The book "IBM & the Holocaust" tells the story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany, which began in 1933 during the first weeks of Hitler's rise to power and continued well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked on its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create the enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Only after the Jews had been identified—a massively complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately—could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and annihilation. This was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge of monumental proportions, one that called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s, no computer existed. But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did.

Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate the persecution of the Jews. Historians were amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled.

The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi-occupied Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and the organizing of concentration camp slave labor. IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, anticipating the Reich's needs. They didn't merely sell the machines and walk away; instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards needed.

"IBM & the Holocaust" details the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries—all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction. Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.

Only with IBM's technological assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews: how Hitler got the names.

product information: