“I knew they were not German machines,” recalled Krzemieniecki in the newspaper interview, and in our later discussion. “The labels were in English…. The person maintaining and repairing the machines spread the diagrams out sometimes. The language of the diagrams of those machines was only in English.”33
I asked Krzemieniecki if the machine logos were in German, Polish, or English. He answered “English. It said ‘Business Machines,’” I asked, “Do you mean ‘International Business Machines’?” Krzemieniecki replied, “No, ‘Watson Business Machines.’”34 That was the correct answer. In Poland, IBM NY’s new subsidiary operated under the German legal name: Watson Buromaschinen. But the Polish machines proudly bore logo tags with the subsidiary’s name in English: Watson Business Machines.
Among the most dramatic post-book revelations was the discovery of the massive Hollerith statistical center in Krakow known as the Hollerith Gruppe, staffed by more than 500 punching and tabulating employees and dozens of machines. Research discovered a previously unknown Berlin agency called the Central Office for Foreign Statistics and Foreign Country Research, which continuously received detailed data from the Statistics Office of the State Secretariat in Krakow. Nazi Hollerith expert Richard Muller headed the operation in Krakow.35 Discoveries about this office answered questions about where much of the data for all of Poland was processed.
A variety of Hollerith-equipped Nazi offices had been operating across occupied Poland from the day of invasion on September 1, 1939. America was not in the war; Watson had not yet returned his medal; and hence he maintained his complete commercial support for the Hitler regime throughout the initial rape of Poland. As part of this strategic commercial support, IBM NY agreed to a vital installation of machines so massive it was not called a Hollerith Department, but a Hollerith Gruppe. This vital installation would permit the Nazis to organize the systematic looting and subjugation of Poland, as well as implement other plans for its citizens.
Just after invasion, Hitler’s General Government in Warsaw asked its Regional Planning Department to establish a Central Statistics Office at the shuttered Jagiellonian University in Krakow. By April 1940, the Nazis formed a working group comprised of a single German statistics expert assisted by former employees of the Polish Statistical Service and other Polish civil servants. This group sifted through some 60,000 printed volumes of raw information in the Polish Statistical Service library in Warsaw, preparatory to conversion to Hollerith data. The selected information, along with all previously supplied Hollerith machines and staff, were relocated from Warsaw to the new Nazi agency in Krakow. So large was the enterprise, the library of raw intelligence to be punched filled two halls.36
By September 1940, the Reich issued a Decree for Statistics in Poland, creating the new expanded “Statistics Office.” Within a few months, the Krakow Statistics Office at 24 Nurnerstrasse subsumed most other statistical operations in Poland. By late 1941, the Statistics Office employed 420 persons including 16 Germans in 6 distinct groups—Group I: Administration; Group II: Population and Culture; Group III: Food and Agriculture; Group IV: Economic Trade and Transportation; Group V: Social Statistics; and Group VI: Finance and Tax. A November 30, 1941, Statistics Office report explains, “The Hollerith Gruppe area of operation stretches across all subject areas,” adding that a major expansion plan would see staffing rise to 500 persons within a month.37
The expansion was dependent on more leased machines, spare parts, company technicians, and a continued, guaranteed supply of millions of additional IBM cards. Because backlogged orders for Hollerith machines required a year or more to deliver, IBM’s long-term supply commitment almost certainly dated to the first days of World War II. Indeed, the Statistics Office report was written just weeks after IBM’s European general manager Werner Lier visited Berlin to oversee IBM NY’s deployment of machines in Poland and other countries. The Krakow Statistics Office’s November 30, 1941 report assured Berlin, “the installation of the equipment necessary for the work of the Hollerith Gruppe has commenced. It is estimated that the equipment will be ready for use by the end of the year, and that training of the prospective employees can begin. The employee designated as the leader of this group now participates in a seminar in Berlin to train for this subject area…. Survey material is already in preparation.”38
The Statistics Office also assured Berlin that its Hollerith Gruppe would employ equipment more modern than the old IBM machinery found in most pre-war Polish data agencies, thus allowing the Nazi office to launch a plethora of “large-scale censuses.” Everything would be counted—and often. Large scale “agricultural” and “industrial” censuses had already been undertaken earlier in 1941. A new “residential census” was also planned. “But the most important and complex census, the population and occupational census, has been in preparation since the beginning of the year,” the report specified.39
In addition to special censuses, the report enumerated a long list of “continuous statistical surveys,” including those for population and culture, domestic migration, infectious disease, and cause of death. Moreover, regular food and agriculture surveys were “coupled with summary surveys of the population and ethnic groups.”40 Tabulating food supplies against ethnic numbers allowed the Nazis to ration caloric intake as they subjected the Jewish community to progressive starvation.
The Statistics Office’s November 30, 1941 report concludes with the statement “Our work is just beginning to bear fruit.”41
Much more information has come to light on IBM in other countries, and will be incorporated into future editions.
Despite a highly publicized, months-long public search throughout the world, in which many stepped forward to offer new materials, not a single document was uncovered anywhere in any country indicating that IBM, either in New York or Europe, ever moderated its strategic alliance with the Third Reich. Nor did IBM, in the face of continuous media requests after this book’s release, offer any documents or evidence to explain its conduct. Instead, the company issued an official statement: “IBM does not have much information about this period,” and declined to comment.
REVELATION AND RESPONSIBILITY
ON FEBRUARY 12, 2001, IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST WAS simultaneously released in nine languages and distributed in forty countries. Nine of the world’s most prestigious publishers worked arduously, time zone by time zone, to ensure that the embargoed news broke worldwide at approximately the same hour. Doing so meant foregoing the customary months of advance catalogue sales and store placement. But announcing the findings correctly and responsibly was the number-one priority. Our collective hope was to make certain that the explosive story did not leak in sensationalist or exaggerated snippets, but was disclosed in a complete historical context.