IBM 'helped in Nazi mass-murder'

[emad]

BBC News snip


Machines built by computer giant IBM helped the Nazi regime commit mass murder more efficiently, Gypsy groups have alleged.

A Swiss court has cleared the way for a lawsuit against the firm, asking for compensation for its wartime role.

IBM had an office in Geneva during the war, which the lawsuit alleges was used for trading with the Nazis.

The firm insists that it had no role in the Holocaust, and that its German unit was taken over before the war.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3832141.stm

[mrfrapp]

1. Book

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

[Swamp Rat]

4. Edwin Black

I watched his lecture on C-SPAN a few months back.

Thanks for the link. EVERYONE should read this book.

[meegbear]

9. Bought it when it came out ...

interesting read on IBM and the the Nazis were able to perform genocide so systematically.

[gatlingforme]

2. I read about this a long time ago, very interesting and I hope

IBM will have to answer for their transgressions during WWII. I will be following this, thanks for the information

[7th_Sephiroth]

3. i wonder if this

can be used to sue the survivors of prescott bush, who also provided equipment to the nazi's

[Solly Mack]

5. The office in Geneva was a money route for the offices in New York

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0213/black.php
Once the U.S. Entered the war in December 1941, Germany appointed a Nazi devoted to IBM, Hermann Fellinger, as enemy-property custodian. He maintained the original staff and managers of Watson Business Machines, keeping it productive for the Reich and profitable for IBM. The subsidiary now reported to IBM's Geneva office, and from there to New York. The company was not looted, its leased machines were not seized. "Royalties" were remitted to IBM through Geneva. Lease payments and profits were preserved in special accounts. After the war, IBM recovered all its Polish profits and machines.

[seemslikeadream]

6. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master R

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race





The plans of Adolf Hitler and the German Nazis to create a Nordic "master race" are often looked upon as a horrific but fairly isolated effort. Less notice has historically been given to the American eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although their methods were less violent, the methodology and rationale which the American eugenicists employed, as catalogued in Edwin Black's Against the Weak, were chilling nonetheless and, in fact, influential in the mindset of Hitler himself. Funded and supported by several well-known wealthy donors, including the Rockefeller and Carnegie families and Alexander Graham Bell, the eugenicists believed that the physically impaired and "feeble-minded" should be subject to forced sterilization in order to create a stronger species and incur less social spending. These "defective" humans generally ended up being poorer folks who were sometimes categorized as such after shockingly arbitrary or capricious means ! such as failing a quiz related to pop culture by not knowing where the Pierce Arrow was manufactured. The list of groups and agencies conducting eugenics research was long, from the U.S. Army and the Departments of Labor and Agriculture to organizations with names like the "American Breeders Association." Black's detailed research into the history of the American eugenics movement is admirably extensive, but it is in the association between the beliefs of some members of the American aristocracy and Hitler that the book becomes most chilling. Black goes on to trace the evolution of eugenic thinking as it evolves into what is now called genetics. And while modern thinkers have thankfully discarded the pseudo-science of eugenics, such controversial modern issues as human cloning make one wonder how our own era will be remembered a hundred years hence. --John Moe
http://topics.practical.org/details/MGJML/FJKMJ


Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and C



Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict
Edwin Black
ISBN: 0-471-67186-X
Hardcover
400 pages
September 2004

New York Times and international bestselling author Edwin Black uncovers Iraq’s hidden economy and the companies that profit from its upheaval
Big business and global warfare have long been fiery and symbiotic forces in Iraq. Banking on Baghdad tells the dramatic and tragic history of a land long the center of world commerce–and documents the many ways Iraq’s recent history mirrors its tumultuous past. Tracing the involvement

of Western governments and militaries, as well as oil, banking, and other corporate interests in Iraq, Black shows that today, just as yesterday, the world needs Iraq’s resources–and is always willing to fight and invade in order to acquire and protect them.

While demonstrating that Iraq itself is partially to blame for its current state of turmoil, Black does not shy away from the uncomfortable truth that war and profit have also played an equal part in creating the Iraq we know today. Just as he did in IBM and the Holocaust, Black exposes the hidden associations between leading corporations, war, and oil–such as the astonishing connections between Nazi Germany, Iraq, and the Holocaust.

He exposes the war and race-based profiteering by some of the world’s most prestigious corporations, as well as the political and economic ties between the Bush administration and the companies that gain handsomely from its foreign policy. Just as he did in War Against the Weak, Black offers a compelling blend of history and contemporary investigative journalism that spans a century and eschews easy answers for complicated questions.

Edwin Black (Washington, DC) is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust, The Transfer Agreement, and War Against the Weak. His journalism has appeared in the Washington Post, The Village Voice, The Sunday Times (of London), and The Los Angeles Times.

more
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047167186X.html



IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.

IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.

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?

[gatlingforme]

8. I have read War Against the Weak an excellent informative book

[stavka]

7. IBM helped defeat Japanese and German Mass Murderers

http://web4.integraonline.com/~bbroadside/WWII_Gun_Production.html

through production of Browning automatic rifles and more than 325,000 M1 carbines.

[lectrobyte]

11. that's interesting, but does it refute any of the points in Mr. Black's

book?

[Solon]

14. That's impressive...how much money did they make doing that?

Like these corporations have an altrustic streak, GM built the Opel Blitzer, workhorse truck of Nazi Germany used against Allied Troops. Ford built tanks for Nazi Germany as well, guess who they were used against? Du Pont provided chemists for the Holocaust, J.P. Morgan Jr. provided money and even kept branches open in Germany and France to provide loans to Hitler AFTER Pearl Harbor. Not to mention their own attempt at installing a fascist government in this country in 1934. Mussolini's own personal banker, along with Morgan's bank, was one of the founders of Bank of America. Let's put it this way, without American Corporate Support, Nazi Germany, nor Mussolini's Italy would have been able to build there war machines up nearly as much as they did, and not be able to conquer most of Europe in that time either. All of these companies and individuals were traitors, to America and to Humanity.

[emad]

10. Lawsuit background: Prescott Bush involvement

Patrick Scott investigates the role of IBM in the Nazi Holocaust and also uncovers a link between Nazi money and George W Bush.

Snip:

A much lesser known US friend of the Nazis, than either Thomas J. Watson or Henry Ford, was Prescott Bush. In 1942, Bush was a director and shareholder of, the New York based, Union Banking Corporation when the US government under the 'Trading with the Enemy Act' seized the company's shares. Hitler had declared war on the US, after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour, and the Act allowed the US federal government to seize control of companies who were, or who were deemed, to be under enemy control during wartime. The federal government justified the seizure of Union Banking because it was a front in the USA for the commercial activities of leading German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen. Fritz Thyssen was no ordinary German industrialist, he had been a major financial supporter of the Nazi Party and had even written a book 'I Paid Hitler' describing his own role in helping to finance Hitler's rise to power. The name and activities of Prescott Bush would probably have faded into obscurity a long time ago were it not for the fact he was to become the father and grandfather of two future US Presidents - George Bush and the current President, George W. Bush. Control and ownership of Union Banking was returned to its shareholders after the end of World War II and the company was wound up in 1951. But there is a twist to the tale, Prescott Bush and his father in law, George Herbert Walker, each received $750,000 as shareholders from the dissolution of Union Banking and this $1.5 million formed the seed money for the current Bush financial empire. An empire that had helped propel George senior and, now, George W. Bush into the US Presidency.

More:
http://www.ethicalmatters.co.uk/articles.asp?itemID=178



PLUS: "Poppy's Pop stole Jewish gold fillings from Auschwitz victims":

The Nazis extracted the fillings of its victims after being informed by Degussa that the company could refine it into marketable gold bullion. Degussa was awarded an exclusive contract with the Nazis to refine all gold. The company was also joint owners with I.G. Farben of Degesch, a firm that produced Zyklon-B cyanide tablets used in the gas chambers. Due to the hoard of gold fillings stacking up at Auschweitz, Degussa built a smelter there. The bullion was then shipped back to Berlin and commingled with the Nazis gold stash. Undoubtedly some of it made its way back to the banker in charge of United Steel Works, Prescott Bush.

from:
Gold Fillings, Auschwitz & George Bush
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/bushies.htm



More Prescott:
“Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951” - Federal Documents

"After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal. Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators."

from:
http://falloutshelternews.com/BushHitlerLinks.html

[seemslikeadream]

12. emad I had to re post this just for the pictures!

Reviews

The Independent
A visual satirical masterpiece

The Observer
said its full of 'malicious joy'

Bizarre Magazine
Book of the Year

Synopsis:

The first book by cult cartoonist Dr Parsons, who stalks the corridors of power and pomposity armed with crayons and coloured pencils like some small, bearded avenging god. Already a cult favourite as an e-mail circular and website, Dr Parsons' childlike but savage satirical cartoons of the Great and Good are now printed and bound and launched on an unsuspecting book trade. The first of what could run to a series of several or fewer volumes, Tony And Me By Georg Bush shows the 43rd President of the United States introducing us to his world, describing in Dr Parsons' inimitable style everything from Georg's oil-baron background to his love of guns -- and, of course, his Speshl Guys. The most Speshl of the Speshl Guys is Georg's best friend Tony Blar. In Tony And Me the Prime Minser and his wife come to visit the White House, and Tony and Georg cement their special relationship in alarming fashion. Funny and offensive in equal measure, Tony And Me is compulsory toilet reading.

and:

[emad]

13. Wish I could scan some pics from the first book and post them

here! Especially the pages about losing Osama but knowing where Saddam is...

Re:Parsons: any real life link to:

Democrat shrink takes unflattering look into depths of Bush

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x58065