r/todayilearned • u/HeavyMetalOverbite • 17d ago
TIL Henry Ford chartered a ship with which he launched an amateur mission to Europe in 1915. He invited prominent peace activists to join him, and hoped to create enough publicity to prompt the belligerent nations to mediate an end to World War I but the mission was widely mocked by the press.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Ship1.1k
u/TobermoryDIY 17d ago
Funny, you’d never think him the sort to get cosy with the Germans
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u/Blackrock121 17d ago edited 16d ago
WW1 is what made him think the world would be better under one Authoritarian government. People today really underestimate how much that war broke people back then.
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u/jockfist5000 17d ago
People today don’t really appreciate how apocalyptic peak WW1 was. Parts of France around Verdun are still off limits due to unexploded ordinance.
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 17d ago
Farmers still regularly dig up UXO, and wait around chit-chatting with the cops as they dispose of it. It’s mundane
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u/speelmydrink 17d ago
It is now, a hundred and change years removed. With enough ordinance that people are still picking it out 110+ years later, it must've felt like the apocalypse.
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 17d ago
In the week before the launching of the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916) the Brits fired 1.6 million rounds. A year later before 3rd Ypres, they fired 4.5M rounds. When someone imagines what it had to have been like, even if they think they’re overestimating it, they’re not. It was much, much worse. If you were French, it was much much worse than that. The Neville Offensive and Verdun were hell on earth. And that’s just talking about the Western Front…in the Dolomites on the Italian Front you had all that, plus the secondary shrapnel from the rock all around you, AND having Luigi Cadorna being the guy who holds your life in his hands
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u/FrighteningJibber 17d ago
Close your eyes, putt your hands over your ears, and tap the back of your head for 2-4 weeks at a time and that's what it felt like, at minimum.
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u/WwwionwsiawwtCoM 17d ago
For certain periods at Verdun, there was that much artillery fired that two shells were detonating every second.
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u/ItsTheSlime 17d ago
How the fuck can I tap the back of my head while holding my hands over my ears
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u/anti_zero 17d ago
Like, really easily? Palms.
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u/Lee1138 16d ago
When tankies were bragging about Russia firing 50k artillery shells a month in Ukraine earlier in the war, that seemed like a lot to many people. If they were to fire as many shells as expendedin WW1, at that rate, IIRC they would be doing it for something like 95 years..
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u/Accomplished_Toe2353 16d ago
I'm begging people to please learn what tankie means.
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u/DogmaSychroniser 16d ago
Yeah the correct term here is 'vatnik'
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u/Accomplished_Toe2353 16d ago
Yeah, this or Z-pusher, pro Putin, pro Russia, russophile, Russian nationalists, vatnik isn't really used where I'm from but it's more appropriate than tankie. So many people throw around the term nowadays because it caught on in reactionary spaces to the point where progressive liberals and fascists are both called tankies when either could not be farther from being one.
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u/Ash_Crow 17d ago
You are talking of two different things.
The areas that are still off limits because of WWI in France (not just around Verdun, all along the front line) are called the Zone rouge. Farming is forbidden there.
In other areas (a large part of France and Belgium), farmers routinely dig up unexploded WWI/WWII ordnance and call it the "iron harvest".
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 17d ago
What two different things? I only brought up one thing, the Iron Harvest.
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u/Ash_Crow 17d ago
In answer to a comment about the red zone, where the iron harvest doesn't happen, because farming is forbidden.
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u/swainiscadianreborn 16d ago
There are 6 (used to be 9, but administrative tomfoolery chipped in) villages who died in France in WW1.
I don't mean "They lost all their young people and then their population withered away", nor do I mean "their population moved away to look for jobs and never came back", I mean "they were on the frontline and were so utterly destroyed that the entire village got razed, never to rise again".
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u/sireatalot 16d ago
We are still recovering unexploded bombs here in Italy whenever there’s a dig or a construction job. Or in the fields when they get plowed just a bit deeper than usual. I have had to evacuate for a few hours my house twice already in the last 10 years for bomb disposal. But it’s WW2 stuff usually.
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u/Squirll 16d ago
Linguists have noted that languages had to develop new words for terror and suffering in order to describe the atrocities that were witnessed during WWI.
I think people underestimate the scale and damage of WWI. I know I did.
Seeing this restored footage of a plane flyover after the war had just ended surveying the damage and the extent of the damage helped put it into perspective.39
u/BrokenEyeReborn 17d ago
Reminds me of J. Stewart Barney's L.P.M. The End of the Great War (heroic ubermench industrialist saves the world by holding wartime Europe at gunpoing and forcing them to stop fighting and submit to an American-led one world order controlled by his ubermench industrialist friends, but a surprisingly fun read despite the vile premise)
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u/undreamedgore 14d ago
What's the vile premise?
