With every technology there is both good and evil that the technology can be used for. The book IBM and the Holocaust written by Edwin Black, Crown Publishing, NY, 2001 deals with the company IBM and its activities to help the Nazis in Germany during WW II and before. For generations, people have been surveyed and governments of all strips allocate resources based on the surveys. The programs can be for infrastructure – roads, bridges, sewers, etc. and they can be for social reasons – if there are more people needing extra services – the surveys help define where resources should go. Everyone in government needs the information from the census surveys. For generations, much of the material was collected by paper and took months to tabulate and there was only so much that could be done. Companies similar to IBM invented machines that could do the work of the tabulating and in the case of IBM, it used a punch card process. With the invention of the silicon chip, we no longer use punch cards. In the case of IBM – to ensure a monopoly like conditions their machines only used IBM paper. This was good for IBM and institutions around the world began to use the technology. Those in Nazi Germany decided to go further, besides running the country, one of their core beliefs was race belief system of Aryans was better. To have a country of Aryans was to have a better country. Part of this meant to eliminate non-Aryans in particular the Jewish population. The race division of the Nazi party ensured all surveys including the census included information about the religion of your grandfather and grandmothers to see if you were Aryan or not. The race division started in Germany and prior to WW II, every time the Germans invaded another country – their number one priority was to identify the Jewish population. Having identified the population, the lists from the IBM cards could be generated and the population transported to camps by the train. The train companies used IBM punch cards to know where every freight car was to be efficient as possible. The IBM system was used throughout the military industrial complex of both Germany and the US, and the state department of the US knew about it. It was one thing to have the machines, but it was another thing to supply the punch cards for the machines ran on cards – millions of them were needed. IBM supplied the punch cards,  which were manufactured in the US, for Europe as did not have the correct paper to supply all the punch cards.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, IBM is not the first company to profit on both sides of the war, but it did lead to the efficient gathering of lists of the population and the movement of them to camps where many died. Should the US state department allowed IBM to continually to ship cards with remarkably few consequences? Should IBM carried on similar to peace time in the German controlled Europe? At the time of the President Tomas Watson, IBM was micromanaged and Mr. Watson knew exactly where his machines were? its audits tracked down every expense and they must had a very good idea of what the Germans were doing. At the present time – both friends and enemies have access to microchips so the debate is mute, but in World War II, could have IBM done better for itself in terms of profitability – no. IBM profited from the high use of punch cards which ran the German system. All companies have to answer the question for themselves which is why when a company says they have a code of ethics what does that really mean? what solutions would they not provide?

There is more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions