reply to post by zeroeffect
I have to wonder at your knowledge of history, especially WWII.
And for the record, Tom Hanks, is just an actor, not a history major.
WWII, was inspired by racism, selective racism at that and Hitler wanted a final solution.
The eradication through genocide of the Israelis, homeless, gypsies, any undesirables.
Japan and Italy had just as much of this planned as Germany.
No one ever said your grandfather was not admirable, I did not know him nor would anyone here on ATS, nor would Tom Hanks, so get your emotions in
check.
If you really want to know more about how it was done, I recommend this book :
Quote from : Wikipedia : I.B.M. and the Holocaust
IBM and the Holocaust, by Edwin Black, is a book documenting the relationship between IBM and the Third Reich. Crown Publishing and a consortium of
other leading publishers worldwide published it in 2001 in more than forty countries in fourteen languages.
IBM and the
Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation
Amazon Review :
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.)
Edwin Black : IBM and the Holocaust
That one book, is a compression of the information of WWII, of just one aspect of how, why, and that the eradication of the Israelis was done, through
I.B.M.
You will notice I do not call the Israelis,
"Jews", because that word is nasty.
To me, using Adolph Hitler's word, is anti-Semitic, as was Juden.
I speak of the process quite a bit more in the thread below but there is so much knowledge that is lost to history, because people do not bother
researching it.
The US Census Form - coming to your mailbox!
The thread is not mine originally, but I've posted some critical information there.
Remember, if your grandfather fought on behalf of the Allies, he was a hero, if he fought on behalf of the Nazi's he was wrong, and if he was just a
loyal German, he was blind, and without knowing any of those variables I cannot speak to his honor or not, my commentary there is a blanket statement
about history.
Research, investigate, and cross-reference and take Hollywood as nothing more than Hollywood.
[edit on 16-3-2010 by SpartanKingLeonidas]