![]() However, another invention did exist: the IBM punch card and card sorting system-a precursor to the computer. When the Final Solution sought to efficiently transport Jews out of European ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps, with timing so precise the victims were able to walk right out of the boxcar and into a waiting gas chamber, the coordination was so complex a task, this too called for a computer. When the Reich needed to mount a systematic campaign of Jewish economic disenfranchisement and later began the massive movement of European Jews out of their homes and into ghettos, once again, the task was so prodigious it called for a computer. To search generations of communal, church, and governmental records all across Germany-and later throughout Europe-was a cross-indexing task so monumental, it called for a computer. Only after Jews were identified could they be targeted for asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately extermination. To Nazis, Jews were not just those who practiced Judaism, but those of Jewish blood, regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious activity, or even conversion to Christianity. When Hitler came to power, a central Nazi goal was to identify and destroy Germany's 600,000 Jews. The destruction of the Jewish people became even less important because the invigorating nature of IBM's technical achievement was only heightened by the fantastical profits to be made at a time when bread lines stretched across the world. To the blind technocrat, the means were more important than the ends. Solipsistic and dazzled by its own swirling universe of technical possibilities, IBM was self-gripped by a special amoral corporate mantra: if it can be done, it should be done. And statisticians used their little known but powerful discipline to identify the victims, project and rationalize the benefits of their destruction, organize their persecution, and even audit the efficiency of genocide. Scientists and engineers debased their higher calling to devise the instruments and rationales of destruction. Doctors defiled the art of medicine to perpetrate ghastly experiments and even choose who was healthy enough to be worked to death-and who could be cost-effectively sent to the gas chamber. Lawyers perverted concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish laws. Police officials disregarded their duty in favor of protecting villains and persecuting victims. In the upside-down world of the Holocaust, dignified professionals were Hitler's advance troops. But for the first time in history, an anti-Semite had automation on his side. There had been czars and tyrants before him. Watson.ĭer Führer's obsession with Jewish destruction was hardly original. That company was International Business Machines, and its chairman was Thomas J. But his quest was greatly enhanced and energized by the ingenuity and craving for profit of a single American company and its legendary, autocratic chairman. Hitler and his hatred of the Jews was the ironic driving force behind this intellectual turning point. The unique igniting event was the most fateful day of the last century, January 30, 1933, the day Adolf Hitler came to power. Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction. The Nazi Party: Table of Contents| Background & Overview| Einsatzgruppen
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |