rather stupid) individuals were able to have such influence over the events of the 1930's and 1940's, he is addressing the deeper issues that lie behind the events he has described - such as humanity's apparent need for heroes, and those heroes' concomitant responsibility to think, speak, and act humanely and honorably. Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford brought great harm to humanity, most especially to the Jews, during their years on the world stage. They should be held responsible for it.

Damning

This book is a very damning look at Ford and Lindbergh, which reveals them both as highly flawed icons who did considerable damage to their country through their flirtation with fascism,. The author, who comes off as quite objective, is careful to emphasize that neither man was a Nazi or a traitor, but because of their status as heroes, they influenced a lot of others into Hitler's camp. The great American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. praises this book on the back cover, so i am reasonably sure that it stands up to acdemic scrutiny.

Dubya's Grandpa was a Nazi

This book is about the Nazi affiliations of Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh and that material is indeed fascinating. But the part of the book that really blew me away was the revelation that George W. Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush was a Nazi whose assets were seized by the US government after Pearl Harbor for Trading With the Enemy and helping Nazi front companies launder money. A former US government Nazi War Crimes prosecutor is quoted in this book as saying, "The fortune that put two members of the Bush family in the White House can be traced directly to the Third Reich." I remember during the first George Bush presidential campaign when a whole bunch of Nazis were exposed by USA Today as working on Bush's campaign and forced to resign. More recently, Vanity Fair exposed the close ties between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family. It's time for the American media to start probing a little deeper into the Bush dynasty so that voters can evaluate the skeletons in Dubya's closet before November, 2004.

An Important Book

Every so often you read a book that you want everybody you know to read as soon as possible. This is the one. America's most eminent historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., endorsed this book so it is obviously historically sound. But it is also a great read from beginning to end as you learn how these two famous Americans genuflected at Hitler's altar. If the Japanese hadn't made the foolish mistake of bombing Pearl Harbor and drawing America into the war, it seems probable that the Nazis would have achieved their goal of swallowing Europe without any interference from Roosevelt. And, as this book reveals, it was largely because of the lobbying by these two horrendous men, who both dreamed of the day the Nazis controlled half the world. I learned a lot from this book that surprised me. One thing I found particularly intriguing is that whenever Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh publicly attacked the Jews, they were roundly condemned by both Jews and Gentiles for their dangerous views. I never realized how many non-Jews were dismayed by anti-Semitism even before world war two. Only the fanatical anti-Semites and American fascists supported their poisonous hate campaigns. But, this book shows that Ford and Lindbergh were at their most dangerous when they spoke in a sort of code that allowed them to go undetected by the radar of public opinion. Ford spoke of the "International financiers' while Lindbergh warned of the "forces that control our nation's press". Anybody with a brain knew who they were talking about but they could get away with it as long as they never said the magic word, "Jew" that would set off a fury. They both learned this lesson quickly and helped Adolf and his gang almost take over the world. It turns out, by the way, that the Ford Motor Company is not quite the innocent bystander that they would have people believe when it came to the use of concentration camp labor and manufacturing of Nazi arms at its German plant. It is shocking how much the company did to bring about a Nazi victory. At one point they even refused to sell arms to England while the British faced a Nazi invasion, while at the same time they were turning out thousands of military vehicles for the Third Reich. It seems that the executives at their Detroit headquarters knew all about this and encouraged it to continue. I know what kind of car I'm never buying again! And, like icing on the cake, we learn that Dr. Seuss was more than just a kids author. He started out at a New York paper called PM drawing cartoons attacking Charles Lindbergh's fascist sympathies. Interesting!

"Heroes" exposed

The author was the first unauthorized biographer allowed into the Lindbergh archives at Yale and he discovered how much damning information Scott Berg left out of his own authorized biography a few years ago. He finds all kinds of letters and unpublished writings revealing that Lindbergh's antisemitism and Nazi sympathies were much more serious than portrayed by Berg. But he says that Lindbergh was not actually a Nazi. Rather he was used by them to keep the US out of World War 2 so that Hitler could achieve his goal of taking over Europe. He describes Lindbergh as an "enigma" who had Jewish friends but thought there were good jews and bad jews. The bad jews supposedly controlled the press, the government and Hollywood and were secretly plotting to get the United States into World War 2. Well, it turns out that it was the Nazis who were secretly plotting, plotting to install Lindbergh as the head of the US isolationist movement (probably without Lindbergh's knowledge, but you never know.) Ford comes off as a rather stupid bigot who also believed there were "good Jews" and "bad" International Jews. Hitler said that his own hatred of the Jews was inspired by Ford, who he called "my inspiration." The strongest part of this book is the investigation into the Ford Motor Company's collaboration with Hitler, even after America entered the war. He discovered that Edsel Ford, Henry's only son, was about to be indicted by the American government for "Trading with the Enemy" at the time of his death in the middle of the war. The company used slave labor to rack up huge profits by selling Hitler miltary vehicles and armaments that were used to kill Allied and American soldiers. It's a shameful chapter in American history.I guess my only complaint is that there's not enough about what made Henry Ford tick. It's a bit of a cop out to call him an "enigma." There's alot more about Lindbergh's personality than his friend Ford, which is unfortunate, although they both had very similar views about the Jews. Unlike Lindbergh, however, Ford was not a white supremacist. While Lindy hated blacks and Asians and considered all non-whites inferior, Ford treated blacks very well. He seemed to hate only the Jews.