IBM and the Holocaust

by Edwin Black

  In May 1940, as American society prepared for an inevitable war with Hitler, Watson worked to secure the underpinnings of his public image. He intensified his advocacy for peace, and against all war.

  “Universal peace is one of the most desirable, most worthwhile ideals in the world today,” Watson insisted in a May 4 speech to reporters. “It cannot be sold by a few people working in widely scattered communities. The project requires a worldwide organization of enthusiastic, hard-working individuals selling the gospel of peace.”8 Watson advertised IBM as such an organization.

  Four days later, on May 8, Watson told reporters that the company’s latest course held in Endicott, New York, for IBM sales representatives from twenty-four countries was to “enable the students… to make greater contributions to the cause of world peace through world trade.”9

  Watson’s advocacy for peace was limitless. May 13, 1940, was proclaimed IBM Day at the World’s Fair being held that month in New York. IBM Day was nothing less than an extravaganza of orchestrated adulation for the company. A dozen chartered trains brought in 7,000 IBM employees and their wives from company facilities across the nation to visit the architectonic IBM Pavilion. Each IBMer wore a red ribbon of solidarity with the company. Two thousand lucky ones were chosen to be feted at a massive Waldorf-Astoria dinner. Special congratulations to IBM, as usual, were issued by leading politicians from President Roosevelt to the Mayor of New York. To underscore the drama, Watson commissioned an original orchestral work, The IBM Symphony, a bombastic composition dedicated to the uplifting spirit of the firm.10

  The climax of IBM Day, however, was Watson’s speech on the subject of peace. He delivered his sermon to 30,000 specially invited guests gathered at the vast Court of Peace located in front of the sweeping USA Pavilion. Mutual Radio broadcast the highly publicized event countrywide.11

  Peace was Watson’s message. War was bad, he argued at every opportunity. It would prove nothing but military might, waste lives and precious resources. War was in fact the worst recourse for the world, and all right-thinking men should be opposed to any involvement with it, Watson pleaded. As head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Watson everywhere proclaimed his driving mantra: “World Peace through World Trade.” Indeed, Watson must have seemed to the public like the very champion of peace and the arch adversary of all conflict. Ironically, at that very moment, Watson and IBM were in fact Europe’s most successful organizers not of peace, but of the ravages of war.

  Even as Watson was preaching the imperatives of peace, IBM was ecstatic about its accomplishments revolutionizing warfare not only for the Third Reich, but also for its Axis allies and even other European nations about to be vanquished by Hitler. In spring 1940, J. W. Schotte, IBM’s general manager for Europe, dispatched a confidential report from his Geneva office to senior IBM executives in America. Schotte’s dispatch addressed the activities not only of just Dehomag, but also of the two dozen European subsidiaries and agencies that worked as inter-connected branches of the New York company.12

  Schotte’s enthusiastic memo was entitled “Our Dealings with War Ministries in Europe.” It began, “Up to about one and a half years ago [about the time of Kristallnacht in 1938], our negotiations with the war ministries of the twenty-four countries which are under the jurisdiction of IBM European headquarters in Geneva, had not been very successful. This was due to several rea sons, but mainly to the fact that in military circles administration was considered a ‘necessary evil’ of little importance for the defense of the country.”13

  IBM had finally succeeded in gaining the necessary insider access to sensitive military projects, Schotte reported, so that company engineers could properly design punch card applications for war use. Schotte explained that in prior years “the military men in Europe have been reluctant to reveal their problems and programs to civilians. It has been overlooked in such instances that there is a distinct difference between knowing which problems exist and what system is applied, and the data and figures to which the system has to be applied.”14 As such, Schotte drew a fine theoretical distinction between IBM possessing specific knowledge of the facts about a military operation, such as the number of people to be counted or a list of German bombing raids, and the actions themselves.

  The big change in military acceptance of Hollerith systems appeared at the end of 1938, confirmed Schotte, when “in Germany a campaign started for, what has been termed… ‘organization of the second front.’” He elaborated, “In military literature and in newspapers, the importance and necessity of having in all phases of life, behind the front, an organization which would remain intact and would function with ‘Blitzkrieg’ efficiency… was brought out. What we had been preaching in vain for years all at once began to be realized.”15

  Schotte’s memo made clear that only at IBM’s initiative did the militarists comprehend what magic they could achieve with Hollerith automation. “Lectures on the punched card system were held by our representatives before officials of the general staff of various countries and, with our men, the study of possible applications was begun… progress was rather slow, and it was not until about eight or nine months ago [summer 1939] when conditions in Europe clearly indicated that a war was more or less unavoidable, that the matter became acute.”16

  Asserting that IBM sold to either side and had enjoyed an ever-escalating volume since the summer of 1939, Schotte’s memo declared, “The War Ministries of Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Holland and France (these are the ones that I remember very distinctly from memory) sent us orders for punched card equipment, some of which is already installed, others being installed when the war started, and further equipment not yet installed or still in transport.”17

