IBM and the Holocaust: Historical Comments on the book

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

Author: Edwin Black
Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (February 12, 2001), ISBN: 0609607995

 

I finally finished reading this book that I purchased when it first came out in 2001. As both a computer person who was trained initially on how to program the sorters that use these 80 column punch cards (IBM 557s, 029 punch verifiers, etc.) and a history buff I wanted to see how this book presented - and why - it put IBM as being the cause of the Holocaust while GM, Ford and the other American firms that were in Germany before WW II never had the same book written against them.

 

From the book the impression I got was it was really not IBM the corporation but Thomas J. Watson the President of IBM who micro-managed IBM from the 1920s onwards in pursuit of profits whose IBM machine allowed the level organization required to track rail cars, parts, production lines, and people to a degree never seen before (now common). Selling machines to increase worker productivity in the statistics department to track everyone when combined with the views of National Socialism made it possible to organize, control and use people on a organized grand scale never seen before. Jews had been killed throughout history but always in fits and starts and only when visible in a large community. Germany, through highly detailed census gathering, was able to track everyone all the time from 1933 onwards till April 1945 when communications finally broke down.

 

Unlike the US census that just counted heads, the NAZI German census data when into such detail of everyone household as to age, education, skills, religion, back to as far as their grandparents. Add in that as people moved they were required to report in to the local police whenever they moved which in turn forwarded this onto the central Government statistics office which enabled the Government to find anyone anywhere at any time. And there were always updated censuses being done.

 

IBM had, by the 1930s, effectively become the only seller of punch card technology in the world by outright lies, lawsuits, patent trolling of any firm or person who could possibly compete with them - all through the efforts of Thomas J. Watson who literally controlled everything personally.

 

Punch cards allowed firms to save money by inventory control - rail road cars - doing census work - the U.S. Government and other countries - manufacturing firms for payroll uses and really the same darn things that we do today on a PC / Mainframe but back then it was just done using punch cards.

 

Watson had every subsidiary organized in HIS name with token locals as owners just for Government paperwork requirements.

 

When Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany (Legally !!) he started to implement his racial policies. Now to do that required massive statistical data being turned into information: which only IBM could provide due to patents on punch card systems - and even the punch cards themselves.  So Germany started  leasing more and more systems - IBM never SOLD any system - only leased and SOLD the punch cards - but cards are used only once so IBM ran the business just like modern consumable marketing systems.

 

Since GERMANS worked in the IBM factories, did the sales, maintenance and so on, GERMANS tokenly ran the firm at the executive level but native GERMANS did all the work. The same was true in each country that IBM had a presence. The locals did the work, IBM NY got 75% of the profits from the leases of equipment IBM  owned - which actually Watson owned / controlled 100% of each firm.

 

Now a person is loyal to their country - and back then also to the corporation (loyalty to a corporation is largely gone, and loyalty to a country is vaporous. Many illegals loyalty to the US is gone - if ever there. (15% to 20% of the US population is here illegally so they don't really care about the US. Illegal immigrants don't care about the country they are working in, they are there to make a buck and go back to their home country - maybe - they are loyal to their home country they left.)

 

The author, Edwin Black, paints the book as one of IBM America making the Holocaust, actually Germans made it possible by using the technology at hand - and inventing some.

 

He goes into great detail showing the financial transactions that IBM did to shield its profits from taxes, creating fictional and creative ways to do so (just like Enron did) but all legal within Germany and the other countries it operated in. Now the IBM finance operational problems really starts once war starts in 1939. How can a corporation making lots of money -  under contract - be willing to break contracts lose money and leave a foreign country when their nation is NOT at war? Also, if they break a contract couldn't Germany just then seize the equipment as a forfeit to breaking a contract? Plus wars end, and you want to be able to go back and earn money rebuilding afterwards - no matters who wins.

 

An international corporation also has International Law rules that it gets to deal with when it comes to war.

 

Now in order to make money it sent punch cards to Europe throughout the war - via neutrals or direct to them before US declared war after Germany declared war on the US on Dec 10. Sending to some of the countries was not illegal since the US was NOT at war with them: Belgium, Norway France etc, but sending them cards was not in the interests of the US since those countries were controlled by Germany. Here is a distinction - unless a law is passed forbidding it you to trade with a country occupied by another - you could. There was no law on the books for that from what I could tell reading the book.

 

Now Watson (IBM) went to great lengths to hide that it was dealing with Germany after the mid- late 1930s, but it was not illegal to do business with them - just not a great public relations press release type of thing to talk about. So Watson looked at it as just another cost of doing business - unable to tout all the benefits of using IBM equipment to solve business problems that it was doing in Germany - nor any of the "business" problems that the German government were trying to "solve" with IBM gear: mobilization lists, Jew lists,  re-armament timelines, troop movements, rail efficiencies etc.

 

Here is the crux of a business problem: If IBM had pulled out in 1935 and shut down, BULL and Powers would have moved in to take over the market - they had machines like IBM and had been marginalized by IBM. Now they could have - and been ordered to do in many cases - the same things that IBM equipment did. There would have been delays for sure, maybe a year or two, but then maybe the war would have started a year or two later and Germany would have been even FUTHER ahead than they were when the war started vis a vis US and Russia.

 

Not until early 1943 did the Reich go to a full war economy: Britain had been on it since fall of 1940 and the US went immediately to it after Pearl Harbor.  A delay in the start of the 2nd World War would mean the US peacetime build up would have gone slower, no need to build when no war is going on, England would not have rushed either to a war footing whereby she got lots of new aircraft and ships from 1943 onwards, and Russia would have been better prepared at war which might have even deterred Hitler from attacking them after seizing Poland - until he had the wonder weapons and an atom bomb.

 

What it comes down to is that the Third Reich would have found a way to kill the Jews if IBM left so it did not matter if IBM was there or not.

 

Thomas J Watson however, would have felt right at home at the Enron finance department.