IBM Technology Made Holocaust Possible

The Holocaust was a highly organized and bureaucratic project that was implemented in six major phases: identify the Jews (more precisely, those defined as Jews by Nuremberg laws); exclude them from German society; confiscate their property; move them into ghettos; deport them to killing centers, and exterminate them using bullets or (mostly) gas.

The first step towards implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question” was (obviously) to figuring out just whom the Nazis wanted to kill – in other words, to conduct the census.

And that’s precisely what Nazis did – right after the Enabling Act gave them dictatorial power in Germany. On April 12, 1933, the German government announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census. The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime.

Due to the sheer magnitude of the task, it could have been done only with punched-cards technology, in which IBM was a virtual monopoly at that time.

No surprise here IBM originated from the U.S. Census Bureau, which used a new electromechanical punched-card tabulator for its 1890 survey. This machine was the brainchild of 28-year-old American inventor Herman Hollerith, the son of a German immigrant (of all people).

By the 1930s, the new Nazi government needed that technology – and recruited IBM for the job. Tabulating machines made tracking lines of Jewish descent possible, even if a German citizen’s family had married out of the religion or converted generations ago.

The latter did not matter for the Nazis as they identified Jews by blood (Jews who baptized or converted to Christianity went to the same gas chambers and the ones who practiced Judaism) but they defined a Jew by the religion of grandparents.

Punched card technology (in which IBM was the global monopoly) made possible the genocide on previously unimaginable scale. Adolf Hitler wasn’t the first murderous dictator to commit genocide (just ask Stalin or the Turks or the Japanese), but he was the first to do so with automation technology on his side.

And with the demographic treasure trove collected in the 1933 census (and again in 1939), the Nazi government could identify, detain and murder Jews with previously unheard-of precision.

IBM’s punch card machines were perfect for this, and for tracking the train traffic coming into the killing centers. In fact, the Nazis soon placed tabulating machines made by IBM’s German subsidiary, Dehomag, in every train depot and into every concentration camp and death factory.

Every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM’s punch-card technology (cards and machines).

And throughout the whole “Holocaust years”, IBM used foreign subsidiaries to funnel its international profits back to the U.S. Two of those subsidiaries — Dehomag and Poland’s Watson Business Machines — played a crucial role in making possible millions of deaths. After all, you can kill only those whom you can identify and watch.

Not surprisingly (given the importance of the “Holocaust Project” to the Nazis), Third Reich soon became the second most important customer of IBM after its primary market in the USA.

The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be crucial to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately annihilate the German Jews.

But the Nazis (obviously) did not stop there – as the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, occupation was followed by a census of the population of each conquered nation focused (no less obviously) on identification of Jews and Romani.

These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM’s German and new Polish subsidiaries. True, IBM ostensibly severed all ties with Nazi Germany in 1938 (after Kristallnacht) … but the well-oiled tabulation and control machine continued to operate perfectly.

Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the Nazis to identify, concentrate and ultimately annihilate ethnic Jewish populations across Nazi-occupied Europe.

Without IBM’s machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler’s death factories could have never managed the numbers they did.