So... IBM played a part in killing 11 million people. WW2

[Theory5]

So I was watching a movie called "Hulu - The Corporation - Watch the full feature film now.@@AMEPARAM@@http://www.hulu.com/embed/wkmeM559C8IHHRF9j_vX_A@@AMEPARAM@@wkmeM559C8IHHRF9j_vX_A http://www.hulu.com/watch/118169/the-corporation (this link is to Hulu.com, if you do not have a US IP you cant watch it. Sorry.) great movie, they even have Michael Moore talk in it. Anyways late into the movie they talk about how IBM leased the Nazi's punch card machines. The contract was made from IBM's NYC office, and it included on-site servicing and IBM made a custom program for the Nazi's. Then After WW2 IBM sent some people over to Germany to collect the money that was owed to them. Why were they never punished for this? This allowed the Nazi's to process people efficiently. I believe that without IBM's help the Nazi's wouldn't have been able to kill 11 million people!

Questions comments or other facts?

[freeztar]

There's a wiki on the book from which the documentary quotes.

 

IBM and the Holocaust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Michaelangelica]

You are saying that the Nazis had embryonic computers in 1939 years before UK/ Bletchley Park/ Turing ?

It is the first i have heard of it.

Turing is generally credited with the invention of the modern computer-- if you discount the Athenians.

[freeztar]

The object in question is a punch card machine. They've been around for a while.

 

In 1920, the company introduced the first complete school time control system, and launched the Electric Accounting Machine. Three years later the company introduced the first electric keypunch, and 1924’s Carroll Rotary Press produced punch cards at previously unheard of speeds. In 1928, the company held its first customer engineering education class, demonstrating an early recognition of the importance of tailoring solutions to fit customer needs. It also introduced an 80-column punched card.[10] in 1928, which doubled its information capacity. This new format, soon dubbed the "IBM Card", became and remained an industry standard until the 1970s.

History of IBM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[LaurieAG]

Hi Theory5,

 

Questions comments or other facts?

 

IBM also made punch card voting machines in the late 1800's and the same principal was used up until recently in the US.

 

There's probably quite a few other collateral damages around that would not be impressed about 'hanging chads' either.

 

'Holy Saint Chad of the irregular convocation,

required lifting for effective operation,

causing his superior much consternation.'

 

He was a 6/7th century English/Saxon religious man who was convocated in a diocese that had already been given to another who had gone to the continent and later returned. He had taken a vow of poverty and his superior wanted him to use a horse to quicken up his circuits so he physically lifted him up onto the horse (I think he gave the horse to the first poor person he met).

[CraigD]

You are saying that the Nazis had embryonic computers in 1939 years before UK/ Bletchley Park/ Turing ?

It is the first i have heard of it.

IBM and other companies didn’t have electronic computers for sale before 1951, when a commercial version of the 1949 Manchester Mark 1 was sold by the big British electrics and electronics company Ferranti, beating the more famous UNIVAC I by a little over a month.

 

Computing companies like IBM were doing significant business around 1900 with electromechanical counting and computing machines that weren’t true Von Neumann-architecture electronic computers. Those used by Germany, England, the US, and I suspect other nations during WWII were of these kinds. Primarily, these machines counted and sorted punch cards (AKA Hollerith cards, named for the founder of IBM, Hermann Hollerith), each card typically representing a manufactured part or human being. The “files” for these computing machines were physical stacks of punch cards, which were automatically or manually loaded into the machines for various processing runs.

 

Anyways late into the movie [The Corporation] they talk about how IBM leased the Nazi's punch card machines. The contract was made from IBM's NYC office, and it included on-site servicing and IBM made a custom program for the Nazi's. Then After WW2 IBM sent some people over to Germany to collect the money that was owed to them. Why were they never punished for this?

I’ve not yet watched the movie, but I expect that the reason IBM and the many other US and other allied nation corporations that began doing business with Germany prior to their nations’ declarations of war with Germany weren’t punished by their nations governments is because their business wasn’t illegal. In the case of IMB, after the US and Germany were at war, the IBM personnel supporting Germany’s IBM machines were physically in Germany, mostly German citizens, so not in a position to legally stop their work.

