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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Thu May 15, 2014, 10:15 PM May 2014

Who enabled NAZI Germany to round up the Jews? Think IBM.

Last edited Thu May 15, 2014, 11:41 PM - Edit history (1)

The company and its Hollerith machines enabled the fascists to tabulate census data and find out "who was who?" and "who did what?"and "who lives where?"



Oh. The IBM machines and the cards they used to process information also were used to find out "how many Jews?" and "where are they?"



IBM & "Death's Calculator"

by Edwin Black

EXCERPT...

When the Reich needed to mount a systematic campaign of Jewish economic disenfranchisement and later began the massive movement of European Jews out of their homes and into ghettos, once again, the task was so prodigious it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed. When the Final Solution sought to efficiently transport Jews out of European ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps, with timing so precise the victims were able to walk right out of the boxcar and into a waiting gas chamber, the coordination was so complex a task, this too called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.

However, another invention did exist: the IBM punch card and card sorting system-a precursor to the computer. IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success. IBM Germany, using its own staff and equipment, designed, executed, and supplied the indispensable technologic assistance Hitler's Third Reich needed to accomplish what had never been done before-the automation of human destruction. More than 2,000 such multi-machine sets were dispatched throughout Germany, and thousands more throughout German-dominated Europe. Card sorting operations were established in every major concentration camp. People were moved from place to place, systematically worked to death, and their remains cataloged with icy automation.

SNIP...

I was haunted by a question whose answer has long eluded historians. The Germans always had the lists of Jewish names. Suddenly, a squadron of grim-faced SS would burst into a city square and post a notice demanding those listed assemble the next day at the train station for deportation to the East. But how did the Nazis get the lists? For decades, no one has known. Few have asked.

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.

CONTINUED...

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/gypibm.html



For me, one who's carried this knowledge most of my adult life, I find it difficult to grasp how anyone could fail to fathom where today's secret government and all its illegalities will head.

So, for science:

Did you know that IBM helped the NAZIs round up the Jewish people in Germany and throughout occupied Europe?
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Who enabled NAZI Germany to round up the Jews? Think IBM. (Original Post) Octafish May 2014 OP
Edwin Black discusses the re-issue of 'IBM and the Holocaust' at Yeshiva University Octafish May 2014 #1
Here's an interesting list of corporations that collaborated with the Nazis deutsey May 2014 #2
Big Names, all. Octafish May 2014 #3
also French cosmetic firm L'Oréal. mylye2222 May 2014 #5
Edwin Black documented how the NAZIs got inspiration from American Academia. Octafish May 2014 #8
This entire thread is excellent. hunter May 2014 #28
Tabulating machine Javaman May 2014 #4
Punch Hole No. 8 Octafish May 2014 #6
Hey, it's only metadata. What's your problem? /sarcasm k&r, nt. appal_jack May 2014 #13
What Hannah Arendt said... Octafish May 2014 #16
I saw that trending during my entire teaching career. Book collecting is still a good idea. ancianita May 2014 #19
And they got their rental payments through a Swiss bank all through the war. hobbit709 May 2014 #7
A few names for the record... Octafish May 2014 #14
IBM also set up the pass system in South Africa, developed the bar code for pass swiping. ancianita May 2014 #9
Final solutions for a small planet - the Use of Computers to Support Oppression Octafish May 2014 #15
Thanks for the link! Truths persist over time, no matter how deeply buried by history's 'winners.' ancianita May 2014 #17
They know they can get a way with it. CanSocDem May 2014 #10
Each NAZI concentration camp had a three digit Hollerith card code. Octafish May 2014 #21
And Mercedes Benz made the engines that powered the gas chambers. Hepburn May 2014 #11
Not BMW - a man was the ultimate slave driving machine... Octafish May 2014 #25
10 Global Businesses that Worked With the Nazis Javaman May 2014 #12
Nasty Business: Corporate Deals with NAZI Germany Octafish May 2014 #26
I'm not at all surprised to see that 90% of DU'ers knew this... Shandris May 2014 #18
DU Spreads Truth. Octafish May 2014 #27
Yes. Randi Rhodes covered this at length. Another reason her leaving radio is so tragic. SalviaBlue May 2014 #20
Randi always makes clear where she stands. Octafish May 2014 #29
Definitely knew about this Separation May 2014 #22
The Bush NAZI Coke Moonie Connection Octafish May 2014 #30
For those new to the subject...The Abominable Dr. Ishii and Gen. Willoughby Octafish May 2014 #32
It also enabled the atom bomb. rug May 2014 #23
Thank you, rug! Outstanding link and history. Octafish May 2014 #33
Important thread, k&r. nt bananas May 2014 #24
IBM enabled the Holocaust. Imagine what NSA could do today? Octafish May 2014 #34
Many people don't know this, but then many really don't know as Cleita May 2014 #31
Thanks to supercomputers and modern programming, we're a click away from 'Turnkey Tyranny.' Octafish May 2014 #36
It's stunning the extent we have regressed into what is a cyber Cleita May 2014 #38
Doña Cleita, you are most welcome. Just standing on the shoulders of giants... Octafish May 2014 #39
Just like the transatlantic slave trade was enabled by the dude who invented the BOAT. cherokeeprogressive May 2014 #35
Watson wasn't just Hitler's dining companion. Octafish May 2014 #37

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
3. Big Names, all.
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:14 AM
May 2014


Going by what their, ah, advertising departments tell us, good corporate citizens, too.

Thank you for the heads-up, deutsey.

