IBM and the Holocaust (72 page)

Second, the long-standing goal of the Nazi movement, that is, the complete destruction of the Jewish people, was now crystallizing. For years, the debate within Nazi circles had taken many forms, including physical extermination. Hitler had publicly prophesied in 1939 that if the world again returned to war, he would utterly destroy the Jewish people. In Hitler's view, the conflict in Europe became a "World War" when America entered after Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941.
Der Fuhrer
was now determined to unleash a long contemplated campaign of systematic, automated genocide, thus once and for all ridding the world of Jews.
⁶⁸

Just weeks after America entered the war with Germany, the two related campaigns accelerated: extermination by labor, and the new drive to exterminate all Jews by the most expedient method possible. On January 20, 1942, a top-secret conference of Hitler's key lieutenants was held in a Berlin suburb at the elegant terraced villa located at Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58. The purpose: coordinate the efficient murder of millions of Jews. The secret gathering was limited to senior Nazi leadership, including Reinhard Heydrich, the head of Security Police, and Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller. Yet the conferees in many ways relied upon three key lower-level experts. One was Roderich Plate, a racial census expert. The second was Richard Korherr, Himmler's handpicked statistical overlord. The third was Adolf Eichmann. Plate was Korherr's assistant and both were established Hollerith experts.
⁶⁹

During the meeting, Heydrich presented a long list of Jewish populations, broken down by territory and country. Eichmann provided the list based on compilations by Korherr and Plate. Working with a coterie of current and former Dehomag experts, they developed the statistics. The conclave at Wannsee resulted in a Protocol, which outlined the massive demographic and geographic logistical challenge. The printed Protocol's centerpiece was, in fact, the statistical report on the mission ahead.
⁷⁰

Germany: 131,800; Ostmark region: 43,700; Eastern territories: 420,000; Occupied Poland: 2,284,000; Bialystok: 400,000; Bohemia and Moravia: 74,200; Latvia: 3,500; Lithuania: 34,000; Belgium: 43,000; Denmark: 5,600; Occupied France: 165,000; Unoccupied France: 700,000; Greece: 69,600; Netherlands: 160,800; Norway: 1,300. . . . The long enumeration of population statistics went on, country after country, and even included England and Ireland.
⁷¹

The Protocol's grand total was 11 million including the British Isles and a broad estimate of 5 million for Russia. The conference was told, "the number of Jews given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Jews who still adhere to the Jewish faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term 'Jew' according to racial principles."
⁷²

Korherr's estimates for the conference were profoundly inflated. Certainly, Reich experts had been able to create precise population tables for Greater Germany and most of the occupied territories. But, at the time, the Nazis simply lacked accurate information about many other countries, especially Russia. Nonetheless, for the Nazi leadership assembled, the numbers, howsoever inaccurate, presented the outline of the genocidal task they faced. It was massive and unprecedented.

A two-tiered genocide was emphasized: extermination by labor and expedient mass murder. "In the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East," the Protocol recorded. "Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action, doubtless, a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival.
⁷³

"In the course of the practical execution of the Final Solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. . . . The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East." Jews in Poland were specified as "epidemic carriers" and "of approximately 2.5 million Jews, the majority is unfit for work."
⁷⁴
In the parlance of Wannsee, those "unfit for work" were to be put to death as soon as possible.

As daunting as the deportation campaign would be, the Nazis insisted it be subordinated to their own Nuremberg racial theories. A complicated list of mandatory or potential exceptions was laid out. For example, "persons of mixed blood of the first degree married to persons of German blood" would be "treated essentially as Germans."
⁷⁵

The Wannsee Conference and its Protocol were considered by many to be the next major step in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem in Europe. Although most of the bizarre formulaic exceptions would be eventually discarded, and although the true number of Jews existing in Europe was vastly overstated in the meeting, this much was apparent: the Final Solution would require an enormous amount of statistical information. Korherr, assisted by Plate, was ready to provide it.

