IBm and the third Reich

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IBM and the Third Reich

        Many people believe that the information age was born Silicone valley, but this is a false statement. The information age was born in Nazi Germany in 1933 by the American company IBM. IBM and the Third Reich had been business partners from 1933 till the end of the war. It was IBM job to supply the Nazis with census machines and punch card technology, which was used to organize and process information in a quick and efficient manner. These machines and technology were mainly used in Hitler’s concentration camps for quick way to classify prisoners and identify the average amount of work one could get out of a prisoner before they were executed. IBM was acting in an unethical manner, since there is evidence that IBM officials were fully aware of what was being done with their machines and continued to allow it.

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        Throughout the 1930’s and 40’s there had been headline after headline in the New York Times and other prominent news papers of a possible genocide. For example in the New York Times on June 21, 1938 “Goebbels warns Jews must leave”, again in the New York Times on April 22 1941 “Census of all Jews planned in France”, and finally in the New York Times on June 30, 1942 “1,000,000 Jews slain by Nazis, report says.”. Tomas Watson dismissed these stories saying that it was just politics. These census machines that IBM sold to the Germans also had to be ...

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