Henry Ford helped create the modern middle class, the five-day, 40-hour work week, and mass-market travel, yet on his 75th birthday he accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi Germany. This deep dive unpacks how one man’s obsession with efficiency and control transformed the world and nearly destroyed his own company and family.

We trace Ford from a Michigan farm he despised and a disassembled pocket watch to failed early ventures, the 999 race car, and the Model T built from vanadium steel. We examine the moving assembly line, the calculated logic of the five-dollar day, the intrusive Sociological Department, Harry Bennett’s violent Service Department, his antisemitic Dearborn Independent, and the family coup that finally removed him.

• How the moving assembly line cut build time from 12 hours to about 90 minutes and the Model T price to $360
• Why turnover forced Ford to hire over 50,000 people a year to keep roughly 14,000 jobs filled
• The real reason behind any color so long as it is black
• Fordlandia, his failed attempt to build a Midwestern town in the Amazon
• The tragic relationship with his son Edsel and the wartime losses that nearly led to nationalization