Herman Bernstein - Refutation of The Protocols and Lawsuit Against Henry Ford

Refutation of The Protocols and Lawsuit Against Henry Ford

In 1921, responding to Henry Ford's printing of 500,000 copies of the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as a series of anti-Semitic articles under the title The International Jew in Ford's newspaper The Dearborn Independent, Bernstein published the book History of a Lie, a demonstration of The Protocols' spurious origins.

At the same time Ford was being lauded as an anti-Semite hero in Europe, he was confronted with another lawsuit in America. This one came from Herman Bernstein, the same man who had helped to expose The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a forgery. In the August 20, 1921 issue of the Independent, Bernstein had been identified as the source . . . who revealed to Ford the supposed worldwide Jewish conspiracy. "He told me most of the things that I have printed," Ford claimed in the article, which labeled Bernstein "the messenger boy of international Jewry." An outraged Bernstein denied the allegations and, in 1923, sued Ford for $200,000. He told the press that he was doing a public service by allowing the American people to get a "true picture" of Ford's "diseased imagination."

Bernstein was represented by Samuel Untermeyer. The suit languished because Bernstein and his representatives were never able to serve Ford with a subpoena; Ford had many allies among the political and law enforcement officials of Michigan and elsewhere, as well as a large private security force. Bernstein and Untermeyer did, however, succeed in getting New York state officials to agree to impound any copies of The Independent that entered the state. The extent to which this was enforced is not clear.

Other libel suits against Ford were pursued by Louis Marshall and Aaron Sapiro, though there was tension among these figures over which suit was most viable. In response to the suits, as well as the fear that the negative publicity was hurting automobile sales, Ford issued an 'Apology to Jews,' the sincerity of which is a matter of controversy. These cases are significant in the history of the jurisprudence pertaining to group libel and hate speech.

In 1935, the year of Bernstein's death, as the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany and revived The Protocols yet again - for example, requiring all German schoolchildren to read it - Bernstein published another and more elaborate refutation, The Truth About the 'Protocols of Zion' - A Complete Exposure.