Mike Burger wrote:
>But is that really news? It was IBM Germany, after all. The employees
>were German. Besides the Jews and Gypsies, who else do you think was
>killed...anyone who spoke out against Hitler/The Reich. Hitler ruled by
>fear just as much as force of personality, you know.
The book by Edwin Black that has just been published on this says that the
chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, expressed admiration for Hitler and that
Hitler personally presented Watson with the Merit Cross of the German Eagle
with Star. I don't know to what extent Watson really sympathized with Nazi
ideology. There was pressure on him after the US joined the war to return
the medal, and he did so. According to the book, there was no such thing as
IBM Germany before the war. It was created in order for IBM not to be
caught trading with the enemy. Watson knew that the profits could be
repatriated to the US after the war.
But if one decided to boycott IBM for trading with the Nazis, one should
also boycott: the Ford Motor Company (Henry Ford was awarded a similar
medal, and definitely was a Nazi sympathizer); General Motors, which owned
Opel, purveyor of fine automobiles to the Nazi regime; Bayer
Pharmaceuticals and Hoechst, both of which were part of the notorious I.G.
Farben group, and Hugo Boss, which designed the Nazis' uniforms. There are
many more examples, and it might prove impractical to boycott them all.
The important thing is to understand what happened in the past, in order
better to understand how things are today. That's why I'm planning to read
the book (so far I've only seen an extract from it in the UK Sunday Times).
As for me, you can be absolutely sure that I do NOT own an IBM minidisc
recorder.
Gerry
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