IBM and the Holocaust

Paperback, 640 pages

Published April 4, 2002 by Time Warner Paperbacks.

ISBN:
978-0-7515-3199-2
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IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing throughout World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s. Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of …

16 editions

Subjects

  • European history: Second World War
  • Fascism & Nazism
  • Political oppression & persecution
  • Germany
  • Inter-war period, 1918-1939
  • Second World War, 1939-1945
  • History: World