IBM and World War II

In Germany, during World War II, IBM engaged in business practices which have been the source of controversy. Much attention focuses on the role of IBM's German subsidiary, known as Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, or Dehomag. Topics in this regard include:

• documenting operations by Dehomag which allowed the Nazis to better organize their war effort, in particular the Holocaust and use of Nazi concentration camps;
• comparing these efforts to operations by other IBM subsidiaries which aided other nations' war efforts;
• and ultimately, assessing the degree to which IBM should be held culpable for atrocities which were made possible by its actions.
• the selection methods they developed and used had the purpose of selecting and killing civilians.

In the United States, IBM was, at the request of the government, the subcontractor of the punched card project for the internment camps of Japanese Americans:

His grand design for 1943 was a locator file in which would appear a Hollerith alphabetic punch card for each evacuee. These cards were to include standard demographic information about age, sex, education, occupation, family size, medical history, criminal record, and RC location. However, additional data categories about links to Japan were also maintained, such as years of residence in Japan and the extent of education received there... The punch card project was so extensive and immediate that the War Relocation Authority subcontracted the function to IBM.[1]

IBM equipment was used for cryptography by US Army and Navy organisations, Arlington Hall and OP-20-G and similar Allied organisations using Hollerith punched cards (Central Bureau and the Far East Combined Bureau).

The company developed and built the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator which was used to perform computations for the Manhattan project.

In an "IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit", IBM responded in February 2001 that:

It has been known for decades that the Nazis used Hollerith equipment and that IBM's German subsidiary during the 1930s – Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag) – supplied Hollerith equipment. As with hundreds of foreign-owned companies that did business in Germany at that time, Dehomag came under the control of Nazi authorities prior to and during World War II. It is also widely known that Thomas J. Watson, Sr., received and subsequently repudiated and returned a medal presented to him by the German government for his role in global economic relations. These well-known facts appear to be the primary underpinning for these recent allegations.[7]

Richard Bernstein, writing for The New York Times Book Review in 2001, pointed out that "many American companies did what I.B.M. did. ... What then makes I.B.M. different?" He states that Black's case in his book IBM and the Holocaust "is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that I.B.M. bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done."[8] IBM quoted this claim in a March 2002 "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit," after the publication of Black's revised paperback edition:

Mr. Black is asserting that IBM is withholding materials regarding this era in its archives. There is no basis for such assertions and we deplore the use of such claims to sell books.[9]