IBM and the Holocaust

by Edwin Black

  But cooperation with the Third Reich was imperative for Watson. The recurring crisis of IBM retaining its dominance in Axis punch card operations was again peaking in fall 1941. The urge to create a German-controlled cartel was again confronting IBM NY. In that vein, the Reich began to view CEC as one of a geographical triad of IBM subsidiaries along with Belge Watson in Brussels and Watson Bedrijfsmachine Maatschappi in Amsterdam.

  The director of Belge Watson was former Bull Director Emile Genon. The director of CEC was Roger Virgile. P. Taylor was Watson’s troubleshooter in IBM Geneva. In September 1941, Genon wrote a confidential letter to Taylor at IBM Geneva discussing Watson’s intentions for CEC. A copy of Genon’s letter ended up in the hands of Justice Department investigators looking into IBM’s many special Treasury licenses. The Justice Department and State Department summarized the letter: “Political affairs in France. Transmits copies of letter addressed to Mr. P. Taylor, International Business Machines Corporation and written by E. Genon, which indicates that Mr. T.H.J. Watson approved Mr. Virgile’s policy of collaboration with Germany.”32

  In France, IBM’s collaboration required working with the SS via Westerholt. Indeed, IBM NY suspected that when America entered the war, Westerholt might be designated custodian of CEC, since he had poignantly discussed the issue of enemy receivership with Virgile. In the second week of October 1941, Westerholt returned to Paris for further consultations with Virgile. Westerholt met Virgile on October 13, when he warned that Dehomag was now prepared to break its contract with IBM NY on a legal “pretext.” The German authorities understood that Bull lacked the manufacturing muscle to supply the Reich, but Berlin still hoped it could use Bull designs and patents to start its own factory. Toward that aim, license agreements had already been signed. In view of the threat to IBM Europe if the company did not cooperate, Westerholt wanted an immediate meeting at Lyon in Vichy. He sent word to Werner C. Lier, Watson’s most senior official at IBM Geneva.33

  While Lier considered Westerholt’s invitation, he filed a full report with IBM NY. In his note, Lier warned that if the U.S. entered the war, as most imminently expected, a custodian for CEC would “have the effect of reducing the amount of reports which we have been able to receive from CEC… and create a situation somewhat similar to that of the Dehomag.” That in mind, Lier needed New York’s permission to attend and bring CEC Sales Manager William Borel as Virgile’s representative.34

  Three days later on October 16, an impatient Lier cabled IBM NY: “Competition affair serious. Genon learned Vichy… definitely able destroy our European business in cooperation with foreign group, previously mentioned…. Following telephone call Borel I received today written report stating Westerholt confirmed Virgile reality our fears…. Also threatened appointment foreign custodian Paris with program suppressing relations with Geneva. Westerholt wants see me Lyon…. Will see him only with your approval. Please instruct all matters.”35

  The next day, Lier contacted Berlin to obtain the latest intelligence on Dehomag’s rebellious actions. He summarized the effort for New York. “Due to the courtesy of the American Consulate in Geneva,” Lier reported, “it was possible for us to speak on the morning of October 17th to the United States Embassy in Berlin. Mr. Woods, the Commercial Attache, being absent, we explained to his assistant our desire to find out something more definite concerning Dehomag’s intention of breaking the contract with us. In the afternoon Mr. Woods called us in Geneva and told us that he had seen Dr. Albert who had admitted, though in a rather vague manner, that he had heard certain rumors about Dehomag’s intention but… could not give a definite opinion as to the legal aspects of the matter.”36

  Thereafter, Lier concluded that a meeting with Westerholt could no longer be postponed. Lier cabled New York, “Recab [re: cable] competition. Intend go Vichy with Genon Wednesday trying prevent or slowing juridical materialization agreement between two groups.” On October 20, IBM NY replied, “No objection your seeing Westerholt. Make no commitments and take no action.” Lier confirmed that he would immediately leave for Lyon because it was “in the best interests of the IBM to delay as much as possible the official ratification of the agreement between the Bull and W [Wanderer-Werke] groups.”37

