3The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was supposedly written in 1897 from the minutes of 24 secret meetings between Jews and Freemasons in which they conspired to bring down Western civilization and jointly rule the world. In reality, it is nothing of the sort. Protocols tells of a Jewish plot to take over the world. Historians have long said the work is a forgery concocted by Czar Nicholas II's secret police to blame Russia's troubles on Jews. In 1921, Philip Graves of the London Times revealed The Protocols to be a fraud, showing it to be based on a French satire aimed at Napoleon III. Professor Nilus was a priest in the Orthodox Church in Russia. He published the first Russian language edition in 1905. In 1920 Henry Ford bought "The Dearborn Independent," a virile and very independent journal published in his home town. He used it to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a series of articles about the book, as part of his series of 81 articles (between 1920 and 1922) on "the Jewish Question in America," which he called "the world's foremost problem." The Dearborn Independent was distributed nationwide to Ford dealer showrooms and was offered free of charge to the general public. The relevant articles are collected here so that the whole can be studied at one time. This book is an important document in the history of anti-Semitism, and has been used as required reading in many university anti-Semitism courses.