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

IBM and the Holocaust is a must-read for any student of the Holocaust I’ve read the Holocaust literature written by more than 50 researchers, historians, and witnesses that described the Nazi’s systematic, institutionalized, and industrialized persecution and brutality against the Jews of Central Europe since the 1930s. The persecution squeezed the life out of the Jews and eventually led to their extermination. It was near perfectly administered and carried out. The levels of efficiency achieved were beyond extraordinary and the imagination. Very few, if any, of these researchers, historians, and witnesses, in the scope, depth, and breath of their scholarship, got to the ground in explaining how the Nazis achieved the efficiencies in identifying the Jews and transporting them to the concentration camps and killing centers. Edwin Black’s thorough, wide-ranging, and in-depth investigation uncovers for the rest of us an American corporate connection that helped drive exponentially the key to the implementation of the Nazi’s Final Solution – IBM’s punch card technology. It was led by micro-managing IBM president Thomas Watson, and his world-wide IBM loyal minions. Black’s investigation of this IBM technology brings to light the basis for how the Nazis were able to track down, identify, and register by individual name and address members of the Jewish populations in Central Europe who were summarily tortured, shot, executed, murdered, and scheduled for deportation. Numerous counts of the populations (census) were held in the occupied countries of Europe; the data collected was tabulated and alphabetized using IBM’s punch card system. After World War 2 and the defeat of the Third Reich, IBM staged an equally efficient effort to hide, coverup, and deny access to its corporate files that would document its connection to the extermination process.

I did not want to read this book. My grandfather worked for International Time Recording (ITR) in Endicott, NY before IBM was formed and Mr. Watson came on board. My father's first job, at the age of seventeen, was caretaker of the Watson Homestead. My family has had a hand in virtually every product that issued from the IBM manufacturing effort since its inception in 1924. I have deep affection for the company my family labored to build. I approached "IBM and the Holocaust" with a high degree of skepticism. The book sat on my nightstand for two months before I opened it. Finally picked it up for the sake of completing my 14-book IBM historical reading cycle. This book is astounding. It is impeccably researched, artfully written, highly detailed, painstakingly documented, remarkably objective and thoroughly engaging. "IBM and the Holocaust" has finally exposed the undeniable truth: IBM became the world's most powerful corporation largely because it assisted in identifying, cataloging and exterminating millions of innocent people for Hitler. The evil that lurks in IBM history was not exposed previously only because IBM management was smart enough and powerful enough to "hide its tracks" in Nuremburg. No investigator has ever dug deeper into IBM history than Edwin Black. A close reading of the book makes it absolutely clear that Mr. Watson (IBM CEO) knew the exact purpose, goal and expected outcome of the IBM solution in Europe. The book details the fact that unlike previous IBM engagements for the Third Reich that were completed by Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary), the engagement in Romania (1941) was conducted directly under the management of IBM New York. That engagement resulted in the swift identification, transportation and extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews. All in the name of "IBM." As a result of reading "IBM and the Holocaust", I no longer view Mr. Watson as the glamorous benevolent industrial icon depicted in hollywoood newsreels. Though the affectionate "shop talk" tossed through the air when I was young still captures my imagination, Mr. Watson is no longer the focus of my unqualified admiration. Watson, for me, now stands beside Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay and all the other American Industrialists throughout history who had many fine qualities yet are outrageously flawed--so good yet so very, very bad. This book is remarkable. Have since read "Internal Combustion", Banking on Baghdad" and "War Against the Weak." Edwin Black is "the bomb." If you have an interest in history, corporations, corruption, good, bad, evil or fine nonfiction; you will appreciate the works of Edwin Black. NancyRae Kjelgaard Tallahassee, FL December 7, 2006

Who would have anticipated that a speedy card-sorter, the Hollerith machine, would evolve into a tool of one of the most evil schemes of all time? Yet, this patented machine, devised by a little-known man of German descent, made it possible to conduct a census in a short time period, and turned counting into a tool useful on a mass scale. Black's book is a page-burner, containing information that will surprise the reader paragraph by paragraph. In my generation, the "Do Not Spindle, Fold, or Mutilate" written on each IBM punchcard was the introduction to the computer and information age (and often the butt of jokes). A scant 25 to 30 years earlier, similar punch cards became the currency on which the Holocaust was based. A truly groundbreaking piece of research that, fortunately, has already appeared in German translation. In the days where vast amounts of personal information are being reduced to a series of ones and zeros carried electronically and stored digitally, this saga may be the harbinger of horrors much worse than were conceived by the progenitors of the 1000-year Reich. We should pay close attention to the uses of such personal information, lest humans lose complete control of their humanity. Here we find a true fable (that's an oxymoron) with much more to teach than Aesop could have imagined.