  The initial meeting between Lier and Westerholt was only the beginning. The Nazis wanted a second, much broader conference, this one in Berlin, and involving CEC’s entire senior staff. Again, Lier would not proceed without Watson’s specific permission. On November 17, 1941, CEC cabled IBM NY: “Meeting Berlin November 21 with Virgile Westerholt… Suggest you instruct Lier at once to attend that meeting even if you have not reached decision on Kiep’s cable November 6 to Watson. Have met Westerholt with Lier. Impression good. Reports follow.”38

  The meetings with Westerholt in Berlin were part of the constellation of intrigues that compelled Chauncey to rush to the State Department in early December, just days before Pearl Harbor, to circumvent Treasury license requirements and issue financial instructions to Dehomag. Ultimately, after the U.S. joined the war against Germany, Westerholt was appointed the custodian of CEC.39 The Nazis were able to do with CEC as they pleased so long as IBM was paid. The looming competition with Bull never came to fruition. It was more of a bargaining chip than a genuine threat. Unable to replace IBM, the Third Reich pressured the company into relinquishing Watson’s troublesome micro-managing in favor of the faster and more coordinated action the Reich required.

  But even though CEC and IBM were able to retain their dominance as a vital supplier of Reich automation, by the end of 1943, the bleak facts about the punch card business in France had become undeniable. CEC could no longer obtain reliable supplies of paper or raw materials. IBM’s subsidiary no longer produced machines for the French market. Key workers with special Hollerith skills were being systematically drafted or transferred to punch card projects in the Greater Reich. The French company’s entire manufacturing capacity—machines and parts—was being shipped out of the country to Germany and beyond. Despite its soaring revenues, the French subsidiary saw a moment of utter corporate collapse looming in the near future.40 In the beginning of 1943, just as CEC was reporting doubled volumes and trebled profits, Virgile was compelled to warn IBM NY: “The situation of CEC at the end of 1942 is very precarious, both from the point of view of specialized personnel, which is subject to forced transfer to Germany at any moment, and from the point of view of card supply which is assured for only a few weeks. Manufacture is proceeding with enormous and ever increasing delays. Subcontractors have had to close down suddenly or decrease their activity sharply as a result of personnel requisitions. The greater part of our skilled labor is subject to immediate call. Under those conditions, it is impossible to venture as much as a guess as to the future.”41

  Powers had been all but marginalized in France. The Germans were required to transfer workshops from Germany to Paris just to keep its almost inactive operation functioning. Even though Bull had promising equipment with numerous installations in France, it was financially and operationally incapable of ramping up. Some Bull machines had also been removed by the Germans and were being serviced by IBM personnel in occupied territories. Bull was also desperate for raw materials to fabricate machines and paper to manufacture cards. Berlin’s one and only order for leased Bull machines had to be canceled before any could be delivered.42

  Germany wanted the Jews identified by bloodline not religion, pauperized, and then deported to camps, just as they were elsewhere in conquered Europe. The Jews of France stood vulnerable under the shadow of destruction. Hitler was ready.

  In France, the Holleriths were not.

  * * *

  HOLLAND SURRENDERED to Germany on May 15, 1940, after just five days of fierce attack. The Reich immediately began planning the complete destruction of the Dutch Jewish community. Believing that the total of ancestral and practicing Jews in Holland to be about double their actual number, Nazi experts assumed the campaign against Dutch Jewry would be phased. More tha
n that, they realized all too well that the local population did not welcome the arrival of Hitler’s forces. Certainly, rabid Dutch Nazis were eager to cooperate with the occupation. But in significant measure, at times citizens of Holland demonstrated open solidarity with persecuted Jews and displayed an unwillingness to deliver their neighbors. Repressive measures against Jews provoked a strike by laborers, frequent demands by Christians to be included with the Jews in their misery, and even some violent riots.43

  The Reich needed a very special expert to help to engineer the roundups. They needed a man who understood the administrative statistical land-scape of Holland, one who was adept at Hollerith technology and willing to cooperate in the face of popular resistance. In an occupied nation beset by neighborhood ambushes against German soldiers, outrageous catcalls at the cinema when Nazi propaganda films flashed onto the screen, and coordinated sermons in churches everywhere to condemn anti-Semitism, Berlin needed someone uniquely qualified to step forward.44

  They found their man in Jacobus Lambertus Lentz. He was not a Nazi. Those who have studied him have not proven his innate anti-Semitism. Instead, Lentz was a population expert, cocooned in his own stacked and tabulated world of ratios, registration programs, and rattling Hollerith machines. Perfection in human cataloging was for Lentz more than a matter of pride, it was a crusade.45

  In 1936, as Inspector of Population Registries, Lentz standardized local population registers and their data collection methodology throughout the Netherlands—an administrative feat that earned him a royal decoration. That same year, he outlined his personal vision in Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv, the journal of the German Statistical Society: “Theoretically,” predicted Lentz, “the collection of data for each person can be so abundant and complete, that we can finally speak of a paper human representing the natural human.”46

  One can only imagine the deep inner satisfaction Lentz derived from indexing one segment of the population after another with infallible precision. He bragged about his data, defensively stood by his summaries and always anticipated the next German request for Jewish names—if for no other reason than to self-validate his own “censual” foresight. When light streamed through the punch card, Lentz surely saw something no one else could. German occupiers were resented nearly everywhere in Holland. But for Lentz, his new Nazi masters had in fact liberated him from the dissatisfying ennui of peacetime social tracking. Now, under Nazism, he could unleash all his ideas of registration and powers of ratiocination restlessly waiting to be tested. He would declare war on population ambiguity. Lentz would be the man to deliver the Jews of Holland. His motto was “to record is to serve.”47

  Step one, on July 3, 1941, was the identification of Jewish refugees living in Amsterdam, a number the Germans erroneously believed was between 120,000 and 150,000. Using police stations normally charged with registering aliens, Lentz organized a systematic count. His numbers ultimately showed far fewer refugees than expected, about 20,000.48

  Then, on August 17, Lentz devised a unique tamper-proof personal identification card that could not be forged. Translucent inks were employed to print key words that disappeared under a quartz lamp. The stamp franking was acetone-soluble. Photos of the individual were affixed front and back through a window transparently sealed and adhered with permanent glue. A fingerprint of the person’s right index finger was then impressed upon the back of one of the photos so it always displayed through the small window. The individual’s signature on watermarked paper completed the document, which included numerous personal details. Lentz’ card was a masterpiece of human documentation.49

  Lentz first conceived his complex card in 1939 when war in Europe broke out and the government considered foolproof food rationing cards. However, as recently as March 1940, a Dutch government commission thought that such a card would treat average people like criminals, and was inconsistent with the nation’s democratic tradition. But with no one to hold him back, Lentz perfected his original card idea by adding the photograph and fingerprint features.50

  When Lentz offered his specimen to the Criminal Technology Institute of the Reich Criminal Police Office, it was eagerly approved. His innovation outshone anything the German police had ever developed, and clearly could defeat the many local attempts to forge papers. Within weeks, German civil administrators began requiring all Dutch citizens over the age of fourteen to sign up. It took about a year before everyone was registered. But Lentz’ personal card was more than just an advanced domestic identification. A second portion detached at issuance created a card-like receipt. Those card receipts were retained and organized into massive files cataloging the personal details of all who lived in the Netherlands.51

  Every Dutch adult was required to carry Lentz’ personal identification card. But a feature was added that only affected Jews. Eventually the letter J was stamped on every identification card carried by those defined as Jewish. The manual card file receipts became the first stepping-stone toward comprehensive automated Dutch Jewish registration.52

