SAT写作素材积累：亨利福特

　　Ford, like other automobile companies, entered the aviation business during World War I, building Liberty engines. After the war, it returned to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company.

　　Ford 4-AT-F (EC-RRA) of the Spanish Republican Airline, L.A.P.E.

　　Ford's most successful aircraft was the 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 ofduralumin. The plane was similar to Fokker's V.VII-3m, and some say that Ford's engineers surreptitiously measured the Fokker plane and then copied it. 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. Ford has been honored by the Smithsonian Institution 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.

　　Peace and war

　　World War I era

　　Ford opposed war, which he thought was a terrible waste. 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 and about 170 other prominent peace leaders traveled there. 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 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.

　　The coming of World War II and Ford's mental collapse

　　Ford had opposed America's entry into World War II 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. The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War (see the section on his anti-Semitism below). 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.

　　At that time, which was before the U.S. entered the War and still had full diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ford-Werke was under the control of the Ford Motor Company. The number of slave laborers grew as the war expanded although Wallace made it clear that companies in Germany were not required by the Nazi authorities to use slave laborers.

　　When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an alternative source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in late 1941." His support of the American war effort, however, was problematic. Once the U.S. entered the war, Ford's Willow Run plant was converted into a B-24 factory. Production, however, was marred by incompetence and bungling.

　　International business

　　Fd's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in the global expansion of his company. He believed that international trade and cooperation led to international peace, and he used the assembly line process and production of the Model T to demonstrate it.

　　Edsel Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford pose in the Ford hangar during Lindbergh's August 1927 visit.

　　He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911, and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In 1912, Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was essential to world peace. In the 1920s, Ford also opened plants in Australia, India, and France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. Ford experimented with a commercial rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle called Fordlândia; it was one of his few failures. In 1929, Ford acceptedJoseph Stalin's invitation to build a model plant (NNAZ, today GAZ) at Gorky, a city now known under its historical nameNizhny Novgorod. He sent American engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help set it up, including future labor leader Walter Reuther.

　　The Ford Motor Company had the policy of doing business in any nation where the United States had diplomatic relations. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold cars and trucks and sometimes assembled them:

　　Ford of Australia　　Ford of Argentina　　Ford of Brazil　　Ford of Britain　　Ford of Canada　　Ford of Europe　　Ford India　　Ford Mexico　　Ford Philippines　　Ford South Africa

　　Henry Ford in Germany; September 1930

　　By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one third of all the world’s automobiles. Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all".

　　Racing

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