The chase for profit and progress makes clear the 99-percent are cannon fodder, in George Herbert Walker Bush's vernacular: OFUs for "One Fodder Unit."
 

mylye2222

(2,992 posts)
5. also French cosmetic firm L'Oréal.
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:24 AM
May 2014

The sold soap made of Jewish bodies. And perruques with their hair.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
8. Edwin Black documented how the NAZIs got inspiration from American Academia.
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:40 AM
May 2014
Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

by Edwin Black
Sunday, November 9, 2003

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

CONTINUED...

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html

Edwin Black is one of the greatest investigative journalists and authors in history. In my opinion, he should be required reading for all high school and college students. For some reason, his works get almost no coverage in American media.

PS: Thank you for the heads-up, mylye2222. Sorry to bring up the horrifying history. My purpose is to help keep it from repeating.

hunter

(38,318 posts)
28. This entire thread is excellent.
Sat May 17, 2014, 01:46 PM
May 2014

California has produced some extremely toxic fruit.

Nixon and Reagan are just two.

Javaman

(62,531 posts)
4. Tabulating machine
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:20 AM
May 2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine

The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information and, later, accounting. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. It spawned a class of machines, known as unit record equipment, and the data processing industry.

The term "Super Computing" was used by the New York World newspaper in 1931 to refer to a large custom-built tabulator that IBM made for Columbia University.[2]

more at link...

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
6. Punch Hole No. 8
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:34 AM
May 2014

Signified the person was Jewish. Edwin Black in the video upthread goes over the classifications, detailing how the cards contained a wealth of data, including occupation, location, cause of death.



Thank you for adding details, Javaman. As the bastards are still at it today, classifying even the loyal opposition as "potential" enemies of the state, truth is what democracy needs.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
16. What Hannah Arendt said...
Fri May 16, 2014, 03:39 PM
May 2014

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in "The Origins of Totalitarianism," is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.”

via Chris Hedges

For those wondering about race to eliminate the Department of Education and buy high school history textbooks from Texas:

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” ― Hannah Arendt

hobbit709

(41,694 posts)
7. And they got their rental payments through a Swiss bank all through the war.
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:37 AM
May 2014

They only leased their machines, not sold them.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
14. A few names for the record...
Fri May 16, 2014, 02:43 PM
May 2014
Central Office for Holocaust Claims (UK) - Bank Accounts
The Association of Jewish Refugees

Barclays and J P Morgan set up a fund to pay compensation for their role in operating with the Vichy and occupational authorities to plunder systematically the bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other valuables of their Jewish clients...

Company names appearing in this article are:

Barclays PLC (UK)
Erste Bank der oesterreichischen Sparkassen (AG Austria)
J.P. Morgan (J.P. Morgan Chase & Company) (USA)
Lloyds TSB Group PLC (UK)
J.P. Morgan et Cie (France)
Rothschild Frères (France)


SOURCE w much additional, important information: http://www.stockmaven.com/medrepcIJ.htm

PS: Thank you, hobbit709. This history must be remembered so it is never repeated.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
15. Final solutions for a small planet - the Use of Computers to Support Oppression
Fri May 16, 2014, 03:32 PM
May 2014


The Use of Computers to Support Oppression

Computer technology enabled the government to organize and enforce such an atrocious system of segregation and control.

More than any other single technological advancement, the computer fostered the concentration of administrative power in the hands of Africa's white elite. (NAR82)

Despite the U.N. arms embargoes, American computers were in widespread use throughout South Africa. The United States was the largest supplier of computers used in South Africa. American computers were in use in virtually every governmental agency, the police system, and the military, all of which contributed to the control system known as apartheid. Computer technology did not merely support the system of oppression, rather the entire country was utterly dependent upon it. As the managing director of the South African subsidiary of Burroughs Corporations said,

We are entirely dependent on the U.S. The economy would grind to a halt without access to the computer technology of the West. No bank could function; the government couldn't collect its money and couldn't account for it; business couldn't operate; payrolls could not be paid. Retail and wholesale marketing and related services would be disrupted. (NAR82)

IBM advertisement The extensive history of the export of American computer technology began in 1952 with an order for the first "electric tabulator" to IBM-South Africa. Three years later, the streamlining of the hated pass system resulted in an automated population register implemented on foreign computers. 1970 found South Africa with an estimated four hundred computers -- a value of about one hundred million dollars. The number of computers continued to grow, totaling more than forty five hundred in 1982. In 1977, only the U.S. and Britain spent more on computer technology than South Africa as a percentage of gross national product, while in 1980, 75% of the computers in South Africa were purchased from American corporations. South Africa continued to import a large number of computers despite an attempt by the government to promote domestic production. Local products accounted for less than 5% of South African computer equipment sales in 1988. Many of these sales occured despite restrictions in U.S. law.

American corporation IBM was the largest computer supplier in South Africa throughout the years of apartheid. In 1978 alone, IBM's South African sales jumped 250%; total annual sales amounted to approximately three hundred million dollars in 1982. Not only did IBM contribute tremendous computing power to the South African apartheid system, but of the fifteen hundred South African workers employed by IBM in 1982, less than 20% were classified as coloured, black or Asian. IBM continually asserted that the applications of their computers were not used to abridge human rights, despite acknowledgment that the uses to which their computers were put could not be known in all cases. In fact, the South African Parliament made it illegal for companies to report the uses of their computers. Although IBM officially divested from South Africa in 1987, their products continued to be distributed by Information Services Group.

CONTINUED...

