IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation
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List Price: $27.50
Our Price: $3.00
Your Save: $ 24.50 ( 89% )
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Manufacturer: Random House Audio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318
EAN: 9780375419331
Format: Abridged
ISBN: 0375419330
Label: Random House Audio
Number Of Items: 4
Publication Date: 2001-02
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: 2001-02-20
Studio: Random House Audio
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Shocking and revealing look into IBM's role in the Holocaust
Comment: Being a mainframe systems programmer who used to live in Germany, I really wasn't certain of what to expect from this book. It's a great book, a definite must read. I learned a lot from this book. The fact the the author doesn't just make assertions, but backs up everything he presents with source after source testifies to this books thoroughness and accuracy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Possibly an even bigger issue here
Comment: I haven't read all the other reviews, but I am curious to know if there is anyone else who was more than a little disturbed by the relationship between IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson and President Franklin Roosevelt. It is well documented, and not just in this book, that the two were close. Edwin Black makes brief reference to the relationship, but never asks the question: Did Roosevelt know?
My gut tells me that the connection between these two is not mere coincedence.
The reader would do well to note the historical and economic circumstances during the era; the collapse of Capitalism seemed immanent, and it was not the New Deal that saved it, but World War II. You can't have war (especially on such a scale that was needed to rescue a crumbling American economic system) without a suitable threat.
There is most definitely a tremendous amount of investigation to be done concerning this matter.
Customer Rating:
Summary: the most important book on the holocaust
Comment: I must have read by now several hundreds of books on the holocaust, and I think this book, IBM and the Holocaust, is by far the most important one. Starting from completely different premisses, it places holocaust research on its head, placing everything we know in a new and fascinating context. Forget for a moment about the horrors of the holocaust (to which countless books have already been devoted), and consider the following question: What made the holocaust possible? -- Not in terms of the horrifying human experience, but rather as statistics and data management problem that exceeded, by orders of magnitude, anything that has been tackled before. How can millions of people be "processed" so effectively, in the 1930's: How could their ancestry be tracked down generations back, how could their assets be mapped, how could their future be plotted and directed so precisely?
The answers provided in Edwin Black's book are as disturbing as they are illuminating. The centralized government of Nazi Germany provided IBM the perfect testing ground for pushing the limits of statistics-gathering and data processing equipment. The rest doesn't matter. It was clear that no matter what would happen, no matter who won the war, the post-WW2 market for data processing would be enormous, and the insights gained from working with the German government were just what the people at IBM needed in order to gain the knowledge, experience, and know-how that would put them in the lead of the data processing revolution. To the good folks at IBM, the holocaust, as well as the other data processing needs of Nazi Germany, were just that -- data processing problems, to be solved by a clever application of their technology. In other words, the holocaust was incidental to them, a by-product of an application in organization: tabulation, counting, sorting, collating, report-generation, etc. One of the most illuminating examples given in the book is the way the Nazi racial laws, which attempted to define "who was a Jew", were created to match the kind of data that could be produced using IBM equipment. In other words. The Nazi definition of who was a Jew matched neither the [Jewish] religious criteria, or the cultural realities. It was an approximation, something that the Nazi statisticians were able to get out of the equipment they had. It was technology that defined, in this case, who would be singled out for special treatment. Another point that comes out is that the holocaust progressed slower in countries that were not as technologically advanced, and progressed faster in countries that already had data processing equipment in active government use.
Finally, a fascinating aspect that comes out of the book concerns the loyalties of multi-national corporations. Edwin Black describes the many ways by which IBM managed to circumvent any rule against trading with enemy countries, and out-manoeuvre any State Dept official who tried investigating IBM's dealings throughout the war. Can we expect national loyalty from a multi-national firm such as IBM? -- Clearly not. May we assume that a multi-national, or shall I say "trans-national" firm, will attempt anything in order to further its financial interests, in the face of any legal or moral restrictions? -- Surely the answer is positive. Google censures information on behalf of the Peoples' Highly Democratic Republic of China, and Yahoo discloses information (to officials of the PRoC) that leads to the arrest of a freedom-fighting Chinese journalist.
I like the book precisely because it let me look at the holocaust from a totally technological, non-sentimental point of view. It shows what where the technological issues involved in answering the various kinds of queries, and how IBM went about solving them. It demonstrates that the "right" questions to ask, and the "right" definitions to use were precisely those that could be processed effectively by the tabulating machines of the time. It also shows how one determined company can circumvent any government and get away with it. This book presents a unique perspective on the holocaust, and its lessons are as timely as ever.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting History
Comment: This book, extremely well documented, gives interesting insight into the ethics of big business. Enron cost investors and employees their life savings; Deomag (the German subsidiary of IBM) cost many Jews their lives. It permits a stark view of corporate decision making.
I used scenarios, pulled from this book, as part of a course on ethics and professional practice for computer scientists. It was interesting to try applying modern engineering codes of ethics to work in Nazi occupied Europe (and contemporary IBM New York offices).
