Books: IBM and the Holocaust

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+[[!meta title="IBM and the Holocaust"]]
+
+"See everything with Hollerith punchcards":
+
+[[!img dehomag.png link="no"]]
+
+## About
+
+* [IBM and the Holocaust](http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/).
+* Author: [Edwin Black](http://edwinblack.com/).
+
+It's worth read on it's entirety.
+
+## Impressum
+
+Impressions not to be held in punch cards.
+
+So we have this huge corporation, an empire built around monopolist practices
+and information technology. It's pure capitalistic in the sense that it's not
+bound any specific foreign government political affiliations providing that
+it buys that information machinery.
+
+Watson's micromanagment style of "the most infinitesimal details" (page 241)
+is symmetric with IBM's own technologies of control. Shape and being shapen
+by a technology, as a mutual reflection with infinesimal consequences
+as multiple mirror-images.
+
+Was Watson before NCR -- and hence before IBM -- a mere seller? An the experience
+with Patterson's salles manual what changed everything in Watson's mind?
+
+    Patterson had created a sales manual designed to rigidly standardize all
+    pitches and practices, and even mold the thought processes of selling. No
+    deviation was allowed.
+
+    -- 39
+
+Watson sounds like the Steve Jobs equivalent at that era of
+techno-totalitarianism.
+
+Similarly to that inclination to control and domination, a government like nazi
+Germany was an _automatic_  customer/partner that exponentiated all
+potentialities for _efficiency_ -- in the limited, rationalized as an
+unidimensional sense of efficiency.  Note that I'm not using _natural_ to
+denote, as nature is just the automatic qualities of something.
+
+Total control freaks meet at the dawn of large-scale information technology --
+as we cannot say that informational practices did not exist before.
+
+A technology that was designed to operate no matter whats the nature of the
+"business". Be it commodities, manufacturing, people or war-making management.
+War-time or logistic-time. Does not matter.
+
+The joint venture of IBM and the Nazis created International Business-As-Usual
+with Machines of hateful domination.
+
+Even with the noise in the relation as when Watson broke with Hitler, some
+"unstoppable force" of automation was there to stay and groe -- in the sense
+that it was already being summoned and the force to stop it would be
+tremendous.
+
+The unusual of war was converted to the usual of business. No matter is war is
+being waged, the corporate-form now was immune to it using a complex set-up os
+nominated trustees, plausible deniability and levels of indirection. It can
+"dissolve" itself in parts split inside beligerant nations and regroup after
+the war -- keeping activities mostly unaffected and the profit guaranteed.
+That is a even higher level of transnationality. It survives beyond localized
+humours of mankind.
+
+THINK must be put in perspective. Not only in the ink in the printed punch card.
+Not only as a corporation as a Think Tank and efectivelly an acting tank.
+
+A technology based on the operation of counting and sorting limits thinking to
+only those two operations. In fact counting enables arithmetic and sorting
+stablish the decision-making needed by proper computing, putting the whole
+thought inside a box. Further restriction of thought is installed by allowing
+it just for the purpose of profit: how to better exploit resources? By selling
+that junk massivelly, this type of machinic "phylum" spread like cancer and
+gangraned many brains. Copy is memory; punch card destruction is amnesia.
+War is peace. Freedom is slavery. The Big Brother, or Big Blue, was an
+information/disinformation machine.
+
+Punch cards: holes punched in holes distributed in a plane-section. How that
+confines or enables thought?
+
+The nazi war machine was also an information machine, with an important
+vulnerability of being too dependent in foreign technology. Hollerith himself
+was a German descendent. Was that machinery only possible with this combination
+of "traits" (page 31)? Germanic war-and-blood ideology with american capitalist
+pragmatism?
+
+Nazism was not only land and blood, but had also a strict and extreme dose of
+ratiolaism. Not only megalomania, but also extreme obsession.
+
+Impressum ironically punched on a ThinkPad.
+
+## An image comparison
+
+At [IBM Schoolhouse and Engineering Laboratory Building](https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1933.html)
+entrance one could read the "Five Steps to Knowledge" [carved _at the
+footsteps_](http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/think_culture/transform/)
+(THINK / OBSERVE / DISCUSS / LISTEN / READ):
+
+![5 steps](https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/images/5steps_to_knowledge.jpg)
+
+![THINK](http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/images/icp/Y812281R29443C55/us__en_us__ibm100__cult_think__five_steps__620x350.jpg)
+
+While, at Auschwitz, it was written "Work sets you free" in the entrance gate, above people's head:
+
+![Auschwitz Gate](auschwitz.jpg)
+
+One-dimensional Rationalization as a monotonic misconception of the thought process used for mass extermination.
+Slave work, death by starvation which would set extermination camp inmates free from work and from data processing.
+
+A strange opposition of what is written in the ground -- for the head look something from above and at the same time
+leaving the head low while the THINK-good stays above -- and what's written above to be seeing from below, diminished.
+
+That Auschwitz photo also has an iconic "HALT" sign at the entry blockade, which is evocative about the
+last destination of an information processing in the extermination complex.
+
+## Workflow
+
+The International Holocaust Machines operated through the following stages:
+
+* Census/identification: initial data aquisition on population, assets and commodities, even livestock.
+* Confiscation: seized goods, assets, etc.
+* Ghettoization and Deportation, through:
+  * Sorting punch-card data to pinpoint residency location of undesirables to
+    subsequenttly kidnap them.
+  * Efficient management of railway using Holleriths to dispatch undesirables.
+* Concentration and Extermination, by using punch-card technology to manage how each person would
+  die and where it will take place, as well as management of slave work.
+* Internal management of the punch card business, which would include inventory
+  tracking and spoil recovering after the war.
+
+Besides the well known relation between death and money-making during wars,
+that was a Death Factory: if life could be stated as a long "detour to death", a
+Death Factory is exactly it's opposite: and acceleration instead of a delay,
+the acumen of the industrial process at the massive scale.
+
+## Ideas
+
+Somebody ought to sort out the data -- not using punch cards! -- presenting in
+the book: production inputs, outputs and what's known about profits, royalties
+and tax avoidance; how money was transfered and invested. Or maybe somebody
+already did that? Lot's interesting stuff might be discovered by doing a
+quantitative analysis.
+
+It also might be important to search through patent offices for Hollerith
+applications.
+
+And creation of organograms and relational charts/maps.
+
+## Questions
+
+How Holleriths were made? Which were manual and with were automaded procedures?
+Was an assembly lines and time-controlled manufacturing processes involved?
+Does Holleriths were involved in management of it's own production?
+
+## Excerpts
+
+### Hollerith
+
+Machine characteristics:
+
+* Closed, pattented design.
+* Commercialized only through leasing.
+* Compatible cards between Hollerith machines, "no other machine that might ever be produced" (how?).
+
+Hollerith characteristics:
+
+    Just nineteen years old, Hollerith moved to Washington, D.C., to join
+    the Census bureau. Over dinner one night at the posh Potomac Boat Club,
+    Director of Vital Statistics, John Billings, quipped to Hollerith, "There ought
+    to be a machine for doing the purely mechanical work of tabulating popula-
+    tion and similar statistics." Inventive Hollerith began to think about a solu-
+    tion. French looms, simple music boxes, and player pianos used punched
+    holes on rolls or cards to automate rote activity. About a year later, Hollerith
+    was struck with his idea. He saw a train conductor punch tickets in a special
+    pattern to record physical characteristics such as height, hair color, size of
+    nose, and clothing—a sort of "punched photograph." Other conductors
+    could read the code and then catch anyone re-using the ticket of the original
+    passenger. 5
+
+    Hollerith's idea was a card with standardized holes, each representing a
+    different trait: gender, nationality, occupation, and so forth. The card would
+    then be fed into a "reader." By virtue of easily adjustable spring mechanisms
+    and brief electrical brush contacts sensing for the holes, the cards could be
+    "read" as they raced through a mechanical feeder. The processed cards could
+    then be sorted into stacks based on a specified series of punched holes. 6
+
+    Millions of cards could be sorted and resorted. Any desired trait
+    could be isolated—general or specific—by simply sorting and resorting for
+    data-specific holes. The machines could render the portrait of an entire
+    population—or could pick out any group within that population. Indeed, one
+    man could be identified from among millions if enough holes could be
+    punched into a card and sorted enough times. Every punch card would
+    become an informational storehouse limited only by the number of holes. It
+    was nothing less than a nineteenth-century bar code for human beings. 7
+
+    -- 31
+
+    Since the Census Bureau only needed most of the tabulators once every
+    decade, and because the defensive inventor always suspected some electri-
+    cian or mechanic would steal his design, Hollerith decided that the systems
+    would be leased by the government, not purchased. This important decision
+    to lease machines, not sell them, would dominate all major IBM business
+    transactions for the next century. Washington paid Hollerith about $750,000
+    to rent his machines for the project. Now the inventor's challenge was to find
+
+    -- 32
+
+    Italy, England, France, Austria, and Germany all submitted orders. Hollerith's
+    new technology was vi r t ual l y unrivaled. His machines made advanced census
+    taking possible everywhere in the world. He and he alone would control the
+    technology because the punchers, sorters, and tabulators were all designed
+    to be compatible with each other—and with no other machine that might
+    ever be produced. 12
+
+    [...]
+
+    Other than his inventions, Hollerith was said to cherish three things: his
+    German heritage, his privacy, and his cat Bismarck. His link to everything
+    German was obvious to all around him.
+
+    [...]
+
+    For privacy, Hollerith built a tall fence around his home to keep out
+    neighbors and their pets. When too many cats scaled the top to jump into the
+    yard, the ever-inventive Hollerith strung electrical wire along the fence, con-
+    nected it to a battery, and then perched at his window puffing on a cigar.
+    When a neighbor cat would appear threatening Bismarck's privacy, Hollerith
+    would depress a switch, sending an electrical jolt into the animal. 16
+    Hollerith's first major overseas census was organized for the brutal
+    regime of Czar Nicholas II to launch the first-ever census of an estimated
+    120 million Russians. Nicholas was anxious to import Hollerith technology.
+
+    -- 34
+
+### IBM merger
+
+The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, or CTR:
+
+    The four lackluster firms Flint selected defied any apparent rationale
+    for merger. International Time Recording Company manufactured time
+    clocks to record worker hours. Computing Scale Company sold simple retail
+    scales with pricing charts attached as well as a line of meat and cheese slicers.