I just came upon this book this past week, but I have read research on the Holocaust for over 30 years and always wondered how the Nazis could be so efficient in rounding up people, how they could exactly know so much as they took over Poland and France, etc., etc., Now I think I know and the knowledge is most disturbing.Reading this book made me stop and think about where technology is going today in our world where all the bits of information about everybody are carefully stored, collated, and applied to "appropriate" use. I think there is a warning from the book about having too much data about individuals. I for one will never answer census questions completely again, certainly not the petty questions that inquire into the specifics of my personal life.A few months ago, I watched the HBO Movie Conspiracy which was an exact dramatization of the Wannesee Conference in 1942 in Berlin. The script was based on the sole transcript of that meeting found after the war and belonging to one of the attendees. As I was watching the movie and later when I poured over the actual transcript which I found on the net, I wondered, "How did they have such exact figures for each country and group? So exact that the numbers were down to the single digits. How did they find these people?" It puzzled me. In reading IBM and the Holocaust, I found my answer.History has an ostentatous way of rationalizing what actually happened to fit current viewpoints that are acceptable to people and institutions. We don't want to think that a company like IBM could be so dreadful for profit or that our Government refused to bomb camps or take in refugees when they knew horror was happening. There was a rationalization that there " must have been other circumstances", mitigating circumstances, and today simply bad historical recollection. It is much easier to go forward and forget and rationalize and look for "reasonable" solutions, that is, until it all happens again and we have to say once more, "but that simply couldn't be possible."A n important and courageous book that every young person especially should read as the years pass and the witnesses of that time leave us.

This book is the most important new work on the Nazi era in the last two decades. The book is even more significant for the questions it raises about what the purpose of a corporation is and should be, what role companies and governments should play in directing cutting edge technology, and the danger that misuses of advanced information technology bring to individuals.The core of the story is how a key IBM technology, the Hollerith-based card tabulating machines, became available for the Nazi war and Holocaust efforts. Although the details are murky (and may remain so), it is fairly clear that the use of this technology was sustained during the war years in part by shipments of customized (for each end user) tabulating cards from IBM in neutral countries for everything from blitzkriegs to slave camp scheduling to transportation to the death camps. There was not enough paper capacity to make the cards in Europe (that the Nazi and IBM records show were used), and there is no evidence that Nazis created substitutes for these essential supplies. As Mr. Black warns, "This book will be profoundly uncomfortable to read." I agree. My sleep will not be the same for some time after experiencing this powerful story. Mr. Black makes an even stronger statement. "So if you intend to skim, or rely on selected sections, do not read the book at all." I took him at his word, and did not even read the book quickly. I also arranged to read it in several sittings, so I could think about what I had read in between. I recommend that you do the same. The reason for my recommendation is that your thinking will change very fundamentally through reading the book. Having read dozens of books by fine historians about the Nazi period, and knowing a great deal about the history of data processing, I assumed that there would be little new to the story here. But the title intrigued me. By the fourth time I saw the book, I could no longer resist it.What I found inside the book surprised, shocked, and amazed me.First, many authors claim that it was not clear in the United States that Jews were losing their lives in Europe during the Nazi years until just before the end of the war. This book documents many articles that appeared in the New York Times that certainly seemed to be saying that this systematic killing was going on from very near the time when it began. Anyone who ignored these reports just didn't want to know.Second, the book makes many connections between Thomas Watson, Sr. and Nazi Germany. Many things surprised me about this. One, he was there once or twice a year until just before World War II began. The horrible human abuses were probably observed first hand by him then. Two, he had friends who were victimized by the Nazis. Three, he accepted a very prestigious medal from Hitler in 1937 (which he returned in June 1940). Four, he spoke in favor of making U.S. policy pro-German until just before the United States entered World War II. Five

As the son of an ICBM rocket designer, I have been concerned with ethics, economics and technological issues of power and progress all my life. This book will probably be subject to much criticism and vilification for the uncomfortable truths it reveals. Everyone concerned with human rights, racism government invasion of privacy and control should read this and in the motto of the book's main culprit Thomas J. Watson THINK. If we ever needed a clear example of the absolute political importance of privacy of personal information and limitations on the role of state intrusion into private lives this book may prove historically to be an important beacon for future generations. The very fact that this horrifying aspect has taken so long to emerge is added warning of the need for active vigilance in every one of us. I had only just finished reading James Bacque's 'Crimes and Mercies' which presents another mirror into a distorted past, the two books together are enough to make thinking people question many so called truths which they may have grown up with. Tell eveyone about this book. It doesn't matter how embarrassed IBM may be about its criminal past. This is an issue for everyone concerned with the use of powerful new technologies for profit beyond control.