IBM and the Holocaust Read online

  From the very onset, the scientific soldiers of Hitler’s statistical shock troops openly published their mission statement. “Above all,” wrote Prof. Dr. Johannes Muller, in a 1934 edition of ASA, “remember that several very important problems are being tackled currently, problems of an ideological nature. One of those problems is race politics, and this problem must be viewed in a statistical light.” Muller, president of the Thuringen Statistical Office, made his comments in a revealing 1934 ASA article entitled “The Position of Statistics in the New Reich.”107

  About the same time, Dr. Karl Keller, writing in an article, “The Question of Race Statistics,” made clear that Jewish blood was to be traced as far back as possible. “If we differentiate in statistics between Aryans and Non-Aryans, we in essence talk about Jews and non-Jews. In any case, we will not look at religious affiliation alone but also ancestry.” Like other Nazis, Keller was looking ahead to the domination of all Europe. Keller added, “beyond agreeing on the definition of race, we must move toward agreement on the number of races, at least as far as Europe is concerned… in reality, the Jews are not a race, but a mix of several races.”108

  Drawing on the emerging pseudo-academic notions of the exploding race science field in Germany, Keller urged doctors to examine the population for racial characteristics and faithfully record the information. “However, not every physician can carry out these examinations,” Keller cautioned. “The physician must also undergo special anthropological training.109

  “The only way to eliminate any mistakes,” Keller insisted, “is the registration of the entire population. How is this to be done?” Keller demanded “the establishment of mandatory personal genetic-biographical forms…. Nothing would hinder us,” he assured, “from using these forms to enter any important information which can be used by race scientists.”110

  Zahn, in his writings, was explicit in the need to annihilate inferior ethnic groups. In his 1937 ASA article entitled “Development of German Population Statistics through Genetic-Biological Stock-Taking,” Zahn specified, “population politics, based on the principles of racial hygiene, must promote valuable genetic stock. It must prevent the fertility of inferior life and genetic degeneration. In other words, this means the targeted selection and promotion of superior life and an eradication of those portions of the population which are undesirable.”111

  In other articles, and in keynote speeches for statistical conventions, Zahn stressed, “There is almost no area of life in Germany which has not been creatively pollinated by the National Socialist ideology…. This is also true for the field of statistics. Statistics has become invaluable for the Reich, and the Reich has given statistics new tasks in peace and in war.”112

  Zahn declared, “Small wonder. In its very essence, statistics is very close to the National Socialist movement.” He added, “German statistics has not only become the registering witness… but also the creative co-conspirator of the great events of time.”113

  Indeed, as co-conspirators, Nazi statisticians worked hand-in-hand with the battalions of Hitler’s policy enablers and enforcers, from the Nazi Party’s Race Political Office and all its many allied agencies to the SS itself. Identifying the Jews was only the first step along the road to Jewish destruction in Germany.114

  None of the publicly voiced statements of Hitler’s scientific soldiers ever dissuaded Dehomag or IBM NY from withdrawing from their collaboration with the Reich. By necessity, that collaboration was intense, indispensable, and continuous. Indeed, the IBM method was to first anticipate the needs of government agencies and only then design proprietary data solutions, train official staff, and even implement the programs as a sub-contractor when called upon.

  IBM machines were useless in crates. Tabulators and punch cards were not delivered ready to use like typewriters, adding machines, or even machine guns. Each Hollerith system had to be custom-designed by Dehomag engineers. Systems to inventory spare aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe, track railroad schedules for Reichsbahn, and register the Jews within the population for the Reich Statistical Office were each designed by Dehomag engineers to be completely different from each other.115

  Of course the holes could not be punched just anywhere. Each card had to be custom-designed with data fields and columns precisely designated for the card readers. Reich employees had to be trained to use the cards. Dehomag needed to understand the most intimate details of the intended use, design the cards, and then create the codes.116

  Because of the almost limitless need for tabulators in Hitler’s race and geopolitical wars, IBM NY reacted enthusiastically to the prospects of Nazism. While other fearful or reviled American businessmen were curtailing or canceling their dealings in Germany, Watson embarked upon an historic expansion of Dehomag. Just weeks after Hitler came to power, IBM NY invested more than 7 million Reichsmarks—in excess of a million dollars—to dramatically expand the German subsidiary’s ability to manufacture machines.117

  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 publicly announced how in tune he and Dehomag were with the Nazi race scientists 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 Heidinger 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 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.119

  “We are proud that we may assist in such task, a task that provides our nation’s Physician [Adolf Hitler] with the material he needs for his examinations. 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 circumstances…. 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. Hail to our German people and der Führer!”120

  Most of Heidinger’s speech, along with a list of the invited Nazi Party officials, was rushed to Manhattan and immediately translated for Watson. The IBM Leader cabled Heidinger a prompt note of congratulations for a job well done and sentiments well expressed.121

  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 support. Those five uppermost steps, steps that each man ascended before entering 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.

