IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation
Reveiw on Amazon
Was IBM, "The Solutions Company," partly responsible for the Final Solution? That's the question raised by Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust, the most controversial book on the subject since Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Black, a son of Holocaust survivors, is less tendentiously simplistic than Goldhagen, but his thesis is no less provocative: he argues that IBM founder Thomas Watson deserved the Merit Cross (Germany's second-highest honor) awarded him by Hitler, his second-biggest customer on earth.
"IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success," writes Black. "IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the information age [and] virtually put the 'blitz' in the krieg." The crucial technology was a precursor to the computer, the IBM Hollerith punch card machine, which Black glimpsed on exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, inspiring his five-year, top-secret book project.
The Hollerith was used to tabulate and alphabetize census data. Black says the Hollerith and its punch card data ("hole 3 signified homosexual ... hole 8 designated a Jew") was indispensable in rounding up prisoners, keeping the trains fully packed and on time, tallying the deaths, and organizing the entire war effort. Hitler's regime was fantastically, suicidally chaotic; could IBM have been the cause of its sole competence: mass-murdering civilians? Better scholars than I must sift through and appraise Black's mountainous evidence, but clearly the assessment is overdue.
The moral argument turns on one question: How much did IBM New York know about IBM Germany's work, and when? Black documents a scary game of brinksmanship orchestrated by IBM chief Watson, who walked a fine line between enraging U.S. officials and infuriating Hitler. He shamefully delayed returning the Nazi medal until forced to--and when he did return it, the Nazis almost kicked IBM and its crucial machines out of Germany. (Hitler was prone to self-defeating decisions, as demonstrated in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II.)
Black has created a must-read work of history. But it's also a fascinating business book examining the colliding influences of personality, morality, and cold strategic calculation. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
The publisher has ordered a print run of 100,000 copies, indicating that they expect high demand for this contentious expose. The author asserts that a collusion existed between IBM Corporation and the government of the Third Reich, wherein IBM supplied the technology enabling Nazi authorities to systematize their persecution of European Jews. Expect much discussion in the press and on the street about this very controversial book. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
I've literally been tracking down this information all of My life.
Political Collusion of a President and Congress in Collapsing America, The Fall of the New Rome
To Be Chipped, Or Not? Owning Stock In Your Own Verichip, And Politics
Verichip/Digital Angel are going to be the end result where this biochip is supposed to be implanted into your skin, and all the information databases that collect this information will eventually get all of this same information from you with this biochip, instead of your Discount Card, instead of your Driver's License, instead of your Social Security Card, instead of having Medical Records, all of this information will be loaded onto this device the size of a grain of insignificant rice.
The problem with this is, it will also be your Credit Cards, your Bank Cards, your money, within this device that's smaller than a penny, insigificant in size, and if you have a problem with Government, if you purchase books online with this, because it will eventually be scanned via a port similar to your USB to "log-in" to online usage, if anything you do seems remotely "anti-Government" or questioning of authority, they can flip the switch, and you are instantly a "terrorist" and all of your information will keep you from buying food, purchasing gasoline, going to the doctor if it's life and death, you will literally be a person with no identity.
Think also about the movie "Logan's Run" if you've seen it as well as "Enemy of the State", and "Minority Report." I don't know about you, but I don't trust Government nor corporations with this much power over what I do and what I know nor what I think and or have within My life.
[edit on 1-8-2008 by SpartanKingLeonidas]
