IBM and the Holocaust

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

by Zaheer • 2 years ago

108 63 2 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Rinzler893• 2 years ago

I know this topic resurfaced due to the Googler protest scandal but nothing really changed under the surface since then. A lot of western corporations are still active in Russia today after the invasion. Corporations don't heave a soul or moral compass, they don't care who they hurt or kill, they just follow the money.

French concrete corporation Lafarge was caught funding terorism by paying ISIS to leave their concrete trucks lone in Syria and all they got was a fine from the US government. Nestle is responsible for a shit tonne of infant mortality in impoverished nations and IKEA for major deforestation and nothing really happened to them despite preaching how much they care about people and the environemnt.

I still maintain my PoV that if the execs were to face jailtime or a trail at The Hague instead of petty corporate fines that become part of the cost of doing business, companies would be a lot more mindful on how humane they earn their money. Bring the downvotes, I made peace with it.

stuff4ben• 2 years ago

Actually things have changed for IBM. Speaking as an IBM employee, but not on behalf of IBM, my team (and I suspect all others) had to identify any work done by Russian IBM employees and then subsequently divested ourselves of those employees and offices during the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

throwarussian• 2 years ago

Throwaway for obvious reasons. Do you mean that you've "divested" yourselves from the employees of Russian IBM branch or from anyone who's a Russian national?

The company I work for is in the process of being acquired by IBM. Even though I'm located in Europe, I have Russian citizenship. Does it mean that I'm also going to be "divested from" after the acquisition is complete?

keybored2• 2 years ago

I’m feeling that this submission might be more apropos of Gaza than the Russian invasion.

pphysch5• 2 years ago

Yeah, the sanctions against Russia were among the most severe in history, and widely observed by Western corporations. That they failed is a different discussion. Meanwhile, BDS is a "hate crime".

spxneo3• 2 years ago

and Ukraine is still on track to lose the war even after all that sanction

Western companies exiting Russia created several Russian billionaires overnight

Resulting in more tax revenues and money staying within that country

I'm sorry but Western virtue signaling impact is routinely over-exaggerated and actually achieves the complete opposite of what it set out to do

dralley4• 2 years ago

Sanctions do work, but anyone claiming that they would single handedly crush the Russian economy in a matter of months were delusional, especially due to all of the avoidance going on through Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Nonetheless, it does add a lot of friction that slowly grinds away at the economy.

For example:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russias-arctic-l...

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-sp...

Russia can't sustain autarky on their own, and especially not with their demographics, manpower shortages due to the war, wartime spending, and corruption. Right now they're coasting on what's left of their reserves, but those are finite. Their economy won't outright collapse but it will get more and more inefficient and fragile.

krapp• 2 years ago

Corporations don't heave a soul or moral compass, they just follow the money.

It's less true that corporations don't have a soul or moral compass and more so that they reflect the soul and moral compass of their owners. Anti-semitism was common amongst the US business and intellectual classes, and many companies - IBM included - were run by people who sympathized with Hitler's ideals.

The uncomfortable truth is that the US and Nazi Germany were a lot more similar in terms of their ideology than the propaganda leads people to believe. Hitler even credited the US' policies of genocide against native Americans, eugenics and racial discrimination as inspiration.

timschmidt2• 2 years ago

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin for an example of US ideology aligned with Hitler's.

belligeront3• 2 years ago

Highly recommend listening to this HBR podcast about the same topic. [1]

TJ Watson (of IBM) is quoted as saying: “I’m an internationalist. I cooperate with all forms of government, regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles or not.”

I hear a lot of similar echos within tech companies right now. People using “we’re a business” to shut down discussion about the role of supplying AI technology to Israel, who has been using AI to choose bombing targets [2].

[1] https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/11/lessons-from-ibm-in-nazi-ger...

[2] https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

pphysch5• 2 years ago

regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles

Sure, being able to work with people who have different values is a noble thing. But what about whether or not they observe international law?

This is like a business saying "I cooperate with all customers, regardless of their criminal nature". That is a quite different statement.

SuperHeavy256• 2 years ago

Exactly. The CEO is speaking in doublespeak (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc)

atoav• 2 years ago

There is a line between saying "I am a business person and therefore I don't judge people with different values" and saying "I am a business person and therefore I expect not to be judged for my lack of ethical behavior".

NoMoreNicksLeft• 2 years ago

Doesn't that lead to absurdities, though? Like, is McDonald's morally required to avoid serving known fentanyl dealers?

simmerup• 2 years ago

Like when Twitter declined to remove ISIS propaganda due to their liberal principles

legitster• 2 years ago

As a complication, it's important to state that concentration camps were not against international laws at the time! Pursing racist and eugenic policies was in vogue, and many of Germany's concentration camps were toured and audited by the Red Cross before the war!

It's because of the holocaust that we thankfully have changed our collective attitude about such things. But in 1939, people's knowledge of the racial atrocities happening was very restricted, so I don't think we can underrate just how naïve some people where at the time.

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

Yes, understanding and cooperating with people of very different values can be noble or evil, it depends entirely on what those different values are.

Also, legality doesn't have a close relation to morality, so cooperating with people regardless of legality can also be noble or evil.

benced2• 2 years ago

I think the moral obligation is slightly different when you have capabilities that no other firm has. I believe IBM falls into that category then, a company like ASML would now. Google Cloud would not: Israel can get cloud services anywhere.

(note this is true regardless of your feelings on the morality of Israel's government's choices)

shadowgovt2• 2 years ago

If anything, "Israel can get cloud services anywhere" is an argument that Google should be even less inclined to take their money. If they have alternatives, it's not even as much money as it would be if they don't.

m463• 2 years ago

I think the moral obligation is slightly different when you have capabilities that no other firm has.

hmmm... I don't know if that argument holds water.

for example, the corollary would be that your obligation is less if other firms have the capability?

although AI and choosing bombing targets is pretty horrible, I think surveillance tech ("advertising") is something more fundamental that everyone should think more about.

