 Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction"; in 1939 he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War.In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents.