IBM and the Holocaust

by Edwin Black

  In explaining so unresponsive a reply to Watson’s elaborate letter, a key State Department official, John Hickerson, caustically wrote, “It seems to me that the attached draft letter for the President to Mr. Watson says about as much as the President could appropriately say. I do not see how the President could well comment on the resolution discussed in this letter re commending that the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States appoint economic representatives of their respective governments to work with businessmen in regard to ‘their own needs and what they are able to contribute to the needs of other countries.’”35

  Watson sent Hull a letter almost identical to the one he sent to Roosevelt. The same State Department group that formulated Roosevelt’s response proffered a similar reply for the Secretary of State, amounting to little more than a simple and non-committal thanks to Watson for “your letter regarding the activities of the Congress.”36

  But Watson would not desist. He sent formal lithographed resolutions to the State Department hoping to rally its support for an international conference of business executives to parcel out the world’s resources. One State Department assistant secretary could not help but comment on the similarity of Watson’s suggestion to the Axis’ own warlike demands. “This is, of course, a political question of major world importance,” wrote the assistant secretary, “and one upon which we have been hearing much from Germany, Italy and Japan. It occurs to me that it is most unfortunate that Mr. Thomas J. Watson, as an American serving as the president of the International Chamber of Commerce, should have sponsored a resolution of this character. It may well be that this resolution will return to plague us at some future date.” That comment was written on October 5, 1939.37 By then it was unnecessary to reply further.

  Poland had already been invaded. World War II had begun.

  * * *

  HOURS BEFORE dawn on September 1, 1939, SS Officer Alfred Naujocks was preparing to launch World War II. For days, Naujocks’ detachment of German soldiers had been waiting. Sometime before 5:40 a.m., he received the code word from Berlin. Working methodically and according to plan, Naujocks’ men donned Polish uniforms and staged a fake attack against a German radio station. Drugged concentration camp inmates were dragged into position and smeared with blood to become the “German casualties.” This sham provided Hitler with the pretext to launch Operation Case White—the invasion of Poland.38

  Germany’s assault was the fiercest and fastest in history. Hundreds of airplanes mounted a sustained bombardment of Poland’s railroads, storage facilities, troop encampments, and cities. Six divisions of coordinated troops, tanks, and artillery ravished Warsaw. Within days, the New York Times and other newspapers reported that three-fourths of much of the fire bombed and shell-battered capital was reduced to smoking rubble. So unique was this attack, it was dubbed Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. Britain and France declared war just days later.39

  Poland, essentially unarmored and in many cases deploying horse cavalry, held out for twenty-seven fierce days before its complete capitulation. News of barbarous massacres, rapes, inflicted starvation, systematic deportations, and the resulting unchecked epidemics made headlines around the world. In one incident in Nasielek, some 1,600 Jews were whipped all night in what was termed a “whipping orgy.” Two Jewish sisters were dragged from their beds in the night and taken to a cemetery; one was raped and the other given five zlotys and told to wait until next time. Shortly after the war began, a New York Times article headlined “250,000 Jews listed As Dead in Poland.”40

  Polish Jewry numbered more than 3 million persons—10 percent of the Polish population. Atrocities, rapes, and massacres could not wipe them all away. Deportation to labor camps was underway. But something more drastic was needed. A German military review of specific actions in Poland declared, “It is a mistake to massacre some 10,000 Jews and Poles, as is being done at present… this will not eradicate the idea of a Polish state, nor will the Jews be exterminated.”41

  On September 13, the New York Times reported the Reich’s dilemma with a headline declaring, “Nazis Hint Purge of Jews in Poland,” with a subhead, “3,000,000 Population Involved.” The article quoted the German government as declaring it wanted “removal of the Polish Jewish population from the European domain.” The New York Times then added, “How… the ‘removal’ of Jews from Poland [can be achieved] without their extermination… is not explained.”42

  SEPTEMBER 9, 1939

  Mr. Thomas J. Watson, President

  International Business Machines Corporation

  590 Madison Ave.

  New York NY USA

  Dear Mr. Watson:

  During your last visit in Berlin at the beginning of July, you made the kind offer to me that you might be willing to furnish the German company machines from Endicott in order to shorten our long delivery terms. I … asked you to leave with us for study purposes one alphabetic tabulating machine and a collator out of the American machines at present in Germany. You have complied with this request, for which I thank you very much, and have added that in cases of urgent need, I may make use of other American machines….

  You will understand that under today’s conditions, a certain need has arisen for such machines, which we do not build as yet in Germany. Therefore, I should like to make use of your kind offer and ask you to leave with the German company for the time being the alphabetic tabulating machines which are at present still in the former Austria….

  Regarding the payment, I cannot make any concrete proposals at the moment, however, I should ask you to be convinced that I shall see to it that a fair reimbursement for the machines left with us will be made when there will be a possibility….

  …[A]t the time that the German production of these machines renders it possible, we shall place at your disposal … a German machine for each American machine left with us.

  This offer, made orally by you, dear Mr. Watson … will undoubtedly be greatly appreciated in many and especially responsible circles…. We should thank you if you would ask your Geneva organization, at the same time, to furnish us the necessary repair parts for the maintenance of the machines….

  Yours very truly,

  H. Rottke

  cc: Mr. F. W. Nichol, New York

  cc: IBM Geneva43

  IBM’s alphabetizer, principally its model 405, was introduced in 1934, but it did not become widely used until it was perfected in conjunction with the Social Security Administration. The elaborate alphabetizer was the pride of IBM. Sleek and more encased than earlier Holleriths, the complex 405 integrated several punch card mechanisms into a single, high-speed device. A summary punch cable connector at its bottom facilitated the summarizing of voluminous tabulated results onto a single summary card. A short card feed and adjacent stacker at the machine’s top was attached to a typewriter-style printing unit equipped with an automatic carriage to print out the alphabetized results. Numerous switches, dials, reset keys, a control panel, and even an attached reading table, made the 405 a very expensive and versatile device. By 1939, the squat 405 was IBM’s dominant machine in the United States. However, the complex statistical instrument was simply too expensive for the European market. Indeed, in 1935, the company was still exhibiting it at business shows.44 Because the 405 required so many raw materials, including rationed metals that Dehomag could not obtain, IBM’s alphabetizer was simply out of reach for the Nazi Reich.

  But the 405 was of prime importance to Germany for its critical ability to create alphabetized lists and its speed for general tabulation. The 405 could calculate 1.2 million implicit multiplications in just 42 hours. By comparison, the slightly older model 601 would need 800 hours for the same task—fundamentally an impossible assignment.45

  More than 1,000 405s were operating in American government bureaus and corporate offices, constituting one of the company’s most profitable inventions. But few of the expensive devices were anywhere in Europe. Previously, Dehomag was o
nly able to provide such machines to key governmental agencies directly from America or through its other European subsidiaries—a costly financial foreign exchange transaction, which also required the specific permission of Watson. Germany had taken over Poland and war had been declared in Europe. Such imports from America were no longer possible. But Dehomag wanted the precious alphabetizing equipment still in Austria: five variously configured alphabetical punches, two alphabetical interpreters, and six alphabetical printing tabulators, as well as one collator. However, these valuable assets were still owned and controlled by the prior IBM subsidiary.46

  Watson would not transfer the assets or give the Austrian machines to Dehomag without something in return. The exchanges began by a return to the issue of Heidinger’s demand to sell his stock if he could not receive the bonuses he was entitled to. Watson tried to defuse the confrontation by suddenly agreeing to advance Heidinger the monies he needed. Watson wrote Rottke, “When I was in Germany recently and talked to Mr. Heidinger, he gave me to understand that he was in need of some money to meet his living expenses. As a stockholder in your Company, I am writing this letter to advise you that it will be agreeable to us for you to lend Mr. Heidinger such amounts as you think he will require to take care of his living expenses.”47 Watson’s letter, of course, expressed his incidental approval as a mere stockholder—not as the controlling force in the company—this to continue the fiction that Dehomag was not foreign-controlled.

