BEYOND THE POINT OF DECENCY: A RESPONSE TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In an editorial published on April 11, 2001 in The Wall Street Journal, Gabriel Schoenfeld writes that a lawsuit by concentration camp survivors against IBM sought to cast "blame for the murder of millions away from where it is due." He further asserts that the evidence against IBM for knowingly marketing its machines for genocidal purposes is "nonexistent." He is wrong on both counts. By design or ignorance, Mr. Schoenfeld shockingly overlooks the documented history of IBM USA and Nazi concentration camps.

No one can or will ever "remove" the blame for the Holocaust from Nazi Germany. But Hitler needed help to murder millions. He could not have carried out his wars of aggression and extermination "...by himself." As declared by the Nuremberg judgments, "he had to have the cooperation of statesmen, military leaders, diplomats and businessmen." These collaborators are "not to be deemed innocent because Hitler made use of them, if they knew what they were doing." As always, the accomplice participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan to commit a crime against humanity shares the guilt of that crime. IBM was such a collaborator. The company's longstanding business relationship with Germany's war industry - and the personal relationship of IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson, with Hitler - provided the Nazis with the technology and machines possible to make mass murder more efficient.

Soon after the Nazis came to power in 1933, they established the Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich, Germany for so-called "protective custody" prisoners, mainly Communist and Social Democrats. The Germans thereafter expanded the concentration camp system to accommodate the growing number of "enemies" of the Reich, including Jews, Gypsies ("Romani"), Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and political and social dissidents.

Central to IBM's abetting of the Nazi regime was the lease of its Hollerith machines, which acted as a computerized reservation system tracking inmates from entry to death. IBM formed the solution - the punchcard machines (Hollerith), sorters, tabulators, printers, technology, the maintenance and supplies. Upon arrival of a prisoner at a camp, registration cards were completed with detailed personal information. Prisoners were categorized by occupation and each individual's punchcard was fed into a mechanical sorter. Machines were adjusted to select skills for particular work battalions. Information collected through the system was sent from the concentration camps to the Department of Statistics at the SS Economics Office and the Central Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in Berlin-Oranienburg. Slave labor was more efficiently allocated and death through work programs was maximized.

Each concentration camp was assigned a number. A typical IBM Hollerith card used by the SS for registering concentration camp inmates included codes for the receiving and current camp, the grounds for confinement ( i.e. Jehovah's Witness = 01, homosexuals = 02, Jews = 05), birth date, gender, ethnicity (i.e. Reich German = 0, Ethnic German = 1, Foreigner = 2), labor capacity, occupation and reason for departure (i.e. execution = 3, escape = 4, special treatment = 6). A decoding key for a concentration camp card index indicates type of prisoner (i.e. Jehovah's Witness =2, Homosexual = 3, Jew = 8), type of departure (i.e. transferred = A2, died = B3, executed = D4) and the concentration camp (Buchenwald = 2, Dachau = 3, Flossenbürg = 4, Ravensbrüch = 10).

As of 1940 and 1941, IBM USA inventories documented the location of Hollerith machines in camps (Lagern) along with their serial numbers and the amounts paid for the lease of each machine. The Hollerith machines were so central to the movement and exploitation of prisoners and camp operation that, by mid-1944, Hollerith Departments (Hollerith Abteilung) were "installed at the main concentration camps at Mauthausen, Ravensbrüch, Flossenbürg and Buchenwald." By the end of the war, the Dachau Concentration Camp alone had approximately twenty-four IBM machines.

In 1998, noted Holocaust historians David Martin Luebke and Sybil Milton wrote that IBM's Hollerith technology performed an "important function" in implementing the genocidal policy of slave labor extermination through work. It was the technology, machines and material that "facilitated so vast and deadly a persecution".

Was IBM USA unaware of this complicity?

In the 1930s and 1940s, IBM was dominated by the iron fist and micro-management of its founder, Thomas J. Watson. His control was guaranteed by the company's corporate structure which invested operational authority in the shareholders, 90% of which shares he held. The German subsidiary's by-laws expressly stated "the shareholders shall be in a position to annul the board of directors" and the "representatives shall follow the [shareholders'] instructions." IBM USA records demonstrate that as late as mid-1943, Watson still held the majority of shares in IBM's German subsidiary.

Watson considered and treated the Hollerith technology and machines, upon which the company was based, as the exclusive intellectual property of the U.S. home office. Watson refused to allow the company to sell machines, instead requiring them to be leased. The leases were renewed annually, ensuring the "company a close control over the use of the machines" worldwide. The machines were usually inspected on site on a regular basis by the closest IBM company or affiliate. The company was responsible for installing, connecting, repairing or replacing machines and parts and generally for keeping the machines "in working order" onsite.

