4 ms·

I feel like you maybe didn't read the post? For example: >tabulating machines were housed at the concentration camps. Each prisoner had a card that detailed t

by mthoms 7y ago

I feel like you maybe didn't read the post? For example: >tabulating machines were housed at the concentration camps. Each prisoner had a card that detailed their health, skills and location as prisoners of good health were transported according to labor needs. Finally, the card also indicated the way the prisoner died: by natural causes (which would include being worked or tortured to death), execution, suicide, and special treatment (including gas chamber). The first part of the post details how the cards and machines had to be coded or prepared by IBM itself (or its subsidiary). It wasn't possible to just add "fields" to a card. The machines weren't general purpose like the computers of today. Everything had to be setup specifically for the precise problem being solved by the manufacturer. The post also goes into more detail about how the Nazis wanted to know if a person was even partially Jewish by ethnicity. Regardless of whether or not they were practising Judaism.

southern_cross 7y ago
Not only did I read the article, but I'm pretty sure that I actually read the book when it first came out, or at least lots of discussion about it, from several angles. This isn't exactly "new" news, after all. It might behoove you to track down some of the discussions from the time. I don't recall IBM coming out smelling like a rose, though, even if you gave them some benefit of the doubt. But I was referring specifically to the census. IBM was in the census business at the time, after all, and Germany had a legitimate need for their services, which they provided at least until the war broke out. IIRC, some years passed between when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany, and when they came to be considered "evil incarnate". Which was plenty of time for folks to do business with them which they might later come to regret.
- mthoms 7y ago
  I find it curious to selectively focus both your comments so far on the census services and ignore the rest. Certainly, when taken out of context those census services are easy to defend. For the record, the context is that of a fascist regime invading its neighbours (enemies, neutrals and allies alike) and rounding up their undesirables. >I don't recall IBM coming out smelling like a rose After building the census systems to identify targets, IBM built a train scheduling system for transporting those people to work and concentration camps. Then, they built a punch card system for optimizing the exploitation of that slave labour and exterminating the rest. But yes, "IBM was in the census business at the time, after all." Please.
  - southern_cross 7y ago
    But wasn't the later stuff done by Dehomag, the German subsidiary started by IBM? IBM's direct involvement in Germany apparently ended when the war started in 1941, although Dehomag kept using their equipment. Just because they used "IBM technology" doesn't mean that IBM still had a hand in it. I mean, if you want to go down that route, shouldn't we be pointing a finger of blame at the train manufacturing folks, too, for example, since their trains were being used for transport? Perhaps you should actually read the book, read the contemporary discussions of it, and maybe IBM's response to the whole affair before, you know, just jumping to conclusions based on this one article.
    - azinman2 7y ago
      The article argued the opposite. I haven’t read the book. Have you?
      - southern_cross 7y ago
        I think I did (or maybe just parts of it), but I don't really remember because it came out back in 2001. I do recall reading a lot of discussion about the whole situation back then, and that IBM's response to it seemed rather weak. I haven't really kept up with the matter since then, though.
        stallmanite 7y ago
        I hope you can take this as an honest question and not a personal attack, but if you’ve not really researched or paid attention to this issue since 2001 why are you all over the comments here defending IBM? I’m an ex-IBMer, not necessarily against them but you really seem to be going out of your way to defend them, what gives?
        southern_cross 7y ago
        I don't believe I've actually "defended" IBM anywhere here. In fact, I stated that their response (their own defense) to the whole thing was quite weak, as I recall. But we're talking here about an article which came out in 2017 (written by someone who was apparently quite clueless about the whole situation), about a book which first came out in 2001, about events which happened back in the 1930s and 1940s. So plenty of time for us to have gotten a good historical view of what actually went on here - good, bad, or indifferent. As I recall the book itself was quite one-sided and basically what we would today refer to as "clickbait", but I could be wrong about that. (My memory here is weak.) But too many folks these days want to buy into clickbaity stuff without doing any due diligence first. This is something that I've tried to instill in my college-age daughter. That is, don't get all worked up about