IBM and the Holocaust (65 page)

With Dutch Jewry handily identified, residentially confined under ghetto-like conditions, and constantly tracked, all that remained now was to organize their efficient deportation to concentration camps. Their names could be called up in an orderly fashion by demographic sector, age, or geographic locale, and of course always alphabetized.

It began in July 1941. Names were taken from the Central Office card indices. Special demographic maps at the Amsterdam Municipal Bureau of Statistics identified the Jewish population, district by district, using red numbers for Jews and blue numbers for non-Jews. In some maps, "dots" were marked onto city maps to more graphically identify Jewish population density by district—the more dots in a district, the more Jews. By July 1942, regular transports started running to a Dutch transit camp called Westerbork. The Dutch
Judenrat,
known as the
Joodsche Raad,
sent a contingent from its own staff to Westerbork to function as a registration department. Arrivals in Westerbork were directed into a large registration hall manned by about sixty registrars, who would take the prisoners' identity papers, ration cards, and other personal documents.
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One British intelligence report at the time declared, "The human being [now] becomes a number. . . . A duplicate of the new barracks number card goes into the card index. . . . a special card index [is maintained] in the camp. The identity papers of the deported Jews are then sent to the headquarters of the Population Register at the Hague which thus received the names of almost all the Jews who were deported from Westerbork to Poland." From Westerbork, they were transported to Auschwitz and other death camps. Twice weekly trains began July 15, 1942.
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Soon, the call up of names in Holland was so efficient, the Nazis regularly exceeded their quotas. For example, during one period, orders originally called for 3,000 Jews to be transported between January 11 and January 31, 1943. But 600 additional Dutch Jews were gathered, so a total of 3,600 occupied the five transports. The next four transports carried 4,300.
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By the close of 1942, virtually the entire 40,000 initial quota was met. Deportations continued. The 8,000 Jews residing in insane asylums and sanatariums were targeted next. The largest was the facility near Apeldoorn, the institution where inmates had such difficulty responding coherently to detailed census questions. January 21 and 22, 1943, SS detachments arrived at Apeldoorn hospital. In what was recorded as a particularly brutal episode, the SS men sadistically beat and herded the bewildered inmates, including many children, into cattle wagons—and from there to the train depot.
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It never stopped in Holland. The Population Registry continued to spew out tabulations of names. The trains continued to roll.

Meanwhile, in France, the Germans also deported Jews to death camps as often as possible. But in France, Nazi forces were compelled to continue their random and haphazard round-ups.
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Carmille was sent to Dachau, prisoner 76608, where he died of exhaustion on January 25, 1945. He was posthumously honored as a patriot although his role in dramatically reducing the number of Jewish deaths in France was never really known and in some cases doubted. How many lives he saved will never be tabulated. After the war, Lentz explained he was just a public servant. He was tried, but only on unrelated charges, for which he was sentenced to three years inprison.
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Holland had Lentz. France had Carmille. Holland had a well-entrenched Hollerith infrastructure. France's punch card infrastructure was in complete disarray.

The final numbers:

Of an estimated 140,000 Dutch Jews, more than 107,000 were deported, and of those 102,000 were murdered—a death ratio of approximately 73 percent.
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Of an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 Jews living in France, both zones, about 85,000 were deported—of these barely 3,000 survived. The death ratio in France was approximately 25 percent.
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XII IBM AND THE WAR

THOMAS J. WATSON HAD CULTIVATED A LOYAL FOLLOWING OF
employees throughout the IBM empire, as well as a nation of admiring executives, a fascinated American public, and enamored officials throughout the U.S. government. He enjoyed close social relations with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the First Lady, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Chiefs of state and royal families on several continents welcomed his company. His veneration internationally, and his esteem in America, overcame any incongruities and embarrassing curiosities of his little-understood multinational technocracy. Even when some American diplomats and Washington financial bureaucrats balked at sanctioning what clearly seemed like IBM's marginal or improper actions against American interests, the reluctance was quiet and cautious. These were exceptions to the rule of deference and cooperation always afforded America's almost regal industrialist.

But as the stream of IBM's Treasury license requests to transact business with Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy multiplied—whether directly or circuitously through neutrals such as Spain, Sweden, or Switzerland—one man did take notice. He was not a politician, an executive, or a member of high society dazzled by Watson's gleam or IBM's corporate prestige. Rather, he was just a simple person waging a war at home while America's troops fought overseas. His name was Harold J. Carter.

Carter was a little-noticed investigator working in a little-noticed group that functioned under various names, and wended its bureaucratic way through a variety of federal organizational charts. But the unit was most frequently referred to as the "Economic Warfare Section" attached to the Department of Justice. Its mission was to acquire economic intelligence and confound enemy commerce. Carter was also looking into a category of crimes loosely styled "trading with the enemy." He understood that foiling the commercial and technologic infrastructure of the Axis powers was as important as deploying tanks and troops. Carter's combat was waged not with carbines and grenades, but with subpoenas and indictments. During 1942 and early 1943, he began looking at International Business Machines.

