Ibm Corporation
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IBM and the Holocaust tells the story of the involvement of this major US corporation in the establishment of Hitlers Third Reich and the destruction of European Jewry.
Author Edwin Black shows how technology developed in America by Herman Hollerith–a punch card and punch card sorting system–enabled the Nazis to organise their war machine and carry through the efficient and systematic genocide of the Jews. At the time of the Nazi dictatorship, IBM had a near worldwide monopoly over the technology and the production of its vital ingredient–the punch cards.
Edwin Black is not new to the subject of the Holocaust. His parents were both Jews of European decent and survivors of the Holocaust. Black first encountered the punch card technology at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, where he saw a Hollerith card sorting machine on exhibition. He explains that it was then that questions started to nag at him–what role did this machine play for the Nazis? What was the role of IBM? This became the starting point for his investigation. In 1998, he began to pursue these questions vigorously, recruiting a team of researchers, interns, translators and assistants, until it comprised more than 100 people.
In his introduction, Black explains “I was fortunate to have an understanding of Reich economics and multi-national commerce from my earlier book, The Transfer Agreement, [which dealt with the secret pre-war agreement between Zionism and the Nazis that enabled a limited number of Jews to leave Germany for Palestine] as well as a background in the computer industry, and years of experience as an investigative journalist specialising in corporate misconduct. I approached this project as a typical if not grandiose investigation of corporate conduct with one dramatic difference: the conduct impacted on the lives and deaths of millions.” (p15)
Black explains that ultimately, IBM helped the Nazis carry through their policy of genocide. Without this assistance, Hitlers regime would not have been able to carry through its extermination plan with such efficiency. IBMs machines were used at all stages of the persecution of the Jews. They collected the necessary information to identify the Nazis victims, first to enforce the bar on Jews working in certain academic, professional and government jobs and later to carry out mass evictions from their homes and into the ghettoes.
IBM technology was used to organise the railways, so that millions of Nazi victims could be transported to the concentration camps, where they were immediately led into the gas chambers. There were Hollerith departments at nearly every concentration camp, which registered the arrival of inmates, organised the allocation of slave labourers, and even kept tallies on the deaths of prisoners.
IBM was involved in virtually every aspect of the Third Reichs operations. The book explains that the company leased, serviced and upgraded more than 2,000 IBM multi-machine sets throughout Germany, and thousands more throughout Nazi occupied Europe. IBM developed custom-designed cards used by the Nazis; with as many as 1.5 billion punch cards being produced in Germany annually.
The punch card technology first developed by Hollerith, a German-American living in Washington, was used to enable the US Census Bureau to count the 1890 census. Decades prior to the development of computers, Hollerith technology enabled the fastest tabulation of the US population ever undertaken. Through a series of punch holes, each card recorded information on an individuals gender, religion, nationality and occupation. Processed, and reprocessed, through sorting and counting machines the cards “could render the portrait of an entire population or could pick out any group within that population Every punch card would become an informational storehouse limited only by the number of holes”. (p25) Within years, Holleriths machines were being used to take censuses across the world. The technology also developed into an early computing system, being used for financial accountancy by some of the largest US corporations.
Hollerith established a near-world wide monopoly, leasing rather than selling his machines, but sold up in 1911 and the company was merged into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. Under the stewardship of ex-sewing machine salesman Thomas Watson, CTR was transformed in the International Business Machines Corporation. Watson, a ruthless businessman, established a paternalistic hierarchy in the company. Watson spoke of the “IBM family” that included not only his workers, but also their wives and children, who would also be trained in the “IBM spirit” and would be well looked after and integrated into his empire.
In 1922, with hyperinflation in Germany leading to the collapse of the currency, Watson took over Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft) that had used the punch card technology under licence. This German subsidiary would later play a crucial role in IBMs business alliance with the Third Reich. By 1933, when Hitler came to power, Watson had transformed the formerly ailing German company into IBMs flag ship–producing more than three times above its quota.
But there was the promise of even more to come. “Nazi Germany offered Watson the opportunity to cater to government control, supervisions, surveillance, and regimentation on a plane never before known in human history. The fact that Hitler planned to extend his Reich to other nations only magnified the prospective profits. In business terms, that was account growth. The technology was almost exclusively IBMs to purvey because the firm controlled about 90 percent of the world market in punch cards and sorters.” (p46)
Black stresses that Watson was not a fascist, but a ruthless profiteer. The strong German state under an authoritarian leader offered great potential for moneymaking, and that was what Watson identified with. In fact, as the chairman of IBM, one of the most prestigious companies in the USA, Watson was a well-respected businessman, a supporter of Roosevelt and special advisor to the president. Watson was elected chairman of the Foreign Department that also made him chairman of the American section of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). This, in essence, made Watson Americas official businessman to the rest of the world. He became installed as president of the entire ICC in 1937 and arranged the organisations next conference in Berlin.
Right from the start, IBM developed business solutions for the Third Reich. In April 1933, the Hitler regime began a census of all Germans, partly aimed at identifying Jews. The first step was