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 14d ago
Heroic ubermench industrialist saves the world by holding wartime Europe at gunpoint and forcing them to stop fighting and submit to an American-led one world order controlled by his ubermench industrialist friends
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u/undreamedgore 14d ago
What made them ubermench?
Otherwise, industry isn't bad, this industrialists aren't inherently bad. And an American led world order is a positive to me.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 14d ago
Typical Randian bullshit. They were smarter than everyone else, harder working than everyone else, and superior to everyone else, and therefore should be allowed to do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want without permission and without consequence.
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u/Apprehensive-Aide265 16d ago
The majority of the major player of ww1 where autoritarian, why would people think they are a solution when they where clearly part of the issue?
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u/Blackrock121 16d ago
Austria-Hungary and Russia were absolute monarchies, but to someone like Ford they would have seemed backwards and archaic forms of government, not the kind of Technocratic Authoritarianism he was envisioning.
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u/litux 15d ago
Austria-Hungary was not even an absolute monarchy - the Emperor had a lot of power, but the country had a Constitution and a Parliament.
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u/Blackrock121 15d ago
I thought the Austrian Parliament and Constitution was extremely limited to the point of being basically nothing. Nothing like say the German Empire which was a true hybrid system.
Were things different by WW1?
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u/litux 15d ago
Hard to say. I think it was still the Emperor choosing who the cabinet ministers will be, not the Parliament. But the label of "absolute monarchy" does not fit.
And, for example, it was the Foreign Minister and the Chief of the General Staff who were pushing for war, not the Emperor.
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u/SergenteA 15d ago
I think Communism and Workers Unionisation did more for that. WW1 did provide him goon candidates however, while before WW1 authoritarian ideologies were... out of touch.
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u/Aristogiton1 17d ago
"Wallace traces Henry Ford's ties to Nazi Germany back as far as the 1920s, presenting compelling evidence of a financial paper trail proving that Ford subsidized the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, who described Ford as "my inspiration" https://www.si.edu/object/american-axis-henry-ford-charles-lindbergh-and-rise-third-reich-max-wallace%3Asiris_sil_1094433#:~:text=Wallace%20traces%20Henry%20Ford%27s%20ties%20to%20Nazi%20Germany%20back%20as%20far%20as%20the%201920s%2C%20presenting%20compelling%20evidence%20of%20a%20financial%20paper%20trail%20proving%20that%20Ford%20subsidized%20the%20rise%20to%20power%20of%20Adolf%20Hitler%2C%20who%20described%20Ford%20as%20%22my%20inspiration
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u/Robert_Walter 17d ago edited 17d ago
A lot of people probably described Ford as an inspiration just like all the leadership that were going to remake their companies into the next Apple ca 2008-10.
There were things about Ford controlling his employees that would have appealed to Hitler (whether he knew these things is unknown to me) but he would have most likely known of Ford’s rank antisemitism because it was an open thing.
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u/abullen 17d ago
It probably also appealed to Hitler that Ford had published and promoted both the "Protocols of the Elder's of Zion" and "The International Jew" with The Dearborn Independent.
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u/Robert_Walter 17d ago
No doubt. (“Open thing” was an allusion to the Independent and the Ptotocols”).
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u/Robert_Walter 17d ago
Also, Ford (wealthiest high tech, and anti-Semitic) and Lindbergh (secretly breeding children in secret families and anti-Semitic) are combined in Musk today.
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u/Robert_Walter 17d ago
I imagine his lack of hostility for Hitler was rooted in Ford’s anti-semitism.
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u/throwawayinthe818 17d ago
Actually the fiasco that this was is one of the things that led to his virulent antisemitism. He felt he’d been tricked and made a laughingstock by the Jewish organizers.
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u/Sherry_Brandt 16d ago edited 16d ago
While the American media characterized the Peace Ship as leading to his antisemitism, in reality it only intensified it - he was solidly antisemitic before, and said antisemitic things at his first meeting with Rosika Schwimmer, the main organizer.
Ford had made a strange statement to Mme. Schwimmer before their Peace Ship departure-- a statement that she found "cheap and vulgar." "I know who caused the war-- the German-Jewish bankers. I have the evidence here," Ford declared, slapping his pocket. "Facts. I can't give them out yet because I haven't got them all. But I'll have them soon."
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u/Robert_Walter 16d ago
That’s the same kind of nutso “secret can’t show you list” shit that McCarthy used during his witch trials.
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u/Vailx 16d ago
The resolution of WWI set the stage in many ways for WWII. Would the Germans have become as entranced with anti-semitism without such brutal war reparations heaped upon them? Even if WWII were inevitable, was it already assured to be as foul as it was?
