Edwin Black (1950--) IBM and the Holocaust (2001)
The strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America's most powerful corporation.
To my daughter, Rachel, who will read this book, and to six million who will not.
Part One. VII Deadly Count
On May 17, 1939, Germany was swept by 750,000 census takers, mainly volunteers. They missed virtually no one in the Greater Reich's 22 million households, 3.5 million farmhouses, 5.5 million shops and factories. Teams of five to eight census takers fanned out through the big cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. Towns and villages were divided into districts of thirty homes with one census taker assigned to each. Some 80 million citizens in the Greater Reich, including Germany, Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Saar, would be classed according to their ancestry.
...The Reich had imposed seemingly impossible target delivery dates for November 1939. So to increase speed, Dehomag's engineers converted their versatile D-11 calculating tabulator into a pure counting machine dubbed the D-11 VZ. The improvised device could process 12,000 60-column punched cards per hour in sixteen counters and then precision-punch its own summaries onto 80-column cards. Eighty million cards were actually used.
...Never before had so many been counted so thoroughly and quickly. The Reich Statistical Office hired an additional 2,000 staffers to process the forms and race cards, which were enough to fill more than seventy boxcars. As in 1933, Dehomag created cavernous counting rooms and management offices at the Statistical Office headquarters in Berlin to tabulate the information. Initially, Dehomag's army of operators punched 450,000 cards per day. With time, the volume reached one million daily. The company met its deadline. Preliminary analyzed results were ready by November 10, 1939, the one-year anniversary of Kristallnacht, and, more importantly for Hitler, the anniversary of Germany's surrender in the Great War.
...For example, municipal officials throughout Saxony asked their regional statistical offices if they could examine the census data first to speed their ghettoization and confiscation campaigns. But the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin said no. Greater priority was granted to the SD and Adolf Eichmann's Referat II 112, which both received copies of all census registration lists.
...Europe, of course, was the Nazi success story. Romania's Iron Guard was highly organized and impatient. In Holland, it was the Dutch Nazi Party. Polish Brown Shirts terrorized Jews. In Hungary, the Arrow Cross Party agitated. In Croatia, blood-lusting Ustashi could not wait. Whether their shirts were black, brown, or silver, whether of German extraction or merely anti-Semites in other lands, these people could be relied upon to preach Hitler's ideology of Jew-hatred, racial castes, and Aryan superiority.
...For example, just days before the Reich invaded Czechoslovakia, Berlin offered to respect Prague's borders only if it submitted to a three-prong ultimatum: delivery of one-third of its gold reserves, dismantling of its army, and an immediate "solution of the Jewish problem" according to Nuremberg racial definitions.
...Country after country adopted laws identical to German race policies, ousting Jews, confiscating their assets, and organizing their expulsion long before the Reich crossed their borders. By spring 1939, Hungary had already passed a series of anti-Jewish measures, including land expropriation, professional exclusion, and citizenship annulment.
...Waves of pogroms and Nazi-style anti-Jewish boycotts and economic expulsions had long been sweeping Poland, especially in areas with many so-called Volksdeutsche, those of German parentage. By 1937, a leading party in the Polish government, "the Camp of National Unity," declared the popular campaign had become official, to the delight of German-allied Polish Fascists. Similar persecution was regularly debated in Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. Eventually the majority of Europe would soon legislate Jews out of existence. It was all part of Berlin's new continent-wide irresistible sphere of anti-Semitic influence.
...On February 16, 1939, Reich legal authorities announced that the term Aryan would be replaced in many instances by a new term: European racial. Under the new guidelines, other ethnic groups and races, such as Germany's Romanian and Hungarian allies, could be allowed to exist. But a Jewish presence would be allowed nowhere on the Continent.
...In Copenhagen, at the ICC Congress, Watson's pro-Axis proposal championed a resolution whereby private businessmen from the three Axis and three Allied nations would actually supercede their governments and negotiate a radical new international trade policy designed to satisfy Axis demands for raw materials coveted from other nations. The businessmen would then lobby their respective governments' official economic advisors to adopt their appeasement proposals for the sake of averting war. Ironically, the raw materials were needed by Axis powers solely for the sake of waging war.
On June 28, under Watson's leadership, the ICC passed a resolution again calling for "a fair distribution of raw materials, food stuffs and other products . . . [to] render unnecessary the movements of armies across frontiers." To this end, the ICC asked "the governments of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States . . . each collaborate with their own leading businessmen . . . with respect to national needs . . . [and therefore] give all countries of the world a fair opportunity to share in the resources of the world."
...Chaim Kaplan was one of Warsaw Jewry's many eloquent men of letters. A teacher, poet, and journalist, Kaplan had traveled to America and Palestine during the pre-War years. In his diary, on October 21, he wrote, "Some time ago, I stated that our future is beclouded. I was wrong. Our future is becoming increasingly clear." He added, "blessed be the righteous judge," the traditional invocation chanted at funerals and upon hearing of a death.
On October 25, Kaplan recorded, "Another sign that bodes ill: Today, notices informed the Jewish population of Warsaw that next Saturday there will be a census of the Jewish inhabitants. . . . Our hearts tell us of evil-some catastrophe for the Jews of Warsaw lies in this census. Otherwise there would be no need for it."
...The deeply Talmudic community, which had little left except its faith and teachings, understood well that censuses were ominous in Jewish history. The Bible itself taught that unless specifically ordered by God, the census is evil because through it the enemy will know your strength:
I Chronicles 21: Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. . . . This command was also evil in the sight of God . . . Then David said to God, "I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now I beg you to take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing."
