Hitlers Scientists - Science, War, and the Devils Pact

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the

three

first

ForGermany

held

decades of

German

throughout the world.

most accomplished and honored the lion's share of

Jewish

scientists

and

oratories to

Nobel

n century,

th

premier position

the

scientists

were dismissed from

at universities,

and

the

enthusiastically collaborated

and

morality.

few German

Hitler.

their positions in lab-

Nazi ideology began

Some

scien-

Nazis; most

with the

merely acquiesced, arguing that science tics

the

winning

1933 come

dominate Germany's science communities.

tists

were

their fields,

in

prizes. But in

science

tor

outside poli-

lies

By the end of the Second World War,

scientists

remained untainted by a regime

bent on genocide and racial conquest.

John Cornwell, author of the acclaimed international seller Hitler's

Pope,

panorama

less scientific rise in the nineteenth

lapse

in

1

under

sets the story of scientists

against the background

of

Germany's

century through

945. His powerful account weaves the

science and technology with the fortunes of stories of

men and women whose

bestHitler

relentits

col-

history of

war and

the

discoveries brought

both benefits and destruction to the world.

Nazi Germany achieved a remarkable range of technological breakthroughs, including early television, radar,

and mechanical encryption as plane. Despite an early lead entists failed to sile

project

well as launching the

in

nuclear science,

make an atom bomb, and

squandered vast resources

first jet

Hitler's sci-

his ballistic mis-

for irrational ends.

Cornwell traces the origins of racial cleansing that led

programs of eugenics and euthanasia and death camps, and recounts the growth of led to the birth of nuclear research the

first

great

weapons

mass

of

and

to the

new

physics that

the construction of

destruction. Hitler's

teams

developed both conventional and high-tech weapons enabled Nazi Germany organizational

to

sordid chapter

the concentration labor,

and

that

prosecute a world war, but

weakness and chaos undermined any

technological advantages final

to

Nazi

in

come

camp

the end.

the

futile

experiments,

the technologies of cruelty

(continued on boct Hap)

In

the

Nazi era's

"wonder weapons," the

and

'jso

of slave -nurder.

Hitlers Scientists

By

the

Same Author

Breaking Faith Hitler's

Pope to

Harm

A Thief in the

Night

The Power

Explaining Your Explanation

Consciousness and

Human

Identity

Nature's Imagination

Hiding Places of God Earth to Earth Coleridge: Poet and Revolutionary

Seven Other Demons

The

Spoiled Priest

Strange

Gods

Hitler's Scientists Science,

War and

the

DeviVs Pact

JOHN CORNWELL

VIKING

VIKING Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in 2003 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

13579

8642

10

© John

Copyright

Cornwell, 2003

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cornwell, John, 1940Hitler s scientists

:

and the

science, war,

devil's pact /

John Cornwell. *,

cm.

p.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-670-03075-9

1.

Science and

state

—Germany— History—20th

1939-1945— Science— Germany.

century. 2.

Q127.G3C67 2003 This book

is

World War,

Title.

I.

2003057650 printed

on

acid-free paper.

@

Printed in the United States of America Set in

Without

Bembo

limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

be reproduced, stored in or introduced into

by any means

(electronic, mechanical,

no

a retrieval system,

part of this publication

may

or transmitted, in any form or

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The

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and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of without the permission of the publisher

is

illegal

copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights

is

appreciated.

In

memory of Max

Perutz

Contents

List

of Illustrations

xiii

Acknowledgements

xv

Introduction: Understanding the

PART one:

Germans

i

Hitler's Scientific Inheritance

21

1.

Hitler the Scientist

2.

Germany

3.

Fritz

4.

The Poison Gas

5.

The

6.

Eugenics and Psychiatry

the Science

Mecca

38

Haber

47 61

Scientists

'Science' of Racial

PART two: The

7.

Physics after the First

8.

German

Hygiene

71 85

New

Physics 191 8 — 1933

War

Science Survives

93 iii

PART three: Nazi Enthusiasm, Compliance and Oppression 1933 — 1939 9.

The

Dismissals

127

10.

Engineers and Rocketeers

142

11.

Medicine under Hitler

152

12.

The Cancer Campaign

167

.

X

Hitler's Scientists

and Lebensraum

1 3

Geopolitik

14.

Nazi Physics

178

15.

Himmler's Pseudo-science

191

16.

Deutsche Mathematik

198

1

74

PART four: The Science of Destruction and Defence 193 3- 1943

Mania

17.

Fission

18.

World War

19.

Machines of War

242

20.

Radar

262

21.

Codes

281

207

229

II

PART five: The Nazi Atomic

Bomb

1941-1945

22.

Copenhagen

299

23.

Speer and Heisenberg

310

24.

Haigerloch and Los Alamos

328

PART

six: Science in Hell

1942-1945

Dora

25.

Slave Labour at

26.

The

'Science' of Extermination and

27.

The

Devil's Chemists

28.

Wonder Weapons

341

Human Experiment

348

367 377

Contents

PART seven: In

Hitler's

xi

Shadow

29.

Farm Hall

391

30.

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

405

31.

Scientific

Plunder

419

PART eight: Science from the Cold War the

War on

to

Terrorisin

32.

Nuclear Postures

429

33.

Uniquely Nazi?

445

34.

Science

at

War Again

459

Notes

469

Select Bibliography

501

Index

513

.

List

1.

The

of Illustrations

fountains of the 'Chateau d'Eau' with the 'Palais d'Electhe Paris International Exhibition.

tricite at 2.

Max Planck.

3.

Fritz

Haber inspecting poison

4.

Fritz

Haber.

5.

Clara Imnierwahr.

6.

Kaiser Wilhelm

7.

Philipp Lenard.

8.

Lise

9.

II

gas canisters in

opening a Kaiser Wilhelm

World War

Institute in Berlin.

Meitner and Otto Hahn.

Johannes

Stark.

10.

Enrico Fenni, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli.

11.

Copenhagen

Physics Conference, June 1936.

12.

Professor Oberth with a group of his

13.

Adolf Hitler

14.

Hitler and his

1

5

inspects the

first

staff.

German U-boats

Bernhard Rust. Hitler at the 1935 Berlin

Automobile Exhibition.

17.

Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard.

18.

Frederic Joliot-Curie.

19.

Otto Frisch and Rudolph

20.

Albert Speer and Josef Goebbels.

21. Albert

Peierls.

Speer and Hitler.

Measuring the

features of a

German.

Mk 6 Tiger Tank.

23.

German

24.

Winston ChurchiU and Frederick Lindemann.

25.

German

signal troops sending

machine. 26.

Vi rocket over London.

27.

V2 rocket. The Mittelwerke

28.

in Kiel.

Deputy Rudolf Hess.

16.

22.

I.

facility.

coded messages on an Enigma

xiv

Hitler's Scientists

29

Messerschmitt Me-262.

30.

Experiments on

31.

Prinio Levi.

32.

Heisenberg's reactor

33.

Farm

34.

Max von

a prisoner at

Dachau.

Haigerloch.

at

Hall.

Laue.

35. Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker.

36.

Paul Harteck.

37.

'Fat

Man' nuclear weapon.

38. General Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer. 39.

Wernher von Braun

US

surrenders to

counterintelligence

personnel. 40. President John F.

Kennedy and Wernher von Braun.

Photographic acknowledgements i:

Hulton Archive/Getty Images;

Archive, Berlin-Dahlem; courtesy 10:

9:

AIP Emilio Segre

photo by

F.

D.

Archives; 11: Niels

photo

2,

3,

4,

Visual Archives,

Rasetti, courtesy

Max

8:

6,

5,

by A. B. Lagrelius

&

Weber

Collection;

AIP Emilio Segre

Bohr Archive, Copenhagen;

12, 28:

ian Institution; 13, 14, 16: Christopher Hurndall; 15, 37:

CORBIS;

17:

Time Pix/Getty

Planck

Westphal,

Images; 18:

Visual

Smithson-

Bettman/

Magnum;

19:

UK

Atomic Energy Authority; 20: Bundesarchiv Koblenz; ^i: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; 22: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/COPJ3IS; 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 38: Imperial

War Museum;

Dachau Museum; 3 1 Gente; 32: AIP EmiHo Goudsmit Collection; 39, 40: NASA. :

Every

effort has

been made to contact

publishers will be glad to

all

CORBIS;

copyright holders.

make good in all future

or omissions brought to their attention.

25:

30:

Segre Visual Archives,

The

editions any errors

Acknowledgements

Drawing together

a history

of science

Germany

in

in the first half

of the twentieth century with special reference to the period of

Reich involves acquaintance with

the Third

scholarship over the past three decades.

work of many

I

a

wide

circuit

work

but especially from the published

historians,

of

have profited from the

of Jeremy Bernstein, Alan Beyerchen, Michael Burleigh, David

Ute Deichmann, Helge Kragh,

Cassidy,

Michael

Miiller-Hill,

Neufeld,

C.

Christie Macrakis,

Thomas Powers, Robert

Monika Renneberg, Richard Rhodes, Paul Lawrence

Proctor,

Rose, Ruth Sime, Mark Walker and Paul Weindling. of gratitude to those

special debt

symposium

at

Others

I

Jesus College,

who

Cambridge

I

also

owe

a

attended the Copenhagen in

November

2002, and

Michael Frayn.

especially to

ways

Benno

wish to thank for information and insights in various

John Barrow, Antony Beevor, Herman Bower, Andrew Brown, Soraya de Chadarevian,

are Paul Alexander,

Bondi,

Tom

Robin Donkin, Marcial and Marie-Louise Echenique, Peter Glazebrook, Walter Gratzer, Henning Grunwald, David Hanke, Stephen Heath, Jana Howlett,

Tim Jenkins,

Gerry Kearns, Jonathan

Keeling, Peter Lipton, Austyn Mair, Marta Mazzoro, Michael

Minden, late

Max

Kirstin

Juliet Mitchell,

Veronique Motier, John Naughton, the

Perutz, Nicholas Ray,

David Reynolds, Simon Schafer,

Shepherd-Barr, Brendan Simms, Derek Taunt,

Adam

Tooze and Lewis Wolpert. I

owe

a special

debt of gratitude to Jeremy Bernstein,

Freeman and Walter Gratzer

for reading

through the manuscript,

and for making many useful suggestions; any

my responsibility.

Ray

errors that persist are

me much pleasure to record my gratitude to William Saslaw for guiding me through the world of physics, and to Peter James Bowman, who tirelessly handled my entirely

It

also gives

xvi

Hitler's Scientists

German

sources and assisted

and research I

me

in a

wide range of bibliographical

tasks.

wish to thank the

librarians

of the Imperial

War Museum,

the

British Library, Churchill College Library, the London Library,

the

Whipple Library

in the

Cambridge University Department of

History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University Library, the Niels

Bohr Archive

tute Archive

in

Max Planck InstiBerlin. am indebted to

Copenhagen and

of the History of Science in

the

I

Kate Barker of Viking-Penguin in London, for her help with pictures,

to

my

and to David Watson for the copy

agents

Bob

London, and,

Lescher in

as ever, to

my

and JuHet Annan

New

editing.

I

am

grateful

York, and Clare Alexander in

editors

Wendy Wolf in New York

thank the Master and Fellows of

in London. I Cambridge and the Department of History and

Jesus College,

Philosophy of Science in the University of Cambridge, for providing ideal auspices and stimulus for research and writing.

To

Crispin

Rope

I

owe

the original inspiration that led to this

project, as well as the constant

kept

me

going.

encouragement and enthusiasm

that

'Science without conscience

is

(Rabelais)

the ruin of the soul.

Hitler's Scientists

Introduction: Understanding the

I

have an early impression of my father holding

a black

Germans

me up

to glimpse

growling angel trailing fire in the moonlit sky across London:

Vi - a long-range pilotless 'pulse-jet' flying bomb, what today we would call a cruise missile. It was early summer of 1944 when the Vi rockets, known to Londoners as doodlebugs and flying bombs, first dived on the capital, ripping through buildings and shattering windows for hundreds of yards around. They made a hideous sound not unlike a powerful, faltering motor bike with a it

was

a

broken exhaust; when the engine cut out, people braced themselves for the explosion that

Later

came the V2s,

would follow within about twelve seconds. ballistic missiles, more menacing because

they hurtled through the stratosphere

warhead.

It

was possible

to hear the

silently,

carrying a larger

whoosh and thunder of their

supersonic atmospheric entry after the explosion on the ground.

On the way back from primary school on the bus with my mother, I

saw the devastation caused by

borders of Wanstead and

London. The

had

missile

a

V2

Woodford

laid

rocket that landed on the in the eastern suburbs

of

waste several acres of woodland and

made an immense crater. A woman had been walking her baby, and the pram still hung high from the branch of a tree. Mother and

child,

and several other hapless pedestrians, had been

killed

outright.

For

a

boy born

in

month when Britain

London

declared

in

war

May

of 1940, conceived in the

war had always been and always would permanent, puzzling

crisis,

be.

War

it

was

as if the

for a child

was

a

as well as an occasional adventure: the

race to the corrugated iron shelter

melancholy chorus; finding

Germany,

against

when

silvery shards

the sirens started up their

of shrapnel in the

streets

morning after an air raid; gazing up at glittering barrage balloons which blotted out the sun like sailing whales. War for our parents the

2

Hitler's Scientists

and elder siblings was the devastation of the and in the

air;

nights spent underground.

these terrors and miseries with

we saw

and, understandably,

summer of

Blitz

news of miHtary

British civilians dead); the

We

Germany and

the

my

war with

(which

casualties

grew up the

left

on

43,000

land, sea

associating

German

people;

Hitler as our war.

mother took me

prisoners of war interned behind barbed wire at a transit

German camp on

an expanse of parkland close to where

we lived.

In the

the

Wanstead

Flats,

1945

They were lounging around, sun-tanned and gay kerchiefs around their necks, dark caps at jaunty angles.

was hard

face. It

same way

to

One

them

Hitler's

relaxed;

and

field

some wore grey forage

me and pulled a funny fighting men in quite the

of them winked

demonize

after seeing

glasses

to see

at

in the flesh. Yet,

even

after the

war had

ended, and the Victory party bunting had been taken down, the impression that there was something congenitally malevolent about

German people

persisted, exacerbated

and deepened by

a

growing

conversational acquaintance with an older generation that had

fought in the Great War.

My grandfather kept used brass shells from

that conflict over the fire place

polish

them every day of

and would take them

his life.

He

down and

talked of the days before

War when Germany's navy was building battleships to the Royal Navy. He spoke with awe of the vast stacks of

the Great

threaten

German goods 'dumped' on

the docksides of Londop, flooding

England with cheap manufactured consumer products. There was a

connection, he told me, between those battleships, and the stacks

of cheap German goods — scissors,

toys, tools, pens, kitchen utensils, lamps,

sewing machines, typewriters — and the

stacks

of bodies

heaped up behind the trenches. 'The Germans,' he used

to say,

The remark anticipated another aphorism that echoed through my boyhood and youth: 'The only good German is a dead German.' 'were too clever and too wicked by half

Introduction: Understanding the

German

Can we by

Germans

Science

studying the history of science in last

relationship

between science and the good

ist,

make human

objective?

Germany

in the

first

century draw significant conclusions about the

half of the

science

3

more

beings

And do we

society?

Does doing

rational, sceptical, international-

expect science to flourish better, and the

more

discoveries of scientists to be used

responsibly and ethically,

under democracies than under dictatorships?

German

Exploring the story of the a period that spans

two world wars

to understand the nature

the twentieth and the

and

science communities during

an essential part of attempting

is

of science and the conduct of scientists in

new

century.

Recounting the drama of ideas

discoveries, probing the behaviour

of Germany's researchers —

towards their disciplines, towards their governments and regimes, towards their fellow

human

beings

— cannot be

separated from the

task of understanding science and technology and

of us since World This chronicle

War II. of German

'science', a

word

its

I

impact on

frequently use

and

in this narrative to include the natural sciences, medicine

technology, where the range of categories against the

is

background of the current war on

all

implied,

written

is

terror, the enlarge-

ment of the European Union and the ever-growing importance of Germany. Today, Germany,

split

for almost half a century,

assuming an increasingly powerful role

at

is

Europe

the centre of a

that stretches from the Atlantic to the borders of Russia and from

the

North Sea

to the

Aegean.

Understanding German science, however, since the victors

of the

last

is

war have tended

fraught with pitfalls, to see themselves,

understandably, in morally superior contrast to things German.

The

indebtedness of Europe and North America to

German

- before the impact of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler - has been powerful, complex and often ambivalent. The German term influence

for science, Wissenschaft, incorporated traditionally a

huge

circuit

of intellectual disciplines in which the German-speaking peoples, never forgetting Austria,

excelled,

and often took the

lead.

Hitler's Scientists

4

including history, literary and scriptural criticism, philosophy, the-

ology and psychology, with far-reaching influences on Western

The

thought.

of sublime genius — Bach, Goethe, Beet-

roll-call

hoven, Kant — was succeeded, beyond Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Frege, by the protean influences of Marx and Nietszche, thinkers fatally

communism and

appropriated by the founders of Soviet

fascism.

The

saw the dynamic

early part of the twentieth century

influence of Max Weber in the social sciences, in philosophy, the unsettling

Ludwig Wittgenstein

impact of Freud, Adler and Jung, and

the seminal if baleful musings ofMartin Heidegger, existentialism

post-war

and the deconstructions

critical

thought —

Sartre,

that

drove

who anticipated much

of French

Ricoeur, Derrida.

Meanwhile, existing for the most part in philosophical and politilimbo, while giving impetus to

cal

new

technologies with the

power to transform the world, the success of the natural and medical sciences in Germany was, before 1933, prodigious: Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen, discoverer of X-rays; Fritz Haber, who fixed nitrogen from the

David

air;

mathematicians sufficient

Max and

Hilbert,

tasks to

who

keep them busy for

Planck, a founding father of quantum his

Germany

a century;

theory; Albert Einstein

relativity;

power-house of chemistj;y, organic,

built an unrivalled

inorganic and industrial,

world's

Werner Heisenberg more than half a century in which

epoch-making theories of

and quantum mechanics. After

set for the

German

nationals, in the

first

two decades

of the twentieth century, walked away with more than half the

Nobel awards

every discipline of the natural sciences and

in

medicine. In the meantime, pologists

had claimed

be explained by it

a

constituency of biologists and anthro-

that populations, society

and history could

a historico-biological theory of race, as spurious as

was menacing. Thus Darwin's and Mendel's

appropriated by Ernst Haeckel and H.

spawned

ideas that

were used

F.

explicators

K. Giinther,

who

were

in turn

to justify Hitler's anti-Semitism

and

so-called racial hygiene.

Rediscovering what with Germany

is

we

nevertheless owe, and therefore share,

an essential part of understanding some of the

Introduction: Understanding the

leading ideas

we

Germans

5

have employed to understand ourselves and the

nature of the world through the twentieth century. Germany's decisive contributions to the natural sciences have

been

a crucial

part of that process.

My generation, however, growing up in Britain in the immediate post-war era routinely characterized

German

science

ence: at best, brutally efficient and militarized

-

as

Nazi

sci-

the Blitzkrieg

combination of Stuka dive-bombers. Panzer tanks and motorized

Vi and the V2 rockets, and U-boats — at worst, monsadistic — experimentation on humans in the death camps.

infantry; the

strously

As

late as

the early 1960s the

popular film culture

as

German

Hitler until

as

was

depicted in

still

Peter Sellers's Doctor Strangelove.

In contrast, Britain's scientists,

in a

scientist

America joined the

who led the

scientific

conflict in 1942,

war

against

were characterized

gamut of movies, documentaries and popular war

histories

ingenious bofTins, effortlessly superior, and modest with

eccentric civilians in threadbare

—

tweed jackets creating wizardry

out of sheer native brilliance in the garden sheds of

like radar

England.

it

We

were

our most offensive

at

invented his bouncing

bombs

dams on the Ruhr. 'Bomber'

to breach

when

Barnes Wallis

Germany's hydro-electric

Harris's 'area

bombing' was portrayed

The story of British participation in the creation of the atom bomb, which Germany had failed to achieve, was not a celebrated chronicle, except to hammer home the point of failed Nazi science. Naturally, we assumed, the Nazis would have dropped an atom bomb on us if they had managed to create as a strategic necessity.

one.

Through political

the 1950s questions

were increasingly

raised about the

and moral dimensions of the science of the atomic bombs

dropped on Japan. The debate continues In time

my generation, who

early 1960s,

came

night raids

on

to ponder,

to this day.

were students

and debate, the

in the late 1950s details

of the British

the civilian populations of Dresden,

Liibeck and other

German towns and cities. There was

ation of technology in a carefully

and

Hamburg, the exploit-

judged combination of pressure

Hitler's Scientists

6

and phosphorus bombs

German morale

There were the specialists

as

much

careful inquiries

that

men, women

hundreds of thousands of innocent order to break

firestorms

create

to

in

as to hit industrial targets.

RAF

by

incinerated

and children

bombing

experts of

like the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner about

ancient buildings: not to preserve such structures, but to discover their combustible properties.

The

began on the night of 24 July 1943,

RAF

raids

known as

culminated in an inferno four nights

later

on Hamburg which

Operation Gomorrah,

-

a fireball that

surged

two kilometres into the night sky, imploding oxygen and raising furious wind storms strong enough to uproot trees. Sugar boiled in cellars, glass melted and people were sucked down into the asphalt on

the streets.

On

that

one night an estimated

Germans died compared with killed

by Allied bombing of

cities

been

to speak loudly

visited

on

and

and towns

in the

Reich

are

It

took another generation of

clearly

about the horrors that had

450,000 killed and 600,000 injured.

Germans

of 45,000

number German estimates of civilians

a similar

during the course of the entire war.

total

killed in Britain

their population.^

By 1962 my generation had shared the eyeball-to-eyeball terror of the Cuban missile crisis and taken views on the nuclear arms race, the doctrine

of

tactical

nuclear weapons

conventional Soviet invasion of West Europe. the

global

effects

as a

We

response to a hac^ learned of

of radioactive contamination from nuclear

weapons testing, both East and West. By the 1 970s we were learning about the indiscriminate and long-term

and napalm

in

Vietnam.

It is

effects

of anti-plant agents

estimated that the United States was

responsible for the destruction of some 30 per cent per year of food

production in Vietnam in the course of a decade.^

more detached and considered view of the imperial rivalries that prompted World War I, and the effect of the Versailles Treaty on the upheavals in Meanwhile,

historians

had long since taken

a

Germany of the Weimar period that contributed to the growth of National Socialism. By the 1980s, as cruise missiles were shipped to West Europe and Ronald Reagan planned his Star Wars initiative, it was possible to disengage from the stark contrast between German

Introduction: Understanding the

Germans

7

or Soviet military science and military science under the auspices

of the democracies. While bearing in mind the unique deeds of

— how can one

Nazism and

its

was possible

to rethink the political history

not just

historical contexts

Nazi or German

as

scientists,

but

forget

them? —

it

of scientists under Hitler

as scientists.

Science under Hitler

No

account of scientists under the Nazis can be understood in the

absence of the narrative that forms the

growth and success of the natural and technology

Germany

in

first

part of this book: the

sciences, medicine,

in the

second half of the nineteenth

century and the early decades of the twentieth. first

mathematics

By

the end of the

decade of the twentieth century, Germany had become the

Mecca of science. Researchers, German universities from all over

international

flocked to

German

to read the leading science journals

conferences and seminars.

Germany was

and applied,

the world; learned

and

to participate in

well placed to take a

new

leading role in the development of a

basic

physics that

would

transform the technology of the century, involving from the outset

Max

Planck, Albert Einstein,

Max

Born, Werner Heisenberg and

Erwin Shrodinger, German-speakers

all,

Denmark, the Netherlands, France and

alongside scientists from Britain. In turn, the

new

quantum mechanics and, ultimately, to nuclear physics, the science of the atom and the hydrogen bomb. Yet by the beginning of World War I the reputation of Ger-

physics led to

many's

scientists

had been tarnished in the eyes of

its

Western

Germany was the first to torpedo a civilian ocean liner the great German novelist Thomas Mann rejoiced in the

enemies. (even

wondrous

display

of technology employed against the

year into the war,

a large

with academics and state

constituency of

German

scientists

A

along

intellectuals declared their subservience to the

and to the military. In April 191 5, moreover, one of Germany's

most distinguished

scientists, Fritz

Haber, encouraged the army to

use poison gas against the Allies, and provided the it

Lusitania).

a reality.