+    Bundy Manufacturing produced small key-actuated time clocks, but, more
+    importantly, it owned prime real estate in Endicott, New York. Of the four,
+    Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company was simply the largest and most
+    dominant member of the group. 32
+
+    Moreover, Flint wanted CTR's helm to be captained by a businessman, not a
+    technocrat. For that, he chose one of America's up and coming business
+    scoundrels, Thomas J. Watson.
+
+    -- 37
+
+### Watson, "Paternalistic and authoritarian"
+
+    Watson was a conqueror. From simple merchandise inauspiciously sold
+    to farmers and townsfolk in rural west-central New York, Watson would go
+    on to command a global company consumed not with mere customers, but
+    with territories, nations, and entire populations. He would identify corporate
+    enemies to overcome and strategies to deploy. Like any conqueror, he would
+    vanquish all in his way, and then demand the spoils. Salesmanship under
+    Watson would elevate from one man's personal elixir to a veritable cult of
+    commercial conquest. By virtue of his extraordinary skills, Watson would be
+    delivered from his humble beginnings as a late-nineteenth-century horse-
+    and-buggy back road peddler, to corporate scoundrel, to legendary tycoon,
+    to international statesman, and finally to regal American icon—all in less
+    than four decades.
+
+    -- 38
+
+    Watson began the systematic annihilation of Hallwood, its sales, and its
+    customer base. Tactics included lurking near the Hallwood office to spy on its
+    salesmen and customers. Watson would report the prospective clients so
+    "intimidation squads" could pounce. The squads would threaten the prospect with
+    tall tales of patent infringement suits by NCR against Hallwood, falsely
+    claiming such suits would eventually include anyone who purchased Hallwood
+    machines. The frightened customer would then be offered an NCR machine at a
+    discount. 43
+
+    -- 40
+
+    Patterson planted him in New York City, handed him a million-dollar budget,
+    and asked him to create a fake business called Watson's Cash Register and
+    Second Hand Exchange. His mission was to join the community of second-
+    hand dealers, learn their business, set up shop nearby, dramatically undersell,
+    quietly steal their accounts, intimidate their customers, and otherwise disrupt
+    their viability. Watson's fake company never needed to make a profit—only
+    spend money to decimate unsuspecting dealers of used registers. Eventually,
+    they would either be driven out of business or sell out to Watson with a dra-
+    conian non-compete clause. Funneled money from NCR was used for opera-
+    tions since Watson had no capital of his own. 46
+
+    -- 41
+
+    NCR salesmen wore dark suits, the corporation innovated a One Hun-
+    dred Point Club for agents who met their quota, and The Cash stressed "clean
+    living" as a virtue for commercial success. One day during a pep rally to the
+    troops, Watson scrawled the word THINK on a piece of paper. Patterson saw
+    the note and ordered THINK signs distributed throughout the company.
+    Watson embraced many of Patterson's regimenting techniques as indispens-
+    able doctrine for good sales. What he learned at NCR would stay with him
+    forever. 53
+
+    [...]
+
+    Patterson, Watson, and several dozen other Cash executives were indicted for
+    criminal conspiracy to restrain trade and construct a monopoly.
+
+    [...]
+
+    A year later, in 1913, all defendants were found guilty by an Ohio jury.
+    Damning evidence, supplied by Watson colleagues and even Watson's own
+    signed letters of instructions, were irrefutable. Most of the men, including
+    Watson, received a one-year jail sentence. Many of the convicted wept and
+    asked for leniency. But not Watson. He declared that he was proud of what
+    he had accomplished. 55
+
+    -- 42
+
+    Then came the floods.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The Cash pounced. NCR organized an immense emergency relief effort.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Patterson, Watson, and the other NCR men became national heroes over-
+
+    [...]
+
+    Petitions were sent to President Woodrow Wilson asking for a pardon.
+    Considering public sentiment, prosecutors offered consent decrees in lieu of
+    jail time. Most of the defendants eagerly signed. Watson, however, refused,
+    maintaining he saw nothing wrong in his conduct. Eventually, Watson's attorneys
+    successfully overturned the conviction on a technicality. The government
+    declined to re-prosecute. 58 But then the unpredictable and maniacal Patterson
+    rewarded Watson's
+
+    -- 42-43
+
+    Patterson had demanded starched white shirts and dark suits at NCR. Watson
+    insisted CTR employees dress in an identical uniform. And Watson borrowed his
+    own NCR innovation, the term THINK, which at CTR was impressed onto as many
+    surfaces as could be found, from the wall above Watson's desk to the bottom of
+    company stationery. These Patterson cum Watson touches were easy to implement
+    since several key Watson aides were old cronies from the NCR scandal days. 66
+
+    -- 45
+
+A "father image":
+
+    Watson embodied more than the boss. He was the Leader. He even had a song.
+    Clad in their uniforms of dark blue suits and glistening white shirts, the
+    inspirited sales warriors of CTR would sing:
+
+        Mister Watson is the man we're working for,
+        He's the Leader of the C-T-R,
+        He's the fairest, squarest man we know;
+        Sincere and true.
+        He has shown us how to play the game.
+        And how to make the dough. 70
+
+    -- 46
+
+    "IBM is more than a business—it is a great worldwide institution that is going
+    on forever." 74 More than ever. Watson f us e d himself into every facet of IBM's opera-
+    tions, injecting his style into every decision, and mesmerizing the psyche of
+    every employee. "IBM Spirit"—this was the term Watson ascribed to the all-
+    encompassing, almost tribal devotion to company that he demanded.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Children began their indoctrination early, becoming eligible at age three for
+    the kiddy rolls of the IBM Club, graduating to junior ranks at age eight. 76
+
+    [...]
+
+    Watson's own son, Tom, who inherited his father's throne at IBM,
+    admitted, "The more I worked at IBM, the more I resented Dad for the cult-
+    like atmosphere that surrounded him." 78
+
+    [...]
+
+    The ever- present equating of his name with the word THINK was more than an
+    Orwellian exercise, it was a true-life indoctrination. The Watson mystique was
+    never confined to the four walls of IBM. His aura was only magnified by
+
+    -- 47
+
+    Fortune referred to Watson as "the Leader," with a capital "L." So completely
+    con- scious was Watson of his mythic quality that he eyed even the porters on
+    trains and waiters in restaurants as potential legend busters. He tossed them
+    big tips, often as much as $10, which was largesse for the day.
+
+    [...]
+
+    By giving liberally to charities and universities, by towering as a patron
+    of the arts, by arranging scores of organizational memberships, honorary de-
+    grees and awards, he further cultivated the man-myth for himself and IBM. 81
+    Slogans were endlessly drilled into the extended IBM Family. We For-
+    give Thoughtful Mistakes. There Is No Such Thing As Standing Still. Pack Up
+    Your Troubles, Mr. Watson Is Here. 82
+    And the songs. They began the very first day a man entered the IBM
+    culture. They never ended during one's entire tenure. More than 100 songs
+    were sung at various company functions. There were several for Watson,
+    including the "IBM Anthem"
+
+    [...]
+
+    Revival-style meetings enthralled the men of IBM. Swaying as they
+    chanted harmonies of adulation for the Leader, their palms brought together
+    in fervent applause in hero worship, fully accepting that their families and
+    destinies were intertwined with the family and destiny of the corporation,
+    legions of company men incessandy re-dedicated themselves to the "Ever
+    Onward" glory of IBM. All of it swirled around the irresistible magnetism,
+    t h e i nt oxi cat i n g command, the charismatic cultic control of one man,
+    Thomas J. Watson, the Leader. 84
+
+    -- 48-49
+
+### IBM and the Third Reich
+
+    The question confronting all businessmen in 1933 was whether trading
+    with Germany was worth either the economic risk or moral descent. This
+    question faced Watson at IBM as well. But IBM was in a unique commercial
+    position. While Watson and IBM were famous on the American business
+    scene, the company's overseas operations were fundamentally below the
+    public radar screen. IBM did not import German merchandise, it merely
+    exported American technology. The IBM name did not even appear on any
+    of thousands of index cards in the address files of leading New York boycott
+    organizations. Moreover, the power of punch cards as an automation tool
+    had not yet been commonly identified. So the risk that highly visible trading
+    might provoke economic retaliation seemed low, especially since Dehomag
+    did not even possess a name suggestive of IBM or Watson. 101
+    On the other hand, the anticipated reward in Germany was great.
+
+    Watson had learned early on that a government in reorganization, and
+    indeed a government tighdy monitoring its society, was good news for IBM.
+    During the Depression years, when the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration
+    created a massive bureaucracy to assist the public and control business, IBM
+    doubled its size. The National Recovery Act of 1933, for example, meant
+    "businesses all of a sudden had to supply the federal government with infor-
+    mation in huge and unprecedented amounts," recalled an IBM official. Extra
+    forms, export reports, more registrations, more statistics—IBM thrived on
+    red tape. 102
+
+    Nazi Germany offered Watson the opportunity to cater to government
+    control, supervision, surveillance, and regimentation on a plane never before
+    known in human history. The fact that Hitler planned to extend his Reich to
+    other nations only magnified the prospective profits. In business terms, that
+    was account growth. The technology was almost exclusively IBM's to purvey
+    because the firm controlled about 90 percent of the world market in punch
+    cards and sorters.
+
+    -- 52
+
+### Dehomag
+
+    To be sure, Dehomag managers were as fervently devoted to the Nazi
+    movement as any of Hitler's scientific soldiers. IBM NY understood this from
+    the outset. Heidinger, a rabid Nazi, saw Dehomag's unique ability to imbue
+    the Reich with population information as a virtual calling from God. His
+    enraptured passion for Dehomag's sudden new role was typically expressed
+    while opening a new IBM facility in Berlin. "I feel it almost a sacred action,"
+    declared Heidinger emotionally, "I pray the blessing of heaven may rest
+    upon this place." 118
+
+    That day, while standing next to the personal representative of Watson
+    and IBM, with numerous Nazi Party officials in attendance, Heidinger pub-
+    licly announced how in tune he and Dehomag were with the Nazi race scien-
+    tists who saw population statistics as the key to eradicating the unhealthy,
+    inferior segments of society.
+
+    "The physician examines the human body and determines whether . . .
