Thursday, February 03, 2005
Not that I like to get involved, but . . .
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
Of course, he fails to note that IBM only leased all of their machines and were pretty much the sole programmers of them, because no one else knew how to use the damn things . . . and they were the only people who made punch cards that worked with their machines, pretty much, so anyone who was using their machines had to buy their punch cards.
As he later notes,
The answer: IBM Germany's census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies. IBM was founded in 1898 by German inventor Herman Hollerith as a census tabulating company. Census was its business. But when IBM Germany formed its philosophical and technologic alliance with Nazi Germany, census and registration took on a new mission. IBM Germany invented the racial census--listing not just religious affiliation, but bloodline going back generations. This was the Nazi data lust. Not just to count the Jews--but to identify them.
In other words, they used fourty and fifty year old technology, customized it a little, and shuffled it towards the German government.
Or this reference:
For example, I encountered an IBM reference to accumulating "points." Eventually, I discovered that "points" referred to making sales quotas for inclusion in IBM's Hundred Percent Club. IBM maintained sales quotas for all its subsidiaries during the Hitler-era.
IBM maintained sales quotas for everyone, always . . . not sure quite what he's driving at. Nor does he address IBM's allegation that IBM responded then that it had lost control of its German subsidy Dehomag before the war began in 1939., that page is still under construction four years after the website went up.
I mean, I suppose you could call Intel an enabler for the US government, but even the most left of the left wouldn't say that they've been backing the war in Iraq. Calculators can be used for good or evil certainly, but I don't think it makes sense to fault a calculator company when the rest of the world was doing the same thing. If you want to displace responsibility, blame the Allies for not attacking Germany in 1936 when Hitler first started militarizing the Rhineland.
Of course, he fails to note that IBM only leased all of their machines and were pretty much the sole programmers of them, because no one else knew how to use the damn things . . . and they were the only people who made punch cards that worked with their machines, pretty much, so anyone who was using their machines had to buy their punch cards.
As he later notes,
The answer: IBM Germany's census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies. IBM was founded in 1898 by German inventor Herman Hollerith as a census tabulating company. Census was its business. But when IBM Germany formed its philosophical and technologic alliance with Nazi Germany, census and registration took on a new mission. IBM Germany invented the racial census--listing not just religious affiliation, but bloodline going back generations. This was the Nazi data lust. Not just to count the Jews--but to identify them.
In other words, they used fourty and fifty year old technology, customized it a little, and shuffled it towards the German government.
Or this reference:
For example, I encountered an IBM reference to accumulating "points." Eventually, I discovered that "points" referred to making sales quotas for inclusion in IBM's Hundred Percent Club. IBM maintained sales quotas for all its subsidiaries during the Hitler-era.
IBM maintained sales quotas for everyone, always . . . not sure quite what he's driving at. Nor does he address IBM's allegation that IBM responded then that it had lost control of its German subsidy Dehomag before the war began in 1939., that page is still under construction four years after the website went up.
I mean, I suppose you could call Intel an enabler for the US government, but even the most left of the left wouldn't say that they've been backing the war in Iraq. Calculators can be used for good or evil certainly, but I don't think it makes sense to fault a calculator company when the rest of the world was doing the same thing. If you want to displace responsibility, blame the Allies for not attacking Germany in 1936 when Hitler first started militarizing the Rhineland.
