by Edwin Black
With metric specificity, Dehomag’s memo called for two massive bomb shelters, each large enough for 950 people or a mass of machinery, as well as an underground tunnel linking factory buildings at the Lichterfelde complex. The bomb shelters were later approved by Watson.100 Thus IBM assured that Hitler’s punch card capability would be protected from Allied strikes, even if those included American bombers.
Thomas Watson was more than just a businessman selling boxes to the Third Reich. For his Promethean gift of punch card technology that enabled the Reich to achieve undreamed of efficiencies both in its rearmament program and its war against the Jews, for his refusal to join the chorus of strident anti-Nazi boycotters and isolators and instead open a commercial corridor the Reich could still navigate, for his willingness to bring the world’s commercial summit to Berlin, for his value as a Roosevelt crony, for his glitter and legend, Hitler would bestow upon Thomas Watson a medal—the highest it could confer on any non-German.
The Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star was created for Thomas Watson to “honor foreign nationals who made themselves deserving of the German Reich.” It ranked second in prestige only to Hitler’s German Grand Cross.101
Watson was honored. At the next ICC Congress, he would not only be installed as president of the ICC, he would be decorated by der Fuhrer. Working with Goebbels as stage manager, Watson would make the 1937 ICC conference in Berlin a commercial homage to Germany. Hitler in turn would make that event a national homage to Thomas Watson.
* * *
THE GREAT 24,000-ton oceanliner Manhattan brought ninety-five American executives and their families to Hamburg on June 24, 1937, where they refreshed and boarded trains for Berlin to attend the ICC gathering. As usual, Watson made arrangements for the State Department, its ambassadors, consuls, and other envoys to sail with the group or otherwise become abundantly visible. In Berlin, the Americans would join more than 2,500 delegates and others from forty-two other countries marshaled by Watson to make a strong showing. The group included 900 from Germany. The suites of the Hotel Adlon, Bristol, and Continental were waiting. The Adlon doubled as Watson’s nerve center for the Congress. Scenic tours were arranged for the after hours.102
Watson had already declared that after the Berlin gathering he would travel to Italy for a private meeting with Mussolini and that the next ICC conference scheduled for 1939 would be held in Tokyo, Germany’s Pacific ally. IBM had been cultivating a thriving business in Japan, helping that nation develop its air force and aircraft carriers.103
Greetings to the Berlin Congress were not only conveyed by Hull, but this time President Roosevelt himself issued an official, if innocuous, felicitation. Again, such communications emphasized Watson’s primacy as much as the event itself. “My hearty congratulations and warmest greetings on your election as President of the International Chamber of Commerce,” Roosevelt cabled the Adlon. “For many years, I have followed with interest your efforts to advance the work of this organization…. Your Congress in Berlin is taking place at a time when many serious problems call for wise and mature counsel…. On this very important occasion, I extend to you and to the participating delegations my best wishes for a successful conclusion to the deliberations.”104
On June 28, 1937, over a peaceful cup of tea served in dainty china cups atop elegant saucers, in a quiet corner of the Reich Chancellery, huddling over a small serving table and seated on cushy, floral armchairs, Watson and Hitler would finally talk. Sitting with them was a Hitler cohort and two other prominent Hitler supporters from the ICC convention. No one knows exactly what Hitler told Watson during their exchange. Watson paraphrased it later for the New York Times as, “There will be no war. No country wants war, no country can afford it.”105 But no one really ever knew the exact exchange between the men. Whatever Hitler did say, Watson was encouraged and entranced.
Later, the ICC thousands assembled at the German Opera House, which doubled as the Reichstag. Nazi flags fluttered monumentally from the balconies as a massive orchestra played Beethoven’s Lenore Overture #3. The New York Times reported, “At times… it seemed to be a purely National Socialist rally.”106
And then Adolf Hitler suddenly walked in. Dressed in his familiar brown party uniform, he made his way directly to the royal box festooned with a swastika flag. As he did, the familiar command crackled through the air: “Sieg!” 107
The assemblage of distinctive businessmen, including dozens from the United States of America, in the year 1937, gripped by the moment, awed by the occasion, imbued with the spirit, under the leadership of Thomas J. Watson, jumped to their feet amid roars, cheers, and wild applause, reached for the sky in a loyal salute and chanted back “Heil!”108 Watson lifted his right arm halfway up before he caught himself. Later, a colleague denied to a reporter for the New York Herald that Watson’s gesture was a genuine salute.109
Hermann Goering was one of the first main speakers. He hammered at Nazi Germany’s constant themes. The Third Reich’s “mighty rearmament,” Goering insisted, was merely to defend Germany’s long borders and protect her honor. He demanded justice for Germany, and access to the raw materials she was entitled to. Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht in his address also stressed “honest raw material distribution.”110
Many more Nazi speakers argued their case, hopeful for appeasement if possible, committed to conquest if necessary. Even Schacht, whose rhetoric was generally subdued, described racial prerogatives that arose from a “God-given division of nations according to race.”111
When the plenary finally dismissed, a signal was given and the orchestra played the theme of the Storm Troopers, the “Horst Wessel Song” and then the German national anthem, “ Deutschland uber Alles.” Caught up in the hypnotic invigoration of it all, delegates sang along with stalwart Brown Shirts.112
