IBM and the Holocaust - Essay Example

IBM and the Holocaust Introduction “IBM and the Holocaust” is the title of a book by Edwin Black, a journalist at the time of he wrote the book. It contains details of the deals of the International Business Machines company (IBM) and its subsidiaries both in Germany and the rest of Europe with the Nazi government. The book’s details spans from 1930 to around 1945 during the Second World War. To sum the operations of IBM, it aided the genocide during Adolf Hitler’s regime by its generation and tabulation of the technology of punch cards using the country’s national census data. This paper further expounds upon the point of corporations in Nazi Germany. Punch Cards IBM’s German subsidiary, called Dehomag, once put up a poster in German whose translation to English meant “see everything with Hollerith punch cards.” This poster, while at the time simply advertising the importance of punch cards in capturing individuals’ information, have been found to have been the reason why the Nazis found it easy to carry out mass murders of the minority groups in Germany. Dehomag is the acronym for the company Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation); a company established in 1910 by Willy Heidinger. Heidinger later sold the company to American industrialist Charles Flint. Through various stages of acquisitions, Dehomag eventually became a direct subsidiary of CTR which was later renamed to International Business Machines in 1924 (Jeffery, 2001). The idea of punch cards had been conceived by Herman Hollerith about the year 1880. Hellorith was working for the US Census Bureau. The punch cards were basically readable cards with perforations in a standardized pattern. Every perforation represented a given piece of information about the individual such as their nationality, occupation, gender, and so on. The traits could be easily sorted out to give the desired picture of a given population. For example, gender could be used to divide the country into males and females (Hayes, 2000). Hitler and IBM Adolf Hitler and the chief executive officer of IBM Thomas J. Watson are two of the people most famously accused of the genocide in Nazi Germany. While Hitler broadcasted his hate messages against the Jews (and other races), he found fanatics among great men such as Henry Ford and Thomas Watson. With IBM’s presence in Germany and with Hitler at the helm, it was not by chance that Watson fueled Hitler’s aims. With technology that could not just count but “record data, process it, retrieve it, analyze it, and automatically answer pointed questions,” IBM proved to be an important tool in Hitler’s government and its aims of identifying its citizens (Hayes, 2000). Hitler’s Germany, like other countries mesmerized by the then new population tabulating technology invented by Hollerith, quickly adopted the new system as were Italy, Russia, France, England and Austria.Upon assuming leadership, Hitler promised to come up with a “Master Race, dominate Europe, and decimate European Jewry.” Hitler oversee a lot of wrongs against the Jewish community with his National Socialist German Workers Party. Political prisoners in his regime were sent to the newly-formed concentration camp in Dachau near the city of Munich. The majority of these prisoners (at least 60,000) were of Jewish origin. All these wrongdoings saw for an international call for an economic boycott. IBM’s subsidiary in Germany (Dehomag) ran its operations uninterrupted. Its relations with the Nazi government are reported to have been close ones (Jacobsen, 2013). A Census The same year Hitler came to power; Germany decided to conduct a census that had for a long time been delayed. While the census was conducted for economic reasons, the Nazi government utilized it to identify the ‘inferior’ races among them Gypsies, Jews, and others. That is when Dehomag offered it to aid the German government identify the ethnic groups using its Hollerith technology of punch cards. Dehomag’s parent company in the United States and its chief executive jumped at the opportunity of working with the Nazi government. Watson and IBM knew of Hitler’s intentions yet they actively supported his course by building IBM’s first factory in the city of Berlin in Germany. IBM received the license to carry out the census as it desired. As expected, the Nazi government was able to precisely identify, isolate, and eventually destroy the Jews and other members of minority groups in Germany. With the help of Hollerith punch cards, the German government was able to identify even more people of Jewish origin. Estimates of between 400,000 and 600,000 Jews were effectively trounced by the new numbers that peaked at 2 million. This included those with one Jewish parent and, to Hitler, even one parent made one ‘not pure.’ More Punch Cards While IBM’s focus was simply to provide an effective method for carrying out a census, the punch cards became an important tool in the isolation of Jews. To prove this, the German concentration camps had their own Hollerith Departments whose responsibility was to keep tabs on the Jewish prisoners using IBM’s system of using punchcards. IBM further established more Hollerith Departments in the countries that Nazis occupied in Europe (Jeffery, 2001). With subsidiaries in Germany and Poland, punch cards became the standard of measurement when it came to identifying Jews and Gypsies and eventually eliminating them. In essence, the spread of Nazism throughout Europe can be credited to have been the reason the use of Hollerith punch cards spread widely. Tools against Jews To this day, the holocaust remains in people’s minds as an example of the worst form of human persecution. Hitler defended the German race but, to this day, a mention of the holocaust draws a bad image to them. Without IBM and its punch cards technology, many are of the view that the holocaust would never have taken place. During the ascension of Hitler to power and for a period after he assumed power as Germany's leader, many corporations that operated in Germany more or less cut their links with the government (Hayes, 2000). It was a matter of ethics to distance a company’s operations from a government bent on destroying part of its population for no good reason.Instead of that, IBM strengthened its relations with Hitler. With Watson being among the people in support of Hitlerism, it can be safely said that Watson and IBM were part and parcel of the Nazi regime. They thus stand accused of having done nothing to stop the atrocities that took place. The Germany under Nazism believed that Jews were a foreign people in Germany. In the real sense, Jews had occupied Germany from the fourth century. The leveling them as foreigners was wrong by all means. The fact that they were a minority group did not in any way mean they were foreigners. Their lynching and immolation at the stake were among the atrocities they faced. Even before the census, these atrocities were taking place and IBM was aware of them. Taking part as the technology company providing the tools necessary to persecute part of the population is akin to having participated in the holocaust (Hayes, 2000). IBM’s Point of View With growing relations with Hitler’s government, Dehomag’s parent company was faced with majorly four problems. First of all, the rate of violence against Jews and Gypsies was escalating all throughout Germany. Secondly, the anti-Hitler campaign had taken root all over the world, and, in particular, in America where IBM New York was based. This meant that any company dealing with Hitler’s government risked a lot. Thirdly, dealing with Hitler’s Germany meant agreeing to the rules of operations that can be summed up as having been greatly inhibitive. Lastly, all who were against Hitler held the view that anyone who helped Germany was indeed helping Hitler carry out war crimes. Even with all these in the face of IBM, the company chose to continue helping Germany (Jacobsen, 2013). Conclusion In conclusion, the point of view held in Black’s book is a correct one given the overwhelming evidence cited to support the facts presented therein. While seemingly all-inclusive, Black’s book left out the idea that the spirit of capitalism in America has for the longest time ignored risk for profit. The pace at which the use of Hollerith punch cards spread throughout Europe and the United States remains among the best examples of American innovation to date. Every American businessman would give up a lot to have such a record. In my view, Watson cannot be held responsible for having overseen the death of thousands of Jews. As a person, while in support of Hitlerism, Watson would not have implemented the holocaust himself. He saw an opportunity which he grabbed and reaped greatly. To this end, the use of Hollerith punch cards was Germany’s choice and not Watson’s (Jacobsen, 2013). While, in my opinion, Watson and IBM are victims of circumstances, their role in the holocaust shall remain a significant. If they had turned down Germany’s use of punch cards, they would not have prevented the holocaust since Germany would have obtained the technology anyway. References Hayes, P. (2000). Industry and Ideology: I. G. Farben in the Nazi Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeffery, Y. (2001). The IBM Century: Creating the IT Revolution. New York, NY: Kindle Books. Jacobsen, A. (2013). Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America. New York: Brown and Company. Read More