Germany's

scientists readily

means

to

make

turned over their civilian

Hitler's Scientists

8

Wilhelm Institutes, to poison gas research. Were these cases of Germans behaving according to type as Germans? Or scientists in Germany behaving according to type science institutions, the Kaiser

as scientists?

In the post-war era, despite lack of funding, boycotts

on

the part

and economic upheavals,

of the victorious nations and

political

science continued to prosper in

Germany. The Weimar period

new

remarkable developments in the

with

the

from many

physics and collaboration

There were

other, darker devel-

in the scientific milieu: an increase in

antagonism towards

scientists

opments

saw^

work of Jewish

nations.

and the growth of

scientists

'racial

hygiene'

encouraged by distorted versions of medicine, anthropology and evolutionary theory. But victimization of Jews within scientific

communities occurred

also

and the United

in France, Britain

States.

When

Hitler

came

to

power

in 1933, science,

technology were pressed into the service of the

Third Reich called for all

the resources of the

a spirit

medicine and

new

regime.

of Gleichschaltung (marching in

new regime were

to

work

The

step):

in coordination.

Education, the media, psychology and communications were

adapted to serve Nazi ideology in order to channel and shape public opinion in the National Socialist 'revolution'. Scientists,

with remarkably few exceptions, speedily acquiesced wnder those pressures.

As the

historian Joseph

Haberer puts

it,

the scientific

leadership engaged in 'expediency and compliance' and colluded

with 'victimization of members of the community'.^ Yet some groups — notably doctors and anthropologists — not only acquiesced but took

a lead in

promoting

racist policies, and, in

some

cases,

community oppressed and coerced another: experimental physics, in the view of some influential Nazi scientists, was more authentic than theoretical physics, which was one segment of the

scientific

deemed to be 'Jewish'. Hannah Arendt expounded famously

in Eichmann in Jerusalem

(1961) her thesis of 'the banahty of evil': the proposition that evil in

the Third

Reich arose out of the

class

of banal, amoral bureaucrats.

Arendt's perspective has been deepened, and

at the

same time

Introduction: Understanding the

challenged, by

more

Germans

9

recent insights and interpretations, shedding

hght on the behaviour of scientists, medical doctors and engineers in the Third Reich.

One

perspective argues that despite the apparent

rhetoric of conformity in the Gleichschaltung, the inchoate nature

of Nazi programmes encouraged forms of 'auto-coordination'. The circumstance was augmented by the fear that hovered continually

on

the edge of each individual's consciousness 'by encouraging

doubt over not belonging to citizens'.'*

a thesis,

a

movement of

compelling

At the same time, and by no means contradictory

fellow^

to such

Michael Wildt's study of what he terms the 'generation of

the unbound' points to the careers of those after Hitler's rise to

who suddenly prospered

power, and who, with the outbreak of war,

saw no

limit to their scope

explain

a

of action.^ Such

Wernher von Braun, and the

a diagnosis

ease with

may

better

which he exploited

slave labour, than Arendt's analysis.

Nazi propaganda gave an impression of technocratic modernity

matched with living

a restored

and outdoor

and bracing naturalism - exercise, healthy

The making of the Volkswagen, the (known as 'Adolf Hitler's

pursuits.

people's car, and the great autobahns

modernizing nation

roads')

were symbols of

in the

propaganda of the time,

transport for

all

a

call for

Deutsche Technik,

marriage between motorized

who was

in charge

landscaped highways

which transcended

orientated capitalist motives. superficial;

signalling,

and the beauty and freedom of the landscapes of

the Fatherland. Fritz Todt,

accepted the

a

state,

The

of the project,

as crucial to

selfish,

the

new

consumerist, profit-

pretensions to modernity

were

Nazi technocracy was seldom unmixed with mawkishly

bucolic dimensions.

The rallies, using new Berlin stadium

searchlight sky patterns; the clean lines of the for the 1936

Olympics; the neo-classical Nazi

pavilion (designed by Albert Speer) out-frowning the Soviet pavParis; the emphasis on Hke the Nazi anti-smoking, callisthenics and health programmes all reinforced the bracing, clear-eyed anti-drinking campaigns

ilion at the

1937 International Exhibition in

image of Deutsche Technik to the outside world. Communications and

new

media, including the

first

use of magnetic tape (to record

10

Hitler's Scientists

Hitler's voice for posterity)

and television

(to

broadcast the Berlin

Olympics), flourished.

The veneer of modernization, however,

did not indicate the

nor an ideal world for any form

flowering of a technocratic

state,

of intellectual endeavour,

the dismissals ofjewish researchers and

the bonfires of books

on

as

12

May, 1934 amply demonstrated.

Basic

science, deprived of many leading researchers, and oppressed from

within and without by ideological pressures, did not entirely collapse,

but neither did

it

thrive.'^

As

for applied science,

and medicine, attempts on the part of certain groups

technology to politicize

movements as German physics, a German biology and even a German mathematics, marked an era of division and decline, while the competition between overlapping power centres of industry, the SS, the amied forces, the civil service would result in prodigious waste and ineptitude. The Third Reich saw science, creating such

the misuse and misapplication of innovation, loss of freedom and

neglect and decline in

diversity,

sciences, physics in particular,

The

some branches of

and marking of time

the natural

in others.

strongest science-based imagery within the Nazi Weltan-

schauung was a bogus borrowing from anatomy, with an ominous

continuity between the symbolic and the real expelling the

of National

unwanted pathogen. The

Socialist

Germany was of

—

the

body

politic

pseudo-scientific vision

a racially hygienic 'body',

invoking the researchers and data of an expanding community

of doctors, anthropologists and eugenicists. In the

first

wave of —

anti-Semitic measures hundreds of scientists were dismissed

expelled system.

as if

A

they were germs rejected by the body's

immune

generation of researchers faced the choice of condoning

would not be long before the ideologues of racial hygiene promoted sterilization and 'euthanasia' — the elimination of 'lives not worth racist legislation

or leaving Germany: they acquiesced.

It

living'.

As the provisions of the

Versailles Treaty

were broken one by

Germany rearmed, powerful traditions of engineering and inventiveness gave the new Reich many apparent advantages in one, and

military applications, raising the familiar

wartime spectres of science

Introduction: Understanding the

and technology

Pandora's

as

list

scientists

In the 1930s

and engineers developed an

of innovations: proximity fuses, infra-red night sights,

jet engines, radar,

mechanical encryption, synthetic

rubber, ballistic missiles, the snorkel

submarines.

ii

Box and Faustian bargain.

and through the war German impressive

Germans

From 1939

military control

synthetic

fuels,

and hydrogen-peroxide assisted

to the war's end, scientists

working under

began research on nuclear chain reaction with the

prospect of arming Hitler with an atomic

bomb.

In

most of these

and especially missile research, development and pro-

activities,

duction, exorbitantly resourced high-tech rational methods were

employed

for irrational goals.

By

1943, however, and after years

of selective suspension of the rule of law, few areas of science, technology, medicine and industry had not been tainted by brutality,

slave labour, torture,

human experiment without

consent and

casual murder.

Was the science of the Third Reich, secrecy, wasteful overlap to failure?

Could

this

and

oppressed by totalitarianism,

racist exclusions, therefore

doomed

poisoned tree not bear the occasional good

recent years, historians have claimed, without attenuating

fruit? In

of atrocious Nazi experimental research, that of science flourished under National Socialism — for

their indictments

some

areas

example, the regime's war against cancer which saw pioneering epidemiological research of the highest quality.

But

is

science

there a clear demarcation

starts

at

the end of World

War II

— where Nazi There

their views.

that the dark

shadow

over Germany's science during the period of the Third Reich

was no more; at

a discontinuity

and ends? Historians are revising

was an assumption cast

—

the

Nuremberg

Germany's ever,

that following the Trials,

scientists

made

punishment of guilty individuals

and the restoration of democracy. West a fresh start. Historians

of science, how-

have brought to our attention more recently the

formerly taboo in

German

historical circles,

arguing, even, that fellow travellers did

of 'fellow

issue,

travelling',

more damage than

card-

cariying Nazi scientists, since they failed to challenge the consciences of the uncertain and the fence-sitters.

argument, the majority of Gemiany's

According

scientists carried a

to this

burden of

12

Hitler's Scientists

guilt

beyond the war's end. Some

further, claiming that the taint

critiques take the

was inherited

in the

argument

West,

as in

the

Soviet Union, through the scientific plunder carried out by the Allies after the war, in particular the evacuation

of the Peenemiinde

team of rocketeers under Wernher von Braun, which had exploited slave labour.

economic

By

the same token, the history of

miracle, the zero

hour growth of

its

West Germany's under

industries

democracy, has been revised, especially in relation to companies like

Mercedes Benz which switched speedily from war production

to domestic products. In the Miller's All

on

My Sons,

words of Chris Keller

'what you have

is

really loot,

and

in

Arthur

there's

blood

it'.

Science

Beyond

all

and Individual Conscience

the collective political and moral issues, there are

instructive matters of individual conscience in point

is

the head of the

German atomic

and behaviour.

research project,

Heisenberg. Did he deliberately impede progress on a

atom bomb? Or did he simply then claim

a retrospective

fail

A

case

Werner German

through inadequate physics,

moral superiority

after the

war

for not

succeeding? Whatever the case of his intentions, heroic or hypocritical, it is clear that

due

the failure of the

at least in part to a

reluctance

German atomic bomb was

on Heisenberg's

responsibility for pressing for the priority

of

part to take

a highly speculative

venture that would put an unbearable strain on Germany's resources. That, as

some

historians

have noted, was

a

pragmatic

rather than a moral decision.

The

significance of Heisenberg's story,

to the question:

how

however,

should any scientist behave

is its

relevance

when drawn

involvement with weapons of mass destruction? The

issue

into

was

book by Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, first published in English in 1957, which suggested that Heisenberg and his colleagues may have behaved more morally

highlighted by the best-selling

than those

scientists,

worked on

the Allied

many of them Jewish emigres, who had bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and

Introciiictioii:

Nagasaki. living

'It

under

Understanding the Germans

13

seems paradoxical that the German nuclear a sabre-rattling dictatorship,'

physicists,

wrote Jungk, 'obeyed

the voice of conscience and attempted to prevent the construction

of atom bombs, while their professional colleagues in the democracies,

who

had no coercion to

fear,

with very few exceptions,

new

concentrated their whole energies on production of the

weapon!'^

The view, which caused

consternation and indignation

Jungk eventually recanted his boost in 1993 by Thomas Powers's

for another forty years (although verdict),

was given

a further

Heisenherg's War. Powers's conclusion at the

book was from the

first

from

weeks of the war

until the

last,

Heisenberg was

German bomb programme; no his colleagues or greater trust

considerations, taken as whole, lead

me

to

It

the very

at

physicist enjoyed greater

by the

authorities.

These

conclude that Heisenberg

consciously did what he could to ensure that there

German

500-page

a

that:

heart of the respect

end of

would be no ambitious

develop atomic bombs.

effort to

was the apparently imponderable nature of Heisenberg's true

intentions that

prompted Michael Frayn,

in his play Copenhagen,

draw a parallel between Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum physics and the uncertainties of history and biography. to

For the

historian,

however, Heisenberg's story demonstrates the

importance of evidence in understanding the behaviour of scientists faced with extraordinary dilemmas and choices in the midst of war. In recent years the publication of the the conversations

Heisenberg,

at

Farm Hall

tapes

—

records of

between detained German physicists, including war - have done much to dispel the

the end of the

'uncertainty' that

of mind and the

once shrouded the truth about Heisenberg's

German atomic bomb programme. The

that evidence, along

physicist Niels Bohr,

with recently released

with

ing in Copenhagen, forms

letters

state

status

of

of the Danish

whom Heisenberg had a wartime meeta

concluding chapter of this narrative.

Hitler's Scientists

14

Ethics

One

and Science

of the toughest criticisms Michael Frayn encountered in the

aftermath of his play was the charge that

moral relativism. ence

a variety

Some

complained

critics

it

exhibits a fashionable

that

by giving the audi-

of versions of Heisenberg's thoughts and motivations,

Frayn appeared to be saying that

judgment on Heisenberg's

it is

impossible to arrive

at a final

intentions and behaviour. Frayn denies

the charge.

On

the face of

no

scientists are

it,

different

from other human

beings caught in complex moral dilemmas. But there

is

a

Scientists themselves frequently claim that basic science

and

culturally neutral.

argue, there are

no

same temperature

in

no

level

of molecules and

no

politics,

Peking as

it

is

morally

particles,

they

culture: water boils at the

does in Berlin. Real

scientists, basic

they argue, generate knowledge; technologists, industry,

scientists,

governments apply view,

this

At the

ethics,

problem.

it.

Basic research under Hitler, according to

the same as research under any other

is

government

or regime. In Britain, for example, the one-time chairman of the for Public writes:

Committee

Understanding of Science, Professor Lewis Wolpert, not for

'It is

scientists to take

their

own: they have neither the

area.

There

is,

in fact, a great

moral or ethical decisions on

right

nor any special

danger in asking

§kills in this

scientists to

be more

socially responsible."'

How

does

this

view operate

applied, for example, to those

German academic

researchers during the

in exploiting data

provided by

camps? As Joseph Rotblat puts

and

a scientist second.'

A

it:

clear

war who were involved

human experiments in the death 'A scientist is a human being first,

example of the depraved values of

Wernher von Braun's version of value-free science was a remark he made after the war: that he did not care whether he worked for

Uncle Joe or Uncle Sam:

was

'all I

really

wanted was an uncle

who

rich'.'"

In a history of the behaviour of scientists in wartime, moral

judgments

are inescapable. Overall

I

have been inclined in

this

Germans

Introduction: Understanding the

15

narrative to adopt a utilitarian approach, judging the actions of

by the known, or

scientists

their discoveries

at least

and published knowledge. Focusing exclusively

on consequences, however, may complexity of choices that scientist

nevertheless

made

A

to resolve the

in isolation, socially

in time, but involves choices that affect the entire hfe project.

fail

scientists routinely face. Integrity for a

not confined to choices

is

probable, consequences of

moral

conduct of a

and

scientist's

involves a committed pattern of

life

behaviour, beHefs and principles, leading to feelings and convictions

how

of self-respect. In other words,

does

a scientist

look himself,

or herself, in the mirror every morning?

How, moreover, do

behave,

scientists

munity of specialists? In the course of this

as

members of

narrative

we

integrity.

forming the context

Being a

for funding,

in

academic and professional recognition, employment,

or publication,

The

is

loyalties

uppermost

of

- between

They

are

scientists are

with

a discovery,

mind.

multi-layered and frequently in

compared with artists,

writers or composers,

dependent on superiors, patrons, fund-holders, pay-

masters of every kind. Scientists,

in a scientist's

first

family, institution, discipline, nation. Scientists

are unusually dependent, say.

to attain

an unusual degree of competition:

promotion, pubhcation. Competition to he

conflict

scientific

which scientists struggle

scientist involves

com-

constantly

encounter the pressures and demands that are special to disciplines,

a

Tn

-'

rUfAe^

moreover, are constrained by high standards of intel-

lectual integrity, strict codes

of procedure

in constructing experi-

ments, devising research programmes, collecting data, reporting results. cite,

They

inhabit a social

acknowledge,

Under

assess

framework which

them

obliges

to

and endorse the work of colleagues.

the Third Reich, the pressures of competition, depend-

ence and maintenance of standards were increased and exacerbated often to an unbearable degree by a regime detennined to exploit

every aspect of science and education to

same time, academic and professional

its

integrity

own

ends.

were

distorted

corrupted by the need to survive, by the desire, in some thrive,

under

a

depraved regime in which

At the and

cases, to

many nomis of law — the

Hitler's Scientists

1

treatment of

'lives

not worth

living', for

suspended. At every stage of this narrative

example - had been

we

shall see the

presence

of pressures, temptations and compromises, involving spouses, families, fear

of loss of opportunity to do science; desire to receive

credit, recognition, resources; conflicting loyalties,

demic discipline, colleagues, land.

The

choices

made by

scientists,

moreover, had consequences

moment

moral dilemmas

are the

of the

extrinsic or external

a

'internal' to their practice.

But what

moral dilemmas?

Science

is

but also for their

human beings and the morale of their milieu.

These

There

and Father-

institutions, student bodies

not only for the circumstances of the 'projects' as integrated

towards aca-

widespread view,

and Democracy first

promoted by the Western

War II,

Allies

in the early stages

of World

of Western

democracy. At first sight the notion of a symbiosis

liberal

that science reaffirms the values

between science and democracy presents view

to the 'irresponsible purity' endorsed

the Third Reich.

within more or responsibility

The danger

less

is,

a

powerful alternative

by many

however,

scientists

that scientists

under

working

democratic societies are inclined to abdicate

by assuming

know what is best, w^-mch To assume that more

that their democratically elected leaders

<^

^ooc a/^^

or

less

r^/.K"vJ^

Ab^or

democratic governments have

tended to behave with integrity in the funding, administration and application of science and technology

of

this

book

is

naive, as the final chapters

will seek to demonstrate.

Free and well-ordered

under the auspices of democracy, hardly made

science, albeit

a

return to the ideals of freedom and diversity in the post-war era,

when

East and

West opposed each other

suspicion, a nuclear missile arms race

ation of science, aided and abetted

Nor have we

in a climate

of secrecy,

and the wholesale

by industry and the

militariz-

universities.

seen since 1989 the emergence of a golden age for

science as a post-Cold

War

peace dividend. Today, fourteen years

we

face alarming trends in the

on from

the

new

of biotechnology and genetics, the continuing pollution

era

fall

of the Berlin Wall,

Introduction: Understanding the

of the planet,

Germans

new generations of nuclear weapons

17 for pre-emptive

use rather than deterrence, a multi-trillion-dollar strategic missile 'shield'

and increasing incursions on

civil liberties in

the global

war

against terrorism.

Challenges to well-ordered science, responsive and responsible to society in an ideals

erty

environment of democracy, include the collapse of

of free access to information, the spread of intellectual prop-

ownership

in the interests

of profit rather than freedom of

knowledge, the aggressive patenting of nature, attempts to break morally accepted guidelines on the exploitation of human embryos

and cloning, continued abuse of the global environment and ecology, the further impoverishment of the developing world, con-

tinued research into biochemical weapons. Scientists

cannot ignore the auspices under which they work and

receive funding, nor relax their moral and political vigilance, even if they believe that a

democracy

is

the best of all possible worlds for

the conduct of science. Pondering, historicist conclusion, the

as this

book does

in

its

frankly

moral and poUtical predicament of scien-

tists

today, in the light of Germany's scientific prostitutions in the

first

half of the twentieth century, prompts not only contrasts

parallels

danger.

and

with the past but consciousness of present and future

PART ONE Hitler's Scientific Inheritance

I

On

his

.

Hitler the Scientist

twenty-seventh birthday, 23 March 1939, Wernher von

Braun, Germany's briUiant young rocket engineer, met Adolf Hitler for the

first

The

time.

had agreed

Fiihrer

be briefed on the

to

programme

progress of the army's advanced ballistic missile

Kummersdorf West,

a research facility

at

south of Berlin.

Walter Dornberger, von Braun's superior, has

an eye-witness

left

impression of Hitler's encounter with one of the most significant high-tech inventions of the century.'

wet

It

was, he reported,

and water

day, with an overcast sky

still

cold,

'a

dripping from the

rain-drenched pines'. Hitler's thoughts seemed elsewhere. 'His

remarkably tanned features, the unsightly snub nose,

moustache and extremely thin

what we were

in

to

show

lips

showed no

sort

on

him.' Dornberger put

little

black

of interest a series

of

demonstrations of roaring rockets and guidance systems to impress his Fiihrer:

he demonstrated the power of

showed

rocket motor, then

a

650-pound

off one with a 2,200-pound thrust for

comparison. But Hitler 'kept

his eyes steadfastly fixed

wrote Dornberger.

know whether he

I

'I still

thrust

don't

on me',

understood what

was talking about.'

Next

the

young von Braun,

Junker stock, gave

a

a

fleshy-looking

young man of A3

presentation of the internal workings of an

rocket using a cutaway model; Hitler apparently listened, closely first,

but then stalked off shaking his head

Another

demonstration took place,

static

which was

to precede in

sophisticated missile

-

development

a

at

as if

uncomprehending.

this

time with an A5,

much

larger

and more

the A4, the army's missile of choice

as a

long-range weapon.

At lunch Dornberger his

sat

diagonally opposite Hitler. 'As he ate

mixed vegetables and drank

mineral water

.

.

.

his habitual glass

[Hitler] chatted

of Fachingen

with Becker about what they

22

Hitler's Scientists

had

seen,'

was

said,

wrote Dornberger.

but he seemed

more

a little

demonstration or immediately

couldn't

'I

much from what

tell

interested than during the

Later Hitler

after.'

made

the laconic

remark, 'Es war doch gewaltig!' (That was tremendous). Dornberger remained puzzled.

The

visit

had seemed

'strange' to

not downright unbelievable'. Dornberger had been used to

being 'enraptured, Luftwaffe chief

thrilled,

and carried away by the

him,

'if

visitors

spectacle', like

Hermann Goering, who, on being shown

the

rocket hardware, leaped about laughing and slapping his thighs

with unrestrained

glee.^

Reflecting on the episode after the war, Dornberger wrote that Hitler did not grasp the significance of missile technology for the

'He could not

future.

worse for us

at that

fit

the rocket into his plans, and

what was

time, did not believe the time was ripe for

it.

He certainly had no feeHng for technological progress, upon which the basic conditions for our

The his

work depended.'

episode encapsulates Hitler's approach to

tendency to make decisions in

isolation,

new

technology:

depending on the

certitude of his personal intuition and inspiration, rather than

on

the basis of careful inquiry and the conclusions of committees. As it

happened. Hitler was right to be suspicious of the imminent 1939; nor did his apparent

effectiveness of ballistic missiles in

lukewarm

reaction indicate an unwillingness, as Dornberger infers,

to fund further research, at

on

first

a

medium

level

of priority. In

time, however, the story of the Fiihrer's decisions and ambitions for the

was

Nazi rocket programme -

a generation

ahead of the

profound flaws in his capacities scientific nations. Hitler at a

point

V2 was

to

when

defeat

technology in which Germany

a

rest

as

of the world - would reveal

leader of one of the most advanced

became seriously interested in rockets only seemed inevitable: the deployment of the

be no more an act of rituahstic vengeance,

of what the novelist Thomas

Mann

described

as

a gesture

'technological

romanticism', than a rational strategy that could help win the war.

Hitler the Scientist

23

Hitler's Bio-political Rhetoric

Hitler's

knowledge and appreciation of science and technology-

were warped, degenerate and profoundly trials

Armaments Minister from February

At the Nuremberg

racist.

of the Nazi leadership, Albert Speer,

Hitler's architect

and

his

1942, proclaimed that he,

Speer, was 'the most important representative of a technocracy

which had showed no compunction

in applying

all its

commented

against humanity'. In a statement to the judge, Speer that in a a type

mechanized age

of individual

and had produced,

dictatorships required,

who

took orders

know-how

uncritically.

'The nightmare

of many people that some day nations will be dominated by technology,'

he declared, 'almost came true

Every

state in the

technology. But

world

is

now

in Hitler's authoritarian system.

seems inevitable in

this

of being terrorized by

in danger a

modern

dictatorship.

Hence: the more demanding individual freedom and the awareness of the individual.'^

The former Nazi

self-

minister had

revealed no such refmed ratiocinations while serving the Third

Reich, yet faced with the hangman's noose he admitted the

insidi-

ous exploitation of science and technology in Hitler's totalitarian state,

while intimating future dangers for the victors of

World

War II. What was

absent,

principally to

weapons technology, communications and the media,

however, from

was an acknowledgement

that

most

outset

influential

at

the

his 'confession',

Hitler's

the

German

as 'bio-political'. Hitler

nation state

stances of health

as a

and disease

racist 'genetics', to

nation state and

favoured rhetorical metaphors,

been described

at its

of the regime, featured crude

German

notion of the

alludes

Adolf Hitler's view of science,

borrowings from the ambit of pathology and articulate his

which

as

its

destiny.

he rose to power, have

subscribed to the idea of

type of anatomy, subject to circum-

like the

human

body.

Hitler betrayed a profound ignorance of Mendelism and particulate inheritance.

His 'biological' notions of race evidently found

their origins in Joseph

century

man of

Arthur de Gobineau, the French nineteenth-

letters

and

early

exponent of

racial theory,

and

24

Hitler's Scientists

'philosophers':

Houston Stewart

Chamberlain, Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and

Fritz Lenz. Hitler

a tradition

of latter-day

racist

believed that the purity of the Germanic-Aryan race had been

compromised through

a

'blending process'/

The

task

ahead was to

encourage and preserve uncontaminated stocks of Aryan blood.

By

1925, as Hitler completed his political testament Mein Kampf,

the racist epithets of Teutonic supremacy, culled from the phlets of his lean days in Vienna,

were giving way

version of geopolitics, Lebensraum

— the

pam-

to a vulgarized

quest for living space, allied

He

to pseudo-scientific quasi-medical imagery.

harped on the

introduction of undesirable hereditary strains into the healthy

Nordic body, the

Volkskorper,

and extraneous

factors operating like

pathogens. Jews were invaders, undermining the integrity of the

German organism - bacilli, cancers, gangrene, tumours, abscesses. His political programme was seen in terms of cures, surgery, purgings

and antidotes.

He

lamented

have the means to 'master the

in 1925 that the state did

disease'

not

which was penetrating the

'bloodstream of our people unhindered'.^ Such ideas, bogus

as

they were pernicious, culled from the so-called discipline of racial hygiene, contained inevitable propensities towards solutions which

saw the German Volk as

as a patient,

the beneficent physician.

The images of Jews mid- 1 93 OS

as

^-^^

the -

as a disease

Jew

as a sickness

^'^^ twocv^c-, were

all

-

and Hitler 'J^^'-'

too famijiar by the

the ideological bio-pohtical content

merged with

Nazi medical science. The cofounder of the Nazi Physicians League, Kurt Klare, talked of the 'decomposing influence of Jewry'. ^

The

the physician

uolkisch

body was

calls

need of 'cleansing', according

to

and Nazi plenipotentiary Dr Gerhard Wagner. Hence

the race laws of 1935

and

in

were underpinned by images of immunity

for radical therapy, the 'cauterizing

1940, Hitler was seen as

of the tumour'.

By

the great 'healer'. In a basic text, explaining

the necessity of the invasion of Poland, the Nazi pubHcist Ernst

Hiemer declared that from Poland

'these Jewish bacilli crossed over

to us, bringing the Jewish sickness to

died from

this sickness,

our land.

Our

people almost

had Adolf Hitler not dehvered us

in the

nick of time.'^ As the war progressed, the bio-rhetoric saw the

Hitler the Scientist

convergence of images that argued

metaphor and clusion.

25

continuity between medical

a

prophylactic realism, hastening to an inevitable

Jews were not only

of the host body

a parasitical invasion

of Germanhood, they were responsible,

it

con-

was claimed,

for actual

current epidemics in the East requiring immediate isolation and

quarantine

- degenerate euphemisms for the ghettos and the camps.

In the pathological paradox that frequently attends science as salvation, the purveyors

and preserve human infected appendix

from

who

of death thus become those

life.

Just as a physician acts to cut

a patient, the 'Jew', as

witz physician Fritz Klein,

'is

respect

away an

declared by Ausch-

the gangrenous appendix in the

body

of mankind'.

Hitler

and

the

Bomb

conquest of Europe, however,

As

Hitler's thoughts turned to the

his

need to understand the power and scope of applied science and

technology for war-making assumed

a practical

urgency.

He was

how

piece of

keenly interested in weapons and quick to grasp

equipment worked. a

It

was often remarked

long-winded technical account with

summary. Speer wrote

that

a

he could rephrase

terse,

highly accurate

antimodern

that Hitler 'was

a

in decisions

on

armaments'. Hitler opposed the machine gun because, according to Speer, ible'.^

'it

made soldiers cowardly and made close combat imposs-

He was against jet propulsion, because he thought its extreme

speed was an obstacle to

aerial

attempts to develop an atomic to Speer,

On

'a

combat, and distrusted

bomb,

German

calling such efforts, according

spawn ofJewish pseudo-science'.

23 June 1942, Albert Speer discussed the atomic

Hitler. Speer

wrote

in his

memoirs

capacity was quite obviously strained

bomb

with

that the Fiihrer's intellectual

by the

idea,

and

that 'he

was

unable to grasp the revolutionary nature of nuclear physics'. Speer

noted that out of 2,200 points raised in

his

conferences with Hitler,

nuclear fission was raised only once and then only briefly. Hitler, it

seemed, had acquired

his

a

garbled version of atomic science from

photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann,

who

in turn

had picked

it

26

Hitler's Scientists

up from

a minister

who was

sponsoring an atomic research project

head of

for the Post Office. Speer,

meanwhile, reported

the official nuclear research

programme, Werner Heisenberg, had

been unable

to

confirm that

'with absolute certainty'. scientists that a

a

that the

chain reaction could be controlled

There had been suspicions among the

chain reaction,

of massive energy in

a release

fissile

once

material

by the instantaneous sphtting of its atomic

started,

would continue on through the material of the entire

planet.

Speer wrote that in consequence Hitler was 'plainly

structure,

not delighted with the possibihty that the earth under

might be transformed into

a

glowing

star'.

Hitler,

his rule

Speer went on,

liked to joke that the scientists 'in their unworldly urge to lay

bare

some day

the secrets under heaven might

all

set the

globe on

fire'.

Yet when Hitler invaded Poland were

Germany who

physicists in

September 1939 there knew at least as much, if not more,

than the Anglo-Americans, and

programmes fact, it

for harnessing the

had been

a

in

who were

organizing research

power of the atom

German, Otto Hahn

as a

weapon. In

in Berlin, assisted

Strassmann, with crucial input from Lise Meitner and her

Otto

Frisch,

who

first

discovered nuclear

fission,

by

Fritz

nephew

or the sphtting

of the atom, in December of the previous year, even though it had probably been first achieved, unwittingly, by Earico Fermi in Italy.

At the same time,

at

Peenemiinde on the

miles north of Berlin, the

some 200

Baltic coast

German army had by 1939

gathered

hundreds of scientists and engineers with unprecedented research

and development

facihties to create

and mass-produce supersonic

rockets to enable Hitler to strike at his enemies hundreds of miles distant. In the last

year of the war the rocket scientists were drawing

would carry payloads as far as 400 miles and even beyond. Had the Third Reich been first to construct an explosive nuclear device, or even a 'dirty bomb' composed of

up plans

for booster rockets that

conventional explosive and radioactive materials,^

it is

likely that

employment against an enemy would have involved delivery by long-range guided missile, and history would have been very

its first

27

Hitler the Scientist

There can be little doubt that Hitler would have used an atom bomb had he possessed one. Albert Speer remembers Hitler's reaction to the final scene of a newsreel in the autumn of 1939. In different.

montage and the

a

plane dives towards the British

island

blew up

Isles:

in smithereens.' Speer

enthusiasm was unbounded. Similarly,

'A

followed,

flash

wrote

that Hitler's

when Walter Dornberger,

head of the German rocket development project, spoke with Hitler about the potential of

ballistic missiles in

'strange, fanatical light'

came

'What

want

I

is

annihilation

the

summer of

1943, a

into the Fiihrer's eyes. Hitler declared:

-

annihilating effect.'

Historians of science have argued to this day about the feasibility

of a Nazi atomic bomb.

It is

clear that Hitler's scientists

had

not overcome the main technological problems by the end of the war;

it is

also

apparent that

manpower and economic weapon during the war.

Germany

lacked the materiel, the

resources necessary to develop such a

skilled in theoretical

moreover, had

Hitler's racist policies,

resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of

and nuclear physics.

key Jewish

physicists,

Hitler's ignorance

of

science and technology, scientists and engineers, as well as the

grotesquely inefficient and corrupt

power

win

a

nature

of the

of the Third Reich, undermined Germany's

structures

ability to

'polycratic'

long-term war based on sophisticated science and

technology calling for massive resources. The Manhattan Project, the

—

a

American atom bomb programme, involved two separate paths uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb - while the research

and development involved some expenditure of $2 billion vast resources

without

at

150,000

personnel

the time. America could

strain.

With Germany,

call

and an

on

these

lacking capacity in

every area of weapons production, the case would have been different.

But Germany's

failures in science

and wide-ranging.

When

Hitler

and technology were systemic

went

to

war

in 1939,

Germany's

education system, once the envy of the world, was in chaos, along with the country's national policies for the fDstering and exploitation of science and technology.

Some members of

Reich leadership even spoke of closing down the

the

universities until

28

Hitler's Scientists

war was

the

over.

Thousands of highly educated technicians,

engineers and science students were drafted into the armed forces irrespective of the stage of their education or their usefulness to the

war

effort;

it

took three years for the regime to reverse the process.

Links between academia and the military, and hence the bias of research programmes, institutions out

were pursued and fostered within academic

of self-interest rather than

while warring

rationality,

elements of the military vied with each other to appropriate aca-

demic personnel, laboratories and

institutions as a matter

of prestige

and inter-service rivalry. In the absence of a rationalized, centralized executive, science and technology in the Third

whim

Reich were

at

the

of competing warlords and commercial and bureaucratic

fiefdoms.

At the same time. Hitler

between the main armed

deliberately generated rivalries

and the SS, while

services

establish a policy for priorities in the

failing to

complex mobilization and

rearmament of a technologically advanced nation

state.

Hitler's Scientific Education

Hitler

grew

advances in science and technology in

background of remarkable

to maturity against the

Germany and

Austria.

at

Germany's

the turn of the

industry, university science departments, (tertiary-level technical colleges

tutes,

were regarded

as

Hitler was, in the unintelligent',

among

later

its

Technische ^ochschulen

its

Kaiser

Wilhelm

Insti-

the best in the world.

words of the

and he had

century

of high academic standing with

and

excellent research capabilities)

last

scientific research centres,

historian Ian

a formidably retentive

not attend school beyond the elementary nature indecisive and lethargic.

By

level,

the time he

Kershaw, 'not

memory. He did and he was by

came

to

power he

had evidently acquired only a remote and patchy knowledge of the natural sciences, engineering

and mathematics. Not inclined

to

rue his lack of secondary and tertiary education. Hitler told the readers of Mem Kampfth^t at school he 'sabotaged' those aspects of

the curriculum he thought unimportant and unattractive. Given, nevertheless,

to

an extraordinary degree of self-assurance, he

Hitler the Scientist

claimed that

at his Realschiile in

were geography and his

lower.

^*^

Linz, in Austria, his best subjects

But he Hed. These were among

history.

worst subjects; although

29

his

marks

At school, he claimed, he

in

mathematics were even

provoked

his teachers

by expos-

ing the contradiction between religion and science in the curricu-

lum: 'At 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism,

which the creation of the world is

with the teaching of the Bible; and

which they

in natural science, at tion.'

He

said that this

his teachers, 'and

I

at 11

a.m. they attend a lesson

are taught the theory

him

contradiction forced

against the wall'. Often,

that

I

drove them to

curious quirk of fate. Hitler overlapped with

of evolu-

to 'run his head

he wrote, he complained on

remember

at

presented to them in accordance

this score to

despair'.

By

a

Ludwig Wittgenstein,

who would become an eminent philosopher; but whereas Wittgenstein

was

year ahead of his age. Hitler was

a

their being

few

a

According

manque, an

a

year behind, despite

days apart in age."

who was well educated, a mathematician and, as Hugh Haflfner once commented, a

to Speer,

architect

'pure technician'. Hitler did not choose direct routes to obtaining

information on science and technology from responsible people, 'but

depended instead on

give

him

unreliable,

incompetent intormants to

Sunday-supplement account'. ^^

a

was proof, Speer

It

added, 'of his love for amateurishness and his lack of understanding of fundamental scientific research'. Hitler nevertheless liked to pontificate

on

science, technology

he had got their measure by placed science within his lecture visitors

on

its

a process

own

and medicine,

of intuitive genius.

He

as if

had

grand vision of things and v^ould

history, the physical laws

of nature and their

applications.

In 1942

we

relationship

hear

him haranguing one of

his admirals

on

the

between the shape offish and the design of ships. The

tone of disquisition and

its

dogmatic appeal to

first

principles give

an impression of Hitler's invincible egotism. 'The current design

of ships certainly does not conform to the laws of nature,' he told the admiral.

Hitler's Scientists

30 If it did,

element

then at

we

should find

fish

furnished with

some

the rear, instead of the lateral fins with

endowed. Nature would

have given the

also

less

that

has

it

In

in front

a

pointed bow.

mid- 1 944, when Luftwaffe senior

of the Me-262

of high-speed

as

combat.

only quite recently, too,

not the best spade. '^

officers

were urging the use

bombers, lectured them on the physiology

- you've got them spinning your heads around -

more about

don't want to hear any

simply shut

is

the pressure

flight:

Fighter jets, fighter jets

won't be able

It is

much

jet aircraft as a fighter. Hitler, insisting that jets

should only be used

I

on

realised that a pointed spade

been

are

exactly to a globule

of water ... by thickening the prow you reduce by so

produced from

which they

stream-lined head,

fish a

instead of that shape which corresponds more or

of propulsive

sort

to fight

down

with

in the

it.

it!

That's not

a fighter,

and you

My doctor told me that parts of your brain

dog

fights

which you have

to

do when

in

'"*

While projecting an image of healthy hving and energetic leadership. Hitler

was given

night watching banal movies and

an eclectic medley of medical administrative influences,

the

life,

of indolence, spending half the

to periods

rising at lunchtime.

in a constellation

subscribed to

strict

particular

espoused

fads, centred, as in his political

from which he chose

monopoly of a

He

and

of orbiting and competing

as if at

random

so as preclude

brand of science or medicine. ^^

He

dietary fads (which he occasionally broke)

-

uncooked fruits, grains and vegetables - based on anecdotal 'science'. At the same time, he imbibed bromides and a highly toxic gun-cleaning fluid, a 'medicine' he believed did his stomach good in the trenches

of World

War

I.

Never would he allow an examin-

ation of his naked body, as if unwilling to surrender his authority to professional scrutiny. Shortly after becoming Chancellor he to see an old

woman

to consult her

on vegetarian

diet.

went

When

his

Gestapo chief attempted to broach an administrative matter with him, Hitler snapped that there were

'far

more important

things

Hitler the Scientist

— reforming

than politics this

woman

old

anything

I

told

can do in

me

human

the

Hfestyle, for

morning

this

my life.''^

3

Hitler's

example.

What

more important than vegetarianism, which dates

is

far

from 193 1, was said to be due to the influence of the composer Richard Wagner, who had claimed that human beings had been contaminated by

racial

human

believed that the sterilization

lifespan

humans

of civilization), including cancer.

started to eat

meat when forced

Age. The promotion of raw

would Hitler

had shortened

of

result

a

as

of food through cooking and consequent Kulturkrank-

heiten (diseases

that

mixing and the consumption of meat. Hitler

to

convinced

do so by the

and vegetables,

Ice

in his view,

Anxious about contracting cancer.

reverse this process.

was convinced

fruits

He was

that there

might be some danger from the

influence of 'earth rays', Erdstrahlen, in the chancellery, and had a physician, Gustav Freiherr

dowsing rod.

Amongst

^^"^

von Pohl,

test for

'emanations' with a

<6a6ai>4

^^ma^,^

-

the luggage of superstition and half-baked

knowledge

Even

in the fmal

he carried through

life

was

a trust in astrology.

days of the Reich, early in April of 1945, he was inclined to place his confidence in a

file

of astrological nonsense, portending

favourable circumstances for his personal horoscope, placed in his

hands by

Propaganda Minister, Goebbels.

his

On

learning of the

death of Roosevelt on 12 April, Hitler was beside himself with glee.

'Here

we

have the great miracle that

'Who's

told his cronies.

Roosevelt

is

right

now? The war

is

not

Reich he placed

it!

will over

the driving force of the national state: science in

as

Weimar

Republic. Writing on education policy in Mein

Kampf,^^ he cited scientific and technical education 'the plague

grasp of

of our present-day cowardly lack of

what science was and what

ill-informed.

unlike

Read

lost.

he declared, was to blame for the fragmentation and chaos

schools,

of the

always foretold,' he

dead.'^^

In his vision of the thousand-year

education

I

those

He

scientists

as a

reason for

will'.

But

his

do was narrow and

vaguely understood that scientific propositions,

of metaphysics, were provisional, that

research should be allowed freedom

unhampered by

scientific

the need to

Hitler's Scientists

32 teach; but

he had a poor understanding of the nature of experimental

and empirical method, and tended to identify

scientific training

with mere accumulations of facts, with scant appreciation of how those facts were obtained.

Once 'The

power, he wrote, he would change the curriculum:

in

school training which today

scientific

and end of all

state

be taken over by the

educational volkish state.

have to put general

'will

form, embracing the

was passing through education

scientific

—

is

really the

is

work can with only slight changes '^^ The wlkish state, he emphasized, an abbreviated

scientific instruction into

essentials'.

beginning

He was

convinced that Germany

a 'materialized epoch',

meaning

that 'our

turning increasingly towards practical subjects

These

in other words, mathematics, physics, chemistry etc'

preoccupations, he warned, were 'dangerous' since they implied a neglect of an 'ideal' education and the renunciation of 'forces are

more important

still

which

of the nation than

for the preservation

all

technical or other ability'.^" All the same, although he

would change his views about technical

innovation during the war, he believed through the 1920s that the Fatherland's best defence 'will citizens ... a living wall

love

.

.

.

and

not in

lie

of men and

weapons, but in

its

women

fanatical national enthusiasm'.

filled

with supreme

There was

a

for 'scientific education':

Science

.

.

.

history

seem

pride.

must be taught from

proper role ^

must be regarded by the

advancement of national

its

volkish state as

Not only world

this standpoint.

great as an inventor, but

An

an instrument for the

history but

all

cultural

inventor must not only

must seem even greater

as a

national

comrade. ^^

The

reflection

was no mere spasm of reactionary

waffle, for

it

echoed precisely the Fulda manifesto signed by ninety-three Ger-

man

intellectuals

had combined

and

who

at

to declare that science

entirely at the service

the Fulda

scientists,

of the nation

the outset of the First

and knowledge should be

state in

document had expressed

this

War

arms.

The

sentiment

signatories

at a

time

of

when

Hitler the Scientist

physicists in Britain, France,

reconsidering

many of

33

Germany and Denmark had

also

been and

their discipHne's cherished structures

preconceptions, questioning whether indeed science could be collaborative and internationalist during wartiine.

claimed that he had carried Schopenhauer in

through the

War, only

First

to reject

him

Hitler,

his greatcoat

who

pocket

later for the 'genius

of

Nietzsche', ^^ had formed a highly nationalistic overview of science;

but he was not alone in his failure to perceive the dependence of

new it

physics

on

pluralist, internationalist collaboration.

seemed, had not progressed

much

in his thinking

But

Hitler,

beyond potted

versions of seventeenth-century astronomy and distorted farragoes

of Darwinism. Sitting over cakes

and

tea

on long evenings

in his headquarters

during the war years. Hitler often turned to the remarkable transformation effected by the inventions of the microscope and the telescope. His

would be

the nation, he liked to say,

gift to

the

construction of observatories to be placed like municipal libraries in the

towns and

claimed, he

cities

of Greater Gemiany. In

would overcome

his 'astronomical' interests

'a

this

way, he

world of superstitions'.-^

was an inclination

Among

to credit a bizarre

known as 'glacial cosmogony', Hanns Horbimix of myth, imagination and pseudo-science. The theory,

theosophical theory ger's

enthusiastically espoused

by Heinrich Himmler, the SS

leader,

claimed that the universe was formed out of ice interacting with an original sun that

was believed

to

have been 30 million times bigger

than our contemporaneous sun. Hitler commissioned the architect Professor H. Gieseler to design a planetarium and observatory in Linz, the city of his childhood, with a gallery in

would

Kepler.^"* Ironically, the futuristic

lich

which Horbiger

take his place alongside Copernicus, Galileo,

Newton and

famous 'Einstein Tower', the spectacular

observatory built by the astronomer Irwin Finlay Freund-

and the architect Erich Mendelsohn

at

Potsdam

to explore the

implications of Einstein's theory of relativity, ceased to do serious basic astrophysics

under Hitler. Freundlich was removed

for questioning the order to give the

The new

director, the

Nazi

as

director

salute within the building.

Nazi Hans Ludendorff, banished the name

Hitler's Scientists

34

of Einstein and called

the Institute for Solar Physics. Research

it

based on Einstein's relativity theory was dropped, and the observa-

became a centre during the war years for research with military — the link between turbulence in the solar atmosphere

tory

relevance

and radio interference.^^

An

of Jews from the

academics were to the country biologists

went

of hundreds of distinguished

Fritz

community and

it

who

to

Max

Through

we

the

will

with

and explosives.

in deference to prevailing prejuin his early twenties,

Germany

a year. Hitler

was

Haber had made di(^

to

not allow

wider prejudice. His notorious response

Planck's pleading was

Jews, then

War

First

and military fortunes, but he

to affect his

dis-

of nitrogen from the

artificial fertilizers

well aware of the epoch-making difference industrial

In particular,

Chemistry in Berlin. Haber had

and cheap

not been for Haber,

knowledge

Planck

dean of the German

could not have prosecuted the war for more than

this

Max

director of the world-famous Kaiser Wil-

had converted to Christianity

Germany's

loss

physicists, chemists,

blockaded Germany in the

a

potentially unlimited

dices

patriot,

the chemical process for the fixation

which provided

Had

meant the

non- Aryan predicament.

Haber, Jew,

Institute for Physical

covered

this

and argued the case for retaining Germany's top

scientists despite their

science

Since most scientists and

Germany,

civil servants in

Planck had in mind

helm

civil service.

and mathematicians. The eminent physicist

to Hitler

Jewish

air

he came to power was the

early decision taken shortly after

dismissal

science cannot

this: 'If

few

years.'

finest scientists in the

world

have to do without science for

mid- 1930s some of the

do without

a

consequently made their way from Germany and Austria to Britain

and the United in the

States,

coming world

with inevitable consequences for both

conflict.

But the

the act had other implications for the

racist

sides

notions underpinning

outcome of the war

against

Russia. Blinded by racial prejudice. Hitler was convinced that the

Russians were incapable of conducting

a

technological

war of the

twentieth century. Hitler believed

that

certain

races,

like

the

Russians,

were

incapable of making things: 'The Russians never invent anything,'

Hitler the Scientist

he liked

to say. 'Give

them

the

35

most highly perfected bombing-

They're capable of copying them, but not of inventing

sights.

them.'^^

Nor were

work and

they capable, in his view, of systematic thought,

organization. Shortly after the invasion of the Soviet

summer of 194 1, he opined over supper: 'The Russian will never make up his mind to work except under compulsion from Union,

in the

outside, for he if,

is

incapable of organizing himself

despite everything, he

is

him, that is thanks to the drop of Aryan blood in their factories,

and

set

he declared, and

them working

again'.

'the Russians

The

left

added: 'And

his veins. '"^

upon

Destroy

cannot rebuild them

on the other hand,

Japanese,

were capable of 'improving something borrowing from

He

apt to have organisation thrust

that exists

and right whatever makes

it

go

already,

better'.

by

Lump-

ing together the Russians, the Chinese and the Japanese, he pro-

nounced: 'These people are inferior to us ... In the sphere of chemistry, for example,

them from

By

it's

been proved

that everything

comes

to

us.'

the time he had reached his prime. Hitler had constructed a

confident, self-taught 'philosophy' in

which he had

relegated sci-

ence, the laws of the universe, race and religion to their proper

spheres and scales of significance. During those evening

headquarters he was given to expatiating about science

logues

at his

and

relationship to politics

its

gress in science'

had led

mastery of nature'.

with

'the laws

He

and

religion.

He

believed that 'pro-

'liberalism astray into proclaiming

advocated

a holistic, intuitive

man's

acquaintance

of nature', but science, he counselled, cannot deal

in ultimate questions

know

mono-

-

anything about

'as

for the

it'.

And

ii^hy

yet,

of these laws,

we

shall

never

the ultimate questions, he

declared, completing the illogical coda, cannot be answered

by

religion.

Religion, science's enemy,

'The best thing

Himmler

is

is

doomed by

science, he insisted.

to let Christianity die a natural death,'

he told

early in the war.