Watson closely monitored IBM's relationship with Hitler--after all, it was a key source of profits for the company. By 1937, he had developed such a close affinity to Germany that on June 28, 1937 at an awards ceremony in Berlin, he accepted the Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star, the second highest honor bestowed on foreign nationals. Three years later, however, in June of 1940, he returned the medal. Watson ostensibly disagreed with the evils of the Reich's racial policies and practices.

To Watson, however, the evil was not the loss of life, but the loss of business. In a letter to Adolf Hitler, Watson, while confirming his "friendship and admiration for Germany," expressed concern that Hitler's racial and religious policies were alienating countries throughout the world, thereby "exercising a decisive influence on Germany's financial and economic situation. The present situation, if not corrected, is liable to lead to a progressive weakening of the Germany economy . . . the[se] impressions and reflections on the German situation . . . are written in confidence to you."

Without skipping a beat or an order, however, IBM USA continued to do business with Germany as usual. After all, Watson couldn't disappoint his friend and business partner. IBM documents record that as of March 31, 1941, IBM clearly understood that not only did Germany need IBM's machines but they were "using them evidently for every conceivable purpose."

Did IBM ever relinquish control of or knowledge about its German subsidiary? The German office apparently didn't believe so. In 1941, after the entry of the U.S. into the war, the managing director of the German subsidiary wrote that "the Americans were carrying on the negotiations (to shift ownership from the United States to Germany) mainly for the sake of form, without any actual intention of agreeing to an actual, not merely fictitious, Germanization." Nazi officials conveyed to IBM the opportunity to create a charade of a friendly agreement to be worked out with IBM USA, like other American companies. The officials assured IBM that its interests would be protected, but the guarantee couldn't be put in writing. Workers at the German subsidiary noticed no discernable difference in the relationship of the German subsidiary to the U.S. parent throughout the war. On November 13, 1944, U.S. Army documents record a debriefing of a German prisoner-of-war, formerly the branch manager of the Saarbrücken Hollerith Office, who stated that he did "not know of any special measures of the Hollerith Co. to conceal its connection with IBM or to sever this connection."

What did IBM executives know? Why, in a December 17, 1940 memorandum to the home office, did an IBM USA representative note the inconsistent behavior of the managing director of the German subsidiary, who would vacillate between being a fierce protector of the company's rights and retiring "within a shell, or completely shut[ting] up with the explanation that there were concentration camps!"?

Mr. Schoenfeld attempts to brush past this history with the vague acknowledgment that IBM, like other American firms, continued to trade with Nazi Germany "beyond the point of decency." Mr. Schoenfeld misses the point. Meshing technology with mass murder for efficiency and profits is not just indecent, it's a crime. Participation in genocide is not acceptable at any point, for any reason.

Mr. Schoenfeld echoes the refrain of corporations which were sought to be brought to justice after the war by surviving slave laborers. The companies successfully defended themselves in German courts by arguing they owed "these people" nothing since they were lousy workers - continually tired and continuously hungry. During the course of negotiations creating the German Foundation seeking some measure of justice, however small, for the survivors of slave and forced labor, companies again angrily protested they owed nothing. This time, they objected to paying twice for the same labor. Since they had paid the SS something for these bodies they reasoned they should not now be forced to pay anything to the victims themselves.

"Decency" is not only a measure of what corporations do, but why they do it. IBM has neither regretted nor reflected on the human consequences of its business. Its concern was only the consequences for business. As explained in an 1944 interview: "all the head men in [IBM Germany's] employ are businessmen first and foremost. As such, and in view of the close connection between their concern and IBM, they are internationally-minded, and very much opposed to the ruinous business policies of the Nazi regime."

In an editorial in The New York Times on Sunday, April 15, 2001, it was observed that "[i]nternational tolerance for the suppression of human rights is diminishing." Tolerance is diminishing for all actors: governments, individuals and corporations; for the perpetrators as well as for their accomplices and participants. In a world of increasing conscience, those who aid massive human misery through greed, indifference or excess must be accountable. Self-serving efforts by offending corporations and their apologists to deny or trivialize these wrongs reflect the less-than-admirable interests they seek to protect.

IBM was not Nazi Germany. The fact that IBM acted wrongly does not detract from nor diminish the guilt of German National Socialism. That shame is its alone. But IBM, like others, had a share in that guilt. IBM did not simply go "beyond the point of decency." Rather, it crossed the point of morality and contributed to a crime against humanity.

Excerpts from this article were printed in the May 2, 2001 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Letters to the Editor.