+    all organs are working to the benefit of the entire organism," asserted Hei-
+    dinger to a crowd of Nazi officials. "We [Dehomag] are very much like the
+    physician, in that we dissect, cell by cell, the German cultural body. We
+    report every individual characteristic . . . on a little card. These are not dead
+    cards, quite to the contrary, they prove later on that they come to life when
+    the cards are sorted at a rate of 25,000 per hour according to certain charac-
+    teristics. These characteristics are grouped like the organs of our cultural
+    body, and they will be calculated and determined with the help of our tabu-
+    lating machine. 119
+
+    It was right about this time that Watson decided to engrave the five
+    steps leading up to the door of the IBM School in Endicott, New York, with
+    five of his favorite words. This school was the place where Watson would
+    train his valued disciples in the art of sales, engineering, and technical sup-
+    port. Those five uppermost steps, steps that each man ascended before enter-
+    ing the front door, were engraved with the following words:
+
+    READ
+    LISTEN
+    DISCUSS
+    OBSERVE
+
+    The fifth and uppermost step was chiseled with the heralded theme of
+    the company. It said THINK. 122
+    The word THINK was everywhere.
+
+    -- 56-57
+
+### The Census
+
+The datacenter:
+
+    IN MID - SEPTEMBER , 1933, 6,000 brown cardboard boxes began unceremo- niously
+    arriving at the cavernous Alexanderplatz census complex in Berlin.  Each box
+    was stuffed with questionnaires manually filled out by pen and pencil, but soon
+    to be processed by an unprecedented automated praxis. As supervisors emptied
+    their precious cargo at the Prussian Statistical Office, each questionnaire—one
+    per household—was initialed by an intake clerk, stacked, and then transferred
+    downstairs. "Downstairs" led to Dehomag's massive 22,000-square-foot hall, just
+    one floor below, specifically rented for the project. 18
+
+    Messengers shuttling stacks of questionnaires from the Statistical Office to
+    Dehomag bounded down the right-hand side of an enclosed stairwell. As they
+    descended the short flight, the sound of clicking became louder and louder. At
+    the landing, they turned left and pushed through the doors. As the doors swung
+    open, they encountered an immense high-ceilinged, hangar-like facility
+    reverberating with the metallic music of Hollerith technology. Some 450 data
+    punchers deployed in narrow rows of punching stations labored behind tall
+    upright secretarial displays perfectly matched to the oversized
+    census questionnaires. 19
+
+    Turning left again, and then another right brought the messengers to a
+    long windowed wall lined with narrow tables. The forms were piled there.
+    From these first tables, the forms were methodically distributed to central-
+    ized desks scattered throughout the work areas. The census forms were then
+    loaded onto small trolleys and shutded again, this time to individual work
+    stations, each equipped with a device that resembled a disjointed typewriter
+    - actually an input engine. 20
+
+    A continuous "Speed Punching" operation ran two shifts, and three
+    when needed. Each shift spanned 7.5 hours with 60 minutes allotted for
+    "fresh air breaks" and a company-provided meal. Day and night, Dehomag
+    staffers entered the details on 41 million Prussians at a rate of 150 cards per
+    hour. Allowing for holidays and a statistical prediction of absenteeism, yet
+    ever obsessed with its four-month deadline, Dehomag decreed a quota of
+    450,000 cards per day for its workforce. Free coffee was provided to keep
+    people awake. A gymnast was brought in to demonstrate graceful aerobics
+    and other techniques to relieve fatigue. Company officials bragged that the
+    41 million processed cards, if stacked, would tower two and a half times
+    higher than the Zugspitze, Germany's 10,000-foot mountain peak. Dehomag
+    intended to reach the summit on time. 21
+
+    As company officials looked down upon a floor plan of the layout, the
+    linear rows and intersecting columns of work stations must have surely
+    resembled a grandiose punch card itself animated into a three-dimensional
+    bricks and mortar reality. Indeed, a company poster produced for the project
+    showed throngs of miniscule people scrambling over a punch card sketch. 22
+    The surreal artwork was more than symbolic.
+
+    -- 63-64
+
+And the description follows which show how was explicity the wish to target Jews.
+
+Note for error-checking procedure and the "statistical prediction of
+absenteeism" which imply on the [informate](/books/sociedade/age-of-the-smart-machine)
+aspect of the procedure.
+
+### Discretion and secrecy
+
+    Watson developed an extraordinary ability to write reserved and clev-
+    erly cautious letters. More commonly, he remained silent and let subordi-
+    nates and managers do the writing for him. But they too respected an IBM
+    code—unwritten, of course—to observe as much discretion as possible in
+    memos and correspondence. This was especially so in the case of corre-
+    sponding with or about Nazi Germany, the most controversial business part-
+    ner of the day.
+
+    -- 68
+
+    Few understood the far-reaching ramifications of punch card technology and even
+    fewer had a foreground understanding that the com- pany Dehomag was in fact
+    essentially a wholly-owned subsidiary of Interna- tional Business Machines.
+
+    Boycott and protest movements were ardently trying to crush Hitlerism by
+    stopping Germany's exports. Although a network of Jewish and non- sectarian
+    anti-Nazi leagues and bodies struggled to organize comprehensive lists of
+    companies doing business with Germany, from importers of German toys and shoes
+    to sellers of German porcelain and pharmaceuticals, yet IBM and Watson were not
+    identified. Neither the company nor its president even appeared in any of
+    thousands of hectic phone book entries or handwritten index card files of the
+    leading national and regional boycott bodies. Anti- Nazi agitators just didn't
+    understand the dynamics of corporate multi- nationalism. 64
+
+    Moreover, IBM was not importing German merchandise, it was export-
+    ing machinery. In fact, even exports dwindled as soon as the new plant in
+    Berlin was erected, leaving less of a paper trail. So a measure of invisibility
+    was assured in 1933.
+
+    -- 75
+
+### Fascism
+
+    But to a certain extent all the worries about granting Hitler the techno-
+    logic tools he needed were all subordinated to one irrepressible, ideological
+    imperative. Hitler's plans for a new Fascist order with a "Greater Germany"
+    dominating all Europe were not unacceptable to Watson. In fact, Watson
+    admired the whole concept of Fascism. He hoped he could participate as the
+    American capitalistic counterpart of the great Fascist wave sweeping the Con-
+    tinent. Most of all, Fascism was good for business.
+
+    THOMAS WATSOON and IBM had separately and jointly spent decades making
+    money any way they could. Rules were broken. Conspiracies were hatched.
+    Bloody wars became mere market opportunities. To a supranational, making
+    money is equal parts commercial Darwinism, corporate ecclesiastics, dynastic
+    chauvinism, and solipsistic greed.
+
+    Watson was no Fascist. He was a pure capitalist. But the horseshoe of
+    political economics finds little distance between extremities.
+
+    [...]
+
+    After all, his followers wore uniforms, sang songs, and were expected to
+    display unquestioned loy- alty to the company he led.
+
+    Fascism, the dictatorial state-controlled political system, was invented
+    by Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini. The term symbolically derived from the
+    Roman fasces, that is, the bundle of rods surrounding a ceremonial axe used
+    during Roman times. Indeed, Nazi symbols and ritual were in large part
+    adopted from Mussolini, including the palm-lifting Roman salute. Ironically,
+    Italian Fascism was non-racial and not anti-Semitic. National Socialism added
+    those defining elements.
+
+    Mussolini fascinated Watson. Once, at a 1937 sales convention, Watson
+    spoke out in Il Duce's defense. "I want to pay tribute ... [to the] great leader,
+    Benito Mussolini," declared Watson. "I have followed the details of his work
+    very carefully since he assumed leadership [in 1922]. Evidence of his leader-
+    ship can be seen on all sides. . . . Mussolini is a pioneer . . . Italy is going to
+    benefit gready." 65
+
+    Watson explained his personal attraction to the dictator's style and even
+    observed similarities with his own corporate, capitalistic model. "One thing
+    which has greatly impressed me in connection with his leadership," con-
+    ceded Watson, "is the loyalty displayed by the people. To have the loyalty and
+    cooperation of everyone means progress—and ultimate success for a nation
+    or an individual business ... we should pay tribute to Mussolini for estab-
+    lishing this spirit of loyal support and cooperation." 66
+
+    For years, an autographed picture of Mussolini graced the grand piano
+    in Watson's living room. 67
+
+    In defense of Fascism, Watson made clear, "Different countries require
+    different forms of government and we should be careful not to let people in
+    other countries feel that we are trying to standardize principles of govern-
+    ment throughout the world." 68
+
+    -- 75-76
+
+What an irony: Watson defending non-standardization of goverments around the world...
+
+    His access to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and more importantly to
+    President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was unparalleled. While the Hoover Justice
+    Department was at the height of its anti-trust investigation of IBM in 1932,
+    Watson donated large sums to the Roosevelt campaign. Roosevelt's election
+    over Hoover was a landslide. Watson now had entree to the White House
+    itself. 71
+
+    -- 77
+
+A statesman.
+
+    So a happy medium was found between Watson's desire to maintain
+    deniability in IBM's lucrative relations with Germany and his personal desire
+    to hobnob with Third Reich VIPs. But, the demands of the growing business
+    in Germany would not be free of Watson's famous micro-management. Too
+
+    -- 79
+
+### Technology for the "Final Sollution"
+
+    IBM did not invent Germany's anti-Semitism, but when it volunteered solutions,
+    the company virtually braided with Nazism. Like any technologic evolution, each
+    new solution powered a new level of sinister expectation and cruel capability.
+
+    When Germany wanted to identify the Jews by name, IBM showed them how. When
+    Germany wanted to use that information to launch pro- grams of social expulsion
+    and expropriation, IBM provided the technologic wherewithal. When the trains
+    needed to run on time, from city to city or between concentration camps, IBM
+    offered that solution as well. Ultimately, there was no solution IBM would not
+    devise for a Reich willing to pay for services rendered. One solution led to
+    another. No solution was out of the question.
+
+    As the clock ticked, as the punch cards clicked, as Jews in Germany saw
+    their existence vaporizing, others saw their corporate fortunes rise. Even as
+    German Jewry hid in their homes and wept in despair, even as the world
+    quietly trembled in fear, there was singing. Exhilarated, mesmerized, the
+    faithful would sing, and sing loudly to their Leaders—on both sides of the
+    Atlantic.
+
+    Some uniforms were brown. Some were blue.
+
+    -- 79-80
+
+### Corporate schizophrenia
+
+    To achieve his goals, each man had to cooperate in an international
+    campaign of corporate schizophrenia designed to achieve maximum deniability
+    for both Dehomag and IBM. The storyline depended upon the circumstance
+    and the listener. Dehomag could be portrayed as the American-controlled, al-
+    most wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM with token German shareholders and
+    on-site German managers. Or Dehomag could be a loyal German, staunchly
+    Aryan company baptized in the blood of Nazi ideology wielding the power
+    of its American investment for the greater glory of Hitler's Reich.