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.comp.html

Thank you for the heads-up, ancianita. This pretty much all is news to me.

How is it possible to not believe everything I read, when it isn't even mentioned?

ancianita

(36,101 posts)
17. Thanks for the link! Truths persist over time, no matter how deeply buried by history's 'winners.'
Fri May 16, 2014, 03:45 PM
May 2014

What gets me now is how pervasive today are IBM's system sales are across the globe, how they've captured so many governmental and military markets.



I came across this in getting our union to divest from South African holdings back in the early 80's. An old ANC friend helped me do the research before personal computers were a twinkle in our collective eye.



 

CanSocDem

(3,286 posts)
10. They know they can get a way with it.
Fri May 16, 2014, 09:48 AM
May 2014


We'd rather be a little cog in a big machine than a human being standing alone on principle...



.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
21. Each NAZI concentration camp had a three digit Hollerith card code.
Fri May 16, 2014, 04:52 PM
May 2014

What could today's data processing reveal? It's something someone on some level of the secret government knows. People who question it, what used to be known as "citizens," may be ringing an alarm bell.



The NSA’s cyber-surveillance technology

Infrastructure of a police state

By Kevin Reed
World Socialist Web Site, 25 June 2013

EXCERPT...

Threat of a police state

When considered within the context of the economic, social and political crisis of American capitalism, the unprecedented scale and scope of the NSA electronic eavesdropping on US citizens and others around the world has an ominous character to it. It is clear that such measures are being prepared for reasons other than those officially provided.

At the height of its power, the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler used the most sophisticated analog information methods available to identify and track those whom it deemed undesirable. The 1933 census was used to establish the ethnic identity of the population and was conducted with the assistance of the computer punch card tabulation services invented by Herman Hollerith and provided by IBM. Years later, each one of the Nazi concentration camps had a three-digit Hollerith code number it used for paperwork purposes.

The explosive development of mobile and wireless devices and their ubiquity in the lives of the vast majority of the world’s population make it possible for sinister operations within the state to gather details about each individual’s everyday activities for repressive purposes.

SOURCE: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/25/infr-j25.html



Because he was on the side of Righteousness, CanSocDem, David knew he would defeat Goliath.

Hepburn

(21,054 posts)
11. And Mercedes Benz made the engines that powered the gas chambers.
Fri May 16, 2014, 10:41 AM
May 2014

Every time I see a Jewish friend in an MB, I want to gag.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
25. Not BMW - a man was the ultimate slave driving machine...
Sat May 17, 2014, 09:26 AM
May 2014

...whose family would later control BMW.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/8796157/BMW-dynasty-breaks-silence-over-Nazi-past.html

The Quandt family has owned up to the past. It is my hope others who profit from war do the same.

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-10-10/bmws-quandt-family-faces-its-nazi-pastbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

Thank you, Hepburn, for remembering. These "prestigious" corporations all did what the criminal state required.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
26. Nasty Business: Corporate Deals with NAZI Germany
Sat May 17, 2014, 09:57 AM
May 2014

Today, with corporate power magnified by the global economy and its international trade agreements, it is worthwhile to reflect on the behavior of "American" corporations at a time when fascism threatened to plunge the world into an anti-human abyss. The experiences of 60 years ago are a potent reminder of corporate power and greed that transcends national borders or patriotic allegiances.

Writing about the Big Three automakers’ dealings with Nazi Germany, Bradford Snell observed: "these firms retained the economic and political power to affect the shape of governmental relations both within and between these nations in a manner which maximized corporate global profits. In short, there were private governments unaccountable to the citizens of any country yet possessing tremendous influence over the course of war and peace in the world."

Bringing corporate power to account remains the task of the world’s citizens today.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_nastybiz.html

Speaking of GE, when was the last time they paid taxes?

 

Shandris

(3,447 posts)
18. I'm not at all surprised to see that 90% of DU'ers knew this...
Fri May 16, 2014, 03:46 PM
May 2014

...(at present poll totals); DU'ers tend to be very well-read.

Extrapolated to the outside, I'd expect to see that number invert itself. Yes, it's scary how few give any consideration to what is going on and the potential it has. "Oh that can't happen nowadays." /smh

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
27. DU Spreads Truth.
Sat May 17, 2014, 01:01 PM
May 2014

My own guesstimate is 95-percent of Americans have no idea that IBM played a significant role in the Holocaust.

The current NSA revelations cast light on the major roles played by telcos, Internet companies and others in providing the secret government of the United States with data that detail most every American's life in full. It is a most sordid and un-American history as revealed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.



Media Alert
May 13, 2004

Thousands of Intelligence Documents Opened under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act

Historians’ Book Details New Accounts of the Holocaust and Relationships Allied Intelligence Services Had with War Criminals

Washington, D.C…Hundreds of thousands of pages of FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army intelligence records related to Nazi and World War II war crimes and perpetrators have been declassified and opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. On May 13, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) announced the release, which included approximately 240,000 pages from the FBI, 419 additional CIA name and subject files, and more than 3,000 pages documenting U.S. Army involvement with German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen.

The records and others released under the Disclosure Act are discussed in U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, a new book by IWG historians Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe.

SNIP...

CIA and Eichmann’s Associates

After World War II, the emerging struggle with the Soviet Union dominated the resources and attention of the United States, even at the expense of the task of locating and punishing the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The May 1960 Israeli capture of notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann, however, refocused public attention on those men who had managed to elude justice in the chaos of the immediate postwar period. For the CIA, this unexpected event would force a re-examination of some of the former Nazis it had recruited in the rush to produce intelligence results during the Cold War in the 1950s. Newly released records show that at least five of Eichmann’s associates, each a significant participant in Hitler’s war upon the Jews, had worked for the CIA. Additionally, the records reveal that at least 23 war criminals or Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment. The documents help answer the question of how and why these war criminals were given employment, assistance, and, in two cases, U.S. citizenship by a nation that had lost more than 300,000 lives in World War II.

In early 1950, the Austrian police began asking questions about Otto von Bolschwing, a former SS officer hired by the CIA in late 1949. Bolschwing’s SS personnel file had been among those captured at the end of the war. To protect this agent from any war crimes trial, however, the CIA decided that any prosecutors who asked for Bolschwing’s SS personnel file should be told, "no files available." Bolschwing had worked with Eichmann before the war in planning the expropriation of Jewish property in Austria and later served as the SS consultant to the forces that staged the bloody pogrom in Bucharest, Romania in 1941. In 1953, in recognition of Bolschwing’s work for U.S. intelligence, the CIA pressured the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to let him enter the country. He later became a U.S. citizen. When U.S. Congress in the 1970s forced an examination of U.S. policy toward Nazi war criminals—creating at the time the Office of Special Investigations in the Department of Justice—Boschwing was investigated and then stripped of his citizenship. OSI found Bolschwing on its own. The CIA never turned him in to law enforcement. He died in 1982.

CONTINUED...

http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2004/nr04-55.html



I very much appreciate that you understand where this can lead, Shandris. I have a great respect for the United States government, including the military. But the secret government and its officers, who knows? Their agenda, as revealed so far by Manning, Snowden and a near-forgotten yet long line of others going back to traitors undermining Jimmy Carter's administration, is very similar to the NAZIs.

SalviaBlue

(2,917 posts)
20. Yes. Randi Rhodes covered this at length. Another reason her leaving radio is so tragic.
Fri May 16, 2014, 04:34 PM
May 2014

Thank you for educating DU.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
29. Randi always makes clear where she stands.
Sun May 18, 2014, 12:24 PM
May 2014


From the great DUer LSK:

Jeff Gannon explains why he canceled on Randi Rhodes

Edited on Thu Oct-05-06 04:20 PM by LSK
October 05, 2006

Randi Rhodes Has No Manners

I cancelled my appearance on the Randi Rhodes Show today on Air America Radio because I wanted to be treated as a guest. I objected to the insulting way in which they were promoting my appearance. I really enjoy to debate, but I'm not going to participate in a conversation where I am not going to be accorded basic courtesy even before the show begins.

Clearly these good-hearted liberals have no idea of the concept of being a good host. Being angry doesn't mean you can be ill-mannered.

http://www.jeffgannon.com /

Randis website today:

http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/

Separation

(1,975 posts)
22. Definitely knew about this
Fri May 16, 2014, 05:10 PM
May 2014

This is a horrible thing that happened while most of the world (I'm not talking intelligence and world leaders) was totally unaware of this. It is nothing that compares with Operation paperclip, and other operations to get japanese scientists who worked on bio weapons.

These actions happened after the fact. We knew these people were directly responsible for countless deaths. Kill 100 of thousands in slave labor? No problem, because you worked on the ME-262, or V1, V2 etc.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
30. The Bush NAZI Coke Moonie Connection
Sun May 18, 2014, 12:56 PM
May 2014

by Nick Mamatas
Disinfo.com, July 28, 2002

In April 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush proclaimed a week of remembrance for the Holocaust. He said, "I urge Texans to never forget the inhumanity of those who perpetrated the Holocaust, and reflect upon our own humanity and our responsibility to respect all peoples." Good advice. He should reflect upon his own family, if he is interested in reflecting on inhumanity.

G.W.'s grandfather and great-grandfather, Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker, were among the chief American fundraisers for Germany's Nazi Party. Through industrialist Fritz Thyssen, the Bush-run Union Banking Company and W. A. Harriman & Company, the Bushes sold over $50 million in German bonds to American investors, starting in 1924. Thyssen in turn pumped money into the infant Nazi Party, which had proved its desire to rule and its willingness to use brute force in 1923's Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

George Walker, GW's great-grandfather, also set up the takeover of the Hamburg-America Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the United States. In Germany, I.G. Farben was most famous for putting the gas in gas chambers; it was the producer of Zyklon B and other gasses used on victims of the Holocaust. The Bush family was not unaware of the nature of their investment partners. They hired Allen Dulles, the future head of the CIA, to hide the funds they were making from Nazi investments and the funds they were sending to Nazi Germany, rather than divest. It was only in 1942, when the government seized Union Banking Company assets under the Trading With The Enemy Act, that George Walker and Prescott Bush stopped pumping money into Hitler's regime.

George Bush, then an eighteen year-old man, held off entering Yale (a long-time Bush family destination, Prescott had graduated in 1917) to enter the military, perhaps to remove some of the tarnish from his family's honor. After the war, however, Bush joined the intelligence community and utilized his own connections to help fund drug runners from Laos to Panama. Most shocking was the so-called "cocaine coup" in Bolivia in June 1980, masterminded by fugitive Nazi Klaus Barbie, "The Butcher Of Lyons." Bush, as director of the CIA, had funneled enormous amounts of cash to drug runners including Manuel Noriega and helped in the destabilization of Argentina. Barbie, who had been previously secreted in Latin America by the CIA, began working closely with the Argentines and used drug money to finance a neo-Nazi cabal, one that succeeded in overthrowing the government. The troops swept through the capital wearing Nazi armbands, according to former DEA agent Mike Levine. They may as well have been wearing armbands portraying syringes, dollar bills and "Bush For President" buttons.

After the cocaine coup, the notorious Unification Church, the "Moonie" cult, began making inroads across Latin America. Among the first to arrive in La Paz after the Nazi/coke coup was Bo Hi Pak, Rev. Sun Myung Moon's right hand man. Moon had invested $4 million in the coup, it so turns out, and still had plenty of money left over to help finance George Bush's campaign for president in 1988. Moonie lieutenant Thomas Ward also acted as the go-between between Barbie and his CIA payrollers. The Moonies were also large funders of the Contras and heavy investors in Latin America generally. Bush is still in Moon's pocket: as recently as 1996, former President Bush flew to Argentina to appeal to Argentine president Carlos Menem to attend the gala celebration for Moon's latest right-wing newspaper. Bush has made hundreds of thousands of dollars stumping for Moon groups since leaving the Oval Office, and has been working to make sure GW Bush gets his share of drug-tainted, Nazi managed cult money for the latest Presidential campaign

SOURCE w LINKS: http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id195/pg1/

Internet Archive cached:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040405232126/http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id195/pg1/

Thanks for keeping a heads-up, Separation. These bastards are still with us and they count on people being distracted and otherwise, eh, occupied to pay attention to who's calling the shots. Literally.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
32. For those new to the subject...The Abominable Dr. Ishii and Gen. Willoughby
Sun May 18, 2014, 01:46 PM
May 2014
The Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele

The Abominable Dr. Ishii

By CHRISTOPHER REED
Counterpunch Weekend Edition May 27-29, 2006

Editors' note: Under the overall codename Project Paperclip US intelligence agencies made similarly diligent efforts to acquire the research records of Nazi doctors working in the death camps. They also brought over several of the Nazi medical experimenters and set them to work in US military research centers such as Ft. Detrick. The Nazi research was quickly put into play in the field. In 1950, the CIA's Office of Security, headed at the time by Sheffield Edwards, opened a project called Bluebird whose object was to get an individual "to do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation." The first Bluebird operations were conducted in Japan in October 1950 and were reportedly witnessed by Richard Helms, who would later run the Agency. Twenty-five North Korean POWs were given alternating doses of depressants and stimulants. The POWs were shot up with barbitutes, putting them to sleep, then abruptly awoken with injections of amphetamines, put under hypnosis, then interrogated. The operation was, of course, in total contravention of international protocols. The Bluebird interrogations continued through the duration of the Korean War. This history is laid out in detail in our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, Verso, available from our office. AC/JSC.

Everyone has heard of Auschwitz, but what about Pingfan? This Japanese germ warfare headquarters and laboratory in Manchuria, northern China, did not hold as many victims, but atrocities committed there were physically worse than in the Nazi concentration camp, and lasted much longer.

Many people know of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi SS "Angel of Death" and a physician (though not chief medical officer) at Auschwitz from 1943-45. There, he deliberately infected prisoners with deadly diseases and conducted fatal surgeries, often without anesthetic. He escaped and lived in South America undiscovered until after his death at 68 in 1979 in Brazil.

But who has heard of Dr. Shiro Ishii? He was the chief of Japan's well financed, scientifically coordinated and government approved biological warfare program from 1932-45. Ishii rose to general and supervised deliberate infection of thousands of captives with deadly diseases. He also conducted grotesque surgeries, but the unique medical specialty of Ishii and his surgical team were dissections, without anesthetic, on an estimated 3,000 live, conscious humans. In 1959, Ishii, a wealthy man, died peacefully at home in Japan at the age of 67.

SNIP...

General Willoughby and officials of MacArthur's Supreme Command for the Allied Powers in Tokyo had succeeded in suppressing evidence from Ishii and colleagues, but separate inquiries were made by the International Prosecution Section (IPS). Its lawyers gathered evidence including detailed statements from defecting Japanese bio-scientists from Pingfan. The latter testified to human live vivisection, the dumping of lethal germs in Chinese water supplies and food stores, as well as aerial spraying. Yet all was silenced even though the information went to the top.

IPS documents stamped "to be read by the Commander-in-Chief U.S. forces" were sent to President Harry Truman in 1947. No word has ever emerged on what Truman thought or said about this evidence. It is one of many still unknown facts about the Japanese-American conspiracy to conceal the complete account of the Japanese bio-warfare horror.

At Fort Detrick, Maryland, the main U.S. installation for BW, records remain on file of the thousands of tissue slides, preserved organs (some labeled "American&quot removed from living bodies, with medical schedules and reports on perverse surgical procedures on screaming and writhing human specimens.

General Willoughby listed the five most important items providing "the greatest value in future development of the United States BW program." These included the Japanese scientists' "complete report" of "BW against man" that Willoughby described as "the only information available in world"; "field trials against Chinese" such as Powell described; using animals as deadly bacteria conveyors" ("U.S. has done little work in this field&quot ; and a "summary of the human experiments." The G-2 heard it all.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/reed05272006.html

Part of a great thread on DU2: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2523565&mesg_id=2523626

GEN WILLOUGHBY matters for those who care about JFK:



Gen. Charles Willoughby


The Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination

by Mae Brussell (from The Rebel, November 22, 1983)

1940-1945: The Nazi Connection to Dallas:General Reinhard Gehlen

SNIP…

"Sir" Charles Willoughby -- a Franco-German-American

He was a bull of a man who spoke with a German accent, wore a custom-tailored general's uniform and affected a monocle. A fellow officer in the U.S. army under his true name of Adolph Charles Weidenbach, born in Heidelberg, March 8, 1892. But by the time he became Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence for the war in the Pacific, he was Major General Charles A. Willoughby. Behind his back he was derisively tagged "Sir Charles."

