Genocide: - DIIS

IBM Technology and the Third Reich
Lars Heide
IBM Technology and the Third Reich
People in the civilised world in the period of economic and psychological
recovery after the Second World War found the industrial killing of 30 million
people during the war incomprehensible. In fact, we have never really
been able to comprehend much more than the bare, horrifying fi gures. The
total number killed was much higher than the mechanised killing of 8,4
million soldiers in the First World War that had the minds of haunted people
during the inter-war years. Further, in the Second World War the majority
of those killed were civilians. Civilians are not supposed to take part
in warfare; it is soldiers who wage war. Scholarly studies into the warfare
and into the systematic genocide of Jews, Romas (Gypsies), homosexuals
and other marginalized groups became part of the process attempting to
make it more comprehensible. How was it possible to organise the location,
transport and extermination of 210,000 German and Austrian Jews,
and 90,000 French Jews?
The role of industry is decisive in the waging of modern mass warfare
and, after the war, the Allies raised questions about the part played by
German industry in the Third Reich and the Second World War. The assets
of several large concerns, including IG Farben, Vereinigte Stahlwerke and
Krupp were confi scated. Otto Ambro, Friedrich Flick and Alfried Krupp
were among the industrial executives prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Prosecutions were mounted against those who had actively supported
production for warfare and genocide, and who were involved in
the exploitation of slave labour. The production of the Zyklon-B gas used
in the gas chambers of the concentration camps was investigated, but not
the more subtle contributions of those involved in locating and deporting
people.
The alleged complicity of International Business Machines Corporation
(IBM) in the location, deportation and persecution of Jews in Europe is
the theme of Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance
between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. 1 The book
was published by the Random House publishing company in New York
via their Crown subsidiary in February 2001 and, simultaneously, in
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