something that you've read on the internet or seen on the news or whatever, until you've done enough due diligence on the matter to be able to say that you are quite familiar with both sides of the story. If you still want to be all worked up about it at that point, fine, but as often as not whenever my daughter actually does this she ends up calming down quite a bit. Along those lines, the book's author claims to have uncovered new evidence here of the "smoking gun" variety. But I can tell that whenever I've looked at various "smoking gun" documents myself (in other contexts), very often these turn out to be nothing of the sort. Instead such claims are often just the product of lazy/incompetent/dishonest journalism, which is why I usually try to review documents for myself before coming to any conclusions. I wish more people would do that kind of thing.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  > IIRC, some years passed between when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany, and when they came to be considered "evil incarnate". Hitler's anti-Semitism and his use of paramilitary thugs to beat up political opponents were well known before he came to power. He wrote about his plans for German conquest of Europe and racial purity in Mein Kampf in the 1920s. The only question, when he came to power, was whether he would put this extreme views into action, and whether the people who installed him in power would constrain him. He didn't waste much time showing that he was going to pursue a radical agenda, violently suppressing almost all political and cultural institutions that opposed him (the "Gleichschaltung"), having himself "voted" dictatorial powers (the "Ermächtigungsgesetz," and I put "voted" in quotes because he had to throw the Communist parliamentarians in jail in order to get the measure passed), enacting a boycott of Jewish businesses, kicking Jews out of positions in the bureaucracy and universities, and passing strict racial separation laws (the Nuremberg race laws). There was also, before long, the overt remilitarization.
  - southern_cross 7y ago
    Anti-Semitism was pretty common in a lot of places at the time (it still is in some circles, you may note), and the whole idea of eugenics was kind of an "in" thing in much of the scientific community at the time, too. It wasn't until Hitler came along and started implementing this stuff in a big and brutal way that the tide of opinion turned.
kens 7y ago
> It wasn't possible to just add "fields" to a card. > Everything had to be setup specifically for the precise problem I've studied and written about tabulators a lot, and this is overstating the difficulty of using a tabulator. Adding a new field is trivial, just type the data into that field on a card. (Unless you want nice custom-printed cards.) And configuring a tabulator is a lot easier than writing a program. You plugged wires into a plugboard connecting fields on the card to columns on the printer, or to counters to compute totals. To sort cards on a field, you set the sorter to sort on that column and ran the cards through. Tabulators could do some extremely complex things (such as differential equations), but normal tasks were pretty straightforward. If you want to learn more about tabulators, there are lots of manuals on Bitsavers. This one is a good place to start: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/22-6275-0_Functional_Wiring_Principles.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/22-6275-0_... (Obviously I'm not supporting IBM's actions; I just want people to understand better how tabulators work.)
- GnarfGnarf 7y ago
  As someone who has programmed tabulators, I can confirm this is correct. Once IBM delivered the machine, customer personnel were able to wire the panel to perform calculations and print reports.
- mthoms 7y ago
  Thanks for your input. I'm not familiar with these machines so I look forward to reading that link. The researcher does say: >IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps Source https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691 Though it's not clear in this passage whether he is referring to IBM itself or its German subsidiary.
  - snotrockets 7y ago
    The discussed book provides evidence that the German subsidiary was micromanaged by Watson.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Weird I'd never thought it was about practicing Judaism, but solely about genetics/race. If there was an "Aryan", 'an upstanding German', that had turned to practicing Judaism did the Nazis treat them the same as someone with Jewish ancestry?
chrismeller 7y ago
Yeah, but you think there’s no businessy way to explain that? There are plenty of reasons to track prisoners and while it’s not acceptable today, tracking religion and other sensitive demographics was not at all uncommon. You also just have to remember that while you might disagree with something being done it’s a national government asking you to do it. You think there aren’t things being done today that people would disagree with? We don’t even need to look to Saudi Arabia or Syria or Indonesia to find corruption and technology being used to oppress people, there’s plenty of that in the US.