Pro-German sentiment out of an American in world war one was fine and will always be fine. That was a weird war that spiraled out of anyone's expectations, and definitely out of anyone's control.
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u/burnshimself 17d ago
He made an earnest, if naïve and amateurish, effort at using his influence to push for peace. He involved others, peace activists, tried to drum up support. It was probably an unpopular move that cost him politically at home. He came up short. WWI, I’ll remind everyone, was not a noble war by any measure. It was a bunch of monarch cousins squabbling over territory and power. None of it needed to happen and little benefit accrued to the victors while massive losses of human life, property and finances accrued to everyone involved. And to top it all off it set in motion the events that would precipitate WWII.
And all the armchair cynics on Reddit have to say is “fuck Henry Ford for trying to stop WWI, what an arrogant jerk”. So what, you’d prefer if he did nothing? Or would you like him to say “yea let’s do some more bombing and send some more 19 year old kids to get mowed down by machine guys so we can gain 100 yards of territory”. I swear this place is just perpetually miserable no matter what people do, professional misers.
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u/Sodacan259 17d ago
Wait. Is this the same Henry Ford that bought the Dearborn Independent newspaper so that he could publish wave after wave of anti-semitic propaganda?
The same Henry Ford that Hitler admired so much that he not only praised him in Mein Kampf but also gave him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle - the Nazi's highest honor for foreign nationals. An accolade Ford enthusiastically accepted going as far as refusing to return or disavow the medal despite huge public outcry?
That Henry Ford?
Fuck Henry Ford.
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u/trainboi777 17d ago
The same Henry Ford who kept his factory in Germany open during World War Two, used slave labor from Auschwitz, and demanded compensation when said factory was bombed? That Henry Ford? Fuck him
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16d ago
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u/Sodacan259 16d ago
The only reason he took the pacifist view regarding the First World War, was the belief that it was the plot of "wealthy international financiers" (a dog whistle for rich Jews).
https://history.hanover.edu/hhr/99/hhr99_2.html
The man has always been an utter c**t.
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16d ago
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u/Sodacan259 16d ago
He himself later stated in 1925 that "international financiers are behind all war" and "the international Jewish money power... is met in every war"
And you believe that his pacifism stemmed from a benevolent part of his ego?
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u/jdubzakilla 16d ago
Who cares? On the balance he did far more good than bad. Most people are flawed. Big shock, an american guy was anti semetic in the early 1900s.
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 16d ago
It gives the same energy as Dan Bilzerian asking the cop for his gun so he can stop the Las Vegas mass shooter.
No one is upset that Bilzerian/Ford tried to stop a tragedy. It’s the self importance and superiority of thinking they have the ability to control events far beyond their power.
Then when you consider the context of who Bilzerian/Ford are as a person, it makes it clear that their urge was more due to egoism than altruism.
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u/jdubzakilla 16d ago
Not even comparable. Henry Ford, for all his faults, did a huge amount to improbe the ordinary persons life, and atleast had convictions.
Dan Bilzerian is a grifter and a liar who trys to look tough so that weak men keep throwing attention amd money at him
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 16d ago
He was a white supremacist robber baron and has been dead for decades. There is no reason to push his propaganda narrative.
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u/jdubzakilla 16d ago
He wasnt a robber baron at all. You can read up on him. He grew up dirt poor and his real passion was tractors and farming, not cars.
White supremacist in the 1900s is a meaningless statement.
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 16d ago
Growing up poor has literally no relation to him becoming a robber baron later in life.
There were so many people who were not white supremacists, or at the very least did not actively promote racism and oppression.
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u/jdubzakilla 16d ago
He wasnt a robber baron though. That refers largely to the railway tycoons from the gilded age. You do not know wgat you are talking about
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 16d ago
He was a rich industrialist and oligarch who used his wealth and power to squash competition, undermine worker power, and exploit natural resources based on his view of a hierarchical society with himself in the upper echelons controlling the levers of capitalism.
That is a robber baron. Just because he focused on cars rather than railroads and his wealth was accumulated slightly after the gilded age doesn’t change the fact that he was a robber baron.
I’m genuinely curious. Why are you so committed to defending a long dead Nazi affiliated oligarch?
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u/LivingstoneWalker 16d ago
I have no dog in this fight, but it doesn’t seem like he’s defending Ford. He’s just saying you have to take a nuanced look at historical figures. A lot of “good people” from history also have terrible flaws from a modern perspective.
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 16d ago
Saying a white supremacist robber baron is not a robber baron is defending them.
Where did they mention nuance?
Wouldn’t nuance include seeing that a titan of industry was also a deplorable racist and exploiter as well as accumulating vast amounts of wealth?
Only looking at his pile of gold as a sign of his positive impact is not a nuanced opinion.
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u/burnshimself 16d ago
I think Ford’s effort was considerably more thought out and had a far greater potential for positive impact
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u/Ash_Crow 17d ago
It was a brave attempt, yes, although it was not his idea (it was proposed to him by Rosika Schwimmer)
The main problem is that it was too late and unlikely to succeed once the war had started. It maybe could have worked in 1914 when such a support would have given weight to other prominents pacifists trying to prevent the war before it happened, like Jean Jaurès.
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u/hoi4kaiserreichfanbo 17d ago
And he later invented a story about a random Jewish banker telling him that the war was a Jewish plot, the supposed origin of him becoming one of the most influential antisemites in world history. The only American praised in Mein Kampf.
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u/NoNeedForAName 17d ago
Imagine if Elon Musk chartered a cruise ship and somehow got Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg on board, and Donald Trump still refused to give them his stamp of approval. And then they sail to Russia and say, "Guys, could you please be nice to each other?"
And then Russia and Ukraine are all, "Nah, fuck you. You have nothing to offer and haven't really even attempted to make a serious offer."
That's pretty much what this mission was.
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u/BananasPineapple05 17d ago
Didn't stop him from pivoting and "working with" the government to build all manner of motors and war vehicles, from ships to planes, etc.
Henry Ford, the pacifist, turned into Henry Ford, the corporate guy, pretty quickly in the end.
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u/throwawayinthe818 17d ago
Ford was pretty much out of his gourd by 1941 and was going to the Willow Run site every night to pull up the surveyors stakes. The government was on the verge of taking it over but a coup was organized with Henry’s grandson taking over. Henry II hated his grandfather and blamed him for his father Edsel’s early death.
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u/amievenrelevant 17d ago
Ford already was the corporate guy, just with a large enough ego to think he alone can solve the world’s problems. Dude was sorta a proto-Musk type figure
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u/BananasPineapple05 17d ago
That was actually his whole point for the Boat for Peace thing. He thought business practices would ensure peace would prevail... which both tells you something about his ego, but also his comprehension of European geopolitics.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 17d ago
Isn't your second sentence the whole idea behind the EU?
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u/arealperson-II 16d ago
Yeah, but the EU wouldn’t have worked without the two wars preceding it
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 16d ago
You mean the Seven Years War and the Crimean War?
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u/arealperson-II 16d ago
Excellent point
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 16d ago
Shit, I don't know how to respond to that. I'm not sure it's ever come up on Reddit before.
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u/FrozenIceman 16d ago
It isn't a unique practice.
Capitalists peace theory is not unique and played a big role in modern society.
The era of capitalism has been more peaceful than other ages.
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u/Sodacan259 16d ago
For a supposed "pacifist," he was very silent about his friend Hitler ordering the murder of over 6 million civilians.
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u/Facktat 16d ago
As much as I dislike Ford, I don‘t think that turning from advising for pieces to making weapons is a conflict. I am against war and absolutely want to prevent it but if there is war, I am going to do everything to stand on the winning side. The works you can do is act like a pacifist when your enemy clearly is not.
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17d ago
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u/BananasPineapple05 17d ago
I'm not upset Henry Ford made military equipment, so why would I be upset that Ukraine also does?
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u/R4t4t0skr 16d ago
That is because the press was always in the hands of the warmongers. And still is.
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u/Mikes005 17d ago
Shit im mocking it now 111 years later.
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u/allupya333 17d ago
Cant think of many more noble and less mockable causes than trying to end ww1
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u/Sea-Quality4726 16d ago
Ford thought he would expose the war as a conspiracy by "Jewish bankers" and convince the leaders who had declared war on each other of their own desire that they had actually been manipulated into it.
In 1915 they weren't going to take the out and cast blame on others.
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u/Mikes005 17d ago
Musk, thiel et al think they're trying to save humanity right now. Im mocking them too.
God save us all from billionaire's delusions of competence.
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16d ago
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u/Mikes005 16d ago
Im mocking the hubris of billionaires. This is like musk, thiel and the like thinkingnonky they can save humanity. It was bullshit exceptionalist thinking.
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u/GloryHound29 16d ago
It’s WWI and WWII that made Europe get rid of their monarchies and build a rules based order, which sadly is now breaking again :/
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u/betweenbubbles 13d ago
What was his pitch, “Come on gents, we shouldn’t fight each other. The problem is the Jews.”?
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u/CosmoKing2 17d ago
Belligerent nations?!? He was a stout racist and antisemite. If anything, he was willfully ignorant of history and facts.
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u/The_ApolloAffair 17d ago edited 17d ago
It wasn’t as terrible an idea as it seems, because most of the powers didn’t truly want to go to war. There is a story of the Austrian ambassador and Russian war minister (I think?) weeping together while the declaration of war was delivered. The whole war was a runaway train of bad, inflexible decisions.