Machine reporting

The machine reporting system was the punched card office of the High Command of the Army , later the High Command of the Wehrmacht and the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition . Due to the transfer of personnel to the German Armed Forces , electronic data processing was also called that way at times . In some cases the term was also used in the civil economic sector.

The machine reporting was a military information system with which the racial political office of the NSDAP , the SS-Wirtschaftsbetriebe in particular, the German economy in general and the Wehrmacht largely exploited the potential of Hollerith punch cards .

Use of punch card systems for military data

When the product decision was made in 1937 as to which tabulating machine the Wehrmacht should choose, there were three applicants:

• DEHOMAG , a subsidiary of IBM ,
• Bull computer and
• Powers Accounting Machine Company .

Germany

During the First World War , punch cards were used in Germany at the Arms and Ammunition Procurement Office (WUMBA), Haus Cumberland . The punch cards were retained after the war, the key remained secret, which was used as an argument for use in the “Third Reich”. The naval administration was already using punch cards for billing of fees and material costs at shipyards before 1934.

Worldwide

Infantry with the new steel helmet, German manufacture on the left, Austrian manufacture on the right

• The US Army had used punch card logistics in the medical service during World War I.
• Austria-Hungary produced the steel helmet model 1917 at Krupp Berndorfer Metallwarenfabrik . For the statistical validation of the design, Kuk medical reports were evaluated using Hollerith perforated card technology.
• In Poland, the IBM subsidiary was called »Polski Hollerith« until 1938, it reported on multitasking and, with the reverse Polish notation, had potential for the development of computers.
• There was also a report on the deployment in the Czech Republic, Holland and Belgium in the defense system, i.e. the population statistics.
• The general manager René Carmille sabotaged the use of punch cards to register Jews under the Vichy regime for years .

Punch card systems used

The Remington Rand System Powers machines used by WUMBA were used again after the machine reporting system was set up.

One result of the international prospecting for a punch card system for the Wehrmacht was reflected in the “Taschenbuch der Heere” (Passow 1938). The other military administrations served as references when selling the office machines. A report by US General Brehon B. Somervell about the use of IBM machines in the US Army aroused considerable enthusiasm in the Wehrmacht administration. Passow favored mobile Hollerith machine units, similar to how they had proven effective with the US Army .

equipment

Usually a district office was equipped as follows:

• Input:
  10 alphabet punches and testers
• Processing:
  1 piece D-11 tabulating machine with total punching
  2–3 pieces sorting machines
• Edition:
  1 piece IBM 405 Alphabetical Accounting Machine (Dup / Print / Punch)
  (appearance and function roughly like teleprinter)
• 8 pieces of magnetic punch and tester
• 3 pieces of blueprint machines "Ultrakop"

A usual district office had one or two Hollerith specialists and 40 to 50 other employees, with one or two Wehrmacht officers responsible for each branch office.

Field of activity of the MB - representations from 1938

The presentation of the tasks of an “ IT weapon” is fashion-dependent: At the moment, the profession would be described as Network-Centric Warfare .

When Kurt Passow came to the specialist public with his presentation of machine reporting in 1965, the development of data processing had progressed twenty years since the use of machine reporting in the war. Passow's presentation is reminiscent of a sales presentation in which no task is excluded. With his presentation, Passow adheres to tasks that are strictly required by orders. He thus formulates a nerd , a computational servant who, in case of doubt, should be held less responsible for the results of his actions than his tabulating machine.

The Passow nerd remains undefeated until the "Jasmin" breakdown at the Bundeswehr Intelligence Center .

Ongoing Psychological Operation - German Office (WASt)

“At the beginning of 1938, the automatic raw material calculation for the mobilization of war started. In the spring, the medical inspection also tried to carry out work at the punch card office of the Army Weapons Office , namely the recording of medical records and examination results for the entire area of ​​the OHK ( Army High Command ).

This work, which was considered extremely important, was based on the knowledge that during the First World War the payment of the pension entitlements of those involved in the war and surviving dependents failed because the documents were too lengthy to provide. It was believed that this poor organization had contributed greatly to the revolutionary mood at the end of the war in 1918. Even in 1937 it was not yet possible to get documents from the archives at short notice. "(Passow 1965)

Medical services

"As a result of war experience, America had very good results from the field of medical services, which were to play a fundamental role in the development of the German medical service in World War II." (Passow 1965)

Other aspects

At the beginning of 1945, machine reporting had around 200 different areas of activity. Shortly before May 8, 1945, all documents from the Berlin Central Office were destroyed; on the other hand, on Passow's orders, tabulating machines and equipment (data carriers and punch cards) were preserved undamaged. In the rearmament phase, attempts were made to reconstruct the individual working areas, which was achieved in around 120 areas.

In 1965, Passow claimed that the areas that could not be reconstructed had been so secret that even senior staff at the MB did not know what was hidden behind the figures to be processed. The role of statisticians Friedrich Burgdörfer , Richard Korherr and Siegfried Koller in the preparation and implementation of the Shoah and the fascist terror regime has been known since the publication of Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth (“The restless registration”, 1983) . Edwin Black ("IBM and the Holocaust", 2001) made it clear that significant contributions to war production in SS business enterprises and German industry were made under a regime of fatal exploitation of forced laborers and prisoners in concentration camps using punched cards.