by mthoms 7y ago

southern_cross 7y ago

Not only did I read the article, but I'm pretty sure that I actually read the book when it first came out, or at least lots of discussion about it, from several angles. This isn't exactly "new" news, after all. It might behoove you to track down some of the discussions from the time. I don't recall IBM coming out smelling like a rose, though, even if you gave them some benefit of the doubt. But I was referring specifically to the census. IBM was in the census business at the time, after all, and Germany had a legitimate need for their services, which they provided at least until the war broke out. IIRC, some years passed between when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany, and when they came to be considered "evil incarnate". Which was plenty of time for folks to do business with them which they might later come to regret.

mthoms 7y ago
I find it curious to selectively focus both your comments so far on the census services and ignore the rest. Certainly, when taken out of context those census services are easy to defend. For the record, the context is that of a fascist regime invading its neighbours (enemies, neutrals and allies alike) and rounding up their undesirables. >I don't recall IBM coming out smelling like a rose After building the census systems to identify targets, IBM built a train scheduling system for transporting those people to work and concentration camps. Then, they built a punch card system for optimizing the exploitation of that slave labour and exterminating the rest. But yes, "IBM was in the census business at the time, after all." Please.
- southern_cross 7y ago
  But wasn't the later stuff done by Dehomag, the German subsidiary started by IBM? IBM's direct involvement in Germany apparently ended when the war started in 1941, although Dehomag kept using their equipment. Just because they used "IBM technology" doesn't mean that IBM still had a hand in it. I mean, if you want to go down that route, shouldn't we be pointing a finger of blame at the train manufacturing folks, too, for example, since their trains were being used for transport? Perhaps you should actually read the book, read the contemporary discussions of it, and maybe IBM's response to the whole affair before, you know, just jumping to conclusions based on this one article.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    The article argued the opposite. I haven’t read the book. Have you?
    - southern_cross 7y ago
      I think I did (or maybe just parts of it), but I don't really remember because it came out back in 2001. I do recall reading a lot of discussion about the whole situation back then, and that IBM's response to it seemed rather weak. I haven't really kept up with the matter since then, though.
      - stallmanite 7y ago
        I hope you can take this as an honest question and not a personal attack, but if you’ve not really researched or paid attention to this issue since 2001 why are you all over the comments here defending IBM? I’m an ex-IBMer, not necessarily against them but you really seem to be going out of your way to defend them, what gives?
        southern_cross 7y ago
        I don't believe I've actually "defended" IBM anywhere here. In fact, I stated that their response (their own defense) to the whole thing was quite weak, as I recall. But we're talking here about an article which came out in 2017 (written by someone who was apparently quite clueless about the whole situation), about a book which first came out in 2001, about events which happened back in the 1930s and 1940s. So plenty of time for us to have gotten a good historical view of what actually went on here - good, bad, or indifferent. As I recall the book itself was quite one-sided and basically what we would today refer to as "clickbait", but I could be wrong about that. (My memory here is weak.) But too many folks these days want to buy into clickbaity stuff without doing any due diligence first. This is something that I've tried to instill in my college-age daughter. That is, don't get all worked up about something that you've read on the internet or seen on the news or whatever, until you've done enough due diligence on the matter to be able to say that you are quite familiar with both sides of the story. If you still want to be all worked up about it at that point, fine, but as often as not whenever my daughter actually does this she ends up calming down quite a bit. Along those lines, the book's author claims to have uncovered new evidence here of the "smoking gun" variety. But I can tell that whenever I've looked at various "smoking gun" documents myself (in other contexts), very often these turn out to be nothing of the sort. Instead such claims are often just the product of lazy/incompetent/dishonest journalism, which is why I usually try to review documents for myself before coming to any conclusions. I wish more people would do that kind of thing.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
> IIRC, some years passed between when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany, and when they came to be considered "evil incarnate". Hitler's anti-Semitism and his use of paramilitary thugs to beat up political opponents were well known before he came to power. He wrote about his plans for German conquest of Europe and racial purity in Mein Kampf in the 1920s. The only question, when he came to power, was whether he would put this extreme views into action, and whether the people who installed him in power would constrain him. He didn't waste much time showing that he was going to pursue a radical agenda, violently suppressing almost all political and cultural institutions that opposed him (the "Gleichschaltung"), having himself "voted" dictatorial powers (the "Ermächtigungsgesetz," and I put "voted" in quotes because he had to throw the Communist parliamentarians in jail in order to get the measure passed), enacting a boycott of Jewish businesses, kicking Jews out of positions in the bureaucracy and universities, and passing strict racial separation laws (the Nuremberg race laws). There was also, before long, the overt remilitarization.
- southern_cross 7y ago
  Anti-Semitism was pretty common in a lot of places at the time (it still is in some circles, you may note), and the whole idea of eugenics was kind of an "in" thing in much of the scientific community at the time, too. It wasn't until Hitler came along and started implementing this stuff in a big and brutal way that the tide of opinion turned.

kens 7y ago

> It wasn't possible to just add "fields" to a card. > Everything had to be setup specifically for the precise problem I've studied and written about tabulators a lot, and this is overstating the difficulty of using a tabulator. Adding a new field is trivial, just type the data into that field on a card. (Unless you want nice custom-printed cards.) And configuring a tabulator is a lot easier than writing a program. You plugged wires into a plugboard connecting fields on the card to columns on the printer, or to counters to compute totals. To sort cards on a field, you set the sorter to sort on that column and ran the cards through. Tabulators could do some extremely complex things (such as differential equations), but normal tasks were pretty straightforward. If you want to learn more about tabulators, there are lots of manuals on Bitsavers. This one is a good place to start: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/22-6275-0_Functional_Wiring_Principles.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/22-6275-0_... (Obviously I'm not supporting IBM's actions; I just want people to understand better how tabulators work.)

GnarfGnarf 7y ago
As someone who has programmed tabulators, I can confirm this is correct. Once IBM delivered the machine, customer personnel were able to wire the panel to perform calculations and print reports.
mthoms 7y ago
Thanks for your input. I'm not familiar with these machines so I look forward to reading that link. The researcher does say: >IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps Source https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691 Though it's not clear in this passage whether he is referring to IBM itself or its German subsidiary.
- snotrockets 7y ago
  The discussed book provides evidence that the German subsidiary was micromanaged by Watson.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

Weird I'd never thought it was about practicing Judaism, but solely about genetics/race. If there was an "Aryan", 'an upstanding German', that had turned to practicing Judaism did the Nazis treat them the same as someone with Jewish ancestry?

chrismeller 7y ago

Yeah, but you think there’s no businessy way to explain that? There are plenty of reasons to track prisoners and while it’s not acceptable today, tracking religion and other sensitive demographics was not at all uncommon. You also just have to remember that while you might disagree with something being done it’s a national government asking you to do it. You think there aren’t things being done today that people would disagree with? We don’t even need to look to Saudi Arabia or Syria or Indonesia to find corruption and technology being used to oppress people, there’s plenty of that in the US.