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	# 2025-08-01 - IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

	Tea Time With Thomas J. Watson and Adolf Hitler

	Some time ago i saw this book referenced on Mastodon. I checked it
	out from the local library. Of course it was serious, heavy reading
	chock full of data and references.

	From this book i learned about the sheer quantity of hard, historical
	data concerning the Holocaust. In my opinion, Holocaust deniers must
	be practicing willful ignorance on an epic scale.

	Evidence And Documentation For The Holocaust

	Reading this book raised questions. I wonder what it must feel like
	to know about this amoral indifference and yet work in an IBM
	subsidiary such as RedHat, or to found a company that does large
	scale business with IBM, such as Intel.

	> By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist
	> dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis'
	> "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a
	> period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war,
	> a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising
	> that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were
	> killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand
	> Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.
	>
	> --Andy Grove, Intel

	Andrew Grove

	On the other hand i see plenty of online rhetoric about punching
	Nazis or kicking Nazi sympathizers out of bars. Some people seem to
	have a sloppy definition of what counts as a Nazi. On top of that,
	the whole attitude has a distinctly American posture of denying the
	systematic nature of problems and reducing them to hopeless matters
	of individual choice and responsibility. This "small picture" line
	of thought is what permitted IBM to be so amoral in the first place,
	while smaller scapegoat companies received public punishment.

	Below are notes from the book.

	# Introduction

	Solipsistic and dazzled by its own swirling universe of technical
	possibilities, IBM was self-gripped by a special amoral corporate
	mantra: if it /can/ be done, it /should/ be done. To the blind
	technocrat, the /means/ were more important than the /ends/. The
	destruction of the Jewish people became even less important because
	the invigorating nature of IBM's technical achievement was only
	heightened by the fantastical profits to be made at a time when
	bread lines stretched across the world.

	IBM NY (USA) always understood--from the outset of 1933--that it
	was courting and doing business with the upper echelon of the Nazi
	Party.

	Punch cards could only be designed, printed, and purchased from
	one source: IBM. The machines were not sold, they were leased, and
	regularly maintained and upgraded by only one source: IBM.

	IBM was founded in 1896 by German inventor Herman Hollerith as a
	census tabulating company. Census was its business. But when IBM
	Germany formed its philosophical and technical alliance with Nazi
	Germany, census and registration took on a new mission. IBM Germany
	invented the racial census--listing not just religious affiliation,
	but bloodline going back generations. This was the Nazi data lust.
	Not just to count the Jews--but to /identify/ them.

	People and asset registration was only one of the many uses Nazi
	Germany found for its high-speed data sorters. Food allocation was
	organized around databases, allowing Germany to starve the Jews.
	Slave labor was identified, tracked, and managed largely through
	punch cards. Punch cards even made the trains run on time and
	cataloged their human cargo. German railway, the /Reichsbahn/,
	Dehomag's (IBM Germany's) biggest customer, dealt directly with
	senior management in Berlin. Dehomag maintained punch card
	installations at train depots across Germany, and eventually across
	all Europe.

	How much did IBM know? Some of it IBM knew on a daily basis
	throughout the twelve year Reich. The worst of it IBM preferred
	not to know--"don't ask, don't tell" was the order of the day. Yet
	IBM NY officials and frequently Watson's personal representatives,
	Harrison Chauncey and Werner Lier, were almost constantly in Berlin
	or Geneva, monitoring activities, ensuring that the parent company
	in New York was not cut out of any of the profits or business
	opportunities Nazism presented. When United States law made such
	direct contact illegal, IBM's Swiss office became the nexus,
	providing the New York office continuous information and credible
	deniability.

	... I understood that IBM does not merely wait for governmental
	customers to call. IBM has attracted its fortune and reputation
	precisely because it generally anticipates governmental and
	corporate needs even before they develop, and then offers, designs,
	and delivers customized solutions--even if it must execute those
	technologic solutions with its own staff and equipment.

	How many solutions did IBM provide to Nazi Germany? I knew about the
	initial solution: the census. Just how far did the solutions go?

	In my pursuit, I received extraordinary cooperation from every
	private, public, and governmental source in every country. Sadly,
	the only refusal came from IBM itself, which rebuffed my requests
	for access to documents and interviews. I was not alone. Since
	World War II, the company has steadfastly refused to cooperate with
	outside authors.

	# Chapter 2: The IBM-Hitler Intersection

	"The physician examines the body and determines whether all organs
	are working to the benefit of the entire organism." asserted
	Heidinger to a crowd of Nazi officials. "We [Dehomag AKA IBM
	Germany] are very much like the physician, in that we dissect,
	cell by cell, the German cultural body. We report every individual
	characteristic... on a little card. These are not dead cards, quite
	the contrary, they prove later on that they come to life when the
	cards are sorted at a rate of 25,000 per hour according to certain
	characteristics. These characteristics are grouped like the organs
	of our cultural body, and they will be calculated and determined
	with the help of our tabulating machine.