Working out of a fourteenth floor office at 30 Broad Street in lower Manhattan, Carter must have comprehended that he was but a very small person looking into a very big operation run by very powerful people. Watson could pick up the phone and call the White House, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the most senior Army officials. But Carter was unaffected by the Watson gravisphere. He saw something very different in the haze and maze of IBM's involvement with Nazis. Carter was determined to put the pieces together.
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After reviewing Treasury license requests, media reports, financial filings, intelligence intercepts from Switzerland, and other materials, Carter concluded that IBM had constructed a unique international cartel responsible for about 90 percent of the punch card technology in the world. This included Nazi Germany, which had developed an extraordinary punch card industry used extensively for all manner of commerce, aggression, and persecution. Carter concluded that IBM's cartel and its special leasing practices, as well as its complete control of the punch cards needed to operate Hollerith systems, meant that the company possessed a virtual monopoly on the technology. But far more than that, because of its grip on punch cards and spare parts, and its ownership of all machines, IBM exercised virtual dominion over any Hollerith's day-to-day ability to function. As a result, IBM wielded a crucial continuing impact on Nazi Germany's ability to plan and wage war.
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Carter saw IBM not as a great American company, but a global monster. In Carter's view, Watson was no capitalist luminary but an opportunist to be classed with the Nazis themselves. The only way to secure the evidence he needed to begin prosecution against IBM and its executives was to walk into their headquarters and seize the documents. He needed a subpoena.
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An eighteen-page draft preliminary report was prepared, complete with diplomatic intercepts, summaries of telephone conversations between CEC and IBM Geneva, translations of letters between IBM's Werner Lier in Geneva and attorney Heinrich Albert in Berlin, as well as corporate correspondence outlining IBM's tenacious fight against the Dehomag revolt. Carter was cautious in building his case. But he used plain words to portray the gravity of his investigation and explain the unique and less-than-apparent forces at work. He entitled his undated draft "Control in Business Machines."
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CONTROL IN BUSINESS MACHINES

This is a story of a peculiar type of cartel. Generally speaking, the cartel arrangements which have been heretofore considered deal with instances wherein the cartel control stems from Germany, or one of the other Axis countries, and into the United States for the purpose of curtailing production of critical materials following a deliberate plan of Nazi economic warfare. Previously a villain like I.G. Farben or Siemens Halske has reached its tentacles into American Industry and curtailed production through patents, licensing agreements, and other types of control. This story deals with an American firm which has deprived not only our own citizens by limiting supply but also the citizenry of the world. Americans and Germans alike have felt the pinching hand of Thomas J. Watson and International Business Machinery manifested through universal limited production and international high prices. In this case, the monopoly control originates in the United States and operates throughout the world. And what Hitler has done to us through his economic warfare, one of our own American corporations has also done. In this "arsenal of democracy," which supplies materiel for over half the warring world, limited production spells our worst enemy. Hence IBM is in a class with the Nazis.

Further, we have a peculiar clash of interests. This [World War] is a conflict of warlike nationalistic states, each having certain interests. Yet we frequently find these interests clashing diametrically with the opposing interests of international corporate structures, more huge and powerful than nations. These corporate entities are manned not by staffs of citizens of any nation, but by citizens of the world looking solely to the corporate interest and pledging loyalty thereto. We see revealed [in] this clash, this dichotomy of culture between our nation and an international corporation whose interests do not coincide. . . .

Dr. Hollerith was employed by the U.S. Bureau of Census in 1880 where it was necessary for him to spend much time in the routine of addition and subtraction. As a timesaving device, he invented these tabulating machines run by electric current for the use of the Census Bureau. He sold his patents to the predecessor of International Business Machines Company, who set up their legal monopoly based on these patents. The patents have since expired but so many additional patents were taken out by IBM on improvements and refinements of the original Hollerith machines that the field has been entirely weighted down and the legal monopoly extended. The monopoly still exists because of the many patents taken out by IBM on many small technical changes but all based upon the original Hollerith patents. A question might well be raised as to whether the patents belong to Dr. Hollerith or the U.S. Government in the first place. . . . Since Dr. Hollerith was an employee of a branch of our government and since there was a definite connection between his work of computing and his invention, the question might well be raised as to whether the patents belonged to Dr. Hollerith and were his to sell or to the U.S. Government at the time of their grant. . . .

As to the fact that these monopolies [IBM and the ones IBM imposed on Powers and Remington Rand in the U.S.] existed, there can be little doubt. These companies deliberately conspired to limit production, dictate price and restrain competition as much as possible. This fact has been declared by the United States Supreme Court. We see a monopoly inflicted on the people of the United States. We shall now attempt to show the effect of this monopoly on the outside world, the international cartel arrangement.

This is a story of circumstantial evidence. Practically no documentation or direct evidence can be produced proving the existence of the cartel. Yet one indirect source after the other points to that ultimate conclusion and the indirect evidence is so frequent as to be almost undeniable. . . .

These international corporations have grown so large that very often their interests and the national interests within which they are supposedly contained do not coincide. The personnel of IBM, though nominally citizens of the United States, is actually composed of citizens of the world. Their loyalties to their corporation know no national bounds. Mr. Thomas J. Watson, President of IBM, was one of the leading figures in the international peace movement—not for altruistic motives alone. IBM's far-flung empire was going much too smoothly to be interrupted by war and Mr. Watson's goal is profit. . . .

Certainly it can be said that his company is not an American company, but an international company. . . . The company has not only worked hardship on the people of the U.S. but also people in Germany. When the German section of the world monopoly grew too burdensome on the German people, the Hitler Government apparently sought to interfere. . . . The entire world citizenry is hampered by an international monster and the indirect evidence herein presented seems to the writer conclusive enough to warrant an extensive search into files of the companies mentioned so that direct evidence may be obtained.
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