“This damning chronicle of IBM’s collusion with the Nazis exposes, in horrific detail, the corporation’s opportunistic ride on Hitler’s tail.”
“This is the stuff of corporate nightmare. IBM, one of the world’s richest companies, is about to be confronted with evidence of a truly shameful history. Edwin Black reveals Big Blue’s vital role in the Holocaust.”
“Black… shows, in compelling detail, that IBM, ‘the solutions company’, was also the company of the Final Solution…. It is a distinctive contribution to the history of the time. It wholly justifies Black’s years of toil… a terrible warning from this brilliantly excavated past.”
“The computer group IBM is haunted by its past. Edwin Black’s book now reveals the company’s involvement in the Holocaust…. Previously the Nazi past of ‘Big Blue’… was hardly ever a topic…. But now IBM is in the dock. Black’s meticulous research documents just how precisely IBM managers were kept informed about the whereabouts of their machines.”
“Black’s … book is the first to give the general public a detailed account of how an American corporation profited from intimate ties with the Nazis. It strips the veneer from the cherished myth of the purity and patriotism of American business.”
“IBM and the Holocaust raises startling questions about the technology giant’s involvement with Nazi government officials—and throws the company’s wartime ethics into serious doubt.”
“Black … documents IBM’s sins with chilling discipline…. IBM and the Holocaust lays out in numbing detail the terrible deeds of bureaucrats and business leaders…. In the end, though, this book has a subtler story to tell, one frighteningly relevant to our lives today. IBM and the Holocaust isn’t about evil men at a particularly bloody point in recent history so much as it’s about the dawn of the modern information age.”
“Edwin Black has put together an impressive array of facts which result in a shocking conclusion never realized before: IBM collaborated with the Third Reich. This book should be read by everyone interested in the ‘under history’ of the Second World War.”
“Black’s great contribution is that he has tenaciously collected a lot of information and combined it in an original way. Few others have thought to place this information in the same context, to see what inferences can be drawn. Black’s history makes two chilling observations. The first is that the Holocaust was possible because the Nazis had access not only to guns and gas but also to cutting-edge census technology. The second is that the Nazis had access to this technology because IBM, in its paranoid zeal, worked very hard to maintain its market dominance of the global market in data processing.”
“A shocking account of IBM’s complicity with the Nazis is a reminder that people bear moral responsibility for the actions of the corporation—a point that critics have failed to grasp.”
“IBM and the Holocaust is a story that must be read if one is to understand how Hitler and the Nazis were able to implement their Final Solution to exterminate European Jewry…. Once again, Edwin Black has hit the mark.”
“A tremendous, timely work. Neglected for more than 50 years, the sordid records dis closing IBM’s collaboration with the Nazi regime have now been exhumed by Edwin Black.”
“Leaves no room for deniability.”
“Edwin Black’s groundbreaking book, IBM and the Holocaust, made a great impression on me. It documents, for the first time, that an American company, IBM, bears a good deal of the moral responsibility for the preparation of the persecution of the Nazi victims. IBM and the Holocaust confirms the belief that the Holocaust was not only a cruel, unprecedented crime, but also an enormous bureaucratic undertaking.
Copyright
Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2009 by Edwin Black
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Dialog Press, Washington, DC
Originally published in hardcover by Crown Publishers in 2001
Printed in the United States of America
DESIGN BY BARBARA STURMAN
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Black, Edwin.
IBM and the Holocaust: the strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s most powerful corporation / Edwin Black.—1st ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. International Business Machines Corporation—History. 2. Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft m.b.H.—History. 3. Germany—Statistical services—History—20th century. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Germany—Data processing. 5. Jews—Germany—History—1933-1945. I. Title.
HD9696.2.U64 I253 2001
940.53’18—dc21
2001028201
ISBN 9780914153108
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Second Paperback Edition
