Hermann Goering was one of the first main speakers. He hammered at Nazi Germany’s constant themes. The Third Reich’s “mighty rearmament,” Goering insisted, was merely to defend Germany’s long borders and protect her honor. He demanded justice for Germany, and access to the raw materials she was entitled to. Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht in his address also stressed “honest raw material distribution.”110
Many more Nazi speakers argued their case, hopeful for appeasement if possible, committed to conquest if necessary. Even Schacht, whose rhetoric was generally subdued, described racial prerogatives that arose from a “God-given division of nations according to race.”111
When the plenary finally dismissed, a signal was given and the orchestra played the theme of the Storm Troopers, the “Horst Wessel Song” and then the German national anthem, “ Deutschland uber Alles.” Caught up in the hypnotic invigoration of it all, delegates sang along with stalwart Brown Shirts.112
Then the merriment began in earnest. Berlin had not seen so monarchical a reception in recent memory. Watson was wined, dined, and honored everywhere in Berlin. Josef and Magda Goebbels entertained the Watsons at the Opera House. The Schachts invited the Watsons and delegates to a grand party for hundreds at the Berlin Palace. The Goerings hosted a majestic banquet for the Watsons and delegation presidents at the immense Charlottenburg Palace. Berlin’s mayor organized a sumptuous dinner for the delegates.113
But all prior splendor was surpassed by the elaborate Venetian Nights staged by Goebbels on Peacock Island, an extravaganza thought by many to be the grandest party of the Nazi era. Located a short drive from Berlin in pastoral Wannsee, Friedrich Wilhelm III’s romantic eighteenth-century castle on Peacock Island had been converted for the evening into an Arabesque fantasy at a cost of 4 million Reichsmarks. Watson and the other guests crossed to the isle atop a narrow pontoon bridge, which brought them to a long path lined with hundreds of charming Berlin schoolgirls daintily outfit-ted in white blouses over white silk breeches and white leather slippers. Each girl waved a white fairy’s wand and angelically bowed as Watson and his fellow industrialists promenaded in.114
Three thousand—some said four thousand—guests were then invited to imbibe at a bar of seemingly endless length, manned by eighty bartenders pouring and mixing any cocktail, vintage cognac, fine wine, or robust beer. Corks popped continuously as champagne flowed with abandon. A regal dinner remembered as gigantic was served to hundreds of tables, each seating as many as twelve. Thousands of chefs, waiters, and their kitchen helpers whisked dome after dome of gourmet specialties back and forth across the lawns in a spectacular demonstration of precision table service. Enchanting Prussian porcelain figurines were bestowed upon the wives. Ballerinas and singers from a nearby artist’s colony performed an enchanted display of dance and song beneath a prodigious rotunda, which later became an immense dance floor.115
But no fanfare could compare with the crowning moment, the decoration of Watson. Hitler’s medal was bestowed by Schacht as newsreel cameras whirred and government functionaries snapped to stiff attention. The eight-pointed gold-framed cross of white enamel embedded with German eagles and Nazi emblems dangled about the neck from a broad red, black, and white ribbon in tandem with a second six-pointed star worn over the left breast. To Watson, it was magnificent. When wearing it, he was draped by two swastikas, one to the right and one to the left.116
The majesty and fantasy of Berlin 1937 swept Watson and IBM into an ever more entangled alliance—now not only in Germany, but in every country of Europe. Soon, the metallic syncopation of Hollerith technology would echo across the continent. There were frightening new applications for punch cards in store, applications no civilized person could envision. France, Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Norway, Romania, Hungary, and the other nations would soon be set ablaze.
Through it all, the songs never stopped. Swaying with exuberance, all dressed in one color, lyrics shouted in almost hypnotic fervor, the songs never stopped. Endicott reverberated with the prospects as followers sang out.
PART TWO
VI. WAR CARDS
JULY 5, 1937
Your Excellency
Adolf Hitler
Berlin
Before leaving Berlin, I wish to express my pride in and deep gratitude for the high honor I received through the order with which you honored me. Valuing fully the spirit of friendship which underlay this honor, I assure you that in the future as in the past, I will endeavor to do all in my power to create more intimate bonds between our two great nations. My wife and my family join in best wishes for you.
JULY 4, 1938
Mr. Thomas J. Watson
International Business Machines
New York
Dear Sir:
I must offer you my apologies for taking the liberty to write you and to request your kind attention for the following matter. Like many [of] Jewish confession, I am facing a very terrible moment in life and I am obliged to leave this country and to procure in another land my means of living. I am born on the 17th of June 1906 and was educated in the elementary and high school in the country. During eight years until 1933, I have worked as an operator of the Hollerith punching machine for the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin.Now I have spoken with Mr. Drines, the manager of the Hollerith company in Berlin about my plans to find work abroad. Mr. Drines has advised me to write to you somehow with my plans and I hope that with your kind help I would be able to find work in a foreign country. No doubt you know the condition of living here and it would be useless to give any further reasons for my immigration.I would be very grateful to you for your kind assistance and please accept in anticipation my thanks.Hoping to be favored with your reply, I remain
GERMANY WAS bitter for the Jews. By 1937, thousands had escaped as pauperized emigrants. But for those Jews remaining within the Reich, existence became a progressively fainter shadow of its former self. Driven from the small cities, Jews began to flood into Berlin where they attempted to continue a fraction of the civilized life they once knew. Small things became important: a cup of coffee in a cafe, a stroll in the park, cinema on the weekend, an afternoon concert, these were the precious relics of normalcy German Jewry clung to. But the Nazis would not permit a moment of peace. Jews were subjected to unending acts of personal degradation as they were marginalized. The national humiliation effort was more than a cruelty unnoticed except within the borders of Germany. The campaign was the source of never-ending American newspaper articles and radio reports, including those in the New York Times.
Nazis would enter cinemas and demand all Jews rise so they could be escorted out. Cafes catering to Jews were ordered closed and the patrons taken into custody. Local authorities disbanded virtually all Jewish athletic teams, musical societies, and social clubs. Indeed, any gathering of more than four Jews in a single place was forbidden. Placarded park benches warned that Jews could not sit down. Synagogues were shuttered and often razed; the grand principal synagogue of Munich was replaced with a parking lot.3