Rating: 
Summary: The Banality of Evil Given a New Face
Review: For a scholar of Nazi Germany, there is an unending series disquieting relizations when yet another horrifying fact becomes crystal clear. I had thought that there was little that could truely shock me anymore, after seeing hours of footage from the camps, or walking through railroad cars which still reak of death more than a half century later.Nothing can compare however, to what this book forces one to see. No one is claiming, not even the author, that the holocaust would not have happened without the efforts of IBM's German branches, but the facts remain. The transport and tracking of millions of people across Europe is normally attributed to tutonic efficiency. The tatooing of numbers is similarly attributed to simple dehumanization. It is Black who paints a picture of the wonderously nerdish enthusastic joy for solving a problem which I have always associated with Big Blue as the true face of evil. The bureaucray of the Final Solution ran on IBM punch cards. Just as a tatooed number is seen as a universal symbol of the concentration camps, it is the punch card that can and should be viewed with new eyes, not only as harbinger of a new computer age, but convayer of death.
Rating: 
Summary: A one-sided account
Review: "It was an irony of the war that IBM equipment was used to encode and decode for both sides of the conflict" (p. 344). Too bad there wasn't more info like that that actually looked at IBMs role in winning the war to counterbalance this decidedly one-sided account. Every step that IBM made during the war years is portrayed as evil and just doesn't ring true to me. If you're going to give IBM this sort of treatment, you're going to have to go after hundreds if not thousands of other companies who backed the Hitler regime. After I finished reading this book I wasn't convinced that IBM was all that different than any other corporation that did business with Germany at that time and am still scratching my head trying to figure out why they were singled out. Bad judgment in high places is nothing new and, motivated by their hatred of Jews, a rabid Nazi with a pencil could've given an IBM Hollerith machine a run for its money if he had been forced to.
Rating: 
Summary: A Crushing Indictment Against Corporate America
Review: While reading this book, I shared it with co-workers.
I'm amazed that two people's first reaction was to ask me
"Sure, IBM helped Hitler build his Nazi war machine, but IBM didn't really know what he was doing to the Jews, did they?"
It angers me when this generation actually makes excuses for America's past financial plundering of the world. What's even harder for people to accept today, is that IBM got help from the U.S. State Department. This book is a tour de force of research. If you've never opened your eyes to the reality of financial exploitation that war brings, this will snap you out of your slumber. "Plausible Deniability" is the term used by bureaucrats to describe the lengths taken to cover up government, corporate and personal wrong doing. Relating to this book, I flatly call it wholesale murder. Hitler never would have achieved the numbers he did while decimating not only Jews, but Europe itself. IBM's technology was THE sole driving force that allowed Nazi Germany to build, organize and maintain it's war machine. The sad reality is, an unknowing American public thought IBM's president and owner was a hero. Quite simply, IBM prostituted it's technology to Germany, 6 million Jews perished, and an American corporation made millions of dollars in profit. The author is the son of Holocaust survivors. This book deserves nothing less than top shelf treatment in your collection.
Rating:
Summary: Passionate Turning Point Revelation
Review: IBM and the Holocaust is not the first Holocaust book I have read--but what an eye-opener. Why has this topic not been covered in any of the thousands of books or papers presented over the years? And when I ask questions of professors and museums seeking more information, no one has any answers.
In his book, the author has perfected the art of recreating the moment and the context, as well as making the undeniable case for IBM's complicity in the murder of millions of Jews and other Europeans during the Hitler regime--both before and after America's entrance in the war. When Watson rides down the dusty turn of the century backroads of upstate NY making sales in saloons, I see it before me. When Hitler crowns him with a medal in Berlin in 1937 for serving the Reich's goals, I see the banquets and the frivolity.
Ironically, instead of actually forming conclusions, the author pulls back and forces the reader to reach the inescapeable conclusion on his own. Yes, IBM technology and corporate power helped organize the Holocaust and escalate the numbers. IBM did not cause the Holocaust, but its involvement was essential to the scale we know today.
Black's documentation is superb. I found myself actually reading footnotes, just to verify the astonishing revelations filling every page. To the scores of historians who have endorsed this book, I hope you will now carry on this important research. To those few with sour grapes, read the book.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Rocks
Review: I have just completed the reading of this book and I have only one word to say-----WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! This is a must read for every child, student, adult, businessperson, and all truthseekers out there. This "docubook" will blow you away. Edwin Black's detail for historical accuracy goes beyond the call of the typical historian. Thank-you, Mr. Black for giving us the truth and shedding light on a subject that has been in the dark all too long.
Rating: 
Summary: More a diatribe than a book
Review: Historians should argue their positions with passion, but they should not let that passion override their entire work. That is the glaring fault I found in this otherwise well-done work. The author is so caught up in proving the essential "evilness" of IBM and its chairman, Thomas Watson, that he overreaches himself, at one point comparing IBM employees to Hitler's Brownshirts. Once he did that, he started losing me. From beginning to end there is a snide and not so subtle painting of everything IBM did as inherently evil, and condoning of the Nazi regime. If this is correct, many many companies and organizations (not to mention entire governments) from that time were complicit in the same situations. There's just too much of the "evil corporation" style of writing contained in this book to enable the unbiased reader make his or her own judgments about the evidence presented. When an author tries too hard to convince the reader, it tends to get my back up, and that's what happened here. He may be quite correct, for all I know, but his style just put me off.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: This book teaches you about a corporation that plays an important role in a lot of people's lives today (evident or not). It tells you about its history and involvement, and then tells its affiliation with a horrible war openly with nothing to hide. Its a great buy.
Rating:
Summary: This is an incredible book
Review: I just read this book and I am absolutely blown away. I would highly recommend this book, would recommend this book be placed and mandatory reading lists in technology training institutions and colleges, thiis is an important book to read. The author presents his facts and it is a testiment to the highest scholarship and dedication to finding the truth I have ever seen.
Every one who is Jewish and certainly anyone interested in technology must read this troubling yet riveting book.
Rating:
Summary: IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black
Review: Edwin Black's book on IBM and the Holocaust is a monument to thorough, historical research and documented fact-finding. He left no stone unturned. I tried to get IBM to dispute any part of it and they did not do so. Investigative journalism at its best.
Rating:
Summary: The Corporate View of the Holocaust
Review: Edwin Black's book is crucial to our collective conscience, and is emotionally draining and exhaustively researched. Working as I do in the corporate landscape of large information systems made it doubly terrifying to read. This book is a contrast to the book "Holocaust Journey" by Martin Gilbert which details the Holocaust from the perspective of individuals. This book describes the massive machinery of extermination from the perspective of the Nazi and corporate leadership of the IBM German subsidiary and details luridly how nothing about the Nazi evil was allowed to intrude on the IBM corporate profit focus. Black visibly restrains himself from emotional outbursts and summarises his chapters with devastating irony. He carefully chooses the timing of his revelations to convey his conclusions and one sinks utterly into the desparate revenue and market protection IBM employed. Where there is little or no direct evidence Black is true to his word: he quotes the available information in context. What he can't say is sometimes more damning than the evidence he presents. This book is essential reading for anyone working in a corporate environment who has a heart.
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