  On October 22, all Jewish enterprises were compelled to register. Jews were defined, as in the Nuremberg Laws, according to their grandparents, not their current religious affiliation. Businesses were deemed Jewish if any member of the ownership or management was Jewish or had Jewish ancestors, again mimicking the decrees espoused earlier in the Reich. A Bureau of Economic Investigation was formed to decide whether suspect companies were actually Jewish under rigid ancestral definitions. As soon as German civil authorities in Holland announced the Jewish commercial registration, the nation erupted in protest. Virtually all Protestant churches, that next Sunday, condemned from the pulpit a Jewish registration they called “un-Christian.”53

  By early 1941, the Germans felt they were ready to begin the last phase before deportation. On January 10, 1941, Nazi State Secretary Friedrich Wimmer issued the all-important decree VO6/41 requiring all Jews—Dutch and foreign—to register at their local Census Office. Wimmer’s deadline was four weeks for those residing outside of Amsterdam and ten weeks for Amsterdam residents. Since the 1930 census, Dutch Census Offices were completely automated with Hollerith systems. By comparing the Jewish registrations to the existing total population card index created by the Lentz card, the authorities could pinpoint any Jew who failed to sign up.54

  Although nearly all of Holland angrily condemned the Nazi registration, the Jews did as instructed. With few exceptions, every Dutch Jewish family dutifully picked up its questionnaires, filled them out completely, and filed with the nearest registration office. The uncanny compliance was based on traditional Dutch respect for laws and regulations, as well as the stated penalty for not registering—five years in prison and the confiscation of property. Jews also understood that resistance was futile because their names had already long been innocently registered as “Jewish” in numerous statistical and registration bureaus throughout the Netherlands, and especially in the new card indices created by Lentz’ personal identification program. Even though some Jews rioted in early February 1941, the entire community nonetheless filled out the forms as required. More than 157,000 questionnaires were ultimately returned in the first months—more than the entire Jewish community because many sympathetic Dutchmen actually volunteered to register alongside their Jewish countrymen. Lentz’ punching cadres began converting the Jews to Hollerith records as quickly as possible.55

  But none of it was fast enough for the Nazis. There were many delays. Although decree VO6/41 was espoused on January 10, 1941, German administrators did not release it to the media until January 14, when the news was published around the world, including in the New York Times. Because the registration ruling did not become effective until January 24, the official Dutch government gazette did not publish the details for census administrators until its February 3 issue. Hence local Census Offices across the country lost time in setting up registration facilities. Nonetheless, the offices remained open all day and night to speed the process. Each day, thousands of D
utch Jews marched into the local Census Office, paid a token guilder, and filled out the elaborate questionnaires providing the Germans with everything they needed to know about their possessions, families, and parentage.56

  The German authorities at first praised the Census Office for “exemplary” service. But as Wimmer’s early April deadline approached and the tallies were far from complete, Lentz’ organization was challenged and rebuked for tardiness. The Germans even suggested some localities were sabotaging the program.57

  Nazi administrators feared sabotage for good reason. Outraged Amsterdam workers had spontaneously called a strike, in large part over repressive measures. Nazi occupiers suppressed the defiance by throwing hand grenades and firing machine guns at crowds of protesters. Violent reprisals followed. The city of Amsterdam itself was fined 15 million guilders for the strike.58

  But Lentz bristled at any suggestion his operation was doing less than its best. As Inspector of the Population Registries, he defended his national operation down to the local office. On March 25, he bluntly wrote Wimmer, “The government Inspectorate has thus far received approximately 30,000 registrations from the local registration posts…. the delay in registration is definitely not based on registration posts not willing to cooperate, or any sabotage, but on the circumstances, that the employees of the registration posts have been overburdened (specifically caused by the identification card decree); and on top of that, we just could not appoint key, reliable employees. The delay is also caused by the great number of dubious cases and interrogations.” Acknowledging that more than a quarter million names were expected, Lentz assured, “I have ordered a circular letter by the Ministry of the Interior to the local registration posts, in which I have again asked for the greatest haste.”59