Culture and Life
by Rob Gowland
Profits regardless
There has been much excitement and outrage in the United States at revelations by US investigative writer, Edwin Black, that IBM made skads of money out of assisting Hitler's regime to identify and classify the population of Germany, enabling sections of it to be methodically rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps. Computers of course did not exist at the time, but the IBM punch card and card-sorting system was available from IBM's German subsidiary, Dehomag. To satisfy the Nazis' demand for IBM technology the company opened a new factory near Berlin, vastly increasing its investment in its German subsidiary. How could an "American" corporation have helped the Nazis in this way, is the question Black's book raises in the US media. Some are trying to blame it on a personal aberration of IBM's creator and chairman at the time, Thomas J Watson, an open admirer of Hitler. Watson paid close personal attention to the running of Dehomag, the company's German subsidiary. The Nazis recognised a "good friend" when they met one and the F hrer personally rewarded Watson with the Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star. However, the shock horror reaction aroused by these revelations is largely a facade designed to obscure the fact that fascism and big business are inextricably entwined. Fascism is, after all, a system of class oppression - - specifically capitalist oppression. It is not peculiar to any one country, certainly not Germany. Horthy's Hungary, Mussolini's Italy, Mannerheim's Finland, Pilsudski's Poland all predate Hitler's Germany as fascist states. And fascists everywhere, Hitler included, could not flourish without substantial financial and political assistance from big business. Let's look at how Hitler got started: Immediately after WW1, "Germany was passing through its period of bitter post-war crisis, of mass unemployment, of unprecedented inflation and widespread hunger. "Behind the democratic fa ade of the Weimar Republic, which had been established in collusion with the German High Command after the bloody suppression of the German workers' and soldiers' soviets, a cabal of Prussian militarists, Junkers and industrial magnates were furtively planning the rebirth and expansion of Imperial Germany. "... Supposedly, the German Military Intelligence Section IIIB, had been disbanded at the conclusion of the war. Actually, it had been reorganised with lavish funds supplied by [industrialists] Krupp, Hugenberg and Thyssen, and was busily functioning under the supervision of its old anti- Semitic chief, Colonel Walther Nicolai. "...Among the chief financial contributors to the secret campaign for rejuvenating German Imperialism was a suave, energetic industrialist whose name was Arnold Rechberg. A former personal adjutant of the Crown Prince and a close friend of the members of the old Imperial High Command, Rechberg was associated with the great German potash trust. "He was one of the chief promoters of the secret German nationalist and anti-Semitic leagues. It was this avocation that drew his attention to [the rabidly anti-Semitic emigre from the Russian revolution] Alfred Rosenberg. "Rechberg arranged to meet Rosenberg [the son of a Baltic landowner from the Tsarist port of Reval]. Taking an immediate liking to the counter- revolutionary zealot from Reval, Rechberg introduced him to another of his proteges, a thirty-year-old Austrian rabble-rouser and Reichswehr spy named Adolf Hitler. "Rechberg was already providing funds to buy the uniforms and to meet various other expenses of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Now Rechberg and his wealthy friends purchased an obscure newspaper, the "Volkischer Beobachter", and turned it over to the Nazi movement. "The publication became the official organ of the Nazi Party. As its editor, Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg." (Sayers & Kahn, "The Great Conspiracy"). But the Nazis were not aided by German industrialists alone. Sayers and Kahn again: "Like Henri Deterding in England [the boss of Shell] and Fritz Thyssen in Germany, the American automobile king, Henry Ford, had identified himself with world anti-Bolshevism and with the rapidly developing phenomenon of fascism. "According to the February 8, 1923, edition of the "New York Times", Vice- President Auer of the Bavarian Diet publicly stated: `The Bavarian Diet has long had information that the Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-Semitic chief who is Henry Ford. "`Mr Ford's interest in the Bavarian anti-Jewish movement began a year ago when one of Mr Ford's agents came in contact with Dietrich Eichart, the notorious Pan-German. "`The agent returned to America and immediately Mr Ford's money began coming to Munich. Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr Ford's support and praises Mr Ford not as a great individualist but as a great anti-Semite.' "In the small, unimpressive office on Cornelius Street in Munich which was Adolf Hitler's headquarters, a single framed photograph hung on the wall. The picture was of Henry Ford." A decade later and lots of US banks and industrialists were investing in Nazi Germany, financing the build-up of its military and industrial strength. American capital financed and profited from developments as diverse as Opel cars and trucks (owned by General Motors), the Lorenz Radio Company, even Focke-Wulf, manufacturer of fighters and bombers for the Luftwaffe. Coca Cola's German subsidiary flourished under the Nazis even inventing "Fanta". When the US entered the War, these corporations took elaborate steps to appear to cease "trading with the enemy". But capital knows no national loyalty. Black points out that IBM, for example, "fabricated elaborate document trails ... to demonstrate compliance when the opposite was true". Pass up the chance to make money from both sides of the conflict? Not likely.