Ibm's Role In The Nazi Holocaust

HOW EXTENSIVE WAS AMERICAN CORPORATE INVOLVEMENT (IBM) IN THE NAZI HOLOCAUST?

The Nazi Holocaust was one of the most barbaric and inhumane acts of violence that had ever occurred in human history and changed the world in all its ethical concepts. The Nazi Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder, bureaucratically organized and financed by the German State, of six million Jews by the Nazi regimes and its contributors between 1941-1945. Adolf Hitler, an Austrian born-German politician, and militiaman was the leader of the National Socialist German Party of Workers (NAZI), who later was named Chancellor of the German Reich by German president Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. Hitler’s hatred towards the Jewish and minorities community started

Both countries engaged with IBM technology and resources such as the “IBM punched card” to keep their records in order. This situation was more than a contribution from IBM; it was a business deal. Historians like Edwin Black have efficiently reported how IBM became Germany’s technology provider and played an essential and critical role in areas such as Hitler’s rearmament program in which they could register information that would become a vital component key to Nazi supremacist parliamentary politics. When Hitler came to power in 1933, IBM already existed. Hitler’s principal motivation as the Nazi leader was the extermination of Jewish people. Thomas J. Watson founded IBM in 1911 and was president of his company. IBM at that point developed the predecessor of current computers, the punched card, which was essential for the administration of the United States’ Social Security Act of 1935. Hitler found admiration for his development and recognized Watson in 1937 with the "Das Verdienstkreuz des ordens vom Deutschen Adler" (The Cross of Merit of the Order of the German Eagle) which was the most unique form of appreciation that Hitler could concede to ambassadors, diplomats, and important foreign personalities. It was received among prominent figures such as Henry Ford, and James D. Mooney. This form of recognition gave a perspective of the estimation that Hitler

IBM had trained Nazi officers to control and manage these punch cards and could report directly to Adolf Hitler the “sole purpose to serve the Nazi occupation during the rape in Poland.” In April of 1940, Hitler’s Nazi Germany developed the Central Statistics Office, where more than 500,000 punched cards were processed. After that, in the summer of 1940, Thomas Watson addressed the United States’ White House and State Department a letter where he asked the United States’ government if they wanted IBM and Nazi Germany to stop their business relationship. United States’ Secretary of State Cordell Hull answered immediately “I feel that this is a matter upon which the decision will have to rest entirely with you and is not one upon which this Government would be able to take a position.” Seeing that the reputation of the Nazis was declining in the USA, Watson decided to return the decoration Hitler offered him in 1937. Watson decided to write a letter to Hitler that would be sent by registered mail and disclosed through media. Watson stated, “the present policies of your government are contrary to the causes for which I have been working and for which I received the decoration.” Hitler felt insulted and removed IBM as an allied of the Third Reich. During 1941-1945, punched cards were still