INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION (IBM): Um exame das relações com o terceiro Reich e suas implicações durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial (1933-1945)

Abstract

This monograph analyzes the relationship between the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and the Third Reich, examining the ethical, political and legal implications of this collaboration in the context of the Second World War. The main objective is to understand how a multinational corporation, guided by profit and international expansion, can become a key component of a regime responsible for severe human rights violations, thereby contributing to the debate on corporate responsibility in International Relations. The research adopts a qualitative approach, based on bibliographical and documentary analysis, combining literature on multinational enterprises, international political economy and business and human rights with historical studies and archival materials concerning IBM’s activities and those of its German subsidiary Dehomag. The work is organized around three main axes: the historical and theoretical reconstruction of the rise and internationalization of multinational enterprises; the examination of IBM’s trajectory, the formation of Dehomag and the use of punched-card technology in the Nazi state’s administrative apparatus; and the analysis of the broader implications of the case for understanding multinational corporations as political actors, for regulatory and governance frameworks in wartime contexts, and for the company’s institutional memory. The results indicate that IBM’s technology played a significant role in enhancing the bureaucratic efficiency of the regime, that claims of corporate neutrality are untenable in the face of large-scale atrocities, and that this case constitutes an important precedent for the development of contemporary standards of corporate responsibility and human rights due diligence, including with regard to technology companies currently operating under authoritarian regimes.