Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

It never fails to amaze me how many people there are out there who worship Charles Lindbergh, my mother included. Besides his one incredible flight across the Atlantic in 1927, he really didn't do a hell of a lot. Max Wallace demonstrates in this riveting book how he managed to turn this 33 hour flight into a pedestal that would give him the unwarranted credibility to launch a crusade that would help the Nazis achieve their goal of keeping America out of World War 2. The Lindbergh worshippers are not going to like this book and I'm sure Wallace will be attacked viciously for daring to question what he calls the Lindbergh Legend. However, the book is really quite objective. He paints Lindbergh as naive rather than sinister and he certainly comes off much better than his friend Henry Ford, who is revealed as a despicable Jew hater who helped Hitler come to power. He has turned up a lot of important new evidence in FBI and military intelligence archives about both men's pre-war activities, showing that both Ford and Lindbergh were clandestinely used by Nazi supporters in their crusades, often without their knowledge. He even found a German Embassy dispatch captured by the Allies after the war that proves beyond a shadow of the doubt that the Nazis actually plotted to install Lindbergh as the leader of the America First Committee and the isolationist movement. This is a book well worth reading.

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.

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!

In his new book, The American Axis, Max Wallace has painted a portrait of two Americans that people seem to love, but had a very sinister past.

Henry Ford, the American manufacturing genius, and Charles Lindbergh, the aviation hero, are the subjects of this book. Both Ford and Lindbergh are revered by much of the American populous, but Wallace has shown us the facts about the darker sides of their respective personalities.

Henry Ford has always been thought to be a red-blooded American, a capitalist with a love for the United States. In the book, however, his anti-Semitic side is exposed and the ensuing discussion reveals that Ford was anything but all-American. He was, as the title of the book suggests, a person that helped the Third Reich's rise to power in Wartime Europe. By promoting anti-Semitism and manufacturing goods for the Nazi war machine, Ford has demonstrated that his true loyalty laid only to himself.

Charles Lindbergh is generally only recognized as the "hero" that flew the first non-stop transatlantic flight. In reality, however, this book depicts him as a naive person that was easily swayed and duped into believing that the Nazi cause was an appropriate movement to follow. His beliefs appear to have been easily manipulated by others around him, thus being duped into passing incorrect information to the Allied government about the strength of the Nazi military before war was declared.

Overall, Wallace has done a very good job of revisiting these two American figures and demonstrating that their reputations are in need of a thorough review. I would recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in behind the scenes activites of World War II. Any Ford or Lindbergh fan should also read the book, but be conscious of the fact that widely held conceptions of these two men may be dashed by the facts presented and conclusions drawn.

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.

It's hard, especially for Americans it seems, to take off the rose-colored glasses when regarding our so called "heroes". Most who have bothered to read up on Henry Ford will acknowledge that he was an odd variety of anti-semite. But there is still much resisitance to the idea that Lindbergh was an anti-semite too, in his own equally odd way. Both were very naive, poorly educated men who spent their lives in denial. Max Wallace does an excellent, thorough job of putting the evidence before us: these men were dangerous, hate-addled dupes who were used to lasting effect by the Nazis. Lindbergh, especially, needs to be taken down a few pegs: his "heroic" flight was nothing more than a dangerous stunt. His timing, however, was accidentally brilliant, resulting in a frenzy of adulation from a hero hungry world. That his half-baked ideas should have had such influence is most regrettable. Hopefully "American Axis" will help set the record straight for future historians.

While reading this book I noticed several inaccuracies pertaining to Charles Lindbergh. For example, Wallace attempts to help build the kidnapping case against Richard Hauptman by stating that the kidnap ladder was found in his garage. In reality, the ladder was left outside the Lindbergh home. This is a minor detail and does not pertain to the central theme of the book, but if the author can't get such a simple fact straight I have a very difficult time with the accusations that Lindbergh and Ford were both Nazis. The book is almost entirely speculation based on little to no real evidence. The author clearly set out with an agenda to discredit these two men and was willing to grotesquely contort any facts necessary to accomplish this goal.