The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the

36

Hitler's Scientists

myths crumble.

All that's left

is

to

prove that in nature there

between the organic and the inorganic. universe has the

become widespread, when

Amidst such nostrums to

frontier

that

rants

be convicted of absurdity."^

he was given to propounding mind-numbing

say.

'On every

He had

to a

to

know

the essence of

grasped the inability of science to answer meta-

physical questions, but science

more

compare science

rung, one beholds a wider

But science does not claim

landscape.

thing

no

men know

the majority of

his captive audiences. 'Let us

he liked to

things. '^'^

is

understanding of the

not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like

stars are

ours, then the Christian doctrine will

ladder,'

When

was providing the world with some-

upon

valuable: the ability to gaze

the very large. 'Science has taught

us,'

the very small and

he declared,

we

'that

are

hemmed in not only by the infmitely great, but also by the infinitely small

—

the

macrocosm and microcosm.

'^*^

Truman

In contrast, although Roosevelt, Churchill and, later,

were not educated

in science, the Allied leadership maintained an

astute respect for the experts.

They listened, they took

learned, sometimes painfully, and they consulted and

committees.

advice, they

formed expert

prejudiced in favour of a Lamarckian view of

Stalin,

inherited characteristics, supported the bogus plant science of

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, but he evidently showed presence of mind in opting for the robust engineering projects the

Red Army

scientists

with the war-winning

T4

that

provided

tank; after the

war

his

kept pace with America in pursuit of the hydrogen bomb.

Roosevelt, despite an extraordinary aberration early in the Pacific war, involving his plan to drop thousands of bats over the belief that they transit),

with

was open

would

terrify the

to extensive advice

scientific matters as well as

migrant

like

scientists

Hungarian-born

expended

vast

Albert

physicist.

sums

in

from committees dealing

being accessible to relatively recent Einstein

Churchill,

in the early

Tokyo

Japanese (the bats died in

and Leo

who

as

Szilard,

First

months of World War

II

the

Sea Lord

on

useless

mechanical trench-diggers to cross what he envisaged would be

World War no man's I

land,

a

was nevertheless fascinated by science

Hitler the Scientist

37

and technology and asked searching questions of the of his closest friends during the 1930s physicist Professor Frederick

One

experts.

and during the war was the

Lindemann.

genius and technology.

as a war leader who had know about the importance of inventive He found it difficult to bridge the gap

between

his fiats

however, portrayed himself

Hitler,

grasped

all

there was to

his acts

of will,

and the technical

feasibility

of his

decisions. 'What's important,' he told a group of dinner-table

cronies early in 1942,

to have the technical superiority in every

'is

case at a decisive point.

know

I

mad on

I'm

that;

technology.

must meet the enemy with novelties that take him by as

war

continually to keep the initiative. '^^ His

he declared, was 'technological'.

He

spoke

wizardry could be conjured out of thin

wonder

as if

air;

We

surprise, so

against the Allies,

technical

that

weapons

he could exploit

inventions by the application of unassailable logic. 'Ten

thousand bombs dropped as a single

bomb aimed

at

random on

with certainty

a city are

at a

not

as effective

powerhouse or

a

water-

works on which the water supply depends.' At the same time, he told Dornberger, the leader of the rocket plant at Peenemiinde, that

Germany must

this at a

one

time

when

build tens of thousands of rockets, at once, and the scientists

were finding

it

difficult to

make

successful prototype.

From

the day Hitler assumed the leadership of

January 1933 nothing he

said,

Germany

or did, indicated that he understood

the prodigious scientific and technological legacy of Germany, it

its

was ordered and organized,

how

it

could be harnessed, or

ongoing programmes could be ordered according

There

is

no evidence

that

in

how how

to priority.

he appreciated or understood anything

of the nature of its origins and the history of its development.

2.

In the

Germany

the Science

Mecca

three decades of the twentieth century

first

pre-eminent in

many areas of the

Germany stood

natural sciences, mathematics

and

technology, despite an intervening ruinous war. In 1900 Berlin had failed in

bid to host the great International Exhibition

its

honour went exhibits,

to Paris

— but

to the Eiffel

did not prevent the

this

which stretched over

fifteen locations

to

glow

had erected with

a pavilion in the

a steeple that

pavilions,

On

the

in

wonder

their

way

to Paris

Quai des Nations the Germans

form of a sixteenth-century Rathaus,

towered above

its rivals.

Apart from the national

the participating countries had been encouraged to

exhibit side

by side in thematic

clusters

of technology - the emphasis

being on the usefulness of products to

all

however, had decided against showing

company

German

and technological achieve-

in pride before the scientific

ments of the Fatherland.

the

from the Tuileries

Tower, outstripping those of other nations

and inventiveness.^ Millions of Germans made

—

origins,

The Germans,

nations.

their wares according to

hence emphasizing the national origins of their

advanced technology rather than mere trade names.

The Germans had brought together such advances as liquefaction of gases, production of electrical power and electrochemistry.^

One

exhibit revealed the rare earths essential for the 'illumination

industry', a feature

of intense interest in the palace of

which displayed the

The

brilliance

electricity,

of Walther Nernst's patent lamps.

purest thorium, crucial to the burgeoning electrical lighting

industry,

was produced by Germany, according

to the

accom-

panying promotion; and the German price had been reduced from 2,000 marks per kilo to 50 marks per kilo in the space of six years. In the science and technology exhibition situated

de Mars

visitors

gazed

earth, constructed

at

on the Champs

the largest and most powerful

dynamo on

by Germany's Helios Company. As

f^r the

Germany

the Science

Mecca

39

instrument section, Britain's science journal Nature reflected that the prodigious array of German precision instruments was not 'one

which brings great pleasure to an Englishman, and if he moves on to examine the English exhibit his thoughts cannot fail to be verygrave'.^ The German exhibition catalogue was a major publishing event in

itself,

250-page volume incorporating the soaring,

a

unstoppable hubris of

German

science and technology. Published

in three different language editions, German, English and French,

and

lavishly illustrated

design,

was bound

it

with colour in

woven

and Art Nouveau

illustrations

beige muslin.

The

publication

covered the history, development and applications of the German exhibits.

The

introduction contained a survey of Germany's popu-

lation expansion,

with

facts

and figures on female employment,

divorce, racial and religious groups and emigration.

and 1899, the population had

risen

from 52 million

Between 1895 to 55 million,

having doubled between 18 16 and 1900. Germany was

a

young

country, 61 per cent of the population aged under thirty. There

were

and only one

4.7 children in every family,

ended

in eighty marriages

in divorce."*

And as if the tangible results of Germany's pre-eminence in so many fields was not overwhelmingly evident at the exhibition, there was a striking reminder in Paris that summer of German leadership in the realm of mathematics. The organizers of the second International Congress of Mathematicians had invited the

German mathematician David

Hilbert to deliver the keynote

address in a lecture hall of the

described that day

as 'wiry,

Sorbonne University.

Hilbert,

quick, with a noticeably high forehead,

bald except for wisps of still reddish

hair',

quahty of intensity and intelligence'.^

had about him

'a

striking

He chose to use the centenary

celebration as an opportunity to set the mathematicians of the world a series

of unsolved problems; these were not just mind-teasers, but

the profound unfinished business of mathematics. Hilbert told his

audience that these problems

show how is

today

.

.

rich, .

how

manifold and

how

extensive mathematical science

the organic unity of mathematics

is

inherent in the nature of

40

Hitler's Scientists

this science, for

the

mathematics

is

the foundation of all exact

knowledge of

it may completely fulfil this high destiny, may new century bring it gifted prophets and many zealous and enthusiastic

natural

phenomena. That

disciples!''

It

was

prophetic statement, and

a

it

seemed only

natural that a

German exponent of the discipline should make it. Twenty years on, despite the loss of a terrible war which devastated the nation's wealth and morale, the promise shown at the great Paris exhibition — that the twentieth century would be Germany's century - still seemed possible. By 1921, twenty years into the leading

institution

had

speakers,

sciences

born

won

half of

and medicine.

went

era

of the Nobel awards, Germans, or all

One

the prizes awarded for the natural

of the

earliest

awards in the post-war

to Albert Einstein for the photoelectric etfect: Einstein,

Germany, had renounced

in

German-

at least

his

German

citizenship

to

become stateless, before acquiring Swiss citizenship; but there were still many Germans, and non-Germans, who regarded him as one of them. Despite Germany's reputation

of

as a

pariah nation in the aftermath

a devastating war, despite boycotts against

its

participation in

conferences, and cancellations of periodical subscriptions,

Germany

was still viewed as the Mecca of science and technology,

language

iis

condition of scientific education and advancement.

a crucial

of Nobel

The

between 1901 and 1921, gives an impression of the range of German genius in the first two decades of the roll-call

greats,

Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen for the discovery of X-rays; Emil Adolf von Behring for serum therapy; Adolf von Baeyer for work on organic dyes; Wilhelm Ostwald for chemical equilibria century.

and

rates

Laue

of reaction; Philipp Lenard for cathode

for diffraction

of energy quanta; its

of X-rays by

Fritz

Haber

crystals;

rays;

Max von

Max Planck for discovery

ammonia from work on thermodynamics. And

for the synthesis of

elements; Walther Nernst for his

then there was Einstein.

What was

it

about Germany,

its

national characteristics even, that

education system,

made

it

its

history,

its

so pre-eminent and

Germany

Mecca

the Science

wide-ranging in original research from the early decades

41

late

nineteenth to the

of the twentieth century?

Germany's Dyestuffs Challenge

The daunting enterprise of German

science into the second decade

of the twentieth century had been founded on the discipline of chemistry; in particular, the talent of the the potential of

new

dependence on the

new

products. That

and coal

iron, steel

chemical processes in the manufacture of

British

and the United as a

Empire

for

many raw

materials

had enabled Germany

States.

economy

to rise

The consequent competition between Ger-

in the tensions that led to

would be

World War

first

decade of

a contributing factor

I.

foundations of Germany's expertise for exploiting chemical

processes had been laid early in the nineteenth century and

synonymous with founded

the

name of Justus von

and the law named

day he

this

after

is

Liebig,

who

where he

his great laboratory at Giessen,

numbers of chemists. To cycles,

from

to challenge France, Britain

burgeoning European great power by the

the twentieth century, and Britain

is

and

freedom, in turn, combined with expanding industries,

the status of an agricultural

The

for exploiting

These chemical technologies freed Germany from

dyestuffs.

many,

Germans

were

in 1824

trained large

associated with nitrogen

him, which

states that plant

growth

limited by the element present in soil in the least adequate

quantity.

The

importance

as

science of nitrogen cycles

would grow

supreme

Germany's young population multiplied. Liebig's

genius anticipated Fritz Haber's great discovery,

made

in 1908, that

Germany from dependence on nitrogen imports. 1828 Friedrich Woehler succeeded in converting ammonium

would In

to

free

cyanate into urea, the product of animal kidneys. Before this

was believed

that molecules

of living organisms could only be

synthesized by living organisms. Chemists

were on the brink of making

a host

occur in nature. Then in 1841 laboratory,

it

now

realized that they

of new substances that do not

a student at Justus

August Wilhelm von Hofmann, received

von

Liebig's

his doctorate

Hitler's Scientists

42

on

for a thesis

the derivatives of coal tar

(a

burning), a substance that

would prove

chemical transformations.

Hofmann found

aniline,

which had

indigo.

Could

dyes,

crucial in the

new world

of

that coal tar could yield

been found

in the past

artificial

waste product of coal

in the distillation

of

he wondered, be obtained from

coal tar?

Four years

later

Queen Victoria and Prince

to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary

Hofmann

in his laboratory, a set

once lodged

as a student.

Albert, visiting

of Beethoven's

Bonn

birth,

met

of rooms where Prince Albert had

The

royal couple

were impressed;

consequence Hofmann was invited to head the Prince's

in

new Royal

College for Chemistry in London's Oxford Street. In London

Hofmann brought

together a group of chemists, both

German and

Enghsh, selecting and directing their research projects.

new

industry was born in

Hofmann's

laboratory,

when

An

entire

in 1856 a

seventeen-year-old student chemist called William Perkin, while seeking a means of making quinine from coal process for

making

a rich artificial

to as 'mauve'. Seeing the

tar,

stumbled on

a

dye - the colour widely referred

commercial possibilities of such an artificial

dye, Perkin's father persuaded his son to leave the laboratoi-y, against

Hofmann's

advice, and to

go into business with him. Perkin

and son achieved rapid but modest success, considering the potential they had unleashed. Mauve became the rage in the street^ and salons

The French Empress thought mauve matched colour of her eyes, and Queen Victoria wore a mauve dress to

of Europe's the a

capitals.

wedding.^

Meanwhile Hofmann developed other good artificial dyes, especially a range of violets. There followed a rainbow of brilliant colours - reds, blues, greens - yet the industrial and trading advantage

was

to

be reaped not

invested extensively in

in Great Britain but in

new

technology aimed

Germany, which at

exploiting the

techniques, while pursuing canny patenting poHcies and marketing

German monopoly. Many chemistry graduates migrated to England to gain work experience in industry; but most of them returned to Germany to take part in the Fatherland's

strategies to ensure

expanding

industries.**

Germany Perkin himself,

who

the Science

Mecca

grieved over the

43

of the

loss to Britain

rewards of his invention, complained for the

rest

of his

life

about

the British tendency to seek only short-term gains from investment.

Equally decisive was the early symbiosis between science education

and industry in Germany.

It

had been noted

fact-finding mission despatched to

as early as

Germany by

Britain,

by comparison, displayed

practice

and contempt

Prince Albert, that

overweening respect

'an

ation.

German

Unlike Britain, where education expansion

school system developed ahead of industrializ-

Meanwhile chemistry departments

were already flourishing Bonn. At Bonn,

him

in a

dream.

in

German

He saw

Bohemian-born chemist August ring, a revelation that

a vision

insight

formulae of the

A

was

known

had come

of chemically linked carbon

atoms, like a serpent, which eventually grabbed

mouth. The

universities

Heidelberg and

in Giessen, Gottingen,

for example, the

Kekule had discovered the benzene to

some twelve

linked with technical secondary schools

Teclniische Hochschulen

lagged, the

for

new developments with academic

the

research. In the latter part of the nineteenth century

as Realschulen.

a

for science'.

Germany could back

known

by

1853,

essential to the

own

its

tail

in

its

understanding of chemical

carbon compounds.

host of discoveries, techniques and processes flowed from

Germany's

laboratories, the greatest

chemistry laboratory in Munich. directly

from dye technologies.

F.

of which was Bayer's organic

Some of the developments came

W. Beneke succeeded in staining

plant and animal cells with aniline dyes in the 1860s. In the follow-

ing decade Paul Ehrlich in Frankfurt realized that coal-tar staining

could highlight parts of the

cell.

Methyl green,

for example, allowed

the cell nucleus to stand out in green while the cytoplasm stained red.

The

staining processes revolutionized biology

and heralded

the science of biochemistry. Ehrlich's cousin, Carl Weigert, that

methyl violet highlighted certain

bacteria,

which

Robert Koch's research in Berlin on the bovine anthrax and tuberculosis. Meanwhile Carl Zeiss had set up his instrument workshop in Jena, giving impetus to

omy,

histology,

cell

showed assisted

bacillus

optical

biology, anat-

embryology and pathology by means of improved

Hitler's Scientists

44

microscopy. Typical of the marriage of optical instruments and the birth of biochemistry in the second half of the nineteenth century

was the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, physiologist and, as he was known, 'the Reich Chancellor of Physics', the first to measure the speed of nerve impulses in frogs (20 metres per second) and detect with his

new ophthalmoscope

a

the end of the nineteenth century the

Hve human optic nerve. By

German

optical instrument

by the Zeiss and Leitz companies, was supreme in the world. German students of science took it for granted that they should possess a microscope; this increased production and made industry, led

Germany's instruments trading

irresistibly

cheaper than the products of her

rivals.

The German

university system and the Techmsche Hochschulen,

unembarrassed by entrepreneurial associations, forged ever closer ties

with industry, and industry with the

universities.^ In the course

of the nineteenth century three kinds of relationship reinforced those connections: personal ties between industrial chemists and their contacts

m the universities,

formalized by chemistry research

organizations; the exchange of research based

on personal

contacts;

and the flow of trained chemists from academe into industry. By the first decade of the century ad hoc arrangements between individual researchers and individual companies had developed into collective relationships

between

laboratories, and,within the

profession as a whole. Well-funded research centres flourished,

and graduate students and post-docs were encouraged to sample,

hke wandering variety

scholars, courses

of universities

and

and research programmes

industrial

laboratories.

in a

University

experience was intense, with hard work, frequent bouts of heavy drinking, duelling and rigid codes of behaviour towards

Vacations were spent chmbing mountains

in

women.

Germany, Austria and

Switzerland.

Mechanistic,

mathematical and empirical,

German

research

appeared to have abandoned any hngering association between the natural sciences and philosophy by narrowing the scope of scientific inquiry. Justus

von Liebig

of a reductionist approach

is

credited with laying the foundations

to scientific research in biology

- under-

Germany

the Science

Mecca

45

standing the mechanistic whole by scrutiny of the smallest parts.

His approach to studying living organisms gave to scientific materialism, thus repudiating the

full

encouragement

metaphysical vagaries

of Naturphilosopliie.^^ The brigades of students trained by von Liebig entered the teaching and research communities, influencing future generations of

German

speculations about the

on

to concentrate

students in their rejection of vitalism and

meaning and purpose of living

the strictly physico-chemical

things, so as

components of

biological processes. The spirit of the reduction of vital to inanimate is captured by Thomas Mann in his Doctor Faustus, when the narrator, Zeitblom, meditates

kiihn's father, in

on

the researches of Adrian Lever-

which the margins of the organic and the inorganic

appear interchangeable:

If I

my host aright,

understood

then what occupied him was the essential

unity of animate and so-called inanimate nature,

we

sin against the latter

the

two

capacity

when we draw

fields, since in reality

which

is

it is

too hard and

fast a line

pervious and there

is

There seemed no end

on an inanimate

between

which the

subject.^'

to the possibilities as

in laboratory biomedical science

that

no elementary

reserved entirely to the living creature and

biologist could not also study

basis

was the thought

it

Germany led the way

and pharmacology to form the

of a global pharmaceutical industry: in the 1890s the invention

of aspirin for pain

at

the

and

huge Bayer plant transformed everyday treatment

fever,

while

at

Novocaine revolutionized

more grievous

Hoechst

am Main

the invention of

local anaesthetic therapy, banishing the

tortures of the dentist's chair. Ehrlich

national fame, and eventually his

Nobel

won

inter-

prize, for Salvarsan, a

synthetic pharmaceutical product for the treatment of syphilis.

Between 1870 and 1900 the cost of Germany dropped from 60 marks per the years running up to

World War

synthetic dye kilo to I

i

produced

mark per

in

kilo. In

German products would

flood the world's markets: soaps, detergents, paints, printing inks, glazes, laboratory staining dyes, pharmaceuticals,

for iron

and

steel

chemical processes

production, photographic materials, explosives

46

Hitler's Scientists

and above all fert,l,zers. Dunng the same period Germany's output of ron and stee outstnpped even Great Bntam's and was second only to that of the United States.

i

3

Fritz

Fritz

.

Haber

Haber, destined to become one of the greatest chemists of the

was

early twentieth century, typical

of the kind of

a

scientist

German system, make the twentieth

product of the

who

stood to

century 'Germany's Century' J Fritz Haber's story embodies in striking fashion science's Janus-faced

power

for

good and

potential for peaceful beneficence as well as for violence

within

ity,

bears his

a single

formula or

set

of equations.^ The discovery that

name, and the name of Carl Bosch, was

culminated in plentiful supplies of artificial nitrogen cost

and thus allowed the world's population

6 billion rather than the 3.6 billion estimated

maximum

without such

in

a process that fertilizer at

as to

low

2000 to reach about

which would have been the

a discovery.

Yet, by the same

token, and the same formula, he enabled a blockaded

produce high explosives so

evil, its

and atroc-

Germany

to

prolong the hideous trench warfare

of 1914— 18. Haber's discovery was

a

powerful exemplar for the

notion that science was value-free, neutral, apoHtical: the

scientist

discovered the laws of nature and invented applications; the good

and

evil perpetrated

of others.

And yet,

by those applications was on the consciences

Fritz

Haber himself would one day demonstrate

the aptitude of scientists for taking a lead in warfare, of blurring the distinctions

between basic and applied science. He not only initiated

the technological

means

by some estimates, the

first

Fritz

attacks

to

make gas warfare in the

killed 1.3 million troops,

from the

Haber was born

First

War which,

but enthusiastically led

front.

on the Haber, was a

into a family that had prospered

success of chemical dyestuffs; his father, Siegfried

wealthy Jewish businessman of Breslau, processes and products that

who

traded in the chemical

were making Germany the pre-eminent

nation state in Europe. Fritz

came up through one of Breslau's top

gymnasia, and had benefited from an all-round education typical

Hitler's Scientists

48

of the

including literary and

era,

classical studies.

While Germany's

secondary education in mathematics and the natural sciences was

second to none in the world, the educationalists of the

new

Germany insisted on the need for a balanced curriculum. At school, Fritz

developed

a

love for poetry.

His father had set his heart on Fritz entering the dyestuifs business,

but he encouraged him to lay the foundations of an academic

Haber studied chemistry at the Uniof Berhn under the same August Wilhelm von Hofmann

career in the natural sciences. versity

who had

supervised William Perkin in the chemistry laboratories

London and who had returned to Germany in 1865. Haber then went to Heidelberg and worked under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, one of the great pioneers of spectroscopy, before in

Oxford

Street in

returning to Berlin to register

at

the

Technische Hochschule in

Charlottenburg. After a year's military service he spent a brief period in his father's business, result

to

where he managed

to

of impetuous transactions.

Zurich and to Jena, Haber

make some significant losses as a After two more university moves,

finally

setded

at

the Technische Hoch-

where he would stay for seventeen years, publishing some fifty papers on a wide range of topics including organic

schule in Karlsruhe,

and inorganic chemistry, combustion chemistry, electrochemistry and engineering. In

1892,

,

aged twenty-four, he converted from Judaism to

Lutheranism, and dropped the middle name, Jacob, to evade associations that could official's,

Wight the prospects of

a scientist's,

or any high

Germany at that time. Photographs of him reveal posturing Prussian - he sits sideways on to the camera

career in

a caricature,

in mihtary jacket, square, shaven head, a

(obtained,

it

deep

scar

from

lip to

jaw

seems, in a duel),^ severe pince-nez, thrusting chin

uhermenschlich: his admirers his darkly intelligent eyes

reveal a passionate,

would

refer to

him

and the wide and

as a full

dreamy dimension. He appears

-

'superman'. Yet

mouth an embodiment sensual

of German efficiency, obstinate energy and science; but he had a capacity for friendship, an accident-prone weakness for women (his

Fritz

first

Haber

49

wife killed herself, his second divorced him) and an aptitude

for poetic sentiment.

In

1

90 1 he had married Clara Immerwahr,

town of at

Breslau.

She was

a

chemist and the

his

home-

woman

Ph.D.

from

a girl first

Breslau University. She too had converted from Judaism to

Protestantism to further her scientific career. She had nourished

hopes of sharing

a full intellectual life

but she soon discovered that

wedding, and shortly a

with her

brilliant

workaholic ways

after the birth

husband;

left little

and collaboration. In 1902, one year

for conversation

departed for

his

after their

of their son Hermann, Haber

four-month tour of the United

States to study the

country's scientific and engineering education systems.

When

Germany, lecturing on what he had

returned, he toured

time

he

seen. In

bemoaning Haber's

1909 Clara wrote to her friend Richard Abegg, behaviour:

It

been

has always

my

one has made

full

of experience

human

other things, that

from

it

attitude that a

I

life

has to offer.

was under

It

decided to get married .

.

.

living if

at that

that impulse,

time

.

.

.

The

way of putting himself first

in

our

home and

was simply

According to colleagues Clara Haber became

among got

lift I

and the main reasons for that was

a less ruthlessly self-assertive personality

(little

worth

has only been

use of all one's abilities and tried to live out every kind

was very brief

oppressive

life

Fritz's

marriage, so that

destroyed.''

a 'Hausmiitterchen'

domestic matron), never out of her apron. As Clara became

diminished, Haber flourished.

