Book: Ford used slaves in Nazi plants

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DETROIT, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- The Ford Motor Co. allowed slave labor at its German plants during World War II, according to excerpts from a new book published in the London Telegraph.

Journalist and Holocaust researcher Max Wallace says in "The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich" both Ford and Lindbergh men fell for Nazi propaganda.

Referring to newly declassified government documents, Wallace alleges Nazi links at the Detroit company went well beyond Henry Ford.

The documents indicate his son Edsel, then company president, could have been prosecuted for trading with the enemy had he not died in 1943.

The evidence included 11 letters between Edsel Ford and the head of Ford's French division in 1942 which suggest that the parent company knew and approved of the manufacturing efforts being undertaken on behalf of the German military.

Before the United States entered the war, Ford supplied Germany with military equipment, while declining to make engines for the British air force.