Some of the oldest stories of the Motor City are actually myths. One such folk tale was inspired by the Dodge Brothers emblem, which features what we know today as a Star of David.
Henry Ford was a great man, many will say, but it’s equally true that he promoted a number of peculiar, backward, and downright ignorant ideas. Easily the most offensive of them was his public embrace of anti-Semitism. Starting in 1920 his newspaper, the The Dearborn Independent, published a torrent of scurrilous and disgraceful attacks on Judaism, including an enthusiastic promotion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notoriously fake document that purported to outline a Jewish plot to enslave the world.
The public reaction to Ford’s crackpot theories was muted compared to what we would see today, but it was predictable: A significant portion of the Jewish community and friends rejected Ford products and took their automobile business elsewhere. Ford eventually renounced his anti-Semitic beliefs, though not nearly as loudly as he had previously announced them. But at any rate the damage was done, and for many Americans, Ford’s bigoted views are a scar on the company’s legacy to this day.
For car buyers who rejected Ford’s beliefs and his automobiles, there was one obvious alternative: the Dodge Brothers, former partners and suppliers to the Ford Motor Company who later became Ford’s rivals, launching their own automobile brand in 1914. As if to drive the point home, the emblem on the Dodge Brothers radiator included two interlocking triangles, the symbol we know today as the Magen David, the Shield or Star of David. This gave rise to a common but mistaken belief: That the Dodge brothers, John and Horace, were Jews, and the Star of David in their company logo was a thumb in the eye to their bitter rival, Henry Ford.
No, the Dodge brothers were not Jewish, in faith or in ancestry. In fact they weren’t particularly religious, sharing a nominally Protestant upbringing in their hometown of Niles, Michigan. (Today, the former John Dodge mansion on East Boston Boulevard is the home of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Detroit.) When John and Horace Dodge adopted the interlocking-triangle theme for their company logo in 1914, it wasn’t solely regarded as the the symbol of Judaism as it is today. More broadly, it was interpreted simply as a sign of good fortune. In iconography and numerology, the symbol is ancient. We should also note that the Dodge brothers and Ford parted ways (and Dodge adopted the meshed triangles) years before Ford launched his anti-Semitic campaign.
As you might expect, theories have arisen to explain the intertwined black and white triangles as the Dodges understood them. The triangle or delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, D in English, so the intelocking triangles could symbolize the the close partnership of the two Dodge brothers. The D and B in the logo are also interlinked, which lends some weight to the theory. (DB symbols can be found on millions of Ford parts manufactured by the Dodge Brothers between 1903 and 1914.) Or it could be that the brothers and their art staff simply liked the paired triangles, not fully aware of the Judaic symbolism.
John and Horace Dodge both died in 1920, victims of the influenza pandemic, and in 1928 their company was acquired by the Chrysler Corporation. Chrysler dropped “Brothers” from the Dodge name in 1930, but the interlocking triangles remained on the Dodge logo through 1939.
There was talk out west about the Dodge brothers being Jewish. I remember one old-timer being quite vocal toward that. He drove only Ford/Mercury because he wouldn’t have anything that might be connected with Jews. I don’t know what the Jews did to him; there were friendships between some Jewish families and mine that lasted for multiple generations…
Thank you for clarifying this bit of automotive history.
In similar fashion, the Krit Motor Company of Detroit used a swastika on its emblem, with no connection to the Nazis. Sometimes, there simply is no (intended) connection between such symbols and organizations/groups.
Also, the circle in the middle of the Dodge family heraldic crest as it appeared in the ’40s/50s and again in the Brougham ’70s was originally a dripping breast before being bowdlerized to a weeping eye and further to a plain circle.
Somewhat odd in retrospect that it never appeared as a wheel (road or steering).
There is a LOT of misinformation and information about the Dodge Brothers.
TRUE:
1. They were Irish, raised Protestant.
2.Almost ALL of the movers and shakers in Detroit, from the late 19th century, into the ’30s, were Masons. That is how networking and business got done. There were members of the defunct Palm chapter of Masons.
3. The interlocking triangles were a Masonic Good Luck symbol.
4. They got along with Henry Ford fine, took a risky position by supplying his engines and transmissions for a stake in the company. The final falling out was due to HF not paying dividends to stockholders, saving the money to build a new plant. Dodges sued and won, jump starting the Dodge, a better car, in 1914.
5. The Dodges were generous philanthropists, paying to build schools and churches.
6. They were paternalistic running their plant, paying for food and beer for lunches. This kept the employees on site and mostly sober in the runup to prohibition in 1917.
The “brothers” was also not dropped until 1939.