Dehomag
More info
- Creator
- Willy Heidinger
- Released
- 1910
- Type
- Punched card company
- Owner
- IBM (majority from 1922)
- Successor
- IBM Deutschland (1949)
IBM's German subsidiary leased punched card machines to the Third Reich, and remains the clearest reminder in computing history that a tool is not innocent merely because it is general-purpose.
Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft was founded in 1910 by Willy Heidinger as the German licensee of Hollerith's patents. Hyperinflation forced Heidinger to sell a majority stake, and from 1922 the firm was controlled by IBM. The business model was the American one: the machines were never sold, only leased, and the cards were a consumable the supplier also provided. That produced a continuing dependency — and continuing visibility.
Dehomag equipment was used for the 1933 census and for the 1939 count, which asked about the religion of respondents' grandparents. After the United States entered the war in December 1941 the subsidiary was placed under German custodianship. Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust (2001) argued for extensive knowing complicity; historians have accepted the documented record of machine use while disputing parts of the causal chain. The company was renamed IBM Deutschland in 1949.