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IBM helped Hitler -- a lot.

Bob001

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This is likely old news to many, but I just read it recently. Before and during WWII, IBM provided the materials and equipment that helped the Nazis identify, round up and murder European Jews.
This book will be profoundly uncomfortable to read. It was profoundly uncomfortable to write. It tells the story of IBM's conscious involvement—directly and through its subsidiaries—in the Holocaust, as well as its involvement in the Nazi war machine that murdered millions of others throughout Europe.
Click to expand...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/ibmholocaust.htm?noredirect=on
https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation-Expanded-ebook/dp/B00AGIDA8A
 
Bob001 said:
This is likely old news to many, but I just read it recently. Before and during WWII, IBM provided the materials and equipment that helped the Nazis identify, round up and murder European Jews.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/ibmholocaust.htm?noredirect=on
https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation-Expanded-ebook/dp/B00AGIDA8A
Click to expand...


I haven't read it but it seems a bit fanciful. From what I've been able to dig up online Black seems to confuse work camps and extermination camps so that's already a bad sign. Here's a review (written by a history grad) and one of the links.



http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133d/essays/Black2001MNeal083.htm

https://www.researchgate.net/public...nce_Fiction_Edwin_Black_IBM_and_the_Holocaust


Everything else online seems to be written by Black himself with a generous helping of bombast. You might want to take a gander at the Holocaust Denial thread and checkout some of the links. The Nazi's final solution strategy and implementation was anything but linear and orderly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#Legal_actions
 
I did snort a bit at the subtitle. IBM certainly no longer is America's most powerful corporation, and it wasn't in the 1930s and 1940s either. They became a very powerful corporation well after the war was over.
 
I don't imagine that IBM's role here is a lot worse than some other corporations. It's not surprising that an international business did international business, and while in retrospect one can say they were in the wrong for not being more selective, and for not cutting off the German subsidiary from cooperation, it's hard to say how much they could have done. Still, it's not to their credit and I think it's a poor choice on their part to pretend, as they seem to be doing, that they had no agency at all. It may require hindsight to appreciate what they did wrong and what they could have done, but that doesn't mean it did not happen.

If you lift enough rocks you'll find a lot of grubs. IBM Hollerith machines with no foreign ownership were also used in the sorting and detention of Japanese Americans by the US government. The machines were good at what they did, and what they did was not always praiseworthy.

The American company ITT owned a large part of Focke-Wulff, the aircraft manufacturer. After the war they got many millions of dollars in reparations from the US government for bombing damage to the Focke-Wulff plants. That's one of the more visible and notorious examples, but many US and Allied companies cooperated with German ones, or had subsidiaries that remained connected. At times in the war ITT machinery was being used by one side to combat ITT machinery on the other. Look into the complex web of banks and who did what when, and a lot of nasty stuff bubbles up.

I seem to recall that back long ago much of this history was touched on by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, (with particular focus on I.G. Farben) and his rather cynical conclusion was that most of the purpose of war is just to rearrange resources.
 
Bob001 said:
Before and during WWII, IBM provided the materials and equipment that helped the Nazis identify, round up and murder European Jews.
Click to expand...
And? Until Dec 7 1941 Hitler was the good guy.

Pro business, anti-communist, draining the swamp (of Jews), providing jobs for real Germans, rebuilding the economy, Making Europe Great Again.

Austria rightly belonged to Germany, and those French surrender monkeys and others deserved what they got. But Hitler liked the English and never wanted to invade Great Britain. If only they had worked with him instead of against him...

The real threat was Communisim. Not Stalin or the Russians - but the ideology, which is pure evil. Any American patriot could see that helping Hitler was the only way to stem the tide of Communism, and if they profited from it even better!

Sadly, Japan made a tactical error and forced the United States into declaring war on Germany. The end result was that Russia won and Communism spread its tentacles over the planet, threatening our freedoms even today.

Hitler never wanted to gas the Jews, he just wanted tho break the stranglehold that rich Jews had on the economy. But with Germany blockaded and the camps taking up valuable resources, he was left with no choice (other than letting them starve to death). And the situation wasn't his fault. If the US and Britain had entered the war on Germany's side, together they could have taken on Russia and stamped out Communism for good.

Not to say that everything Hitler did was good (we all make mistakes) but when viewed in context what he did to the Jews was not nearly as bad as the death toll from Communism.
According to R. J. Rummel's book Death by Government (1994), about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, were killed by Communist democide from 1900 to 1987.
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If only the United States and Great Britain had followed the lead of companies like IBM, all of those deaths could have been avoided (including the Jews). And that's not all. The inheritors of Communism in the US today - liberals - are still killing people!

So it's perfectly understandable that IBM would provide materials and equipment to help the Nazis deal with the Jewish problem efficiently. If it hadn't been for blind opposition from those who couldn't see the big picture, the World would be a much different place today - free of the scourge of Communism, much more affluent with the fusion of Capitalism and State, and even the Jews would have been better off (imagine Israel without the Palestinian problem). The people really responsible for the Holocaust weren't those who supported Hitler, but those who opposed him.
 
Bob001 said:
This is likely old news to many, but I just read it recently. Before and during WWII, IBM provided the materials and equipment that helped the Nazis identify, round up and murder European Jews.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/ibmholocaust.htm?noredirect=on
https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation-Expanded-ebook/dp/B00AGIDA8A
Click to expand...

A correction is needed ...

While it is true that IBM did sell some of its early computers and such to the Nazi government before the USA got involved with World War II

However, there were no such sales after the USA got involved in World War II.
 
And a lot of American Oil Companies were selling oil to Japan up until a few months before Pearl Harbor.........

It's a blot on IBM's record to a degree, but the idea they sold the tech to Germany knowing how it would be used is a bit much.

And it's not a like a lot of American Companies were not doing business with Nazi Germany pre 1939.
 
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I'm reminded of the E.E. Cummings poem....

[Plato told]

—e.e. Cummings

plato told

him:he couldn't
believe it(jesus

told him;he
wouldn't believe
it)lao

tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him
Click to expand...
 
Roger Ramjets said:
And? Until Dec 7 1941 Hitler was the good guy.

Pro business, anti-communist, draining the swamp (of Jews), providing jobs for real Germans, rebuilding the economy, Making Europe Great Again.

Austria rightly belonged to Germany, and those French surrender monkeys and others deserved what they got. But Hitler liked the English and never wanted to invade Great Britain. If only they had worked with him instead of against him...

The real threat was Communisim. Not Stalin or the Russians - but the ideology, which is pure evil. Any American patriot could see that helping Hitler was the only way to stem the tide of Communism, and if they profited from it even better!

Sadly, Japan made a tactical error and forced the United States into declaring war on Germany. The end result was that Russia won and Communism spread its tentacles over the planet, threatening our freedoms even today.

Hitler never wanted to gas the Jews, he just wanted tho break the stranglehold that rich Jews had on the economy. But with Germany blockaded and the camps taking up valuable resources, he was left with no choice (other than letting them starve to death). And the situation wasn't his fault. If the US and Britain had entered the war on Germany's side, together they could have taken on Russia and stamped out Communism for good.

Not to say that everything Hitler did was good (we all make mistakes) but when viewed in context what he did to the Jews was not nearly as bad as the death toll from Communism.
If only the United States and Great Britain had followed the lead of companies like IBM, all of those deaths could have been avoided (including the Jews). And that's not all. The inheritors of Communism in the US today - liberals - are still killing people!

So it's perfectly understandable that IBM would provide materials and equipment to help the Nazis deal with the Jewish problem efficiently. If it hadn't been for blind opposition from those who couldn't see the big picture, the World would be a much different place today - free of the scourge of Communism, much more affluent with the fusion of Capitalism and State, and even the Jews would have been better off (imagine Israel without the Palestinian problem). The people really responsible for the Holocaust weren't those who supported Hitler, but those who opposed him.
Click to expand...

Actually, Hitler declared war on the USA in support of Japan.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
And? Until Dec 7 1941 Hitler was the good guy.

Pro business, anti-communist, draining the swamp (of Jews), providing jobs for real Germans, rebuilding the economy, Making Europe Great Again.

Austria rightly belonged to Germany, and those French surrender monkeys and others deserved what they got. But Hitler liked the English and never wanted to invade Great Britain. If only they had worked with him instead of against him...