+
+    -- 83
+
+### The rhetoric
+
+    "The physician examines the human body and determines whether ...
+    all organs are working to the benefit of the entire organism," asserted Hei-
+    dinger to a crowd of company employees and Nazi officials. "We [Dehomag]
+    are very much like the physician, in that we dissect, cell by cell, the German
+    cultural body. We report every individual characteristic ... on a little card.
+    These are not dead cards, quite to the contrary, they prove later on that they
+    come to life when the cards are sorted at a rate of 25,000 per hour according
+    to certain characteristics. These characteristics are grouped like the organs of
+    our cultural body, and they will be calculated and determined with the help
+    of our tabulating machine. 27
+
+    "We are proud that we may assist in such a task, a task that provides our
+    nation's Physician [Adolf Hitler] with the material he needs for his examina-
+    tions. Our Physician can then determine whether the calculated values are in
+    harmony with the health of our people. It also means that if such is not the
+    case, our Physician can take corrective procedures to correct the sick circum-
+    stances. . . . Our characteristics are deeply rooted in our race. Therefore, we
+    must cherish them like a holy shrine, which we will—and must—keep pure.
+    We have the deepest trust in our Physician and will follow his instructions in
+    blind faith, because we know that he will lead our people to a great future.
+
+    -- 88
+
+### Automation and efficiency
+
+    While Hitler's rhetoric was burning the parade grounds and airwaves,
+    while Storm Troopers were marching Jews through the streets in ritual
+    humiliations, while Reich legislative decrees and a miasma of regional and
+    private policies were ousting Jews from their professions and residences,
+    while noisy, outrageous acts of persecution were appalling the world, a qui-
+    eter process was also underway. Germany was automating.
+    Hollerith systems could do more than count. They could schedule, ana-
+    lyze, and compute. They could manage.
+
+    -- 92
+
+    [...]
+
+    Hitler's Germany began achieving undreamed of efficiencies.
+
+    -- 94
+
+### Now or then?
+
+    People seated in a doctor's office or a welfare line never comprehended the
+    destiny of routine information about their personal traits and conditions.
+    Question 11 required a handwritten checkmark if the individual was a for-
+    eigner. Later, this information was punched into the correlating punch card in
+    columns 29-30 under nationality. 83
+
+    -- 101
+
+### Information as money, on paper
+
+The discourse on purity was also present on technology itself, in the form
+of punch cards produced according rigid specificiations using a paper devoid
+of "impurities":
+
+    WHEN HERMAN HOLLERITH designed his first punch card, he made it the
+    size of a dollar bill. 94 For IBM, information was money. The more Germany
+    calculated, tabulated, sorted, and analyzed, the greater the demand for
+    machines. Equally important, once a machine was leased, it required vast
+    quantities of punch cards. In many cases, a single tabulation required
+    thousands of cards. Each card was designed to be used only once, and in a
+    single operation. When Dehomag devised more in-depth data processing, the
+    improvements only bolstered card demand. How many punch cards were needed?
+    Millions - per week. 95
+
+    Punch cards sped through the huffing machines of the Third Reich like tiny
+    high-speed mechanized breaths rapidly inhaled and exhaled one time and one time
+    only. But Hollerith systems were delicate, precision-engineering instruments
+    that depended on a precision-engineered punch card manufac- tured to exacting
+    specifications under ideal conditions. Because electrical current in the
+    machines sensed the rectangular holes, even a microscopic imperfection would
+    make the card inoperable and could foul up the en-
+
+    So IBM production specifications were rigorous. Coniferous chemical
+    pulp was milled, treated, and cured to create paper stock containing no
+    more than 5 percent ash, and devoid of ground wood, calk fibers, process-
+    ing chemicals, slime carbon, or other impurities that might conduct electric-
+    ity and "therefore cause incorrect machine sensing." Residues, even in trace
+    amounts, would accumulate on gears and other mechanisms, eventually
+    causing jams and system shutdowns. Electrical testing to isolate defective
+    sheets was mandatory. Paper, when cut, had to lie flat without curl or wrin-
+    kle, and feature a hard, smooth finish on either side that yielded a "good
+    snap or rattle." 96
+
+    -- 103
+
+There seems to be an equivalent discourse on purity and eugenics during the
+development of the transistor. Something to check out.
+
+    Only IBM could make and sell the unique punch cards for its machines.
+    Indeed, punch cards were the precious currency of data processing. Depend-
+    ing upon the market, IBM derived as much as a third of its profit from card
+    sales. Overseas sales were even more of a profit center. Punch card profits
+    were enough to justify years of federal anti-trust litigation designed to break
+    the company's virtual monopoly on their sale and manufacture."
+    When Herman Hollerith invented his technology at the close of the
+    previous century, he understood the enduring commercial tactic of prolifer-
+    ating a single universal system of hardware and ensuring that he alone pro-
+    duced the sole compatible soft goods. Hollerith was right to size his card like
+    the dollar. IBM's punch card monopoly was nothing less than a license to
+    print money.
+
+    -- 104
+
+    Never before had so many people been identified so precisely, so silently, so
+    quickly, and with such far-reaching consequences.  The dawn of the Information
+    Age began at the sunset of human decency.
+
+    -- 110
+
+## 1933 census was just a rehearsal
+
+    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
+    Protec- tion 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 marry- ing
+    or having sexual relations with any Aryan.
+
+    [...]
+
+    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 Jew-
+    ish 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
+
+    [...]
+
+    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 "practic-
+    ing 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
+    rishing to compose the Nuremberg Jewish laws for Hitler. 16
+
+    -- 114-115
+
+"Final sollution":
+
+    Gesturing fanatically, he [Hitler] 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
+
+    -- 116
+
+### Mechanics
+
+    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
+
+    [...]
+
+    NAZI GERMANY was IBM's second most important customer after the U.S.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Business was good. Hitler needed Holleriths. Rigid dictatorial control
+    over all aspects of commerce and social life mandated endless reporting and
+    oversight.
+
+    [...]
+
+    IBM was guided by one precept: know your customer, anticipate their needs.
+
+    -- 117
+
+    [...]
+
+    Dehomag could do the sorting in-house for a fee. The company bragged that
+    it possessed the ability to cross-reference account numbers on bank deposits
+
+    -- 119
+
+    None of Germany's statistical programs came easy. All of them required
+    on-going technical innovation. Every project required specific customized
+    applications with Dehomag engineers carefully devising a column and corre-
+    sponding hole to carry the intended information. Dummy cards were first
+    carefully mocked-up in pen and pencil to make sure all categories and their
+    placement were acceptable to both Dehomag and the reporting agency. [...]
+    Dehomag was Germany's data maestro.
+
+    -- 121
+
+    New devices never stopped appearing. [...] Many of these devices were of course
+    dual-purpose. They as routinely helped build Germany's general commercial,
+    social, and military infrastructure as they helped a heightening tower of Nazi
+    statistical offensives.  In Germany, some of the devices, such as the IBM
+    Fingerprint Selecting Sorter, were only usable by Nazi security forces. 46
+
+    -- 123
+
+### What the alliance meant
+
+    Rottke openly conceded the contract between IBM and Heidinger had
+    "been made under an unlucky star, [and] appears to be the source of all
+    evil." But he nonetheless warned Watson again that if Heidinger's shares
+    were transferred to a foreign source Dehomag would probably not be per-
+    mitted "the use of the word Deutsche (German) as an enterprise recognized
+    in Germany as German." 126 That disaster had to be avoided at all costs. To
+    IBM's doctrinaire German managers, including Heidinger, Dehomag repre-
+    sented far more than just a profit-making enterprise. To them, Dehomag had
+    the technologic ability to keep Germany's war machine automated, facilitate
+    her highly efficient seizure of neighboring countries, and achieve the Reich's
+    swiftly moving racial agenda. If IBM's subsidiary were deemed non-Aryan,
+    the company would be barred from all the sensitive projects awaiting it.
+    Hitler's Germany—in spite of itself—would be deprived of the Holleriths it
+    so desperately required.
+
+    From Watson's point of view, Germany was on the brink of unleash-
+    ing its total conquest of Europe. IBM subsidiaries could be coordinated by
+
+    Dehomag into one efficient continental enterprise, moving parts, cards, and
+    machines as the Reich needed them. The new order that Hitler promised was
+    made to order for IBM.
+
+    In July 1939, Watson arrived in Berlin to personally mediate with Hei-
+    dinger. A compromise would be necessary. The stakes were too high for the
+    Nazis. The stakes were too high for capitalism. But it was the Germans who
+    gave in, deferring on Heidinger's demands for a few months under term
+    Watson dictated. "Watson now controlled something the Third Reich needed
+    to launch the next decisive step in the solution of the Jewish question, not
+    just in Germany—but all of Europe. Until now, the fastest punchers, tabula-
+    tors, and sorters could organize only by numbers. The results could then be
+    sorted by sequentially numbered profession, geographic locale, or popula-
+    tion category. But now Watson had something new and powerful. 127
+    He had the alphabetizes.
+
+    -- 172-173
+
+    In Copenhagen, at the ICC [International Chamber of Commerce] Congress,
+    Watson's pro-Axis proposal exceeded anything the State Department could have
+    expected. He champi- oned a resolution whereby private businessmen from the
+    three Axis and three Allied nations would actually supercede their governments
+    and negoti- ate a radical new international trade policy designed to satisfy
+    Axis demands for raw materials coveted from other nations. The businessmen
+    would then lobby their respective governments' official economic advisors to
+    adopt their appeasement proposals for the sake of averting war. Ironically, the
+    raw mate- rials were needed by Axis powers solely for the sake of waging war.
+
+    On June 28, under Watson's leadership, the ICC passed a resolution again
+    calling for "a fair distribution of raw materials, food stuffs and other
+    products . . . [to] render unnecessary the movements of armies across fron-
+    tiers." To this end, the ICC asked "the governments of France, Germany, Italy,
+    Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States . . . each collaborate with
+    their own leading businessmen . , . with respect to national needs . . . [and
+    therefore] give all countries of the world a fair opportunity to share in the
+    resources of the world." 27
+
+    Even as Watson angled for Germany to be ceded more raw materials,
+    Germany was openly raping invaded territories.
+
+    [...]