	"We are proud that we may assist in such task, a task that provides
	our nation's Physician [Adolf Hitler] with the material he needs
	for his examinations. Our Physician can then determine whether the
	calculated values are in harmony with the health of our people. It
	also means that if such is not the case, our Physician can take
	corrective procedures to correct the sick circumstances... Our
	characteristics are deeply rooted in our race. Therefore, we cherish
	them like a holy shrine which we will--and must--keep pure..."

	Heidinger's speech, along with a list of the invited Nazi Party
	officials was rushed to Manhattan and immediately translated
	for Watson. The IBM Leader cabled Heidinger a prompt note of
	congratulations for a job well done and sentiments well expressed.

	# Chapter 3: Identifying The Jews

	IBM did not invent Germany's anti-Semitism but when it volunteered
	solutions, the company virtually braided with Nazism. Like any
	technologic evolution, each new solution powered a new level of
	sinister expectations and cruel capability.

	When Germany wanted to identify Jews by name, IBM showed them how.
	When Germany wanted to use that information to launch programs of
	social exclusion and expropriation, IBM provided the technologic
	wherewithal. When the trains needed to run on time, from city to
	city or between concentration camps, IBM offered that solution as
	well. Ultimately, there was no solution IBM would not devise for
	a Reich willing to pay for services rendered. One solution led to
	another. No solution was out of the question.

	# Chapter 5: Medal For Watson

	Thomas Watson was more than just a businessman selling boxes to the
	Third Reich. For his Promethean gift of punch card technology that
	enabled the Reich to achieve undreamed of efficiencies both in its
	rearmament program and its war against the Jews, for his refusal to
	join the chorus of strident anti-Nazi boycotters and isolators and
	instead open a commercial corridor the Reich could still navigate,
	for his willingness to bring the world's commercial summit to
	Berlin, for his value as a Roosevelt crony, for his glitter and
	legend, Hitler would bestow upon Thomas Watson a medal--the highest
	it would confer on any non-German.

	The Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star was created for Thomas
	Watson to "honor foreign nationals who made themselves deserving of
	the German Reich." It ranked second in prestige only to Hitler's
	German Grand Cross.

	Watson was honored. At the next ICC Congress, he would not only be
	installed as president of the ICC, he would be decorated by
	/der Führer/.

	On June 28, 1937, over a peaceful cup of tea served in dainty
	china cups atop elegant saucers, in a quiet corner of the Reich
	Chancellery, huddling over a small serving table and seated on
	cushy, floral armchairs, Watson and Hitler would finally talk.
	Sitting with them was a Hitler cohort and two other prominent Hitler
	supporters from the ICC convention. No one knows exactly what Hitler
	told Watson during the exchange.

	* * *

	... And then Adolf Hitler suddenly walked in. Dressed in his
	familiar brown party uniform, he made his way directly to the royal
	box festooned with a swastika flag. As he did, the familiar command
	crackled through the air: "Sieg!"

	The assemblage of distinctive businessmen, including dozens from the
	United States of America, in the year 1937, gripped by the moment,
	awed by the occasion, imbued with the spirit, under the leadership
	of Thomas J. Watson, jumped to their feet amid roars, cheers, and
	wild applause, reached for the sky in a loyal salute, and chanted
	back "Heil!" Watson lifted his right arm halfway up before he caught
	himself. Later a colleague denied to a reporter for the New York
	Herald that Watson's gesture was a genuine salute. [Maybe it was
	merely a Roman salute. Sarcasm.]

	Hitler's medal was bestowed by Schacht as the newsreel cameras
	whirred and government functionaries snapped to stiff attention.
	The eight-pointed gold-framed cross of white enamel embedded with
	German eagles and Nazi emblems dangled about the neck from a broad
	red, black, and white ribbon in tandem with a second six-pointed
	star worn over the left breast. To Watson, it was magnificent. When
	wearing it, he was draped by two swastikas, one on the right and one
	to the left.

	# Chapter 8: With Blitzkrieg Efficiency

	In spring 1940, J.W. Schotte, IBM's general manager for Europe,
	dispatched a confidential report from his German office to senior
	IBM executives in America.

	Schotte's enthusiastic memo was titled
	"Our Dealings With War Ministries in Europe"...

	IBM had finally succeeded in gaining the necessary insider access
	to sensitive military projects, Schotte reported, so that company
	engineers could properly design punch card applications for war use.

