Beyond dispute

Christopher Simpson

Washington Post Book World

Black clearly demonstrates that Nazi Germany employed IBM Hollerith punch-card machines to perform critical tasks in carrying out the Holocaust and the German war effort. He goes on to document that IBM managed to profit from Hitler's state throughout its existence. Black establishes beyond dispute that IBM Hollerith machines significantly advanced Nazi efforts to exterminate Jewry. IBM and the Holocaust is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust.

Copiously documented case

Richard Bernstein

The New York Times

Edwin Black makes a copiously documented case for the utter amorality of the profit motive and its indifference to consequences … IBM, led by its chairman, Thomas J. Watson, had global control of a technology that was enormously helpful, indeed indispensable, to the Nazi machinery of war and annihilation.

A shocking conclusion

Simon Wiesenthal

Director, JDC, Vienna, Austria

Edwin Black has put together an impressive array of facts which result in a shocking conclusion never realized before: IBM collaborated with the Third Reich. IBM and the Holocaust should be read by everyone interested in the “hidden history” of the Second World War.

Explosive; stunning

Michael Hirsh

Newsweek

An explosive book … Backed by exhaustive research, Black’s case is simple and stunning: that IBM facilitated the identification and roundup of millions of Jews during the 12 years of the Third Reich … Black’s evidence may be the most damning to appear yet against a purported corporate accomplice.

Groundbreaking

Franciszek Piper

Historian, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Edwin Black’s groundbreaking book IBM and the Holocaust made a great impression on me. It documents, for the first time, that an American company, IBM, bears a good deal of the moral responsibility for the preparation of the persecution of the Nazi victims. IBM and the Holocaust confirms the belief that the Holocaust was not only a cruel, unprecedented crime, but also an enormous bureaucratic undertaking.

Shocking

Jack Beatty

The Atlantic

Thomas Watson chose to tabulate the Nazi census, to accept Hitler’s medal, and to fight for control of Dehomag. And he made other equally indefensible choices in his years of doing a profitable business counting Jews for Hitler—choices that are described in IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black. This is a shocking book. With the help of more than a hundred researchers working in archives in the US, Britain, Germany, France, and Israel, Edwin Black has documented a sordid relationship between this great American company and the Third Reich, one that extended into the war years.

Exhaustive research; richly textured

Sam Jaffe

Businessweek

With exhaustive research, Black makes the case that IBM and Watson conspired with Nazi Germany to help automate the genocide of Europe’s Jews … Black’s book is so enlightening [because] it paints a richly textured picture of how a man [Watson], and an entire company, can ignore all sense of morality while not once transgressing the lines of business ethics. If nothing else, this book should be required reading for every first-year MBA student.

Meticulous documentation, undeniable fact

Robert Urekew

Harvard International Review

After years of exhaustive research, [Black] concludes that the IBM corporation enabled the Nazi regime to be as brutally efficient as it was in identifying and sending Jews to extermination camps, confiscating their assets, and automating the German war machine … Black's meticulous documentation reveals an undeniable fact: after the outbreak of the World War II, the IBM corporation knew the whereabouts of each of its European-leased machines, and what revenues it could expect from them. Read the full review.

Throws IBM’s wartime ethics into serious doubt

Jessica Reaves

Time Magazine

IBM and the Holocaust raises startling questions about the technology giant’s involvement with Nazi government officials —and throws the company's wartime ethics into serious doubt.

Watson, a master of subterfuge

Gordon A. Craig

New York Review of Books

Black's book is most interesting when he is dealing with Watson's stubborn, and unsuccessful determination to continue in control of IBM's German operation without appearing to be doing so. He was able to cut off direct relations between IBM in the US and the Germans while continuing to deal with them indirectly. He was a master of subterfuge and made a fine art of being in a position to deny collaboration with the Nazis while operating through subsidiaries who were responsive to his every wish [...] and he never forbade them to supply IBM machine that were used in sending people to camps, which they did.

A wealth of unknown details

Saul Friedlander

Los Angeles Times

Black's study contains a wealth of unknown or little-known details. The author convincingly shows the relentless efforts made by IBM to maximize profit by selling its machines and its punch cards to a country whose criminal record would soon be widely recognized. Indeed, Black demonstrates with great precision that the godlike owner of the corporation, Thomas Watson, was impervious to the moral dimension of his dealings with Hitler's Germany and for years even had a soft spot for the Nazi regime. He didn't desist even when it became clear that IBM's tabulation system was helping the regime to register its victims.

Disturbing

Ron Grossman

Chicago Tribune

Black has tracked down document after document witnessing that Holleriths inventoried prisoners for death at Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps. IBM and the Holocaust is a disturbing book -- all the more so because its author doesn't prescribe what should be done about sins committed more than half a century ago. It is left to readers to decide.

Prodigious

Jack Fischel

Philadelphia Inquirer

Black was moved to write this important book to answer questions that have eluded historians of the Nazi genocide. How are we to account for the methodical manner in which the Nazis implemented the Holocaust? Black's account of IBM's complicity in the "Final Solution" provides a perspective departs from most other accounts of the Holocaust. Whereas much of the scholarship on the Holocaust focuses on anti-Semitism ... Black argues the efficient manner in which Hitler's Germany was able to bring about the Holocaust was due to technical support provided by IBM. This prodigious research helps us understand a previously ignored factor in comprehending the Holocaust, the profit motive.

Shocking

Robert Urekew

Midstream

Black’s book is shocking. Its contents go against the grain of all that is dear to naive images of corporate America…. This book will be a case study in corporate ethics for years to come.

Ambitious; important

John Friedman

The Nation

IBM and the Holocaust is an ambitious book … an important contribution to Holocaust studies

Demonstrates convincingly

Terry W. Hartle

Christian Science Monitor

The book adds much to our knowledge of the Holocaust and World War II. Black convincingly demonstrates the extent to which it [IBM technology], was central to the operation of the Third Reich.

Excruciatingly documented

Karen Sandstrom

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Black makes a case that shames the IBM of the mid-20th century…. There will be no question … in the minds of readers that IBM officials had the ability to understand the task their machines were performing. The book succeeds as a piece of excruciatingly documented journalism.

Impossible to refute

John Mark Eberhart

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Black’s argument that IBM made millions from its association with the Nazis seems almost impossible to refute.

A chilling lesson

Richard Pachter

Miami Herald

Black’s book … is an ugly story, hidden for years, told by a master craftsman in a compelling way. More than just another Holocaust tale … it’s a chilling lesson.

Black has made his case

Louisville Courier-Journal

More than 15 million people have visited the Holocaust Museum and seen the IBM machine there. Surely some have raised the question: How could this prestigious corporation possibly be linked to such a heinous stain on human history? With empirical evidence, Edwin Black has supplied the answer. IBM and the Holocaust makes an empirical statement. Edwin Black has made his case.

Damning chronicle of IBM’s collusion with the Nazis

Charles Winecoff

Entertainment Weekly

This damning chronicle of IBM’s collusion with the Nazis exposes, in horrific detail, the corporation’s opportunistic ride on Hitler’s tail.

A corporate nightmare

Sunday Times

This is the stuff of corporate nightmare. IBM, one of the world’s richest companies, is about to be confronted with evidence of a truly shameful history. Edwin Black reveals Big Blue’s vital role in the Holocaust.

A terrible warning from this brilliantly excavated past

Peter Preston

The Guardian

Black … shows, in compelling detail, that IBM, ‘the solutions company’, was also the company of the Final Solution. … It is a distinctive contribution to the history of the time. It wholly justifies Black’s years of toil … a terrible warning from this brilliantly excavated past.

Meticulous

Christian Habbe

Der Spiegel

The computer group IBM is haunted by its past. Edwin Black’s book now reveals the company’s involvement in the Holocaust…. Previously the Nazi past of ‘Big Blue’” was hardly ever a topic. … But now IBM is in the dock. Black’s meticulous research documents just how precisely IBM managers were kept informed about the whereabouts of their machines.

Strips the veneer

Marilyn Henry

Jerusalem Post

Black’s … book is the first to give the general public a detailed account of how an American corporation profited from intimate ties with the Nazis. It strips the veneer from the cherished myth of the purity and patriotism of American business.

Frighteningly relevant

Douglas Perry

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Black … documents IBM’s sins with chilling discipline. … IBM and the Holocaust lays out in numbing detail the terrible deeds of bureaucrats and business leaders. … In the end, though, this book has a subtler story to tell, one frighteningly relevant to our lives today. IBM and the Holocaust isn’t about evil men at a particularly bloody point in recent history so much as it’s about the dawn of the modern information age.

