Korherr was the most important statistics man in the Nazi hierarchy. Irritable, defensive, and almost possessive about his Hollerith machines, Korherr had been developing race-oriented punch card programs for years. Always a rabid raceologist and statistical adventurer, his early writings denounced the “niggerization” of France and urged the defense of the “white race.”77
His career included work with the Reich Statistical Office, and later, service as the Director of Population Politics and Statistics for Deputy Fuhrer Hess. But Korherr did not become the undisputed syndic of all Nazi statistics until December 9, 1940. On that day, Himmler issued and personally signed two explicit orders. The first appointed Korherr Inspector of Statistics for the SS as well as for the Chief of the German Police. The second outlined Korherr’s broad portfolio. By any reading, it was an extraordinary entitlement and cachet for one who might be viewed as a mere statistical technician. But Korherr was more than just a number cruncher.78 He would become the keeper of the state’s most incriminating genocidal secrets.
“The Inspector reports directly to me and receives his instructions from me personally,” ordered SS Chief Himmler in Korherr’s bona fides. “The Inspector is solely responsible for the totality of statistics of all units and offices in my area. The work of the Inspector is to be supported in every way possible in light of the necessity and significance [of]… practical statistics…. The Inspector is the sole point of contact between the Reich and provincial and Party statistics.”79
Korherr was more than willing to jealously guard his domain of Hollerith expertise, even if it meant tangling with Nazidom’s top generals. For example, one general at the Wannsee Conference was Gruppenfuhrer Otto Hofmann, the general in charge of the politically well-connected SS Race and Settlement Department. The Race and Settlement Office was a marginal agency that functioned as a marriage-assistance bureau for SS officers, and therefore had to wait two years to secure its own Hollerith. When it finally arrived, Gruppenfuhrer Hofmann was excited about his new Hollerith installation, and had already suggested expansive changes in statistical campaigns and the creation of new racial registration offices across Greater Germany. Korherr openly denigrated Hofmann’s ideas as unnecessary and duplicative.80
Shortly after the Wannsee Conference, Korherr wrote to a colleague, “I would like to mention that the understandable lack of statistical expertise at the Race and Settlement Office, coupled with their urgent wish for a large statistics office with a Hollerith system and for an SS population card file, made [recent] negotiations extraordinarily difficult. For the statistician, the best proof of an amateur is when someone wants to begin—and end—his statistical work with a card file… Since Reichsfuhrer [Himmler] appointed me the sole liaison for Reich statistics… I see Gruppenfuhrer Hofmann’s behavior as deliberately… undermining my position.”81
Korherr snidely added, “The person in charge at the Reich Statistical Office was astonished at Gruppenfuhrer Hofmann’s plans and asked: then why did Reichsfuhrer [Himmler] hire me and Dr. Plate. We were both amused at the idea of a Hollerith survey of the entire popular [German] movement… I suggested the numerical continuation of the [existing] inventory instead of a [new] Hollerith system… I should just float above it all.”82
Korherr’s expertise was so valued, Himmler sided with him even over a prominent SS general. Eventually, Himmler issued Korherr an additional directive: “in order to avoid jurisdictional conflicts and streamline work procedures, you are to be given responsibility for processing all statistical matters for [ Gruppenfuhrer Hofmann’s] Race and Settlement Office.”83
As Himmler’s plenipotentiary for all statistical matters, Korherr was able to coordinate the data activities of numerous Reich agencies, and call upon many Hollerith experts who had been either trained by Dehomag, or were employees transferred or loaned to government offices for the war period. One example was Albert Bartels, head of the SS machine record agency and in charge of Waffen-SS Holleriths at Dachau. Bartels also worked at the complex at 129 Friedrichstrasse. In one typical packet, Bartels sent Korherr “work progress forms and punch cards used in my office. I ask you… for the necessary evaluations.” Bartels’ assistant was Busch, the former Hollerith dealer who ran the Waffen-SS machines at the Storkow camp. Herbert Blaettel, a veteran of Dehomag’s training department, worked at Dachau’s Hollerith Department. Dehomag’s Munich dealer, Herr Asmis, sold the Nazi Party office its original leases; he only left the subsidiary in August 1944 to work with government projects. The Maschinelles Berichtwesen was the clearing-house for all punch card technology, and their resources could be continuously tapped.84
In January 1943, Korherr was required to provide Himmler with a status report on the Final Solution. To do so, Korherr worked frantically to determine exactly how many Jews had been killed, country by country. He demanded a stream of data from all the ghettos and other territories where Eichmann had been working. Eichmann remembered that he provided Korherr “all our top-secret stuff. That was the order. All the shipments [of Jews] insofar as they had been reported to us.” Eichmann added, “The statistician [Korherr] was with me, a week or maybe two, in my office, day after day, making his inquiries, he sent telegrams etc. all over the place.”85
Korherr eventually produced a sixteen-page draft report, but was required to condense the tabulated data to just seven pages so Hitler could review it. When Korherr completed the summary, the perfectionist in him was still frustrated. “Despite the expended sweat, an accurate number for this time period cannot be given,” he asserted, but he assured the report nonetheless did offer “useful clues.” Korherr’s progress report was submitted to Hitler on March 23, 1943.86
This time, the numbers were precise, enumerating Jewish communities throughout Europe, by ghetto and territory. The word “evacuation” was used to designate gassing in killing centers such as Treblinka and Sobibor. To eastern Russia: 1,449,692 Jews; to camps in occupied Poland: 1,274,166; through camps in the Warthe region: 145,301. Occupied France: 41,911; Netherlands: 38,571; Belgium: 16,886; Norway: 532; Slovakia: 56,691; Croatia: 4,927. Total evacuations including Special Treatment: 1,873,519. The total was written as more than 2.5 million to date.87
Himmler was so pleased with the report and Korherr’s subsequent performance, he eventually appointed the statistician to a specially created agency known as the Statistical Scientific Institute of the Reichsfuhrer SS. It, too, was located at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse. Korherr’s new office now had the most up-to-the-minute access to all concentration camp information streaming into the Zentral Institut. By early 1944, Korherr was able to report to Eichmann a total of 5 million Jews eliminated by “natural decrease, concentration camp inmates, ghetto inmates, and those who were [simply] put to death.”88
The offices at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse, undoubtedly processed more information than any other single office in Germany about the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. More than a statistical bureau, by its very nature, the Hollerith complex at Friedrichstrasse helped Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann prioritize, schedule, and manage the seemingly impossible logistics of genocide across dozens of cities in more than twenty countries and territories. It was not just people who were counted and marshaled for deportation. Boxcars, locomotives, and intricate train timetables were scheduled across battle-scarred borders—all while a war was being fought on two fronts. The technology had enabled Nazi Germany to orchestrate the death of millions without skipping a note.