By

the

first

for science

decade of the century, the widespread enthusiasm

and technology in Germany had translated into

a

key

Prussian decision to encourage research projects unhindered by industrial aims or teaching duties.

Gennany had prospered by

applying science and technology directly to industry: lost sight

of the need for pure

pre-eminence, yet

it

scientific research to

had no independent research

the Pasteur Institute in Paris, or the

it

had not

maintain

its

institutes to rival

American foundations - the

Hitler's Scientists

50

Rockefeller Medical Institute, the Carnegie and Cold Spring

Harbor. In the

of the nineteenth century Friedrich

final years

Althoff, the Prussian minister responsible for university

pondered

Germany

a response to

American competition, convinced

had that

should take advantage of the fact that the obHgation to

teach could v^ere

affairs,

good

hamper research, and that in any

case not aU researchers

at teaching.

In consequence, by 1910 the

patronage of

a research society

German Emperor had assumed and associated

specialist centres

named after him - the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes

(after

World War II, renamed Max Planck). The institutes, incorporating offices, laboratories and Hving quarters, were mainly situated in a leafy

suburb of south-w^est Berlin w^ith the hope that the

might one day become

a

been purchased

hectares of land had

for the erection

Dahlem, sometimes known

buildings in

Close to the lakes and

forests

as Berlin's

Peter Behrens,

Hermann Muthesius and Walter

5,500.

The

villas

only 153 people living in first

group of

institutes

fifty

institute

Hampstead.

by noted German

boast impressive

were

of six

of Wannsee and Potsdam, the

would one day there

district

'German Oxford'. In 1908 some

district

architects:

Gropius. In 1895

Dahlem; by 19 14 there were was dedicated

to chemistry,

physical chemistry and biology.^

The

spirit

of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and

its

institutes

was

admirably expressed in an essay penned in 1909 by Adolf von

Harnack on the respect for

state

German

were many reasons

of German science. Despite the widely held research,

to fear for

von Harnack suggested its

future.^

He

that there

appealed to the

ideal,

widely ascribed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, for the unity of research

and teaching,

as

well

as

independent

institutes

funded not

solely

by

emphaof two key

the state but by private philanthropy. At the same time he sized that

German

Germany's greatness was based on the drives:

pillars

Wehrkraft und Wissenschaft - military might and

science in the widest sense of knowledge.

The shaping of the individual institutes, and the views of

as it

turned out, involved

One

eminent

scientists

Society's

most generous supporters was Leopold Koppel,

industrialists.

a

of the

Jewish

Haber

Fritz

who

banker,

funded

tune of 700,000 marks) the Kaiser

(to the

Wilhelm

Institute for Physical

that Fritz

Haber should run

joined by

Max

neighbouring

5

Chemistry

in

BerHn, on condition

Haber accepted and was soon

it.

Planck, Walther Nernst and Albert Einstein in

institutes

(most of the

Dahlem incorporated into

KWI

buildings

still

survive in

the Free University of Berlin; the society

headquarters was in Berlin Palace, which was razed to the ground

by the Soviet occupiers in Willstatter's

home

1945). Preparing in his colleague

Richard

for a possible audience with the Kaiser

on

his

appointment, Haber practised walking backwards while bowing,

and managed

Haber

to break

now

one of his

applied his

more

cies to reach a solution to a

host's vases as

he did so7

characteristically assertive

tenden-

long-standing problem in chemistry.

In the late eighteenth century

it

had been discovered that ammonia,

and explosives, was composed of one atom of

essential for fertilizer

From that point onwards chemists had been attempting to synthesize ammonia from these two plentiful gases in nature, without success. The problems were technically nitrogen and three of hydrogen.

formidable

as

the synthesis involved the application of pressures

200 times the atmosphere (390°F). ditions

When

this

was

by Haber and

at sea level

first

and temperatures of 200°C

achieved in

his English assistant

process yielded only a trickle of

difficult laboratory

con-

Robert Le Rossignol, the

ammonia over long

periods of

hope of industrial production. Haber realized would have to be found to speed up the reaction. After a trial of countless metals, Haber discovered that the powder of the rare metal osmium (only 220 pounds of which existed in the time, precluding any that a catalyst

world) produced the desired

result.

red letter days, 2 July 1909, Haber

On

one of chemistry's great

made

a

demonstration of

his

ammonia production at the rate of seventy drops a minute in the presence of the two technical heads of the great German chemical concern Badische Anihn- und Soda-Fabrik (BASF), Alywin Mittasch and Carl Bosch. During the demonstration one of the bolts

of the pressure apparatus burst, delaying matters for several

hours.

Twenty years

stress that

later

one of Haber's students remembered the

attended the event: Tikke des Objeckts, he called

it

—

'the

52

Hitler's Scientists

BASF now

inherent malevolence of inanimate objects'.^

Bosch and Alywin Mittasch

into service Carl

to

improve and make

an engineering reality of Haber's process. Although the

had bought up the entire

available stock

the team was determined to

fmd a

pressed

company

of osmium in the world,

catalyst that

was both more rapid

and more

plentiful. After 4,000 trials they came up with an ideal composed of iron, oxides of aluminium, calcium and potassium. The recipe is virtually unchanged to this day.

catalyst

The

The

bid to be

first

Birth of the Giant

Farben

produce and exploit

to

occurred against the background of

Germany's chemical

IG

industries.

By

the

a

artificial

ammonia

major transformation

first

decade of the century

the success of Germany's major dyestuifs businesses was a brake profits in foreign

espionage.

clients

and indus-

The warring companies were locked

in hostile

competition and solution.

a trust

or cartel arrangement appeared the only

The impetus came from Carl Duisberg, the chief executive

of Bayer, cate

on

and domestic markets. The industry was fraught

with price wars, patent wrangles, bribes to major trial

in

a

keen pan-German, an inexorable Prussian and an advo-

of the leadership principle

endowed

the term with

its

(Fiihrerprinzip)

long before Hitler

violent, dictatorial implications. Duis-

berg was to survive and thrive through the reign of the Kaiser, the era

of the Weimar Republic, and into the regime of Adolf Hitler,

leading and shaping the increasingly dark and culpable fortunes of

IG

Farben.

Reich

as

IG Farben would emerge

in the period

one of the most formidable and

easily the

of the Third

most corrupt

multinational in the world.

Duisberg's inspiration to draw together the leading chemical

companies into

a cartel

had been prompted by

a trip

the United States in 1903. His aim was to establish a plant at Rensselaer,

New

protective tariff laws.

flourishing despite the

Bayer-owned

York, in order to overcome American

While

movement — cooperation

he made to

to

in

America he studied the

trust

overcome competition — which was

1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. Duisberg

Fritz

looked closely Oil

trust,

at

Haber

the organization and advantages of the Standard

which had succeeded

in the

many of the problems encountered industry. In

53

United

in

States in neutralizing

Germany by

consequence Duisberg negotiated

brought together the German chemical 'Big Agfa, Hoechst, Cassella and Kalle

(community of

interests),

-

a

Six'

the chemicals

formula which — Bayer, BASF,

into an Interessengemeinschaft

hence 'IG' Farben. The aim was

reduce competition between the members and to establish

a

of profit sharing. Each company nevertheless maintained

its

pendent

identity, each

was

to

means inde-

and develop other

free to research

products outside the core activity of dyestuffs. Agfa, for example, specialized in photographic materials, trated

By

Bayer and Hoechst concen-

on pharmaceuticals. the

autumn of

191 3,

BASF, which had

invested heavily in

nitrogen-fixing formula, was producing up to

the

synthetic

ammonia

a day.

By

tons of

5

July of the following year, on the

brink of war, the plant was capable of producing 40 tons a day,

mostly for

on

the

fertilizer.

Rhine with

become one of the would expand to

The ammonia production its

rows of

industrial

tall

chimney

plant at

Oppau

would soon

stacks

wonders of the world and production

include six ammonia-producing factories in

Gennany. Although on the declaration of war the British navy was blockading the import of Chilean saltpetre stocks to Germany,

War Ministry in Berlin some months to

it

took the

understand the importance

of the ammonia process for the German war effort in the production of explosives. In the second week of September 1914 the Wehrmacht's juggernaut towards Paris was stopped in

its

tracks

by

a

French counter-attack which exposed the German lack of gun-

powder. Bosch was ordered to Berlin and

a deal

ing a substantial subsidy, to exploit existing

conversion of ammonia, via 191

5

Bosch announced

nitric acid.

was

set to

that

was

struck, involv-

ammonia

plants for the

nitric acid, to explosives. In

Oppau was

set

up

to

May

of

mass-produce

Germany was now free of those Chilean imports and make the Royal Naval blockade impotent. Bosch soon

persuaded the government to subsidize

a

massive expansion in the

Hitler's Scientists

54

BASF's at

nitrate production,

which led to

a

new high-pressure plant

Leuna. Meanwhile, under Haber's direction, the Kaiser Wilhelm

Institute for Physical

the military and

Chemistry began

to collaborate,

with industry,

phenomcomplex and 'Big Science' - as Fritz

the government, anticipating both the

enon of the industrial-mihtary Stern has commented, 'a kind of Manhattan Project before its time'.^ The phenomenon of 'Big Science', denoting huge funding and investment, from industry, the

complex

plant

and machinery and

engineers, was to

become

a

key

state

and the

military, large

large teams of scientists

and

feature of science later in the

century. Researchers within the ambit of Big Science

would be

diminished, with a consequent reduction of personal responsibility for

its

products.

Haber reported

to the Imperial Civil Cabinet in 191 6 that the

production of chemicals suitable for reached 2,400 tons

a

fertilizers

month, making

it

and explosives had

possible for continued

prosecution of the war.

Britain's

Was Germany,

Dreadnought

Project

then, the instigator of the industrial-military

com-

plex and the Big Science that would dominate Western science and technology in World War II and the Cold War? Germany had

not been alone in showing such propensities. As the Fatherland

expanded

to the status

state in the last

of an industrial giant and

a great

European

decade of the nineteenth century, bursting the

framework of the continental balance of power, tensions had arisen with Great Britain, which was traditionally reluctant to permit Europe to be dominated by a single nation state. Germany's power

beyond Europe was

insignificant,

whereas

Britain's

empire

accounted for a third of the populations of the world and a vast trading enterprise secured by the all-powerful Royal Navy. The

development in the late nineteenth century of steam-driven, heavily armoured warships, dependent on new technologies, was set to

Anglo-German rivalries as Germany aspired to become superpower. The threat became palpable in 1898 when Germany

exacerbate a

Fritz

passed

ships to first

Navy Law

its first

own home

Haber

55

challenging Britain's naval primacy in

its

waters by planning the construction of a fleet of battle-

be stationed in the North Sea.^" Britain responded. The

Royal Naval Dreadnought

on

keel, laid

October 1905

2

at

Portsmouth Dockyard, heralded the most demanding programme of ship construction ever conducted by any nation

in history.

Sea Lord during

this period,

Admiral

Sir John Fisher, Britain's First

was thus responsible

prompting an arms race

for

that

would

Britain and the Empire's resources to their limits. Since the

noughts were superior to

stretch

Dread-

earlier warships, including all the ships

all

of the Royal Navy, and since what now counted was not numbers of ships but the

numbers of ships of similar design

Britain's rivals

nought

could

standards.

conceded

now compete

and equal not

two but

to

world combined'. ^^ Over

Sir Frederick

was

at

practically

all

it

Richards

was scrapped and

British fleet

moment when

labelled obsolete at the

efficiency

whole

Dreadnought,

only by emulating the Dread-

Admiral of the Fleet

in Parliament: 'the

to the

the zenith of

its

the navies of the

period of fifteen years Britain's ship-

a

modern battleships and thirteen World cruisers. By the beginning of War I a Royal Navy battleship was arguably the most complex object on earth, comparable to the launch of a major manned space satellite today, and, at ^j million

yards

were

to build thirty-five

^^

the time, easily the most expensive.

To

per ship in actual costs

at

achieve

Admiralty commissioned vessels from the

targets the

its

Royal Dockyards

as

well

as

inviting competitive tenders

from

private shipyards.

The expense of building

a fleet that outstripped in

numbers and

firepower the two next largest navies in the w^orld (the 'two power standard' as

it

was known) drew exorbitantly on the nation's wealth,

diverting financial resources from other needs

provision of free education.

The popular

its

scientific

in particular the

'naval vote' always

the day over every other sacrifice; and yet,

many, there was an inherent weakness

—

won

compared with Ger-

in Britain's ability to exploit

and technological expertise even

in such an important

national aim.*^

Arthur PoUen,

a British

engineer of genius, had worked on the

56

Hitler's Scientists

problem of how

to set adjustments to the range

gunsights relative to the

were

missiles

target.

and deflection on

At

of course,

sea,

by wind, and rapidly changing

affected

between aiming and

movement of a

target vessels while

distances

both pitched and

rolled.

Pollen employed synchronous, gyro-stabilized range and bearing observations in conformity with the firing ship's course and speed.

A

computer - an instrument

'clock'

rather than a digital

that

worked

computer - integrated the

as

an 'analogue'

rapidly altering data

and transmitted the required adjustments to the guns from point on the ship.

A

a central

massive cabinet the size of a cathedral

altar,

operated by up to eight men. Pollen's prototype gunfire-control range finder, built in 1909, was an instrument of prodigious plexity and sophistication for

its

time.

But

com-

of complex

distrust

technology and the preference for in-service personnel, with gunnery experience, led to the rejection of Pollen's system in favour

of a

less

sophisticated

for the sea battles

The German

compromise with far-reaching consequences First War.

of the

no such

military harboured

distrust

of

civilian

scientists.

War, Science and German Chauvinism

At the outbreak of World War age, too old for active service

I

Fritz

Haber was

forty-six years

because he was Jewish. But he eagerly put himself and at the service of the military. In the

responded to that

a military

would not

of

and ineligible for a reserve commission

first

his institute

weeks of the war he

request to develop an antifreeze substance

require scarce toluene, essential for

TNT. He

speedily found alternatives in xylene and other petroleum derivatives.

meantime the German military had been seeking means of achieving a breakthrough on the Western

In the

alternative

Front to conventional firepower, due to shortage of gunpowder.

Major

Max Bauer, who was

industry,

the

Supreme Command's

liaison

was intrigued by the potential of poisonous

weapon. After an abortive attempt

mine on the Russians,

Fritz

Haber,

to use a

who

with

gas as a

Bayer-produced bro-

also ran a

bureau in the

Fritz

War Raw

was

Chlorine was already stored for the battlefield, as

Haber

Institute

set

up

plentiful in the dyestuffs plants.

BASF

in metal cyhnders, suitable

to the

more

at

opposed

57

promoted the advantages of

Materials Office in Berlin,

chlorine, a substance that

tainers.

Haber

a collaboration

traditional glass

between

his Kaiser

con-

Wilhelm

and the IG companies to speed up the production of

The development to weapons grade dangers. One of his young chemists. Otto

chlorine poison in secrecy.

was not without

its

Sackur, a friend of Haber's wife Clara from Breslau, was killed in a laboratory explosion

Another

Gerhard Just,

lost his right

bitterly at Sackur's funeral.

to the exploitation

from

grounds of the Kaiser Wilhelm

in the

scientist,

and Willstatter wept

opposed

the institute. Clara heard the explosion

which was

their house, Institute.

at

hand. Haber

Clara, utterly

of science for weapons of war, was

distraught.

For Haber, however, German scientists were

as

much involved in

the service of the Fatherland as any frontline soldier. His enthusiastic

chauvinism was certainly shared by an impressive constituency of his colleagues

for

all

among

its

and led to the tawdry ritual that would earn Germany,

pre-eminence

in science,

a

reputation

civilized nations early in the Great

ninety-two of

his

Fulda manifesto

(so called as a

Jew),

Intellectuals' (otherwise, in

War. Haber joined with

repudiated out of hand

was drafted by Ludwig Fulda,

it

titled

a

'The Appeal of the Ninety-three

German, known

Aufruf- The World of Culture!

A Wake-up

Die Kulturwelt! Ein

as

CaH!).

The document

German responsibility for the war, defended

the invasion of Belgium, denied alleged culture and militarism

militarism,'

the pariah

academic and science colleagues in signing the

popular writer and

German

as

were one. 'Were

continued the document, 'German

long ago have been destroyed

.

.

.

and

atrocities, it

insisted that

not for

German

civilisation

would

The German amiy and

the

German people are one.'^"* The manifesto was published in a crop of German newspapers on 4 October 1914 and reported around the world: its signatories included many of the top names in German science - Max Planck, Emil Fischer, Paul EhrHch, Richard Willstatter,

Wilhelm Ostwald, Walther Nernst,

all

of them,

in time.

Hitler's Scientists

58

Nobel prize-winners. Albert Einstein, Haber's longstanding friend, notably refused to sign the manifesto. Instead Einstein became signatory to a counter-manifesto launched in the same

month by

Berlin doctor, seeking the influence of intellectuals

G.

F. Nicolai, a

to

promote internationalism and peace

in the

form of 'an organic

unity out of Europe'.

Yet Germany had not been alone, nor idea of science and chauvinism.

The

first,

golden age of universalism in science until corrupted by

Germany

twentieth century

been

rife

is

in the

first

promoting the

in

charge that there had been it

a

was distorted and

and second decades of the

hardly borne out by the

facts.

Chauvinism had

during the nineteenth century, especially between France

A

and Germany. ^^

French minister of education declared

in 1852:

does not our tongue appear especially suited to the culture of the sciences? Its clarity, its

shifts

sincerity,

its

and

lively

at

the same time logical turn,

ever so rapidly between the realm of thought and feeling

destined to be not merely

[scientists']

—

which not

is it

most natural instrument but

also

most valuable guide?'^

their

After the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian

War

of 1870,

Franco-German rivalry became increasingly incendiary. Louis Pasteur renounced in

honorary degree from

a letter his

the* University

of Bonn, whose dean of the Medical Faculty replied light

of the

'insult

which you have dared to

offer the

that, in the

German nation

in the sacred person of our august emperor', the letter, with

its

'expression of total contempt', was being returned so as 'to protect its

archives

from

pollution'.

German pre-eminence

^^

in the chemical industries, according to

the French, was simply a token of the its

response,

Hermann

but as

I

Kolbe,

a

noted and particularly intemperate

chemist, gave vent to public explosions of Francophobe

such

bile,

to

organizations and to plunder the ideas of others. In

militarize

German

Germanic tendency

as: 'I

have

a

deep hatred and contempt for the French,

have never considered them so uncivilized,

we now

recognize them to be.''"

vile

and

beastly,

Fritz

Haber

59

Amidst the anti-Gemian mud-slinging

War were

at

become

sentiments destined to

Pierre Duhem, borrowing mainly from

Volk.

German

He

liked to contrast the French and the

learning

esprit

authoritarian;

is

German mind, by

definesse with a German its

esprit geometrique.

laboratories are like factories;

dedicated to geometrical thinking, their scientists lack sense. The 'mathematical mind of the Germans, so all

the consequences from a given principle,

to extract an industry

is

Duhem

benefit of the doubt,

marvellously adapted

moment they reached a deduct-

also

denounced Einstein

would become familiar within Germany would condemn theoretical physics, or

itself,

physicists

they termed

it,

bogus.

as

deduce

Denying German science the

ive and mathematical stage'.

as

common

fitted to

of extraordinary power from our machines,

our physics and our chemistry, the

that

physicist

Pascal, set the tone, carica-

science as typical of the unthinking regimented

contrasting a French

German

stock anti-Teutonic

The French

prejudices through the rest of the century.

turing

the outset of the First

Duhem

least

in terms

when Aryan

'Jewish physics'

wrote: 'For a supporter of the

principle of relativity to speak of a velocity greater than that of Hght is

to

'^^ bereft of sense.

pronounce words

War continued, the denunciation of Germany and all things German gathered momentum in Britain and France. But the great and the good of German academia responded by issuing further manifestos - one signed by 3,000 German academics, the other by the rectors of twenty-two German universities. The As the

American

First

physicist

omer George

Michael Pupin wrote to

Hale: 'Science

ation. Allied science

is

science.' In a series

of

is

the highest expression of a civiliz-

therefore entirely different from Teutonic articles in

Le Figaro German science was

characterized as being subservient to the profit, usefulness to

Germany,

without doubt,

a

to

its

German

state,

supremacy, to

its

'reduced to

domination'.

August 1914, 'German barbarous language only just emerging from

The American journal is,

a colleague, the astron-

Science

hud stsited on

i

the stage of the primitive Gothic character, and ...

the advantage of science to treat

it

it

should be to

as such.'^°

In Britain the chemist Sir William

Ramsay of University College,

6o

Hitler's Scientists

London,

a

Nobel laureate, excoriated German science in the journal

Nature, with an interesting aside about

German Jewish

scientists:

'Much of [German scientific] reputation has been due to Hebrews resident among them; and we may safely trust that race to persist in vitality less

and

intellectual activity.

'^^

Jewish

scientists

were neverthe-

serving the Fatherland enthusiastically during the First War.

Meanwhile Haber's chemical weapons research programme culminated in the first deployment of a weapon of mass destruction, inflicted on French Algerians on 22 April 191 5. The taint on the reputation of the

through

German army and German

much of the

twentieth century.

science

would

last

The Poison Gas

4-

Known cillor

Scientists

- privy coun-

to his scientific colleagues as 'the Geheimraf

- Haber was

a distinctive figure in the

went about poisoning the

Allied

enemy

German

in 191

trenches

A

5.

as

he

uniformed

academic, pince-nez perched on his nose, pockets bulging with papers,

a

permanently between

cigar stuck

accompanied by

among them co-discover

a

team of young,

teeth,

his

eccentrically attired researchers,

the bluff Rhinelander Otto

Hahn

(one day to

which he would win the Nobel

fission, for

he was

prize),

and

future Nobel laureates James Franck and Gustav Hertz, as well as Erwin Madelung and Wilhelm Westphal. These were the new

German warriors:

scientists

who calculated injury and kill rates with

graphs and equations, and employed toxic gases produced by their

chemical fonnulae

weapons. As the German-Jewish author

as

would write, by the end of the conflict: 'The decisive upon mankind now proceed from the drawing boards and

Alfred Doblin assaults

the laboratory.'^ Gas warfare had brought together civilian scientists

and the military

in a

new

partnership.

It

was seen

as a

wonder

weapon.^

At

5

p.m. on the afternoon of 22 April 191 5, Haber and

known

troop

as

Pionierkommando 36 were dug

mile front on the torials

were

German

lines at Ypres, facing the

French

and an Algerian division of the French Army. His

in charge

operators

— wearing

When

protective

came to opened the masks the order

released the entire contents within ten minutes.

A

terri-

scientists

of some 5,730 cylinders, each weighing 200

chlorine gas in liquid fonn.

his gas

in along a four-

lbs,

of

attack, the

valves

and

spectacular

blanket about five feet high of thick green-yeUow gas swept on a

westward breeze

across

no man's land

to the Allied trenches.

Those

troops that were not suffocated broke from the trenches and fled,

62

Hitler's Scientists

abandoning fifty guns. The German infantry then crossed no man's land and took the Allied trenches. Fritz

Haber,

the Kaiser

now a professor at Berlin University and director of

Wilhelm

Institute for Physical

atrociously the acceptable

century.

He

claimed, as

would other

physicist J. B. S. Haldane,

new

that it

Chemistry, had broken

norms of warfare

who

in the early twentieth

gas poisoners, like the British

emulated Haber's example,

swiftly

technology in weapons had the power to save

could achieve swift victory. Haber beheved, or

did Haldane, that gas warfare was

'a

lives since

at least said so, as

higher form of killing'

to be injured by gas was better than being

blown up by

a

-

that

conven-

tional shell.

Chlorine attacks the mucous membranes of the nose, mouth and throat, causing asphyxiation

and blindness. In

W. Barnett of the Indian Medical Service men - blue faces choking and gasping.' He

J.

the Germans.'^

A

with

soldier serving

neighbouring section of the front gave

exposed

We for

it

full

flat

were,

By

we were under

in the trenches.

