“Since the state of war between U.S.A. and Germany
I am unable to correspond with you very easily.”
— Maurice Dollfus, Ford factory manager in Poissy, France
January 28, 1942 letter to Edsel Ford
BY JOEL THURTELL
Ford Motor Company spent millions on a history project aimed at refuting accusations that its wartime factories in Nazi-occupied Europe used slave labor and supplied cars, trucks, half-tracks and aircraft engines to Hitler’s war against the western democracies and the Jews.
In 2001, Ford triumphantly proclaimed that its corporate historians found no contact between the Dearborn-based company and its European operations after November 28, 1941, according to the December 7, 2001 Detroit Free Press.
The Cologne plant had been supplying Hitler with cars, trucks, and half-tracks before the US declared war, according to Max Wallace in The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich (New York, 2003).
The Cologne plant continued its production of military material for Hitler, including turbines for V-2 rocket engines.
Early in 1942, Edsel received a letter dated January 28 from Maurice Dollfus, manager of the Ford factory in Poissy, near Paris in Nazi-occupied France.
Dollfus wrote, “Since the state of war between U.S.A. and Germany
I am unable to correspond with you very easily.”
Edsel went to Washington to see what could be done.
Breckinridge Long was an assistant secretary of state in the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt.
Long had just told Jewish organizations that the United States’ Trading with the Enemy Act prevented the government from helping Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, according to Charles Higham in Trading with the Enemy (New York, 1983).
Edsel told Long he needed to secretly stay in touch with the company’s manufacturing operation at Poissy that was turning out cars, trucks, and engines for the Nazi war machine, but it would not look good to the public if it became known that.
Over the past two years, Hitler’s troops had invaded and taken over Poland, the Low Countries, and France in alliance with Mussolini’s fascist Italy. The Germans had bombed Britain to soften up the last holdout for invasion by swastika-waving troops. Nazi U-boats were sinking Allied ships in record numbers as they tried to re-supply bomb-ravaged England. Here was this cheeky emissary from Henry Ford, son of Ford, with the gall to ask that he be allowed to buoy Hitler’s war effort and thus directly menace American servicemen.
Did Breckinridge Long explain to Edsel Ford that the United States had a law that banned the conduct Edsel was proposing? Did he point out that if aid to Jews broke the law, so would Edsel’s plan to correspond with his Nazi-run plants?
Of course not.
Long told Edsel he could have a company courier between Dearborn and Ford offices in France via neutral Portugal.
Contrary to the corporate historians, November 28, 1941 was not the last time Ford heard from its Nazi-affiliated plants. Dollfus wrote to Edsel on August 15, 1942 that production had been moved away from Poissy after British bombers attacked the factory; damaged equipment had been repaired; operations at Poissy would be resumed, Dollfus reported.
German companies set up a $5.1 billion fund to compensate slave workers. Ford contributed $13 million. The company has not compensated those who suffered from damage caused by weapons Ford made for Hitler.
Does it sound radical to compensate victims of wartime attacks?
Not if the victim is Ford Motor Company. In September, 1942, Edsel learned from Dollfus that Hitler’s government had compensated Ford with 38 million francs for damages British bombers caused to the Poissy plant. In 1945, Ford’s plant in Cologne received $1,1 million from the US government to cover damages caused by Allied bombing.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
