IBM and the Holocaust
Page 19
When the pace of emigration was not quick enough, Jews in the Austrian provinces were simply expelled from their homes with no notice. More than 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children in the Burgenland region of Austria, many with roots dating back centuries, were loaded onto trucks, driven to the Jewish quarter of Vienna, and summarily dumped. The Vienna Jewish community housed them in synagogues and other buildings as best they could, but the weather was unusually cold and many of the children suffered extreme exposure and near starvation from the ordeal.13
On June 30, 1938, nearly 10,000 Jewish-owned businesses in Austria were ordered to immediately fire all Jewish employees—30,000 men and women—and replace them with Aryans. The mass media described “heart-breaking scenes” across Vienna as trusted Jewish employees—many of ten- and twenty-year tenure—were suddenly ousted without warning or severance.14
Expulsions, exclusions, and confiscations raged across Vienna, stripping Jewish citizens of their dignity, possessions, and legal status. No one was spared. Middle-class Jews from Sigmund Freud to nameless victims were forced to board any ship, train, or bus out of Austria with no possessions other than what they could carry.15 Once Jews were identified, their lives in Austria were over.
Suicide became a frequent alternative. In the first 10 days of German annexation, ninety-six persons committed suicide. As more Jews found themselves dispossessed or facing the prospect of Dachau, they entered into suicide pacts and even suicide clubs.16
With stunning precision, the Nazis knew exactly who in Austria was Jewish. Indeed, the New York Times, in its initial coverage of the round-ups, could not help but comment, “Many of these patrols are engaged in rounding up the thousands on lists of those due for imprisonment and ‘correction.’ These lists were compiled quietly year after year in preparation for the day of Germany’s seizure of power.”17
IBM was in Austria. Before Hitler came to power, the company was represented only by an agency called Furth & Company, operated in part by Stephan Furth. But in 1933, after Hitler declared the Third Reich, Watson established a wholly-owned IBM subsidiary in Austria. Furth then went to the United States to undergo sales training with IBM in New York. Shortly thereafter, Furth returned to Vienna as co-manager of the new wholly-owned IBM subsidiary. That subsidiary had the benefit of one of IBM’s most talented punch card engineers, Gustav Tauschek, and Manager Victor Furth. Another Dehomag-trained manager named Berthold later joined Furth. In 1934, IBM undertook the Austrian census, and two years later, Watson approved a card printing plant for the country.18
In early 1938, in the weeks leading up to the March Anschluss, Adolf Eichmann was dispatched to Vienna as a specialist on Jewish affairs to organize forced Jewish emigration. Once in Vienna, he found an enormous punch card operation working around the clock. The Hollerith program superseded every other aspect of German preparations.19
“For weeks in advance [of the Anschluss],” remembered Eichmann, “every able-bodied man they could find was put to work in three shifts: writing file cards for an enormous circular card file, several yards in diameter, which a man sitting on a piano stool could operate and find any card he wanted thanks to a system of punch holes. All information important for Austria was entered on these cards. The data was taken from annual reports, handbooks, the newspapers of all the political parties, membership files; in short, everything imaginable…. Each card carried name, address, party membership, whether Jew, Freemason or practicing Catholic or Protestant; whether politically active, whether this or whether that. During that period, our regular work was put on ice.”20
The German racial census scheduled for May 1938 was postponed a year to allow Dehomag to draw up new plans to count the population of Austria as well. Dehomag opened several additional branches throughout the greater Reich to accommodate the extra load. More than twenty-five offices would tackle the task of profiling the expanded base of some 70 million Germans and Austrians.21
Hitler’s reign of terror against the Jews continued throughout 1938 to the continuing astonishment of the world. The final stage of confiscation was launched on April 27 as the Reich ordered Jews to register virtually all possessions.22 Hollerith machines were kept busy tabulating assets.