British

impact of the

gas,

makes your eyes smart and run,

passed off fairly soon.

we

Captain

recorded: 'Saw gassed

'How we

hate

Canadian division

in a

added:

impressions from a

his

less

area.

did not get the

me,

a

his diary,

nickname

this

I

became

we

got was enough

violently sick, but

it

time the din was something ajvful where

the crossfire of

The next

but what

thing

for Algerians)

I

rifles

and

noticed was

making

for

a

shells,

we had

to

lie

horde of Turcos (the

our trenches, some were

armed, some were unarmed. The poor devils were absolutely paralysed

with

fear."*

The British Commander-in-Chief, Sirjohn French, cabled London that day, reporting that

hundreds of men had been thrown into

a

comatose or dying condition, and that within an hour the whole position had been

some 5,000

troops,

abandoned with some it

fifty

guns.

By

nightfall

was claimed by the Allies, had lost their

lives,

and 10,000 were injured (disputes about the casualty numbers

The Poison Gas

continued

down

figures settled at

The it

was

be linked,

a third

German

Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 (and major

as a

kill

act

of inhumanity, with the sinking

two weeks

and injury

for an attack

blow

with

win

the

mere 'experiment'. He

to

German

a

He had argued

produce

later

a

knock-out

commented

that if

made Gennans would have won

the military had followed his advice and instead of the experiment at Ypres, the

by

his colleagues, the

'scientifically'.

volume of gas,

a far larger

rather than a

war

later

however, Haber was

rate,

evening mightily downcast. According to

Geheimrat had hoped to

sources, the

of the original claims).^

civilian passenger ship Lusitania

U-boat). Despite the that

63

the years, until, according to

around

action broke the

to

of the

Scientists

a large-scale attack

the war.

On

12 June the

Germans used gas

against the Russians in Galicia,

using a lethal mixture of phosgene and chlorine. Phosgene toxic,

more

so than prussic acid (hydrocyanic acid):

died after one

sniff.

Soldiers

remarked

that as

is

highly

inventor

its

phosgene was released

the birds dropped from the trees and even rats stopped dead in their tracks.

Otto Hahn,

no man's

who

German

personally led the

land, described in later years

how

he

infantry across

felt

'profoundly

ashamed and perturbed' on seeing the consequences of the and

that

officers'

he attempted to revive Russian soldiers with

masks —

attack,

his scientific

in vain.^

Predictably the

first

use of gas

as

a

weapon only

served to

deepen the wrath and violence of Germany's enemies, prompting kind and the violation of more humane conventions

retaliation in

of war. According to Britain's Imperial

In the days and

weeks following the introduction of

frightening advance in the culture of war

precepts of the carried

little

during the

—

War Museum

Hague Convention on

-

it is

gas

historian,

—

a

new and

hardly surprising that the

the treatment of enemy prisoners

or no clout and were completely ignored ... As well

battle, the intensive

particularly if the deaths

easily do, the

urge to

as

rage

high-octane commitment of a trench raid

of comrades during

it

produced,

as

it

could so

extract instant equivalent revenge — could also mean

Hitler's Scientists

64

thumbs down

the

were

for prisoners; they

sitting targets,

obvious tokens

of reprisal.'

On

taken to

John French insisted that 'immediate steps be supply similar means of most effective kind for use by our

troops'.

He

23 April Sir

added:

'It is

also essential that

our troops should be

immediately provided with means of countering enemy

gasses.'^

end of the war some twenty-two different agents had been used on both sides, ranging from lung and skin irritants to blood-poisoning chemicals, delivered by shells, mortars, grenades

By

the

bombs. Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front sketches a harrowing description of German casualties stricken

and

aerial

by the very weapon Haber had

initiated:

We found one dug-out full of them, with blue heads and black lips. Some of them in

know

hole took off their gas masks too soon; they did not

a shell

that the gas lies longest in the hollows;

when

they saw others on

top without masks they pulled theirs off too and swallowed

scorch their lungs. Their condition

is

hopeless, they

choke

enough

to death

to

with

haemorrhages and suffocation.

There seems their army's

to

first

have been no

civilian outcry in

use of gas; but

since the prevaiHng

winds

in

German

Carl

troops deplosed

Flanders came from the

fmd, moreover, private detestation even

The German General

at

outset.'

its

wrote

I

the 6th

We

'I

am

furious about

me from

the

criminals'.'^'

The com-

Army, Crown Prince Rupprecht of

Bavaria,

in his diary for 191 5:

made no

secret

of the

fact that the

disagreeable, but also a mistake, for if it

use,

to describe gas as 'very unchivalrous too,

otherwise used only by blackguards and

mander of

its

west.^

von Einem, supreme commander of the

deployment, which has disgusted

He went on

against

the level of the generals.

3rd Army, writing to his wife in 1917, told her: the gas and

Germany

proved

effective, the

new

gas

weapon seemed not only

one could assume with

enemy would have

certainty that,

recourse to the same means,

The Poison Gas

Scientists

65

and with the prevaihng winds he would be able to

more

ten times

A

often than

few days

family.

after

against

i

threw

captain, an

unprecedented honour for

Gemiany with

Two

was

commit

that she

hours

later she

That same night

a scientist.

air

and put the next

bullet into her

down

the years

suicide to protest against Haber's role in the

of gas warfare: it

it

seems certain that she had argued

in previous

months

he

as

The very morning of her

tactics.

women in

died in her son's arms (he too, in time,

suicide). Speculation has persisted

vehemently against chlorine

to

Ph.D., took his service revolver out into the

a

committed

initiation

accom-

promotion

of distinction, one of the few

garden, fired one shot in the breast.

visit his

a celebration for friends in the

close to the Institute to celebrate his

his wife, herself a scientist

to

release gas against us

him."

Ypres, Haber returned to Berlin to

On May he

modation

we

laid plans for his

death Haber

house and made the journey to the eastern front to

left

the

initiate a gas

attack against the Russians.'^

As the war progressed, Haber led a series of research and development projects for further exploitation of gas as a weapon. One type, eventually favoured over others, was

known

which

as Biintkreuz,

involved a mixture of a phosgene-type gas and an

irritant that

could

penetrate gas-masks. Otto Hahn, Haber's younger colleague,

who

experimented on these substances in Berlin in 19 16, reported that 'those attacked

were forced

to tear off their gas-masks, leaving

themselves exposed to the poison

Hahn continued after the

As

war was

a result

to

ponder

gas'.^^

his participation in gas

over. Haifa century later he

minds were so numbed

that

we no

longer had any scruples about the

Anyway, our enemies had by now adopted our methods,

thing.

and

they became increasingly successful in

were no longer exclusively the

more rarely

at

commented:

of continuous work with these highly toxic substances, our

whole as

warfare long

the receiving end.

saw the

aggressors, but

Another factor was

direct effects

of our weapon.'"*

this

mode of warfare we

found ourselves more and

that

we front-line observers

66

Hitler's Scientists

Hahn

Interviewed in the 1960s, already had

You might of poison

rifle bullets filled

Haber put

say that

gas,

but

He

gas.'^^

my mind

at rest.

at stake,

I

let

I

was

still

against the use

his case to

myself be converted and

As

scientists also

put themselves

at his disposal

Hahn commented:

for the ethics of war,

'At

I

me

and

then threw

many

myself into the work wholeheartedly. As you know,

renowned

the French

added:

Geheimrat Haber had put

after

explained what was

with

me

'Haber told

said,

other

.'^ .

.

first

the English

were very surprised by our disregarding the Hague Convention, but from 19 16 onward they used

we

at

least

as

much

as

did.''^

These were unprecedented moral conundrums

and

poison

it is

arguably unfairly anachronistic to reproach

latterday reflections; but

on every count

for scientists,

Hahn

for his

his exculpations rehearse

the arguments of treaty breakers and perpetrators of atrocities

the ages.

Even

the physicist Lise Meitner,

the fact that she remained

who would live

working with Hahn

down

to regret

until 1938 in Berlin,

sympathized with Hahn's rationalizations about poison gas work during

World War

she wrote to

'[I]

I.

Hahn,

'yet

can well understand your misgivings,'

you

are certainly justified in being an

you were not asked [but ordered] and second, someone else will. Above all, any means which if you do not do it, might help shorten this horrible war are justified.' ^^ After Germany lost World War I, the Allies sought to bring Haber to trial as a war criminal. For a time, according to Hahn, he went around with a beard 'so that he would not be immedi"opportunist".

First,

ately recognized'.

He

disappeared to Switzerland; but he was

eventually allowed to return to Germany to participate in the

reconstruction of his defeated country.

Western

scientific

community, Haber

won

To a

the disgust of the

Nobel award

in 191

ammonia discovery and continued to prosper as a prominent and honoured leader of German science for more than a decade. Otto Hahn would win the award in 1944, and James Franck, who assisted Hahn in experiments on phosgene, won his in 1925 for

for his

The Poison Gas

67

Scientists

demonstrating that atoms in collision gain or lose energy in

quantum steps. Haber continued to be absorbed by his work on chemical weapons. Even after the war he tried to persuade Koppel, the Institute's benefactor, to fund a laboratory for weapons technology well

as

by

directed

and

Fritz

weU

as

Kaiser

as a

Wilhelm

Institute for

himself. Six million

Chemical Warfare

marks were voted

Haber, Walther Nernst (chemist and old

as

to

be

to the project rival to

Haber,

an enthusiastic poison-gasser) and Emil Fischer were

made board members in prospect. The Institute of Chemical Warfare was never realized, but after returning from Switzerland Haber continued work on poison gas despite the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. Through a gobetween, Dr Hugo Stoltzenberg, Haber was involved in several significant chemical warfare operations: the use

army of poison

gas to put

el

Krim's revolt in Morocco;

with the Soviets to produce poison

a secret deal

ment of a poison a

down Abd

gas factory near

by the Spanish

gas; the establish-

Madrid; and the construction of

chemical warfare plant near Wittenberg. Haber also encouraged

the development of hydrocyanic acid: pesticide,

and

as a lethal gas against

it

had

humans

a

dual use

—

as a

in enclosed spaces.

It

would be known as Zyklon B, one day to be used as the principal means of killing Jews in the death camps. Even after Haber ceased to be a leading figure in gas warfare research, the Kaiser, living in exile in Holland, continued to consult

him in

anticipation of a future

war of revenge

against the Allies. In

June 1927 the Kaiser wrote that he was especially interested in the scope for

'total gassing

of large

cities'.

^^

A correspondence between Haber and the pacifist chemist Hermann

Staudinger

(a

generation younger than Haber) offers insight

into Haber's ethical views

an

article in

French

at

on

gas warfare. Staudinger

had published

the time of the Versailles Treaty negotiations

which he sent to Haber in order to initiate a dialogue on the subject. Haber wrote back accusing the young chemist of 'smiting Germany in the

back

at its

hour of

greatest

need and

helplessness',

and

providing propaganda that could only prompt more punitive

68

Hitler's Scientists

measures.

A

Haber pointed

patriot,

out, should concentrate

combating foreign slander, not exacerbating

Staudinger countered that Haber had not understood his

His main concern, he told the senior

blame but to warn had exerted an

on

evil effect

than

scientist,

was not

drift.

to apportion

that an advanced science in the form of chemistry

ethical considerations orities rather

were

warfare.

Haber

replied that these

matter for political and military auth-

a

but in any case he was utterly against

scientists,

international treaties banning the use of poison gas: morality for individuals. This

prompted Staudinger

out that the warfare of the future,

end

on

it.^*^

if things

was

to write again, pointing

went on like

this,

would

in total destruction.^^

A

token of Haber's influence was

to officers

his invitation to give a

of the Reichswehr Ministry, published on

1920, the second anniversary of the armistice.

It

1 1

was

the resolution passed by the League of Nations

paper

November

a response to

on

gas warfare

on 28 October, reaffirming that gas warfare broke the Hague Convention and was hence in contravention of international law. Haber declared that poison gas weapons were no more cruel than conventional weapons, and that international condemnation of was

gas warfare

illogical.

He

development of gas weapons

war and encouraged German of gas warfare and

its

stressed,

moreover, the continuing

in other countries after the

end of the

officers to learn the techaical aspects

potential. ^^

Haber urged elsewhere

in his

correspondence to Staudinger the homely reflection that 'permanent peace cannot be assured in terms of the technical side of things.

The

amicabihty of a husband and wife in

from

their basic convictions

of access to

sticks

a

marriage must issue

and self-discipUne, not from the denial

and pokers to brawl

with.'^^

But if Haber and his influential voice had remained intransigent

on the merits of gas the

Fatherland,

a

warfare, as well as fervently patriotic towards

voice of internationalism,

mihtarism had persisted in described

of the

as

First

Germany

in the

Haber's 'fraternal opposite'.-^

War, Albert Einstein paid

peace and anti-

person Fritz Stern has

Not long

after the

end

a visit to the batdefields

France, accompanied by Maurice Solovine, a

of

Romanian Jewish

Tlie Poison

Gas

69

Scientists

of philosophical bent, and Paul Langevin, the eminent

physicist

woods and cratered fields, and stood at the graves of French and German soldiers lying side by side. 'We ought to bring all the students of Germany French

They wandered through

physicist.

to this place,' Einstein remarked, that they can see

how

ugly war

minds of Einstein's companions

'all

blasted

the students of the world so

There was some doubt

is.'^^

as to

how

the local French

take the presence of a 'German' scientist.

French

officers

and

group rose from saying a word, to Einstein.

French party

a party

of

also rose

without

moving together, and bowed low and respectfully entirely likely that these citizens

of France had

among

the handful of

Einstein to be a leading figure

who

would

woman recognized Einstein. When Einstein's

their table, the

It is

remembered academics

all

a

At lunch,

in the

had refused

to sign the Fulda manifesto supporting

the view that 'German' science should be at the unqualified service

of the Fatherland and the military.

Haber

Haber had met

his

Germany. She was the

a society for the great

at

the

and the good of

secretary of the organization, a Jewess and

his junior.

She appears to have taken

which expressed

poetry,

War

second wife, Charlotte Nathan, in 1914

Deutsche Gesellschaft, twenty years

after the

a

a liking to his

youthful infatuation with her.

They

married in the autumn of 19 17 in church, she converting to Christianity in order to

do

so.

Marriage and two children born to him by 1920, however, could not

the deep depression

shift

Nobel award memorable. solution

is

failed to

He

said,

not the

final

lift

Haber

his spirits,

among

felt after

Even

the war.

but his acceptance speech was

other things:

'It

may be

that this

one. Nitrogen bacteria teach us that Nature,

with her sophisticated fomis of chemistry of living matter, understands and utilizes methods which w^e do not

how to One

imitate.

as

yet

still

know

'^^

of his friends noted that he seemed

this state

the

of melancholy he

'75

per cent dead'. In

now embarked on

a strange quest to

70

Hitler's Scientists

period of post-war

The

help his Fatherland in

its

payments exacted by

the Versailles Treaty sought 20 billion gold

May

marks from Germany by

peril.

reparations

some 132

1921, and

billion in

subsequent payments. This gargantuan ransom was equal to two-

of the gold reserves of the entire world.

thirds

To make

matters

worse, the Allies had declared Germany's carefully protected patents

and void, including the famous Haber-Bosch process, depriv-

null

ing the country of the means of earning revenues to pay those

Could science rescue the situation and from impending economic and political chaos? reparations.

Working on

save the nation

the calculation that a tonne of seawater contains

several milligrams

of gold, Haber calculated that the oceans of the

world could yield countless millions of tonnes of gold. With fourteen-strong team of researchers Haber

from Hamburg had

in July 1923

on

set sail for

York

which he

installed a laboratory to test the waters for gold traces.

October he

set sail for

Argentina in order to

The following year he Honolulu, Yokohama, the China

Caribbean.

test

friends to send

different quarters

him

Seas, the Indian

finally

He

to

Ocean, and

also prevailed

appropriate specimens of sea water from

of the globe. Meanwhile

some 5,000 samples of

In

the seas of the

from San Francisco

sailed

through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean.

on

New

the ocean liner Hansa, in

a

sea

his research

team

tested

water in great secrecy in^Berlin, and

reached the conclusion that the original estimate of several

milligrams of gold per tonne of seawater was very wide of the mark.

The a

actual concentration

of gold per tonne was 0.008 milligrams,

thousandth of the original estimates, indicating that hopes for

commercial extraction were in

Through

vain.

the 1920s Haber's depression deepened; but he never

ceased to promote science and to travel

far

and wide. By 1927

second marriage broke down. Later he wrote to Willstatter: fighting with declining strength against lessness, the financial

future,

The

came

blow

to

am

four enemies: sleep-

my unease about the mistakes in my life.'"^

demands of my ex-wife,

and the feeling of having made grave

greatest

Hitler

my

'I

his

in his

power.

life,

however, awaited

in 1933,

when

The

5-

Throughout

'Science' of Racial

his Hfe

ambit of chemistry.

He

Fatherland.

abandoned

his

Hygiene

Haber had busied himself in the wide-ranging

He

had seen himself as

had, as

Jewish

we

a science patriot for his

have seen, adopted Christianity and

He

birthright.

was born into an educated

Germany that saw Jewishness principally as a religious

generation in

or cultural affiliation that could be dropped or repudiated as

as easily

submitting to Christian baptism. But there had been movements

within science, or claims for science, throughout the course of his life

were

that

to

make

of his colleagues,

his Jewishness,

While Germany emerged world

and the Jewishness of many

deep and dangerous matter.

a

as

power-house of the

the chemistry

second half of the nineteenth century, there had been

in the

important developments in biology, anthropology and the study of race,

with far-reaching consequences for Jews in Germany. In the

year 1900 the

new

announcement of

century was celebrated in

the field of biology.

of evolution encourage

The

Germany with

a controversial essay prize to

The

in order to

be awarded in

organizers sought to exploit theories

undermine revolutionary socialism and

nationalist, conservative

views in the public domain.

point was to encourage and reward biologists

promote an equivalence between

social

in secrecy

by

a

major figure

and armaments tycoon Friedrich sole heir

in

'Fritz'

of the mighty firm's founder,

The

age in 1900.

and

who

could

political history

and

The initiative was masterGerman industry, the steel

the influence of biological inheritance.

minded

the

Krupp, the grandson and

who was

forty-six years

of

circumstances of the award reveal the scope for

manipulation of theories of evolution to draw political and social conclusions.

Darwinism decided

The

part played

by Krupp

reveals the vulnerability

to pseudo-scientific conclusions.

how

the

winning

essay should

be

cast

Krupp had before

it

of

already

had been

72

Hitler's Scientists

written; his insistence that distinguished academics should 'front'

the pubUcity and adjudication of the prize reveals the tainted nature

of the

from the very

initiative

Fritz

Krupp was

outset.

Wilhelm

close to

II,

and by 1900 was profiting

prodigiously from the Kaiser's passionate determination to build a

Krupp had purchased

navy.

the

Germania shipyards

at

Kiel in 1896

in order to create the specialized capacity necessary to build a fleet

of

battle cruisers for

Germany; but

his foundries at Essen,

with

their jealously patented state-of-the-art armour-plating production,

were

providing guns,

also

shells

and armour for countries

the world, including Britain, and even China and Japan, at

war with each In

common

cal

over

other.

with other industrial firms, the Zeiss lens company

and Siemens engineering, nerships

all

who were

Fritz

between industry and

and physical

Krupp had sought

science. In 1898 he

to develop part-

funded

a

chemi-

experimental research with obvious

institute for

advantages for steel and weapons. His passion for biology, however,

was more

way

a

token of the influence of his wife,

book by

a

the

German Darwinian

who

had put in

his

biologist Ernst Haeckel,

Natural History of Creation, expounding hierarchical evolution in

human

populations.

Krupp developed an

grammes under the strong

direction of

interest in welfare pro-

company management,

and advocated the virtues of gradual 'progress' as oppgsed to the cataclysms of revolution: a socio-political direction, of course, that

favoured at

his goals as

points with his

He became two of his island

an

industrialist.

a serious

private yachts for research at sea.

of Capri he made

friends a

made by

Plon,

From

his villa

on the

renowned marine to

Dohrn's

laboratory to this

institute

and gave

it

He also funded a fresh-water where he spent much time gazing at the patterns

the run of one of his research at

now merged

with Anton Dohrn, director of the

Krupp donated 100,000 marks

laboratory

interests

student of marine biology and equipped

Naples Zoological Station, day.

These

amateur fascination for evolutionary biology.

yachts.

plankton.

There were

Krupp biology and society 30,000 marks): forty-four from Germany,

sixty-six entries for the

prize (valued in total at

The the rest

from

'Science'

of Racial Hygiene

Austria, Switzerland, Russia

Krupp had anonymously written

73

and the United

States.

the original manifesto, pointing

out that he was looking for a formula to revitalize conservative policies in the

government of the

The academic members of

state.'

the prize commission and judges' panel attempted to restrain

Krupp's input, advising him that the science should be kept separate

from

history. In the event they failed, but the

the prize at least succeeded in inheritance'

announcement of

recommending a separation of 'natural

from 'inheritance of tradition'. Krupp chose the

figures

responsible for organizing and judging the prize: conservatives

all,

including the Darwinist Haeckel.

Most of

the prize

money was

split

four ways, with several

The noted Aryan racist among the entries, Ludwig Woltmann, did not win first prize (the judges criticized his entry for manifest errors in biology); he came fourth, and as a result withdrew his essay and refused to accept the money. The first prize, in the event, went to Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmayer, whose history indilesser prizes.

cated the eugenic direction of medicine

Schallmayer,

who was a psychiatrist,

French psychologist Theodule Ribot,

at

the turn of the century.

had been influenced by the

who was

convinced of the

hereditary nature of both mental disease and personality disorders.

As

historian of science Paul

Weindling comments, Ribot's notions

'marked the transition from liberalism to professional

elitism,

once

power to decide who were the degenerates'.^ Schallmayer, as he expounded it in his prize essay and elsewhere, recommended the abandonment of the deregulatory liberalism which had dominated psychiatry from the midnineteenth century in Germany (in short, letting inmates out of

the medical profession claimed the

their asylums),

and the promotion of proactive

combat not only mental

illness

policies designed to

but social deviancy.

He

called for

mental health assessment panels, composed of doctors who, officials

of the

state,

would

sit

in judgment

on

the status

as

of patients

and deviants of various kinds. People would be universally issued with health passports to identify

at all

unsound.

He believed that the mentally

back into

society,

times the sound from the sick should not

where they could produce

offspring.

be released

Here were

Hitler's Scientists

74

powerful indications of eugenic policies of future essay,

moreover, argued for

tary biological principles

a strong nation state,

and ubiquitous

years.

His prize

based on heredi-

state intervention. In this

way Germany would enjoy an advantage in the competitive struggle for survival Fritz

with other nation

Krupp did not

how

his initiative

had served to

culminated in National Socialism. His end

fuel the influences that

was imminent and

states.

live to see

tragic. In

1902 newspapers in

Germany and

Italy

accused him of homosexual and paedophile crimes committed

while he stayed on the island of Capri. His wife asked the advice

of the Kaiser,

who recommended,

with consummate irony, that he

should be placed in an asylum. Krupp's friend Admiral Friedrich

von Hollmann, however, countered about Frau Krupp's

eminent in Jena.

state

psychiatrists,

The

this

scheme by

of mind. With the

Krupp had

his

raising doubts

assistance

bizarre circumstances resolved themselves

Krupp died suddenly

in

November

of four

wife locked up in an asylum

1902.

The

when

Fritz

death certificate

more generally suspected. Krupp would be remembered for the welfare schemes that made his business, as Jerome Bonaparte commented, 'a state within averred stroke; but suicide was Fritz

a state', the

homosexual

scandals,

and the legacy of a hugely

profit-

company which had employed 2 1 ,000 workers when he started and 43,000 when he died. Less well known, as he had kept his name a secret in the enterprise, was his seminal influence on the able

growth of racial hygiene and eugenics

in

Germany,

a

tendency that

had been gathering strength in Europe and North America during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Charles Darwin 's Idea

In the early sixteenth century, Spanish philosophers and theologians

came together against the

in juntas to debate the natural status

background of the Spanish occupation of the

World and one

side

New

quarrels about the legitimacy of taking indigenous

people into slavery.

On

of Amerindians

Were

these creatures

human, or were they not?

of the argument there were those

who

invoked the

The

on

idea, based

'Science'

75

Aristode, of the existence of 'natural

explain the existence of savages to cannibalism

of Racial Hygiene

and lacking

men' —

who were slaves by nature,

full souls.

Opposed

to this

to

inclined

view were

who insisted on the Judaeo-Christian belief in the unity human race as descended from Adam and Eve. Human

theologians

of the

beings, according to this doctrine, possessed without exception

immortal souls and were capable of evangelization and

De

Francisco de Vitoria, for example, in his

alternative texts in Aristotle to argue that 'true

men', whose rational

The

actual.^

faculties

Indis (1539),

invoked

American Indians were

were potential rather than

Spanish disputes, like most arguments about race in

Europe and North America, continued tury, based

salvation.

on philosophical and

until the nineteenth cen-

theological rather than biological

considerations.

The earliest attempt to characterize race as the principal dynamic of human affairs was made by the French man of letters Arthur Comte de Gobineau, whose Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855) argued that 'racial vitality' impelled the great

human

history, including the progress

Bronze Age, and the

Fall

are innately unequal,

shifts in

from the Stone Age

to the

of Rome. Gobineau maintained that races

and

that the

white

races, especially the

Aryan

ones, are at the pinnacle of a hierarchical racial pyramid. 'Contamination,' he believed, resulted

from inter-breeding between the

white and other races and even between white races that are themselves unequal. Gobineau's thesis was scorned by de Tocqueville,

who commented that among

tion only

such ideas would fmd

the principal interest of Gobineau's essay as a

a suitable

is its

But

emphasis on science

means of distinguishing between human populations.

Science was by then the emerging universal explanation as

recep-

the plantation owners of America's South.

offering increasing

means of

social control.

arguments were the theories of the thought

Then

it

there was the

cranial evidence

women.

Italian

possible to identify criminals

as

well

Typical of such

Cesare Lombroso,

who

by the shapes of their heads.

American George Morton,

who

thought that

proved the low intelligence of Indians, Blacks and

'Scientific racism,'

claims historian of science

Robert

Hitler's Scientists

76

Proctor, 'was an explanatory program, but

it

was

also a political

program, designed to reinforce certain power relations

and

as natural

inevitable.''*

Meanwhile Charles Darwin's undermined the declaring that

biblical basis

human

Origin of Species (1859) profoundly

of understanding

human

beings had evolved not since

groups by

Adam,

a

mere

four millennia past, but over hundreds of millennia, and by suggesting that races had evolved by a process of adaptation to local

Darwin

habitats.

offered the prospect of understanding the

race biologically, and to

it

was

a short step for certain

invoke natural selection and survival of the

human behaviour and were

there

of white spirit.

who

fittest as

United

form of

capitalist

Germany, however, Darwinism took a rather would control

selection

in order to avoid the degeneration

In

in Kent, the

had

its

man who had become

at

his

Down House, most

supporter, the zoologist Ernst Haeckel.

difficulties, since

different

of human groups.

October of 1 866 Charles Darwin greeted

German

States

competitive

a

direction: calls for social intervention that

home

the basis of

appealed to the theory in support

racial superiority in the

In

of his followers

racial characteristics. In the

early Darwinists

human

his

enthusiastic

The encounter

Haeckel was so overcome with exuberance

comprehend him. Soon afterwards Haeckel's Generelle Morphologic (in two 500-page volumes) was delivered to Darwin's door. In a painful process of word-by- word that

Darwin could

translation aided

by

scarcely

dictionaries,

Darwin began

to get the gist of

German professor's ambitions for the scope of evolutionary theory. The two volumes, it turned out, were a mere fragment of the

a

theory of everything, a grandiose proposal for the universal

relevance of Darwinism ranging from the finer details of embry-

ology to excursions into the formation of the this lay the

peoples

-

all

nation state

and

its

- and

'gaseous'

monism

liberal

nation

state.

promotion of the superiority of the Germanic the more superior for becoming united within one

Beyond

since,

the need to

combat

God. Haeckel in his view,

it

Christianity, the priesthood

called his evolutionary philosophy

was the only viable explanatory

The principle in science.

'Science'

The

of Racial Hygiene

nation

state,

77

according to Haeckel, was

comparable to an evolutionary biological organism, struggling towards progress and constrained by natural laws. Only the racial types

on

would

survive and prevail; and the

race

fittest

fittest

must be

guard against disease and deterioration.

its

Haeckel,

a

evolution and

devotee of Goethe, combined

German

'nature philosophy',

a

curious blend of

which

lent a

powerful

notion of teleology, or sense of inherent goals and purpose, to

his

interpretation of Darwin's theory. Evolution, according to this

view, was driven relentlessly onwards and upwards by an inexorable propensity towards the complexity and genius of as

human

beings

the pinnacle of nature. Haeckel's blend of nature philosophy

and evolution survives to

this

day

among

certain professional

biologists.

German academic opinion on Darwinism was by no means united even among its enthusiasts. Haeckel studied medicine at Wtirzburg University under Rudolf Virchow, staining

techniques,

modern pathology, from

who

using dyestuffs technology,

laying

down

cells {\vmiis cellula e cellida).

had exploited

and founded

the principle that cells derive only

Haeckel, while

still

a student,

was

already under the spell of evolutionary theory, having read The

Voyage of the Beagle. Virchow disagreed with Darwin on principles of the theory.

some

Mutation of individuals which gave

basic

rise to

the evolutionary process, he argued, was not the result of random agents of change, but cellular alterations that disease.

By

were precursors of

the time that Haeckel had been appointed to a chair at

the University of Jena, enthusiastic students,

where he lectured

Virchow and he were

to large

numbers of

clashing publicly over

Virchow maintained leftists influenced by social Darwinism would plunge society violence and bloodshed similar to that of the French Revol-

the political implications of social Darwinism. that

into

The dispute popularized the issues, and Haeckel, in the eyes of many Germans, appeared to be getting the best of the argument.

ution.

At the same time, Haeckel's views began

to

merge with

ideas

of Gobineau, whose essay had found widespread resonance

in

Hitler's Scientists

78

Germany, where the theme of Teutonic

superiority

was

in time

developed by the EngHshman Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

Chamberlain had become

a friend

of Wagner and an ardent devotee

of mystical pan-Germanism, and was to exert

powerful influence

a

over Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain, born in 1855, was the son of British admiral the igth

and

a

German mother.

book

In his

a

Foundations of

Century he opined that Germans were superior to other

and should be considered the very foundation of advanced

races

they were responsible for industrialization. Focusing on Darwin's suggestion that the evolution of homo sapiens was a result of enlargement of the human brain. Chamberlain became societies, since

preoccupied with brain race

size

within the

He

and evolutionary progress.

his theory, the idea that various

bumps on

denoted certain moral and

figurations

human

species as a

key to

incorporated phrenology into skull

and

cranial

con-

intellectual characteristics

in individuals.

Here were the

origins

of the notion of Rassenhygiene

(race

hygiene), a term coined by Alfred Ploetz, a medical practitioner,

who,

in 1936, aged seventy-six,

professorship at

based on

a

Munich

would be appointed by

University.

Hitler to a

Among Ploetz's leading ideas,

mish-mash of evolutionary theory, was the notion

of counter-selection leading to degeneration.

He

maintained, for

example, that advances in medicine would only encourage the survival of degenerate

He

human

stock by sustaining them' artificially.

advocated sending only inferior specimens of the race to the

front in

war

as

cannon fodder, sparing the

best specimens.

The

driving force of Ploetz's racial hygiene was the fear that inadequate

people were going to multiply also

faster

urged the enhancement of

than the

fit

human germ plasm

be the biological 'substance' of heredity) and

damaging agents such

as

and the

its

and

He

(thought to

protection from

alcohol and venereal disease. In this way,

he believed, the process of natural selection of the attained

gifted.

fittest

could be

by manipulation of human breeding rather than by war

struggle.

His notion of

racial

hygiene focused on the good of the race

rather than the individual. In the furtherance of racial hygiene he

The

recommended

'Science'

of Racial Hygiene

three-pronged thrust of anthropology, socio-

a

and medicine. In 1895 he pubHshed

politics

jg

his

magnum

opus, The

Vigour of our Race and the Protection of the Weak,^ followed in 1904

by

notorious journal for volkish enthusiasts, Archives of Racial and

his

Social Biology {Archiv

fiir

Rassen- und Gesellschaftshiologie) In 1905 he .

founded the Society for Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft fiir Rassenhygiene) with local branches in Berlin,

aim was

stated

ditions for the

Munich and

Freiburg. His

of the optimal con-

to investigate 'the principles

maintenance and development of the

race'.**

members

the society agreed that membership should be restricted to

of the Nordic

He was

'race'.

also a

member of a

promoted the supremacy of the Nordic through sports and

Ploetz was not

he put Jews

and Marx however, mixing.

as

He

anti-Semite; in

fact,

lower than the Aryan and cited Jesus, Spinoza

evidence of Jewish

talent.

He was

the aptitudes of Jews arose from

was convinced

to variations

racial

self-discipline.

at this early stage a radical

a little

that

secret club that

and he helped found

type,

Nordic Ring, which promoted Germanic

a club called the traits

In 1909

that the Caucasian

convinced,

Aryan

racial

was better adapted

of climate and terrain than the Negro and claimed

'known to every American school child' that Negroes learn more slowly than Whites.^ The intelligence of a White compared with that of a Negro, he declared, offered the same contrast as the intelligence of a Negro compared with that that

of

it

was

a fact

a gorilla.

Racial Hygiene after the First

Up

till

the

mid- 1 920s

found on both the

who

saw eugenics

racialist

political left as a

War

and eugenic tendencies were and the

means of

right.

There were

rationalizing the

to

be

socialists

means of pro-

duction and favoured state-organized eugenic programmes. There

were

socialists

who

claimed that the heroes of their

were mostly of Nordic the

German

Social

stock. Karl Valentin Miiller, a

movement member of

Democratic Party (SPD), argued that

'the goals

of the workers' movement extend only to white workers: socialism

8o

Hitler's Scientists

simply cannot for an

mean

the same thing for a Chinese and an Indian,

"Alpine" Frenchman or

a

Nordic Swede'.**

Through the 1920s the link between Nordic supremacy, rightwing politics and racial hygiene, however, grew stronger, particularly under the influence of the publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann. Lehmann, who was enthusiastic for the ideas of Ploetz, was one of the most successful publishers of medical text-books and journals in

Germany, and exerted widespread influence over the medical

profession.

Another

influential racist,

self-taught anthropologist

H.

Giinther' (Race Giinther),

under the F.

who

spell

K. Giinther,

of Ploetz, was the

known

'Rassen-

as

published in the early 1920s his

Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes {Racial Hygiene of the German People),

book which Hitler plundered. With Nazi backing Ploetz and Lehmann managed to secure Giinther a chair in anthropology at Jena. He was fmally appointed in 1932 despite vehement objections on the part of the majority of the members of the university senate. Hitler came to hear Giinther's inaugural lecture. Ploetz himself was nominated, unsuccessfully, for a Nobel peace a

prize for his

work in racial hygiene. His anti-war rhetoric, however,

was fundamentally

racist,

particularly affected

arguing that people of Nordic stock were

by war, since they were strong and

large

and

therefore put at the front of battle; also, Nordic people, he argued,

were 'more willing suffer least

weaker

to fight for their ideas',^

from war,

constitutions,

and

fellow citizens and the ideas,

partly

due

partly

whereas Jews 'tend to

to their smaller physique

due

to their lack

state'. Hitler,

of solidarity

and with

under the influence of such

proclaimed before the German Parliament in

'Every war goes against the selection of the

May

fittest,'

of 1935:

and hence

National Socialism was 'profoundly and philosophically committed to peace'.

Two

^"

other figures influential in the early formation of National

Sociahsm

as a 'political

expression of biological knowledge' were

Eugen Fischer and Otmar von Verschuer. Fischer, born in 1874, came from a prosperous family and originally studied medicine, his father having refused to allow him to become a zoologist. But as

TJte 'Science' of Racial

wrote

part of his medical degree he

which had died

Hygiene

on

a thesis

8i

famous orang-utan

a

Zoo, concentrating on

in Stuttgart

and reproductive organs. As he worked

its

urinary

way up through

his

the

academic ladder on the borders of zoology and medicine, he began to

make

a

name

for himself developing

pology by working on

new

approaches to anthro-

races.

human

organs and tissues in different

soft

For example, he 'demonstrated' that the

Europeans were

much fmer

Papuans showed

far greater similarities to

muscles of

facial

than those of Papuans, whereas the

He

the apes.

did similar

work on nose shape, eye pigment and tongue muscles." Fischer later studied the

colonies,

consequences of inter-breeding in Germany's

and of bastard children

that 'inferior' breeds

weaken

The foremost prophet was Erwin Liek, was

a

after the First

War, concluding

the stock.

to

emerge from

this

a disorder

healing mechanism: to suppress

it

school of thought

who

medical doctor of Danzig,

benign secretion of

a

Rhineland fathered by

in the

French African troops of occupation

and an

argued that pain

essential part

of the

impeded recovery. Endurance of

pain was, moreover, a prime virtue and one with which the superior races

were better provided. Liek believed

that illness

was due

to

would add impetus

lack of moral fibre, a conviction that in time

to the influences within professional medicine that justified the

elimination of the sick.

While German academic

biologists

were not

a force for the

pseudo-science of racial hygiene (research dedicated to

this

end was

mainly carried out by anthropologists and jurists), there were several significant biologists

who

attempted to bring the

with Nazi policy and ideology. Ludwig von the idea of drawing an equivalence

and the

state, for 'the

and society

will

holistic nature

Then ingen,

hope

between

be followed by

of life and of the Volk' had

there was Ernst

who was

promoted

biological organisms

that the atomizing a biological

'discipline' in line

Bertalanffy

one

conception of state that recognizes the

now been

realized.'^

Lehmann, Professor of Botany

to praise Hitler for perceiving the dangers

degeneration, urging that

it

at

Tub-

of racial

should be 'the task of biology to

promote the spread of this knowledge and

to forge

new weapons

82

Hitler's Scientists

Lehmann's mission statement involved

for the struggle to come'.

the subservience of the individual to the

commonality of the

Volk.

Individualism w^as a tumour, he declared, that needs to be cut out.

Lehmann founded a new monthly periodical. Die Biologie, and a society known as the Association for German Biologists. One of Die

Biologies,

Konrad Lorenz,

leading contributors was the Austrian

a behaviourist zoologist, race, a process

who inveighed against the softening of the

he compared with the domestication of pet animals.

member of the Nazi

Lorenz would eventually become

a

Office of Race Policy, and

the 'elimination' of supposedly

call for

Party's

'genetically inferior' people.

Lorenz was

also responsible for

respectability to a

Nazi eugenicist

view

policies. It

ate morally inferior

tion

favoured

environmental

human

attempting to give academic

would form

direct connections

was the duty of racial hygiene

human

endurance,

heroism

and

social

now

organization to prevent the degenerative

sterihzations,

suffered

with

to elimin-

beings. In prehistory, he argued, selec-

That process must

factors.

go with domestication. Nazi

that

The view provided

usefulness

by

be assumed by

phenomena

that

a 'scientific' basis for

which would be compulsory

for those

who

from hereditary conditions such as schizophrenia, blindness

and other weaknesses,

a

theme picked up

in the next chapter.

Lamarckianism and Weismannism Ernst Haeckel, Darwin's friend, had

German

worked

closely

with the

Weismann of Freiburg in promoting proposed the theory of germ Weismann Germany.

zoologist August

Darwinism

in

plasm, a hereditary material carried in the parents'

germ

cells

which

accounted for every aspect of their potential offspring's characteristics - moral, aesthetic and intellectual as well as physical. His

contemporaneous questions about nature and nurture, carried important social and pohtical imphtheory,

which sought

to settle

cations.

Throughout the nineteenth century the notion of inheritance of acquired characteristics, propounded by the French biologist

Tlie 'Science' of Racial

Hygiene

83

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, had been widely accepted, while the disci-

of biology awaited an explanation for transmission of

plines

Such

heredity.

a

monk

theory had been established by the Austrian

and plant botanist Gregor Mendel, studying in the seclusion of his monastery

Briinn in what

at

is

now the Czech

Republic.

Working

on

the colour and shape of several generations of pea seeds he demonstrated that two features — yellow versus green; round versus

wrinkled - were transmitted independently between generations according to definite quantifiable

rules.

His experiments involved

some 28,000 plants, fertilized by hand, while number of varieties as control groups. Mendel, unlike

the breeding of

employing

a

his predecessors

and most of

contemporaries, demonstrated

his

the importance of quantification, of counting.

But

his research,

published in an obscure journal in 1865, lay dormant until 1900

when

three scientists

von Tschermak —

- Carl Correns, Hugo de

Vries and Erich

resurrected his theory independently of each

other.

In the

with

meantime Weismann had attempted

model

a

cells are

two kinds of cells within an organ-

that distinguished

and germ (reproductive)

ism: somatic (body) cells

passed

to resolve the issue

cells.

Somatic

involved in the development of the organism but are not

on

to the offspring.

Germ

cells,

on

the other hand, do not

undergo development but form the genetic material of heredity. In this

way he sought

to explain

how

organisms were stable despite

nurture and environmental factors.

By

the early twentieth century the contentions over nature and

nurture, heredity and environment, had acquired a strong political

dimension.

The proponents of racial hygiene

supported the teaching of Weismann with

plasm was passed

down through

rejected

its

Lamarck and

insistence that

the generations unaffected

germ

by the

influences and vicissitudes of the somatic cells of the organism. For

the racial hygienists the

human

characteristics.

influences had

The

polarities

germ

By

no power

cells

accounted for the nature of

the same token, they held that social

to shape the

human

condition or destiny.

of the argument — Mendelian (or Weismannian)

versus Lamarckian

- were

later

exploited by Nazi ideologues

as a

Hitler's Scientists

84

demonstration of the contrast between race and the influence of class

and economics.

In the Soviet Union,

where Lamarck's views were favoured

mechanism of radical societal change, the germ-line interpreted to

as

combat

cell

as a

theory was

an unproven, reactionary, pseudo-scientific proposal

and communist reforms. A mix of ideology and biological

for radical socialist

calls

dramatic manifestation of the lethal

science occurred in agricultural practice, leading to disaster. Follow-

ing the

of Stalin

rise

after Lenin's death,

farming in the Soviet Union in the

and the collectivization of

late 1920s,

an obscure autodidact

agronomist called Trofim Denisovich Lysenko leaped to prominence

of an

as a result

A

prophet of environmen-

Lysenko would attack 'bourgeois

talism,

taught in

Germany as

Lamarckian

fascist science,

principles. Stalin

ogy even when izing'

article in Pravda.

his

aimed

at

of the kind

undermining sociaHst

would favour Lysenko's Marxist biol-

attempt to revolutionize grain yields by 'vernal-

winter wheat, chilling the seeds so

ended in

genetics'

as to

plant

them

early,

World War II Lysenko managed to persuade was not the theory that was wrong but sabotage on

disaster (after

Stahn that

it

the part of reactionary biologists,

3

,000 of

whom were consequently

sacked)

The

historian

Robert Proctor notes

that a lesson to

be drawn

from the disputes between Nazi and Soviet ideologuesK)ver Lamarck versus

Mendel is

'that political

motivations can be

as

important

in justifying correct views in science as they are in justifying false

views'.'^

phasis

on

As

it

happened, the biologizing of race and an overem-

heritable characteristics

formed connections

in

Germany

with an enthusiasm for eugenics, which in different ways and with different

emphases had become popular

in the

United

States

and

other countries in Europe. In Germany, however, the symbiosis

between

racial

hygiene and eugenics would become

feature of National Socialist ideology.

a

leading

Eugenics and Psychiatry

6.

with the growth of racial hygiene in Germany was the

Parallel

rise

of 'eugenics', the science of encouraging 'good' offspring. Eugenics is

associated with Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton,

had

a

mania

beauty.

for

who

measuring everything, from intelligence to physical

Hishook Hereditary

Genius,

first

published in 1869, explored

the heritability of intelligence, with scant interest in environmental factors,

emphasizing the advantages of selection of highly intelligent

members of the population for ideal breeding. Galton was captivated by the power of the Gaussian normal distribution graph,

known

popularly

as

the 'bell curve'. Since the distribution of

norms and exceptions —

physical

could be usefully described in

height, weight and so forth

population, Galton reasoned that

a

intelligence could also be quantified,

parents.

During

a

and

be accounted for by the

intelligence could

—

that ditferent levels

of

of intelligence

in

levels

period of rising crime and poverty in the second

London and more intelligent,

half of the nineteenth century in great cities like

New York,

Galton believed that

a

more

healthy,

better-behaved population could be encouraged by appropriate

planning on the part of governments: he called ics'.

One

minster

One

his

Abbey

for unions that

met

at

West-

certain 'eugenic' criteria.

of Galton's most ardent disciples in England was Karl

Pearson, an austere, hollow-cheeked individual, a ist

scheme 'eugen-

of his proposals was to offer cost-free marriages

leanings,

who

studied mathematics

at

Cambridge, then in

London, before studying biological sciences

became the founder of modern

statistics, his

in

Germany.

He

original contributions

including the introduction of the chi-squared significance

Quaker of social-

test

of

statistical

and the concept of standard deviation.

Dedicated to the task of quantifying biological information

86

Hitler's Scientists

he

mathematically,

eventually

settled

at

University

London, the founding home of utilitarian philosophy.

He

College attracted

funds for 'biometries', the quantifiable aspects of biology, which

helped establish

a

biometric laboratory and a periodical, Biometrika.

Following Galton's death in 191

Pearson became the founding

1,

professor of the Galton Chair of Eugenics and headed the Galton

Laboratory for National Eugenics, where gathered on

a

These included various

was the judgment of a

were

to be inherited.

latter,

prior to intelligence

child's class teacher.

Observing the correlation between family

figures

alcoholism and intelligence,

diseases,

although the principal measure of the tests,

and

facts

wide range of characteristics deemed

'intelligence'

of parents and

Pearson concluded that the British population was

size,

headed for imminent degeneration. Pearson espoused the notion that

war had

positive eugenic effects as consequences of selection

through struggle. 'This dependence of progress on the survival of the

fittest race,'

he wrote,

'terribly black as

of you, gives the struggle for existence the fiery crucible out of which

its

comes the

it

may seem

redeeming finer metal.

to som.e

features;

it is

'^

Enthusiasm for eugenics and the benefits of war was not confined to Britain. In the that

war created

a

Roland Campbell Macfie claimed shortage of men, and, as a result, a more 'careful

United

States

weeding of women'. War did not simply mean of

men by

chance destruction so

much

matrimonial selection of women by the

would mean an improvement combatant

races'.

a

'martiH selection'

as a 'deliberate stringent

critical

in the 'health

eyes of men'.

War

and beauty of the

As Stefan Kiihl comments, the view

'fitted

well

into the militarist, imperialist thinking of the period and linked eugenicists

with

nationalist

movements within

the

different

countries'.^

Karl Pearson's counterpart in the field of eugenics in the United States

was Charles Davenport,

and mathematics

to

reach

behaviour and intelligence.

who similarly had combined biology eugenic

He was

groups suffered stereotypical moral prostitution

were

heritable.

He

conclusions

about moral

persuaded that certain ethnic failings; that criminality

established a Eugenics

and

Record

Eugenics and Psychiatry

Office,

where he mounted

a

scheme

87

to process data

on the charac-

States. Davenport worked Henry Goddard, who along with the psychologist Lewis Terman introduced the French 'Binet' intelligence test into the United States, where it became known as the 'Stanford-Binet' test. Convinced that there was a single gene for intelligence, they were also responsible for introducing 'Intelligence Quotient', or teristics

of the populations of the United

closely with

IQ, into the language.

The

application of the test to immigrants

led to the rejection of certain ethnic groups. a

Goddard advocated

Mendelian view of heredity and

simplistic

two heterozygous

parents

would each

intelligence:

one

possess

so

'intelligence'

gene and one 'moron' gene; assuming no dominance, the expected ratio

of types in their offspring would be one moron, to one

ligent offspring, to

two

intel-

Such views encouraged

intermediates.

eugenic policies that would ban the reproductive union of people

with genetic

illness, syphilis

and

anti-social behaviour, including

even habitual masturbation. Some

states, like

Indiana, introduced

laws for compulsory sterilizations conducted by castration and irradiation.

Meanwhile racial

well

were

the development of eugenics in

Germany

had, like

hygiene, been increasingly shaped by pseudo-Darwinism as

Among

Aryan supremacist mythology.

Philalethes

Kuhn, who held the

the Technische Hochschule of Dresden

Fritz Lenz.

