IBM’s Hollerith Machine
IBM AND THE HOLOCAUSTSin is so ancient - much older, in fact, than the computers to which the International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM, owes its fame today.
The punch card of Hollerit was a great invention. One of the first commercial applications of what will be the fundamental system for the organization of information and therefore for the birth of the first computers. Its inventor, Herman Hollerit, in a few years unknowingly created the foundations of one of the most important and significant companies of the twentieth century, the one that soon became known all over the world with the acronym Ibm, International Business Machine .
A shadow, however, risks obscuring the history of this technological giant and its first invention. An abundant documentation would reveal the use of those cards for the cataloging of the millions of Jews that Nazi Germany decided to exterminate in a few years. It was thanks to that small easily usable and very light punch card that the Reich was able to organize the census of its victims with absolute precision and without wasting energy.. And he demonstrates this hypothesis also with the case of Holland, a country in which the system worked best and 73% of the Jews were deported and exterminated, and that of France, in which only 25% of the Jews were persecuted because a hero of the Resistance sabotaged the punch card system.
Punch card used in the SS Race Office
To succeed in the project, the Nazi hierarchies decided to map the entire German population as quickly as possible. They decided to divide Jews from non-Jews. It was not an easy task. On the one hand, there was an operational problem to be contemplated in the long run of detailed organization and planning. On the other hand, precisely in order to reduce the time by achieving the tragic objectives in a timely manner, it would have been necessary to use the best technological resources in circulation. The holocaust presupposed method: cataloging and archiving of data, information, details of all kinds. Ibm, through the subsidiary Dehomag, owner of patents in Germany, From America, it was Thomas Watson - a "conqueror" as the author of the book defines him - who made this relationship possible. The same man who led the IBM towards the definitive planetary diffusion looked, in fact, to Germany above all as a great deal. Nazi Germany had a need and technology could have found a solution. The situation, however, did not favor the intentions.
From '33 to '39 the choices of the owner of the IBM were evaluated according to a dense and complex network of relations with both the US and German political and economic powers. Watson's appears as a reasoning of convenience.. In June 1937 Watson received a medal from the Führer for his "entrepreneurial" contribution. In a short time , Nazi Germany had become IBM's second largest customer after the US market .
More detail, The Nazi Party: IBM & “Death’s Calculator”