IBM and the Holocaust Quotes

“Behind every text footnote is a file folder with all the hardcopy documentation needed to document every sentence in this book at a moment’s notice. Moreover, I assembled a team of hair-splitting, nitpicking, adversarial researchers and archivists to review each and every sentence, collectively ensuring that each fact and fragment of a fact was backed up with the necessary black and white documents.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Hitler's Reich established camps all over Europe, but they were not alike. Some, such as Flossenburg in Germany, were labor camps where inmates were worked to death. Several, such as Westerbork in Holland, were transit camps, that is, staging sites en route to other destinations. A number of camps such as Treblinka in Poland, were operated for the sole purpose of immediate extermination by gas chamber. Some camps, such as Auschwitz, combined elements of all three. Without IBM's machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust

“In other words,” said Flint, “you want part of the ice you cut.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“First, he sold himself—like any adroit salesman—and then worked around their collective worries about his conspiracy conviction.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“As a nineteenth-century international economic adventurer, Flint believed that the accretion of money was its own nurturing reward,”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Considering public sentiment, prosecutors offered consent decrees in lieu of jail time.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Watson recruited men to carry supplies in on their backs until the goods reached Dayton—all to cheering crowds.57”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Bottled water and paper cups were distributed to flood victims along with hay cots for sleeping.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Watson embraced many of Patterson’s regimenting techniques as indispensable doctrine for good sales.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“One day during a pep rally to the troops, Watson scrawled the word THINK on a piece of paper. Patterson saw the note and ordered THINK signs distributed throughout the company.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Eventually, they would either be driven out of business or sell out to Watson with a draconian non-compete clause.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“In 1903, Watson was called to Patterson’s office and instructed to destroy second-hand dealers across the country.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“A Hallwood salesman whom Watson had befriended one day mentioned that he was calling on a prospect the next day.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“The squads would threaten the prospect with tall tales of patent infringement suits by NCR against Hallwood,”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Adopting the brutal, anything-goes techniques of Patterson and Range, and adding a few devious tricks of his own, Watson began the systematic annihilation of Hallwood, its sales, and its customer base.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Patterson had created a sales manual designed to rigidly standardize all pitches and practices, and even mold the thought processes of selling.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Although born into a clan of tough Scottish Watsons, the future captain of industry was actually born Thomas J. “Wasson.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“By virtue of his extraordinary skills, Watson would be delivered from his humble beginnings as a late-nineteenth-century horse-and-buggy back road peddler, to corporate scoundrel, to legendary tycoon, to international statesman, and finally to regal American icon—all in less than four decades.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“North suspected that even the Russian Czar was paying far less than Uncle Sam.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Excessive royalties, phantom machines, inconsistent pricing for machines and punch cards, restrictive use arrangements—the gamut of vendor abuses was discovered.19”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Moreover, the new reform-minded Director of the Census Bureau, Simeon North, uncovered numerous irregularities in the Bureau’s contracts for punch card machines. Hollerith was gouging the federal government.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“SHORTLY AFTER the 1900 census, it became apparent to the federal government that it had helped Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company achieve a global monopoly,”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“For privacy, Hollerith built a tall fence around his home to keep out neighbors and their pets. When too many cats scaled the top to jump into the yard,”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Other than his inventions, Hollerith was said to cherish three things: his German heritage, his privacy, and his cat Bismarck.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“He and he alone would control the technology because the punchers, sorters, and tabulators were all designed to be compatible with each other—and with no other machine that might ever be produced.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust

“Census and statistical departments in Russia, Italy, England, France, Austria, and Germany all submitted orders.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Governments and industry were queuing up for the devices.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“Computations were completed with unprecedented speed and added a dramatic new dimension to the entire nature of census taking.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“His card sorter was more than just a clever gadget. It was a steel, spindle, and rubber-wheeled key to the Pandora’s Box of unlimited information.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

“The clanging contraption could calculate in a few weeks the results that a man previously spent years correlating.”
― Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation