IBM and World War II

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Both the United States government and Nazi German government used IBM punched card technology for some parts of their camps' operation and record keeping.

Contents

By country

Germany

In Germany, during World War II, IBM engaged in business practices which have been the source of controversy. Much attention focuses on the role of IBM's German subsidiary, known as Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, or Dehomag. Topics in this regard include:

United States

In the United States IBM was, at the request of the government, the subcontractor for the Japanese internment camps' punched card project:

His grand design for 1943 was a locator file in which would appear a Hollerith alphabetic punch card for each evacuee. These cards were to include standard demographic information about age, sex, education, occupation, family size, medical history, criminal record, and RC location. However, additional data categories about links to Japan were also maintained, such as years of residence in Japan and the extent of education received there... The punch card project was so extensive and immediate that the War Relocation Authority subcontracted the function to IBM. [1]

IBM equipment was used for cryptography by US Army and Navy organisations, Arlington Hall and OP-20-G and similar Allied organisations using Hollerith punched cards (Central Bureau and the Far East Combined Bureau).

The company developed and built the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator which was used to perform computations for the Manhattan project.

Critics of IBM's actions during World War II

A 2001 book by Edwin Black, entitled IBM and the Holocaust , reached the conclusion that IBM's commercial activities in Germany during World War II make it morally complicit in the Holocaust. [2] [3] An updated 2002 paperback edition of the book included new evidence of the connection between IBM's United States headquarters, which controlled a Polish subsidiary, and the Nazis. [2] Oliver Burkeman wrote for The Guardian , "The paperback provides the first evidence that the company's dealings with the Nazis were controlled from its New York headquarters throughout the second world war." [2]

In February 2001, an Alien Tort Claims Act claim was filed in U.S. federal court on behalf of concentration camp survivors against IBM. The suit accused IBM of allegedly providing the punched card technology that facilitated the Holocaust, and for covering up German IBM subsidiary Dehomag's activities. [4] [5] In April 2001, the lawsuit was dropped after lawyers feared the suit would slow down payments from a German Holocaust fund for Holocaust survivors who had suffered under Nazi persecution. [4] IBM's German division had paid $3 million into the fund, while making it clear they were not admitting liability. [4]

In 2004, the human rights organization Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action (GIRCA) filed suit against IBM in Switzerland. [4] The case was dismissed in 2006, as the statute of limitations had expired. [6]

Responses to critics

In an "IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit", IBM responded in February 2001 that:

It has been known for decades that the Nazis used Hollerith equipment and that IBM's German subsidiary during the 1930s – Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag) – supplied Hollerith equipment. As with hundreds of foreign-owned companies that did business in Germany at that time, Dehomag came under the control of Nazi authorities prior to and during World War II. It is also widely known that Thomas J. Watson, Sr., received and subsequently repudiated and returned a medal presented to him by the German government for his role in global economic relations. These well-known facts appear to be the primary underpinning for these recent allegations. [7]

Richard Bernstein, writing for The New York Times Book Review in 2001, pointed out that "many American companies did what I.B.M. did. ... What then makes I.B.M. different?" He states that Black's case in his book IBM and the Holocaust "is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that I.B.M. bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done." [8] IBM quoted this claim in a March 2002 "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit," after the publication of Black's revised paperback edition:

Mr. Black is asserting that IBM is withholding materials regarding this era in its archives. There is no basis for such assertions and we deplore the use of such claims to sell books. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Herman Hollerith American statistician and inventor

Herman Hollerith was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. His invention of the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.

Punched card Paper-based recording medium

A punched card is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to directly control automated machinery.

Thomas J. Watson American businessman (1874–1956)

Thomas John Watson Sr. was an American businessman who served as the chairman and CEO of IBM. He oversaw the company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956. Watson developed IBM's management style and corporate culture from John Henry Patterson's training at NCR. He turned the company into a highly effective selling organization, based largely on punched card tabulating machines. A leading self-made industrialist, he was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world's greatest salesman when he died in 1956.

Electronic data processing (EDP) can refer to the use of automated methods to process commercial data. Typically, this uses relatively simple, repetitive activities to process large volumes of similar information. For example: stock updates applied to an inventory, banking transactions applied to account and customer master files, booking and ticketing transactions to an airline's reservation system, billing for utility services. The modifier "electronic" or "automatic" was used with "data processing" (DP), especially c. 1960, to distinguish human clerical data processing from that done by computer.

Edwin Black American journalist

Edwin Black is an American historian and author, as well as a syndicated columnist, investigative journalist, and weekly talk show host on The Edwin Black Show. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, academic fraud, corporate criminality and abuse, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany.

Unit record equipment Electromechanical machines which processed data using punch cards

Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, well before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical machines collectively referred to as unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) or tabulating machines. Unit record machines came to be as ubiquitous in industry and government in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century as computers became in the last third. They allowed large volume, sophisticated data-processing tasks to be accomplished before electronic computers were invented and while they were still in their infancy. This data processing was accomplished by processing punched cards through various unit record machines in a carefully choreographed progression. This progression, or flow, from machine to machine was often planned and documented with detailed flowcharts that used standardized symbols for documents and the various machine functions. All but the earliest machines had high-speed mechanical feeders to process cards at rates from around 100 to 2,000 per minute, sensing punched holes with mechanical, electrical, or, later, optical sensors. The operation of many machines was directed by the use of a removable plugboard, control panel, or connection box. Initially all machines were manual or electromechanical. The first use of an electronic component was in 1937 when a photocell was used in a Social Security bill-feed machine. Electronic components were used on other machines beginning in the late 1940s.

Keypunch

A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator. Other devices included here for that same function include the gang punch, the pantograph punch, and the stamp. The term was also used for similar machines used by humans to transcribe data onto punched tape media.

Bibliography of The Holocaust

This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.

Dehomag was a German subsidiary of IBM with a monopoly in the German market before and during World War II. The word was a portmanteau for Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen GmbH. Hollerith refers to the German-American inventor of the technology of punched cards, Herman Hollerith. In April 1949 the company name was changed to IBM Deutschland.

Tabulating machine Late 19th-century machine for summarizing information stored on punch cards

The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models were widely used for business applications such as accounting and inventory control. It spawned a class of machines, known as unit record equipment, and the data processing industry.

Guenter Lewy American historian

Guenter Lewy is a German-born American author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the applicability of the term genocide to various historical events. Lewy rejects that the word genocide is an appropriate label for either Romani genocide or Armenian genocide.

Nazi eugenics Nazi German policy of the elimination of "undesirable" persons from the German people

Nazi eugenics refers to the social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of "Nordic" or "Aryan" traits at its center.

The Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action is a human rights organization seeking justice on behalf of the Romani people (Gypsies) for the crimes of the Porajmos.

International Business Machines (IBM), nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM originated from the unification of several companies that worked to automate routine business transactions, including the first companies to build punched card based data tabulating machines and to build time clocks. In 1911, these companies were amalgamated into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).

<i>IBM and the Holocaust</i> 2001 book by Edwin Black

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation is a book by investigative journalist and historian Edwin Black which documents the strategic technology services rendered by American-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries for the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler from the beginning of the Third Reich in January 1933 through the last day of the regime in May 1945 at the end of World War II. Published in 2001, with numerous subsequent expanded editions, Black outlined the key role of IBM's technology in the Nazi genocide, by facilitating the regime's generation and tabulation of punch cards for national census data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.

Paper data storage refers to the use of paper as a data storage device. This includes writing, illustrating, and the use of data that can be interpreted by a machine or is the result of the functioning of a machine. A defining feature of paper data storage is the ability of humans to produce it with only simple tools and interpret it visually.

René Carmille French civil servant

René Carmille was a French military officer, civil servant under the Republic and Vichy government, and member of the French Resistance. During World War II, in his office at the government's Demographics Department, he created the National Statistics Service and the individual code number which would become the social security number after liberation and is still used in France today. While there, Carmille sabotaged the Nazi census of France, thus saving tens of thousands of Jewish people from death camps.

Edward (Ted) Millstein is an attorney in Philadelphia. He is best known for representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against large corporations such as Visa, MasterCard, and Volkswagen. Millstein is also well known for his representation of victims of the Holocaust. He was instrumental in obtaining reparations for victims and their families, which resulted in the formation of a foundation with over $5 billion in assets.

James Legrand Powers was a US inventor and entrepreneur, the founder of Powers Accounting Machine Company.

References

  1. ↑ Tyson, Thomas N; Fleischman, Richard K. (June 2006). "Accounting for interned Japanese-American civilians during World War II: Creating incentives and establishing controls for captive workers". Accounting Historians Journal. Thomson Gale. 33 (1): 167. doi:10.2308/0148-4184.33.1.167.
  2. 1 2 3 Burkeman, Oliver (March 29, 2002). "IBM 'dealt directly with Holocaust organisers'". The Guardian . guardian.co.uk . Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  3. ↑ Black, Edwin (May 19, 2002). "The business of making the trains to Auschwitz run on time". Editorial. SFGate . San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Ramasastry, Anita (July 8, 2004). "A Swiss court allows Gypsies' Holocaust lawsuit to proceed, Case questions role of corporate giant IBM in World War II". Law Center, Find Law. CNN.com . Retrieved October 26, 2004.
  5. ↑ Feder, Barnaby (February 11, 2001). "Lawsuit Says I.B.M. Aided The Nazis In Technology". The New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2017.
  6. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald staff (August 19, 2006). "Swiss high court rejects Gypsy Holocaust suit versus IBM, cites time limit". The Sydney Morning Herald . AP Digital. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
  7. ↑ IBM Press Room (February 14, 2001). "IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit". Press Release. Armonk, New York: ibm.com . Retrieved 2011-06-16.
  8. ↑ Bernstein, Richard (March 7, 2001). "'IBM and the Holocaust': Assessing the Culpability". Books. The New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2017.
  9. ↑ IBM Press Room (March 29, 2002). "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit". Press Release. Armonk, New York: ibm.com . Retrieved 2011-06-16.
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