Conditions in Nazi Germany became ever more nightmarish. Beheading was adopted as the dreaded new punishment of the unappealable Peoples’ Court, which adjudicated in secret but announced its executions to the world media as a warning to all those the Reich considered special enemies. Scores of ghastly concentration camps were opened throughout the Greater Reich, each spawning its own infamy of cruel torture and degradation depicted in the newsreels and magazines of the day. Mob violence during the day, a dreaded knock on the door in the middle of the night, humiliating public campaigns, and endless decrees forcing Jews further into starvation and impoverishment rained terror on Jewish existence in the Greater Reich.23
World revulsion against Germany was inspired not just by its anti-Semitic outrages, but by a continuous assault of highly publicized oppression against Catholics, Protestant church groups, intellectuals, and others the Nazis did not agree with.24 Hitler’s war menacing clearly identified Czechoslovakia for imminent takeover. Poland and France seemed next. Many thought it was just a matter of time before Europe re-ignited into a total war that America would be compelled to enter. It became increasingly hard for anyone to argue Germany’s case, even euphemistically in code. Then came the turning point for Americans and indeed the world: Kristallnacht—The Night of the Broken Glass.
November 10, 1938, on the twentieth anniversary of Germany’s surrender in the Great War, all Germany exploded into a national pogrom of depravity and violence against Jews heretofore not seen. The Reich’s pretext was the assassination of a German consular official in Paris by a despondent Jewish refugee. Within hours of the news, disciplined cadres of shock troops driving in open cars, directed by uniformed SA leaders, with merciless synchrony, deployed in virtually every town and city of the Third Reich during the early hours. Almost on cue, Hitler’s Germany erupted into a tempest of shattered glass. Store panes, display cases, fixtures, office doors, and ordinary windows—if it was glass, the Nazis smashed it. Synagogues, cafes, schools, offices, homes—wherever there was unexcised Jewish presence, the Brown Shirts struck.25
Then Jewish possessions were systematically ripped, splattered, and looted. Brown Shirts spread Torahs across the ground and danced upon the scrolls. Furniture was thrown into the street. Valuables were carted away as trophies. Pictures, books, and curtains were torn.26
Kerosene came next. Floors and drapes were methodically doused. An enthusiastic drenching was reserved for Torahs, prayer shawls, holy books, and devotional bimahs in synagogues. Tossed matches. Rolled incendiary bombs. Lobbed petrol bombs. Nearly everything Jewish was set aflame. Not just in Berlin. Not just in Vienna. In every town and city of the Third Reich.27
More than 15,000 Jews dragged from their homes were brutalized before the cheering onlookers, herded into trucks, dispatched to jails, and in many cases, directly to concentration camps. Firemen watched the flames with laughter, taking care that neighboring Aryan structures were unaffected. Policemen studiously directed traffic, allowing the marauders complete freedom of operation.28
Here among the ruins was the final overnight summary of Jewish existence in Germany and a prophecy for their bleak fate in Europe. Jewish life would ultimately be incinerated everywhere. The consequences of identification had been irrevocably unmasked. Whatever doubt the world had about the intentions of the Hitler regime, that doubt vaporized with the curls of smoke rising from hundreds of synagogues and Jewish offices in Germany.
