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The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first English edition

The Jewish peril: protocols of the learned elders of Zion

Anonymous, The Jewish Peril: Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (London, 1920)

The first English edition of the Protocols. The date of its publication, printed within one year of the first German edition, reveals just how quickly this inflammatory text had spread through Europe. In America the Protocols first appeared in 1919, and by the early 1920s the deeply anti-Semitic industrialist Henry Ford funded the publication and distribution of 500,000 copies, until he was condemned by a U.S. court and ordered to retract them.