Dehomag was a German business, effectively a franchisee and subcompany of International Business Machines. The word was an acronym for Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH - "German Hollerith Machines LLC." "Hollerith" refers to the inventor of the technology of punched cards, Herman Hollerith. Franchising (from the French for free) is a method of doing business wherein a franchisor licenses trademarks and tried and proven methods of doing business to a franchisee in exchange for a recurring payment, and usually a percentage piece of gross sales or gross profits as well as the annual... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... The punch card (or Hollerith card) is a recording medium for holding information for use by automated data processing machines. ...
Under Nazi Germany, Dehomag was the company that leased and maintained the Nazis' collection of punch card machines. The use of this technology increased the efficiency of the Final Solution greatly. [citation needed] Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... In a February 26, 1942 letter to German diplomat Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). ...
The Hollerith Punch-card system was invented for the U.S. Census Bureau around 1890 by German-American Herman Hollerith. He leased the machines to foreign governments as well for census work, including Russia. Willy Heidinger, an acquaintance of Hollerith's and soon-Nazi supporter, licensed all of Hollerith’s patents in 1910, and created DEHOMAG, leasing Hollerith technology in Germany. The punch card (or Hollerith card) is a recording medium for holding information for use by automated data processing machines. ...
Further reading
Black, Edwin. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation' ISBN 0609607995
IBM and the Holocaust Book review at greenleft.au
IBM and the Holocaust Book review at www.hacknot.info
CNN: "A Swiss court allows Gypsies' Holocaust lawsuit to proceed"
Dehomag D11 tabulation machine exibit in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dehomag, like IBM, owned and leased all its machines, customizing them for specific tasks, so its employees always knew what they were being used for.
The influence of these Jews, in addition to the anti-German Jewish and other lies in newspapers, are beginning to affect his mind....” Dehomag’s founders, as well as the Nazis, now tried to remove all vestige of IBM control, exposing the financial tangles that had made German ownership of the company something of a front.
As early as May 1941, Dehomag was cutting prices to support the German war effort and, in the ruins of the Reich in the summer of 1945, the firm was reduced to making toys from scrap metal so back salaries could be paid.
In 2001 author Edwin Black published a book titled IBM and the Holocaust (http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/), which alleged that although IBM did not control Dehomag once World War II began, Thomas J. Watson nevertheless knew of the German regime's activities and was indifferent to any moral issues.
IBM has donated more than 10,000 pages of archived documents concerning Dehomag to Hohenheim University in Germany and New York University.
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