For a man of such Teutonic traits it was odd that Willoughby preferred his fascism with a Spanish accent. But this was an accident of geography. While serving as a military attache in Ecuador, he had received a decoration from Mussolini's government -- the Order of Saints Maurizio and Lazzaro. After delivering an impassioned paean to Spanish dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco at a lunch in Madrid, he was toasted by the secretary general of the Falangist Party, "I am happy to know a fellow Falangist and reactionary.

MacArthur's pre-war headquarters were in the Philippines, whose commerce was dominated by resident Spaniards. The Daddy Warbucks of this crowd was Andres Soriano, who owned an early-day conglomerate of airlines, mines, breweries ("Of course!&quot and American distributorships. During the Spanish Civil War Soriano was one of Franco's principal money-bags. When the Rising Sun flag was raised over the Philippines Soriano fled to Washington to become finance minister of the government-in-exile. But there was such a fuss over his fascist reputation that he flew off to Australia to become a colonel on MacArthur’s staff.

Willoughby accompanied the Supreme Commander to Tokyo for the occupation of Japan. His preferences remained the same; when military police shook down his hotel looking for a fugitive, they found Willoughby at dinner with the stranded Italian fascist ambassador to Japan and members of his staff. He became a heavy-handed censor, suppressing unfavorable news to the States. He delighted in falsely labeling correspondents who defied him as "Communists," a tactic Senator McCarthy would adopt with enthusiasm. But the general's priority project was a dressed-up history of the Pacific War in which MacArthur would be the towering hero. Willoughby brought in Japanese military brass for a view from the enemy side, a move that may have had an ulterior motive. The possibility existed that Willoughby was down-playing Japanese war crimes so that the perpetrators could be protected for use against the Soviets later. This was happening in Germany where the top nazis were writing the history of Malmedy. The tight security in which Willoughby wrapped the project only adds to this impression. One woman had a passkey, the wife of Dr. Mitsutaro Araki, a former exchange lecturer in Germany, who was closely tied in with high nazis in Tokyo and the Tojo clique.

Willoughby harbored another secret that only came to light last year. During the war, the Japanese conducted germ warfare experiments with human beings as guinea pigs (at least 3,000 died, including an undetermined number of captured U.S. military). The Pentagon decided that the biological research might prove handy against the Russians, and the Japanese responsible for the experiments were granted immunity from prosecution in return for their laboratory records. On December 12, 1947 the Pentagon acknowledged the "wholehearted cooperation" of Willoughby in arranging the examination of the "human pathological material which had been transferred to Japan from the biological warfare installations."

As his final public gesture to Franco, Willoughby lobbied the U.S. Congress in August, 1952 to authorize $100 million for the anti-Communist dictator's needs. Then he settled down in the U.S. to do battle with the domestic enemy. As Sir Charles and his right-wing allies saw it, Marxism wasn't the real enemy, the Liberals were.

CONTINUED…

http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Nazi%20Connection%20to%20JFK%20Assass.html

Part of another great DU2 thread.

And how the NAZIs tie in to the assassination after the fact...

Cloak and Dagger had no place on the Warren Commission...

...yet, there he was. The Warren Commission's ties to NAZI Germany are facts curiously missing from American history and any corporate media mention of the assassination of President Kennedy.



Here's a fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission: Two of its members were directly responsible for the rise of post-war fascism. Allen Dulles, as a top official of the OSS and CIA, incorporated NAZI war criminals into the CIA from its founding. John McCloy, as High Commissioner for Germany, allowed Klaus Barbie and who-knows-who-else to escape justice. Of course, both men were also barons of Wall Street and Beltway Insiders. We all can see what that means today.
 

rug

(82,333 posts)
23. It also enabled the atom bomb.
Fri May 16, 2014, 06:29 PM
May 2014
The new IBM punched-card machines were devoted to calculations to simulate implosion, and Metropolis and Feynman organized a race between them and the hand-computing group. "We set up a room with girls in it. Each one had a Marchant. But one was the multiplier, and another was the adder, and this one cubed, and all she did was cube this number and send it to the next one," said Feynmann. For one day, the hand computers kept up: "The only difference was that the IBM machines didn't get tired and could work three shifts. But the girls got tired after a while."

http://www.mphpa.org/classic/HISTORY/H-06c18.htm

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
33. Thank you, rug! Outstanding link and history.
Tue May 20, 2014, 01:23 PM
May 2014

More on the history:



Atomic Weapons and the Dawn of the Computer Age

Trevor Eddolls
destinationZ.org

What if I told you we probably wouldn’t have computers if the Manhattan Project hadn’t created atomic bombs? According to a fascinating and detailed book by George Dyson, “Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe,” that’s in many ways the case. And most of what happened through the 1940s and ’50s hinged on John von Neumann and the people he was associated with.

Originally from Hungary, von Neumann and, it seems, many of the pre-eminent minds involved in the development of computing were Europeans escaping from the Nazis. Von Neumann published more than 150 papers. Interestingly, another Central European figure was responsible for collecting and publishing them together after von Neumann’s death—that was the notorious Robert Maxwell. Anyway, at the start of the war, von Neumann was a bit of an expert on explosions and how to model them. The math involved is complicated and so machines able to quickly calculate the answers were needed—hence the development of computers.