  At the very moment Watson was dictating his letter about Heidinger, Germany was involved in a savage occupation of Poland. WWII was underway. So Watson was careful. He did not date the letter to Rottke, or even send it directly to Germany. Instead, the correspondence was simply handed to his secretary. She then mailed the authorizing letter to an IBM auditor, J. C. Milner in Geneva, with a note advising, “I have been instructed by Mr. Watson to forward the enclosed letter for Mr. Hermann Rottke to your care. Would you kindly see that the letter reaches him.” The undated copy filed in Watson’s office, however, was date-stamped “September 13, 1939” for filing purposes.48

  But Heidinger was not interested in further advances, as these only deepened his tax dilemma. He wanted the alphabetizers and made that known to J. W. Schotte, IBM’s newly promoted European general manager in Geneva who acted as Watson’s intermediary on the alphabetizer question. On September 27, 1939, the day a vanquished Poland formally capitulated, Schotte telephoned Rottke and a Dehomag management team in Berlin to regretfully explain that Watson refused to transfer the alphabetizers. Instead, Watson merely offered to arrange for Dehomag to take possession of thirty-four broken alphabetizers returned from Russia and lying dormant in a Hamburg warehouse. They could be repaired and rehabilitated back into service.49

  An indignant Rottke refused “most energetically on the grounds that these are ‘old junk’ in which we are not the least interested.” Schotte upped the offer, saying Watson wanted Dehomag to take over the entire Russian territory. Rottke thought the prospect in principle seemed rather attractive because Dehomag could then gain foreign exchange. But, thought Rottke, all the benefits of Russian sales would be negated if the German subsidiary was still compelled to pay IBM NY a 25 percent royalty. Preferring not to verbalize any of that, Rottke simply replied to Schotte that any ideas on servicing the Russian market should be expressed in writing.50

  Returning to the alphabetizers, Rottke repeatedly insisted Schotte call Watson to recommend that he “let us have these few machines.” Schotte would not budge, saying they had been “set aside for urgent needs.” From Rottke’s view, the machines were in Nazi-annexed Austria, a territory now granted to Dehomag, and Watson would not let the Germans deploy the existing machines? Incensed and threatening, Rottke told Schotte, “IBM is big enough to take care of its customers,” adding, “depriving us of these few machines might later be regretted.” Schotte saw that Rottke’s limit was being reached. He promised to call Watson again and convey the sentiment in Berlin.51

  Schotte called Rottke the next morning, September 28, in friendly spirits. It was all just a mistake on Watson’s part, he was happy to say. Watson, claimed Schotte, thought the machines had never even been delivered to Austria. Watson had backed down again. Rottke was able to send a letter to Heidinger confirming that Dehomag is “keeping the machines I had asked for until further notice.”52

  Dehomag’s paperwork was quickly finalized:

  Just a week before, on September 21, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Himmler’s Security Service, the SD, held a secret conference in Berlin. Summarizing the decisions taken that day, he circulated a top secret Express Letter to the chiefs of his Einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied territories. The ruthless Einsatzgruppen were special mobile task forces that fanned out through conquered lands sadistically murdering as many Jews as they could as fast as they could. Frequently, Jews were herded and locked into synagogues, which were then set ablaze as the people inside hopelessly tried to escape. More often, families were marched to trenches where the victims, many clutching their young ones, were lined up, mercilessly shot in assembly line fashion, and then dumped into the earth by the hundreds.54 But these methods were too sporadic and too inefficient to quickly destroy millions of people.

