IBM and the Holocaust (22 page)

Even as Hitler's fanatic followers thunder-marched through Nuremberg, Hollerith machines in Berlin were dispassionately clicking and rattling through stacks of punch cards slapping into hoppers to identify the enemy for the next drastic measures.

Throughout 1935, race specialists, bolstered by population computations and endless tabular printouts, proffered their favorite definitions of Jewishness. Some theorems were so sweeping as to include even the faintest Jewish ancestry. But most tried to create pseudo-scientific castes limited in scope. These latter efforts would encompass not only full Jews who professed the religion or possessed four Jewish grandparents, but also the so-called
three-quarter, half,
and
one-quarter
Jews of lesser Jewish lineage.
⁸

Adolf Hitler was personally aware of preliminary Hollerith findings that while only about a half million Germans registered as Jews in the census, the veins of many more coursed with traces of Jewish blood. About a million more.
⁹
He wanted something done about the continuing Jewish presence. The Jews Hitler feared most were the ones not apparent.
Der Fuhrer
had been working on the long-awaited racial definition for some weeks, but the enforceable formulae and calculations were still inconclusive.
¹⁰

On September 10, 1935, he flew from Berlin to Nuremberg to open the Party Day celebrations. Church bells sounded and flowers were thrown adoringly as his automobile wended through the streets paced by newsreel cars. But belying the flourish was a Hitler impatient to intensify Jewish obliteration.
¹¹

Suddenly, on September 13, 1935, Hitler demanded that a decree be hammered out—now—within forty-eight hours, in time for his appearance before the
Reichstag
as the culmination of Party Day festivities. Top racial experts of the Interior Ministry flew in for the assignment. Working with drafts shuttled between Hitler's abode and police headquarters, twin decrees of disenfranchisement were finally patched together.
The Law for the Protection of German Blood
and a companion decree entitled the
Reich Citizenship
Law
deprived Jews of their German citizenship and now used the term explicitly—
Jew,
not non-Aryan. Moreover, Jews were proscribed from marrying or having sexual relations with any Aryan. Jewish employers could not even hire an Aryan woman under the age of 45—a concession to Streicher's hysteria regarding sexual perversion. The laws would apply not only to full Jews, but also to half and quarter Jews as well, all according to complex racial mathematics.
¹²

Despite the decree language, the precise arithmetic of Jewish ancestry had still not been finalized. How could one differentiate a quarter Jew from a so-called
Mischling,
or person of some mixed Aryan and Jewish blood? Indeed, it would be months of drafting and redrafting before those fractions were finally settled.
¹³

Laborious and protracted paper searches of individual genealogical records were possible. But each case could take months of intensive research. That wasn't fast enough for the Nazis. Hitler wanted the Jews identified en masse. Once drafted, the Nuremberg regulations would be completely dependent upon Hollerith technology for the fast, wholesale tracing of Jewish family trees that the Reich demanded. Hollerith systems offered the Reich the speed and scope that only an automated system could to identify not only half and quarter Jews, but even eighth and sixteenth Jews.
¹⁴

With the denouement of September 15 approaching, Germany's own sense of Jewish numbers was changing dynamically. As Security Police Chief Heydrich had concluded, "it has become apparent that a great number of Jews in Germany have become baptized in the Evangelical and Catholic faiths with the idea that once they changed their residence, they would no longer appear as Jews in the registries."
¹⁵

Earlier in 1935, the Party's Race Political Office had estimated the total number of "race Jews." Thanks to Dehomag's people-counting methods, the Nazis believed that the 1933 census, which recorded a half million observant Jews, was now obsolete. Moreover, Nazis were convinced that the often-quoted total of some 600,000 Jews, which was closer to Germany's 1925 census, was a mere irrelevance. In mid-June 1935, Dr. Leonardo Conti, a key Interior Ministry raceologist, declared 600,000 represented just the "practicing Jews." The true number of racial Jews in the Reich, he insisted, exceeded 1.5 million. Conti, who would soon become the Ministry's State Secretary for Health overseeing most race questions, was a key assistant to the officials rushing to compose the Nuremberg Jewish laws for Hitler.
¹⁶

Working in bureaucratic anterooms and elegant villas, the race scientists tore up version after version until their paper supply ran out. So they finished writing on menus. Finally, at 2:30 a.m. on September 15, armed with the most up-to-date statistical information, the decrees were cobbled into presentable form.
¹⁷
The scene was set for Hitler's announcement that evening.

At 9
P.M.
, September 15, a grandiose if improvised hall decorated with streamers and ceiling fabrics was convened as a
Reichstag
for 600 deputies. They gathered for the sole purpose of ratifying the laws their
Fuhrer
would declare. Hitler outwardly appeared as his usual charismatic self, carefully attired in riding pants tucked into polished jack-boots, a red swastika armband around his left elbow, and a tie neatly buried under a fully buttoned soldier's jacket. His hair, austerely slicked to one side, bannered above his unmistakable narrow mustache to create Nazism's emblematic face. But to at least some observing him,
der Fuhrer
seemed tired from the long debate over Jewish definition. From his seat on the stage, he ascended three steps to a podium overlooking a massive assembly of the devoted stretching dozens of rows back and more dozens left and right of a great center aisle that was empty except for the obligatory photographer and a newsreel cameraman. Behind, a full orchestra and organist sat stilled, their instruments set down. Facing him, thousands waited, rapt with anticipation.
¹⁸

Hitler's speech, revised at the last minute, lasted only twelve minutes. Even though passionate, and at times fiery, his voice sounded weak. He rambled from point to point. Throughout,
der Fuhrer
tore into a world community that was offending German honor and boycotting German goods. As usual, he blamed the Reich's one great enemy. "We must notice here," he accused, "mostly Jewish elements are at work." He ripped into "international Jewish agitation" and declared, "The time had come to confront Jewish interests with German national interest."
¹⁹

Referring to the population statistics rendered by his raceologists but rounding off the numbers,
der Fuhrer
cried out, "a nation of 65 million persons has a right to demand that she is not respected less than the arbitrariness of 2 million persons." For the first time, Hitler had left behind the well-worn totals of 400,000 to 600,000 German Jews and now pronounced the updated Hollerith tabulated numbers.
²⁰

New racial laws, he promised, would immediately strip German Jews of their citizenship, even more severely restrict their activities and outlaw their ability to hoist a German flag. More than once, Hitler remonstrated, "the law is only an attempt at legal regulation. However, should this not work . . . should Jewish agitation within and without Germany continue, we will then examine the situation again."
²¹

Gesturing fanatically, he concluded with this warning: The new law "is an attempt at the legal regulation of a problem, which, if it fails, must be turned over to the Nazi Party for final solution."
²²

The pleasant Nuremberg night and reverberating
Sieg Heils
suddenly turned to rain. Hitler's well-photographed smile was now nowhere to be seen, not even as the crowd cheered him all the way from the
Reichstag
hall to his hotel.
²³

Everywhere, the new formulaic approach to Jewish persecution exploded into worrisome headlines. Under a page one banner story, the
New
York Times
lead was typical: "National Socialist Germany definitely flung down the gauntlet before the feet of Western liberal opinion tonight . . . [and] decreed a series of laws that put Jews beyond the legal and social pale of the German nation." The paper went on to detail the legal import of the ancestral fractions.
²⁴
The news was everywhere and inescapable.

The League of Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees Coming from Germany issued all member governments a long, detailed, and scathing report of the Reich's determination to persecute Jews on an unprecedented basis, all based on tabulating the percentages of their ancestry. The report's opening page sounded a special alarm: "Even more ominous was the declaration of the German Chancellor: '. . . should, however, the attempt at legal regulation fail, then the problem must be turned over to the National Socialist Party for final solution.' "
²⁵

Ironically, while all understood the evil anti-Jewish process underway, virtually none comprehended the technology that was making it possible.

The mechanics were less than a mystery, they were transparent. In 1935, while the world shook at a rearmed Germany speeding toward a war of European conquest and total Jewish destruction, one man saw not revulsion, but opportunity—not horror and devastation, but profit and dividends. Thomas Watson and IBM indeed accelerated their breakneck alliance with Nazism. Now Thomas Watson, through and because of IBM, would become the commercial syndic of Germany, committed as never before to global advocacy for the Third Reich, helping his utmost to counteract Hitler's enemies and further
der Fuhrer
's military, political, economic, and anti-Semitic goals. Even as he continued as a statesman of American capitalism and a bulwark of international commerce, Watson would become a hero in Nazi Germany—both to the common man and to Adolf Hitler himself.

NAZI GERMANY
was IBM's second most important customer after the U.S. market.

Business was good. Hitler needed Holleriths. Rigid dictatorial control over all aspects of commerce and social life mandated endless reporting and oversight. What's more, Germany's commercial isolation and preparation for war compelled the National Socialist regime into a frenzied campaign of autarky that necessitated upward spirals of surveillance and bureaucratic meddling into the smallest industrial details. Nazi planners wanted every object in daily life—from trucks to paper clips—coded, inventoried, and regimented. But no matter how preoccupied with economic and armament drives, the Reich inculcated every program with its maniacal desire to eradicate the Jewish presence.

IBM was guided by one precept: know your customer, anticipate their needs. Watson stayed close to his customer with frequent visits to Germany and continuous daily micro-managed oversight of the business.

Everywhere one turned in America or Germany in 1935, it was clear that identification and exclusion of the Jews was only the beginning. The next step was confiscation and Aryanization. During the two previous years, most Aryanizations were disorganized. Jews were forced from their business or profession and then pressured to sell their enterprises to Aryans for a fraction of the value. Thousands of others fled the country as refugees with their portable possessions worriedly stuffed into bulging suitcases. Homes, vehicles, and chattels were left behind, often to be seized in satisfaction of trumped-up juridical penalties or simply taken over as abandoned property.
²⁶

Jewish presence in smaller towns now became the most precarious. Once identified, Jews were unable to earn a living, then unable to even purchase food or medical supplies. Local shopkeepers, kept in line by neighborhood anti-Jewish boycott vigilantes, prominently displayed signs forbidding Jews to shop within. Pointed threats and a late night visit from hooligans usually sealed the family's departure decision. During 1935, dozens of localities were able to post signs on their outskirts declaring that they were
Jew-free
and/or Jews were no longer permitted to purchase lands or even enter the town limits. As Jews were methodically driven to lodge with friends and family in larger cities, they left behind their real estate and often much of their goods. Now the body of unattended Jewish property was growing.
²⁷