Because of the international stature of IBM, Edwin Black's new book is bound to attract attention and generate controversy. Drawing on documents from an impressive range of archives and on very revealing business files from IBM itself, Black reconstructs in great detail a collaborative partnership between IBM and the Hitler regime which was ``intense, indispensable, and continuous''. ...Black portrays Watson as a thoroughly unscrupulous and predatory capitalist in the mould of the old robber barons of the 19th century, a master of dirty tricks who was willing to do almost anything in the pursuit of profit and power. A fascist sympathiser who praised Hitler and Mussolini and cultivated his own bizarre leadership cult within IBM, complete with company songs extolling his own virtues, Watson seems to have been a man whose monstrous egomania and appetite for profit were matched only by his moral turpitude. As Black shows, Watson worked tirelessly after 1933 to cultivate a strong business relationship with the new Reich. His efforts were rewarded with substantial contracts, enormous profits and a medal authorised by the Fuehrer and bestowed on Watson in Berlin in 1937.

Melbourne Age

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