To my daughter, Rachel, who will read this book, and to six million who will not.
Part One. VII Deadly Count
On May 17, 1939, Germany was swept by 750,000 census takers, mainly volunteers. They missed virtually no one in the Greater Reich's 22 million households, 3.5 million farmhouses, 5.5 million shops and factories. Teams of five to eight census takers fanned out through the big cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. Towns and villages were divided into districts of thirty homes with one census taker assigned to each. Some 80 million citizens in the Greater Reich, including Germany, Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Saar, would be classed according to their ancestry.
...The Reich had imposed seemingly impossible target delivery dates for November 1939. So to increase speed, Dehomag's engineers converted their versatile D-11 calculating tabulator into a pure counting machine dubbed the D-11 VZ. The improvised device could process 12,000 60-column punched cards per hour in sixteen counters and then precision-punch its own summaries onto 80-column cards. Eighty million cards were actually used.
...Never before had so many been counted so thoroughly and quickly. The Reich Statistical Office hired an additional 2,000 staffers to process the forms and race cards, which were enough to fill more than seventy boxcars. As in 1933, Dehomag created cavernous counting rooms and management offices at the Statistical Office headquarters in Berlin to tabulate the information. Initially, Dehomag's army of operators punched 450,000 cards per day. With time, the volume reached one million daily. The company met its deadline. Preliminary analyzed results were ready by November 10, 1939, the one-year anniversary of Kristallnacht, and, more importantly for Hitler, the anniversary of Germany's surrender in the Great War.
...For example, municipal officials throughout Saxony asked their regional statistical offices if they could examine the census data first to speed their ghettoization and confiscation campaigns. But the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin said no. Greater priority was granted to the SD and Adolf Eichmann's Referat II 112, which both received copies of all census registration lists.
...Europe, of course, was the Nazi success story. Romania's Iron Guard was highly organized and impatient. In Holland, it was the Dutch Nazi Party. Polish Brown Shirts terrorized Jews. In Hungary, the Arrow Cross Party agitated. In Croatia, blood-lusting Ustashi could not wait. Whether their shirts were black, brown, or silver, whether of German extraction or merely anti-Semites in other lands, these people could be relied upon to preach Hitler's ideology of Jew-hatred, racial castes, and Aryan superiority.
...For example, just days before the Reich invaded Czechoslovakia, Berlin offered to respect Prague's borders only if it submitted to a three-prong ultimatum: delivery of one-third of its gold reserves, dismantling of its army, and an immediate "solution of the Jewish problem" according to Nuremberg racial definitions.
...Country after country adopted laws identical to German race policies, ousting Jews, confiscating their assets, and organizing their expulsion long before the Reich crossed their borders. By spring 1939, Hungary had already passed a series of anti-Jewish measures, including land expropriation, professional exclusion, and citizenship annulment.
...Waves of pogroms and Nazi-style anti-Jewish boycotts and economic expulsions had long been sweeping Poland, especially in areas with many so-called Volksdeutsche, those of German parentage. By 1937, a leading party in the Polish government, "the Camp of National Unity," declared the popular campaign had become official, to the delight of German-allied Polish Fascists. Similar persecution was regularly debated in Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. Eventually the majority of Europe would soon legislate Jews out of existence. It was all part of Berlin's new continent-wide irresistible sphere of anti-Semitic influence.
...On February 16, 1939, Reich legal authorities announced that the term Aryan would be replaced in many instances by a new term: European racial. Under the new guidelines, other ethnic groups and races, such as Germany's Romanian and Hungarian allies, could be allowed to exist. But a Jewish presence would be allowed nowhere on the Continent.
...In Copenhagen, at the ICC Congress, Watson's pro-Axis proposal championed a resolution whereby private businessmen from the three Axis and three Allied nations would actually supercede their governments and negotiate a radical new international trade policy designed to satisfy Axis demands for raw materials coveted from other nations. The businessmen would then lobby their respective governments' official economic advisors to adopt their appeasement proposals for the sake of averting war. Ironically, the raw materials were needed by Axis powers solely for the sake of waging war.
On June 28, under Watson's leadership, the ICC passed a resolution again calling for "a fair distribution of raw materials, food stuffs and other products . . . [to] render unnecessary the movements of armies across frontiers." To this end, the ICC asked "the governments of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States . . . each collaborate with their own leading businessmen . . . with respect to national needs . . . [and therefore] give all countries of the world a fair opportunity to share in the resources of the world."
...Chaim Kaplan was one of Warsaw Jewry's many eloquent men of letters. A teacher, poet, and journalist, Kaplan had traveled to America and Palestine during the pre-War years. In his diary, on October 21, he wrote, "Some time ago, I stated that our future is beclouded. I was wrong. Our future is becoming increasingly clear." He added, "blessed be the righteous judge," the traditional invocation chanted at funerals and upon hearing of a death.
On October 25, Kaplan recorded, "Another sign that bodes ill: Today, notices informed the Jewish population of Warsaw that next Saturday there will be a census of the Jewish inhabitants. . . . Our hearts tell us of evil-some catastrophe for the Jews of Warsaw lies in this census. Otherwise there would be no need for it."
...The deeply Talmudic community, which had little left except its faith and teachings, understood well that censuses were ominous in Jewish history. The Bible itself taught that unless specifically ordered by God, the census is evil because through it the enemy will know your strength:
I Chronicles 21: Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. . . . This command was also evil in the sight of God . . . Then David said to God, "I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now I beg you to take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing."