However, even when U.S. officials agreed to issue a visa, Lier still could not enter French territory to effect his exit from Europe and travel to America. Yet sometime in the first two weeks of February 1945, Lier did indeed suddenly disappear.108
Camille Delcour, a longtime French IBM director, was astonished when he reported to the Paris subsidiary on February 12. He penned a message.
On coming to the IBM office on Monday morning, February 12, a notice was pinned on the notice board. This notice informed us that Mr. Lier was on his way to the States, “a rapid means of transportation necessitating a hurried departure having been placed at my disposal” and that he regretted not having the opportunity to take leave of the staff.
What is surprising to us is not only his strange way of eloping, but how he has found his ways and means to cross France since we know for a definite fact that the French transit visa for which he applied… was refused to him on January 12, 1945.
It seems that the invitation for him to go over to the States emanates from Mr. Schotte. Whether this invitation was extended without a direct provocation by Lier is uncertain. I am cabling Mr. Watson warning him not to be guided by anything Lier may say before a responsible N.Y. official has investigated the whole Geneva situation.
No one could understand how Lier managed to escape. As late as summer 1945, Bern Commercial Attache Reagan had written to the French Embassy reviewing the French Foreign Ministry’s decision to deny Lier the right to enter their territory. “We have since learned,” informed Reagan, “that Mr. Lier successfully reached the United States and we would like to know how he could have traveled through France without the necessary visa. If you have information about this subject, I would be grateful if you would inform me.”110
But it should have been plain to consular officials in Bern. The man in Switzerland who intervened for Lier was America’s Military Attache, Brig. Gen. Barnwell Legge, an experienced hand at smuggling people into and out of Switzerland. Consular officials had already explained in a prior letter that General Legge was one of two senior foreign service officers who had proffered his written justification for allowing Lier into the United States. The other was the Consul General himself, a man who had transferred in from the German Embassy in Berlin. That new Consul General was Sam Woods—the same Sam Woods who helped IBM during Dehomag’s revolt, and who later helped Lier move Holleriths from Poland to Romania.111
For Werner C. Lier and IBM Geneva, the war was over.
XV. THE SPOILS OF GENOCIDE, II
WHEN WORLD WAR II ENDED IN EUROPE, THE CONTINENT was shattered and in disarray. Millions of all faiths and nationalities were dead. For millions more—displaced persons, tattered victims, and fatigued combatants—it would be years before they could recover.
Yet, Dehomag emerged from the Hitler years with relatively little damage and virtually ready to resume business as usual. Its machines had been salvaged, its profits preserved, and its corporate value protected. Hence, when the war ended, IBM NY was able to recapture its problematic but valuable German subsidiary, recover its machines, and assimilate all the profits.
As early as December 1943, the United States government concluded that Hitler’s Holleriths were strategic machines to save, not destroy. Dehomag’s equipment held the keys to a smooth military occupation of Germany and the other Axis territories. By June 1944, Carter’s investigative reports on IBM and Dehomag had been adapted into a confidential War Department Pamphlet, 31-123, entitled Civil Affairs Guide: Preservation and Use of Key Records in Germany. Over several dozen pages, key government and Party offices were listed by street address with a description of their punch card machines and data. On page 18, the Ministry of Labor entry declared, “Their records are of the utmost importance as they are the means by which the Germans controlled and shifted manpower, and should therefore be a valuable source of information for the occupying authorities. On pages 19-20, the Ministry of Transportation entry explained, “The up-to-date reports disclose the location and number of trains available in each territory, traffic density, tonnage over a particular line, type of cars used, type of materials shipped…. As the smooth running of the railroad system is of primary importance… in administering the occupied territory, all records should be placed under military custody.”1
The War Department’s Civil Affairs Guide citation on page 21 for Police Records specified, “records on aliens and Jews are kept by a special department of the police, the Fremdenpolizei (alien police)…. By an elaborate technique, that is kept rigorously up to date, the police are enabled to trace the movements of practically everyone in the country.” On page 58, in the “Gestapo Card Index,” section subsection B was entitled “Register of Inmates of Concentration Camps.” It confirmed: “The Gestapo Directorates and Offices keep the register of inmates of concentration camps in the areas under their jurisdiction. Copies are to be found in the concentration camps themselves.”2
Appendix B of the Civil Affairs Guide identified the Dehomag factories and summarized the operational basics of Hollerith tabulators, sorters, verifiers, and multipliers.3
British intelligence was also keen to maintain German Holleriths intact to facilitate the occupation. A British paper reviewing the Reich Statistical Office asserted, “If the German statistical staffs at the Ministry of Economics and at subordinate levels continue to function, it will not require a great number of people to take charge. If, however, the German system… has been disrupted and the records sabotaged, it would be a long and arduous, though necessary, task to reconstitute it.”4
German forces were just as eager to safeguard their IBM equipment, albeit for their own reasons. As the Allies liberated territories from the east and west, precious machines were moved behind defensible lines for the Reich’s continued use. As late as 1945, der Fuhrer himself had issued a decree placing a new emphasis on punch card technology for registering and tracking all Germans needed for the defense of the Reich. He appointed Karl-Hermann Frank, former military governor of occupied Czechoslovakia as a new plenipotentiary for punch card registration. Frank would be able to supercede the authority of the Maschinelles Berichtwesen (MB), the Zentral Institut, and all other party and state offices. “In this capacity, he has to answer to me personally,” declared Hitler. Der Fuhrer added that the committee advising Frank would be chaired by Rudolf Schmeer, the official who spoke for the Party at the original 1934 opening of Dehomag’s Lichterfelde factory. Schmeer still enjoyed a commanding role at the MB.5