+
+    No wonder the German delegate to the ICC enthusiastically lauded
+    Watson's proposal, which only sought to legitimize by private consultation
+    what the Third Reich was undertaking by force. In his final speech of the
+    Congress, Watson himself summed up the misery and devastation in the
+    world as a mere "difference of opinion." His solution of businessmen confer-
+    ring to divvy up other nations' resources to avoid further aggression was
+    offered with these words: "We regret that there are unsatisfactory economic
+    and political conditions in the world today, with a great difference of opinion
+    existing among many countries. But differences of opinion, freely discussed
+    and fairly disposed of, result in mutual benefit and increased happiness to all
+    concerned." 31
+
+    [...]
+
+    One State Department assistant secretary could not help but comment on the
+    similarity of Watson's suggestion to the Axis' own warlike demands. "This is,
+    of course, a political question of major world importance," wrote the assistant
+    secretary, and one upon which we have been hearing much from Germany, Italy and
+    Japan. It occurs to me that it is most unfortunate that Mr. Thomas J. Watson,
+    as an American serving as the president of the International Chamber of
+    Commerce, should have sponsored a resolution of this character. It may well be
+    that his resolution will return to plague us at some future date." That comment
+    was written on October 5, 1939. 37 By then it was unnecessary to reply
+
+    -- 181-184
+
+### Biblical Census
+
+    The Bible itself taught that unless specifically ordered by God, the census is
+    evil because through it the enemy will know your strength:
+
+        I Chronicles 21: Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a cen-
+        sus of Israel. . . . This command was also evil in the sight of God. . . Then
+        David said to God, "I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now I beg you to take
+        away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing." 78 On
+        October 28, 1939, for the Jewish people of Warsaw, everything
+
+    -- 195
+
+### The Ghetto, The Train and the Print Shop
+
+    Now the Reich knew exactly how many Jews were under their jurisdic-
+    tion, how much nutrition to allocate—as low as 184 calories per person per
+    day. They could consolidate Jews from the mixed districts of Warsaw, and
+    bring in Jews from other nearby villages. The transports began arriving.
+    White armbands with Jewish stars were distributed. Everyone, young or old,
+    was required to wear one on the arm. Not the forearm, but the arm—visible,
+    above the elbow. The Warsaw-Malkinia railway line ran right through the pro-
+    posed ghetto. It was all according to Heydrich's September 21 Express Let-
+    ter. Soon the demarcated ghetto would be surrounded by barbed wire.
+    Eventually, a wall went up, sealing the residents of the ghetto from the outside
+    world. Soon thereafter, the railway station would become the most feared lo-
+    cation in the ghetto. 83
+
+    The Nazi quantification and regimentation of Jewish demographics in
+    Warsaw and indeed all of Poland was nothing less than spectacular—an al-
+    most unbelievable feat. Savage conditions, secrecy, and lack of knowledge by
+    the victims would forever obscure the details of exactly how the Nazis man-
+    aged to tabulate the cross-referenced information on 360,000 souls within
+    forty-eight hours.
+
+    But this much is known: The Third Reich possessed only one method
+    of tabulating censuses: Dehomag's Hollerith system. Moreover, IBM was in
+    Poland, headquartered in Warsaw. In fact, the punch card print shop was just
+    yards from the Warsaw Ghetto at Rymarska Street 6. That's where they pro-
+    duced more than 20 million cards.
+
+    -- 196
+
+    The strategic alliance with Hitler continued to pay off in the cities and
+    in the ghettos. But now IBM machines would demonstrate their special value
+    along the railways and in the concentration camps of Europe. Soon the Jews
+    would become Hollerith numbers.
+
+    -- 203
+
+### 'Blitzkrieg' efficiency
+
+    HITLER'S ARMIES SWARMED OVER EUROPE THROUGHOUT the first months of 1940. The
+    forces of the Reich slaughtered all opposition with a military machine
+    unparalleled in human history. Blitzkrieg—lightning war—was more than a new
+    word. Its very utterance signified coordinated death under the murderous
+    onslaught of Hitler's massive air, sea, and 100,000-troop ground assaults.
+
+    -- 204
+
+    IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the
+    information age. Through its persistent, aggressive, unfaltering efforts, IBM
+    virtually put the "blitz" in the krieg for Nazi Germany. Simply put, IBM orga-
+    nized the organizers of Hitler's war.
+
+    Keeping corporate distance in the face of the company's mounting
+    involvement was now more imperative than ever. Although deniability was
+    constructed with enough care to last for decades, the undeniable fact was
+    that either IBM NY or its European headquarters in Geneva or its individual
+    subsidiaries, depending upon the year and locale, maintained intimate
+    knowledge of each and every application wielded by Nazis. This knowledge
+    was inherendy revealed by an omnipresent paper trail: the cards themselves.
+    IBM—and only IBM—printed all the cards. Billions of them.
+
+    -- 213
+
+### Even more discretion
+
+    Only with great caution could Watson now publicly defend the Hitler
+    agenda, even through euphemisms and code words. Most Americans would
+    not tolerate anyone who even appeared to be a Nazi sympathizer or collabo-
+    rator. So, as he had done since Kristallnacht in late 1938, Watson continued
+    to insert corporate distance between himself and all involvement in the
+    affairs of his subsidiaries in Nazi Europe—even as he micro-managed their
+    day-to-day operations. More than ever, he now channeled his communica-
+    tions to Nazi Europe through trusted intermediaries in Geneva and else-
+    where on the Continent. He controlled subsidiary operations through
+    attorneys and employees acting as nominee owners, following the pattern set
+    in Czechoslovakia and Poland. 7
+
+    [...]
+
+    Peace was Watson's message.
+
+    [...]
+
+    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.
+
+    -- 206-207
+
+### Customized, proprietaty tech from a monopoly
+
+How they knew how the card was user for, which would lead to ethical concerns
+-- but the part of IBM -- and strategic ones -- by the part of the German government:
+
+    IBM printed billions of its electrically sensitive cards each year for its
+    European customers. But every order was different. Each set was meticu-
+    lously designed not only for the singular client, but for the client's specific
+    assignments. The design work was not a rote procedure, but an intense col-
+    laboration. It began with a protracted investigation of the precise data needs
+    of the project, as well as the people, items, or services being tabulated. This
+    required IBM subsidiary "field engineers" to undertake invasive studies of
+    the subject being measured, often on-site. Was it people? Was it cattle? Was it
+    airplane engines? Was it pension payments? Was it slave labor? Different data
+    gathering and card layouts were required for each type of application. 44
+
+    [...]
+
+    Once printed, each set of custom-designed punch cards bore its own
+    distinctive look for its highly specialized purpose. Each set was printed with
+    its own job-specific layout, with columns arrayed in custom-tailored configu-
+    rations and then preprinted with unique column labels. Only IBM presses
+    manufactured these cards, column by column, with the preprinted field topic:
+    race, nationality, concentration camp, metal drums, combat wounds to leg,
+    train departure vs. train arrival, type of horse, bank account, wages owed,
+    property owed, physical racial features possessed—ad infinitum. 46
+
+    Cards printed for one task could never be used for another. Factory pay-
+    roll accounting cards, for example, could not be utilized by the SS in its on-
+    going program of checking family backgrounds for racial features.
+
+    [...]
+
+    An IBM punch card could only be used once. After a period of months, the
+    gargantuan stacks of processed cards were routinely destroyed. Billions more
+    were needed each year by the Greater Reich and its Axis allies, requiring a
+    sophisticated logisti- cal network of IBM authorized pulp mills, paper
+    suppliers, and stock trans- port. Sales revenue for the lucrative supply of
+    cards was continuously funneled to IBM via various modalities, including its
+    Geneva nexus. 50 Slave labor cards were particularly complex on-going projects.
+    The Reich was constandy changing map borders and Germanizing city and regional
+    names. Its labor needs became more and more demanding. This type of punch card
+    operation required numerous handwritten mock-ups and regular revisions. For
+    example, MB Projects 3090 and 3091 tracking slave labor involved several
+    mock-up cards, each clearly imprinted with Deho- mag's name along the edge.
+    Written in hand on a typical sample was the pro- ject assignment: "work
+    deployment of POWs and prisoners according to business branches." Toward the
+    left, a column was hand-labeled "number of employed during the month" next to
+    another column hand-marked "number of employed at month's end." The center and
+    right-hand column headings were each scribbled in: French, Belgium, British,
+    Yugoslavian, Polish. 51 Another card in the series was entitled "registration
+    of male and female
+
+    [...]
+
+    The delicate machines, easily nudged out of whack by their con-
+    stant syncopation, were serviced on-site, generally monthly, whether that site
+    was in the registration center at Mauthausen concentration camp, the SS
+    offices at Dachau, or the census bureau in any country. 54
+
+    -- 214-217
+
+### Business plan and practice
+
+    Few in the financial community were sur- prised. IBM profits had been in a
+    steep climb since the day Hitler came to power. 57 Clearly, the war was good to
+    IBM coffers.  Indeed, in many ways the war seemed an ideal financial
+    opportunity to Watson. Like many, he fully expected Germany to trample over all
+    of Europe, creating a new economic order, one in which IBM would rule the data
+    domain.  Like many, Watson expected that America would stay out of the war, and
+    when it was over, businessmen like him would pick up the post-war economic
+    pieces.  In fact, Watson began planning for the post-war boom and a complete
+
+    "Our program," asserted Watson, "is for national committees in the individual
+    countries to study their own problems from the standpoint of what they need
+    from other countries and what they have to furnish other countries." It was the
+    same Hitleresque message Wat- son had been preaching for years. Some countries,
+    both men believed, were simply entided to the natural resources of another. War
+    could be avoided by ceding these materials in advance. 58 No time was wasted in
+    making plans.
+
+    -- 217-218
+
+But domestic pressue got too high in the US:
+
+    The long delayed moment had come. That day, June 6, Watson wrote a
+    reluctant letter to Adolf Hitler. This one would not be misaddressed or
+    undelivered. This one would be sent by registered mail and released to the
+    newspapers. Watson returned the medal Hitler had personally granted—and
+    he chose to return it publicly via the media. The letter declared: "the present
+    policies of your government are contrary to the causes for which I have been
+
+    -- 222
+
+    Dehomag was to become completely Nazified. The hierarchy had plans
+    for Hollerith machines that stretched to virtually all the Reich's most urgent
+    needs, from the conflict in Europe to Hitler's war against European Jewry.
