May 15


	May 15, 2002	atimes.com

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BOOK REVIEW
The technology of genocide
By Sreeram Chaulia

(A Review of Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust, The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. Three Rivers Press, New York, 2002. ISBN: 0-609-80899-0. Price: US$16. 551 pages)

Genocides, the most horrible and atrocious of international crimes, have three ubiquitous features: "rationality", "bureaucracy" and "efficiency" (Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust). Our generation has seen with unbelieving eyes all three of these characteristics operating with gory cadence in the 1994 Rwanda genocide that decimated 1 million human beings in less than 100 days. Before beginning to research IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black, son of Polish survivors of the Holocaust and noted expert on Nazi economics, never quite understood how Hitler's willing executioners managed to mass murder 6 million Jews with Blitzkrieg efficiency. Holocaust literature has documented in copious detail the ideology and rationale of Nazi anti-Semitism, as well as the formal bureaucratic structure in Germany and occupied Europe that ordered and oversaw the diabolical exterminations. But how did the carnage attain efficiency, speed and alacrity like a well-oiled machine? As Black hauntingly queries in the introduction, "The Nazis had my parents' names. How?" (p 11). The answer zeroes in on IBM Headquarters, 590 Madison Avenue in New York - one of the best-kept secrets of America's corporate history.

Identification
Thomas J Watson, a thoroughbred "business scoundrel" and "commercial mercenary", had reasons to rejoice with Adolf Hitler's advent to power in Germany in 1933. Dehomag, the German subsidiary of his International Business Machines (IBM), had been steadily expanding its market in Hollerith tabulating machines under the Weimar Republic, but Hitler's obsession for destruction of Jewry and other "unwanted" racial elements meant that IBM had an opportunity of a lifetime. Watson was certain that "a government tightly monitoring its society was good news for IBM" (p 46). Totalitarian Germany offered limitless scope for IBM, owner of 90 percent of the world's existing punch cards and sorting machines, to enable government control, supervision, surveillance and regimentation of its own people. Besides, Hitler's search for lebensraum held out the prospect of profits in the "extended Reich". Thanks to the voracious need for tabulators in Hitler's race and geopolitical wars, "IBM NY reacted enthusiastically to the prospects of Nazism" (p 50).

Dehomag was assigned the responsibility of Germany's most comprehensive "racial census" in 1933, leading to a "profession-by-profession, city-by-city, and indeed a block-by-block revelation of the Jewish presence" (p 58). IBM New York also allowed Dehomag to extend its special brand of statistical prowess to other nearby countries - Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France and Holland - so that the "scientific soldiers" of the Third Reich would already have strategic outposts before the Nazi military juggernaut rolled into these territories. Race science, Eugenics profiles and informational depth about bloodlines were all serviced with great steadfastness by Dehomag, the first tangible outcome of which was the abominable forced sterilization of Jews by Genetic Health Courts in 1934 and 1935. Hollerith machines had bizarrely identified not only "half Jews" and "quarter Jews", but even "eighth Jews" and "sixteenth Jews" (tracing lineage back to the 1800s) to be dragged to clinics and deprived of reproductive rights forever. Confiscations of Jewish property, employment and ownership in companies were also smoothly carried out with the necessary racial and occupational details available in automated IBM punch cards.

As the IBM-Hitler alliance deepened in the mid-30s and as Dehomag earned stupendous annual profits at a time when the rest of German industry was suffering from an anti-Nazi boycott, Watson instituted a skein of deniability and innocence about the resultant barbarities that were outraging the conscience of the world. Few in America understood the far-reaching ramifications of punch-card technology to the fate of minorities in Germany. Moreover, Watson assiduously cultivated the right kind of "connections" to be on the safe side. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Franklin Roosevelt himself were Watson's "personal friends" who relied on his sage advice on world trade and economics and were more than willing to wink and turn away at every step of IBM's fiendish braiding with Nazism. Watson also leveraged IBM's prestige in his capacity as President of the International Chamber of Commerce, organizing its lavish 1937 summit in Berlin and urging the world to ensure "fairer redistribution of raw materials" (Axis pretext for foreign conquest) and to eschew its trade boycott of Germany. In recognition of his stellar efforts, Hitler awarded Watson with the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, the highest civilian award for a foreigner bestowed by the Reich.

War cards
As Europe hurtled towards war and the German SS, Wehrmacht (German armed forces) and Luftwaffe (German air force) were being readied for an all-out assault on Jewry and civilians in neighboring countries. Experts like Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann emphasized that "continual regimentation, tracking, and redeployment of the general population, work force and military personnel will be best accomplished by Hollerith systems" (p 154). Watson kept up his "world peace through world trade" shibboleths as his company became Europe's most successful organizer not of peace, but of the ravages of war. Eventually, every Nazi combat order, bullet and troop movement was tacked on an IBM punch card system: "Simply put, IBM organized the organizers of Hitler's war" (p 208). The war proved so profitable for Watson that in 1940 alone he amassed a record half-year profit of $6 million.

