Collaboration of Convenience: Corporate Complicity from Auschwitz to Trump’s America
“The business world functioned much as the animal kingdom: survival of the fittest.”
— Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust Goodreads
Power, profit, and moral surrender: these are the threads that bind the 1930s to the 2020s. In Nazi Germany, industrial giants found it cheaper, safer, and more profitable to collaborate than to resist. In America, under the rising shadows of authoritarian impulse, we face fresh temptations of the same kind. The lesson of history is not that corporations are evil, but that when state violence becomes legitimate, many firms will adapt their strategy rather than stand in its way.
This is the history of adaptation—and of accumulation.
I. The Machinery of Murder and Profit
The IG Farben Constellation
The name IG Farben (Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG) is haunted today. It was a chemical conglomerate formed in 1925 through the merger of six major German chemical firms. Through the 1930s, Farben became not merely an adjunct to the Nazi state but one of its economic pillars.
One of the most damning illustrations of corporate complicity is the fate of Auschwitz III—Monowitz, also called Buna-Monowitz. Farben decided to build a synthetic rubber and chemical works (the “Buna” plant) near Auschwitz for calculated reasons: cheap energy, access to railway lines, and, above all, a captive workforce of concentration-camp prisoners. The SS, which ran the Auschwitz complex, subleased prisoners to Farben. The Monowitz subcamp was created specifically to staff the Buna plant. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum+3United States Holocaust Memorial Museum+3digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu+3
Farben’s leadership knew the mortality rates would be high. Many workers were sick, starving, overworked, poorly sheltered, and given near zero medical care. The use of slave labor was intrinsic to the economic calculus. As one historian writes, the exploitation of concentration-camp inmates “is a crime against humanity.” Indeed, during the postwar IG Farben trial at Nuremberg, defendants were indicted for precisely this. Wikipedia+3digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu+3United States Holocaust Memorial Museum+3
Heinrich Bütefisch, a senior Farben manager and SS functionary, was convicted and sentenced for his role in exploiting forced labor at Monowitz. After his early release, he went on to join supervisory boards of postwar German chemical firms—a bitter symbol of the boundary between accountability and rehabilitation. Wikipedia
Farben’s ambitions exceeded synthetic rubber. Its pharmaceutical and chemical arms had broad influence; even before Hitler’s rise, the German chemical/pharma industry was world-leading. The regime merely accelerated that trajectory. PubMed+1
To be precise: IG Farben did not “own Auschwitz” in the sense that it controlled the camp complex—that was the SS’s province. Farben built the factory next door, leased labor, and paid the SS for workers. But the camp system remained under SS authority. Many modern conspiracy-laden retellings flatten that distinction; in truth, they coexisted in a macabre symbiosis.
Forced Labor in Ford & GM’s German Arms
Farben may be the dramatic case, but it was hardly alone. The American automakers’ German affiliates—Ford-Werke and Opel (GM’s German division)—also used forced labor during World War II. From 1940 onward, the Nazi regime deployed POWs, forced civilian laborers, and concentration-camp detainees into German industry. Ford-Werke in Cologne and Opel factories did not act under duress only—they actively managed camps, organized maintenance, and became integral parts of the war economy. ResearchGate+2JSTOR+2
Rüdiger Hachtmann’s scholarly article Fordism and Unfree Labour explores the tensions inherent in combining mass-production logic (Fordism) with forced labor regimes. He describes a duality: the techniques of industrial efficiency were adapted to brutal coercion. Workers were seen not as human beings but as machines to be drained until failure. Cambridge University Press & Assessment
In Cologne, for instance, by 1943 about half of the workforce in Ford’s plant consisted of Soviet POWs or women forcibly brought from Ukraine and elsewhere. They were housed in barracks next to the factory, under the supervision of the plant security forces. Their food, rest, and medical care (if any) were minimal; mortality rates were high. Wikipedia
After the war, these companies quietly contributed to restitution funds or settlements, though the sum of moral and material damage was far greater than what they paid.
IBM and the Data Infrastructure of Oppression
Even more insidiously, the Nazis’ bureaucratic and logistical apparatus—the machinery of deportation, identification, census, and transport scheduling—depended on data and tabulation. That is where IBM (and its subsidiaries) becomes relevant.
Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust lays out a broad, ambitious thesis: that IBM, through its German subsidiary Dehomag and interconnected European affiliates, furnished the technologies—punch-card machines, tabulators, spare parts, servicing, and custom cards—that enabled more efficient record-keeping and deportation logistics. scholarship.shu.edu+4Wikipedia+4Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies+4
In Black’s words: “Without IBM’s machinery … Hitler’s camps could have never managed the numbers they did.” Goodreads+1
Critical scholars, however, caution that Black’s thesis sometimes overstates direct culpability. One historian notes that Black does not always convincingly prove causality, pointing out that many of the lists used by the Nazis had local sources independent of national census records. Marcuse Project
Still, the facts remain that:
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IBM’s German affiliate, Dehomag, had a licensing arrangement with U.S. IBM, and its machines were used in Germany and occupied Europe. societyforhistoryeducation.org+2Wikipedia+2
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Maintenance, spare parts, and customer support were supplied from international networks. Wikipedia+1
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Documents reveal that IBM’s European network reported up through Geneva to IBM New York in some cases. Wikipedia+2The Guardian+2
One Guardian report in 2002, referencing newly discovered archival documents, claimed that IBM “directly supplied the Nazis with technology which was used to help transport millions of people to their deaths.” The Guardian
Thomas Watson Sr., IBM’s long-time leader, is often indicted in popular accounts as complicit. Black argues that Watson personally approved the relationships; IBM disputes that interpretation. Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2
Whatever the precise chain of command, it is clear that IBM technology materially lowered the friction in organizing deportation, administration, and forced labor logistics. The architecture of mass murder needed more than bullets—it required paperwork.
II. The Anatomy of Corporate Accommodation
If we strip away the moral shock, what we see is a pattern: when the state becomes violent, many corporations adapt, not reject.
Pre-war Ties, Cartels, and Soft Collaboration
It is tempting to imagine that corporate complicity began only after 1933. But in fact, many of the economic relationships were built earlier.
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Standard Oil and IG Farben: Before Hitler’s regime, Standard Oil and IG Farben held cross-licensing agreements and patent sharing, especially around synthetic fuels and chemistry. During the war, after U.S. entry, direct shipments were curtailed—but the structural alignment had been established. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Patents and technology exchange: Farben, among others, benefited from global licensing regimes and invested heavily in research—pushing the boundaries of organic chemistry, dyes, and drugs even before Nazism. PubMed+1
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Corporate elites and state networks: Many board members or senior managers from German industrial firms were part of nationalist circles, social clubs, or direct political networks. Business elites often saw themselves as partners in state projects of national renewal. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum+2PDXScholar+2
In short, when the regime turned totalitarian, it sometimes merely accelerated networks and strategies already in motion. Corporations didn’t wake up on January 30, 1933, and decide to collude—many had long been preparing for stronger state alignment.
Pragmatism, Cooptation, and the Sliding Scale
In authoritarian regimes, the logic is rarely binary. There is negotiation, “buffering,” and incremental surrender.
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Contracts and coercion: Many companies would claim they were coerced. The Nazi state did not always need to threaten executives personally; it could reorganize boards, nationalize assets, or place “trustees” under SS oversight.
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Dual accounts: Firms often maintained public distance while internally negotiating for subsidy, protection, or exempt status. They would deny culpability even as they reaped benefits.
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Normalization of exclusion: Discriminatory laws—Jewish exclusion, forced requisitions, racial quotas—became “business as usual” in Germany. Corporations adapted their practices, fired Jewish employees, and absorbed Aryanization policies not out of ideology alone but because compliance was safer.
The key point: collaboration rarely looks like a uniform decision to commit evil. It is often a funnel of small concessions, risk calculations, and moral compromise.
Reparations, Trials, and the Illusion of Closure
After 1945, the Allied powers prosecuted many Nazi officials. But how thoroughly did they prosecute corporate complicity?
IG Farben was split and dismantled. Some of its managers went on trial; others re-entered German industry. Bütefisch, though convicted, later sat on boards in postwar Germany. Wikipedia
Other corporations—Ford, General Motors, even IBM—eschewed full accountability. Instead, they helped fund restitution programs or negotiated class-action settlements decades later. The full measure of moral and economic harm was never forced into balance.
This partial restitution—and the reinsertion of many individuals into postwar networks—gave a veneer of closure. But in truth, much corporate history remained opaque, sanitized, or omitted.
III. America in the Age of Trump (2025–)
"The past is never past," as Faulkner wrote. Under the Trump presidency (2025–), America has experienced repeated runs at centralized power, media suppression, and executive overreach. Against that backdrop, corporations face new temptations to cooperate or resist.
Below is a thematic sketch of what this dynamic looks like today.
Tech, Surveillance, and Platform Control
If Auschwitz needed Hollerith machines, 2025 needs algorithms. And U.S. tech giants are the inheritors (by scale, not intention) of that infrastructure.
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Many platforms that once touted content moderation or privacy now shrink their rules under pressure from pro-Trump lobbying or legislative threats.