  III. ID
ENTIFYING THE JEWS

  THEY WERE SINGING TO THEIR LEADER.

  Arms locked, swaying in song, male voices rising in adulation and expectation, they crooned their praises with worship-ful enthusiasm. Clicking beer steins in self-congratulation, reassured by their vision of things to come, Storm Troopers everywhere sang the “Horst Wessel Song” as a Nazi testament and a prophecy both.

  This is the final

  Bugle call to arms.

  Already we are set

  Prepared to fight.

  Soon Hitler’s flags will wave

  Over every single street

  Enslavement ends

  When soon we set things right!

  Whether in beer halls, sports fields, or just swaggering down the streets, Brown Shirts throughout the Third Reich joyously chanted their most popular anthem. With good reason. For the Sturm Abteilung (SA), or Storm Troopers, the ascent of Adolf Hitler was deliverance from the destitution and disconsolation of lives long disenfranchised by personal circumstance or character. But they needed a scapegoat. They blamed the Jews—for everything. Jews had conspired to create the Depression, to enslave the German race, to control society, and to pollute Aryan blood. And now the followers of Hitler would exact their bizarre brand of justice and revenge.

  More precisely, the Nazis planned to uproot the alien Jews from their prized positions within German commerce and culture. The angry young men of the SA, many of them dregs within German society, believed they would soon step into all the economic and professional positions held by their Jewish neighbors. Through unending racial statutes ousting Jews from professional and commercial life, relentless purges and persecution, unyielding programs of asset confiscation, systematic imprisonment and outright expulsion, the SA would usurp the Jewish niche. Nazis would assume Jewish jobs, expropriate Jewish companies, seize Jewish property, and in all other ways banish Jews from every visible facet of society. Once the Nazis finished with the Jews of Germany, they would extend their race war first to the Greater Reich in Europe they envisioned, and ultimately to the entire Continent.1

  But Jewish life could only be extinguished if the Nazis could identify the Jews. Just which of Germany’s 60 million citizens were Jewish? And just what was the definition of “Jewish”? Germans Jews were among the most assimilated of any in Europe.

  Nazi mythology accused Jews of being an alien factor in German society. But in truth, Jews had lived in Germany since the fourth century. As elsewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages, what German Jews could do and say, even their physical dress, was oppressively regulated. Waves of persecution were frequent. Worse, anti-Jewish mobs often organized hangings and immolation at the stake. Even when left alone, German Jews could exist only in segregated ghettos subject to a long list of prohibitions.2

  The pressure to escape Germany’s medieval persecution created a very special kind of European Jew, one who subordinated his Jewish identity to the larger Christian society around him. Assimilation became a desirable anti-dote, especially among Jewish intellectuals during the Age of Enlightenment. When Napoleon conquered part of Germany in the early nineteenth century, he granted Jews emancipation. But after Napoleon was defeated, the harsh German status quo ante was restored. The taste of freedom, however, led affluent and intellectual Jewish classes to assimilate en masse. Philosophically, assimilationists no longer considered themselves Jews living in Germany. Instead, they saw themselves as Germans who, by accident of birth, were of Jewish ancestry.3

  Many succumbed to the German pressure to convert to Christianity. German Jewry lost to apostasy many of its best commercial, political, and intellectual leaders. A far greater number were convinced that Jewish ethnic identity should be denied, but nonetheless saw quintessential value in the tenets of Moses. These German Jews developed a religious movement that was the forerunner of Reform Judaism. Yet, even many of this group ultimately converted to Christianity.4

  Between 1869 and 1871, Germany granted Jews emancipation from many, but not all, civic, commercial, and political restrictions. Germany’s Jews seized the chance to become equals. They changed their surnames, adopted greater religious laxity through Reform Judaism, and frequently married non-Jews, raising their children as Christians. Outright conversion became common. Many of Jewish ancestry did not even know it—or care.5

  In fact, of approximately 550,000 Jews in Germany who were emancipated in 1871, roughly 60,000 were by 1930 either apostates, children raised without Jewish identity by a mixed marriage, or Jews who had simply drifted away. Even those consciously remaining within organized Jewish “communities” neglected their remnant Jewish identity. The Jews of twentieth-century Germany, like their Christian neighbors, embraced national identity far more than religious identity. In the minds of German Jews, they were “101 percent” German, first and foremost.6

  But the Reich believed otherwise. The Jewish nemesis was not one of religious practice, but of bloodline. Nazis were determined to somehow identify those of Jewish descent, and destroy them.

