Rating: 
Summary: Important work should be easier to read
Review: This is a very well-documented account of how one American business giant profited from WWII and the Holocaust. (In fact, with the breadth and volume of sources cited it is hard to understand why some reviewers question the book's central thesis.) The author requests that readers not skip around and read the book in its entirety. Much of the historical info (especially the early history of IBM) is quite interesting but honoring Mr. Black's request is a bit challenging. The accounts tend to be somewhat repetitive and could be organized better. Still, this is a very important work by a very thorough writer. If you can manage to read (study) this work from start to finish, you no doubt will have learned a great deal.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding and Explosive
Review: Having read this book, and heard Mr. Black on the radio, I can only say this book is outstanding and sxplosive and should be read by everyone. It is impeccibly documentged and powerfully written.
Rating: 
Summary: A vital, inefficient work
Review: Edwin Black has done heroic, scholarly, vital work. This book must
exist.It's a cautionary monument against corporate amorality and
the certainty that high tech population control is
a 60 year old fact.
Problem with monuments is they don't always make engaging reading. Third Reich and IBM practices were effective because
they were predictable and formulaic. To recount these practices in convincing detail is fascinating at first. But Black moves from occupied country to occupied countrytelling essentially the same tale of punch cards and profit margins. Reading his book is a bit like listening
to the same song over and over, only in a dozen different
languages. Eventually you go numb, no matter how visceral your
initial reaction.
I would
have liked to have read more first person accounts from surviving Jews
who were rounded up. Did they sense that their cooperation in
filling out census forms was spelling doom? What were the other paper work signs
that so many failed to see? That kind of knowledge could
benefit us all.
Rating:
Summary: Story from the Past and a Tech Warning for the Future
Review: I just came upon this book this past week, but I have read research on the Holocaust for over 30 years and always wondered how the Nazis could be so efficient in rounding up people, how they could exactly know so much as they took over Poland and France, etc., etc., Now I think I know and the knowledge is most disturbing.
Reading this book made me stop and think about where technology is going today in our world where all the bits of information about everybody are carefully stored, collated, and applied to "appropriate" use. I think there is a warning from the book about having too much data about individuals. I for one will never answer census questions completely again, certainly not the petty questions that inquire into the specifics of my personal life.
A few months ago, I watched the HBO Movie Conspiracy which was an exact dramatization of the Wannesee Conference in 1942 in Berlin. The script was based on the sole transcript of that meeting found after the war and belonging to one of the attendees. As I was watching the movie and later when I poured over the actual transcript which I found on the net, I wondered, "How did they have such exact figures for each country and group? So exact that the numbers were down to the single digits. How did they find these people?" It puzzled me. In reading IBM and the Holocaust, I found my answer.
History has an ostentatous way of rationalizing what actually happened to fit current viewpoints that are acceptable to people and institutions. We don't want to think that a company like IBM could be so dreadful for profit or that our Government refused to bomb camps or take in refugees when they knew horror was happening. There was a rationalization that there " must have been other circumstances", mitigating circumstances, and today simply bad historical recollection. It is much easier to go forward and forget and rationalize and look for "reasonable" solutions, that is, until it all happens again and we have to say once more, "but that simply couldn't be possible."
A n important and courageous book that every young person especially should read as the years pass and the witnesses of that time leave us.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting topic - quality of writing poor
Review: An interesting book. My undergrad was in history; I carry something of a bias for the subject. For those readers who are interested in a fairly detailed, narrow-scope history, this will be an interesting read. For readers unfamiliar with Nazi Germany, this book may be somewhat tedious to get through. This book might appeal those interested in the early days of computing. I enjoyed this book. And while I don't expect this work to get a great deal of attention, it is bound to raise eyebrows in some circles. IBM, according to this author, was as culpable, if not more so, than Hitler and the rest of his top brass for the murders of Jews, political enemies and other undesirables. According to this author, IBM sorters provided the Gestapo with accurate, current, detailed information on people who were a threat to Nazi power. IBM punch cards ran the trains, tracked Jewish money, controlled troop movements, maximized war production, limited political freedoms and ultimately provided the informational basis for the "miracle of Germany" in the critical post-war years. All in all - a good book.
Rating:
Summary: "Calculated" Genocide
Review: I took the authors advice and did read the book in it's entirety and as I did a compelling story unfolded, a chilling account of calculated genocide. Whilst the passages describing the fate of the Jewish people were as harrowing as in any other document or film describing this dark chapter, it was the knowledge that in all likelihood many IBM employees knew what was going on and had enabled the company to amass a fortune in assisting the Nazi war machine with it's 'Final Solution' that caused me most concern. There was one memorable, heartening story of French Resistance member Carmille and of how he duped the Nazis - they contracted him to sift the census information for their anti-Semitic purposes, he used the data to prepare his countrymen for effective mobilisation. The comparison of how differently the French and Netherlands Jews fared under German occupation was enlightening and perhaps hinted at how sometimes a healthy disregard for authority can prove beneficial. When coupled to a bureaucratic and very much localised government infrastructure I (like the author) feel that it probably saved many lives. This book should serve as a warning to the common man that large business corporations can be as ruthless as dictator-led regimes and worry little about the niceties of whom they are dealing with when there's a profit to be made! One perturbing moment for me was when on turning a page I spotted my precise initials and surname in the text' T. J. Watson
Rating:
Summary: A Detailed But Imperfect Examination of Organizing Genocide
Review: Other reviewers have already pointed out that, contrary to the book's title, in the 1930s and 40s IBM was not "America's most powerful corporation." Edwin Black admits that "the dynamics and context of IBM's alliance with Nazi Germany changed throughout the 12-year Reich"; indeed, the book shows that the firm's German subsidiary Dehomag was trying to break free from its parent early in World War II, that the Nazis were trying to build their own automation center of excellence based on the French firm Bull and others, and that IBM executives likely knew little of Dehomag's involvement in the Nazi concentration camp system. However, the most interesting part of the book for many readers is not the relations between IBM, Dehomag, and the Nazi regime, but how punch-card automation technology, the precursor to modern computing, supported the Nazi policies of persecution and extermination and the German war effort. Dehomag's IBM-designed Hollerith machines were found in government ministries throughout Nazi-occupied Europe and in the Labor Service Office in each concentration camp. Black shows how the Holleriths were used to support Nazi policies from the initial census to identify the German Jewish population to supporting the Final Solution. As he states, "People and asset registration was only one of the many uses Nazi Germany found for high-speed data sorters. Food allocation was organized around databases, allowing Germany to starve the Jews. Slave labor was identified, tracked and managed largely through punch cards. Punch cards even made the trains run on time and cataloged their human cargo." One of Dehomag's directors, Edmund Veesenmayer, acted as a Nazi troubleshooter in southeastern Europe and participated in the deportation of Serbian, Slovakian and Hungarian Jews. Black states up front that genocide would have taken place without IBM technology. However, automation played a crucial role in murdering so many millions of Jews, members of other ethnic groups, political prisoners, Christians, and homosexuals. Black compares the highly automated Netherlands, where 73% of the Jewish population was killed, with France, which was poorly automated and whose census head was working secretly for the Resistance, resulting in the deaths of 25% of French Jews. Holleriths also scheduled movements of troops and war materiel throughout Europe, organized military manpower, and tracked aircraft sorties, ammunition useage, and other vital statistics. While Dehomag was meeting the automation needs of the Axis, IBM's own Holleriths were supporting the Allied war effort. This included the detailed US Strategic Bombing Survey conducted at the end of the war, at the same time as IBM officials returned to Europe to reclaim Dehomag's machines and the profits made from Nazism. Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell notes that Nazism, with its "mass manipulation, armored Panzer divisions and systematic racial murder", marks an apotheosis of the "peculiar logic of techno-modernity". IBM and the Holocaust contributes to our understanding of totalitarianism and technology, although this topic awaits a definitive treatment.
Rating:
Summary: Corperate America, nothing's changed.
Review: I'm neither scholar nor historian, just your average reader. Edwin Black's book goes to show how far some people are willing exploit innocent people for a profit. I believe that Mr. Black being a son of Holocaust survivors gives his work an emotional and insightful read which I really appreciate. When I am reading page by page, I feel his pain and anguish. History is all about emotion and to hear it from this viewpoint is very refreshing. I have added Mr. Black's book to my collection of books which tell of our (USA) dark history during WWII.
Rating:
Summary: Chilling Example of what might be
Review: The real horror of this book is not the fact that IBM collaborated with the Nazis to slaughter innocent human beings: the real horror is that it happened before and could happen again and we give these corporations and governments that power in larger pieces every day. Mr. Black never reveals a smoking gun, but he does an excellent job of explaining that there was no smoking gun to be revealed because Thomas Watson of IBM had been successfully prosecuted for anti-trust violations and never allowed any substantive writings about his business practices within IBM. The paper trail is ...impossible to ignore. Mr. Black explains IBM's business model of leasing machines and selling supplies and consulting services and supports his research fully with page after page of documents from IBM's archives. He also points out that the major press in America were documenting the oppression of the Jews and other groups on their front pages for years before America entered the war: in other words, the only way to have not known the truth is to have ignored it. This book is a must read for any serious student of the twentieth century. The vocabulary and sentence structures are advanced, but should be readable for anyone of high school level or greater. The material is disturbing and might not be appropriate for anyone younger than high school. This is a story that should be told and Mr. Black has done an excellent job.
Rating:
Summary: Morality, Accountability & Responsibility
Review: Edwin Black's IBM and the HOLOCAUST a must read for anyone interested in issues of morality, responsibility,and accountability in the world of business & technology and its global implications. The silence emanating from IBM headquarters worldwide and its PR spin doctors speak volumes to their guilt!
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