  Revenues from IBM’s dominant customer, the Third Reich, was growing so rapidly, Schotte said he did not yet possess the sales numbers. “We have no details of Germany,” he reported, “but know that a large amount of punched card equipment is being used by the War Ministry.” He added that so great was Germany’s need in the months before and after the invasion of Poland that the Reich began requisitioning machines. Indeed, the agency ultimately known as the Maschinelles Berichtwesen (MB) had exercised full authority over all punch card technology since 1937. “In the second half of 1939,” wrote Schotte, “most of our equipment was ‘seized’ and used to supplement the installations already in operation.”18

  Once war erupted, the haste to add machines for military use was not confined to Germany. Schotte’s report noted that “rush orders were placed with us” by those countries not yet properly automated. Most IBM subsidiaries were two years behind in filling orders, so many war ministries hurried their orders just to get in queue. “To make up for lost time,” Schotte continued, “Holland and France gave us blank orders for a large quantity of machines, although our studies were not completed for several of the uses, and the quantities of required machines not established. As late as February 1940, the French War Ministry ordered a very substantial quantity of machines.”19

  Schotte’s report clarified that not all war applications were handled directly by war ministries. Numerous systems had been conveyed to private industry, “but are for their [war ministry] use and under their control.” Therefore, even though a coal mine or insurance company might be listed as the account, utilization of the machines was dictated by military needs either on the original corporate premises or moved to a more secure location altogether. Indeed, by spring 1940, his memo confirmed, many such systems had already been relocated to more protected sites, the report acknowledged.20

  Widespread expansion of punch card systems for war was ironically undermined in various countries by the draft itself, which infringed on the punch card workforce, asserted Schotte. However, eventually, military officials exempted “key men in our installations [who then] remained at their posts.” Moreover, “supervisors and our indispensable servicemen were released for such work.” Even still, he added, “A great inconvenience was cau
sed due to the sudden extension of equipment in most countries, a shortage of trained supervisors and punch operators. Ads were placed in the papers and such operators lured away from one installation to another by offering higher salaries. We hurriedly started training schools for key punch operators and supervisors, and of course servicemen who would be exempted from military service due to age or physical condition.”21

  Europe’s militarists had finally realized the indispensable advantages Hollerith instilled into modern warfare, boasted Schotte. Punch cards freed up manpower. Schotte cited a typical case: “For example, in Hungary with one set of machines and a few operators we replaced about sixty men.” He added that the machines “work twenty-four hours without vacation. The place and location is immaterial, and machines have been installed in bombproof cellars…. There is no limit to the flexibility and adaptability of the machines, provided the mass of data to be handled is sufficiently large.”22

  Most importantly, stressed Schotte, Hollerith machines guaranteed “speed in handling mass records and data. Such speed would be absolutely impossible by manual methods,” he stressed.23

  Schotte’s report included a list of IBM’s remarkable accomplishments for the armies of war-ravaged Europe. Personal information about every officer and soldier resided on Hollerith systems. In France, for example, the actual “mobilization call to each officer was printed by our equipment by means of punch cards.” Hollerith machines controlled all payrolls to both armies and civilian workers in munitions factories.24

  So comprehensive was IBM Europe’s data on both Germany and its enemies that Schotte’s memo was able to assert that the punch cards maintained “records of each and every Communist and Nazi.”25

  Records were also kept “on skilled laborers by profession, industry, etc. Such records are kept to control the potential of war material manufacture,” Schotte’s memo specified.26

  The labor data tersely alluded to in just a few words in Schotte’s memo was profoundly vital to Hitler. These automated reports allowed the Reich to strategically deploy both the skilled laborers within Germany and the conscripted work brigades and slave gangs shipped in from occupied countries. It was a daunting organizational challenge. By the end of 1940, the number of such conscripted and other slave workers totaled nearly 2.5 million. Re porting formats continuously evolved as the Reich’s needs changed and Hollerith technology improved to keep up. Eventually, reporting categories included what Germany considered its entire manpower pool, from company owners to skilled workers to unskilled laborers, divided into male and female columns. As time evolved, the various cross-indexed reports further classified the categories into “Reich residents, civilian foreigners, prisoners and Jews,” as well as others. Germany’s punch card control agency, Maschinelles Bericht wesen, coordinated the reports. The agency considered its labor data, “without a doubt, MB’s most important statistical survey on the deployment of individuals,” as a key senior MB official later expressed it. “For all participating offices,” the MB officer emphasized, “this was the major tool for the coordination and surveillance of work employment in the individual territories and in the entire Reich. Its results laid the foundation for the ongoing monthly negotiations on the assignment of workers for armaments production.”27

  Three years later, Schotte, while in his New York office, would describe to a government official exactly how the personnel tracking system worked in Nazi-occupied territories. “For example,” wrote the official that Schotte briefed, “if a Gauleiter [the ranking regional Nazi Party official] in Poland needs a number of technicians who speak Polish but are not Poles, it is possible to secure the exact names and locations of the men in their present units by placing the punched cards in the sorting machine and setting the machine to provide the correct answer. When the required number has been determined, the machine stops.”28

  People weren’t all that IBM counted and tracked. Schotte, in his spring 1940 memo to IBM, was also proud of the company’s ability to count “animals: a record of each horse, mule, etc.”29

