Adolf Hitler & Henry Ford kept framed pictures of each other on their desks

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True or false?

Adolf Hitler & Henry Ford kept framed pictures of each other on their respective desks.jpg

[VanillaNuns]

Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said he regarded Ford as his “inspiration”, explaining his reason for keeping Ford’s life-size portrait next to his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler “revered” Ford, proclaiming that “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany”, and modeling the Volkswagen, the people’s car, on the Model T.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry- ... ross-1938/

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.

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-gover ... -want-told

At the end of 1931, a columnist from the Detroit News arrived to interview a rising German politician about how his nation was rebuilding itself.
Adolf Hitler sat at a large desk, flanked by a pair of red flags emblazoned with the swastika. And directly behind him, looming over the interview, was a portrait of one of Detroit’s most famous men: Henry Ford.
Why, asked the journalist, did Hitler have a picture of an American car manufacturer on his wall? “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” he replied.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trum ... -llnqwnm05


It's possible. So why isn't there more on this story? Why isn't the interview available in print?

1. Back in 1931, Hitler usually conducted such interviews in the presence of Hess and/or Otto Dietrich. The latter would be the facilitator who arranged these interviews. One of the conditions would often be that no shorthand notes were allowed and that many comments were "off the record" and not to be published.

2. The publishers and editors of the Detroit News publication had history of shredding articles and interviews which they didn't like or which could be seen as provocative to their readers. Especially if it involved Jews or Negroes.

They possibly didn't want the same problems and reputation that "The Dearborn Independent" had - this was Henry Ford's popular but controversial newspaper which ceased publication in 1927.

That would certainly explain why the interview was never published.

Of course, the portrait of Henry Ford might just have been in Hitler's office for a single day. For the sole purpose of the interview. That would be my guess.

There used to be a running joke that local mayors, politicians and businessmen would often have portraits of opposing political leaders in their desk drawers, and they'd bring out whichever one was needed for the occasion in order to make a good impression.

[George L Gregory]

I’ve read about that being the case, but I can’t find any photos online of a portrait of Henry Ford in Adolf Hitler’s office and a portrait of Adolf Hitler in Henry Ford’s office.

Maybe such portraits were only in show for two special occasions.

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It's possible. So why isn't there more on this story? Why isn't the interview available in print?

The articles are interesting, but unfortunately, they are devoid of any verifiable facts whatsoever.
And they raise serious questions.
Would Hitler give an interview to a provincial American newspaper? For what purpose?
Would American (provincial) readers even be interested in obscure political events in a faraway country? I suppose not - they weren't then, and they aren't today.

[LineDoggie]

It's one of those things impossible to prove/disprove about the framed pictures.

Occams law would say it's a BS claim

[hambubger]

Hitler's rumored favorite painting was by Joannes Vermeer... I believe it was "Astronomer." I know he planned to eventually have it in a museum in Linz, Austria. After the Nazis seized it, it had a small swastika stamp put on it. Eventually, it was given back to the Rothschilds and then after that, put up in the Louvre.

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This is what Kurt Ludecke, Hitler's personal envoy in the US, wrote about his meeting with Ford and his efforts to interest him in financing the Nazi Party in 1924.
He was introduced by Richard Wagner's children, so; theoretically, Ford could have trusted him unconditionally, but still:

Ford listened keenly. He was hearing for the first time things which he could not learn from American newspapers, which, as the Dearborn Independent alleged, were controlled by Jews. But it would be untrue to say that his response was enthusiastic. Occasionally he nodded; once in a while he interjected a curt remark: “I know ... yes, the Jews, these cunning Jews...” All my own best cunning was quite inadequate to pry something less non-committal out of him.

If I had been trying to sell Mr. Ford a wooden ‘nutmeg, he couldn’t have shown less interest in the proposition.

Ford was deeply interested in what I had to tell, but he was not at all interested in what I had to ask.

At the time of this interview, he knew already that he had put his finger into a hornet’s nest. Experience was teaching him that it is one thing to see through the Jewish game, but another thing to talk about it. The weight of obloquy heaped on him could not make him hold his head less high; but the Jews’ spontaneous boycott of his products, tightening every time he opened his mouth, pinched him in the ledgers, where even a multi-millionaire is vulnerable.

The real shock came early in July, when, along with a surprised world, I read the colossal news of Henry Ford’s retraction and apology to the Jews.
Ford’s signed statement had been sent to a Detroit attorney with a letter authorizing him to transmit it to Louis J. Marshall, a recognized leader of Jewry in the United States and throughout the world. He confessed himself:
‘...
deeply mortified that this journal (the Dearborn Independent). . . has been made the medium for resurrecting exploded fictions, for giving currency to the so-called Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,
…’
Though I had already abandoned every hope of Ford, I had never expected one of the richest men in the world to be willing thus to repudiate his editor and to make such a humiliating kowtow to Jewry.

In light of that, it seems unlikely that such a cautious man like Ford kept Hitler's pictures post-1924.
(interestingly, Ludecke met with Louis J. Marshall too.)

[George L Gregory]

It's one of those things impossible to prove/disprove about the framed pictures.

Occams law would say it's a BS claim

How have you come to the conclusion that it’s a “BS claim” using Occam's razor?

