Rating: 
Summary: Awesome Book
Review: Black's book typifies the way corporations run business: profit over social responsibility.IBM MUST suffer the consequences of its past dastardly act. They can begin by renumerating and compensating ALL victims of the Holocaust. A must read!
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Summary: Horrifying look into the future
Review: If even a small portion of this book is true (and I have no reason to think that it is all true), then our society is in deep "Bandini". The book is written in a serious and factual style (like a book of this type should be). Just set aside a weekend to read it, because you will not put it down. Whether Jew or Greek, this is a must read!
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: The Holocaust was a sad and shocking event in our history but what's more incredible is the role IBM played. Mr Black has written a great book and it's a must read for every concern human.
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Summary: History Comes to Life
Review: The history of computing seems to be a topic relegated to the back burner. I suspect IBM and the Holocaust will change this. Much like the development of atomic weaponry (also in the same time frame), Edwin Black brings questions about responsible use and the role of monopolistic marketing practices starkly to the forefront. A must read for anyone with an interest in technology and/or the holocaust.
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: An Extraordinarily Frustrating Book
Review: This book is an extraordinarily frustrating book to read -- both for what is in it and what is not. It is often extra-hyperbolic, witness its dust jcket which claims "THE Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" A single alliance is certainly not in evidence, as THE alliance. That IBM was at some time in the 20th Century "America's Most Powerful Company" is also highly debatable. But yes, the strategies of IBM and Nazi Germany did run down parallel tracks and the story promised by the book should be told -- for US Corporations in general and IBM in particular -- but without the hyperbole. In the book, for an author with a technical background, the words "computer" and "computing" are badly abused. I doubt that a whole lot of computing was going on with the exception of that done by humans. Added to that is a lack of any kind of specifications for the machines (even in an appendix) which are asserted to have been "interconnected" and "high speed" and the lack of the card layouts for the punch cards which are the heart of the story. To include these two "technical" details would have aided me in really judging the contribution of the machines versus plain old Nazi work ethic. In short, a very important topic badly presented -- looking at 1930s technology through a lens of late 20th century thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Well researched but too peppered with unimportant details
Review: When I saw this book's title, I was immediately intrigued to learn what IBM's role in the Holocaust was, and eagerly began reading. Once I started the book I learned most of the facts about IBM's involvement in the Holocaust in the first chapter of the book with the author's introductory summary. I continued to labor through further chapters of the book to learn additional details, and have come across a couple additional nuggets. However, the majority of the information was summarized at the beginning.
This book is overall very well researched and documented, and this adds to its credibility. In addition, the subject matter is fascinating and very important to know for a full understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the book is not well organized, goes into excruciating detail about stock mergers and inter-corporate disputes, and although it attempts to be chronological, weaves in and out of chronology just enough to confuse readers who do not constantly note at what point in time the author is referring to.
This book appears to have needed three things: (1) a more flowing narrative of the events discussed; (2) a good editor to take out superfluous detail or put it into the endnotes; and (3) a viewpoint that is less black and white, good versus evil.
In reference to the third thing this book needs, it appears from Mr. Black's prose that IBM's President, Mr. Watson, is the devil incarnate, and right up there with Hitler. Mr. Black makes a credible argument that Mr. Watson was overly concerned with profit margins, and was a pure capitalist. However, without more information about his personal life (all we learn about is his business life), I am not yet convinced he was pure evil. Greed does not necessarily mean he is in the same category as a mass murderer. In addition, while Mr. Black makes a great case that people at IBM should have known what the machines were being used for, he does not make a great case that they did know, for sure. Granted, Mr. Black notes that IBM did not cooperate with his research, and it is possible that IBMers did not write down what they knew, specifically because what they knew was so heinous. However, Mr. Black is prone to take an example and make a federal case out of it, without sufficient evidence to back him up. For example, Mr. Black takes the fact that the word "jew" was not capitalized in a piece of correspondence to explain, without a footnote, that because "jew" was not capitalized, this meant that the author was anti-semitic and could not even bear to capitalize the word "Jew" because that would give too much dignity to the Jews, who were not, in fact, Germans. I have trouble believing Mr. Black could gather all that from one piece of punctuation, especially without back up documentation. These types of remarks take away some of the credibility of the book.
With that being said, I would suggest to anyone having an interest in the history of the Holocaust that they read this book, because I am unaware of any other source in which they can learn about IBM's involvement in the tragedy. In addition, the book gives great insight into how the Nazis always had lists of Jews names, and could so efficiently execute the Final Solution. This insight will help you understand other histories of the Holocaust more completely. However, to learn this information you must wade through a good deal of excruiating detail and create the narrative in your own mind, because it is not laid out well by the author. I hope in the future another historian with revisit the research of Mr. Black and try to compile a summary of the information provided in about 100 pages less than Mr. Black did.
Rating:
Summary: First Rate Research--Even a Widget has its Evil Side
Review: Who would have anticipated that a speedy card-sorter, the Hollerith machine, would evolve into a tool of one of the most evil schemes of all time? Yet, this patented machine, devised by a little-known man of German descent, made it possible to conduct a census in a short time period, and turned counting into a tool useful on a mass scale. Black's book is a page-burner, containing information that will surprise the reader paragraph by paragraph. In my generation, the "Do Not Spindle, Fold, or Mutilate" written on each IBM punchcard was the introduction to the computer and information age (and often the butt of jokes). A scant 25 to 30 years earlier, similar punch cards became the currency on which the Holocaust was based. A truly groundbreaking piece of research that, fortunately, has already appeared in German translation. In the days where vast amounts of personal information are being reduced to a series of ones and zeros carried electronically and stored digitally, this saga may be the harbinger of horrors much worse than were conceived by the progenitors of the 1000-year Reich. We should pay close attention to the uses of such personal information, lest humans lose complete control of their humanity. Here we find a true fable (that's an oxymoron) with much more to teach than Aesop could have imagined.
Rating:
Summary: Makes me UNproud to be former IBM employee
Review: The book is very well written and the author obviously did his homework. I think it is a bit wordy and describes events and conversations contributing little to the overall story.
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Summary: Not the WHOLE Truth,
Review: The bottom line here is simple. After reading this book, I will never purchase or have any part of an IBM product. This book is not the best I have ever read. The author tends to lose the readers in the details of IBM's involvement with the Third Reich. This book could have been 100 pages shorter and still have been just as effective. The lengthy explanations about the number of manufacturing facilities and the number of punch cards produced and where they were sent were boring. However, the existence of these explanations is used as evidence in an attempt to prove without a doubt that IBM, an American company, knowingly contributed the machinery and manpower that organized and mobilized Germany's blitzkrieg. Other than the lengthy asides, there was one thing that really bugged me about this book. The author is the son of Polish survivors of the Holocaust and the first critic on the back flap to heap praise upon the book is from the American Jewish Historical Society. The facts about the atrocities of the Holocaust are cut and dry, Germany killed 6 million Jews. But, the fact that the author is the son of concentration camp survivors makes me think that it would be difficult to write an objective account of IBM's relations with Germany. There is plenty of evidence to support Black's claim, but I am not positive we are getting the whole story. I liked this book very much, and I would recommend reading it. However, I would tell anyone who is going to read this to keep in mind that there are 2 sides to every story. I am not ready to call for the end of IBM, but I am finished supporting their products.
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