Intralexical2• 2 years ago

So, "If I didn't do it, then somebody else would, so I may as well take the profit for myself"?

Or "As long as I'm not the only one who's complicit, it's okay"?

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

This is where government sanctions come in. While some companies may behave morally, we can't expect that they all will when there is money to be made.

If we the people as represented by our government decide that a particular foreign regime is off-limits, then companies are compelled to not do business with them. We don't leave it to choice.

belligeront3• 2 years ago

Shouldn’t individuals and companies also have a set of morals?

res0nat0r• 2 years ago

Good book. Have the hardcover on my bookshelf. Not a fan the cover art design though.

cyclecount• 2 years ago

Google and Amazon are actively involved in the largest man-made famine since WWII, and we’re not even allowed to discuss it on HN (you know the conflict I’m talking about, every post about the genocide gets flagged immediately).

keybored2• 2 years ago

And also submissions that are tangentially related (look up)…

EDIT: not flagged any more :)

dunekid• 2 years ago

This is true, It was absolutely ridiculous to see even UN articles getting flagged to death. All the while absolute propaganda were still actively get promoted. An argument can be made that HN has to not keep discussions going to flamewar. I would acknowledge that I have learned much kore about the issues through HN. And it is much more clear to me that the responsibility almost completely lies on the west, both colonial and neo colonial entities there.

What is even more surprising is that US under Reagan, of all people, had cut off aid and stabilised Israel aggression much more than the current government. Yet, we have bipartisan support for the apartheid genocide machine when they commit even more cruel crimes against humanity.

cafard• 2 years ago

Ethiopia in the 1980s?

nojvek• 2 years ago

Which one. There’s a few ongoing right now.

Aloha2• 2 years ago

I remember reading this book when it came out in 2002 and the expanded version in 2012.

It made a largely circumstantial case for IBM's involvement in the holocaust.

Yes - the following things are true:

* Germany used IBM Tabulating Equipment to compile its racial census.

* Deutsch Reichsbahn used IBM Punched Card equipment to run most of its operations.

* The German Government made extensive use of IBM Punched Card equipment to track prisoners, including in the concentration camps.

Beyond those three facts the case is basically circumstantial - Black made a bunch of suppositions when drawing his conclusions -

* IBM New York knew all of the particulars of use of its tabulating equipment, and what the outcomes would be.

* IBM New York had defacto continuing control of its german subsidiary (Dehomag) even after it was functionally nationalized.

* IBM New York provided technology and parts thru IBM Geneva.

* Profits from Dehomag were funneled thru IBM Geneva to IBM New York.

* Most glaringly, he asserts that IBM Punched Card technologies were the only way to do what Nazi Germany did at the scale it did it at.

However he makes the assertions without much backing evidence for it, and its all clouded in an aura of leading purple prose.

This article presents a pretty concise version of the gaping flaws in the book - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/33853

Most notably, the book leaves out important context - even if everything he supposed about IBM were true, what IBM did wasn't unique, it was common corporate practices at the time, indeed, many american corporations had similar subsidiaries, all of whom at a minimum contributed to the german war effort.

belligeront3• 2 years ago

He claimed in 2002, after the book was published, to have found additional evidence that IBM established a Polish subsidiary after Germany invaded Poland to sell machines to the Nazi government.

https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/The-business-of-makin...

chasil• 2 years ago

Though I also read the book, I don't remember the details of DEHOMAG control via Switzerland, but I would be surprised if there wasn't a paper trail of directives from Armonk, NY via the Swiss to maximize DEHOMAG's market.

I do remember that Coca-Cola in Germany was not able to use the formula for the eponymous soft drink, and developed Fanta during this time. I do not imagine that much secrecy in tabulating machines was present.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag

Looking over the DEHOMAG wiki, there are some curious facts...

"Watson had received Order of the German Eagle medal at the Berlin ICC meeting in 1937, but after Nazis' pogroms against Jews started in 1938 Watson himself wanted to distance himself and IBM from Germans but was convinced not to do so by Secretary of State Hull and he gave up the idea until spring of 1940.

"Leon Krzemieniecki, the last surviving person involved in the administration of the rail transportation to Auschwitz and Treblinka, stated he knew the punched card machines were not German machines, because the labels were in English. Income from the machines leased in General Government was sent through Geneva to IBM in New York."

Aloha2• 2 years ago

The issue is, there isn't a paper trail - now TJ Watson wasn't a big leaver of paper either. He learned at working at NCR - but this was an era when international phone calling was prohibitive.

rexpop• 2 years ago

even if everything he supposed about IBM were true, what IBM did wasn't unique

Not only an ethically irrelevant assertion, but additionally a scientifically irrelevant assertion: one cannot be expected to research all subjects in all contexts. Black investigated the subject for which he had observations. The rest is up to the rest of us.

ngcc_hk• 2 years ago

Providing x to china will be the same with hindsight.

mixmastamyk• 2 years ago

While this is an important part of history to know, the story didn't stop there, and certainly not with IBM. Computers/primitive-databases were also used to manage Japanese internment in the US, also using Census data. The Stasi used improved technologies to their advantage until the 80s.

You can draw a line from there to the NSA, surveillance capitalism, and the commercial data broker markets of today. It's just a matter of time until the information gets used.

sherburt3• 2 years ago

If only those engineers at IBM had looked into their crystal ball and known that Adolf Hitler was a bad egg, then they wouldn't have done a census and then everything would be great today.

IBM and the Holocaust

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