+
+    -- 227
+
+But Germany was too dependent on IBM automation technologies. In fact dependency
+on information technology was so high that equipment production could not supply
+the demand. The automation process might have been exponential, beyond the
+capacity of the system itself. Information was faster than physical, industrial
+production:
+
+    But the strategic alliance with IBM was too entrenched to simply switch off.
+    Since the birth of the Third Reich, Germany had automated virtually its entire
+    economy, as well as most government operations and Nazi Party activities, using
+    a single technology: Hollerith. Elaborate data operations were in full swing
+    every- where in Germany and its conquered lands. The country suddenly discov-
+    ered its own vulnerable over-dependence on IBM machinery.
+
+    [...]
+
+    At the same time, Germany's war industry suffered from a chronic paper and pulp
+    shortage due to a lack of supply and the diversion of basic pulping ingredients
+    to war propellants.  Only four specialized paper plants in Germany could even
+    produce Hollerith
+
+    [...]
+
+    Holleriths could not function without IBM's unique paper. Watson controlled the
+    paper. 17 Printing cards was a stop-start process that under optimal conditions
+
+    [...]
+
+    Holleriths could not function without cards. Watson controlled the cards. 18
+    Precision maintenance was needed monthly on the sensitive gears, tum-
+
+    [...]
+
+    Even working at peak capacity in tandem with recently opened IBM factories in
+    Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, Nazi requests for sorters, tabulators, and
+    collators were back-ordered twenty-four months. Hollerith systems could not
+    function without machines or spare parts. Watson controlled the machines and
+    the spare parts. 19
+
+    Watson's monopoly could be replaced—but it would take years. Even
+    if the Reich confiscated every IBM printing plant in Nazi-dominated Europe,
+    and seized every machine, within months the cards and spare parts would
+    run out. The whole data system would quickly grind to a halt. As it stood in
+    summer 1941, the IBM enterprise in Nazi Germany was hardly a stand-
+    alone operation; it depended upon the global financial, technical, and ma-
+    terial support of IBM NY and i t s seventy worldwide subsidiaries. Watson
+    controlled all of it.
+
+    Without punch card technology, Nazi Germany would be completely
+    incapable of even a fraction of the automation it had taken for granted,
+    Returning to manual methods was unthinkable. The Race and Settlement
+
+    -- 228-230
+
+    If Watson allowed the Reich—in a fit of rage over the return of the medal—to
+    oust IBM technologic supremacy in Nazi Germany, and if he allowed Berlin to
+    embark upon its own ersatz punch card industry, Hitler's data automation
+    program might speed toward self-destruction. No one could predict how
+    drastically every Reich undertaking would be affected. But clearly, the blitz
+    IBM attached to the German krieg would eventually be sub- tracted if not
+    severely lessened. All Watson had to do was give up Dehomag as the Nazis
+    demanded. If IBM did not have a technologic stranglehold over Germany, the
+    Nazis would not be negotiating, they would simply seize what- ever they wanted.
+    For Watson, it was a choice.
+
+    [...]
+
+    But Watson would not detach Dehomag from the global IBM empire.
+
+    -- 235
+
+    Albert empha- sized that in the very near future, "a minority of shares might
+    be even materi- ally of higher value than the present majority." He added that
+    the notion of stockholder "control" was actually becoming a passe notion in
+    Germany since the Reich now direcdy or indirectly controlled virtually all
+    business.  "A majority of shares," he wrote Watson, "does not mean as much as
+    it used to . . . [since] a corporation, company, enterprise or plant
+    manufacturing in Germany is so firmly, thoroughly and definitely subjected to
+    the governmen- tal rules and regulations." 46
+
+    -- 237
+
+    For IBM, war would ironically be more advantageous than existing
+    peace.
+
+    Under the current state of affairs, IBM's assets were blocked in Ger-
+    many until the conflict was over. Under an enemy custodian, those same
+    marks would still be blocked—again until any war was over. As it stood, Hei-
+    dinger was threatening daily to destroy Dehomag unless IBM sold or re-
+    duced its ownership; and he was demanding to cash out his stock. But if war
+    with the U.S. broke out, Heidinger and the other managers would be sum-
+    marily relieved of their management authority since technically they repre-
+    sented IBM NY. A government custodian chosen on the basis of keen
+    business skills—and Albert might have the connections to select a reliable
+    one—would be appointed to replace Heidinger and manage Dehomag. In
+    fact, the Nazi receiver would diligendy manage all of IBM's European sub-
+    sidiaries. The money would be waiting when the war was over. 56
+
+    Plausible deniability would be real. Questions—would not be asked by IBM NY.
+    Answers-would not be given by IBMers in Europe or Reich officials. 58
+
+    -- 240-241
+
+    [...]
+
+    The company that lionized the word THINK now thought better of its
+    guiding mandate.
+
+    -- 241-242
+
+    IBM should rely on its decided technologic edge, suggested Chauncey,
+    because of the profound difficulty in starting a punch card industry from
+    scratch, especially if New York could block French Bull competition. In spite
+    of the quality of its devices, French Bull was a very small company with very
+    few machines. Bull's one small factory could never supply the Reich's conti-
+    nental needs. Ramping up for volume production—even if based within a
+    Bull factory—would take months. Hitler didn't have months in his hour-to-
+    hour struggle to dominate Europe. In a section entided "Length of Time for
+    Competition to Come in Actuality," Chauncey argued, "Unless the authori-
+    ties, or the new company, operate in the meantime from the French Bull fac-
+    tory, it would appear that much time may elapse before such new company
+    [could] ... furnish machines in Germany." 103
+
+    -- 257
+
+    It seemed that in spite of its autarkic impulses and collective rage
+    against Watson, the cold fact remained: Nazi Germany needed punch cards.
+    It needed them not next month or even next week. It needed them every
+    hour of every day in every place. Only IBM could provide them.
+    "My inclination is to fight," Chauncey declared straight out. But the
+    battle would be difficult. He knew that IBM was fighting a two-front psycho-
+    economic war: Heidinger's demand to cash in his stock, and Nazi Party
+    demands to take over the subsidiary. Clearly, the two were organically linked,
+
+    [...]
+
+    As for IBM's fight with the Nazi Party, Chauncey reiterated his willing-
+    ness to "make any representations to the authorities that our managers need
+    not reveal any information of the activities of Dehomag's customers... . but I
+    cannot get the actual persons out in the open." 107 That chance would now
+    come. After weeks of remaining in the background, Dr. Edmund Veesen-
+    mayer would finally come forward.
+
+    -- 258
+
+    IBM as a company would know the innermost details of Hitler's Holle-
+    rith operations, designing the programs, printing the cards, and servicing the
+    machines. But Watson and his New York directors could erect a wall of credi-
+    ble deniability at the doors of the executive suite. In theory, only those down
+    the hall in the New York headquarters who communicated direcdy with IBM
+    Geneva, such as IBM European General Manager Schotte, could provide a
+    link to the reality in Europe. But in fact, any such wall contained so many
+    cracks, gaps, and hatches as to render it imaginary. The free flow of informa-
+    tion, instructions, requests, and approvals by Watson remained detailed and
+    continuous for years to come—until well into 1944.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Using codes and oblique references, they nonetheless all spoke the
+    same language, even when the language was vague.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Millions of punch cards were routinely shipped from IBM in America
+    directly to Nazi-controlled sources in Poland, France, Bulgaria, and Belgium,
+    or routed circuitously through Sweden or colonies in Africa. When IBM's
+    American presses did not fill orders, subsidiaries themselves would ship
+    cards across frontiers from one IBM location to another. 125
+
+    -- 264-265
+
+Such knowledge would in fact interest the allies. But curiously the State
+Deparment acted as a "postman" during "DURING IBM'S day-to-day struggle to
+stay in the Axis during wartime" (page 277):
+
+    The Department's desire to secretly advance the commercial causes of
+    IBM persevered in spite of the nation's officially stated opposition to the
+    Hitler menace. For this reason, it was vital to Watson that nothing be done to
+    embarrass or even annoy the Department publicly. This caution was only
+    heightened by an on-going FBI investigation into IBM's operation as a
+    potential hotbed of Nazi sympathizers. Avoiding embarrassing moments was
+    difficult given the far-flung global empire of IBMers so deeply involved with
+    Fascist and Axis countries, and accustomed to speaking supportively of their
+    clients' military endeavors.
+
+    -- 277
+
+That was before the US entering the war.
+
+### The new board
+
+    During all the genocide years, 1942-1945, the Dehomag that Watson
+    fought to protect did remain intact. Ultimately, it was governed by a special
+    Reich advisory committee representing the highest echelons of the Nazi hier-
+    archy. The Dehomag advisory committee replaced the traditional corporate
+    board of directors. As with any board, the committee's duty was to advise
+
+    [...]
+
+    Four men sat on the advisory board. One was a trustee. Second was
+    Passow, chief of the Maschinelles Berichtwesen. Third was Heidinger. Fourth
+    was Adolf Hitler's personal representative. 160
+
+    Hitler's representative on Dehomag's advisory committee was Dr. Edmund
+    Veesenmayer. 161
+
+    -- 271
+
+### General Ruling 11
+
+    As America advanced toward the moment it would enter the war, the
+    Roosevelt Administration had recendy espoused General Ruling 11, an
+    emergency regulation forbidding any financial transactions with Nazi Ger-
+    many without a special Treasury Department license involving written justifi-
+    cations. Even certain corporate instructions of a financial nature were subject
+    to the rule. This was something completely new to contend with in IBM's
+    Nazi alliance. IBM would now be required to seek a complicated, bureau-
+    cratic approval for each financial instruction it ordered for its overseas sub-
+    sidiaries under Nazi control. General Ruling 11 would not affect subsidiaries
+    in neutral countries, such as Sweden or Switzerland. Even still, it would
+    severely hamper all communications with Dehomag itself, and open a gov-
+    ernment window into many of IBM's complex transactions. 51
+    How much time did IBM have?
+
+    -- 288
+
+    Now it appeared that General Ruling 11 had been violated.
+
+    -- 291
+
+    IBM would not place a stop on any of its Dehomag business, or any
+    subsidiary's interaction with it. IBM filed another request with the Treasury
+    Department, this time to send an instruction to all of its European sub-
+    sidiaries and agencies, as well, as its divisions in Japan. The instruction: "In
+    view of world conditions we cannot participate in the affairs of our compa-
+    nies in various countries as we did in normal times. Therefore you are
+    advised that you will have to make your own decisions and not call on us for
+    any advice or assistance until further notice." It was sent to the State Depart-
+    ment on October 10, 1941, with a request for comment. 77
+
+    -- 293
+
+    December, just days before Pearl Harbor, to circumvent Treasury license
+    requirements and issue financial instructions to Dehomag. Ultimately, after
+    the U.S. joined the war against Germany, Westerholt was appointed the cus-
+    todian of CEC. 39 The Nazis were able to do with CEC as they pleased so
+    long as IBM was paid. The looming competition with Bull never came
+    to fruition. It was more of a bargaining chip than a genuine threat. Unable to
+    replace IBM, the Third Reich pressured the company into relinquishing Wat-
+    son's troublesome micro-managing in favor of the faster and more coordi-
+    nated action the Reich required.
+
+    -- 306
+
+### Holland and France
+
+    Germany wanted the Jews identified by bloodline not religion, pauper-
+    ized, and then deported to camps, just as they were elsewhere in conquered
+    Europe. The Jews of France stood vulnerable under the shadow of destruc-
+    tion. Hitler was ready.
+
+    In France, the Holleriths were not.
+
+    -- 307
+
+    In 1936, as Inspector of Population Registries, Lentz standardized local
+    population registers and their data collection methodology throughout the
+    Netherlands—an administrative feat that earned him a royal decoration. That
+    same year, he outlined his personal vision in Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv,
+    the journal of the German Statistical Society: "Theoretically," predicted
+    Lentz, "the collection of data for each person can be so abundant and com-
+    plete, that we can finally speak of a paper human representing the natural
+    human." 46
+
+    [...]
+
+    His motto was "to record is to serve." 47
+
+    -- 308-309
+
+    Ten days after the census ordered by decree V06/41 was fully com-
+    piled, punched, and sorted, Nazi authorities demanded all Jews wear the
+    Jewish star. Again a number of Dutch people reacted with outrage and
+    protest. British diplomats reported that in one town, when the burgomaster
+    ordered Jews to affix the star, many non-Jews wore one as well. 87
+    But it was not the outward visage of six gold points worn on the chest
+    for all to see on the street, it was the 80 columns punched and sorted in a
+    Hollerith facility that marked the Jews of Holland for deportation to concen-
+    tration camps. The Germans understood this all too well.
+
+    -- 316
+
+    Arthur Seyss-Inquart, German Kommissar for Holland: 'Thanks to decree
+    6/41, all Dutch Jews are now in the bag." 88
+
+    FRANCE EXCELLED at many things. Punch card automation was not one of
+    them. Although IBM had been able to install several hundred Hollerith
+    devices, mainly for high-volume military, railway, and banking users, Reich
+    forces had in large part confiscated those machines
+
+    -- 317
+
+    Oppressive Nazi rule could have dictated its iron will to all reluctant
+    French authorities, and conquered the demographic uncertainties of a
+    French Jewry in two zones if only the Holleriths could be deployed. That is
+    precisely what Holleriths brought to any problem—organization where there
+    was disorder and tabular certainty where there was confusion. The Nazis
+    could have punch-carded the Jews of France into the same genocidal sce-
+    nario in force elsewhere, including Holland. But in the aftermath of the MB's
+    technologic ravages, France's punch card infrastructure was simply incapable
+    of supporting the massive series of programs Berlin required. Even if the
+    machines could have been gathered, transferred, or built—CEC just didn't
+    have the punch cards.
+
+    -- 319
+
+    Rene Carmille, comp- troller general of the French Army, had for years been an
+    ardent advocate of punch cards. More than that, he had machines in good working
+    order at his government's Demographic Service. Carmille came forward and
+    offered to end the census chaos. He promised that his tabulators could deliver
+    the Jews of France. 119
+
+    -- 324
+
+    Carmille had been working for months on a national Personal Identifi-
+    cation Number, a number that would not only be sequential, but descriptive.
+    The thirteen-digit PIN number would be a manual "bar code" of sorts
+    describing an individual's complete personal profile as well as professional
+    skills in great detail. For example, one number would be assigned for metal
+    workers, with a second modifying number for brass, and then a third modi-
+    fying number for curtain rods. Tabulators could then be set to whisk
+    through millions of cards until it located French metal workers, specializing
+    in brass with experience in curtain rods. Those metal workers could also be
+    pinpointed in any district. The system mimicked a concurrent Reich codifica-
+    tion system that assigned a descriptive bar code-like number to every prod-
+    uct and component in Germany. Carmille's number would ultimately evolve
+    into France's social security number. 123
+
+    -- 325
+
+    "We are no longer dealing with general censuses, but we are really following
+    individuals." Carmille made clear, "the new organization must now be envisioned
+    in such a way that the information be obtained continuously, which means that
+    the updating of information must be carefully regulated." 127 Carmille was now
+    France's great Hollerith hope.
+
+    -- 328-329
+
+    Clearly, Carmille was running an active tabulator operation. Why wasn't
+    he producing the Jewish lists?
+
+    [...]
+
+    Just days after the French mobilized in Algeria the Nazis discovered
+    that Carmille was a secret agent for the French resistance. He had no inten-
+    tion of delivering the Jews. It was all a cover for French mobilization.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Carmille had deceived the Nazis. In fact, he had been working with
+    French counter-intelligence since 1911. During the worst days of Vichy,
+    Carmille was always considered one of the highest-placed operatives of the
+    French resistance, a member of the so-called "Marco Polo Network" of sabo-
+    teurs and spies. Carmille's operation had generated some 20,000 fake iden-
+    tity passes. And he had been laboring for months on a database of 800,000
+    former soldiers in France who could be instandy mobilized into well-
+    planned units to fight for liberation. Under his plan, 300,000 men would be
+    ready to go. He had their names, addresses, their military specialties, and all
+    their occupational skills. He knew which ones were metal workers specializ-
+    ing in curtain rods, and which were combat-ready troops. 154
+    As for column 11 asking for Jewish identity, the holes were never
+    punched—the answers were never tabulated. 155 More than 100,000 cards
+    of Jews sitting in his office—never handed over. 156 He foiled the entire
+    enterprise.
+
+    -- 332-333
+
+    In early 1944, SS security officers ordered Carmille arrested. He was
+    apprehended in Lyon at noon on February 3, 1944. He was taken to the
+    Hotel Terminus where his interrogator was the infamous Butcher of Lyon,
+    Klaus Barbie. Barbie was despised as a master of torture who had sadistically
+    questioned many members of the resistance. Carmille went for two days
+    straight under Barbie's hand. He never cracked. 159
+
+    -- 334
+
+    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. 168
+
+    Carmille was sent to Dachau, prisoner 76608, where he died of exhaus-
+    tion 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. 169
+
+    Holland had Lentz. France had Carmille. Holland had a well-entrenched
+    Hollerith infrastructure. France's punch card infrastructure was in complete
+    disarray.
+
+    -- 336
+
+### American Property
+
+    So even though corporate parents, such as IBM, were not
+    permitted to communicate with their own subsidiaries because they were in
+    Axis territory, these companies were deemed American property to be pro-
+    tected. In fact, since IBM only leased the machines, every Dehomag machine,
+    whether deployed at the Waffen-SS office in Dachau or an insurance office in
+    Rome, was considered American property to be protected. 10
+
+    -- 342
+
+### War, Computing, Cryptography and Meteoroloy
+
+    IBM and its technology were in fact involved in the Allies' most top-
+    secret operations. The Enigma code crackers at Bletchley Park in England
+    used Hollerith machines supplied by IBM's British licensee, the British Tabu-
+    lating Machine Company. Hut 7 at Bletchley Park was known as the Tabulating
+    Machine Section. As early as January 1941, the British Tabulating Machine
+    Company was supplying machines and punch cards not only to Bletchley
+    Park, but to British intelligence units in Singapore and Cairo as well. 40
+
+    Park, but to British intelligence units in Singapore and Cairo as well. 40
+    By May 1942, IBM employees had joined America's own cryptographic
+    service. A key man was Steve Dunwell, who left Endicott's Commercial Re-
+    search Department to join other code breakers in Washington, D.C. The
+    group used a gamut of punch card machines made by IBM as well as Rem-
+    ington Rand to decipher intercepted Axis messages. Captured enemy code
+    books were keyed into punch cards using overlapping strings of fifty digits.
+    The punched cards were sorted. Each deciphered word was used to attack
+    another word until a message's context and meaning could laboriously be
+    established. At one point, Dunwell needed a special machine with electro-
+    mechanical relays that could calculate at high speed the collective probability
+    of words that might appear in a theoretical message bit. Dunwell sought per-
+    mission from Watson to ask that the device be assembled at IBM. Watson
+    granted it.
+
+    It was an irony of the war that IBM equipment was used to encode and
+    decode for both sides of the conflict. 42
+
+    IBM was there even when the Allies landed at Normandy on June 6,
+    1944. Hollerith machines were continuously used by the Weather Division of
+    the Army Air Forces to monitor and predict t h e tempestuous storms afflicting
+    the English Channel. When Al lied troops finally landed at Normandy, MRUs
+    went in soon after the beachhead was secured. 43
+    War had always been good to IBM. In America, war income was with-
+
+    -- 348
+
+    IBM machines were not just used to wage war. They were also used to
+    track people. Holleriths organized millions for the draft. Allied soldiers miss-
+    ing in action, as well as captured Axis prisoners, were cataloged by IBM sys-
+    tems.
+
+    -- 349
+
+### Untouchable and beyond reach of any nation
+
+    IBM and Watson were untouchable. Carter learned the immutable truth in the very
+    words he had written months earlier:
+
+        This [World War] is a conflict of warlike nationalistic states, each having cer-
+        tain interests. Yet we frequently find these interests clashing diametrically
+        with the opposing interests of international corporate structures, more huge
+        and powerful than nations.
+
+    [...]
+
+    IBM was in some ways bigger than the war. Both sides could not afford
+    to proceed without the company's all-important technology. Hitler needed
+    IBM. So did the Allies.
+
+    -- 352
+
+### One could never escape his code (p. 367), Hollerith erfasst: the Logistics of Genocide (p. 375)
+
+    For the Allies, IBM assistance came at a crucial point. But for the Jews
+    of Europe it was too late. Hitler's Holleriths had been deployed against them
+    for almost a decade and were continuing without abatement. Millions of
+    Jews would now suffer the consequences of being identified and processed
+    by IBM technologies.