Plate was an experienced Hollerith expert. After a stint as administrative assistant with the Reich Statistical Office, he joined the Race Political Office of the NSDAP in 1935. Soon thereafter, he assisted noted raceologist Friedrich Burgdorfer in compiling an estimate of all racial Jews in Germany. Later, he helped produce a second estimate, this one of World Jewry. In succeeding years, Plate functioned as the Reich Statistical Office's liaison to Eichmann's
Referat
II 112, also known as the Jewish Division. Plate was described by colleagues as an expert "in all important questions regarding the census, religious and race statistics, special counts of Jews, special counts of foreigners, and minority statistics." Plate, a civilian when Wannsee convened, was required to sign an oath of secrecy three days before the conference and was drafted into the military five days later.
⁷⁶

Korherr was the most important statistics man in the Nazi hierarchy. Irritable, defensive, and almost possessive about his Hollerith machines, Korherr had been developing race-oriented punch card programs for years. Always a rabid raceologist and statistical adventurer, his early writings denounced the "niggerization" of France and urged the defense of the "white race."
⁷⁷

His career included work with the Reich Statistical Office, and later, service as the Director of Population Politics and Statistics for Deputy Fuhrer Hess. But Korherr did not become the undisputed syndic of all Nazi statistics until December 9, 1940. On that day, Himmler issued and personally signed two explicit orders. The first appointed Korherr Inspector of Statistics for the SS as well as for the Chief of the German Police. The second outlined Korherr's broad portfolio. By any reading, it was an extraordinary entitlement and cachet for one who might be viewed as a mere statistical technician. But Korherr was more than just a number cruncher.
⁷⁸
He would become the keeper of the state's most incriminating genocidal secrets.

"The Inspector reports directly to me and receives his instructions from me personally," ordered SS Chief Himmler in Korherr's bona fides. "The Inspector is solely responsible for the totality of statistics of all units and offices in my area. The work of the Inspector is to be supported in every way possible in light of the necessity and significance [of] . . . practical statistics. . . . The Inspector is the sole point of contact between the Reich and provincial and Party statistics."
⁷⁹

Korherr was more than willing to jealously guard his domain of Hollerith expertise, even if it meant tangling with Nazidom's top generals. For example, one general at the Wannsee Conference was
Gruppenfuhrer
Otto Hofmann, the general in charge of the politically well-connected SS Race and Settlement Department. The Race and Settlement Office was a marginal agency that functioned as a marriage-assistance bureau for SS officers, and therefore had to wait two years to secure its own Hollerith. When it finally arrived,
Gruppenfuhrer
Hofmann was excited about his new Hollerith installation, and had already suggested expansive changes in statistical campaigns and the creation of new racial registration offices across Greater Germany. Korherr openly denigrated Hofmann's ideas as unnecessary and duplicative.
⁸⁰

Shortly after the Wannsee Conference, Korherr wrote to a colleague, "I would like to mention that the understandable lack of statistical expertise at the Race and Settlement Office, coupled with their urgent wish for a large statistics office with a Hollerith system and for an SS population card file, made [recent] negotiations extraordinarily difficult. For the statistician, the best proof of an amateur is when someone wants to begin—and end—his statistical work with a card file . . . Since
Reichsfuhrer
[Himmler] appointed me the sole liaison for Reich statistics . . . I see
Gruppenfuhrer
Hofmann's behavior as deliberately . . . undermining my position."
⁸¹

Korherr snidely added, "The person in charge at the Reich Statistical Office was astonished at
Gruppenfuhrer
Hofmann's plans and asked: then why did
Reichsfuhrer
[Himmler] hire me and Dr. Plate. We were both amused at the idea of a Hollerith survey of the entire popular [German] movement . . . I suggested the numerical continuation of the [existing] inventory instead of a [new] Hollerith system . . . I should just float above it all."
⁸²