	> In military literature and in newspapers, the importance and
	> necessity of having in all phases of life, behind the front, an
	> organization, which would remain intact and would function with
	> "Blitzkrieg" efficiency... was brought out. What we have been
	> preaching in vain for years all at once began to be realized.

	Revenue from IBM's dominant customer, the Third Reich, was growing
	so rapidly, Schotte said he didn't yet possess the sales numbers.

	IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the
	information age. Simply put, IBM organized the organizers of Hitler's
	war.

	Although deniability was constructed with enough care to last for
	decades, the undeniable fact was that either IBM NY or its European
	headquarters in Geneva or its individual subsidiaries, depending on
	the year and locale, maintained intimate knowledge of each and every
	application wielded by Nazis. This knowledge was inherently revealed
	by an omnipresent paper trail; the cards themselves. IBM--and only
	IBM--printed all the cards. Billions of them.

	IBM printed billions of its electronically sensitive cards each year
	for its European customers. But every order was different. Each set
	was meticulously designed not only for the singular client, but for
	the client's specific assignments. The design work was not a rote
	process, but an intense collaboration.

	# Chapter 12: IBM And The War

	Carter saw IBM not as a great American company, but as a global
	monster. In Carter's view, Watson was no capitalist luminary but
	an opportunist to be classed with the Nazis themselves.

	Throughout 1942, a number of American companies were grandly exposed
	for extensive dealings with Nazi Germany.

	Ironically, none of IBM's subsidiaries were on the Proclaimed
	List because they fell into a double-edged corporate identity as
	"American-owned property." The same applied to all American-owned
	subsidiaries in Axis-controlled lands. So even though corporate
	parents, such as IBM, were not permitted to communicate with
	their own subsidiaries because they were in Axis territory, these
	companies were deemed American property to be protected. In fact,
	since IBM only leased the machines, every Dehomag machine, whether
	deployed at the Waffen-SS office in Dachau or an insurance office
	in Rome, was considered American property to be protected.

	Hence, Dehomag could simultaneously exist as a United States interest
	and a tool of the Nazis doing business with the same Farben and
	Siemens entities that brought other American companies utter
	denunciation and often prosecution.

	* * *

	One special defense project involved an experimental system required
	by the Army Air Corps. It needed a device that could read holes in
	the telegraphic paper and translate the results to punch cards.

	[I had already thought of this idea before i read this book.]

	* * *

	IBM and its technology were in fact involved in the Allies most top
	secret operations. The Enigma code crackers at Bletchley Park in
	England used Hollerith machines supplied by IBM's British licensee,
	the British Tabulating Machine Company.

	It was an irony of the war that IBM equipment was used to encode and
	decode for both sides of the conflict.

	The maps displaying Japanese population density were marked with
	dots, one for each ten persons. American and Dutch census bureaus
	simultaneously used Hollerith systems in 1943 to create racial "dot
	maps" as a means of organizing transfers to concentration camps.

	IBM was in some ways bigger than the war. Both sides could not
	afford to proceed without the company's all-important technology.
	Hitler needed IBM. So did the Allies.

	For the Allies, IBM assistance came at a crucial point. But for the
	Jews of Europe it was too late.

	# Chapter 14: The Spoils of Genocide

	IBM's business was never about Nazism. It was never about
	anti-Semitism. It was always about the money. Before even one Jew
	was encased in a hard-coded Hollerith identity, it was only the
	money that mattered. And the money did accrue.

	# Chapter 15: The Spoils of Genocide, Part 2

	In the years that followed, IBM's worldwide stature became even
	more of a beacon to the cause of progress. It adopted a corporate
	motto: "The Solutions Company." Whatever the impossible task, IBM
	technology could find a solution. ... Their exploits during the Nazi
	era were lionized with amazing specificity in a promotional book
	entitled /The History of Computing in Europe/ published in 1967 by
	IBM itself. However, an internal ISM review decided to immediately
	withdraw the book from the market. It is no longer available in any
	publicly accessible library anywhere in the world.

	How did the Nazis get the names? They always had the names.

	What seemingly magical scheduling process could have allowed
	millions of Nazi victims to step onto train platforms in Germany or
	nineteen other Nazi-occupied countries, travel for two or three days
	by rail, and then step onto a ramp at Auschwitz or Treblinka--and
	within an hour be marched into gas chambers. Hour after hour. Day
	after day. Timetable after timetable. Like clockwork, and always
	with /blitzkrieg/ efficiency.

	The question was barely raised.

	author: Black, Edwin
	detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
	LOC: HD9696.2.U64 I253
	tags: book,history,holocaust,non-fiction
	title: IBM and the Holocaust

	See also:

	How Not To Build The Torment Nexus

	# Tags

	book
	history
	holocaust
	non-fiction