Clearly, Chauncey contended, the Nazis now understood that IBM’s technology was vital to their war aims and too entrenched to be discarded. Replacing Holleriths, he argued, would be a long, difficult task in view of the military’s “large use of Dehomag machines.” Indeed, despite all “the animosity,” Chauncey wrote, “the business has, however, gone forward… due to the need of the authorities.”101
In fact, Germany had already thought better of its first hostile anti-Watson reaction and was trying now to find some rapprochement with the IBM Corporation. As for the machines snatched by the Nazis in France, noted Chauncey, “I understand… rental is being paid for them to our French company.”102
IBM should rely on its decided technologic edge, suggested Chauncey, because of the profound difficulty in starting a punch card industry from scratch, especially if New York could block French Bull competition. In spite of the quality of its devices, French Bull was a very small company with very few machines. Bull’s one small factory could never supply the Reich’s continental needs. Ramping up for volume production—even if based within a Bull factory—would take months. Hitler didn’t have months in his hour-to-hour struggle to dominate Europe. In a section entitled “Length of Time for Competition to Come in Actuality,” Chauncey argued, “Unless the authorities, or the new company, operate in the meantime from the French Bull factory, it would appear that much time may elapse before such new company [could]… furnish machines in Germany.”103
Watson, in fact, was ready to continue fighting to keep Bull out of the Nazi market. IBM had already preemptively acquired Swiss Bull’s patent rights in Switzerland and was preparing to litigate to block the French sister corporation from functioning. IBM had concluded Bull infringed several IBM-owned patents, now that IBM NY had acquired Swiss Bull, which legally controlled French Bull’s patents. Moreover, IBM believed that French Bull’s use of an 80-column punch card violated IBM patents and could be swiftly enjoined by court action. So Chauncey added his prediction that even if French Bull did attempt to cooperate with the Nazis, there would be a great “length of time and difficulties for actual competition” to appear.104
It seemed that in spite of its autarkic impulses and collective rage against Watson, the cold fact remained: Nazi Germany needed punch cards. It needed them not next month or even next week. It needed them every hour of every day in every place. Only IBM could provide them.
“My inclination is to fight,” Chauncey declared straight out. But the battle would be difficult. He knew that IBM was fighting a two-front psycho-economic war: Heidinger’s demand to cash in his stock, and Nazi Party demands to take over the subsidiary. Clearly, the two were organically linked, but Chauncey could not be sure how.105
As they bickered, war and invasion proved it was still good business. By now, Dehomag’s profits had mushroomed even more rapidly than expected, especially as a result of the Nazi takeovers of Belgium, Poland, and France. As the Reich expanded its voracious need for Holleriths in occupied lands, Dehomag’s value was catapulting daily. The latest valuation of Heidinger’s 10 percent stock, Chauncey advised, was now as much as RM 23 million—IBM accountants in Germany had already confirmed it. The new figure was as much as ten times higher than calculated just a few months earlier. It would be an enormous amount of money if payable in dollars—perhaps $5 or $6 million. Chauncey expected Heidinger to prevail in any court, should the Germans press his claim for repurchase. IBM’s multimillion-mark blocked accounts in Berlin would be seized by the court to purchase those high-priced dollars, Chauncey warned. For this reason, Chauncey was continuously trying to finesse a settlement. “I am after him every day,” he wrote.106
As for IBM’s fight with the Nazi Party, Chauncey reiterated his willingness to “make any representations to the authorities that our managers need not reveal any information of the activities of Dehomag’s customers…. but I cannot get the actual persons out in the open.”107 That chance would now come. After weeks of remaining in the background, Dr. Edmund Veesenmayer would finally come forward.
EVEN THOUGH Edmund Veesenmayer lived at August Strasse 12 in Lichterfelde, just around the corner from Dehomag’s Berlin headquarters, he had declined to make his presence known to Chauncey until the first days of December 1940. Veesenmayer was one of Berlin’s quiet but powerful Nazis, often feared, who helped to directly implement the most dramatic phases of Hitler’s plans for Europe and the Jews. He was just a step or two removed from der Fuhrer , and was from time to time summoned for consultations by Hitler personally—a claim few would dare make, but a claim that was nonetheless quite correct. Although Veesenmayer proudly wore the full uniform and regalia of his SS rank, he avoided noisy street riots and ghetto roundups in favor of boardrooms and embassies. Always lurking in the shadows as Eastern Europe’s most heinous actions erupted, Veesenmayer was Hitler’s most trenchant facilitator.108
Born Catholic in 1904 in the town of Bad Kissingen, amid the pastoral rolling hills and lush forests of Bavaria, Veesenmayer quickly took to political economics. He became a professor of economics and business administration at the Technical College in Munich. Veesenmayer joined the NSDAP early, in 1932, when he was only twenty-eight years old. When National Socialism came to power in 1933, he became the personal secretary and economic advisor to Wilhelm Keppler, Hitler’s personal economic advisor. As such, Keppler functioned as Veesenmayer’s direct connection to the Fuhrer and the most powerful officials in Germany.109
Keppler was not only Hitler’s personal economic advisor, he was also Germany’s main nexus to American business. Dubbed “a Kodak Man” by U.S. military intelligence reports for his links to the Eastman Kodak film company, Keppler owed much to the Kodak Company. Before the rise of Hitler, Keppler enjoyed managerial positions with several firms that produced photographic gelatins, including one that exported heavily to Eastman Kodak in America and Kodak Limited in England. Kodak financed 50 percent of Keppler’s Odin Company, which specialized in photo gels. Once Hitler came to power, Keppler advised a number of American companies on terminating their Jewish employees. He maintained good relations with executives connected to such companies as International Telephone and Telegraph and National Cash Register, and was Hitler’s intermediary to such commercial giants as General Motors.110
Largely through his Keppler connections, Veesenmayer eventually joined the board of directors of the German subsidiaries of International Telephone and Telegraph and Standard Oil.111 Veesenmayer traveled in executive circles and spoke the language of big business.
But Veesenmayer was more than just a corporate liaison. He was arguably considered Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s most important personal troubleshooter and advance man. A technical expert on the eradication of Jewish communities, Veesenmayer was invaluable as a behind-the-scenes organizer in Hitler’s war against the Jews. As such, he had a keen appreciation for statistics and Hollerith capabilities. U.S. military intelligence described his meteoric ascent within the Reich’s anti-Jewish destruction machine as “an amazing career which took him on missions to Southeastern Europe always, it would seem, at a moment of trouble.”112