Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM, made a bold claim in an editorial published before the United States entered World War II:
We are either internationalists or isolationists, and I can see nothing in the future of the United States except absolute ruin of our industrial structure if we become isolationists.
“After the War — What?”, International Conciliation 20 (September 1940)
I found this quote in Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy by Stephen Wertheim. Especially interesting is that you cannot find the quote online, primarily because most of the 587 issues of International Conciliation, published between 1908 and 1972 are generally not digitized and apparently only accessible by visiting libraries.
Watson stuck to his internationalists beliefs: the book IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black documents how IBM continued to do business, through its subsidiary, in Nazi Germany and its conquered territories after war started and continued – indirectly, with the necessary obfuscation – after Germany declared war on the United States. Its punch card technology was used for population census – e.g., finding/killing Jews – railroad scheduling, and likely much more. And after Germany capitulated, IBM sent employees to Europe to track down its machines and calculate outstanding billing and licensing fees.
IBM has always denied Black’s claims, but subsequent editions of the book present increasingly damning documentation uncovered since the initial version. If the book’s claims are true – which, at least, have never been disproven – it shows Watson more concerned with profit than how IBM’s technology (likely) lengthened the war, allowing more deaths than without IBM’s assistance.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if IBM intentionally whitewash their history by making the quote as inaccessible as possible, such as claiming copyright infringement. Needless to say, a very damning quote that unfortunately aligns with the book’s allegations.
