Title: A one-sided account
Product review: "It was an irony of the war that IBM equipment was used to encode and decode for both sides of the conflict" (p. 344). Too bad there wasn't more info like that that actually looked at IBMs role in winning the war to counterbalance this decidedly one-sided account. Every step that IBM made during the war years is portrayed as evil and just doesn't ring true to me. If you're going to give IBM this sort of treatment, you're going to have to go after hundreds if not thousands of other companies who backed the Hitler regime. After I finished reading this book I wasn't convinced that IBM was all that different than any other corporation that did business with Germany at that time and am still scratching my head trying to figure out why they were singled out. Bad judgment in high places is nothing new and, motivated by their hatred of Jews, a rabid Nazi with a pencil could've given an IBM Hollerith machine a run for its money if he had been forced to.
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