In late 1922, The New York Times reported the “rumor” passing through Berlin that Henry Ford was bankrolling Adolf Hitler and his curiously well-funded Nazi movement. The wall of Hitler’s office featured a large picture of the American mogul, the Times noted, and copies of a book bearing Ford’s byline littered a table in the anteroom. Titled The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, the volume was an anthology of articles published by Ford’s Dearborn Independent newspaper, which two years earlier had launched an unrelenting crusade to expose Jews’ supposed “financial and commercial control, usurpation of political power, monopoly of necessities, and autocratic direction of the very news that the American people read.” The series, which eventually spanned 92 issues over seven years, concluded that the “International Jew and his satellites” lurked behind virtually all of the world’s ills: labor unrest, Bolshevism, financial panics, wars. Hitler denied receiving funding from Ford but made no secret that he considered him an inspiration. “We look on Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascisti movement in …