It sounds like German employees in Germany and it’s territories working for the german subsidiary did work for the German government yes, and after the war was declared they did some very shady stuff. Similarly American citizens working for German companies in America did work for the US government during the war.
I don’t really see what’s surprising about any of this. The implication seems to be that the US directors of IBM were supposed to do something about it, but I’m not sure what.
Of course if some of these contracts for the concentration camps and such were tendered during peacetime, and this was known and it was possible for the US operation to exercise oversight, that would be incredibly damning.
Are you just guessing though? There certainly was coordination between IBM in the US and IBM in Nazi Germany even during the war. Look at IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black for example.
We can argue about the scale of involvement and its meaning, but if you're not just speculating you should mention a source.
The Just World Fallacy is incredibly strong in this one.
Sure, the US imprisoned its citizens of Japanese ethnicity during WWII, a practice approved by its highest court, but they would never imprison Jewish people just for their ethnicity, right?
If I'm committing a fallacy, it's probably just assuming that individual American IBM executives probably wouldn't have actively and knowing facilitated genocidal policies. Also that if German IBM employees did do so, that's on them, not necessarily US execs who may have had no knowledge or awareness of it.
That turns out to be false though, it's seems apparent that US execs had a pretty good idea what their machines were being used to do at last up to 1942. Not in detail, they probably weren't aware of the specific activities happening at say Treblinka, I don't think anyone in the US did, but they were aware that German government policy was the registration and oppression of Jews and other minorities and that IBM machines were facilitating it.
You pretty much just hoped something wasn't true, even though references were easily available, so you started making excuses, caveats and assumptions instead of following up on those references. Really what was your comment going to achieve?
Your fallacy is to repeatedly make assumptions in favour of the US without any evidentiary basis. When history is as well studied as it is, there's no need to propagate your assumptions.
Now you're at it again - I just Googled "when was us aware of the holocaust" and found an interesting Time article. There were already rumours of mass killing. And the existence of concentration camps, ie not merely "registration and oppression" but active imprisonment, was very well known. The number of victims was underestimated in the common mind - but IBMs contribution of record keeping systems was to help increase that number.
Nah, this is just the ultimate conclusion of the Friedman doctrine: there is no morality, only legality. Unless you can conclusively prove that IBM US C-level executives knew about the Holocaust while it was happening, it was just business as usual which makes it okay by definition.
I don’t really see what’s surprising about any of this. The implication seems to be that the US directors of IBM were supposed to do something about it, but I’m not sure what.
Of course if some of these contracts for the concentration camps and such were tendered during peacetime, and this was known and it was possible for the US operation to exercise oversight, that would be incredibly damning.