Given the stigma of associating a company with Hitler's Final Solution, I held the book to a fairly high standard of proof; the book certainly delivered. Documentation, public where possible, from private interviews where not, is meticulously presented and thoroughly cross referenced. If this topic holds interest for you, this book is a compelling, informative read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shame on IBM
Comment: This book should be required reading in every history class in America. The fact is the numbers tattooed on the Jews were their punch card numbers the Nazis used to keep track of them. The behavior and cover up of what they did in the war is a crime that has gone unpunished.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Shocking and revealing look into IBM's role in the Holocaust
Comment: Being a mainframe systems programmer who used to live in Germany, I really wasn't certain of what to expect from this book. It's a great book, a definite must read. I learned a lot from this book. The fact the the author doesn't just make assertions, but backs up everything he presents with source after source testifies to this books thoroughness and accuracy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Possibly an even bigger issue here
Comment: I haven't read all the other reviews, but I am curious to know if there is anyone else who was more than a little disturbed by the relationship between IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson and President Franklin Roosevelt. It is well documented, and not just in this book, that the two were close. Edwin Black makes brief reference to the relationship, but never asks the question: Did Roosevelt know?
My gut tells me that the connection between these two is not mere coincedence.
The reader would do well to note the historical and economic circumstances during the era; the collapse of Capitalism seemed immanent, and it was not the New Deal that saved it, but World War II. You can't have war (especially on such a scale that was needed to rescue a crumbling American economic system) without a suitable threat.
There is most definitely a tremendous amount of investigation to be done concerning this matter.
Customer Rating:
Summary: the most important book on the holocaust
Comment: I must have read by now several hundreds of books on the holocaust, and I think this book, IBM and the Holocaust, is by far the most important one. Starting from completely different premisses, it places holocaust research on its head, placing everything we know in a new and fascinating context. Forget for a moment about the horrors of the holocaust (to which countless books have already been devoted), and consider the following question: What made the holocaust possible? -- Not in terms of the horrifying human experience, but rather as statistics and data management problem that exceeded, by orders of magnitude, anything that has been tackled before. How can millions of people be "processed" so effectively, in the 1930's: How could their ancestry be tracked down generations back, how could their assets be mapped, how could their future be plotted and directed so precisely?
The answers provided in Edwin Black's book are as disturbing as they are illuminating. The centralized government of Nazi Germany provided IBM the perfect testing ground for pushing the limits of statistics-gathering and data processing equipment. The rest doesn't matter. It was clear that no matter what would happen, no matter who won the war, the post-WW2 market for data processing would be enormous, and the insights gained from working with the German government were just what the people at IBM needed in order to gain the knowledge, experience, and know-how that would put them in the lead of the data processing revolution. To the good folks at IBM, the holocaust, as well as the other data processing needs of Nazi Germany, were just that -- data processing problems, to be solved by a clever application of their technology. In other words, the holocaust was incidental to them, a by-product of an application in organization: tabulation, counting, sorting, collating, report-generation, etc. One of the most illuminating examples given in the book is the way the Nazi racial laws, which attempted to define "who was a Jew", were created to match the kind of data that could be produced using IBM equipment. In other words. The Nazi definition of who was a Jew matched neither the [Jewish] religious criteria, or the cultural realities. It was an approximation, something that the Nazi statisticians were able to get out of the equipment they had. It was technology that defined, in this case, who would be singled out for special treatment. Another point that comes out is that the holocaust progressed slower in countries that were not as technologically advanced, and progressed faster in countries that already had data processing equipment in active government use.
Finally, a fascinating aspect that comes out of the book concerns the loyalties of multi-national corporations. Edwin Black describes the many ways by which IBM managed to circumvent any rule against trading with enemy countries, and out-manoeuvre any State Dept official who tried investigating IBM's dealings throughout the war. Can we expect national loyalty from a multi-national firm such as IBM? -- Clearly not. May we assume that a multi-national, or shall I say "trans-national" firm, will attempt anything in order to further its financial interests, in the face of any legal or moral restrictions? -- Surely the answer is positive. Google censures information on behalf of the Peoples' Highly Democratic Republic of China, and Yahoo discloses information (to officials of the PRoC) that leads to the arrest of a freedom-fighting Chinese journalist.
I like the book precisely because it let me look at the holocaust from a totally technological, non-sentimental point of view. It shows what where the technological issues involved in answering the various kinds of queries, and how IBM went about solving them. It demonstrates that the "right" questions to ask, and the "right" definitions to use were precisely those that could be processed effectively by the tabulating machines of the time. It also shows how one determined company can circumvent any government and get away with it. This book presents a unique perspective on the holocaust, and its lessons are as timely as ever.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting History
Comment: This book, extremely well documented, gives interesting insight into the ethics of big business. Enron cost investors and employees their life savings; Deomag (the German subsidiary of IBM) cost many Jews their lives. It permits a stark view of corporate decision making.
I used scenarios, pulled from this book, as part of a course on ethics and professional practice for computer scientists. It was interesting to try applying modern engineering codes of ethics to work in Nazi occupied Europe (and contemporary IBM New York offices).
Given the stigma of associating a company with Hitler's Final Solution, I held the book to a fairly high standard of proof; the book certainly delivered. Documentation, public where possible, from private interviews where not, is meticulously presented and thoroughly cross referenced. If this topic holds interest for you, this book is a compelling, informative read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shame on IBM
Comment: This book should be required reading in every history class in America. The fact is the numbers tattooed on the Jews were their punch card numbers the Nazis used to keep track of them. The behavior and cover up of what they did in the war is a crime that has gone unpunished.
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany — beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified — a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately — could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.
But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries — all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.
Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews — how did Hitler get the names?
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