Perhaps the most important location in the history of computing is the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) near Princeton. As well as von Neumann, other famous people working at the IAS included Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Noam Chomsky—many of whom worked on creating the very early computers. They had to come up with a design that worked and used readily available components, but the task proved harder than you might expect. The electricity supply could be anything but uniform, and components could fail midway through running a program. And they thought using paper tape was a great leap forward from physical plug boards!

And if you had a machine that could calculate explosion wave fronts, you could also use it to model the weather (meteorology), biological evolution and stellar evolution. And that’s what people tried to do on these very early machines.

SNIP...

But in the United States, it seems that many of the people who had successfully developed the early working computer at the IAS went on to work for IBM. And the rest, as they say, is history.

CONTINUED...

http://www.destinationz.org/Community/Evangelizing-Mainframe/June-2012/Atomic-Weapons-and-the-Dawn-of-the-Computer-Age.aspx



The death of FDR affected the nation's future in many ways, including the centralization of command and control -- as in secrecy and intelligence -- of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Most un-democratic, their control gives near-limitless political power to those holding their reins.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
34. IBM enabled the Holocaust. Imagine what NSA could do today?
Wed May 21, 2014, 08:03 AM
May 2014

Last edited Thu Mar 24, 2016, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)

The late Sen. Frank Church, (D-Idaho) did imagine. He was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American. And he warned us, so NSA spied on him.

The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.


And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1


From GWU's National Security Archives:



"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations


National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/



I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-PA) also got the treatment from NSA?

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT

Cleita

(75,480 posts)
31. Many people don't know this, but then many really don't know as
Sun May 18, 2014, 12:59 PM
May 2014

much about Nazi Germany as they should, even people like myself who were alive then.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
36. Thanks to supercomputers and modern programming, we're a click away from 'Turnkey Tyranny.'
Wed May 21, 2014, 08:14 AM
May 2014

From less than a year back, an astute analysis of why the Secret Government works so damn hard to keep track of the mob, what this democracy once called the People:



Turnkey Tyranny: Surveillance and the Terror State

Connecting Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA surveillance with inequality, climate change and the "war on terror," artist Trevor Paglen argues that future administrations will respond to environmental and economic crises with the authoritarian tools of a rising "Terror State."

By Trevor Paglen New York, NY, USA
June 25, 2013

By exposing NSA programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant, Edward Snowden has revealed that we are not moving toward a surveillance state: we live in the heart of one. The 30-year-old whistleblower told The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald that the NSA’s data collection created the possibility of a “turnkey tyranny,” whereby a malevolent future government could create an authoritarian state with the flick of a switch. The truth is actually worse. Within the context of current economic, political and environmental trends, the existence of a surveillance state doesn’t just create a theoretical possibility of tyranny with the turn of a key—it virtually guarantees it.

For more than a decade, we’ve seen the rise of what we might call a “Terror State,” of which the NSA’s surveillance capabilities represent just one part. Its rise occurs at a historical moment when state agencies and programs designed to enable social mobility, provide economic security and enhance civic life have been targeted for significant cuts. The last three decades, in fact, have seen serious and consistent attacks on social security, food assistance programs, unemployment benefits and education and health programs. As the social safety net has shrunk, the prison system has grown. The United States now imprisons its own citizens at a higher rate than any other country in the world.

While civic parts of the state have been in retreat, institutions of the Terror State have grown dramatically. In the name of an amorphous and never-ending “war on terror,” the Department of Homeland Security was created, while institutions such as the CIA, FBI and NSA, and darker parts of the military like the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) have expanded considerably in size and political influence. The world has become a battlefield—a stage for extralegal renditions, indefinite detentions without trial, drone assassination programs and cyberwarfare. We have entered an era of secret laws, classified interpretations of laws and the retroactive “legalization” of classified programs that were clearly illegal when they began. Funding for the secret parts of the state comes from a “black budget” hidden from Congress—not to mention the people—that now tops $100 billion annually. Finally, to ensure that only government-approved “leaks” appear in the media, the Terror State has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, leakers and journalists. All of these state programs and capacities would have been considered aberrant only a short time ago. Now, they are the norm.

Terrorism works by instilling so much fear in a society that the society begins to collapse on itself.
Politicians claim that the Terror State is necessary to defend democratic institutions from the threat of terrorism. But there is a deep irony to this rhetoric. Terrorism does not pose, has never posed and never will pose an existential threat to the United States. Terrorists will never have the capacity to “take away our freedom.” Terrorist outfits have no armies with which to invade, and no means to impose martial law. They do not have their hands on supra-national power levers like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They cannot force nations into brutal austerity programs and other forms of economic subjugation. But while terrorism cannot pose an existential threat to the United States, the institutions of a Terror State absolutely can. Indeed, their continued expansion poses a serious threat to principles of democracy and equality.

SNIP...

A few statistics are telling: between 1992 and 2007, the income of the 400 wealthiest people in the United States rose by 392 percent. Their tax rate fell by 37 percent. Since 1979, productivity has risen by more than 80 percent, but the median worker’s wage has only gone up by 10 percent. This is not an accident. The evisceration of the American middle and working class has everything to do with an all-out assault on unions; the rewriting of the laws governing bankruptcy, student loans, credit card debt, predatory lending and financial trading; and the transfer of public wealth to private hands through deregulation, privatization and reduced taxes on the wealthy. The Great Divergence is, to put it bluntly, the effect of a class war waged by the rich against the rest of society, and there are no signs of it letting up.