Hollerith identifications and marking superseded every other aspect of German preparations before the 1938 Anschluss (annexation by Germany) of Austria. The agony of the "ditch people" (Jews expelled from Sudetenland) and of Czech Jewry was again courtesy of the fact that IBM was already in Czechoslovakia with the statistical tools before Germany invaded. Dehomag's 1939 population census of "Greater Germany" (including Austria and Sudetenland) yielded a grand total of 330,539 "racial Jews", over and above the religious Jews, to be meted out "appropriate treatment" by the SS and "pro-Aryan" vigilante squads. The most spectacular IBM achievement came in occupied Poland, when the Nazis managed to tabulate cross-referenced information about the whereabouts of 360,000 Jews of Warsaw within 48 hours. The destinations of the spotted and requisitioned were overcrowded ghettos, lying along the notorious railroads.

In 1940, as trading with the Nazis became a taboo and there were unconfirmed rumors of IBM's pro-Hitler subversives, FBI Director Edgar Hoover personally began taking an interest in Watson's underhanded dealings with Germany. Growing public pressure for American business to boycott dealings with fascists made IBM's position doubly vulnerable. "Nazism's favorite capitalist", Watson, decided to play a charade by returning Hitler's medal, drawing the ire of the Fuhrer himself and of Dehomag's irascible Nazi manager, Willy Heidinger. Although a serious revolt broke out in Dehomag against Watson's micro-management and possessive control of the subsidiary, Watson tenaciously clung on due to IBM's indispensability to the Nazi war machine (only IBM NY could print the raw material of Dehomag machines - millions and millions of customized punch cards). As one internal IBM report from Berlin stated: "The government at this time needs our machines. The army is using them evidently for every conceivable purpose" (p 229). However much Watson's return of the medal enraged the German government, it was too dependent on IBM NY to attempt "Aryanization" of Dehomag. As Nazi domains in occupied lands increased, the Reich made its peace with Watson and allowed his old methods of remote-controlled management to continue with token Nazi custodians for Dehomag and other subsidiaries in Axis territory. Most shockingly, US consulates, embassies, commercial attaches and diplomats in Berlin and occupied Europe intervened on IBM's behalf to ensure its blocked profits and American ownership remained intact.

France and Holland
IBM's French subsidiary CEC joined in the mad race for profits soon after the Nazi advance and division of the country into Vichy France and Occupied France. In the last quarter of 1942 alone, CEC was paid 9.4 million francs by the Wehrmacht for leasing, service and the spare parts of tabulators and alphabetizers. By 1943, CEC was a veritable satellite of Dehomag, maintaining direct links to the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and the SS (Protective Squad), a fact approved by Watson in writing. Though Nazi attempts at launching pogroms of French Jews failed relative to other countries due to the courageous sabotage of Hollerith operators by De Gaulle's Free French movement and a dire paper shortage, CEC profits quadrupled in 1942-43.

Automated Jewish registration on Hollerith cards was attempted in the Netherlands, again meeting with stiff popular resistance, but population expert Jacobus Lentz managed to employ specially-designed IBM punch card technology to track down 159,0806 Jews in Amsterdam. Eichmann had all of them "evacuated" to the death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor in 1942. "It never stopped in Holland. The Population Registry continued to spew out tabulations of names. The trains continued to roll" (p 322).

Rallying for 'homeland security'
After Pearl Harbor, the "Economic Warfare Section" of the US government was again alerted to Watson's fishy undertakings in Axis-occupied Europe and launched an investigation which concluded: "IBM is in a class with the Nazis." But Watson was never on the "Proclaimed List" of blacklisted firms that were either clandestinely trading with or had active Nazi sympathizers (Standard Oil and General Aniline were caught). Investigators on IBM "were not permitted to work with much speed. Alleging treacherous business when the firm was as prominent as IBM, and its leader as well connected to the White House as Watson, was not to be undertaken lightly by any branch of the US government" (p 339). Besides, IBM tabulators and coding machines began to mobilize America's own war effort, and IBM's new subsidiary, Munitions Manufacturing Corporation, was at the fore of production of automatic rifles, gas masks, bombsights, anti-aircraft guns and carbines. Total wartime sales tripled annually from 1940 to approximately $140 million by 1945. IBM technology also helped identify Japanese-Americans for FDR's shameful "Executive Order 9066", which authorized their internment and evacuation on the West Coast. It was an irony of the war that IBM equipment was used to encode, decode, mobilize and ostracize for both sides of the conflict.

