The Holocaust genocide committed by the German Nazi regime, by facilitating the regime's generation and tabulation of punch cards for national census data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.[1]
Summary
In the early 1880s, Herman Hollerith (1860–1929), a young employee at the U.S. Census Bureau, conceived of the idea of creating readable cards with standardized perforations, each representing specific individual traits such as gender, nationality, and occupation. The millions of punched cards created for the population counted in the national census could then be sorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained—thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation and its citizens.[2]: 25 A circuit-closing device was used to electromagnetically record the data represented by the perforations. The technology enabled searching for individuals using the traits as search terms.[3]
In 1910, the German licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), known by the abbreviation "Dehomag".[2]: 30 The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint (1850–1934) for US$1.41 million(equivalent to $44.3 million in 2022).[2]: 31 The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).[2]: 31 Flint chose Thomas J. Watson (1874–1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation, to head the new operation.[2]: 38–39 In 1923,[4] the German licensee Dehomag became a direct subsidiary of the American corporation CTR.[2]: 44 In 1924, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of CTR and renamed the company International Business Machines (IBM).
Black details an ongoing business relationship between Watson's IBM and the emerging German regime headed by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party(NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoners in the Bavarian town of Dachau, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country's ethnic Jewish population began immediately. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned.[2]: 44–45 Business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott.[2]: 45 Willy Heidinger, who remained the chief executive of Dehomag, the German subsidiary of which IBM owned 90%, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.[2]: 50
On April 12, 1933, the German government announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census.[2]: 54 The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, focusing upon the 41 million residents of Prussia.[2]: 55 This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 Reichsmark—about $1 million (equivalent to $22.6 million in 2022).[2]: 60 This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlinand to construct IBM's first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby "tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime".[2]: 60
Black also cites documents regarding a "secret deal" that was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories".[2]: 61 As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative U.S. market.[2]: 110 The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.[2]: 110
As the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of each subjugated nation, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Romani. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New Yorkoffice following Germany's successful Blitzkrieg invasion.[2]: 193 Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe.[2]: 198 Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung(Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology.[2]: 351 In his book, Black charges that "without IBM's machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did."[2]: 352
Major changes were made for the 2002 paperback editions on Three Rivers Press/Time Warner Paperbacks[5][6][7] and the 2012 expanded edition on Dialog Press.[8] In the updated 2002 paperback edition, the author included new evidence of the connection between IBM's United States headquarters and its Polish subsidiary during Nazi occupation.[5][6][7] In 2012 Black published a second expanded revision with more documents. The 2012 expanded edition provides 32 pages of new photographic and documentary evidence.[8]
IBM's post-invasion Polish subsidiary
A revised 2002 paperback edition provides additional evidence that IBM New York established a special subsidiary in Polandcalled Watson Business Machines to deal with railway traffic in the General Government. Edwin Black asserts that IBM did so after the September 1, 1939 Invasion of Poland by Germany, and continued this business relationship during the Holocaust in Poland. Watson Business Machines operated a punch card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto.[5]
In a 2002 editorial in the SFGate, Black documented that this Polish subsidiary reported to IBM Geneva which in turn reported to IBM New York. Black further states that IBM's European general manager reported directly to Thomas Watson Sr., that some machines in Poland were sent to Romania to assist in the Jewish census there, and that these Polish machines were later replaced.[6]
In his book, Black quotes Leon Krzemieniecki, the last surviving person involved in the administration of the rail transportation to Auschwitz and Treblinka, as stating he knew the punched card machines were not German machines, because the labels were in English. Black details how income from the machines leased in Poland was sent through Geneva to IBM in New York.[5][6]
Ongoing sales
Edwin Black details how IBM not only leased Nazi Germany the machines, but then provided continuous maintenance service, and sold the spare parts and the special paper needed for the customized punch cards.[9]
No machines were sold – only leased. IBM was the sole source of all punch cards and spare parts. It serviced the machines on site either directly or through its authorized dealer network or field trainees. There were no universal punch cards. Each series of cards was custom-designed by IBM engineers to capture information going in and to tabulate information the Nazis wanted to extract.