Korherr's expertise was so valued, Himmler sided with him even over a prominent SS general. Eventually, Himmler issued Korherr an additional directive: "in order to avoid jurisdictional conflicts and streamline work procedures, you are to be given responsibility for processing all statistical matters for [
Gruppenfuhrer
Hofmann's] Race and Settlement Office."
⁸³

As Himmler's plenipotentiary for all statistical matters, Korherr was able to coordinate the data activities of numerous Reich agencies, and call upon many Hollerith experts who had been either trained by Dehomag, or were employees transferred or loaned to government offices for the war period. One example was Albert Bartels, head of the SS machine record agency and in charge of
Waffen
-SS Holleriths at Dachau. Bartels also worked at the complex at 129 Friedrichstrasse. In one typical packet, Bartels sent Korherr "work progress forms and punch cards used in my office. I ask you . . . for the necessary evaluations." Bartels' assistant was Busch, the former Hollerith dealer who ran the
Waffen
-SS machines at the Storkow camp. Herbert Blaettel, a veteran of Dehomag's training department, worked at Dachau's Hollerith Department. Dehomag's Munich dealer, Herr Asmis, sold the Nazi Party office its original leases; he only left the subsidiary in August 1944 to work with government projects. The
Maschinelles Berichtwesen
was the clearing-house for all punch card technology, and their resources could be continuously tapped.
⁸⁴

In January 1943, Korherr was required to provide Himmler with a status report on the Final Solution. To do so, Korherr worked frantically to determine exactly how many Jews had been killed, country by country. He demanded a stream of data from all the ghettos and other territories where Eichmann had been working. Eichmann remembered that he provided Korherr "all our top-secret stuff. That was the order. All the shipments [of Jews] insofar as they had been reported to us." Eichmann added, "The statistician [Korherr] was with me, a week or maybe two, in my office, day after day, making his inquiries, he sent telegrams etc. all over the place."
⁸⁵

Korherr eventually produced a sixteen-page draft report, but was required to condense the tabulated data to just seven pages so Hitler could review it. When Korherr completed the summary, the perfectionist in him was still frustrated. "Despite the expended sweat, an accurate number for this time period cannot be given," he asserted, but he assured the report nonetheless did offer "useful clues." Korherr's progress report was submitted to Hitler on March 23, 1943.
⁸⁶

This time, the numbers were precise, enumerating Jewish communities throughout Europe, by ghetto and territory. The word "evacuation" was used to designate gassing in killing centers such as Treblinka and Sobibor. To eastern Russia: 1,449,692 Jews; to camps in occupied Poland: 1,274,166; through camps in the Warthe region: 145,301. Occupied France: 41,911; Netherlands: 38,571; Belgium: 16,886; Norway: 532; Slovakia: 56,691; Croatia: 4,927. Total evacuations including Special Treatment: 1,873,519. The total was written as more than 2.5 million to date.
⁸⁷

Himmler was so pleased with the report and Korherr's subsequent performance, he eventually appointed the statistician to a specially created agency known as the Statistical Scientific Institute of the
Reichsfuhrer
SS. It, too, was located at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse. Korherr's new office now had the most up-to-the-minute access to all concentration camp information streaming into the
Zentral Institut.
By early 1944, Korherr was able to report to Eichmann a total of 5 million Jews eliminated by "natural decrease, concentration camp inmates, ghetto inmates, and those who were [simply] put to death."
⁸⁸

The offices at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse, undoubtedly processed more information than any other single office in Germany about the mass murder of Europe's Jews. More than a statistical bureau, by its very nature, the Hollerith complex at Friedrichstrasse helped Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann prioritize, schedule, and manage the seemingly impossible logistics of genocide across dozens of cities in more than twenty countries and territories. It was not just people who were counted and marshaled for deportation. Boxcars, locomotives, and intricate train timetables were scheduled across battle-scarred borders—all while a war was being fought on two fronts. The technology had enabled Nazi Germany to orchestrate the death of millions without skipping a note.