CONTINUED...

http://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/25/surveillance-and-the-construction-of-a-terror-state/




History, like all truth, can be monstrous. One big reason to tell it is to remember it so as to keep it from repeating, especially when the rich and powerful feel threatened by the rabble on the other side of the moat.

Thank you for standing up to the fascists, Cleita. Then and now.

Cleita

(75,480 posts)
38. It's stunning the extent we have regressed into what is a cyber
Wed May 21, 2014, 09:59 AM
May 2014

Last edited Wed May 21, 2014, 12:04 PM - Edit history (1)

police state. Thank you for what you do to enlighten everyone on this.

 

cherokeeprogressive

(24,853 posts)
35. Just like the transatlantic slave trade was enabled by the dude who invented the BOAT.
Wed May 21, 2014, 08:14 AM
May 2014

And MURDER was enabled by the guy who invented the TOOL (watch the Dawn of Man part of Kubrick's 2001).

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
37. Watson wasn't just Hitler's dining companion.
Wed May 21, 2014, 08:29 AM
May 2014

He made sure the punchcards got delivered -- even after 1939 and reports came out of Poland that 3,000,000 Jews were being "relocated."



IBM's Role in the Holocaust -- What the New Documents Reveal

Edwin Black
Huffington Post, Feb. 27, 2012

EXCERPT...

In 1937, with war looming and the world shocked at the increasingly merciless Nazi persecution of the Jews, Hitler bestowed upon Watson a special award -- created specifically for the occasion -- to honor extraordinary service by a foreigner to the Third Reich. The medal, the Order of the German Eagle with Star, bedecked with swastikas, was to be worn on a sash over the heart. Watson returned the medal years later in June 1940 as a reaction to public outrage about the medal during the bombing of Paris. The return of this medal has been used by IBM apologists to show Watson had second thoughts about his alliance with the Reich. But a newly released copy of a subsequent letter dated June 10, 1941, drafted by IBM's New York office, confirms that IBM headquarters personally directed the activities of its Dutch subsidiary set up in 1940 to identify and liquidate the Jews of Holland. Hence, while IBM engaged in the public relations maneuver of returning the medal, the company was actually quietly expanding its role in Hitler's Holocaust. Similar subsidiaries, sometimes named as a variant of "Watson Business Machines," were set up in Poland, Vichy France, and elsewhere on the Continent in cadence with the Nazi takeover of Europe.

Particularly powerful are the newly-released copies of the IBM concentration camp codes. IBM maintained a customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in virtually every concentration camp to sort or process punch cards and track prisoners. The codes show IBM's numerical designation for various camps. Auschwitz was 001, Buchenwald was 002; Dachau was 003, and so on. Various prisoner types were reduced to IBM numbers, with 3 signifying homosexual, 9 for anti-social, and 12 for Gypsy. The IBM number 8 designated a Jew. Inmate death was also reduced to an IBM digit: 3 represented death by natural causes, 4 by execution, 5 by suicide, and code 6 designated "special treatment" in gas chambers. IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps.

Newly-released photographs show the Hollerith Bunker at Dachau. It housed at least two dozen machines, mainly controlled by the SS. The foreboding concrete Hollerith blockhouse, constructed of reinforced concrete and steel, was designed to withstand the most intense Allied aerial bombardment. Those familiar with Nazi bomb-proof shelters will recognize the advanced square-cornered pillbox design reserved for the Reich's most precious buildings and operations. IBM equipment was among the Reich's most important weapons, not only in its war against the Jews, but in its general military campaigns and control of railway traffic. Watson personally approved expenditures to add bomb shelters to DEHOMAG installations because the cost was born by the company. Such costs cut into IBM's profit margin. Watson's approval was required because he received a one-percent commission on all Nazi business profits.

Two telling U.S. government memos, now published, are remarkable for their telling irony. The first is a State Department memo, dated December 3, 1941, just four days before the attack on Pearl Harbor and as the Nazis were being openly accused of genocide in Europe. On that day in 1941, IBM's top attorney, Harrison Chauncey, visited the State Department to express qualms about the company's extensive involvement with Hitler. The State Department memo recorded that Chauncey feared "that his company may some day be blamed for cooperating with the Germans."

The second is a Justice Department memo generated during a federal investigation of IBM for trading with the enemy. Economic Warfare Section chief investigator Howard J. Carter prepared the memo for his supervisors describing the company's collusion with the Hitler regime. Carter wrote: "What Hitler has done to us through his economic warfare, one of our own American corporations has also done ... Hence IBM is in a class with the Nazis." He ended his memo: "The entire world citizenry is hampered by an international monster."

At a time when the Watson name and the IBM image is being laundered by whiz computers that can answer questions on TV game shows, it is important to remember that Thomas Watson and his corporate behemoth were guilty of genocide. The Treaty on Genocide, Article 2, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." In Article 3, the treaty states that among the "acts [that] shall be punishable," are the ones in subsection (e), that is "complicity in genocide." As for who shall be punished, the Treaty specifies the perpetrators in Article 4: "Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals."

International Business Machines, and its president Thomas J. Watson, committed genocide by any standard. It was never about the antisemitism. It was never about the National Socialism. It was always about the money. Business was their middle name.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edwin-black/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691.html



Edwin Black republished his book with expanded documentation. The guy has no agenda, other than telling the truth. His corporate opponents, FWIW, did all they could to shout him down.
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