12. An Early Death Saved This Great Industrialist’s Son From Getting Prosecuted For Trading With the Nazis
In the early 2000s, evidence from newly-declassified documents demonstrated that Nazi Germany’s links with Ford Motor Company went well beyond its founder. Among other things, the documents indicated that Henry Ford’s secretary, Ernest Liebold, might have been a Nazi agent who helped fuel his boss’ paranoia about Jews. Indeed, the documents indicate that Ford’s own son and the company’s then-president, Edsel, could have been prosecuted for trading with the Nazi enemy had he not died in 1943.
Letters between Edsel Ford and the head of Ford’s French subsidiary in 1942 – after America had joined the war – were quite troubling. They indicated that Ford knew and approved of the subsidiary’s manufacturing efforts on behalf of the German military. The declassified documents reveal that the US Department of Justice concluded that there were grounds for criminally prosecuting Edsel Ford.