From the Reich’s point of view, punch card technology would be indispensable to its war-making capability. A February 1938 secret military report declared that “technologizing the Wehrmacht [armed forces]” was imperative. The report listed the continual regimentation, tracking, and redeployment of the general population, work force, and military personnel, as best accomplished by Hollerith systems. “A punch card system,” the MB report concluded, “must be introduced for the statistical survey of workers and for shifting workers” to create “perfectly structured personnel planning.”65
A later memo from the Office of Military Economy called for a universal punch code system. The document reviewed Dehomag’s many prior efforts, such as the census, labor statistics, and the Work Book, but that these “all have the disadvantage of existing for singular purposes and being incompatible with each other.” The report made clear, “it is impossible to reliably separate industrial demand for armament purposes from total industrial demand. The punch card is appropriate for the solution of this problem,” adding, “The punch card does not replace all considerations, judgments and decisions, but it makes them easier.”66
While it was obvious to all that Germany was preparing for imminent war, it was also apparent that the Reich was aggressively utilizing statistics and punch card technology to track Jews and implement its program of persecution. “Statistics issued today show that 12,094 Jews left Berlin last year for Palestine, Great Britain and the Americas,” led a July 4, 1937, New York Times article datelined Berlin, adding, “The statistics are confined to ‘Jews by faith,’ the authorities declaring that Jews by race alone could be included in such records.” Wire services regularly reported on the facts of Nazi demographic tracking: religion percentages based on census returns; quotas on goods Jews could purchase; an August 17, 1938, regulation compelling all identified Jews whose names did not “sound Jewish” to add the first name Israel or Sara.67
Newspapers, on May 15, 1938, listed a number of large cities outside Berlin and exactly how much their Jewish population had decreased through the end of 1937. Nuremberg had 7,502 Jews in 1933, but only 4,000 in 1937. Worms went from 1,016 Jews in 1933 to 549 in 1937. Hagen dropped from 508 to 299.68
Nazi raceology was becoming an all encompassing obsession evident on virtually every street and within every organization in Germany. A June 22, 1938, New York Times article reported, “twenty-six research organizations have been established throughout the Reich which go from family to family” to identify bloodline. Wire services informed that the curriculum for all German medical students had been altered to include mandatory courses on race science and population policy. Local prosecutors could order compulsory divorces of Jews and Aryans. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of marriages of urban Aryan women to what the Germans termed “virile, hereditary” farmers were required by Nazi demographers to achieve population health; the authorities began combing factories and offices for state-mandated brides.69 Few in America outside of IBM understood that these highly publicized racial policies were facilitated by Dehomag’s population, health office, and labor office tabulations.
Personal data that could not be tabulated by an organization for lack of an on-site Hollerith system were assembled on simple handwritten cards, forms, or copied onto registries that were forwarded to race offices and security services for punching and sorting. Churches were among the leading sources of such information. Their antique, ornately bound church books were often bulky and difficult to work with so supply companies developed a variety of index cards in various sizes designed to facilitate the tracing of ancestry. Often the process was awkward and anything but fast.70
One small church office in Braunlage in the Harz Mountains was typical when it complained in a letter to the Reichssippenamt, the Reich’s leading raceology agency, that the cards were too small and the data too large. “We have received samples of cards for the carding of church books,” wrote Pastor Stich. “Once we started to work with these cards, we noticed that these are rather small…. For [those of] us who are doing the work and bearing the costs, it is important we record not just some of the data, but all of the data, so that each card gives complete information about ancestry…. we are not served well if we have to open and move the pages of the heavy and irreplaceable church books.” Pastor Stich asked for larger index cards, making clear, “We are glad to serve the cause… and ready to do the job right.”71
The Reichssippenamt promptly replied, “The primary function of the carding of church books is that it makes the research easier and at the same time preserves the church book…. if you follow my guidelines for an alphabetical name index, then use of the church books itself should be reduced by a factor of fifty.”72
Local NSDAP leadership in Dusseldorf debated whether cards should be filed phonetically or alphabetically. Either way, the office felt it wise to color code the cards. “Whenever full Jews or mixed Jews appear,” a local official wrote, “the former are marked by a red line, the latter by a blue line. However, both also receive a tab. Without the tab, the red and blue lines could otherwise not be easily identified after the sorting and filing has taken place.”73
Detailed instructions were developed for recording baptisms to make sure Jews could not hide their identity through conversion. “For every Jewish baptism,” the instructions read, “two double cards are to be filled out in addition to the normal card. (One for the Reichssippenamt and one for the file of Persons of Foreign Descent in the Berlin central office). With name changes (for example, the Jew Israel receives the family name Leberecht through baptism), the Christian or Jewish name is to be entered in parentheses in the field for family name.” The name was then coded R, and the Jew’s occupation and address were to be written on the reverse side.74
To help standardize methods, the Publishing House of Registry Office Matters published a guide entitled How Do I Card Church Books? 75
So precise were the tabulations that, in some areas, the authorities had identified people considered “sixteenth Jews.” The county of Bautzen, for example, summarized its extensive race tracking in a December 5, 1937 study, bragging that it had expanded the local Race Political Office from four employees to twenty-one during the previous two and a half years, with additional race experts deployed in local Party offices as well as women’s associations. “For the entire county area,” officials asserted, “there exists a file for Jews, Half-Jews, Quarter-Jews, Eighth-Jews, etc. with the following information: name, residence, occupation, date of birth, place of birth, citizenship, religion… spouse, children, ancestors.” As a result, local officials had identified 92 [full] Jews, 40 half-Jews, 19 quarter-Jews, 5 eighth-Jews, and 4 sixteenth-Jews “whose connections are continuously observed.”76