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 Three. XIII. Extermination
...The SS Economics Administration, under the leadership of Gruppenführer Oswald Pohl, utilized Hollerith systems for morethan specific prisoner tracking. IBM machinery helped the SS manage the massive logistics of the entire camp system. Although millions, representing many nationalities and religions, were imprisoned at various times in hundreds of installations, the total camp capacity on any given day was between 500,000 and 700,000. That required population management. Jews from across Europe were being continuously transported into the camps. At the same time, slaves within camp confines died or reached the limits of their utility to the Reich. The prodigious task of efficiently scheduling deportation from cities and ghettos in many countries, the daily work assignments, and outright extermination timetables would have been impossible without the daily strength reports. When the camps reached the maximum of even their inhumane overcrowded capacity, orders went out from Berlin to reduce the density. Those periodic orders issued by the SS Economics Administration were based on the well-honed statistics provided by the Holleriths both in the camps and at camp administration headquarters.
...Charges for DII's workers could be easily tabulated on Dehomag's well-established hourly wage cards, thereby generating instant slave billings. A typical monthly charge to Messerschmitt airplane works for Flossenburg slaves was the one itemized on DII's invoice #FLO 680, which was issued December 1, 1944:
50,778 full-time skilled slaves at RM 5 per day
5,157 part-time skilled slaves at RM 2.50 per day
53,071 full-time helpers at RM 3 daily
5,600 part-time helpers at just RM 1.50 daily
Messerschmitt's total invoice for the month of November 1944 was RM 434,395.50. Although Messerschmitt employed 114,606 Flossenburg slaves in November 1942, once the month closed on November 30, DII was able to generate an itemized invoice within twenty-four hours. Prompt payment was requested.
Slave revenues for all camps totaled RM 13.2 million for 1942. This program of working inmates to death had a name. The Reich called it "extermination by labor." Atop the ironwork entrances of many slave camps was an incomprehensible motto: Arbeit Macht Frei-"Work will set you free."
...Himmler was so pleased with the report and Korherr's subsequent performance, he eventually appointed the statistician to a specially created agency known as the Statistical Scientific Institute of the Reichsfuhrer SS. It, too, was located at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse. Korherr's new office now had the most up-to-the-minute access to all concentration camp information streaming into the Zentral Institut. By early 1944, Korherr was able to report to Eichmann a total of 5 million Jews eliminated by "natural decrease, concentration camp inmates, ghetto inmates, and those who were [simply] put to death."
The offices at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse, undoubtedly processed more information than any other single office in Germany about the mass murder of Europe's Jews. More than a statistical bureau, by its very nature, the Hollerith complex at Friedrichstrasse helped Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann prioritize, schedule, and manage the seemingly impossible logistics of genocide across dozens of cities in more than twenty countries and territories. It was not just people who were counted and marshaled for deportation. Boxcars, locomotives, and intricate train timetables were scheduled across battle-scarred borders-all while a war was being fought on two fronts. The technology had enabled Nazi Germany to orchestrate the death of millions without skipping a note.
Part Three. XIV. The Spoils of Genocide, I
...Once the United States entered the war, Axis custodians would be appointed as titular directors of subsidiaries in occupied territory. But these enemy custodians never looted the IBM divisions. Rather, they zealously protected the assets, extended productivity, and increased profits. Existing IBM executives were kept in place as day-to-day managers and, in some instances, even appointed deputy enemy custodians. In France, for example, although SS Officer Heinz Westerholt was appointed enemy custodian of CEC, he, in turn, appointed Dehomag's Oskar Hoermann as deputy custodian. CEC's Roger Virgile continued as managing director to keep the company profitable and productive. In Belgium, Nazi custodian H. Garbrecht remained aloof, allowing IBM managers Louis Bosman and G. Walter Galland to remain in place and virtually in command. In Germany, Dehomag's board of directors was superseded by custodian Hermann Fellinger. Fellinger replaced Heidinger, and then insisted that Rottke, Hummel, and all the other managers in Dehomag's twenty offices continue producing record profits. Whether overseen by Nazi executives or Watson's own, IBM Europe thrived.
...IBM's business was never about Nazism. It was never about anti-Semitism. It was always about the money. Before even one Jew was encased in a hard-coded Hollerith identity, it was only the money that mattered. And the money did accrue.
Millions in blocked bank accounts scattered across Europe were waiting for IBM, as well as its newly acquired real estate, numerous Hitler-era factories and presses, and thousands of Hollerith machines. Much of the money and plant expansion was funded by a fundamentally bankrupt Third Reich, which financed its rapacious operations by slave labor, massive plunder, and cost-effective genocide. Where did Hitler's Germany get the money to pay for all the services, cards, and leases? Nazi gold and currency was fungible-whether carted away from banks in Prague or pried from the teeth of Jewish carcasses at Treblinka. The Reich could afford the best. And it purchased the best with the assets it stole.
...World War II finally ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. Almost immediately, IBM rushed in to recover its machines and bank accounts from enemy territory. The wealth of stories could take many volumes to chronicle, but this much was clear: there was no realm where IBM would not trade, and none where they failed to collect-country by country.
To my daughter, Rachel, who will read this book, and to six million who will not.
Part Three. XIII. Extermination
...The SS Economics Administration, under the leadership of Gruppenführer Oswald Pohl, utilized Hollerith systems for morethan specific prisoner tracking. IBM machinery helped the SS manage the massive logistics of the entire camp system. Although millions, representing many nationalities and religions, were imprisoned at various times in hundreds of installations, the total camp capacity on any given day was between 500,000 and 700,000. That required population management. Jews from across Europe were being continuously transported into the camps. At the same time, slaves within camp confines died or reached the limits of their utility to the Reich. The prodigious task of efficiently scheduling deportation from cities and ghettos in many countries, the daily work assignments, and outright extermination timetables would have been impossible without the daily strength reports. When the camps reached the maximum of even their inhumane overcrowded capacity, orders went out from Berlin to reduce the density. Those periodic orders issued by the SS Economics Administration were based on the well-honed statistics provided by the Holleriths both in the camps and at camp administration headquarters.
...Charges for DII's workers could be easily tabulated on Dehomag's well-established hourly wage cards, thereby generating instant slave billings. A typical monthly charge to Messerschmitt airplane works for Flossenburg slaves was the one itemized on DII's invoice #FLO 680, which was issued December 1, 1944:
50,778 full-time skilled slaves at RM 5 per day
5,157 part-time skilled slaves at RM 2.50 per day
53,071 full-time helpers at RM 3 daily
5,600 part-time helpers at just RM 1.50 daily
Messerschmitt's total invoice for the month of November 1944 was RM 434,395.50. Although Messerschmitt employed 114,606 Flossenburg slaves in November 1942, once the month closed on November 30, DII was able to generate an itemized invoice within twenty-four hours. Prompt payment was requested.
Slave revenues for all camps totaled RM 13.2 million for 1942. This program of working inmates to death had a name. The Reich called it "extermination by labor." Atop the ironwork entrances of many slave camps was an incomprehensible motto: Arbeit Macht Frei-"Work will set you free."
...Himmler was so pleased with the report and Korherr's subsequent performance, he eventually appointed the statistician to a specially created agency known as the Statistical Scientific Institute of the Reichsfuhrer SS. It, too, was located at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse. Korherr's new office now had the most up-to-the-minute access to all concentration camp information streaming into the Zentral Institut. By early 1944, Korherr was able to report to Eichmann a total of 5 million Jews eliminated by "natural decrease, concentration camp inmates, ghetto inmates, and those who were [simply] put to death."
The offices at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse, undoubtedly processed more information than any other single office in Germany about the mass murder of Europe's Jews. More than a statistical bureau, by its very nature, the Hollerith complex at Friedrichstrasse helped Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann prioritize, schedule, and manage the seemingly impossible logistics of genocide across dozens of cities in more than twenty countries and territories. It was not just people who were counted and marshaled for deportation. Boxcars, locomotives, and intricate train timetables were scheduled across battle-scarred borders-all while a war was being fought on two fronts. The technology had enabled Nazi Germany to orchestrate the death of millions without skipping a note.
Part Three. XIV. The Spoils of Genocide, I
...Once the United States entered the war, Axis custodians would be appointed as titular directors of subsidiaries in occupied territory. But these enemy custodians never looted the IBM divisions. Rather, they zealously protected the assets, extended productivity, and increased profits. Existing IBM executives were kept in place as day-to-day managers and, in some instances, even appointed deputy enemy custodians. In France, for example, although SS Officer Heinz Westerholt was appointed enemy custodian of CEC, he, in turn, appointed Dehomag's Oskar Hoermann as deputy custodian. CEC's Roger Virgile continued as managing director to keep the company profitable and productive. In Belgium, Nazi custodian H. Garbrecht remained aloof, allowing IBM managers Louis Bosman and G. Walter Galland to remain in place and virtually in command. In Germany, Dehomag's board of directors was superseded by custodian Hermann Fellinger. Fellinger replaced Heidinger, and then insisted that Rottke, Hummel, and all the other managers in Dehomag's twenty offices continue producing record profits. Whether overseen by Nazi executives or Watson's own, IBM Europe thrived.
...IBM's business was never about Nazism. It was never about anti-Semitism. It was always about the money. Before even one Jew was encased in a hard-coded Hollerith identity, it was only the money that mattered. And the money did accrue.
Millions in blocked bank accounts scattered across Europe were waiting for IBM, as well as its newly acquired real estate, numerous Hitler-era factories and presses, and thousands of Hollerith machines. Much of the money and plant expansion was funded by a fundamentally bankrupt Third Reich, which financed its rapacious operations by slave labor, massive plunder, and cost-effective genocide. Where did Hitler's Germany get the money to pay for all the services, cards, and leases? Nazi gold and currency was fungible-whether carted away from banks in Prague or pried from the teeth of Jewish carcasses at Treblinka. The Reich could afford the best. And it purchased the best with the assets it stole.
...World War II finally ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. Almost immediately, IBM rushed in to recover its machines and bank accounts from enemy territory. The wealth of stories could take many volumes to chronicle, but this much was clear: there was no realm where IBM would not trade, and none where they failed to collect-country by country.