Order of the German Eagle

The Order of the German Eagle was a decoration from Hitler’s Nazi government that Henry Ford accepted in 1938. Its appearance at Ford’s seventy-fifth-birthday dinner—and its later association with Charles A. Lindbergh—made the award a visible sign of the ties that critics saw between prominent Americans and the regime that bestowed it.

Award and Occasion

The award was presented to Ford in July 1938, at a birthday dinner in Detroit attended by 1,500 prominent citizens. The occasion placed the decoration within a public celebration of Ford’s seventy-fifth birthday, even as its source gave it a political significance beyond the ceremony. Ford accepted the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler’s Nazi government.

Shared Distinction and Public Meaning

The distinction also linked Ford to Lindbergh: the same medal was awarded to Lindbergh at a ceremony in Germany that October. In December, Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes drew attention to the parallel at a meeting of the Cleveland Zionist Society. He called Ford and Lindbergh the only two free citizens of a free country to have accepted such honors, describing them as “tokens of contemptuous distinction” bestowed by a government that, he said, counted the day lost if it committed no new crimes against humanity. His rebuke made the medal more than a personal honor: in public argument, its acceptance became evidence of the troubling closeness between two celebrated Americans and Nazi Germany.