|
If US corporations have the same "rights" as individuals then why aren't they held to the same standard in anti Nazi cases like the above? IBM (and other US corporations) did more to help the Nazis murder millions than did this man. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/ibm-j27.shtmlIBM helped the Nazis carry through their policy of genocide. Without this assistance, Hitler’s regime would not have been able to carry through its extermination plan with such efficiency. IBM’s machines were used at all stages of the persecution of the Jews. They collected the necessary information to identify the Nazis’ victims, first to enforce the bar on Jews working in certain academic, professional and government jobs and later to carry out mass evictions from their homes and into the ghettoes.
IBM technology was used to organise the railways, so that millions of Nazi’ victims could be transported to the concentration camps, where they were immediately led into the gas chambers. There were Hollerith departments at nearly every concentration camp, which registered the arrival of inmates, organised the allocation of slave labourers, and even kept tallies on the deaths of prisoners.
IBM was involved in virtually every aspect of the Third Reich’s operations. The book explains that the company leased, serviced and upgraded more than 2,000 IBM multi-machine sets throughout Germany, and thousands more throughout Nazi occupied Europe. IBM developed custom-designed cards used by the Nazis; with as many as 1.5 billion punch cards being produced in Germany annually.
The punch card technology first developed by Hollerith, a German-American living in Washington, was used to enable the US Census Bureau to count the 1890 census. Decades prior to the development of computers, Hollerith technology enabled the fastest tabulation of the US population ever undertaken. Through a series of punch holes, each card recorded information on an individual’s gender, religion, nationality and occupation. Processed, and reprocessed, through sorting and counting machines the cards “could render the portrait of an entire population or could pick out any group within that population... Every punch card would become an informational storehouse limited only by the number of holes”. (p25) Within years, Hollerith’s machines were being used to take censuses across the world. The technology also developed into an early computing system, being used for financial accountancy by some of the largest US corporations.
Hollerith established a near-world wide monopoly, leasing rather than selling his machines, but sold up in 1911 and the company was merged into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. Under the stewardship of ex-sewing machine salesman Thomas Watson, CTR was transformed in the International Business Machines Corporation. Watson, a ruthless businessman, established a paternalistic hierarchy in the company. Watson spoke of the “IBM family” that included not only his workers, but also their wives and children, who would also be trained in the “IBM spirit” and would be well looked after and integrated into his empire.
In 1922, with hyperinflation in Germany leading to the collapse of the currency, Watson took over Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft) that had used the punch card technology under licence. This German subsidiary would later play a crucial role in IBM’s business alliance with the Third Reich. By 1933, when Hitler came to power, Watson had transformed the formerly ailing German company into IBM’s flag ship—producing more than three times above its quota.
But there was the promise of even more to come. “Nazi Germany offered Watson the opportunity to cater to government control, supervisions, surveillance, and regimentation on a plane never before known in human history. The fact that Hitler planned to extend his Reich to other nations only magnified the prospective profits. In business terms, that was account growth. The technology was almost exclusively IBM’s to purvey because the firm controlled about 90 percent of the world market in punch cards and sorters.” (p46)
Black stresses that Watson was not a fascist, but a ruthless profiteer. The strong German state under an authoritarian leader offered great potential for moneymaking, and that was what Watson identified with. In fact, as the chairman of IBM, one of the most prestigious companies in the USA, Watson was a well-respected businessman, a supporter of Roosevelt and special advisor to the president. Watson was elected chairman of the Foreign Department that also made him chairman of the American section of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). This, in essence, made Watson America’s official businessman to the rest of the world. He became installed as president of the entire ICC in 1937 and arranged the organisation’s next conference in Berlin.
Right from the start, IBM developed business solutions for the Third Reich. In April 1933, the Hitler regime began a census of all Germans, partly aimed at identifying Jews. The first step was to register data about the citizens of Germany’s largest state, Prussia, which Dehomag was commissioned to undertake. The procedure that was established in this census gives an example of how the co-operation between Dehomag and the Nazis would work in practice in the fields of statistical and data collection.