  Heydrich’s September 21 memo was captioned: “The Jewish Question in the Occupied Territory.” It began, “With reference to the conference which took place today in Berlin, I would like to point out once more that the total measures planned (i.e., the final aim) are to be kept strictly secret.” Heydrich underlined the words “total measures planned” and “strictly secret.” In parentheses, he used the German word Endziel for “final aim.”55

  His memo continued: “A distinction is to be made between 1) The final aim (which will take some time) and 2) sections of the carrying out of this goal (which can be carried out in a short space of time). The measures planned require the most thorough preparation both from the technical and the economic point of view. It goes without saying that the tasks in this connection cannot be laid down in detail.”56

  The very next step, the memo explained, was population control. First, Jews were to be relocated from their homes to so-called “concentration towns.” Jewish communities of less than 500 persons were dissolved and consolidated into the larger sites. “Care must be taken,” wrote Heydrich, “that only such towns be chosen as concentration points as are either railroad junctions or at least lie on a railway.” Addressing the zone covered by Einsatzgruppe I, which extended from east of Krakow to the former Slovak-Polish border, Heydrich directed, “Within this territory, only a temporary census of Jews need be taken. The rest is to be done by the Jewish Council of Elders dealt with below.”57

  Under the plan, each Jewish ghetto or concentration town would be compelled to appoint its own Council of Elders, generally rabbis and other prominent personalities, who would be required to swiftly organize and manage the ghetto residents. Each council would become known as a Judenrat, or Jewish Council. “The Jewish Councils,” Heydrich’s memo instructed his units, “are to undertake a temporary census of the Jews, if possible, arranged according to sex [ages: (a) up to 16 years, (b) from 16 to 20 years, and (c) over], and according to the principal professions in their localities, and to report thereon within the shortest possible period.”58

  Once in the ghetto, the instruction declared, Jews would be “forbidden to leave the ghetto, forbidden to go out after a certain hour in the evening, etc.”59

  Heydrich demanded that “the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen report to me continually regarding… the census of Jews in their districts…. The numbers are to be divided into Jews who will be migrating from the country, and those who are already in the towns.”60

  Some 3 million Polish Jews, during a sequence of sudden relocations, were to be catalogued for further action in a massive cascade of repetitive censuses, registrations, and inventories with up-to-date information being instantly available to various Nazi planning agencies and military occupation offices.6
1 How much food would the Jews require? How much usable forced labor for armament factories and useful skills could they generate? How many thousands would die from month to month under the new starvation regimen? Under wartime conditions, it would be a marvel of population registration—a statistical feat. No time was to be lost.

  The Reich was ready. During summer 1939, the Office for Military-Economic Planning, with jurisdiction over Hollerith usage, had conducted its own study of the ethnic minorities in Poland. By November 2, 1939, Arlt, the statistics wizard who had already surveyed Leipzig Jews and their city-by-city ancestral roots in Poland, had been appointed head of the Population and Welfare Administration of the “General Government,” the new Reich name for occupied Poland. Arlt was devoted to population registrations, race science issues, and population politics. He edited his own statistical publication, Volkspolitischer Informationsdienst der Regierungen des Generalgouvernments (Political Information Service of the General Government), based in Krakow. It featured such detailed data as Jewish population per square meter with sliding projections of decrease resulting from such imposed conditions as forced labor and starvation. Arlt ruled out permanent emigration, since this would only keep Jews in existence. Instead, one article asserts, “We can count on the mortality of some subjugated groups. These include babies and those over the age of 65, as well as those who are basically weak and ill in all other age groups.” Only eliminating 1.5 million Jews would reduce Jewish density to 110 persons per square kilometer.62

  In October 1939, the next counts began.

  * * *

  UNLIKE GERMAN, Austrian, and Czech Jewry, most of Polish Jewry was not assimilated. Intensely religious and not infrequently cloistered into very separate communities, they were often discernible by certain physical features that Eastern Europeans associated with Jews. Characteristic dark beards and other facial attributes made their appearance very different from many Poles. Openly speaking Yiddish and Germanic dialects only set them further apart. In some neighborhoods, Jews wore traditional attire. Persecuted into the portable professions, Jews inhabited the merchant class and artisan crafts. Indeed, the Polish word for “commerce” was the German word handel, which Jews had Yiddishized. With well-developed schools and other institutions, as well as a unifying corporate communal body, a flourishing Jewish and Yiddish culture thrived in Poland. The Jews of Poland were often highly recognizable and frequently resembled the stereotypical notion anti-Semites harbored. In short, one didn’t need a punch card-driven census to identify most of Polish Jewry.