Edwin Black (1) (1950–)

Thomas Watson, as the CEO of IBM, and the majority shareholder of IBM’s German subsidiary Dehomag, paid little or no attention to the plight of Germany’s Jews and accepted the Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star from Hitler himself in 1937. The award was for the company’s work in supplying Germany with IBM punch card reading machines - the computers of the day. The machines were used throughout the German government, including the Reichsbahn, the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, the concentration camps themselves, and for a series of German racial censuses designed mostly to identify converted, non-observant or distant relatives of German Jews. In some camps, the punch card data included forms of torture used. The author and his researchers found letters, public statements and published articles indicating that Dehomag and IBM were completely aware of the uses of their machines. In fact, Watson strove to acquire and expand these contracts, and IBM made huge profits from them. He had to go through many convoluted legal paths to get his money out of Germany, convince the Nazis that Dehomag was not an American company and that his profits were royalties and not subject to taxation. IBM’s profits increased dramatically with the invasion of Germany’s neighbors. IBM assisted the Nazi war effort and the efficient operation of the Holocaust right up to December 7, 1941, after that date, Dehomag was run partly by the German government. IBM continued to operate in occupied Europe through their Geneva office until they were, country by country, legally prohibited from doing so. IBM concealed as much of this information as they could, and hypocritically advertised about how patriotic they were during the war.

Is any of this a surprise? I’d heard about this book, but the totality of the story is shocking.
I now recoil when I hear what new use IBM has selected for their Jeopardy-winning supercomputer “Watson”. I suppose they’ve removed the swastika from it. There were other well-known Americans who either did or would have accepted medals from Hitler. After all, should we be more reluctant to buy a car that was designed (supposedly) by Hitler himself and made by slaves, or from the American company that advised them how to do it (https://mondediplo.com/1998/01/11volkswag)? The failure or inability of businesses and governments to respond to genocide is clear, both in history and in today’s newspaper. What have the governments of the developed world done for the Rohingya -- and what can they do?

Sadly, for the reader of this book, the substance of the story is laid out in the introduction. Reading the rest can be a slog. And personally, I wanted to know exactly how these machines worked. There are occasional technical paragraphs, the instruments could add, or sort, or alphabetize, but this book needs an appendix with diagrams and clear technical explanations. I thought that the machines themselves were an important part of the story.
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I read a used hardbound copy of this book. I’ve heard that the paperback version is a second edition that has additional information and corrections… (mehr)

This book was at first facinating, then appalling and finally horrifying. It could just as easily be called How IBM Built Nazi Germany. causing WWII. It says volumes about the ethics of Capatolism without Christ and the lessons learned can easily be applied to Google, Nike, Facebook and other multinational corporations today. Hitler could not have built the Reich, run the war or killed the Jews with out the concerted effort of IBM to make as much money as possible. Money was always the first and usually the only order of business.… (mehr)