Passow (1965) contrasted the seizure of motor vehicles in Holland, which was coordinated by the MB, with the seizures carried out without the MB in Belgium and France. Black (2001) contrasted the low-friction deportation and murder of many Dutch Jews by census with the support of the German Hollerith with a proportionately lower murder rate of French Jews and points to the heroic behavior of the head of the French statistical office René Carmille, to whom this reduction in the murder rate is partially attributable to a delaying tactic.

As a further achievement of the MB, Passow complained in 1965 that two winter divisions 1941/42 were deployed against the Soviet Union by reducing the recovery period for soldiers from 30 to 28 days. Comparison with REFA .

Organizational structure

Management structure

The machine reporting system was understood by the Wehrmacht as a command weapon and was consequently subject to the Army Weapons Office , whose head from December 1, 1933 to February 28, 1938 was Major General Kurt Liese and then General of the Artillery Karl Becker .

The high command of the Wehrmacht had hired the Reichsbahn-Oberinspektor Hörber from the Reichsbahndirektion Köln as a punch card specialist with the military economic staff and entrusted him with the establishment of a central office at the OKW and all armaments inspections. The OKW let the MB rise as a test balloon at the OKH and therefore ordered Hörber to provide expert support to Rittmeister Passow in setting up the OKH's punch card office. The demand for planning data led to a new type of integration of the MB into the overall organization of the authorities, which functioned smoothly in the last years of the war.

Development of the automated reporting system in 1945

• Head of machine reporting: Colonel Kurt Passow
• Military area Head of the MB at the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW): Colonel Kurt Passow
• Unified reporting by General Kurt Waeger in the armaments office of the RMfRuK
• Head of the MB at the Army High Command (OKH): Colonel Kurt Passow
• Head of the MB at the High Command of the Navy (OKM): Captain Louis
• Head of MB at the Air Force High Command (OKL): Heimerdinger
• Civil Division Head of the MB at the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production ( Albert Speer ): Colonel Kurt Passow
• Standardized reporting: State Councilor Rudolf Schmeer (* 1905 Aachen, electrical engineer, NSDAP Cologne interface coordinator SS), Deputy Chairman of the German Labor Front
• Central office: Lieutenant Colonel Huebner (offered front service in March 1945)

Depending on the machine utilization, decentralized branch offices, which were subject to the head of MB technically (see geographical distribution), for example for armaments inspections, medical inspections or the General Army Office.

Staff: 5000 to 6000 people

over 200 sets of punch card machines

a total of about 5000 machines.

Temporal development of the line

December

• 1937 - 1st stage: establishment of the first punch card office; is subordinate to the Ia of the Heereswaffenamt.
• 1939 - 2nd stage: Punch card position is technically assigned to the chief engineer. of the Army Weapons Office as a department chief engineer. 5 / Wa I assumed.
• 1940 - 3rd stage: The punch card office becomes independent as a machine reporting system for the Army Commander in Chief. Own development of machines ordered (possibly Wanderer / Bull)
• 1942 - 4th stage: Deployment of a head of the machine reporting of the High Command of the Wehrmacht with the title "Head of MB / OKVV".
• 1942 - 5th stage: Deployment of a head of mechanical reporting (MB) to the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production.
• 1943 - 6th level: Deployment of a head of machine reporting to summarize all machine reporting with special powers.
• 1944 - 7th level: The head of machine reporting in the Ministry of Armaments and War Production becomes an independent head of the office group.

Individuals from the MB

• Liesefeld Hermann , captured in 1945 as Sergeant in District Office IX (Kassel), MB, he was the hollerite expert at the armaments inspection of the Reich Ministry of Armaments and Ammunition.
• When he was arrested, Robert Ritter stated that he was a mathematician and statistician at the field economics office at the OKW, that he had organized and advised the use of statistical methods on the Hollerith tabulator.

(After the territory of the Soviet Union had largely been evacuated by German troops in the course of 1944, the official end of the Economic Staff East followed on November 1, 1944, when Lieutenant General Otto Stapf, who took over the field management office on October 15, 1944, the rest of the former Defense Economy and Armaments Office, merged both institutions.)

• Theodor Schuch (* 1912; † April 6, 1962) Cologne, 1934–1942 dealer for Hollerith tabulating machines in Cologne, drafted into the MD department of the Reich Ministry of Armaments and Ammunition on March 15, 1943, 1945 as a private at the District Office IX, MB in captivity , provides essential information about the use of Hollerith tabulating machines.

Geographical distribution

First of all, in November 1937, a small test facility was set up at Alexanderplatz in Berlin, in the Army-Marine House at Bahnhof Zoo ( Berlin-Charlottenburg ), the OKH's first punched card office.

A central office was in the Ministry of Armaments and War Production, which was responsible for standardizing the reporting system.

