IBM & Nazis

[Eric Rosenbloom]

Another story link, from Reuters:

<http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010211/ts/ibm_nazis_dc_2.html>

Quotes: "IBM, as a nearly exclusive supplier of database equipment to the
Third Reich, fed this hunger not out of Nazi sympathies per se but from
a desire to dominate global markets for its products, Black argues."

"Hollerith punch cards are the same technology blamed for the election
counting breakdown in Florida last year."

That desire to dominate the world sure is troublesome . . .

Doug Millison wrote:
> So, what does this have to do with Pynchon, at least one (and perhaps
> more) of you will ask.  Good question. The Holocaust in GR' the
> explicit link between the factory system, the German long range
> rocket program, and the death camps that Pynchon discusses in his
> Luddite essay, the computer imagery in COL49 (binary code, the kind
> used to program computers), the role that computers play in the
> arguably neo-Nazi resurgence that Pynchon depicts in Reagan-era
> Vineland -- you get the picture.  Or not. For my money, it's
> interesting to see Pynchon's popularization of the notion that
> multinational corporations profited from the War -- in GR -- and the
> Holocaust that was at the heart of that War (WWII, at least) borne
> out by subsequent revelations by historians. Your mileage will vary,
> of course.

The use of advanced technology is what, I think, sets the Nazi death
machine apart from other contenders for the genocidal record books (not,
as your anti-semite would have it, because the Jews are now so powerful
and make everyone else feel guilty). Everyone else, from the Ottomans
and Stalin to the Khmer Rouge in my native country and the Hutu rampage
against Tutsis in Rwanda, just killed. The Nazis used science, not just
advanced tabulating machines and the latest poison gas, but also
scrupulously planned cutting-edge psychological programs to prepare for
and then mask the killing operation. That is what is so uniquely
chilling. A crime of passion, stupidity, brutality is one thing; but a
coldly planned long-term operation as the Nazis got going kinda shakes
you up.

Gravity's Rainbow may avoid the overt paths of the war and the holocaust
but it drives right to the core of the horror -- that the culmination of
Greek-Roman-German (Indo-European, or Aryan) culture is a program of
mass death. Learning that multinational corporations transcended the
war, maintaining shortages at home and profit arrangements behind enemy
lines, serves to mock even further our vaunted civilization. Is Blicero
our standard bearer, or . . .

Go Saoraid,
Eri Cros...



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