Edwin Black

Edwin Black is an award-winning "New York Times" bestselling American author and journalist specializing in corporate and historical investigations. He has published sixty editions in fourteen languages in sixty-one countries. He has also written numerous newspaper and magazine articles, published throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. The author has been featured in or the subject of numerous documentaries.

Work

The Transfer Agreement

Edwin Black's first nonfiction book was "The Transfer Agreement", originally published in 1984 and then subsequently republished in 1999, 2001 and 2002. The book details the painful and controversial 1933 agreement between the Nazis and the Zionist Organization to rescue European Jews and their assets by transferring them to Jewish Palestine. The Nazis insisted that the transfer was conditioned on the purchase and resale of German goods. The more goods the Zionist sold, the more Jews the Third Reich released. This program effectively broke the Jewish-led anti-Nazi boycott working to topple the Hitler regime in its first year. As such, the deal tore the Jewish and Zionist communities apart because one could not fight against Hitler by boycotting German goods and at the same rescue Jewish victims of Nazi oppression by selling those same German goods. Black's book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and was given the Carl Sandburg Award for the best nonfiction book of the year. The book was met with a firestorm of publicity and incredulity when it was originally published. Although Black was originally attacked by Jewish communal leaders for revealing the bitter details of the Transfer Agreement, he later became a popular Jewish journalist, considered by many to be one of the Jewish community's most ardent and credible defenders precisely because of the explosive nature of The Transfer Agreement.

IBM and the Holocaust

Black's second nonfiction book was "IBM and the Holocaust" which in February 2001 was published simultaneously in 40 nations in 9 languages and is now sold in 60 nations in 13 languages. In brief, IBM and the Holocaust "tells the story of IBM's conscious involvement-directly and through its subsidiaries-in the Holocaust, as well as its involvement in the Nazi war machine that murdered millions of others throughout Europe". Black's book documents how IBM's New York headquarters and CEO Thomas J. Watson acted through its overseas subsidiaries to provide the Third Reich with punch card machines that could help the Nazis to track down the European Jewry (especially in newly conquered territory). The book quotes extensively from numerous IBM and government memos and letters that describe how IBM in New York, IBM's Geneva office and Dehomag, its German subsidiary, were intimately involved in supporting Nazi oppression. The book also includes IBM's internal reports that admit that these machines made the Nazis much more efficient in their efforts. Several documentaries, including the 2003 film The Corporation screened, C-SPAN broadcast and The Times, the "Village Voice," the JTA and numerous other publications published close-ups of several documents demonstrating IBM's involvement in the Holocaust. These included IBM code sheets for concentration camps taken from the files of the National Archives. Prisoner Code 8 was Jew, Code 11 was Gypsy. Camp Code 001 was Auschwitz, Code 002 was Buchenwald. Status Code 5 was executed by order, code 6 was gas chamber.

One extensively quoted IBM report written by the company's European manager during WWII declared “in Germany a campaign started for, what has been termed … ‘organization of the second front.’” The memo added, “In military literature and in newspapers, the importance and necessity of having in all phases of life, behind the front, an organization which would remain intact and would function with ‘Blitzkrieg’ efficiency … was brought out. What we had been preaching in vain for years all at once began to be realized.” IBM has never denied the details of the book, [ cite web| url=http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/black-edwin/ibm-and-the-holocaust.html | title=The Nizkor Project: IBM and the Holocaust] [cite web| url=http://news.com.com/Probing+IBMs+Nazi+connection/2009-1082_3-269157.html | title=Probing IBM's Nazi connection] and even stated that Black's "case is long and heavily documented." But the company added, "yet he does not demonstrate that I.B.M. [sic] bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done." [ cite web|url=http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/828.wss | title=Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit] The book won two major 2001 awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors: Best Book of the Year and Best Investigative Article of the Year for "IBM and Auschwitz" which was based on the book. IBM and the Holocaust has been featured in hundreds of news articles, magazine stories, TV shows and documentaries, virtually none with rebuttal from IBM.

War against the Weak

Black's third nonfiction book was "War Against the Weak", published in 2003, documenting the forgotten rise of genocidal American eugenics in the first decades of the 20th Century, that is, the drive to create a white, blond, blue-eyed master race. The campaign forcibly sterilized some 60,000 Americans by virtue of racist, pseudoscientific legislation in 27 states eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and made the law of the land. The book also documents the American eugenics movement's direct financial and political sponsorship of Nazi eugenics after the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933 through the efforts of the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. These groups inspired Adolf Hitler to move his German nationalism into biological supremacy. They financed vast eugenic research networks. The Carnegie Institution helped create the mathematical formulas defining a half-Jew, quarter-Jew, sixteen Jew and so forth which became enshrined as the Nuremberg Laws. The Rockefeller Foundation, according to the book, financed the program that sent Mengele into Auschwitz seeking twins for monstrous experimentation. After World War Two, the eugenics movement recoiled and renamed itself "human genetics." War Against the Weak was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and eventually won the 2003 International Human Rights Award from the World Affairs Council.

