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them. They resented reporting the prisoner departures in column 34 of the punch card forms as code 7—escaped. 13
    He became fascinated with a young Dutch seamstress. Who was she? Her journey began in the Westerbork camp. Went to Auschwitz. She was born May 10, 1924. No name. Just a number. 53752. But who was 53752, Cheim wondered? Did she not have a name, only a number? 14
    Cheim soon began to understand the truth. Hundreds of thousands of human beings were being identified, sorted, assigned, and transported by means of the Hollerith system. Numbers and punch cards had dehumanized them all, he thought. Numbers and punch cards would probably kill them all. But Cheim never understood where the Hollerith system came from. 15
    One December morning, even as the numbered man Cheim, in his tattered uniform, stepped quickly toward the Bergen-Belsen Hollerith office to stay warm and to stay alive, another man, this one dressed elegantly in a fine suit and warm overcoat, stepped out of a new chauffeured car at 590 Madison Avenue in New York. He was Thomas J. Watson. His company, IBM—one of the biggest in the world—custom-designed and leased the Hollerith card sorting system to the Third Reich for use at Bergen-Belsen and most of the other concentration camps. International Business Machines also serviced its machines almost monthly, and trained Nazi personnel to use the intricate systems. Duplicate copies of code books were kept in IBM's offices in case field books were lost. What's more, his company was the exclusive source for up to 1.5 billion punch cards the Reich required each year to run its machines. 16
    Indeed, the systems were not only used in the concentration camps, but hundreds of them had been installed for years throughout the entire commercial, industrial, war-making, and anti-Jewish infrastructure of Nazi Germany and Nazi-dominated Europe.
    On this cold December day, Watson was unyielding. His German subsidiary, Dehomag, was out of control. More lawyers would be called, more telegrams would be sent, more clever maneuvering with the State Department would be undertaken—not to stop Dehomag from its genocidal partnership with the Third Reich, but to ensure that all the proceeds and profits remained with IBM NY. No matter who won, IBM would prosper. Business was its middle name.

II THE IBM - HITLER INTERSECTION
    ON JANUARY 30, 1933, THE WORLD AWOKE TO A FRIGHTENING new reality: Adolf Hitler had suddenly become leader of Ger many.Hitlerites dressed in a spectrum of uniforms from gauche to ominous, paraded, motored, and bicycled through Berlin in defiant celebration. Hanging from trucks and stomping through the squares, arms outstretched and often swaggering in song, the Nazis were jubilant. Their historic moment—fraught with emotional expectations of revenge and victory against all adversaries—their long awaited decisive moment had arrived. From this instant, the world would never be the same.
    Quickly, Hitler's Nazis moved to take over the entire government and virtually all aspects of German commerce, society, and culture. Der Fuhrer wanted an Aryan Germany to dominate all of Europe with a master race subjugating all non-Aryans. For Jews, Hitler had a special plan: total destruction. There were no secrets in Hitler's vision. He broadcast them loudly to the world. They exploded as front-page headlines in every major city, on every radio network, and in weekly cinema newsreels. Ironically, Hitler's fascism resonated with certain men of great vision, such as Henry Ford. Another who found Hitlerism compelling was Thomas J. Watson, president of one of America's most prestigious companies: Inter national Business Machines. 1
    The roads traveled by Hitler and Watson began in different parts of the world in completely different circumstances with completely different intentions. How did these two men—one an extreme capitalist, the other an extreme fascist—form a technologic and commercial alliance that would