 

As the wikipedia article to which freeztar linked in post #2 explains, there’ve been a couple of civil lawsuits brought against IBM for its business with Nazi Germany, all of which have been abandoned or dismissed, although in 2001, IBM’s German division did donate US$ 3 million to a special fund to compensate Holocaust victims and their descendents.

This allowed the Nazi's to process people efficiently. I believe that without IBM's help the Nazi's wouldn't have been able to kill 11 million people!

I don’t believe the Nazi German government would have had any difficulty killing the people they did in the Holocaust without IBM’s machines. Arguably, they might have killed slightly more people without them, as the improved record keeping these machines supported allowed the Nazis to force some people with useful skills they imprisoned and would otherwise have killed to work for them. Singling out IBM as an especially immoral company because their products and services helped the Nazis, is, I think, somewhat unfair, because the decision to use these and other products and services as some Nazis used them, to imprison, torture, enslave, and kill, was made by these German leaders and administrators, not the people who provided these goods and services.

 

This is not to say that companies and individuals shouldn’t refuse to work for individual, companies, and countries they believe behave immorally. I think it’s important, however, to understand the history of the 20th century, especially the prevalent attitude in England and the US toward Nazi Germany in the years leading up to WWII. The Nazi government was not believe by a large majority of Americans and English to be bad, even in their publicly stated views about eugenics and racial superiority. Worldwide condemnation for these views came only from people who predicted the extremes to which the Nazis would take them, and later, from nearly all people, after the Holocaust had happened.

[modest]

I’ve not yet watched the movie, but I expect that the reason IBM and the many other US and other allied nation corporations that began doing business with Germany prior to their nations’ declarations of war with Germany weren’t punished by their nations governments is because their business wasn’t illegal. In the case of IMB, after the US and Germany were at war, the IBM personnel supporting Germany’s IBM machines were physically in Germany, mostly German citizens, so not in a position to legally stop their work.

 

They continued doing business directly under US control after the war stated (for example: after Poland was invaded) but had to restructure things when the US entered the war. It is, considered by some, a moot point because after the war ended IBM was paid by Germany for the use of the machines during the war—something for which IBM lobbied. Business was always done under the company IBM (either directly managed in the US or overseas). And, they must have known, given that they were printing and programming the cards, exactly what they were being used for. IBM literally programmed "extermination" right on the card.

 

I don’t believe the Nazi German government would have had any difficulty killing the people they did in the Holocaust without IBM’s machines. Arguably, they might have killed slightly more people without them, as the improved record keeping these machines supported allowed the Nazis to force some people with useful skills they imprisoned and would otherwise have killed to work for them.

 

The clerical work of finding, processing, and facilitating the death of those in the holocaust would need to be done with or without IBM's help. That IBM made that work a little easier doesn't seem at issue.

 

The original Auschwitz tattoo was an IBM number.

 

Singling out IBM as an especially immoral company because their products and services helped the Nazis, is, I think, somewhat unfair, because the decision to use these and other products and services as some Nazis used them, to imprison, torture, enslave, and kill, was made by these German leaders and administrators, not the people who provided these goods and services.

 

I think you are correct that IBM should not be singled out. The person who wrote the book "IBM and the Holocaust" in 2001 later wrote "Nazi Nexus" which focuses on other companies having similar business practices in WWII. I read parts of the former book when I was at college some years ago and it does not read as sensationalist, unfair, or lacking in investigative journalism.

 

This is not to say that companies and individuals shouldn’t refuse to work for individual, companies, and countries they believe behave immorally. I think it’s important, however, to understand the history of the 20th century, especially the prevalent attitude in England and the US toward Nazi Germany in the years leading up to WWII. The Nazi government was not believe by a large majority of Americans and English to be bad, even in their publicly stated views about eugenics and racial superiority.

 

Unfortunately, I think the last sentence, with regards to the US, is spot on. The Nazi views on eugenics was either not troubling or entirely agreeable to a large part the the population. That the Nazi's were exterminating the undesirables of the countries they were invading was reported in US newspapers almost immediately after the war began in 1939. IBM established offices in each of those countries shortly before Nazi invasion to facilitate the work ahead.

 

~modest

[Jman8564]

Doing business with the nazis could have been a bid to avoid hostilities? Just pathetic and irresponsible, not mal-intentioned.