Editing Henry Ford (section)

===Ford Airplane Company===
[[File:Ford 4ATF.jpg|thumb|left|Ford 4-AT-F (EC-RRA) of the Spanish Republican Airline, [[L.A.P.E.]]]]
Like other automobile companies, Ford entered the aviation business during [[World War I]], building [[Liberty L-12|Liberty engines]]. After the war, it returned to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Ford acquired the [[Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company|Stout Metal Airplane Company]].

Ford's most successful aircraft was the [[Ford Trimotor|Ford 4AT Trimotor]], often called the "Tin Goose" because of its corrugated metal construction. It used a new alloy called [[Alclad]] that combined the corrosion resistance of aluminum with the strength of [[duralumin]]. The plane was similar to [[Fokker]]'s V.VII–3m. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in a rather uncomfortable fashion. Several variants were also used by the [[U.S. Army]]. The [[Smithsonian Institution]] has honored Ford for changing the aviation industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because of poor sales during the [[Great Depression]].

In 1985, Ford was posthumously inducted into the [[National Aviation Hall of Fame]] for his impact on the industry.<ref name=NAHF/>

====World War I era and peace activism====
{{Further|Peace Ship|1918 United States Senate election in Michigan}}

Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste,<ref name="Ford-Bio-A&E">Henry Ford, Biography (March 25, 1999). ''A&E Television''.</ref><ref>Michigan History, January/February 1993.</ref> and supported causes that opposed [[military intervention]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/04/06/examining-american-peace-movement-prior-world-war-i |title=Examining the American peace movement prior to World War I |date=April 6, 2017}}</ref> Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist [[Rosika Schwimmer]] gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a [[Peace Ship]] to Europe, where World War I was raging. He led 170 other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President Woodrow Wilson about the mission but had no government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands to meet with peace activists. A target of much ridicule, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Watts |url=https://archive.org/details/peoplestycoonhen00watt |title=''The People's Tycoon'' |publisher=A. A. Knopf |year=2005 |isbn=9780375407352 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/peoplestycoonhen00watt/page/225 225–249] |url-access=registration}}</ref> In 1915, Ford blamed "German-Jewish bankers" for instigating the war.<ref>Norwood, Stephen Harlan. ''Encyclopedia of American Jewish History''. Vol. 1. Abc-clio, 2008, p. 182.</ref>

According to biographer Steven Watts, Ford's status as a leading industrialist gave him a worldview that warfare was wasteful folly that retarded long-term economic growth. The losing side in the war typically suffered heavy damage. Small business were especially hurt, for it takes years to recuperate. He argued in many newspaper articles that a focus on business efficiency would discourage warfare because, "If every man who manufactures an article would make the very best he can in the very best way at the very lowest possible price the world would be kept out of war, for commercialists would not have to search for outside markets which the other fellow covets." Ford admitted that munitions makers enjoyed wars, but he argued that most businesses wanted to avoid wars and instead work to manufacture and sell useful goods, hire workers, and generate steady long-term profits.<ref>Steven Watts, ''The people's tycoon: Henry Ford and the American century'' (Vintage, 2009). pp. 236–237.</ref>

Ford's British factories produced [[Fordson]] tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane engines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Ford went quiet on foreign policy. His company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and [[Eagle-class patrol craft|anti-submarine boats]].<ref name=Ford/>{{rp|95–100,119}}<ref>Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, ''Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915–1933'' (1957), 2: 55–85.</ref>

In 1918, with the war on and the [[League of Nations]] a growing issue in global politics, President [[Woodrow Wilson]], a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed [[League of Nations|League]]. "You are the only man in Michigan who can be elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 7,000 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide.<ref>Banham, Russ. (2002) ''The Ford Century.'' Tehabi Books. {{ISBN|188765688X}}, p. 44.</ref> He was defeated in a close election by the Republican candidate, [[Truman Newberry]], a former [[United States Secretary of the Navy]]. Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and supporter of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking tour in the summer of 1919 to promote the League, Ford helped fund the attendant publicity.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Watts |url=https://archive.org/details/peoplestycoonhen00watt |title=''The People's Tycoon'' |publisher=A. A. Knopf |year=2005 |isbn=9780375407352 |page=[https://archive.org/details/peoplestycoonhen00watt/page/378 378] |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>John Milton Cooper Jr., ''Woodrow Wilson: A Biography'' (2009), p. 521.</ref>

