Author:
Edwin Black
ISBN:
0609607995 ···
Hardcover ··· 519
pages.
History:
The Strategic alliance between
Nazi German and the America's
most powerful corporation.
IBM and the
Holocaust is the stunning
story of IBM's strategic alliance with
Nazi Germany - beginning in 1933 in
the first weeks that Hitler came to
power and continuing well into World
War II. As the Third Reich embarked
upon its plan of conquest and
genocide, IBM and it's subsidiaries
helped create enabling technologies,
step-by-step, from the identification
and cataloging programs of the 1930s
to the selections of the 1940s. IBM
and the Holocaust takes you through
the carefully crafted corporate
collusion with the Third Reich, as
well as the structured deniability of
oral agreements, undated letters, and
the Geneva intermediaries - all
undertaken as the newspapers blazed
with accounts of persecution and
destruction. Just as compelling is the
human drama of one of our century's
greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas
Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis
for the sake of profit. Only with
IBM's technologic assistance was
Hitler able to achieve the staggering
numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black
has now uncovered one of the last
great mysteries of Germany's war
against the Jews - How did Hitler get
the names?
Only after Jews were identified -- a
massive and complex task that Hitler
wanted done immediately -- could they
be targeted for efficient asset
confiscation, ghettoization,
deportation, enslaved labor, and,
ultimately, annihilation. It was a
cross-tabulation and organizational
challenge so monumental, it called for
a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no
computer existed.
But IBM's Hollerith punch card
technology did exist. Aided by the
company's custom-designed and
constantly updated Hollerith systems,
Hitler was able to automate his
persecution of the Jews. Historians
have always been amazed at the speed
and accuracy with which the Nazis were
able to identify and locate European
Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this
puzzle have never been fully
assembled. The fact is, IBM technology
was used to organize nearly everything
in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from
the identification of the Jews in
censuses, registrations, and ancestral
tracing programs to the running of
railroads and organizing of
concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary
custom-designed complex solutions, one
by one, anticipating the Reich's
needs. They did not merely sell the
machines and walk away. Instead, IBM
leased these machines for high fees
and became the sole source of the
billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you
through the carefully crafted
corporate collusion with the Third
Reich, as well as the structured
deniability of oral agreements,
undated letters, and the Geneva
intermediaries -- all undertaken as
the newspapers blazed with accounts of
persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama
of one of our century's greatest
minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who
cooperated with the Nazis for the sake
of profit.
Only with IBM's technologic assistance
was Hitler able to achieve the
staggering numbers of the Holocaust.
Edwin Black has now uncovered one of
the last great mysteries of Germany's
war against the Jews -- how did Hitler
get the names?
IBM and the Holocaust is a
tremendous, timely work. Neglected for more
than 50 years, the sordid records disclosing
IBM's collaboration with the Nazi regime, in
pursuit of market monopoly, have now been
exhumed by Edwin Black. His comprehensive
and detailed account shows how the blessings
of punch card technology can become a curse
to human rights, as it did in enabling the
Holocaust.
Robert Wolfe, Former Chief
National Archives expert for captured German
records and Nuremberg documentation
In this carefully researched, yet chilling book,
Edwin Black relates how the corporate and
technological zeal of IBM, and its CEO, Thomas J.
Watson, contributed step-by-step to Nazi power, and
advanced the Holocaust. One can only wonder how
different the number of Holocaust deaths might have
been throughout Europe had Hitler not enjoyed the
strategic services of IBM and its punch card
technology. This book is an awesome warning for the
future.
William Seltzer, Former Director
U.N. Statistics Division
Author of "Population Statistics and the
Holocaust" |