Banking on Baghdad

Black's fourth nonfiction book was "Banking on Baghdad", which traced the history of commerce and conflict in Mesopotamia and Iraq from the onset of recorded history to the Second Gulf War. The book, which accessed numerous public, private and corporate archives, begins with the first commercial trading of the ancient world in the "Cradle of Civilization," including the origin of that term. But the bulk of the research and text centers on the Ottoman Empire, the run-up to WWI and the western imperialism and League of Nations mandate process that created the oil states and modern-day Iraq. Of particular interest was the book's revelations about he secretive "Redline Agreement," which is published for the first time, and "the Farhud," that is the anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad in 1941. The World Affairs Council awarded the author "Best Book of 2004" for the work.

Internal Combustion

Black's fifth nonfiction book was "Internal Combustion", published in 2006, documenting how society never needed to fuel its industrial expansion on oil, and how rulers, governments and corporations have subverted the alternatives. The book accomplishes this by chronicling the history of fuel and transportation from the beginning of recorded times to the modern day. Extensive use is made of archives and obscure research in this highly footnoted work. Black shows that wood was the original fuel, and this made it the most valuable commodity on earth, tightly controlled by monarchs, and subjects to special "forest laws." Eventually, industrializing civilizations such as Great Britain exhausted their timber supply. When they could no longer invade other lands to acquire more woodlands, these countries turned to an "alternative fuel," mainly coal. Black writes that the rise of coal ushered in the first OPEC-style international fuel cartel, the Hostmen of Newcastle, which manipulated supply and demand, and pressured societies at will to achieve their goals and economic objectives. Coal led to trains, and trains necessitated batteries to operate telegraphs over great distances. Black writes that when in about 1835 electricity was employed to power horseless carriages, the automobile was born. The author then traces the history of the automobile throughout the 1800s and eventually at the turn of the 20th century when vehicles were battery-powered to an abrupt conversion to internal combustion in the years before WWI. Eventually, in the first two decades on the 20th century, Black documents, the corporate forces that controlled the electric car retired it in favor of internal combustion, which was considered more "manly" and profitable than the electric car. The book reveals a heretofore unknown 1912 project by Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to switch the nation back to electric cars, but the project was subverted by corporate opposition and suspicious accidents and a devastating fire at Edison's factory. Black then documents the combine of five corporations led by General Motors to purchase several dozen trolley systems, destroy them, and replace them with oil-burning buses, using a front company called National City Lines. Eventually, the federal government prosecuted and convicted GM of criminal conspiracy, a conviction which was upheld by the Supreme Court. Calling upon previously unknown prosecution records and the court file itself, Black documents the realities of what had been termed an urban legend but was in fact authentic. At the same time, Black shows, GM was collaborating with the Hitler regime to motorize the Third Reich in preparation for war. The book concludes with a forward look into oil alternatives such as natural gas, electric and hydrogen. "Internal Combustion" received four major awards, including best book of the year from the Society of Journalists and Authors, the Rockower Award for investigative reporting, the Green Globes, and the Thomas Edison Award.

Authored books

* 1984 - [http://www.transferagreement.com/ The Transfer Agreement]
* 1999 - [http://www.formatnovel.com/ Format C:]
* 2001 - [http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ IBM and the Holocaust, The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation] .
* 2003 - [http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/ War Against the Weak, Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race] .
* 2004 - [http://www.bankingonbaghdad.com/ Banking on Baghdad, Inside Iraq's 7,000 Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict]
* 2006 - [http://www.internalcombustionbook.com/ Internal Combustion, How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Subverted the Alternatives]
* 2008 - [http://www.planforoilcrisis.com/ The Plan: How to Rescue Society the Day the Oil Stops--or the Day Before]
* 2008 - Nazi Nexus

Contributions to anthologies and other books

* 2004 - Contributor, technical translator, "The Nazi Census: Identification and Control in the Third Reich" by Götz Aly, Karl Heinz Roth, Edwin Black, Assenka Oksiloff (Temple University Press)
* 2005 - Chapter Contributor, "The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World", edited by John Friedman (Picador Books)
* 2006 - Essay Contributor, "What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists", edited by Alan Dershowitz (Wiley Books)

Notable articles

* 2002 - [http://www.featuregroup.com/fgarchive/pollard/pollard.html Why is Jonathon Pollard Still in Prison]
* 2002 - [http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0213,black,33412,1.html Final Solutions, How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland]
* 2002 - [http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0241,black,39111,1.html The IBM Link to Auschwitz]
* 2003 - [http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html Eugenics and the Nazis – the California Connection]
* 2003 - [http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/images/articles/HAdvocate.gifEthnic Cleansing in Connecticut – Nazi Eugenics in the State]
* 2004 - [http://www.featuregroup.com/articles_hate.html Funding Hate – How the Ford Foundation Funds Hate Groups]
* 2004 - [http://www.bankingonbaghdad.com/archive/hnn20041122/7774.html How France Sunk the Original Middle East Peace]
* 2006 - [http://www.internalcombustionbook.com/gmandthenazis.php Hitler's Carmaker – GM and the Nazis] (article series)
* 2007 - [http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/BadArolsenArticles.php The Secret Bad Arolsen Archives] (article series)

Major documentary appearances

* 2002 - "The King of Capitalism", BBC
* 2002 - "The Corporation", theatrical release
* 2007 - "Saddam and the Third Reich", History Channel
* 2007 - "Racism – A History", BBC

References

External links

* [http://www.edwinblack.com/ Edwin Black's official website]
* [http://www.featuregroup.com/ Feature Group News Service]