====World War II era and controversies====
Ford opposed the United States' entry into World War II<ref name="Wallace" /><ref>Baldwin, Neil (2001). ''Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate''. New York: Public Affairs.</ref> and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction". In 1939, he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.<ref>Stephen Watts, ''The People's Tycoon'' (2005), p. 505.</ref> The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War.<ref name="Wallace" /><ref>Baldwin.</ref>

In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. Ford continued to do business with [[Nazi Germany]], including the manufacture of war [[materiel]].<ref name="Wallace" /> However, he also agreed to build warplane engines for the British government.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://michiganhistory.leadr.msu.edu/wwii-and-ford-motor-company/|title=WWII and Ford Motor Company – Michigan History}}</ref> In early 1940, he boasted that Ford Motor Company would soon be able to produce 1,000 U.S. warplanes a day, even though it did not have an aircraft production facility at that time.<ref name="LegendOfHenryFord">{{cite book | last=Sward | first=Keith | title=The Legend of Henry Ford | publisher=Rinehart & Company Inc. | year=1948 | url=https://archive.org/details/unset0000unse_d3s5 | access-date=April 26, 2020}}</ref>{{rp|430}} Ford was a prominent early member of the [[America First Committee]] against World War II involvement, but was forced to resign from its executive board when his involvement proved too controversial.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dunn |first=Susan |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/847526899 |title=1940 : FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler--the election amid the storm |date=2013 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300195132 |location=New Haven, Connecticut |oclc=847526899}}</ref>

Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French [[Prisoner of war|POWs]] to work as slave laborers, ''[[Ford Germany|Ford-Werke]]'' contravened Article 31 of the 1929 [[Geneva Conventions|Geneva Convention]].<ref name="Wallace" />

When [[Rolls-Royce Limited|Rolls-Royce]] sought a U.S. manufacturer as an additional source for the [[Rolls-Royce Merlin|Merlin]] engine (as fitted to [[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfire]] and [[Hawker Hurricane|Hurricane]] fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in December 1941.<ref>Watts, ''The People's Tycoon'' (2005), p. 508.</ref>

====Willow Run====
Before the U.S. entered the war, responding to President Roosevelt's call in December 1940 for the "Great Arsenal of Democracy", Ford directed the [[Ford Motor Company]] to construct a vast new purpose-built aircraft factory at [[Willow Run]] near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of 1941, B-24 component production began in May 1942, and the first complete [[Consolidated B-24 Liberator|B-24]] came off the assembly line in October 1942. At {{convert|3,500,000|ft2|m2|abbr=on}}, it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes.<ref name="Willowrun">Nolan, Jenny. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180625103810/http://blogs.detroitnews.com/history/1997/01/27/willow-run-and-the-arsenal-of-democracy/ "Michigan History: Willow Run and the Arsenal of Democracy."]  ''The Detroit News,'' January 28, 1997. Retrieved: August 7, 2010.</ref> Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.<ref name="Willowrun" /><ref name="LegendOfHenryFord" />{{rp|430}}

====Edsel's death====
When Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943, at age 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name.<ref>Watts, ''The People's Tycoon'' (2005), p. 503.</ref> The company was controlled by a handful of senior executives led by [[Charles Sorensen]], an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and [[Harry Bennett]], the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944.<ref>Watts, ''The People's Tycoon'' (2005), pp. 522–525.</ref> Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating a coup among executives and directors.<ref name="Sorensen1956pp324–333">{{Harvnb|Sorensen|1956|pp=324–333}}.</ref>

====Forced out====
Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson [[Henry Ford II]]. They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted to three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but he had no choice but to give in.<ref>Yates, Brock. "10 Best Moguls", in ''Car and Driver'', 1/88, p. 45.</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=Maybe an less than perferct RS|date=March 2014}}<ref>Watts, ''The People's Tycoon'' (2005), pp. 522–527.</ref> The young man took over and, as his first act of business, fired Harry Bennett.