Until 1935, IBM NY was the sole exporter of punch cards to Hitler’s Germany. Eventually, Watson invested in high-speed presses for Germany so Dehomag could print and export its own throughout Europe. During the next few years, he authorized IBM printing presses in Austria, Poland, Holland, France, and greatly expanded capacity in Germany. Deep into the war, as late as 1942 additional IBM printing facilities were opened in Finland and Denmark. All these plants acted as a coordinated cross-border European supply line. For example, in the first three months of 1939 alone, IBM Sweden sold 1.9 million punch cards to Denmark, 1.3 million to Finland, and 696,000 to Norway. IBM NY sold 1 million cards to Yugoslavia and 700,000 to Fascist Spain. Dehomag sold 261,000 to Hungary. It was all done under the constant supervision of IBM Geneva, which in turn kept in continuous contact with IBM NY. European General Manager Schotte regularly flew back and forth from Switzerland to America conveying reports.43
IBM printed billions of its electrically sensitive cards each year for its European customers. But every order was different. Each set was meticulously designed not only for the singular client, but for the client’s specific assignments. The design work was not a rote procedure, but an intense collaboration. It began with a protracted investigation of the precise data needs of the project, as well as the people, items, or services being tabulated. This required IBM subsidiary “field engineers” to undertake invasive studies of the subject being measured, often on-site. Was it people? Was it cattle? Was it airplane engines? Was it pension payments? Was it slave labor? Different data gathering and card layouts were required for each type of application.44
Once the problem was intimately understood, Hollerith technology was carefully wedded to the specific mission. This process required a constant back and forth between the IBM subsidiary’s technical staff and client user as they jointly designed mock-up punch cards to be compatible with the registration forms, and then ensured that the plug and dial tabulators could be configured to extract the information. Only after careful approval by both IBM technicians and the client did the cards finally go to press.45
Once printed, each set of custom-designed punch cards bore its own distinctive look for its highly specialized purpose. Each set was printed with its own job-specific layout, with columns arrayed in custom-tailored configurations and then preprinted with unique column labels. Only IBM presses manufactured these cards, column by column, with the preprinted field topic: race, nationality, concentration camp, metal drums, combat wounds to leg, train departure vs. train arrival, type of horse, bank account, wages owed, property owed, physical racial features possessed—ad infinitum.46
Cards printed for one task could never be used for another. Factory payroll accounting cards, for example, could not be utilized by the SS in its ongoing program of checking family backgrounds for racial features. Differences in the cards were obvious. Dehomag’s 1942 accounting cards for the Bohlerwerk Company, for instance, featured the manufacturer’s name centered. The card contained only 14 columns preprinted with such headings as hours worked above column 8, pieces produced above column 9, and suggested processing time above column 11. The right hand third of the punch card was empty.47
In contrast, SS Race Office punch cards, printed by Dehomag that same year, featured a bold Rassenamt SS logo. Rassenamt cards carried custom-labeled columns for years of marriage above column 7, height above column 47, height while seated above column 48, and weight above column 49. A separate grouping on the Rassenamt card listed “ethnic categories,” including sub-divisions such as Nordic printed above column 50, Oriental above column 57, Mongolian above column 59, and Negroid above column 60. SS Race Office cards were crowded from margin to margin with column designations.48
Dehomag’s 1933 Prussian census cards featured a large Prussian Statistical Office label and used only 48 columns in total. The census card bore such preprinted demographic headings as religion over column 24 and mother tongue over column 28; columns 49-60 were left empty. Coal survey cards listed sources, grades, and carloads. Luftwaffe cards listed bombing runs by pilots. Ghettoization registration cards listed Jews block by block. Railroad punch cards listed cities along a route, schedule information, and the freight being hauled—whatever that freight might be.49
Each card bore the distinctive ownership imprimatur of the IBM subsidiary as well as the year and month of issue, printed in tiny letters—generally red—along the short edge of the card. An IBM punch card could only be used once. After a period of months, the gargantuan stacks of processed cards were routinely destroyed. Billions more were needed each year by the Greater Reich and its Axis allies, requiring a sophisticated logistical network of IBM authorized pulp mills, paper suppliers, and stock transport. Sales revenue for the lucrative supply of cards was continuously funneled to IBM via various modalities, including its Geneva nexus.50
Slave labor cards were particularly complex on-going projects. The Reich was constantly changing map borders and Germanizing city and regional names. Its labor needs became more and more demanding. This type of punch card operation required numerous handwritten mock-ups and regular revisions. For example, MB Projects 3090 and 3091 tracking slave labor involved several mock-up cards, each clearly imprinted with Dehomag’s name along the edge. Written in hand on a typical sample was the project assignment: “work deployment of POWs and prisoners according to business branches.” Toward the left, a column was hand-labeled “number of employed during the month” next to another column hand-marked “number of employed at month’s end.” The center and right-hand column headings were each scribbled in: French, Belgium, British, Yugoslavian, Polish.51
Another card in the series was entitled “registration of male and female workers and employees.” Hand-scribbled column headings itemized such conquered territory as Bialystok [Poland], Netherlands, Protectorate [Czechoslovakia], and Croatia. Noted in pen near the bottom were special instructions about the left-hand row: “columns 56-59 members of Polish ethnicity go with hole 1” and “columns 56-59 members of Ukrainian ethnicity go with hole 2.”52
Yet another Dehomag mock-up card in MB Project 3090 was hand-titled “registration of male and female foreign workers and employees.” The scrawled column headings included: road worker, miners, textile workers, construction workers, chemists, technicians.53
Cards were only the beginning. All decisions about precisely which column and which row could be punched in order to properly record, tabulate, and sort any portion of data were studiously determined in advance by Hollerith engineers. Making the cards readable by IBM sorters required special settings on the machines that only company engineers could adjust. This involved review of machine schematics to ascertain which adjustments were needed for each data run. Once an assignment was undertaken, the subsidiary or its authorized local dealers would then continuously train the Nazi or other personnel involved to use the equipment, whether puncher, sorter, or tabulator. The delicate machines, easily nudged out of whack by their constant syncopation, were serviced on-site, generally monthly, whether that site was in the registration center at Mauthausen concentration camp, the SS offices at Dachau, or the census bureau in any country.54 Without this abundance of precision planning, assistance, and supply of systems, IBM’s Holleriths just could not work—nor could their benefits be derived.