+
+    After nearly a decade of incremental solutions the Third Reich was
+    ready to launch the last stage. In January 1942, a conference was held in
+    Wannsee outside Berlin. This conference, supported by Reich statisticians
+    and Hollerith experts, would outline the Final Solution of the Jewish prob-
+    lem in Europe. Once more, Holleriths would be used, but this time the Jews
+    would not be sent away from their offices or congregated into ghettos. Ger-
+    many was now ready for mass shooting pits, gas chambers, crematoria, and
+    an ambitious Hollerith-driven program known as "extermination by labor"
+    where Jews were systematically worked to death like spent matches.
+    For the Jews of Europe, it was their final encounter with German
+    automation.
+
+    -- 354
+
+    The multitude of columns and codes punched into Hollerith and sorted
+    for instant results was an expensive, never-ending enterprise designed to
+    implement Hitler's evolving solutions to what was called the Jewish problem.
+    From Germany's first identifying census in 1933, to its sweeping occupa-
+    tional and social expulsions, to a net of ancestral tracings, to the Nuremberg
+    definitions of 1935, to the confiscations, and finally to the ghettoizations, it
+    was the codes that branded the individual and sealed his destiny. Each code
+    was a brick in an inescapable wall of data. Trapped by their code, Jews could
+    only helplessly wait to be sorted for Germany's next persecution. The system
+    Germany created in its own midst, it also exported by conquest or subver-
+    sion. As the war enveloped all Europe, Jews across the Continent found
+    themselves numbered and sorted to one degree or another.
+
+    By early 1942, a change had occurred. Nazi Germany no longer killed
+    just Jewish people. It killed Jewish populations. This was the data-driven
+    denouement of Hitler's war against the Jews.
+
+    Hollerith codes, compilations, and rapid sorts had enabled the Nazi
+    Reich to make an unprecedented leap from individual destruction to some-
+    thing on a much larger scale.
+
+    -- 369
+
+    Der Fuhrer was now deter- mined to unleash a long contemplated campaign of
+    systematic, automated genocide, thus once and for all ridding the world of
+    Jews. 68
+
+    -- 370
+
+    By early 1944, Korherr was able to report to Eichmann a total of 5 million Jews
+    eliminated by "natural decrease, con- centration camp inmates, ghetto inmates,
+    and those who were [simply] put to death." 88
+
+    [...]
+
+    More than a statistical bureau, by its very nature, the Hollerith complex at
+    Friedrichstrasse helped Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann prioritize,
+    schedule, and manage the seemingly impossible logistics of genocide across
+    dozens of cities in more than twenty countries and territories. It was not just
+    people who were counted and marshaled for deportation. Boxcars, locomotives,
+    and intricate train timetables were sched- uled across battle-scarred
+    borders—all while a war was being fought on two fronts. The technology had
+    enabled Nazi Germany to orchestrate the death of millions without skipping a
+    note.
+
+    Amidst the whirlwind of the Final Solution, the Third Reich's transition
+    from the blind persecution of a general population to the destruction of indi-
+    viduals had come full circle. In genocide, the Jews lost their identity. They
+    had been reduced to mere nameless data bits. Now each murdered Jew no
+    longer even represented an individual death. Now every corpse comprised a
+    mere component in a far larger statistical set adding up to total annihilation.
+
+    -- 375
+
+### Business Philosophy of "The Sollutions Company" (page 429)
+
+    Perhaps IBM's business philosophy was best expressed by an executive
+    of Beige Watson in an August 1939 letter to senior officers of IBM NY. The
+    letter detailed the company's growing involvement in Japan's aircraft indus-
+    try. The IBM Brussels executive declared: "It is none of our business to
+    judge the reasons why an American corporation should or would help a for-
+    eign Government, and consequently Mr. Decker and myself have left these
+    considerations entirely out of our line of thought. ... we are, as IBM men,
+    interested in the technical side of the application of our machines." 102
+    But as European territory was liberated in late 1944 and early 1945,
+
+    -- 399
+
+    Fellinger even put IBM's interest before that of the Third Reich, con-
+    stantly badgering Berlin to pay more rent, and clear up its delinquencies.
+    He even demanded that the Wehrmacht pay for CEC machines the German
+    military seized from occupied France. It took months of burdensome legal
+    wrangling, but Fellinger successfully argued that the German military had no
+    right to remove CEC's machines without properly compensating IBM. His
+    argument hammered away at the theme that because the plundered machines
+    were leased items, they never belonged to the French government, but to IBM.
+    As such, the transferred devices were not subject to traditional rules of "war
+    booty." Only after reams of Fellinger's dense briefs, supported by attestations
+    by CEC Managing Director Roger Virgile, did the MB finally consent to nearly
+    a million Reichsmarks in back rent for machines transported out of France. 19
+
+    -- 407
+
+    Eventually, after ceaseless efforts, IBM NY regained control of its Ger-
+    man subsidiary. The name had been changed, the money regained, the
+    machines recovered, the record clear. For IBM the war was over.
+
+    But for the descendants of 6 million Jews and millions of other Euro-
+    peans, the war would never be over. It would haunt them and people of con-
+    science forever. After decades of documentation by the best minds, the most
+    studied among them would confess that they never really understood the
+    Holocaust process. Why did it happen? How could it happen? How were they
+    selected? How did the Nazis get the names? They always had the names.
+
+    What seemingly magical scheduling process could have allowed mil-
+    lions of Nazi victims to step onto train platforms in Germany or nineteen
+    other Nazi-occupied countries, travel for two and three days by rail, and then
+    step onto a ramp at Auschwitz or Treblinka—and within an hour be marched
+    into gas chambers. Hour a f t e r hour. Day a f t er day. Timetable after timetable.
+
+    Like clockwork, and always with blitzkrieg efficiency.
+    The survivors would never know. The liberators who fought would
+    never know. The politicians who made speeches would never know. The
+    prosecutors who prosecuted would never know. The debaters who debated
+    would never know.
+
+    The question was barely even raised.
+
+    -- 429-430
+
+    "IBM does not have much information about this period"
+
+    -- 433
+
+    IBM stuck to its story that the "Information Company" had no information about
+    the documents in its own archives, and had transferred some documents to
+    esteemed institutions for study.
+
+    -- 452
+
+## Index
+
+* Contract irregularities and American taxpayers subsidizing Hollerith, 34.
+* Statistics, "race statistics", intellectual shock troops, 53-55.
+* Tax avoidance, 65-66.
+* Plan for a tower centralizing all the information, 97-98.
+* Organized sterilization, 99.
+* Slogan: "Hollerith illuminates your company, provides surveillance and helps organize", 110.
+* Powers Machine Company, specialized, old and still functioning, like a niche technology, 108.
+* Punch card and equipment production in numbers, 123-124.
+* Accounting manipulation, 126-130.
+* Meeting with Mussolini, 137.
+* Meeting with Hitler, '"Heil!" 108 Watson lifted his right arm halfway up before he caught himself', 138.
+* Watson wearing a medal with swastikas, 140.
+* Office of Automated Reporting (Maschinelles Berichtwesen) and an "universal punch code system", 158-159.
+* Animal censuses, 211.
+* Monopoly and anti-trust ligitations, proprietary technology, 36, 213-214; monopoly and Soviet government, 243.
+* FBI investigation on germans at the IBM, 219-220.
+* Examples use for punch cards in nazi-Germany, 215-216, 373; at page 230 it's mentioned the "Race and Setdement Office", "a marriage-assistance bureau for SS officers" "who fulfilled the `[racial]` requirements for marriage", a pre-tinder automated dating agency that could not run correctly due to difficult access to Hollerith machines.
+* Bizarre "alien" corporation management by a trustee in war-declared situations (Alien Property Custodian) with plausible deniability, destruction of evidence and layers of indirection, 238-241.
+* IBM and State Department, 242.
+* Watson was a micromanager, micromanagement (many places in the book).
+* Money/revenue flow, 252.
+* Patent war, 258 and other pages.
+* Nazi-Germany and other US companies, 259.
+* Irish Republican Army, 260.
+* Ustashi croatian militia, 260.
+* International Telephone Company reorganization in Spain; company re-organization under fascist-regimes, 262.
+* Competitors: Bull in France, Powers in the US, Kamatec in Holland, 263.
+* Veesenmayer: "technical scheduler of actual genocide", 268.
+* Network of Hollerith systems installed at railroad junctions; relation between punch cards and trains, 270.
+* Tulard file, a form system from 1941, 322.
+* Notice from the Jewish Underground, 331.
+* Holland and France in numbers: death-ratios (Jews counted / murdered) of 73% versus 25%, 336.
+* Control in Business Machines, corporation as an "international monster" (which sounds like a "transleviathan"), 339.
+* Argument that Hollerith patents should belong to the US Government "in the first place", 340.
+* Watson motive to be "in the international peace movement", 340.
+* IBM guns, grenades and masks, 346.
+* Final Solution, 370.
+* Daily death-rate at Auschwitz getting higher and outpassing Hollerith capacity, giving place to improvised number schemes; decrease of order, 357-358.
+* Mengele and his own distinct numbers tatooed on inmates, 357.
+* Protocol for mass Jewish extermination, 370.
+* Switzerland: "switchboard for Nazi-era commercial intrigue"; banks as annomization proxies, 395.
+* Document fabrication "to demonstrate compliance when the opposite was true" and client "blacklisting", 397.
+* Watson's letter to all subsidiaries on enemy territory stating that now they were on their own, which in practice was only partially true 293, 398.
+* The role of a neutral country to put a subsidiary as a proxy - or a "nexus" (page 399) - between a corporation and it's branches on enemy territories; in the case of IBM it was on Geneva, Switzerland, "a clearing office between the local organizations (...) and the New York Headquarters", 395-399.
+* Validity of "punch card signature", 407.
+* IBM Soldiers, 409.
+* Reparation avoidance after the war, 422.
+* Simultaneus translation technology during the Nuremberg Trials, by IBM and free-of-charge, 425.
+* Hollerith usage by Allies, 426.
+* IBM exemption, 426.
+* Another Census, 428.
+* Book "The History of Computing in Europe", 429.
+* Manual punch card sorting by concentration camp inmates, 432.
+* The Hollerith Bunker, 432.
+* Caloric intake rationing, 196, 443.
+* Defensive Documentation, 446.
+* IBM Klub and House of Data, 449.
+* Investigation that required "Holocaust knowledge with an emphasis on Hitler-era finance, added to information-technology expertise, sifted through the dogged techniques of an investigative reporter", 454.
+* Local and central processing facilities -- like Berlin and Oranienburg, 455.
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