The districts in the German Reich corresponded to the military areas:

• in the occupied territories
  • Oslo for Scandinavia
  • Brussels for Belgium and the Netherlands
  • Vienna for Austria, Switzerland and the Southeast European region
  • Posen was responsible for the occupied eastern territories and the protectorates together with Department VII of the Reich Statistical Office.

From 1944 the school for machine reporting from Berlin was set up in Frankenberg in Saxony .

Arms inspection	Location	Relocated April 1, 1945	Number of tabulation units
I.	Koenigsberg	Flensburg - Mürwik by ship (at the beginning of May the special area Mürwik was established there with the last Reich government )	2
II	Szczecin	Neudietendorf via Karolinenhorst in the district court and tax office Gryfino , district Belkow, registry office Kublank	2
III	Berlin	Zorndorf	2
IV	Dresden	Agricultural college in Tetschen-Liebwerd	3
V	Stuttgart	Nürtingen	2
VI	Muenster	Emsdetten	2
VII	Munich	Aichach	2
VIII	Wroclaw		2
IX	kassel	Zorndorf, Friedigerrode in the Schwalm-Eder district , Oberaula	3
X	Hamburg	in the immediate vicinity of Hamburg	3
XI	Hanover	Else (Werre)	2
XII	Wiesbaden	Bad Schwalbach	3
XIII	Nuremberg	Ansbach Brauhaus Str.9B	2
XVII	Vienna	Kenyong Alley	3
XX	Danzig	Sopot	2
XXI	Poses	Neudietendorf	1
XXI	Strasbourg	Neighborhood of Stuttgart	2
XXI	Bohemia-Moravia	Prague	2
	Central archive for military medicine	Berlin Reichstag	3
	Field stuff	Berlin-Düppel Zehlendorf or Bench Allee Stassfurt	3

The decentralized main office was housed in Wendisch Rietz on May 8, 1945 in a large barrack camp, which was nicknamed Otto Ernst Remer 's Hotel . The tabulating machines were in Schwarzborn Castle.

At the beginning of April 1945 the department for machine reporting of the Reichsgruppe Industrie moved on the advice of officers of the economic department from Gera , located in the Soviet occupation zone , to the vicinity of the American headquarters in Bad Nauheim . This department was renamed the Statistical Office and integrated into the Industry Branch.

MB maintained strategic data and emphasized the administrative nature.

There are reports of employees of the MB who, when they were captured, presented the MB as a statistical military administration to the US military authorities.

During his time in the Wolfsschanze, Adolf Heusinger had no knowledge of the existence of the MB office and asked the Bundeswehr to report on the production of his strategic information.

The members of the European Defense Community (EDC) also learned about this facility later .

Forecast for a totalitarian system in 1965

In 1965, the head of machine reporting, Kurt Passow, was pessimistic about the possibility of building up such a powerful information structure again with regard to the data processing available at the time. He named form design, numbering, work planning.

Central archive for military medicine

The Central Archives for Military Medicine was an offshoot of the machine reporting system that carried out its tasks from the Reichstag building . It was headed by General Doctor (Army) Hans Müller (* 1890), and its staff included Hans Hosemann , Berthold Mikat and Siegfried Koller . In 1943, the German Wehrmacht registered both the transfer of medical data from conscripts during the draft and data from over 15 million medical histories on punch cards. Millions of punched cards with medical data of the German Wehrmacht are said to have been misused as heating material in post-war Berlin after the Second World War and have therefore been lost. This does not affect the retention requirements for military medical documentation. The tasks were later transferred to the Institute for Military Medical Statistics and Reporting .

literature

• Kurt Passow The automated reporting . In: Defense technical monthly books. No. 62, 1965
• Götz Aly , Karl Heinz Roth : The complete recording: census, identification, weeding out under National Socialism. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-596-14767-0 ( limited preview in Google book search)
• Edwin Black: IBM and the Holocaust. The global corporation's involvement in the crimes of the Nazis. Propylaea 2001, ISBN 3-549-07130-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ FW Kistermann: Hollerith punched card system development (1905-1913). In: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 27, 2005, pp. 56-66, doi: 10.1109 / MAHC.2005.8 .
2. ↑ Passow 1965; What is meant is either a machine by James Powers , which was compatible with the IBM card format from 1906, or a machine that was also compatible with the IBM card format, from 1927 when Powers merged with Remington, which, however, when presented in such detail, raises the question, whether there was an embargo violation with the delivery of the Remington machine to the German Reichswehr.
3. ↑ Correspondence on the establishment of the school. (No longer available online.) April 18, 2008, formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 18, 2015 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
4. ↑ ... from aniline to forced labor, The path of a monopoly through history, On the origin and development of the German chemical industry . ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) A reader from the Federal Conference of the Chemistry Schools, 1994/2007, p. 111, accessed April 18, 2008. 
5. ↑ Götz Aly , Karl Heinz Roth : The complete collection: census, identification, weeding out in National Socialism. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-596-14767-0 ( limited preview in Google book search)
6. ↑ Claus O. Köhler: History of Medical Informatics in Germany from the Beginning to 1980 . P. 22 (PDF)