Newspapers, newsreels, and radio broadcasts across the globe burned with headlines condemning Hitler’s Reich as savage and barbarous. The New York Times printed a tall page one banner headline: “Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn Jewish Shops and Temples.” The newspaper tellingly noted that the only Vienna synagogue not torched was one “that the authorities have protected�
� because it contains records of the Jewish community of Vienna that could not be replaced.”29
Washington recalled its ambassador from Berlin. Western diplomats called for concerted action to stem the anti-Semitic outrages. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a sharply worded denunciation in which he personally penned the words, “I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization.” Gallup Polls asked whether Hitler could be believed when he said he had no more territorial ambitions in Europe beyond Czechoslovakia; 92 percent of American respondents and 93 percent of British respondents declared Hitler could not be believed. Hitler’s followers in America had already been prosecuted in high-profile cases under various civil rights statutes. Now, the term “Nazi sympathizer” became widely used. And Nazi collaboration and propagandizing was deemed sufficiently subversive and “un-American” that eventually a special Congressional committee investigated.30
American reaction to the riots was almost wholly disregarded by Hitler. After Kristallnacht, Jews were forced to vacate their apartments, sometimes on just a few days’ notice, as Hitler loyalists queued up to move in. In Munich, all Jewish families were given just forty-eight hours to permanently leave the city. The order was soon rescinded as impossible—although later the demand was re-imposed. Jews were collectively fined 1 billion marks for inciting the Kristallnacht riots. And the last phases of confiscation and asset registration were set in motion.31
The German government issued dire warning after dire warning that the situation could worsen. But a New York Times feature on November 14, 1938, ominously asked, “Inasmuch as everything has been done to the Jews in Germany that can be done to a people short of physical extermination, there are arising some obvious speculations as to what these continued warnings may imply.” The question was answered just days later on November 30, when the newspaper published an article headlined “Jews in Germany Get Extermination Threat,” quoting the Schwarze Korps, the organ of Hitler’s SS, as it advertised the potential for wholesale Jewish murder.32
Watson had visited Germany twice in 1938, once in late May, just after the Anschluss of Austria, and once in early October, during the tense build-up to Kristallnacht. 33
Germany was threatening invasion daily. War preparations were no secret. Reich propagandists spread the word, ensuring headlines and debates. Commanders fortified borders. Mobilization plans were disseminated. Aircraft engineers received special awards for new bomber and fighter designs. Passenger trains were restricted so rail stock could be devoted to troop movements. Housewives were publicly asked to dramatically reduce consumption of fats to save money so the Reich could purchase raw materials urgently needed for its weapons production.34 War was in the air.
Yet, throughout the year, Watson argued passionately for Germany’s demands. He barely made an appearance at an international commercial meeting, university commencement ceremony, ribbon-cutting, or press conference without reiterating his well-worn Hitleresque appeal that the world “redistribute its raw materials” and lower so-called “trade barriers” as “the path to peace.” This public lobbying was undertaken even as the mass media regularly published articles and broadcast explanations that Germany desperately only needed those raw materials to arm her war machine. Even though Watson’s pronouncements sounded to many as mere code for the Nazi agenda, he held fast to his script. More than that, whenever Watson returned from a tour of the Continent, his dockside remarks always spoke glowingly of the optimism throughout Europe and the steadily increased standard of living for all—this at a time when the world was teetering on the brink of total war and witnessing the dispossession of the Jews.35
Prominent writers and personalities would rebut Watson’s brand of thinking. One foreign correspondent in the New York Times reflected the common view when he wrote, “It must be remembered… the series of boycotts due to worldwide resentment against German domestic policies… play almost as large a part as do the trade barriers.” In May 1938, just after the Anschluss and just before sailing to Germany, Watson answered such sentiments. “Unjust criticism of business is a trade barrier,” he lectured his fellow industrialists at an ICC gathering, adding, “Unjust criticism of government is another trade barrier.”36
For Watson, whatever Hitler was doing to the Jews and other perceived enemies of the Third Reich was no obstacle to realizing profit on Germany’s plans. “You know, you can cooperate with a man without believing in everything he says and does,” Watson sermonized to his followers after one trip to Germany, adding, “If you do not agree with everything he does, cooperate with him in the things you do believe in. Others will cooperate with him in the things they believe in.” On another occasion, Watson illuminated his steeled indifference this way: “I am an American citizen. But in the IBM I am a world citizen, because we do business in 78 countries and they all look alike to me—every one of them.”37
Yet when Watson’s ocean liner anchored at New York just days after the November 10 Kristallnacht outrage, it was all different. IBM’s Leader finally realized that American sentiment had become so extremely anti-Nazi, he now needed to distance himself from the very regime he had so publicly saluted.