  Although mentioned by Schotte only in passing, animal censuses were complex logistical projects. The Nazis ordered the first such “horse census” in Poland in early 1940. Jews operated many of the stables and equine operations in Poland. As part of the confiscation of Jewish assets, horses were seized and then mobilized by the army to move materials, prisoners, and even corpse wagons through the frigid, often snowbound Polish countryside, as well as the cities. By seizing horses, the Reich also cut off an important means of escape for Jews fleeing Nazi invaders. Orders to German police units stationed throughout Poland reflected the gravity of the horse count. Those instructions proclaimed: “In order to secure the Wehrmacht’s census of horses, conducted to avoid a secret shifting around, I request that you, in conjunction with the county’s farmers and all Wehrmacht offices dealing with the horse census, employ police forces, especially at night, to establish that horses are not secretly moved from their census districts into other sections. Captured horses which may have been moved are to be confiscated and their owners punished.” British intelligence agents monitoring the horse census called the project “tremendous,” and in a secret report could only marvel at the “thoroughness of preparations.”30

  The spring 1940 cow census in occupied Belgium, also monitored by British intelligence, reflected an equal feat of livestock counting. After the count, each animal was required to wear an identity card.31

  Schotte’s spring 1940 memo also listed the extraordinary programs of material control covering inventories as diverse as “arms, clothes, airplane spare parts” and all raw materials, such as “rubber, oil, steel, iron.” Moreover, reported Schotte’s report, “records [are] kept of each factory with the type and class of its machines” and whether they were currently being used for battle or classed as potential suppliers.32

  In occupied lands, material censuses and registrations organized Nazi plunder of resources. For example, a butter census was scheduled for occupied Denmark to discover large stores of butter hoarded by Danes. As railroad cars loaded with the material and merchandise of a foreign country entered Germany, punch cards kept track of the inventory. This system was refined as the months progressed and as Germany’s occupation broadened. Schotte later described the evolved system for a government official who summarized it this way: “The original inventory throughout a country is represented by cards,” the official wrote. “For a period of ten days in Germany, cards are punched of incoming and outgoing movements and then at the end of ten days are sorted by commodity, together with the inventory card… [so] the inventory is never more than ten days behind time.”33

  Schotte’s spring 1940 memo also cited the organization of all “automobile records: (military and in some cases also the private cars).” Private vehicles were routinely seized by invading Germans, first from Jews, and then from other citizens as well. Identifying cars and trucks was one of the first statistical efforts Germany generally mounted after invading any foreign territory.34

  Hollerith machines were deeply involved in combat records as well, according to Schotte’s spring 1940 memo. For example, Luftwaffe missions were all duly recorded to calculate the details of aviator combat, asserted the report. Schotte’s memo bragged that punch cards maintained a “record of each flight of a military aviator, for his personal record and calculation of premiums.” In addition, all German war injuries were analyzed by complex Hollerith programs that allowed Reich planners at the Central Archive for War Medicine in Berlin to conduct sophisticated medical research. In World War I, it was Hollerith analyses of head-wound injuries that helped the Austrian military design the most protective helmet possible.35

  Schotte’s spring 1940 report also listed “decoding” of enemy dispatches as a prime Hollerith application.36

  As each month advanced, Hollerith machines became more involved in each and every move of the German forces. Eventually, every Nazi combat order, bullet, and troop movement was tracked on a
n IBM punch card system.37

  In 1940, IBM NY knew the exact location of its machines in the Reich on an updated basis. Without that tracking, it could not audit IBM Europe’s charges and depreciate its equipment. One typical machine list in its Manhattan office was entitled “International Business Machines Corp. New York” and labeled in German words “Machines as of September 30, 1940.” This particular thirteen-page inventory identified each machine by client, location, type, serial number, and value. Five alphabetizers in the 405 model series, for instance, were located at the German Army High Command. Those five machines bore serial numbers 10161, 10209, 11316, 13126, and 13128, with each one valued between RM 8,750 and RM 11,675.38

  Other alphabetizers were placed at a myriad of offices, according to the list, including various military inspectorates, offices of the punch card control agency, the census bureau, the branches of Reich Statistical Office, and strategic arms manufacturers such as Krupp and Junkers Aircraft. Again, each installation reflected the type of machine, serial number, and value.39

  Ironically, all the rush orders placed into the militaries of such countries as Holland and Poland worked to the Reich’s advantage. When the Nazis invaded, all Hollerith machines were seized and converted to German use. IBM subsidiaries were then on hand to service the Reich’s needs. Sales to Germany’s enemies never bothered IBM’s hypersensitive Reich sponsors. Indeed, some in the Nazi hierarchy may have even viewed such sales as a virtual “pre-positioning” of equipment in neighboring nations, nations that many throughout Europe and America expected to be invaded imminently. In the case of Poland, for example, IBM leased Hollerith equipment to the Polish military in 1939 just before the German invasion, and then immediately after the invasion created a new Berlin-based subsidiary for the occupied territory. Accounts in annexed regions were transferred to Dehomag. In the case of Holland, systems were leased to the military in early 1940; a completely new subsidiary was planned in March 1940, just weeks before the invasion, and rush-formalized just after the invasion.40