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The title of Edwin Black's book is jarring not because we believe that the horrors of
the Holocaust are beyond a large, prosperous corporation but because "IBM" and
"Holocaust" seem to be words from different eras. IBM conjures images of the
modern office, personal computers, and Internet connections --- the leader of what we have
dubbed our own Information Age. IBM seems alienated even from its full name, International
Business Machines, and certainly a world away from barbed wire, locked cattle cars,
ghettos, and gas chambers. But as IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST by Edwin Black reveals, the world
that IBM and the Third Reich occupied in the 1930s and 40s was a terrifyingly small place
where corporate America not only tolerated Nazi policies, but may have profited from them.
Black has assembled government files, IBM letters and correspondence as well as newspaper
headlines from the period to form his argument. He asserts that one of America's most
powerful corporations willingly supplied the Nazis with technology that organized,
tabulated, and analyzed population data --- making possible mass deportations and
executions.
The book begins with the invention of a punch card tabulating machine by Hollerith in 1884
and includes a brief history of Thomas Watson's creation of an international empire that
unleashed the machines on the world. As a successful businessman and a charismatic
celebrity, Watson plays a central role in Black's narrative. In the 1930s Watson was a
household name, one of the highest paid CEOs in the world and notorious for his cutthroat
business practices that sought to eliminate competition at any cost.
Black relates Watson's rise to success against a background of a world economic depression
and the rise of fascism. But it is also clear that Watson's motives for developing a
strong relationship with Germany in the 1930s were purely financial --- rather than
ideological. Germany would spend millions on a plan to meticulously map the racial make up
of its populations and, eventually, the population of Europe. Anti-Jewish laws were well
publicized, and Black concludes, Watson would have known that the use of these machines
would eventually lead to mass executions.
To support this point, Black uses quotes from pre-war New York Times articles to
illustrate that Watson, and the rest of the IBM, should have seen the gathering clouds of
genocide. Watson's acceptance of a Medal of Honor directly from Hitler in 1937 is the most
tangible illustration that Nazi anti-Jewish policies were not an obstacle to good business
in Watson's mind. But the idea of corporate greed speaking louder than moral outrage is
not exactly a shocking revelation. In fact, Black brings up examples of several American
corporations, including Standard Oil, that were charged with illegally trading with Nazi
Germany just prior to the U. S. entering the war. Corporate America was willing to look
past the unsavory elements of Nazi Germany as long as there were profits in the
relationship.
Fortunately, Black moves beyond this outraged but somewhat naïve trajectory and reveals
some truly shocking details about IBM's profit from Nazi Germany, describing how the cozy
IBM/Nazi pre-war relationship endured and evolved well into the war. In fact, with IBM's
assistance the Nazis were able to streamline an industry of death --- an industry from
which IBM directly reaped rewards.
By dealing with IBM's German subsidiary, Dehomag, through neutral European countries,
Watson ensured that IBM profits were collected in protected bank accounts to be recovered
after the war. As Germany looted Europe, American businesses such as IBM were dutifully
managed and maintained by German custodians. Profits were deposited in frozen bank
accounts to be collected when peace came.
While conducting a violent war in Europe, Germany --- bizarrely --- adhered to some rules
of business. For example, they made a practice of leasing equipment seized from invaded
countries, payments for which made it into IBM coffers. That IBM profited from both sides
of a declared war and emerged unscathed is perhaps Black's most revealing point, and one
that raises the question of how many other global corporations, then and now, have done
the same. Black reminds us that much of the money paid out by the Nazis to IBM was
plundered from Jewish household and bank accounts throughout Europe. IBM not only profited
from the enemy, IBM profited from the horrendous pain and suffering inflicted on millions
of innocent people.
The book also asserts that the punch card technology itself dramatically increased the
death toll of the Holocaust. Using IBM's Hollerith machines, the Nazis located, counted,
transported and exterminated millions of people with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
Germany embraced punch card tabulation long before the Nazis came to power, but it was
Hitler's vision of a "clean" German population --- with racial
make-up calculated to a 16th of a level --- that truly accelerated the use of the
technology.
Black's most controversial assertion is that IBM's Hollerith machines served as a core
enabling technology for genocide. In a damning assessment, Black corroborates the use of
Hollerith machines with the mortality rates of the Jewish populations in Holland and
France. The Dutch population opposed (even violently) the persecution of Dutch Jews, but a
particularly deft Dutch statistician used Hollerith punch card technology with lethal
precision. By comparison, the French Hollerith system was infiltrated by a member of the
French Resistance, who sabotaged the entire system. In the end, Holland had a mortality of
rate among its Jewish population of nearly 70% while France suffered
25%. This reveals that the technology (unhindered by sabotage) proved lethal.
Whether the tragedy of the Holocaust would have somehow been diminished had punch card
technology never existed is perhaps not the best way to approach this book. The technology
existed long before the Nazis and was used around the world to organize and analyze
information. Black cites the U. S. government's use of the machines to tabulate and
imprison the Japanese-American population; certainly the technology could have been used
by many other governments for equally unethical purposes. The use of punch card technology
by the Nazis is another facet to our understanding of the Holocaust, but it is not what
ultimately implicates IBM as a responsible party to the genocide.
The book is worth the read, but not for Black's conclusions. He asks the reader to be
shocked at a destructive use of technology and by corporate greed --- two things that
history teaches us are more or less inevitable and often directly related. The real shock
from this book and the real achievement of Black's research is the revelation that a
powerful American corporation aided the Nazi cause and profited from it. Given recent
settlements between Swiss Banks and Holocaust victims and their families, I'm sure this
book has raised eyebrows within IBM.
Even if the question is never raised in a court of law, Black's book raises it in our
minds and brings the Holocaust closer to home --- closer than perhaps other historians
have had the courage to do. Most Americans, including Watson, knew of the persecution of
Germany's Jews but were blinded not by the scarlet swastika banner but by the green dollar
sign and, in this case, the Big Blue.
--- Reviewed by James Krouse
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