NOVEMBER 25, 1938
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht
President
Reichsbank
Berlin, Germany
Dear Dr. Schacht:
I returned from Europe about ten days ago, and I feel I owe it to you and the German people to tell you of the tremendous loss of good will to Germany, which is increasing on account of the latest policies of Germany in regard to dealing with Jewish minorities in your country. I feel that I would be unfair to my long list of Jewish friends if I did not appeal to your Government to give fair consideration to the Jews as human beings, and to their property rights. As you know, for many years, I have put forth my best efforts to improve trade relations between Germany and the United States, and I want you to know that it is my honest judgment that if the Jewish situation today is not improved, it will have a very serious effect on Germany’s trade with our country.
Yours very truly38
Watson reviewed the typed letter from his secretary. A diagonal line was drawn through the entire letter canceling its message and the words “Yours very truly” were vigorously crossed out. The letter would not be sent.39 Second try, this one directly to Adolf Hitler.
NOVEMBER 25, 1938
Your Excellency:
In July 1937, as President of the International Chamber of Commerce, I received by your order the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, which was presented to me by Dr. Schacht on behalf of the German Government, in recognition of my efforts for world peace, and better economic relations between Germany and other nations.
In expressing my thanks to you, I stated that I would cooperate with you in the future as I had in the past in connection with these two important issues. This, I am still most anxious to do; but upon my recent return to my country after an absence of several months I find a change in public sentiment and a loss of good will to your country, and unless something can be done to bring about a more friendly understanding on the part of our people, I feel it is going to be difficult to accomplish mutually satisfactory results in connection with our trade relations.
The change in sentiment referred to has been brought about through the decisions of your Government in dealing with minorities, and I respectfully appeal to you to give consideration to applying the Golden Rule in dealing with these minorities.
I have read with the greatest interest the statement that your Government is prepared to make arrangements with a committee of leading Quakers to assist German Jews in the spirit of charity and the Golden Rule, I venture, therefore, to accept this act as a symbol of willingness on your part to grant more generous treatment to minorities.
If your Excellency would follow up this act of kindliness with policies inspired by its humanitarian effort, it would, in my opinion, be the one way by which those interested in the exch
ange of goods and services and high ideals might find the opportunity to help Germany regain the valuable trade and good-will which she has lost.
Very respectfully yours,
Thomas Watson40
Watson would be able to show his direct and unequivocal protest letter to anyone as evidence of vociferous objection to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Presumably the letter could be exhibited with the same flourish Watson employed in displaying other letters to and from world leaders, some of which he routinely carried in his inside suit pocket. Surely, the November 25, 1938, letter would put Watson on record as unalterably opposed to Hitler’s campaign. But somehow, Watson’s explicit letter to Hitler was… misaddressed. Watson could always say it had been mailed. But in truth the Post Office returned it—unopened. Watson’s secretary tried again four months later.41
People of conscience throughout the world were outraged at the Hitler regime. Yet Germany was on the verge of expanding its use of Hollerith systems to an unprecedented level. Watson needed to cover himself in the Reich and at home. He would now pursue a strange public posture, essentially speaking from both sides of the punch card. Deftly, he would mix his messages of subtle advocacy for Reich territorial and economic hegemony with patriotic assertions supporting American defense measures, and almost pollyannaish aphorisms offered to Germany about its brutal anti-Semitism. Watson would always be able to point to out-of-context portions of his remarks to satisfy any audience—be it those listening in the Nazi Reich or the United States. At the same time, all mention of Germany as the linchpin of IBM’s overseas operation was conspicuously dropped from IBM press statements.
For example, just after Kristallnacht, when Watson returned from Europe, his usual dockside remarks to the media listed the many countries he had visited, including Greece, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Turkey, and France. But Germany was not mentioned—the first time since the rise of Hitler that Watson had omitted the country name from his proudly detailed itineraries. A newspaper article about IBM’s foreign employees studying at the company sales school in Endicott spoke of students from twenty-four countries. Yet Germany’s name was the only one not listed—again, the first time the Reich’s place in IBM’s international commerce was omitted, even though, as usual, representatives from Germany were there.42