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 the second world war and before. The story goes IBM started from the Hollerith machine which could read punch cards, the early days of computers – data imputers punched computer cards which read the data and reports were produced to be analysed. The punch card started with data needed by the census department – to determine who is living in the country. Then other questions would be asked and IBM developed bigger cards for more information to provide solutions to the questions being asked. Census taking was a large task and provided the basis to sell to other large companies and institutions.

In Germany during the 1930’s the government decided the Jews were the problem and needed to be removed. It was one thing to decide that, how they did it is the subject of the book about IBM. Jews had been living in Germany for hundreds of years, fought for Germany during the first World War, similar to most had varying degrees of religion and did their best to make Germany a good place to live. The Nazis decided all Jews going back 100 years needed to be identified in order to be removed, this is where IBM plays a large part. IBM’s German subsidiary – Dehomag was profitable and was quasi removed or a layer of deny ability from IBM. One would need to look through a number of layers before the true relationship could be seen. IBM allowed Dehomag to manufacturer the punch card machine and Dehomag won the census taking for Germany. The Nazis wanted many questions about your past in the census so anyone who had Jewish blood in them could be identified. Once identified they could be rounded up, moved to ghettos, move to camps and many them would be killed. Other countries around the world followed the same process of identification, rounded up, moved to ghettos and camps, but they did not kill.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the case of IBM the senior management of the company including Thomas Watson knew what was happening in Germany and continued to help the Nazis. He saw it as good business and for a long time sympathized with the Nazis. Every long term profitable company goods and services can be used for both good and evil, depending on how society defines it. Fortunately most do more good than evil and when it does happen consequences happen including loss of goodwill and share prices.

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