NYTimes on IBM & Nazis

[Doug Millison]

  <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/11/world/11IBM.html>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/11/world/11IBM.html

"The suit argues that Thomas J. Watson, I.B.M.'s chairman from 1915 to 1956,
and other senior executives in New York did nothing to stop the Nazis from
using I.B.M. technology because they wanted to protect profits. It charges that
they knew or should have known where the technology was being used
because the company leased the equipment to customers rather than selling
it, serviced the machines, and helped customers customize punch cards for
each application. The machines were used in German censuses in 1933 and
1939, to organize civil and military operations and, according to documents
cited in the lawsuit, to manage concentration camps."


[P.S.  IBM supplied  computers to make ICBMs, too, re  Pynchon's 
discussion of  the way the factory system, death camps, long-range 
missle program came together in WWII and hooked up with the fruit of 
the Manhattan Project  in the post-WWII period.  Von Braun would be 
seen to take a leading role, too, as the Nazi project rolled more or 
less seamlessly into the American. ]