—
Edwin Black, on updates in 2002[6]
After the publication of the 2012 expanded edition, he wrote for the Huffington Post, "The punch cards, machinery, training, servicing, and special project work, such as population census and identification, was managed directly by IBM headquarters in New York, and later through its subsidiaries in Germany, known as Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG), Poland, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and other European countries." He added that the punch cards bore the indicia of the German subsidiary Dehomag.[10]
Reception
IBM's response
Though IBM has never directly denied any of the evidence posed by the book, it has criticized Black's research methods and accusatory conclusions.[11] IBM claimed it does not have any other information about the company during its World War II period or the operations of Dehomag, as it argued most documents were destroyed or lost during the war.[12]
IBM also claimed that an earlier dismissed lawsuit, initiated by lawyers representing concentration camp survivors, was filed in 2001 to coincide with Black's book launch.[12] Lawyers for the Holocaust victims acknowledged the timing of the lawsuit to coincide with Black's book release, explaining their public relations strategies played an important role in their record of achieving Nazi-era settlements totaling more than $7 billion without winning a judgment.[13]
After the publication of Black's updated 2002 paperback edition, IBM responded by stating it wasn't convinced there were any new findings and there was no proof IBM had enabled the Holocaust.[5][7] IBM rejected Black's assertion that IBM was hiding information and records regarding its World War II era.[14]Several years previously, IBM had given its corporate records of the period to academic archives in New York and Stuttgart, Germany, for review by undefined "independent scholars".[7]
In early 2021, Black published the 20th anniversary edition with special public events and a syndicated article stating that in twenty years, "not a comma has been changed", adding that "IBM has never requested a correction or denied any facts in the book."[15][16][17]
Wikipedia editing controversy
In 2010, Black reported on unidentified Wikipedia editors marginalizing his research on IBM's role in the Holocaust.[18] It is not clear whether the editors involved were IBM employees, but Black states that, "[they were] openly fortified by official IBM corporate archivist Paul Lasewicz using his real name, and others"; Black nevertheless calls Lasewicz a "man of integrity" and points out that he deferred taking the lead because of potential conflict of interest and then recused himself entirely.[19][20]
References
- Preston, Peter (February 18, 2001). "Six million and counting". The Observer. guardian.co.uk. Retrieved June 14, 2001.
- Black, Edwin (2009) [2001]. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation (Paperback) (Second ed.). Washington, DC: Dialog Press. OCLC 958727212.
- Jefferson, Brian (2020). Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. p. 20.
- Elkin, Larry M. "IBM: A Centenarian's Imperfect But Impressive Recall". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-01-13.
- Burkeman, Oliver (March 29, 2002). "IBM 'dealt directly with Holocaust organisers'". The Guardian . guardian.co.uk. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
- Black, Edwin (May 19, 2002). "The business of making the trains to Auschwitz run on time". Editorial. SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
- Grace, Francie (March 27, 2002). "IBM And Nazi Germany: Researcher Has New Documents On World War II Conduct". CBS News.
- "Edwin Black Seeks to Prove IBM's Involvement in Holocaust". William S. Boyd School of Law. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. November 13, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
- Beatty, Jack (April 2001). "Hitler's Willing Business Partners". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 2, 2021.
- Black, Edwin (2012). "IBM's Role in the Holocaust — What the New Documents Reveal". Huffington Post. Retrieved October 23,2017.
- Bazyler, Michael J. (2005). Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts. New York: New York University Press. p. 303.
- IBM Press Room (February 14, 2001). "IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit". Press Release. Armonk, New York.
- Feder, Barnaby (February 11, 2001). "Lawsuit Says I.B.M. Aided The Nazis In Technology". The New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2017.
- IBM Press Room (March 29, 2002). "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit". Press Release. Armonk, New York. Archived from the original on February 5, 2021. Retrieved July 13,2021.
- Black, Edwin (February 8, 2021). "IBM and the Holocaust — 20 Years of Corporate Denial". The Times of Israel.
- Black, Edwin (February 8, 2021). "IBM and the Holocaust—20 years of corporate denial". Israel National News.
- Black, Edwin. "Barnes & Noble Launch Event for IBM and the Holocaust hardcover 2021 re-issue | The Edwin Black Show". The Edwin Black Show.
- Black, Edwin (April 12, 2010). "Wikipedia—The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge". The Cutting Edge News. Archived from the original on January 31, 2018. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
- Black, Edwin (April 12, 2010). "Wikipedia—The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge". Editorial. History News Network. George Washington University. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
- Barillas, Martin (April 9, 2010). "Martin Barillas: Wikipedia Blocks Users in Response to Edwin Black Article". History News Network. Retrieved May 24, 2019.