The real threat was Communisim. Not Stalin or the Russians - but the ideology, which is pure evil. Any American patriot could see that helping Hitler was the only way to stem the tide of Communism, and if they profited from it even better!

Sadly, Japan made a tactical error and forced the United States into declaring war on Germany. The end result was that Russia won and Communism spread its tentacles over the planet, threatening our freedoms even today.

Hitler never wanted to gas the Jews, he just wanted tho break the stranglehold that rich Jews had on the economy. But with Germany blockaded and the camps taking up valuable resources, he was left with no choice (other than letting them starve to death). And the situation wasn't his fault. If the US and Britain had entered the war on Germany's side, together they could have taken on Russia and stamped out Communism for good.

Not to say that everything Hitler did was good (we all make mistakes) but when viewed in context what he did to the Jews was not nearly as bad as the death toll from Communism.
If only the United States and Great Britain had followed the lead of companies like IBM, all of those deaths could have been avoided (including the Jews). And that's not all. The inheritors of Communism in the US today - liberals - are still killing people!

So it's perfectly understandable that IBM would provide materials and equipment to help the Nazis deal with the Jewish problem efficiently. If it hadn't been for blind opposition from those who couldn't see the big picture, the World would be a much different place today - free of the scourge of Communism, much more affluent with the fusion of Capitalism and State, and even the Jews would have been better off (imagine Israel without the Palestinian problem). The people really responsible for the Holocaust weren't those who supported Hitler, but those who opposed him.
Click to expand...

This is a Poe yes?
 
Border Reiver said:
Based on his other work, I'm leaning towards this being a Poe (and if it is, the fact that several of us are wondering about it makes it a good one).
Click to expand...



Yeah, it's a Poe, but it's based on the current claims of certain alt-right types, as well as historical attitudes of some people. There really were those who felt the Nazis were, if not "good guys", at least preferable to the Communists.

Heck, even after the war was over, there were some people on our side who were advocating re-arming the Germans and turning them loose on the Soviets.
 
Horatius said:
Yeah, it's a Poe, but it's based on the current claims of certain alt-right types, as well as historical attitudes of some people. There really were those who felt the Nazis were, if not "good guys", at least preferable to the Communists.

Heck, even after the war was over, there were some people on our side who were advocating re-arming the Germans and turning them loose on the Soviets.
Click to expand...

Pat Buchanan is the guy who really mainstreamed the "Nazis were really the good guys" crap.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
And? Until Dec 7 1941 Hitler was the good guy.

Pro business, anti-communist, draining the swamp (of Jews), providing jobs for real Germans, rebuilding the economy, Making Europe Great Again.

Austria rightly belonged to Germany, and those French surrender monkeys and others deserved what they got. But Hitler liked the English and never wanted to invade Great Britain. If only they had worked with him instead of against him...

The real threat was Communisim. Not Stalin or the Russians - but the ideology, which is pure evil. Any American patriot could see that helping Hitler was the only way to stem the tide of Communism, and if they profited from it even better!

Sadly, Japan made a tactical error and forced the United States into declaring war on Germany. The end result was that Russia won and Communism spread its tentacles over the planet, threatening our freedoms even today.

Hitler never wanted to gas the Jews, he just wanted tho break the stranglehold that rich Jews had on the economy. But with Germany blockaded and the camps taking up valuable resources, he was left with no choice (other than letting them starve to death). And the situation wasn't his fault. If the US and Britain had entered the war on Germany's side, together they could have taken on Russia and stamped out Communism for good.

Not to say that everything Hitler did was good (we all make mistakes) but when viewed in context what he did to the Jews was not nearly as bad as the death toll from Communism.
If only the United States and Great Britain had followed the lead of companies like IBM, all of those deaths could have been avoided (including the Jews). And that's not all. The inheritors of Communism in the US today - liberals - are still killing people!

So it's perfectly understandable that IBM would provide materials and equipment to help the Nazis deal with the Jewish problem efficiently. If it hadn't been for blind opposition from those who couldn't see the big picture, the World would be a much different place today - free of the scourge of Communism, much more affluent with the fusion of Capitalism and State, and even the Jews would have been better off (imagine Israel without the Palestinian problem). The people really responsible for the Holocaust weren't those who supported Hitler, but those who opposed him.
Click to expand...

Wow!

What a total load of Nazi apologist nonsense.
 
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