Then the merriment began in earnest. Berlin had not seen so monarchical a reception in recent memory. Watson was wined, dined, and honored everywhere in Berlin. Josef and Magda Goebbels entertained the Watsons at the Opera House. The Schachts invited the Watsons and delegates to a grand party for hundreds at the Berlin Palace. The Goerings hosted a majestic banquet for the Watsons and delegation presidents at the immense Charlottenburg Palace. Berlin’s mayor organized a sumptuous dinner for the delegates.113
But all prior splendor was surpassed by the elaborate Venetian Nights staged by Goebbels on Peacock Island, an extravaganza thought by many to be the grandest party of the Nazi era. Located a short drive from Berlin in pastoral Wannsee, Friedrich Wilhelm III’s romantic eighteenth-century castle on Peacock Island had been converted for the evening into an Arabesque fantasy at a cost of 4 million Reichsmarks. Watson and the other guests crossed to the isle atop a narrow pontoon bridge, which brought them to a long path lined with hundreds of charming Berlin schoolgirls daintily outfit-ted in white blouses over white silk breeches and white leather slippers. Each girl waved a white fairy’s wand and angelically bowed as Watson and his fellow industrialists promenaded in.114
Three thousand—some said four thousand—guests were then invited to imbibe at a bar of seemingly endless length, manned by eighty bartenders pouring and mixing any cocktail, vintage cognac, fine wine, or robust beer. Corks popped continuously as champagne flowed with abandon. A regal dinner remembered as gigantic was served to hundreds of tables, each seating as many as twelve. Thousands of chefs, waiters, and their kitchen helpers whisked dome after dome of gourmet specialties back and forth across the lawns in a spectacular demonstration of precision table service. Enchanting Prussian porcelain figurines were bestowed upon the wives. Ballerinas and singers from a nearby artist’s colony performed an enchanted display of dance and song beneath a prodigious rotunda, which later became an immense dance floor.115
But no fanfare could compare with the crowning moment, the decoration of Watson. Hitler’s medal was bestowed by Schacht as newsreel cameras whirred and government functionaries snapped to stiff attention. The eight-pointed gold-framed cross
of white enamel embedded with German eagles and Nazi emblems dangled about the neck from a broad red, black, and white ribbon in tandem with a second six-pointed star worn over the left breast. To Watson, it was magnificent. When wearing it, he was draped by two swastikas, one to the right and one to the left.116
The majesty and fantasy of Berlin 1937 swept Watson and IBM into an ever more entangled alliance—now not only in Germany, but in every country of Europe. Soon, the metallic syncopation of Hollerith technology would echo across the continent. There were frightening new applications for punch cards in store, applications no civilized person could envision. France, Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Norway, Romania, Hungary, and the other nations would soon be set ablaze.
Through it all, the songs never stopped. Swaying with exuberance, all dressed in one color, lyrics shouted in almost hypnotic fervor, the songs never stopped. Endicott reverberated with the prospects as followers sang out.
That’s the spirit that has brought us fame!
We’re big, but bigger we will be.
We can’t fail
for all can see.
…
We fought our way through—and new
Fields we’re sure to conquer too.
For the ever onward IBM.117
PART TWO
VI. WAR CARDS
JULY 5, 1937
Your Excellency
Adolf Hitler
Berlin
Before leaving Berlin, I wish to express my pride in and deep gratitude for the high honor I received through the order with which you honored me. Valuing fully the spirit of friendship which underlay this honor, I assure you that in the future as in the past, I will endeavor to do all in my power to create more intimate bonds between our two great nations. My wife and my family join in best wishes for you.
Thomas J. Watson
International Business Machines1
JULY 4, 1938
Mr. Thomas J. Watson
International Business Machines
New York
Dear Sir:
I must offer you my apologies for taking the liberty to write you and to request your kind attention for the following matter. Like many [of] Jewish confession, I am facing a very terrible moment in life and I am obliged to leave this country and to procure in another land my means of living. I am born on the 17th of June 1906 and was educated in the elementary and high school in the country. During eight years until 1933, I have worked as an operator of the Hollerith punching machine for the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin.Now I have spoken with Mr. Drines, the manager of the Hollerith company in Berlin about my plans to find work abroad. Mr. Drines has advised me to write to you somehow with my plans and I hope that with your kind help I would be able to find work in a foreign country. No doubt you know the condition of living here and it would be useless to give any further reasons for my immigration.I would be very grateful to you for your kind assistance and please accept in anticipation my thanks.Hoping to be favored with your reply, I remain
Sincerely Yours,
Ilse Meyer
Berlin2
* * *
GERMANY WAS bitter for the Jews. By 1937, thousands had escaped as pauperized emigrants. But for those Jews remaining within the Reich, existence became a progressively fainter shadow of its former self. Driven from the small cities, Jews began to flood into Berlin where they attempted to continue a fraction of the civilized life they once knew. Small things became important: a cup of coffee in a cafe, a stroll in the park, cinema on the weekend, an afternoon concert, these were the precious relics of normalcy German Jewry clung to. But the Nazis would not permit a moment of peace. Jews were subjected to unending acts of personal degradation as they were marginalized. The national humiliation effort was more than a cruelty unnoticed except within the borders of Germany. The campaign was the source of never-ending American newspaper articles and radio reports, including those in the New York Times.
