During the frenetic rush to expand business with the Nazis and automate more and more Reich projects, never once was a word of restraint uttered by Watson about Dehomag’s indispensable activities in support of Jewish persecution. No brakes. No cautions. Indeed, to protest Germany’s crusade against Jewish existence would be nothing less than criticizing the company’s number two customer. Despite the innumerable opportunities to disengage or decline to escalate involvement in the war against the Jews, IBM never backed away. In fact, the opposite occurred.
Watson became intensely proud of the German subsidiary’s accomplishments. In late November 1935, two months after the Nuremberg Laws were espoused, and just days after more headlines were made when the Reich issued highly detailed genealogical dicta defining just who was Jewish under the decree, Watson traveled to Berlin to celebrate Dehomag’s twenty-fifth anniversary. A lavish company banquet was scheduled for November 27 at the exclusive Hotel Adlon. More than 150 invitations were distributed. IBM offices in New York, Switzerland, Italy, France, and Norway were represented by their top executives. Dignitaries such as U.S. Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, Hitler’s press attache, Ernst Hanfstaengl, former German consul in New York, Otto Kiep, and Reich Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht were invited. Important industrial contacts were on the list. Even if some, such as Schacht, could not attend, most did.39
Sumptuous food was served in the Watson tradition of elaborate dinner events. The Heidingers, Rottkes, and Watsons toasted their success. But even as the precious crystal glinted and ornate silverware gleamed, the utilitarian machine rooms of Lichterfelde and countless other data processing offices throughout Germany continued their own demographic clatter. The machines never slept.
Not everyone could be as jubilant and splendid as the Watson revelers at the Hotel Adlon. Unseen and unheard were Jews, cowering in their homes, fearing visibility. Goebbels had already warned them. “We have spared the Jews,” asserted Goebbels, “but if they imagine they can just stroll along the [fashionable] Kurfurstendamm as if nothing at all had happened, let them take my words as a last warning.” In another warning, Goebbels demanded, “Jews must learn to break with their past behavior and leave public places in Germany to the Germans.” These were not quiet comments murmured at obscure party meetings but public threats reprinted worldwide, including in the New York Times under headlines such as “Nazi Warns Jews to Stay at Home.”40
Now Watson eagerly launched a program to expand Dehomag’s capability. Ten more boxes of machinery had been shipped from New York to Hamburg in November 1935 on the SS Hansa. Millions of additional punch cards would be rushed across the ocean until Dehomag could produce them in Germany. Branch offices were opened throughout the Reich, the Lichterfelde factory was enlarged, and a second factory was established to manufacture spare parts.41
While in Berlin that November 1935, Watson attempted to gain technical information from Dr. Fels, a key Reich Statistical Office expert who had helped organize the 1933 census. Watson learned that despite Fels’ expertise, he had been ousted from his position because he was Jewish. Dehomag delivered a note to Watson’s hotel explaining that Fels was now living as an unemployed refugee with his family in New York, “in quite a bit of misery.” The note added that IBM in America had declined to give him a job. But Watson wanted Fels’ expertise. So immediately upon his return to America Watson arranged a meeting. On February 3, 1936, Fels briefed Watson in his Manhattan office and they spoke of such wide-ranging issues as the German census and the prospects for similar projects elsewhere. As for employment, Watson did assure he would ask around and see if any of the many organizations he was associated with might offer Fels a job.42
After the Fels briefing, joint exchanges on both sides of the Atlantic between IBM NY and Dehomag sales and technical staff became constant. These exchanges were highly selective, well thought out, and very costly investments in future work. Dozens of Dehomag salesmen, engineers, and managers came to America for training and exchange of expertise. IBM established a special sales training school in Endicott, New York, predominantly attended by German and other European IBMers. Sales training was necessary because despite all the proliferation in punch card systems, representatives encountered continual resistance from government officials on just how the elaborate new technology worked. At Endicott, salesmen learned how to fire the imagination of bureaucrats and convince them that IBM’s technology could provide solutions for any governmental requirement—no matter how unprecedented.43
Four of IBM NY’s brightest engineers and managers, all of Germanic descent, were eventually transferred from America to the Berlin operation: Walter Scharr in 1936, and Otto Haug, Erich Perschke, and Oskar Hoermann in the following years. One Austrian inventor, Gustav Tauschek, was so prized, he demanded—and was granted—an annual contract guaranteeing him six months with IBM in the United States and six months in his beloved Austria. Tauschek generated dozens of valuable patents. Indeed, anticipating Dehomag’s expansion, IBM NY filed for patents in various European countries to protect the inventions of its German subsidiary.44
New devices never stopped appearing. Numbered gang punches type 501 for multiple punching. Electrical interpreters type 550 for analysis. Electrical accounting machine type 400 for zone punching. Summary punch type 516 for cumulative information. Dehomag developed its own motor-driven duplicating printing punch type 016 for high-speed processing, and calculating punches type 621 and type 623. Multiplying punches were able to tally the sum of two punched holes on a single card, shortening sort time. High-speed reproducers, alphabetic tabulators, numeric and alphabetic interpreters, horizontal sorters—a parade of metal magicians joined the repertoire.45 Many of these devices were of course dual-purpose. They as routinely helped build Germany’s general commercial, social, and military infrastructure as they helped a heightening tower of Nazi statistical offensives.
In Germany, some of the devices, such as the IBM Fingerprint Selecting Sorter, were only usable by Nazi security forces.46
Specialized printing presses for punch cards were finally installed in 1935, allowing Dehomag to print its own punch cards. In a typical eight-hour shift, allowing for pauses to change plates and re-ink, each press could produce 65,000 cards. Within two years, IBM would install fifty-nine such presses in Germany—fifty-two from the only European press source that could manufacture them, and seven from the United States, including several high-speed units five times faster than the European models.47
In 1936, Dehomag opened its first full-time school for customer training. Courses for beginning card punchers typically required two weeks of intensive study. Additional courses were needed to master the more delicate skills of operating the sorters and tabulators. Each new device required additional training. A Development Laboratory, staffed by ten engineers, was opened. Initial projects included high-speed punches and automatic paper feeders for the new D-11. Ironically, despite all its increased factory space, technical support from America, and extra investment, demand was so high that Dehomag was still two years behind in filling its mounting list of orders.48 It was a never-ending battle to supply systems. And the Reich needed them so urgently.