To cater to the specific requirements of Germany’s statistical programmes, the closest collaboration between Dehomag’s technicians and the Nazi authorities was necessary. Every project required specific customized applications. First, Dehomag was specifically informed about the task to be undertaken. Then mock-ups of punch cards were produced with pen and pencil marking the columns and holes to carry the needed information. Production of the punch cards only began if both Dehomag and the German reporting agencies were happy with the result. The company then manufactured and sold the cards, often pre-printed with project names. Once a project was undertaken, the company trained the personal to carry out the work.
With the expansion of its enterprise, Dehomag needed constant technical innovations and developments. Far from intervening in its German subsidiary to halt its collaboration with the Nazi persecution, IBM in New York carefully supervised the whole process and also would make sure that all technical requirements were provided. Dehomag technicians were constantly sent to the US for training.
Whilst IBM was famed in the US, little was known about its German activities. The internal structure of Dehomag was organised in such a way that as far as the Nazis were concerned it was a German company, whilst overall control remained with IBM. This also meant that the mother company could circumvent the American trading restrictions with Germany, once the war had begun.
Nonetheless, Watson not only fully exploited the profit making possibilities offered by Nazi Germany, he also became a political spokesperson for the German Reich. Black explains that Watson believed the world should extend “a sympathetic understanding to the German people and their aims under the leadership of Adolf Hitler”. (p43)
For his role, Watson was awarded the specially created Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star to “honour foreign nationals who made themselves deserving of the German Reich”—a medal ranking second in prestige only to Hitler’s German Grand Cross. Only when the war started did it become necessary for Watson to return his medal.
In 1937, the Nazi regime ordered another nationwide census. This one was decisive for Hitler’s war preparations and “for the Jews it would be the final and decisive identification step”. (p139) In accordance with the Nuremberg race laws, it meant tracing any Jewish ancestry. IBM bought in 70 card sorters, 60 tabulators, 76 multipliers and 90 million punch cards for the 3.5 million Reich Mark contract (worth about $14m today).
In advance of the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, IBM’s Viennese subsidiary, under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann, was working to collate comprehensive demographic information about the country on punch cards. This meant the Hitler regime knew exactly where the Austrian Jews were that were to subject to the forced expulsion programme.
When German troops invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, IBM was already there and was helping to run strategic operations such as the State Railway, whose system could be easily taken over by the Nazis.
After several postponements, the nation-wide census ordered in 1937 was finally carried out in May 1939. Some 750,000 census-takers were involved, covering all of the Greater Reich’s 22 million households—80 million citizens in Germany, Austria, the Sudentenland, and the Saar.
This was Dehomag’s biggest undertaking. It included a so-called “supplemental card” to record each household’s racial ancestry. This enabled the identification of a total of 330,530 so-called “racial Jews” in the Greater Reich. This was then broken down by gender, and was further divided between “full-Jews” and other shades of Jewish ancestry, with all those recorded in this way also being identified by their address.
This pattern would be repeated over and over again. In virtually every country that the Nazis occupied, an IBM subsidiary—normally already doing business there—would collect national and racial statistical information for the Nazis, which could then be used to identify Jews and other undesirables.
Dehomag even knew in advance that Hitler was preparing for war, as the company had been approached on how to protect its functioning in the event of an attack. With the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, IBM profits leapt as a result of Germany’s activities—especially with the roundups in Poland and the East.
Whether it was in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Scandinavia, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands or France the Nazi war machine relied upon IBM technology. It helped to organise the allocation of military equipment and personnel just as efficiently as it assisted in identifying Jews and facilitated their transportation to the death camps by train. Although it is true that even without the collaboration of IBM, Hitler fascism would still have carried through its policy of genocide, it is equally true that without it, the Nazis could not have proceeded with such ruthless efficiency.
After the war, IBM was able to retrieve its German assets, machines and profits alike with astonishing ease. At the end of 1946, Dehomag was valued at more than 56.6 million Reich Marks ($230m today) with a gross profit of 7.5 million Reich Marks ($30m). Its machines had been salvaged, its profits preserved and its corporate value protected.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