Nazis would enter cinemas and demand all Jews rise so they could be escorted out. Cafes catering to Jews were ordered closed and the patrons taken into custody. Local authorities disbanded virtually all Jewish athletic teams, musical societies, and social clubs. Indeed, any gathering of more than four Jews in a single place was forbidden. Placarded park benches warned that Jews could not sit down. Synagogues were shuttered and often razed; the grand principal synagogue of Munich was replaced with a parking lot.3
Hundreds of disenfranchised middle-class German Jews from the provinces tried to reestablish themselves in Berlin with small retail businesses. Former boot manufacturers reappeared in shoe shops. Liquidated apparel makers set up shop as haberdashers. Evicted professors opened bookstores. As soon as the Nazis discovered these shoestring enterprises, customers were frightened away and the assets targeted for confiscation. Jewish shops were defaced with painted epithets exclaiming “Jewish Swine” or “Out with the Jews.” Not infrequently, armed Storm Troopers blockaded the doorways. One day, the world awoke to headlines reporting a massive racist display as several miles of Berlin’s main shopping streets were obstructed with crude, three-foot-high signs identifying exactly which stores were owned by Jews.4 Nazi agitators always seemed to know if owners were Jewish, no matter how new the stores.
Yet for the Hitler regime, the pace of Jewish destruction was still not swift enough nor sufficiently complete. Although Germany’s professing Jews had been identified, thousands of so-called “racial Jews” with Jewish ancestors dating back to the prior century had yet to be marked. In 1937, the Reich ordered another nationwide census that would prepare the country for military mobilization, and for the Jews would be the final and decisive identification step. Dehomag eagerly agreed to organize the project.5
The racial portion of the census was designed to pinpoint ancestral Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws, ensuring no escape from the Reich’s anti-Semitic campaign. In addition to the usual census questions, a special card asked whether any of the individual’s grandparents was Jewish. When completely filled out, the card would be isolated in a separate envelope for processing by both the census authorities and security offices.6
The project, originally scheduled for May 1938, would be an enormous undertaking for IBM, requiring a huge expansion of manpower, machinery, and processing space. Seventy sorters, some sixty tabulators, seventy-six multipliers, and 90 million punch cards would be needed for the RM 3.5 million contract. IBM supervisors in Geneva, Stockholm, and New York understood how difficult the challenge would be. A memo from IBM’s European Factory Manager J.G. Johnston to IBM NY supervisors in Sweden specified, “we also have to raise considerable funds for the financing of the RM 3.5 million census order” even though the Reich’s payments would be distributed over a fifteen-month period. Other IBM executives seemed to sense that the forthcoming racial census would represent a project so far-reaching, it would be the last of its kind, and therefore IBM’s investment would have to plan for a temporary surge. “You should take into consideration… the fact that the German census order is a peak load which may not reoccur.”7
The Nazi establishment was ecstatic about the implications for German Jewry. “In May of next year,” bragged the leading NSDAP newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, “the largest and most comprehensive census will take place. It will be larger and more comprehensive than Germany, and even the rest of the world, has ever known…. it is the duty of every Volks-comrade to answer every single question completely and truthfully… [thus] giving the Fuhrer and his colleagues the basis for the future legislation of the next five to ten years.”8
One Nazi bureaucrat enthused, “The general census of 1938 is intended to also determine the blood-wise configuration of the German population…. the results could also be recorded on the police department’s technical registration cards. The police would thus gain an insight into the racial composition of the persons living in their jurisdictions. And this would also accomplish the goals set by the Main Office of the Security Police
.”9
But the much-anticipated May 1938 census was delayed. On March 13, 1938, the Third Reich absorbed Austria, creating a Greater Germany of 73 million people. Hitler called it the Anschluss, or “Annexation.” The anti-Semitic program that had evolved over the years in Germany now rapidly took hold in the Austrian provinces—virtually overnight. First came the violence. Jewish merchants were rounded up and publicly beaten, their stores looted. Viennese crowds cheered when Jewish men and women were forced to their knees to scrub streets as rifle butts flailed them.10
Page one headlines in the New York Times immediately decried an “Orgy of Jew-baiting.” The article described sadistic cruelties calculated to coerce Jews into immediately emigrating penniless to anywhere. “In Vienna and Austria,” the New York Times declared, “no vestige of decency or humanity has checked the will to destroy, and there has been an unbroken orgy of Jew-baiting such as Europe has not known since the darkest days of the Middle Ages.”11
Then came the arrests. Thousands of Jews were extracted from their homes and offices, loaded onto wagons, and shipped to concentration camps, such as Dachau, where they suffered bestial tortures, starvation, and back-breaking labor. The camps, too, were designed to convince Austrian Jews to leave the country—should they ever be released from incarceration. And only those who promised to emigrate at once were even considered for release.12