Damonization and facts

The book "ibm and the holocaust" does not do what it promises, but shows how a company has earned fascism

Where did the nazis have the names? How did they know the names of the six million jews who murdered them? The answer of the american journalist edwin black betrayed the title of his evidence: "ibm and the holocaust". From ibm, more precisely: from the punch card reading machines sold ibm nazi germany under the name hollerith machines. They only measured the precise and rapid evaluation of the referendums of 1933 and 1939 and the statistical data of occupied states, the coordination of the flash wars on several fronts, the calculated destruction of human life.

As far as blacks thesis. However, it is already on the beginning of the book when black formulates as a question claims that never someone has asked the question. That's not true. Some scientists have even answered this question as similar as black. About the importance of the hollerith machines in nazi germany have already written david martin luschke or sybil milton. About the nazi's payments and the related technology wrote in 1984 gotz aly and karl-heinz roth the book "the residual lot. Volunteers, identify, separated in national socialism". But blacks foam blow can still be passed through, finally he is the first one who makes a pointed, journalistic written and well readable book on the involvement of the world group ibm in national socialism.

These strong are at the same time responsible for the coasted weakness of the factory. Black does not just want to tell facts, he also wants to create facts through a payment. Why reports black, for example, in epic width, as the ibm-grunder hermann hollerith protected the area of his kater bismarck with an electric wire? Hollerith watched the fence. When a neighboring cat appeared on it, he replaced her electric shock. Black does not pay that because he described the fence of the concentration camp bergen belsen at the beginning of his book: the bose created in hollerith's spirit and invention. This is a stupid, tasteless and certainly not literary parallelization — the holocaust is not with cats on any american basic chippings at the beginning of the 20. To compare century century.

Damonization and facts

Hollerite machine dehomag d11, which was used in 1933 in germany for the public payment

Unfortunately, black often tries to construct such parallels. So he repaid again and again from the horst wessel song, which was sung on germany's strawing. And he paid by the songs singing the employees of the ibm group to create a company spirit. The company manager thomas j. Watson is drawn by black as a driver in the company. A sympathy with certain striking. So in numerous speeches and letters watsons is noted that he admired hitler and moussolini as a rough statesman and fascism as a possible government form — one must give each state in the world for him correctly — recognized.

He wrote at the president of the reichsbank hjalmar schacht in 1937: "the world must accommodate the german people and his goals under the administration adolf hitler's benevolent understanding." a total ruler was watson, which made even children of three years to functionaries in the ibm leisure club. "… The credans were singing, loud singing to their fuels — on both sides of the atlantic. Some uniforms were brown, some were blue."

The like writes black. Again and again he claims, ibm was indispensable for the execution of the holocaust. "The nazi regime wanted to identify the jews, and ibm showed him how that went. Zuge had to drive, from city to town and a concentration camp on the other, and ibm also regulated that. In the end, ibm offered the third reich, which was ready to pay for the services done, for everything a solution and a solution leading to the next."

However, black dates completely that gates to read punch cards also produced from other companies as ibm for the third reich. Only in a quoted half-set falls with black the name siemens. Above all, black forgets that the holocaust did not happen without punch cards. "The nazis had all the blob made with pencil and paper", has the holocaust researcher raul hilberg written in the context. Black, even in one place itself, when he describes how to put in dachau the mass murder no longer in statistics and quotas, but was simply celebrated: the punch card numbers had to be given in part of dead to living, because there were no longer enough.

Black does not believe his dangerous claims of the indispensability of ibm for the holocaust. He even counteracts his damonization of the total company ibm, when he suddenly paid that the group supplied the allied ammunition in a coarse extent and thus tripled its revenues in the years after 1942. The work of ibm at the allies deciphering machines does not mention black. Thomas j. Watson, before still a kind of nazi, who receives the highest award of the third reich for a foreign channel, gives these in the next moment already under protest against the bombing paris at hitler, as his sympathies begin to threaten the business.

An explanation for the behavior of ibm does not provide this damonization. Sometimes black contradicts his own signs, and just there he is close to an analysis: "watson was certainly not a fascist. He was through and through capitalist." which is not true, but rather true as the idea of a small, american fuhrer.

Black's book is the strongest, where he alone tells the facts. Especially the complex braid of the nazi economy and the role of ibm in it, he has rather deeply researched. The pracesis description of which decides all previous platens. Until 1941 ibm held a majority of his daughter in the third reich. The profits generated by foreign companies were only allowed to be carried out in a small mab, but here are ibm with tricks such as license payments, which were recorded as expenditure, not as a profit removal. Or just invested as required in the realm and bought real estate in berlin.

In 1941, however, the us came into the war and a direct involvement of an american company in the nazi economy was not welcome on both sides of the atlantic. The "german hollerith machinen gmbh" was placed under nazi-forced administration. And that was all in watson's sense. The winnings fortan namely on a trustee account. Ibm simply could not know what these were generated. Before 1941 ibm employees still had to control the hollerith apparatus. Even those who stood in concentration camps. After 1941, however, ibm was able to wash the hands in ignorance. After the end of the war ibm only had to prove that the "german hollerith machinen gmbh" had been an american company before 1941 to resume production states and funds without being burdened with unpleasant questions. So it happened.

Alone this illustration makes blacks study worth reading. Your answer to the question you should actually answer, you can not quite take full. The nazis did not learn the names of their victims alone by ibm. But black answers another question, where there is still a need for scientific work: how much money did ibm earned on the third reich, at the holocaust, on the second world war — and why never denied the group's claim to this blood benefit? A value in dehomag, which made the company in 1946, introduced: corporate value: 56.6 million reichsmark, annual profit 7.5 million marks.