  * * *

  IDENTIFYING THE Jews in Germany would be an uphill technologic challenge that would take years of increasingly honed counting programs and registration campaigns. From the moment Hitler was appointed Chancellor, fear gripped the entire Jewish community. No Jew wanted to step forward and identify himself as Jewish, and therefore become targeted for persecution. Many doubted they even possessed enough Jewish parentage to be included in the despised group. Indeed, not a few frightened Jews tried to join the denunciations of the Jewish community to emphasize their loyal German national character.7 But that did not help them.

  The identification process began in the first weeks of the Third Reich on April 12, 1933, when the Hitler regime announced that a long delayed census of all Germans would take place immediately. Friedrich Burgdorfer, director of the Reich Statistical Office, expressed the agency’s official gratitude that the “government of our national uprising had ordered the census.” Burgdorfer, a virulent Nazi, also headed up the Nazi Party’s Race Political Office and became a leading figure in the German Society for Racial Hygiene. He was jubilant because he understood that Germany could not be cleansed of Jews until it identified them—however long that would take.8

  The Nazis wanted fast answers about their society and who among them was Jewish. Censuses in Germany had long asked typical and innocent questions of religious affiliation. But since the Great War, European population shifts and dislocations had brought many more Jews to Germany, especially from Poland. No one knew how many, where they lived, or what jobs they held. Most of all, no one knew their names. The Nazis knew prior censuses were plagued by three to five years of hand sorting, rendering the results virtually useless for enacting swift social policies. If only the Nazis could at least obtain information on the 41 million Germans living in Prussia, Germany’s largest state, comprising three-fifths of the German populace. How fast? Nazi planners wanted all 41 million Prussians processed and preliminary results produced within a record four months. The Prussian government itself was completely incapable of launching such a massive undertaking.9

  But IBM’s Dehomag was. The company offered a solution: it would handle almost the entire project as a contract. Dehomag would design a census package counting and classifying every citizen. Moreover, it would recruit, train, and even feed the hundreds of temporary workers needed to process the census and perform the work on Dehomag’s own premises. If the government would gather the information, Dehomag would handle everything else. To secure the deal, Dehomag turned to its special consultant for governmental contracts, attorney Karl Koch.10

  Koch enjoyed good Nazi Party as well as government connections. With Watson’s help, Koch had recently traveled to IBM offices in New York to learn more about the company’s technical capabilities and pick up tips on negotiating tough government contracts. By late May 1933, Koch was able to joyously report to Watson that he had secured a RM 1.35 million contract to conduct the Prussian census. This was a test case for Dehom
ag’s relationship with the Nazi Reich. “We now have a chance to demonstrate what we are capable to do,” Koch wrote to Watson.11

  Koch was careful to credit his recent training in the United States. “Equipped with increased knowledge,” Koch wrote Watson, “and strengthened by the experience collected during my highly inspiring trip to the States, I was able to conduct the lengthy negotiations and to accomplish the difficult work.”12

  Watson wrote back a letter of appreciation to Koch and hoped he would “have the pleasure of visiting your country next year.”13

  Organizing the census was a prodigious task. Dehomag hired some 900 temporary staffers, mainly supplied by the Berlin employment office, which had become dominated by the venomous German Labor Front. Dehomag enjoyed good relations with the German Labor Front, which ranked at the vanguard of radical Nazism. Coordinating with the Berlin employment office christened the enterprise as a patriotic duty, since relieving joblessness was a major buzzword objective of Hitler’s promise to Germany. Dehomag’s two-week immersion data processing courses instructed seventy to seventy-five people at a time in daily four-hour sessions.14

  Statistical battalions were emerging. The Berlin employment office allocated large, well-lit halls for their training. Looking from the rear of the training hall, one saw a sea of backs, each a matronly dressed woman sporting a no-nonsense bun hairdo, tilted over census forms and punching machines. Packed along rows of wooden study benches, even behind view-blocking pillars, trainees diligently took notes on small pads and scrutinized their oversized census forms. Methodically, they learned to extract and record the vital personal details. Large “Smoking Prohibited” signs pasted above the front wall reinforced the regimented nature of the setting. At the front, next to a blackboard, an instructor wearing a white lab coat explained the complicated tasks of accurately punching in data from handwritten census questionnaires, operating the sorting, tabulating, and verifying machines, and other data processing chores.15