The 'Final Solution'
Every major Nazi concentration camp had a Hollerith Department, with dozens of sorters, tabulators and printers. The camps were monitored by the Reich Economics Department at Oranienberg, with individual Hollerith codes reading like a roster of place names from hell: Auschwitz 001; Buchenwald 002; Dachau 003; Flossenburg 004; Mauthausen 007; Ravensbruck 010; Stutthof 012 and so on. The massive logistics of the Nazi Gulags were meticulously arranged into order by IBM machinery. New and novel types of cards were devised in IBM's Endicott and Geneva outlets to meet the bloodthirsty needs of the Reich. "Personal Inmate Cards" carefully mentioned the skills of prisoners to be traded, sold or exchanged as slave labor by the SS. "Slave revenues" for all camps totaled RM 13.2 million for 1942, killing most assignees in the process. Arbeit Macht Frei, German for "work will set you free", could never have had a more sinister implication. "Departure Lists" churned out by Hollerith tabulators announced roll calls of the chosen for instant death, with separate numbers for "natural causes" (overworking), "execution", "suicide" and "SB Special Treatment" (gassing). At the summit of this empire of torturous evil was the Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler's Statistical Scientific Institute in Berlin, a "Hollerith complex that helped Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann prioritize, schedule and manage the seemingly impossible logistics of genocide across dozens of cities in more than twenty countries and territories" (p 371).

Payback of genocide
Not underestimating Watson's personal affinity for fascism, IBM's business was never primarily about ideology or racism. "It was always about the money" and after the war ended, Watson made a skillful grab for all the blocked profits and revenues that accrued to the parent office in New York from a war-ravaged Europe. IBM Romania, which assisted Antonescu's extermination of Jews, lodged compensation claims for war damaged machines and also got US State Department intermediaries to secure its bank accounts worth $1.5 million in Bucharest. Bulgarian railroads, which transported 12,000 Macedonian, and Thracian Jews in boxcars to the satanic Treblinka camp, were obliged through US government auspices to return their dues to "Watson Business Machines" in Sofia. US State Department contacts also helped IBM reclaim its bank accounts in Belgrade and recover machines used by Croatian Ustashi gangs to pacify Jews. Within a year after World War II ended, IBM got back all its French CEC machines and its money from Credit Lyonnais bank.

In occupied Germany, Dehomag emerged with "relatively little damage and virtually ready to resume business as usual" (p 398). Recapture of misplaced machinery was aided not only by enthusiastic favor-currying US officials, but by a dedicated band of "IBM Soldiers", former IBM employees and technicians working in the American and British zones of occupation. Instead of docketing it as evidence of collaboration with Nazi war crimes, IBM equipment was clandestinely smuggled and returned to its rightful owner, the beloved "Mr Watson". Recouping the spoils of genocide at a time when businessmen who colluded with Hitler were considered "accessories to war crimes" was a feat of extraordinary chicanery and guile orchestrated by IBM NY. When the Nazis threatened to "Araynize" Dehomag, Watson tried his utmost to show it was a "German-owned company" and when post-war America was identifying the plethora of corporate supporters of Hitlerism, the same Watson inveigled his way into establishing that Dehomag was not a German company but an American-owned enterprise that must be protected for post-war European reconstruction.

Responsibility and reparations
Black's Afterword to the paperback edition has nailed the case with ever-new evidence about IBM's direct role in the Holocaust. Willy Heidinger's descendants have proof that Black "understated Watson's true sympathies for Hitler and his true knowledge of the events in Germany" (p 432). A massive Hollerith statistical center at Krakow, staffing more than 500 punching and tabulating employees, has been discovered in Poland. It cross-indexed such utterly perverse variables as food supplies against ethnic numbers, allowing Nazis to ration caloric intake and progressively starve Jewish and Gypsy inmates. Several survivors of the Holocaust who did not comprehend the real intent of Hollerith offices in the camps have also given testimonies of their puzzling importance in the eyes of camp authorities. Black maintains that he has "only scratched the surface" and that the voluminous proof he has made public is only the tip of the iceberg.

The attitude of IBM to Black's tireless research and truth seeking has ranged from uncooperative to obstructive. IBM's Public Relations officer warned him in 1999, "You won't get access to any IBM facility in the world, no IBM archive, no IBM library" (p 446). IBM also sponsored a global campaign of distraction, misinformation and negative book reviews after the release of IBM And The Holocaust. But the truth is before the world and a significant gap in scholastic understanding of the efficiency and automation backing Hitler's solutions to the "Jewish Problem" has seen light. Lawsuits against IBM to get it to open its closely guarded Nazi-era documents are intensifying and there is also a general consensus that a case for reparations for historical crimes against humanity be pursued against IBM.

This book is not for the faint-hearted or for those who are Pollyannaish about corporate ethics. It will make the readers exclaim in disbelief, clench in anger, frown in disgust and marvel in contempt that the company which boasts of finding "solutions for every problem" once offered "solutions" of a horrendous nature, all the while posing as a dependable friend of the American administration and a crusader for peace.

What is the essential lesson of IBM And the Holocaust for humankind? "Unless we understand how the Nazis acquired the names," writes Black, "more lists will be compiled against more people" (p 16). Like Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost (recounting Belgian genocide in the Congo), Edwin Black's book is both a vista to a nauseating past and a profound eye-opener for the future inhabitants of the planet that inculcating zero tolerance for genocide is simply not enough. What is also needed is zero tolerance for the technology of genocide.

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