Has anyone read the book IBM and the Holocaust?

[Quantum]

Anybody read this book? I put it on my TBR.

What they [IBM's glossy brochures] don’t tell you is that in the 1930s IBM was instrumental in providing groundbreaking technology that assisted the Nazi regime in identifying and tracking down Jews for its methodical program of genocide.

One of the machines is displayed in a place of prominence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. The IBM badge can be clearly seen.

The IBM card sorting machine on display at the United States Holocaust Museum. Picture: William Philpott/LiaisonSource:Getty Images

It was a technical marvel of its time, the forerunner of today’s computers. The complex-looking machine was a punch card and card-sorting system initially built to assist the collation of vast amounts of information gathered in a census.
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Black was mystified how an iconic American corporation could be involved in the Holocaust, the most evil act of the twentieth century. He then spent decades digging up the links between IBM America and the Nazi genocide of millions of Jews and other inmates of the concentration camps.

He said IBM tried to block his access to the firm’s records at every turn. But from archives around the world, and some files from IBM, he managed to assemble 20,000 documents that revealed IBM’s horrific role in the war, and in 2001 Black published his groundbreaking findings in IBM and the Holocaust.

It was shocking. Black wrote that IBM headquarters in New York knew all about its German subsidiary designing and supplying indispensable technological equipment that allowed the Nazis to achieve what had never been done before — “the automation of human destruction”.
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Black concludes that for Watson and IBM, trading with the monster of Nazi Germany wasn’t about anti-Semitism or National Socialism. “It was always about the money.’”
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In 1943, however, the Economic Warfare Section of the US Justice Department, the unit responsible for investigating cases of trading with the enemy, looked into IBM’s deals with Nazi Germany. It didn’t like what it saw.

The unit’s chief investigator, Howard J Carter, wrote a memo to his superiors warning that corporations like IBM had become larger and more powerful than nations. Carter was denied access to crucial files by IBM that could have proved how closely it was linked to the Nazi regime.

In reality, there was nothing Carter could do to challenge IBM. The company was simply too big and too essential to the US war machine.
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IBM immediately took back control of the rest of its European subsidiaries and demanded the profits they had made during the war. In this demand IBM had the assistance of the US government, who was keen on IBM getting back its machines because they were needed to run the military occupation of post-war Germany.

When it came time to put German industrialists and Nazi leaders on trial, it was IBM machines that stored and collated the evidence and translations. While many German war profiteer corporations, such as the mammoth IG Farben, were stripped for war reparations, Dehomag was untouched.

By 1949 the German subsidiary was 100 per cent owned by IBM New York and the name was changed to IBM Germany. Dehomag was gone. Nobody questioned the role of the IBM machine and its Dehomag subsidiary in the Nazi death camps or the Nazi war machine.
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On the publication of Edwin Black’s book in 2001 about IBM and its link to the Holocaust, IBM released a statement acknowledging that IBM equipment supplied by Dehomag had been used by the Nazi government. But IBM insisted that during the war Dehomag and hundreds of other foreign-owned companies came under the control of Nazi authorities.

The IBM statement said most records concerning Dehomag were lost or destroyed during the war, but documents that did exist had been placed on the public record to assist research and historical scholarship.

“IBM and its employees around the world find the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime abhorrent and categorically condemn any actions which aided their unspeakable acts,” it said.

In a 2002 statement, IBM denied assertions by Black that the company was withholding documents and material from the wartime era.

(http://www.news.com.au/finance/busine...)

[Novall]

One reference in the book that has implications for the technology in the US paper industry of the time: Page 97-98 cites that the punch cards delivered to Germany by IBM required a precise quality of paper. This specialty paper for IBM may have been produced by Appleton Paper, Appleton, Wisconsin, or possibly Kimberly-Clark, Neenah, Wisconsin. Both of these Wisconsin-based companies were uniquely qualified to address the needs of IBM at that time. Archival research here would be beneficial.

[Graeme]

History is written by the victors.

In 1933, Germany was an economic basketcase. 6 years later they successfully conquered Western Europe and threatened England.

When I was at school, or even at University, I never saw a single history class that delved into 'Who,' financed the rise of the German war machine.

[J.]

I've added it to my queue. I think that it may make for an interesting follow up to Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, which is a book that I recommend.

The question that worries me though is who has been helping ODESSA? All of those "ratlines" required money. Those quaint Bavarian villages in Argentina required money. All of those purported experiments and clandestine operations required money. Banks had to clean the money. Which banks?

[Ian]

J. wrote: "I've added it to my queue. I think that it may make for an interesting follow up to Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, which is a book that I recommend.

The question that worries m..."

As for the money laundering, I would suspect the Nazis took stolen "stuff" with them. Gold, diamonds, whatever. Whatever else they took, it would not be Reichsmarks.

[J.]

I agree that the original source of their funding was looted from their victims. Individually it might not draw too much attention, but when scaled up for the organization moving that much money around would be obvious. This would have been especially true in the post war years when many European countries limited or outlawed the removal of money from within their borders. Doing it successfully would have taken many skilled professionals. For instance, artwork would have needed to be fenced and transported to willing, wealthy, and discreet customers of which there were few left in Europe. Then in order to build towards their new goals their moneys would need to be moved and laundered so that they could be used without attracting attention. The quantities involved would have required the knowing complicity of banks. We know for a fact that numbered Swiss accounts were used by Nazis. Are money laundering and illegal currency exchanges that much of a reach?

[Ian]

As far as I recall, money was reasonably easily transferred and negotiated then, if you had it. The leading Nazis presumably also used Swiss banks to get out of reichsmarks well before the end. Money laundering only really became a problem when the US started to react against drug money.

[J.]

While drug trafficking has coopted banks into laundering amounts of money which dwarf the GNPs of many nations, the practice is as old as income taxes. The term "money laundering" has been attributed to Prohibition Era bootleggers who bought and ran laundries so that they could co-mingle their liquor profits with the legitimate money of the businesses, and thus appear clean on their taxes. None of the alphabet agencies are as terrifying as the IRS.

Capital control was standard policy for European nations until the 1970s:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capit...

[Ian]

It would have been easy to launder money in Sth America because most people did not use banks. I was talking to someone in Buenos Aires who told me it was common there to buy a house with a suitcase full of US hundred dollar bills. This was probably even in the 1990s (can't recall the date but he lived there and presumably knew). I was also informed that in Bolivia you could buy USD at a serious discount as long as you had pesos! Apparently thanks to the likes of Escobar the place was swimming in Benjamin Franklins.

[Novall]

Kris wrote: "I haven't read this book, but IBM is on the roster of US companies that did business with the Nazis.

https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-americ...."

Thank you for the additional insight!