"Lest we forget..."
Techno giant IBM should be held responsible
for its significant contributions to the
Third Reich's attempt at the Final Solution.
The technical expertise of IBM is documented
here:
"Mankind barely noticed when the concept of
massively organized information quietly
emerged to become a means of social control,
a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group
destruction. The unique igniting event was
the most fateful day of the last century,
January 30, 1933, the day Adolf Hitler came
to power. Hitler and his hatred of the Jews
was the ironic driving force behind this
intellectual turning point. But his quest
was greatly enhanced and energized by the
ingenuity and craving for profit of a single
American company and its legendary,
autocratic chairman. That company was
International Business Machines, and its
chairman was Thomas J. Watson.
Der Führer's obsession with Jewish
destruction was hardly original. There had
been czars and tyrants before him. But for
the first time in history, an anti-Semite
had automation on his side. Hitler didn't do
it alone. He had help.
In the upside-down world of the Holocaust,
dignified professionals were Hitler's
advance troops. Police officials disregarded
their duty in favor of protecting villains
and persecuting victims. Lawyers perverted
concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish
laws. Doctors defiled the art of medicine to
perpetrate ghastly experiments and even
choose who was healthy enough to be worked
to death-and who could be cost-effectively
sent to the gas chamber. Scientists and
engineers debased their higher calling to
devise the instruments and rationales of
destruction. And statisticians used their
little known but powerful discipline to
identify the victims, project and
rationalize the benefits of their
destruction, organize their persecution, and
even audit the efficiency of genocide. Enter
IBM and its overseas subsidiaries.
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.
So how did it work?
When Hitler came to power, a central Nazi
goal was to identify and destroy Germany's
600,000 Jews. To Nazis, Jews were not just
those who practiced Judaism, but those of
Jewish blood, regardless of their
assimilation, intermarriage, religious
activity, or even conversion to
Christianity. Only after Jews were
identified could they be targeted for asset
confiscation, ghettoization, deportation,
and ultimately extermination. To search
generations of communal, church, and
governmental records all across Germany-and
later throughout Europe-was a cross-indexing
task so monumental, it called for a
computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
When the Reich needed to mount a systematic
campaign of Jewish economic
disenfranchisement and later began the
massive movement of European Jews out of
their homes and into ghettos, once again,
the task was so prodigious it called for a
computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
When the Final Solution sought to
efficiently transport Jews out of European
ghettos along railroad lines and into death
camps, with timing so precise the victims
were able to walk right out of the boxcar
and into a waiting gas chamber, the
coordination was so complex a task, this too
called for a computer. But in 1933, no
computer existed.
However, another invention did exist: the
IBM punch card and card sorting system-a
precursor to the computer. IBM, primarily
through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's
program of Jewish destruction a technologic
mission the company pursued with chilling
success. IBM Germany, using its own staff
and equipment, designed, executed, and
supplied the indispensable technologic
assistance Hitler's Third Reich needed to
accomplish what had never been done
before-the automation of human destruction.
More than 2,000 such multi-machine sets were
dispatched throughout Germany, and thousands
more throughout German-dominated Europe.
Card sorting operations were established in
every major concentration camp. People were
moved from place to place, systematically
worked to death, and their remains cataloged
with icy automation.
IBM Germany, known in those days as Deutsche
Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, or
Dehomag, did not simply sell the Reich
machines and then walk away. IBM's
subsidiary, with the knowledge of its New
York headquarters, enthusiastically
custom-designed the complex devices and
specialized applications as an official
corporate undertaking. Dehomag's top
management was comprised of openly rabid
Nazis who were arrested after the war for
their Party affiliation. IBM NY always
understood-from the outset in 1933-that it
was courting and doing business with the
upper echelon of the Nazi Party. The company
leveraged its Nazi Party connections to
continuously enhance its business
relationship with Hitler's Reich, in Germany
and throughout Nazi-dominated Europe.
Dehomag and other IBM subsidiaries
custom-designed the applications. Its
technicians sent mock-ups of punch cards
back and forth to Reich offices until the
data columns were acceptable, much as any
software designer would today. 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 subsidiaries trained
the Nazi officers and their surrogates
throughout Europe, set up branch offices and
local dealerships throughout Nazi Europe
staffed by a revolving door of IBM
employees, and scoured paper mills to
produce as many as 1.5 billion punch cards a
year in Germany alone. Moreover, the fragile
machines were serviced on site about once
per month, even when that site was in or
near a concentration camp. IBM Germany's
headquarters in Berlin maintained duplicates
of many code books, much as any IBM service
bureau today would maintain data backups for
computers.
I was haunted by a question whose answer has
long eluded historians. The Germans always
had the lists of Jewish names. Suddenly, a
squadron of grim-faced SS would burst into a
city square and post a notice demanding
those listed assemble the next day at the
train station for deportation to the East.
But how did the Nazis get the lists? For
decades, no one has known. Few have asked.
The answer: IBM Germany's census operations
and similar advanced people counting and
registration technologies. IBM was founded
in 1898 by German inventor Herman Hollerith
as a census tabulating company. Census was
its business. But when IBM Germany formed
its philosophical and technologic 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
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 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 12-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 U.S. law made such direct contact
illegal, IBM's Swiss office became the
nexus, providing the New York office
continuous information and credible
deniability.
Certainly, the dynamics and context of IBM's
alliance with Nazi Germany changed
throughout the twelve-year Reich....Make no
mistake. The Holocaust would still have
occurred without IBM. To think otherwise is
more than wrong. The Holocaust would have
proceeded — and often did proceed — with
simple bullets, death marches, and massacres
based on pen and paper persecution. But
there is reason to examine the fantastical
numbers Hitler achieved in murdering so many
millions so swiftly, and identify the
crucial role of automation and technology.
Accountability is needed."
From
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/IBM.html
cw
DeadMan2003
hawk7771
CodeWarrior
Indierockgal
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