Brad Pitt is producing an adaptation of Edwin Black’s nonfiction bestseller IBM and the Holocaust.  The book examines how the company’s chief executive, Thomas Watson, formed an alliance with Nazi Germany in 1933 to help identify Jews for extermination.  It’s harrowing material, and Pitt previously set the project up at HBO where it was in development as late as this past January with a script by Marcus Hinchey (All Good Things).  The feature film has now left the cable channel, and Pitt is looking to find IBM and the Holocaust a new home through his Plan B production company either on cable TV or as a theatrically released film.

Vulture reports that Pitt has attached himself to star in order to attract directors, but it’s entirely possible that he might not take a role in front of the camera once the project gets going.  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for the book.

ibm-and-the-holocaust

Here’s a synopsis for IBM and the Holocaust:

IBM and the Holocaust is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling shocker--a million copies in print--detailing IBM's conscious co-planning and co-organizing of the Holocaust for the Nazis, all micromanaged by its president Thomas J Watson from New York and Paris. This Expanded Edition offers 37 pages of previous unpublished documents, pictures, internal company correspondence, and other archival materials to produce an even more explosive volume. Originally published to extraordinary praise in 2001, this provocative, award-winning international bestseller has stood the test of time as it chronicles the story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany. IBM and the Holocaust provides nothing less than a chilling investigation into corporate complicity. Edwin Black's monumental research exposes how IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies for the Nazis, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s. [Amazon]