Robert Wolfe wrote, “Until 1995, I served with the National Archives for more than a third of a century of service as its specialist for captured Third Reich, war crimes trial and World War II records…. Black’s latest project seeks information about IBM’s involvement in statistical work performed for the Third Reich…. As an archivist of decades of experience, I am taken aback at such a cavalier denial of access to a project of such potential historic, humanitarian and moral significance. As an archivist and historian, I can assure you there is no justification—commercial, historical or archival—for hiding this material or obstructing efforts to access it…. The sudden transfer of selected files to the NYU Department of Judaic Studies, a university department known primarily for Biblical and Medieval studies with little archival capability and devoid of any transmittal papers allowing NYU to show the documents, rather than working with a recognized Holocaust-oriented institution, suggests obstructive timing to thwart Black’s research. This is a familiar tactic for keeping documents on the move and hamstringing them in archival processing.”
Several major Jewish leaders then contacted Professor Schiffman, indicating that the documents in his closet were of great significance to the Jewish community, and urging him to share them with me. Quickly, Schiffman became the hero of the documents. He immediately secured legal permission through university attorneys to show them to me. I was given complete access. The selection of the seemingly boring, completely unprocessed corporate documents IBM had loaned NYU was quite sparse. Virtually all wartime documents were conspicuously missing. But by adding information from other archives, I was able to assemble the story. Indeed, Schiffman received an advance copy of my manuscript and joined other scholars in endorsing the book. Schiff man declared, “Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust is a thoroughly researched, meticulously documented history of the relationship of a corporate giant and the advanced technology it sold to the Third Reich, its war effort, and its plan to exterminate the Jews.”
Over the months, I had phoned IBM officials dozens of times, seeking access to documents and explanations of their Hitler-era actions. I outlined the information discovered in my research with specificity so that the company understood the gravity of the implications. Each time, Colley stayed on message, declaring IBM would not discuss the period or my findings. Nor could I have access. At one frustrated and emotional point, I asked if Colley would search the archives for a copy of my mother’s punch card. He coolly replied, “I’m not going to get drawn into that question.” After about one hundred such calls, I simply gave up. IBM would never cooperate.
Things were quiet at IBM throughout the beginning of 2000. But in May 2000, IBM was again reminded that my research was progressing rapidly. An eminent professor who had been helpful and was aware of my work let slip a comment to reporters in Jerusalem that a book would soon be released proving that “IBM helped Hitler exterminate the Jews.” Israeli, German, and Austrian reporters aggressively called Ian Colley, who had by now transferred to Paris, asking what IBM’s role was during the Holocaust. Colley answered by saying the company “knew little about the German subsidiary.” After a few days, the isolated radio and newspaper reports ceased. Sometime after that leak, IBM arranged to transfer several linear meters of its Stuttgart documents to business archives at Hohenheim University in Germany, where they are being “inventoried” and, as of this writing, are still inaccessible. The documents arrived at Hohenheim just weeks before my book was released.
Also in the weeks before publication, reporters began contacting IBM public relations manager Carol Makovich and other IBMers, seeking official responses to the specific findings in the book. IBM stuck to its story that the “Information Company” had no information about the documents in its own archives, and had transferred some documents to esteemed institutions for study.
IBM had known for two years that my book was coming. During those two years, I and others had been asking for access and answers, and during the seven years their logo-emblazoned machine had been prominently displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., prompting enormous speculation, IBM claimed it had never tried to look into its own records and document its own past.
When press inquiries made it clear that the book was just days away, IBM pre-empted with its own global press release—essentially, the only official statement it has issued. IBM’s statement reiterated that the company had no information about the period or its own documents. The company added the first of a series of well-parsed phrases, and what can only be seen as conscious misinformation. For example, IBM’s statement declares, “As with hundreds of foreign-owned companies that did business in Germany at that time, Dehomag came under the control of Nazi authorities prior to and during World War II.”
But clearly, the public facts are otherwise. Watson received his medal from Hitler in 1937. The war began on September 1, 1939. IBM exercised highly visible minute-to-minute on-site micro-management of its German subsidiary—and indeed all its European subsidiaries—until the summer of 1940 when Watson was pressured into returning the medal. Until the late fall of 1941, IBM NY ruled the German unit through stalwart European managers who were backed up by German and American attorneys. IBM’s statement was released even as the Sunday Times (London) posted to its website incriminating October 1941 IBM internal correspondence with Watson confirming the fashion in which IBM NY controlled its German, Polish, and Romanian operations two years after the war began.
Even after the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, IBM never lost control of its companies in Nazi-controlled lands. When German custodians, or receivers, took over, virtually all IBM staff and management remained in place. Only the profits were temporarily blocked as in any receivership. After the war, IBM fought to recover all those Nazi-blocked bank accounts, claiming they were legitimate company profits.
IBM, through spokeswoman Makovich, remains consciously silent about the numerous other European subsidiaries controlled during the twelve-year Holocaust directly from New York or through its Geneva office. These include subsidiaries in Switzerland, France, Spain, Poland, Romania, and dozens of other territories. Nor will Makovich make any mention of the Hitler-era documents still held by IBM subsidiaries in Poland, Argentina, France, Italy, Holland, and many other countries. The corporation has been asked repeatedly, but simply declines to respond and refers callers to its one and only on-the-record statement. Indeed, as recently as September 2001, IBM told an American Jewish Congress regional board member in Dallas that the company had no information on the topic.
The details of IBM’s obstruction were not included in the original book’s introduction. In my view, that would have been a distraction that IBM would have welcomed. The paramount issue is not IBM’s obstruction in the twenty-first century, but its involvement with the Hitler regime from 1933 to 1945. My personal struggle to obtain this information is, in my view, but a tertiary footnote.
The public, it seems, has not accepted IBM’s vague and parsed words. The book became an immediate New York Times bestseller in America, with similar results across Europe and Latin America. In many countries, such as Canada, Ireland, and Brazil, the book achieved the number-one slot. This is meaningful not as a measure of commercial success, but only as a gauge of the world’s acceptance of the information. Average people, most of whom had no detailed understanding of the Holocaust or its twelve-year chronology, are now avidly reading the unhappy details. Word of mouth is stronger than any minute on TV or inch of type.