Tenacious, original

Anthony Sebok

CNN

Black’s great contribution is that he has tenaciously collected a lot of information and combined it in an original way. Few others have thought to place this information in the same context, to see what inferences can be drawn. Black’s history makes two chilling observations. The first is that the Holocaust was possible because the Nazis had access not only to guns and gas but also to cutting-edge census technology. The second is that the Nazis had access to this technology because IBM, in its paranoid zeal, worked very hard to maintain its market dominance of the global market in data processing.

Must be read

Abraham H. Foxman

National Director, Anti-Defamation League

IBM and the Holocaust is a story that must be read if one is to understand how Hitler and the Nazis were able to implement their Final Solution to exterminate European Jewry…. Once again, Edwin Black has hit the mark

Undeniable

Malcolm Hoenlein

Executive Vice Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

Leaves no room for deniability.

Meticulous research

Jack Smith

Mic Magazine

[Black’s] meticulous research has uncovered tens of thousands of documents, culled together from across Europe, that carefully show how IBM didn't just provide technology to Hitler's Germany — it helped implement and maintain it for whatever purposes the Nazis required.

Haunts me 20 years later

Goodreads

I read this book when it was published and it haunts me 20 years later. It is very relevant to our lives today!

A standalone chronicle of complicity

ExplainingHistory

The story of IBM and Dehomag in the Holocaust is a standalone chronicle of complicity and a chapter in the larger narrative of how the modern age’s pursuit of efficiency and information can be turned against our most basic humanity. 

Murderous use

American Heritage Magazine

Black details the murderous use to which [IBM] Dehomag’s punch-card machines were put during the war.

A superb job of weaving this tale

Storygraph

This is a fascinating book on so many levels. It has long been known that IBM and many other American companies did business with the NAZIS. But I had no idea they were so instrumental in providing the technology needed to [efficiently] carry out the Holocaust. Edwin Black does a superb job of weaving this tale.

Punches you right in the guts

Terrence Eden's Shkspr

This is a hard book to read. It is beautifully written, meticulously sourced and footnoted, follows a compelling narrative, and — every few pages — punches you right in the guts.

Real shock

Bookreporter

The real shock from this book and the real achievement of Black's research is the revelation that a powerful American corporation aided the Nazi cause and profited from it.

Compelling

Richland Library

Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit. Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews — how did Hitler get the names?

Meticulously researched

Cezar M. Ornatowski

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Edwin Black begins his meticulously researched account of IBM's involvement in the rise of Nazi terror in the Nazi war machine, in the genocide and enslavement of millions, and even an eventual allied victory. The account as not just a fascinating story of global corporate politics and corporate involvement in one of history's greatest crimes, but also primarily as a story about technology and its relationships to knowledge power politics global finance and ethics/ For this reason, uncomfortable as it may be to read, IBM in the Holocaust is required reading.

IBM Gets An Ugly History Lesson

Forbes

Like any efficiency-driven organization, the Nazis were big on technology. It wasn't just to order and track office supplies —they had to keep track of all the Jews in concentration camps. And to do that, they used IBM equipment.
 

Fantastic

Hey's Reviews

IBM and the Holocaust is fantastic stuff. You will learn a lot about how the world worked back then … but also how things are still happening.

Revealing; completes our knowledge

Leon Krzemieniecki PhD

Wartime Hollerith worker

In the years between the two World Wars, processing of encoded digital data became an indispensable component of managing the economy. Hitler's ideology included utilization of these capabilities in the politics of genocide. Edwin Black's revealing studies complete our knowledge of the efficient methods of selecting populations, and planning translocations, ghettos, slave labor and extermination camps. In the years 1943–1944, the years of intensification of the Holocaust in the General Government, maneuvering huge data was impossible. Special Services took over total control of the crime and left no paper trail of their activities, such as the constant movement of the mass transports. Nor was there was evidence of those transports in reports or analyses. Eyewitness Leon Krzemieniecki operated sorters and a tabulator at the Hollerith Department of Polish Railways in Kraków.

Shows the whole picture

Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz

Historian of the German occupation

Edwin Black's book on IBM is an important contribution to the history of Hitler's Europe. It shows how Hitler's occupation worked in a very important sphere of the system of concentration camps. Utilization of the Hollerith machine made management of the concentration camps easier and, indirectly, made extermination easier. The central statistical system, made possible by the Hollerith machine, was one of the elements of the SS administration's dreary plan to create a unified organizational and statistical system in all of Europe. Black's book, rich with documentary evidence, shows the whole picture, and is an important contribution to the knowledge of that picture. Eyewitness Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz, formerly Prisoner #36090, worked for some time completing forms in the Stutthof Concentration Camp’s Hollerith Department.