[LineDoggie]

It's one of those things impossible to prove/disprove about the framed pictures.

Occams law would say it's a BS claim

How have you come to the conclusion that it’s a “BS claim” using Occam's razor?

Simple no witnesses from the time claim they saw it except in the interview.

Apparently not mentioned in Fords papers or Hitlers

No one else has ever come forward saying they saw it

Simplest answer is its made up

Prove me wrong

[wm]

The inability to disprove does not prove.

So far, we don't even know that the interview with Hitler ever happened.
"Detroit News" isn't available online, but I've searched for "Hitler Ford "Detroit News"" on newspapers.com (and its claimed archive of ~16000 newspapers) hoping some of them mentioned the interview but there was nothing.

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Strangely the 1933 hit piece "Hitler as Frankenstein" by Johannes Steel (unaware apparently that Victor Frankenstein was a good guy and the creature had no name) doesn't mention any framed pictures but has this to say about Ford:

Hitler’s most important business connection in the United States, however, was that with Henry Ford. There is a symbolic likeness in the character of the two men which has struck me at various times.
Henry Ford stuck to his one and sole idea—that all the motor car needed to be, was a vehicle ‘which would get you there and back.’ Adolf Hitler stuck with the obstinacy of a possessed fanatic to his metaphysical] belief in a national regeneration of the German people through jingo talk, until he too reached his goal. Ford in his earlier days did not know perhaps where he was going, but Hitler wanted what he has now.

The first link between Ford and Hitler dates back to the days when the automobile manufacturer's Dearborn Independent lambasted the Jews week after week. After the famous libel suit brought in Chicago and the subsequent cessation of publication of the Independent, Ford entered into conversation with the publishers of Hitler’s party literature the firm of Fr. Eher Nachfolger in Munich.

Ford’s proposition was that they should reprint in the form of pamphlets a selection of articles from the Independent, translated into German, of course. He gave express permission for the joint use of the names Ford and Hitler in advertising the pamphlets and he furnished the funds for the campaign, Henry Ford’s offer was accepted with glee. It came at a psychological moment. The Nazi movement was still young, still ‘provincial’ in the sense that little attention was yet paid to it outside Bavaria; it was regarded more as a curiosity than a potentiality. Hitler felt that with adequate advertising, the pamphlets would circulate throughout Germany and provide very welcome publicity. Fr. Eher Nachfolger received a cheque for forty thousand dollars to further the spread of anti-Jewish literature in Germany.

This cheque represents the first financial support of Adolf Hitler by Henry Ford. The pamphlets were a very qualified success. The restricted sale was out of all proportion to the amount of the cheque. Hitler, however, learned something which he has never since forgotten in his entire career. Although the restricted sale of the pamphlets was out of all proportion to the money Ford had subscribed and dissatisfied him to such an extent that he temporarily severed his relations with Hitler, Hitler began to understand, that Germans generally will always listen to accusations based upon metaphysical theories about the inherited blood-qualities of the Nordic races.

From Hitler’s point of view the value of his early relations with Henry Ford had resided in the revelation that Ford, like himself, was a bourgeois, did not like Jews, Socialists, Communists or Revolutionaries, or governmental interference with private business. This similarity of dislikes was destined to draw the men together again.

A few years passed, and the Hitler movement, steadily gathering new followers, was still being watched by Henry Ford. Then
in 1929 the world heard that Prince Ferdinand of Prussia had decided to make a career for himself in the United States, and had taken up a post in the engineering department of the Ford Works in Detroit.

To-day the intimate relations between the members of the ex-Kaiser’s family and the Nazi leaders are a matter of common knowledge. Prince August Wilhelm, for one, is an active member of the organisation, while many people look upon Hohenzollern and Nazi as synonymous terms. Prince Ferdinand was the link bringing Ford and Hitler into contact again. When I met the young Princes at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, and was introduced to their particular circles, our conversation occasionally turned on Henry Ford, and the fact was impressed upon me that so far as ‘selling Hitler’ was concerned, Detroit was a special territory of Prince Ferdinand.

[LineDoggie]

The inability to disprove does not prove.

Show a picture to prove your assertion, should be easy

[wm]

Here:

Russell_teapot.png

it's called Russell's teapot.

[wm]

Socialists such as Vladimir Lenin admired Ford as one of the major contributors to twentieth-century revolution, and it was not unusual to see portraits of Ford and Lenin hanging side by side in Soviet factories.
Yet Adolf Hitler also revered Ford. He proclaimed, “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany,” and modeled the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the Model T.
The People's Tycoon by Steven Watts

If Ford was pro-Nazi, why did he help to create the automotive industry (and the tractor industry) in Stalinist Russia?

[George L Gregory]

For what purpose would someone make-up an interview between Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford?

The Henry Ford Wikipedia article states:

In Germany, Ford's The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem was published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[81] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[82] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[83][78] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany", and modeling the Volkswagen Beetle, the people's car, on the Model T.[84] Max Wallace has stated, "History records that ... Adolf Hitler was an ardent Anti-Semite before he ever read Ford's The International Jew."[85] Ford also paid to print and distribute 500,000 copies the antisemitic fabricated text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[86][87] Historians say Hitler distributed Ford’s books and articles throughout Germany, stoking the hatred that helped fuel the Holocaust.[87]