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Corporations that provide data analytics, facial recognition, or ad targeting are being pressured to assist election integrity systems tied to Trump’s political base.
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Some firms quietly build or partner with surveillance systems for the state, framing them as “law-and-order” tools, even as critics warn about dystopian implications.
The logic is familiar: comply a little, placate the coercive arm, and keep your margins intact.
Energy, Climate, and Regulatory Capture
In 2025, the Trump administration has reversed major climate regulations, slashed EPA oversight, and delegated enforcement power to sympathetic appointees. Energy companies, especially fossil-fuel giants, are rewarded for public fealty—quietly suppressing internal dissent, opposing environmental lawsuits, and collaborating with regulatory rollbacks.
The moral stakes: when the government frames climate policy as “security,” corporate cooperation can become a mode of complicity in ecological destruction.
Financialization and State Projects
Trump’s infrastructure agenda, crony privatization, and public–private carve-outs create incentives for Wall Street and private-equity firms. Projects like border walls, detention centers, and internal “security” contracts offer enormous profits—but also complicity in human-rights abuses.
In many cases, banks and firms become enablers: lending to “law enforcement” contractors, underwriting debt for municipalities complicit with coercive policies, or providing opaque financial flows that mask complicity.
Branding, Culture, and Co-option
Many consumer-facing companies reframed their identities under Trump. “Patriotic branding,” pro-Trump cultural campaigns, or aligning with voter-suppression narratives become faint but perceptible pressure points. Boardrooms may mandate retraining programs or public statements to avoid backlash.
Workforces may protest; but often, the cost of public resistance (boycotts, regulatory retaliation, access withdrawal) seems higher than private dissent.
IV. Echoes and Warnings
Parallels That Are Not Identity
We must be clear: the United States in 2025 is not Nazi Germany. The scale, ideology, and state violence differ. But patterns echo:
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The infrastructure of oppression needs logistics, data, staffing, and corporate service.
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The economics of obedience are seductive: fewer regulatory hurdles, more privileges, fewer constraints.
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The slippery slope of minor compliance leads to deeper entanglements.
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The illusion of apolitical business is a myth; neutrality under authoritarian pressure is itself a choice.
History’s lesson is not just horror, but a mechanism: collaboration often happens in increments.
When Resistance Costs More
One question looms: what does it cost to resist? In Nazi Germany, some firms did refuse. Others had exile, expropriation, or asset seizure threatened. Executives might lose careers or lives.
In America, resistance can mean stock-price drops, regulatory audit, media attacks, or executive purges. But the difference is: many companies perceive those risks as manageable, and so they hedge, accommodate, or stay silent.
The Moral Accounting That Never Ends
The postwar German reckoning is incomplete. Some executives were prosecuted, some firms dismantled or restructured, some funds allocated. But many operations slipped through the cracks; many records remain suppressed or disputed.
Likewise, the American corporations that bow to authoritarian pressure today may think they escape accountability—but future generations, historians, or whistleblowers may not be so forgiving.
V. Into the Breach—How Companies Could Resist
A gloomy account risks fatalism. But resistance is possible. The following are structural guardrails companies can adopt (however imperfectly) when authoritarian pressure rises:
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Institutional firewalling. Independent compliance or ethics offices, with protection from executive override, can buffer demands to comply with authoritarian mandates.
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Transparency and auditability. Publishing transparency reports, audits, and third-party oversight helps limit secret collusion.
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Whistleblower protections. Cultivating strong protection for internal dissent reduces the pressure to capitulate silently.
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Standards of refusal. Firms can adopt red-lines—types of demands they will not comply with, no matter the cost, and commit publicly.
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Coalitional defense. Corporations, NGOs, civil society, and unions can build alliances to resist coordinated authoritarian pressure.
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Active divestment. Where collaboration implicates human-rights abuses, firms can divest or refuse contracts even at short-term cost.
These steps will not guarantee safety. But they shift the game: resisting first is historically more courageous; resisting late is merely penitential.
VI. Epilogue: The Unsettling Mirror
In 1942, Auschwitz’s train schedules were tabulated on punch cards. Corporations like IBM, Farben, Ford, and GM were cogs—if willingly installed—serving a murderous state. The survivors, the courts, and historians have tried to reconstruct moral accountability ever since.
In 2025, American firms find themselves facing a different but eerily familiar challenge. The machinery is newer, the rhetoric different, but the fundamental question remains: Will you serve power or humanity?
The past is not passed—it is warning, mirror, and incitement. Corporations today must decide whether they will drift toward complicity or anchor themselves in conscience. Because the reckoning eventually arrives—not in open trial, perhaps, but in collective memory.
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