Lenz held the

first

the leading lights

chair of clinical hygiene at

from 1920, Hans Reiter,

taught hygiene with a racist dimension

as

at

who

Rostock from 19 19, and

chair in race hygiene at

Munich

University from 1923; Hitler read and admired his views on race

and medicine when he was

in

Landsberg prison in 1924. Lenz

returned the compliment by becoming an enthusiastic

member of

the Nazi party.

Despite the optimism expressed in the for the eugenic beneficence

altered attitudes.

first

decade of the century

of war. World

War

I

had

radically

Edward Poulton and Leonard Darwin agreed

in

the pages of the British Eugenics Review that 'war unquestionably killed off the better types,

and was therefore highly dysgenic'.

Following World War I members of the International Organization

88

Hitler's Scientists

of Eugenicists united to denounce war for

German

this reason.

Ploetz led

eugenicists in advocating a 'eugenic peace order',

Nazi race pohticians would endorse head of the Racial

Political Office

Nazi Germany thinks

racially,

While laws supporting Scandinavia and

it

his

arguments. Walter Gross,

of the party, declared: 'Because

wants peace. '^

positive eugenics

Germany

and the

in the period

were

to

fmd favour

in

between the wars, such

measures were eventually resisted in Britain despite the continued

advocacy of a small

When Professor E. W. MacBride wrote to

elite.

the science weekly Nature in 1936 urging a government-sponsored

scheme

for eugenics,

difficult to express the

trines, so is

a

combative riposte from the

Needham, biochemist and

redoubtable Joseph is

he drew

expert

on China:

'It

dismay experienced in seeing these doc-

dangerous to humanity, receiving the imprimatur of what

perhaps the most famous scientific weekly in the world.'"* Another

influential British anti-eugenicist in the 1930s

father of the mathematician

in Pearson's chair at University College,

removed from

owed

the

title.

was Lionel Penrose,

Roger Penrose. Penrose had succeeded London, and had 'eugenics'

He was adamant

that intelligence

was

to a variety of genetic factors as well as to environmental

circumstances.

Psychiatry and 'Euthanasia'

Another far-reaching

effect

of World

War

I

had been

decline in the practice and reputation of psychiatry respectable discipline, paralleled lect

a general

as a scientifically

by the scandal of widespread neg-

and mistreatment of mental patients in

institutions.

The gap

between Friedrich Schallmayer's bold proactive recommendations and the reaUty could not have been more disease

stark.

Malnutrition,

and neglect reigned in Germany's asylums, culminating

in

a massive 30 per cent of fatalities in the inmate population during

the

war years. ^ At the same

and other

effects

time, soldiers suffering

from shell-shock

of trench warfare were subjected to abusive

'psychiatric' treatments, including the

appHcation of punitive elec-

tro-convulsive 'therapy'. Matters did not improve in Germany's

Eugenics and Psychiatry

mental hospitals

the

after

war

as

89

economic and

the

political

deprived mental institutions of funding for the most basic

crises

needs.

The

Michael Burleigh notes

historian

movement

active psychiatric reform

that, despite a

temporarily

calling for patients'

rights

and checks on committal procedures, there were indignant voices complaining of the waste of resources on the mentally

ill.

Leading

advocates for a solution to the expanding armies of 'mental defectives'

were the lawyer Karl Binding and the

Hoche,

who

popularized the chilling phrase lebensunwertes Lehen

unworthy of life)

(life

psychiatrist Alfred

key

in their

Die Freigahe der Vernichtung

tract

lehensunwerten Lebens (Lifting Controls

on

the Destruction of Life

Unworthy of Life), published in Leipzig in 1920. Binding recommended allowing doctors to terminate a painful existence on their

own

initiative;

terminate a

foundly

by the same token, he urged

life

that

utilitarian

burden

a

is

to society.

no

they lack the essential qualities that life

of an

idiot,

he declared,

is

accepted legal understanding of the

made

than any other,

right to

make

Although

sacred.

unworthy of aged by

disease,

life

relatives

pro-

text,

terminate

commonly more

in the

kill

This

To

arguably

Nazi regime an

in the early days

hence

would spread

who

'ethical'

of the regime

pubHc discussion would focus on the prevention of

with hereditary

a

he argued, because

life,

life

not to act.^

available to the

rationale for 'euthanasia'.

the

Hoche, taking

view, cited the resources squandered on main-

taining defective lives. Idiots had

the

that society should

offspring

sterilization, the destruction as

of life

an unspoken principle, encour-

subscribed to the solution.

Meanwhile many leading academic

Germany leaned towards National psychiatric research centre

psychiatric researchers in

Socialism.

The most prestigious

was the Kaiser Wilhelm

Psychiatry in Munich, founded in 19 17 with

Institute

money from

of the

Rockefeller Foundation and the private benefaction ofjames Loeb,

an American-born Jewish philanthropist.

Its

director, Professor

Emil Kraepelin, brought together a distinguished group of clinicians and researchers, including the neurologist Alois Alzheimer, discovered the disease of that name. Ernst Riidin led

a

who

research

90

Hitler's Scientists

programme on genealogy and demographics through the 1920s that became a classic in the field of genetics and schizophrenia. As Hitler's party made its bids for power, Riidin became an enthusiastic

exponent of eugenic and

racial

hygiene

policies.

His

high reputation lent respectability to the Nazi policies of enforced eugenic

sterilization.

Under

his aegis

schizophrenia and manic

depression were judged categories suitable for sterilization. As the

pohcy expanded, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry became a source of expert opinion on eugenic questions and individual cases.

The

'medical'

the mentally

preparing

ill

and

'scientific' basis for

was thus

Germany

of maintaining the congenital diseases.

the notion of eliminating

laid in the years

for the

following

World War

I,

propaganda that would lament the cost

'ballast'

of the mentally

ill

and those with

PART

The

TWO

New Physics

191 8-193 3

7.

World War as 'the

Fritz

I

was known

his

aim

amply merited by the work of

poison gas colleagues. Physics nevertheless

war

a varied role in a

weapons on land and

which guns were

in

of heavy

roll

enemy gun, and other of the

involved in basic research on both

powers, threw themselves into

how

temporary and

the influence of

worked on albeit a

wind and

to

calculate the

the physics of

and seismometrics.^

Max Born

Scientists

and the Central

between pure and

of Gottingen researched

on sound. Max Wien of Jena

Arnold Sommerfeld of Munich,

physicist, studied

on enemy telephone conversations;

phone

To

sides, the Allies

altitude

bugging devices could detect

how

targets emitting observable

the division

is

wirelesses in aircraft.

noted theoretical

main

work on military technology, show-

fragile

applied science in wartime.

seas.

War had employed

First

acoustics, optics, electromagnetism

ing

the

of weather, smoke, distance,

projectiles accurately, regardless

signals, warriors

still

and the principal problem was

at sea,

darkness and the pitch and position of an

War

to succeeding generations of scientists

chemists' war', a sobriquet

Haber and

played

Physics after the First

signals

ways of

his electron

more than

listening in

tube-amplified

half a mile

from

a

line.

British scientists too old to fight

were

also

drawn

into

war

work, while many of the younger ones went enthusiastically to the trenches,

where

all

many

too

died.

Most

notably, the brilliant

protege of Rutherford, H.J. G. Moseley, was killed by a sniper's bullet in the Dardanelles. British physicists, as

we

have seen in the case of Arthur Pollen,

had long been grappling with the problem of gunfire control (range-finding equipment) on warships, although

hampered by

Admiralty prejudices. William Henry Bragg, father of Lawrence,

and joint founder with

his

son of X-ray crystallography, worked

Hitler's Scientists

94

on sound-ranging to locate enemy guns; while Ralph Fowler (who became Rutherford's son-in-law) studied at the British Munitions Inventions Department the use of optical instruments to improve gunfire control future

worked early

on

at

Lindemann

anti-aircraft guns. Frederick

Lord Cherwell,

scientific adviser to

Farnborough on infra-red heat detection

warning system

Rutherford,

at

(the

Winston Churchill)

for approaching aircraft.

as a possible

Meanwhile Ernest

Manchester, was researching means of locating

U-boats.

had realized the importance of science and

British scientists

technology for warfare

at

an early stage in World

of Nature urged the government

in

its

War I. The

energies and expert

knowledge

make country whose

17 June issue of 191

better use of the 'hundreds of men of science in the

editor

to

5

are not being effectively used

.

.

.

The organization of the scientific intellect of the country is essential, yet almost nothing has been

done towards

its

accomplishment.'

some of the great British men of science had committed themselves to war work not necessarily compatible with their gifts and expertise. Rutherford, famous by World War I for attempts to understand the atom, believed that acoustics were the only way to detect submarines. He and his team concentrated on the development of 'hydrophones' and other Like their

sorts

German

counterparts,

of listening devices, including the use of piezoeletlric quartz

(crystals

which generate

electronic pulses

when

stressed or

com-

pressed by sound waves) to locate high-frequency sound. This

technology anticipated the detection technique Rutherford,

at least,

atomic physics by the

when he was

known

had an inkling of the future last

year of the war. There

reproached for

as sonar.

possibilities is

his failure to attend a

of

a story that

meeting of

on anti-submarine technology, Rutherford, known for his very loud voice, responded: 'Talk softly, please. I have been engaged experts

in experiments

which suggest

disintegrated. If it

He declared,

is

true,

it is

that the

atom can be

artificially

of far greater importance than

in time, intriguingly, that

a war.'^

atomic science would never

release energy in large quantities. Rutherford,

Bragg and

Thomson (known

who

as JJ,

the

Cambridge

physicist

J. J.

discovered

War

Physics after the First

the electron)

95

were members of an Admiralty Board of Invention

and Research, but the navy was reluctant to strategy with civilians,

and many opportunities were

By the end of the Great War, few needed convincing

discuss tactics

in

was

that physics

lost.

government or the essential for

and

military

weapons and

defence technology and that substantial government funding was required

if

science was to play a major part in future planning.

become well established by 191 8, but few could have guessed the extent to which the discipline would dominate weapons and defence systems innovations in World War II, especially in the detection of aircraft at night. The predicament is captured Military physics had

McCormmach in

by the writer Russell a Classical Physicist. First

on

his

novel Night Thoughts of

these matters in the depths of the

War, Professor Victor Jacob, the protagonist of the

comes

war

Reflecting

to the conclusion:

again,

it

will use

'If,

modern

God

physics, with every branch

classical

forbid, the

physics.

But

this

narrative,

world should go to

war was fought with

of it.'^

So what was 'modern' physics?

Modern

The

first

new

year of the

Physics

century, as revealed by the impressive

exhibits at the Paris International Exhibition,

of the triumph of Germany's

saw the celebration

scientific attainments, the expression

of confidence in the Fatherland's technological future it

which now,

was widely accepted, rested on secure foundations. But

as

the

exhibition visitors flocked to Paris to admire the impressive artefacts

and new chemical and

ments that

industrial processes, there

in progress in the laboratories

were soon

to transform the

way

were develop-

and seminar rooms of Europe

way

nature was observed and

undreamed of Until the turn of the new century, scientists had viewed nature and the universe as more or less predictable, determinist and mech-

understood, making

anistic,

young

with material physicists

for technologies

effects

following material causes. Promising

were being advised

pHnes, since physics had

more or

less

to

move on

completed

into other disci-

its

project, or so

it

96

Hitler's Scientists

was thought. The prevaiHng, complacent view was

that

of energy, motion, radiation and electromagnetism was or

less

knowledge

now more

complete. Scientists worked on the assumption that the

known,

general structure of the laws of nature was

of science for the future was to

were perceived

in terms

human

corresponding to

fill

that the business

in the details; matter

and energy

of common-sense mechanical models, intuition.

The

British scientist

William

Thomson, Baron Kelvin, had declared that he never satisfied himself until he could make a mechanical model of a thing. All that was about to change, and Germany was to play a major role in the transformation.

Hobsbawm

Age of Empire i8y3—igi4, 'when man's entire way of apprehending and structuring 'There are times,' writes Eric

the universe

is

transformed in a

decades which preceded the

Hobsbawm at

is

in his

fairly brief period

of time, and the

World War were one of these.''*

First

referring to turning points that occurred in science

the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the

twentieth in psychology, biology, physics, innovations

and appreciated, and

at first,

intellectual elite

innovations were

by only

a small

known

to,

minority of the scientific

of the United States and Europe.

Among these

the publication of Freud's Intepretation of Dreams,

the resurrection of Mendel's experiments in genetics and the

work of the German

scientist

Max

Planck,

who

held

ftie

chair of

theoretical physics at Berlin University.

Planck, a notoriously reticent and undemonstrative individual

him

(one of his students described starched white shirt and black civil servant'),^

as a 'spare figure in

bow

tie

.

.

.

the dark

suit,

like the typical Prussian

had been working on the nature of electromagnetic

radiation. In 1900

he proposed, in

a

profound break with ordinary

physical ideas, that radiation exists only in integral multiples of tiny

amounts of energy,

assuming that as

light

is

called 'quanta'. In other words, only

emitted not in waves of arbitrary energy,

was generally thought, but

calculations at a

make

by

sense.

in tiny energy parcels, could his

When he announced this quantum model

meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, neither he nor

his

Physics after the First

War

97

audience realized the implications of the quantum revolution in physics that was about to break over their heads.

Planck's hypothesis had been, in

fact,

one

step in a series

of

extraordinary developments in physics at the end of the nineteenth century. Five years earlier another

German, Wilhelm Rontgen,

had discovered the presence of X-rays,

new

a

kind of radiation

undermined accepted assumptions about the physics of the

that

spectrum and methods of experiment. bridge physicist J. J.

up of discrete

Two

Cam-

years later the

Thomson showed that cathode rays were made two thousand times

particles

atom

lighter than an

of hydrogen. Meanwhile in France, the physicist Antoine-Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium created photographic researcher,

plates.

cloud on unexposed

who first employed the term radioactivity, while coinci-

dentaUy conducting

a series

of experiments which revealed that

some heavy elements emitted turn of the

a

was Marie Curie, the Franco-Polish

It

new

of radiation. At the

different kinds

century researchers had noticed the

of radioactive decay

and spectra were

in

phenomenon

uranium. X-rays, radioactivity, beta decay,

now

raising questions

about the uncontested

primacy of classical physics, the comfortable relationship between scientific explanation

and common-sense intuition. Just as Darwin's

theory had proposed the evolution of species and the breakdown

of fixed natural kinds, so atomic science was about

to alter the

understanding of the domain of the physical world. In the following months and years, although many measurements

confirmed Planck's formula for the spectrum of emitted radiation, based on the

quantum

hypothesis,

continued to be puzzled by what that

this

many

he and meant.

One

Planck had explained an incomprehensible

more incomprehensible assumption

that light

colleagues

scientist

fact

wrote

by the even

waves occurred

in

jerks.

In

1

905 the year he published his epoch-making special relativity ,

theory, Einstein wrote a paper revealing that Planck's quanta

accounted for experiments that had been conducted by the German physicist Philipp

Lenard

(a scientist

destined to be identified with

98

Hitler's Scientists

'Nazi' science). Einstein

employed Planck's quantum idea

pret the photoelectric effect.

to inter-

The maximum energy of an emitted

depended only on the wavelength of light and not on

electron

intensity, as

was predicted by

was behaving

Here was

in the

a

its

he revealed,

classical physics. Light,

manner of a swarm of particles or photons.

The

remarkable paradox.

outstanding achievement

of nineteenth-century physics had been the demonstration by James Clerk Maxwell that light behaves field; this.

he had

how

But

intuitive,

down

set

as a

wave of an electromagnetic

mathematical equations which described

could light be both

and

a particle

a

wave? Counter-

based on probabilities, non-local qualities and

difficult

mathematics, quantum theory undermines the deterministic trajectories

of Newtonian physics and brings into our view of nature an

elusive fitfulness. this day, its

not

It is

least

its

the subject of

many

unresolved debates to

disjointedness with classical physics. Despite

daunting conceptual

small elite of scientists

and

difficulties,

accessibility to

its

only a

and mathematicians, quantum theory was

to

give rise to a stunningly successful account of the atomic and

sub-atomic structure of the world, an intellectual achievement of great beauty

and imagination.

It

would

influence in the disciplines of physics and

enjoy

a

and

it

would

remarkable agreement between observation, experiment

and theory.

make

new

exert a powerful cheinistry,

It

was

available

to lead to fission

new

and to chain

technologies,

from

reactions;

transistors

it

would

to nuclear

energy, creating the world-transforming technologies of the

puter age, and

at

the same time the

com-

mushroom-shaped cloud of the

atomic bomb.

Who

should take the accolade, or the blame, for the unfolding

work in the German first decade of the new century? One talent made a signal contribution to the development of quantum theory, and while Gottingen, Munich and Berlin would become discoveries that flowed

from Planck's and thing

major centres of endeavour, its

intellectual stamina

its

nurture,

is

its

Einstein's certain:

while

source of imagination,

and genius originated

in cities as diverse as

Cambridge, Manchester, Copenhagen, Vienna, Moscow, Zurich.

Quantum

physics thrived

on

Paris

and

freely shared information

and

War

Physics after the First

wide-ranging collaboration between ities

and

A

scientists

of different national-

cultures.

key event

story

99

illustrating international collaboration in the early

of quantum theory was the

First International

in Physics held in Brussels at the

October 191 had made

a

1.

Solvay Congress

Hotel Metropole

fortune out of

sodium carbonate. His

A

Europe and Russia.

the end of

who

process for industrial production of

a

industrial

empire spanned the United

States,

thinker and philanthropist, he was keen to

promote the sociology and

politics

of science.

It

was arguably the

instance of an international meeting focusing

first

at

Ernest Solvay was a wealthy Belgian chemist

agenda in contemporary physics. of Solvay, would follow

down

Many

the significance of the event, although the

and Paul Langevin — was

a subject

a specific

The media overlooked

the decades.

from the meeting of two participating

on

more, under the auspices

rumoured elopement — Madame Curie

scientists

of widespread gossip in

scientific

circles.

Ernest Rutherford's contributions stimulated the early

Bohr

in

the Solvay Conference

at

quantum work of a young Dane

called Niels

Copenhagen. Henri Poincare, the French mathematical

physicist, influenced

another participant, the Englishman James

Jeans; then Poincare returned to Paris to spread the message in a series

of papers that caught the attention of his French colleagues.

Convened by

the physical chemist Walther Nernst, the Solvay

participants included Planck, Einstein,

Sommerfeld, KamerHngh-

Onnes, Rutherford, Langevin and Curie. taries

One

of the young secre-

ofthe meeting was the 2 5 -year-old Frederick Lindemann,

who

would become Winston Churchill's scientific adviser two decades later. Lindemann left a personal account of the meeting. The discussions were 'interesting', he informed his father in Devon, 'but the result is that we seem to be getting deeper into the mire than ever. On every side there seem to be contradictions.' He liked Einstein, and had observed

that

he had

asked the young Lindemann to

asked care

him

much

to

come and see us

for appearances

'a

Jewish nose'. Einstein apparently

come and stay with him,

[in

Devon]

.

.

.

'and

I

nearly

However, he does not

and goes to dinner

in a frock coat.

He

100

says

Hitler's Scientists

he knows very

little

mathematics and can only

up general

set

considerations, but he seems to have a great success with them.'^

'We

In the fmal session of the conference Einstein declared:

agree that the so-called device,

not

is

a useful

not a theory in the usual sense of the word, in any case

theory that can be developed coherently

a

other hand,

has

it

be considered

been shown

a generally useful

tation of all physical

Whatever at

quantum theory of today, although

all

that classical

.

.

the

cannot

.

theoretical represen-

phenomena.'^

his reservations, the congress

the centre of the

mechanics

scheme for the

On

at present.

had put Einstein firmly

new physics community.

showed

Einstein

at all

times his respect for H. A. Lorentz, the chairman of the congress,

and Lorentz subsequently

him

in the chair

letter

tried to

of physics

at

tempt Einstein into succeeding

Leiden. Einstein turned

it

down

in a

redolent with regret and deep respect.

Relativity

Albert Einstein, born in

and

the Anti-relativists

Ulm, Germany,

in 1879,

had transcended

German background and roots at an early stage to such an extent Gemiany may hardly claim him. As a boy he had attended the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, a highly disciplined, militaristic

his

that

had not appealed to him. His

institution that

him

to leave at

diligence of his classmates and that he

of anything. it

is

now

shown an

teachei:

encouraged

sixteen, claiming that his indolence affected the

He was

a natural outsider

believed that he early love

would never make

a success

and resented regimentation;

may have been

dyslexic.

of music and began to study the

But he had

violin.

When

he began to recognize the underlying mathematical structures, aptitude and passion for music expanded. his lack

that

of practical

were

'too

skills

In later years

his

he wrote of

and 'imagination', emphasizing his

insights

deep for words'.

After a brief spell in Milan, where his businessman father had

attempted to redeem the ailing family fortunes, Albert settled in

Zurich to attend

a

four-year course in mathematics and physics

the Federal Polytechnic School.

He

had

told his father that he

at

had

Physics after the First

decided to renounce

his

Gemian

War

loi

and

citizenship

his

Jewish

faith.

Authors Michael White and John Gribbin comment that the decisions 'were of course part and parcel of his to maintain an isolation

from the world and

avowed

to

intention

be master of

his

January 1896, on payment of three marks, he was

destiny'.^ In

officially relieved

of his German citizenship and remained

until five years later,

on taking up

a

post

stateless

when he acquired Swiss citizenship. In 191 1, the German University in Prague, he was

at

obliged to accept Austro-Hungarian citizenship; but he retained his Swiss papers. '"

Zurich, a city of 1 5 3 ,000 inhabitants

the turn of

at

the century, was a hospitable metropolis for free and revolutionary spirits.

from

The

its

'Athens on the Limmat',

frontiers or

its

schools. In

as it

its

was known, shut no one

crowded cosmopolitan

cafes

could be found the analysts Adler, Carl Gustav Jung and Freud, well

as

Lenin. Excluded, nevertheless, from

as

schoolteacher, Einstein

examiner

as

went

to Bern,

employment

where he had gained

as a

a post

in the Swiss patent office. In 1901 his Serbian lover,

Mileva Marie, gave birth to

a girl

out of wedlock.

The

child

was

adopted and died aged two. In 1903 he and Mileva married, moving into a a

one-bedroom apartment. Continuing his studies, he received

doctorate in physics from the University of Zurich in 1905, and

Marie gave birth to In that ity,

a son,

Hans

Albert.

same year Einstein published

which became an

sub-atomic

his special

essential basis for

particles. In

theory of relativ-

understanding atomic and

many respects it is counterintuitive in terms

of our understanding of space and time. Einstein based the theory

on

the observation that the speed of light

velocity of the source that produces

observer w^ho receives

it.

one another with

a

observers in different unifomily

all

not affected by the

or the velocity of the

This led him to

the laws of physics must be the same in relative to

it,

is

a

basic postulate that

reference frames

moving

constant velocity. Consequently

moving frames

will find that the

moving there is no

passage of time occurs at different rates as seen in different frames. According to Einstein, then, in special relativity

such thing

as

absolute space and time. All observations

of an event, the length of

a

— the timing

piece of string, or the weight of an

102

Hitler's Scientists

object

—

depending on the speed of the observer. At

are relative,

the same time he posited the formula

with energy

E=mc^,

relating mass (m)

(w^hich in classical physics are distinct) with a

(E)

proportionality constant involving the speed of light. Einstein later

generalized this approach in his General

published in 191

motion.

which

5,

He showed

relates gravity

that the presence

Theory of

Relativity,

and accelerated frames of

of mass

alters

the structures

of space and time to produce an apparent force which causes

motion of bodies

accelerated

in space anticipating explanations for

important cosmological phenomena.

Although general

known

at

relativity in

broad outlines came to be

its

an early stage, the theory was not widely publicized until

after the First

War. The event

that

prompted

its

recognition was an

eclipse expedition. Einstein had predicted that light from a star

passing close to the sun

He

also calculated the

auspices

would be apparently bent by

degree of curvature. In 191 9, under the

of Arthur Eddington, the Cambridge

expeditions were

mounted

to Brazil

and

Science:

astrophysicist,

to the Principe Island off

became

the west coast of Africa. As a result Einstein celebrity.

the sun's mass.

a

worldwide

The Times of London ran the headline: 'Revolution in

New

thrown.'^y

Theory of the Universe, Newtonian

H(^(M-Mi
of

^o/ioMft

S0M5

Ideas

Over-

?4Ao<:ki«^\/f^

.

Paul Dirac, the Cambridge mathematical physicist vj^ho achieved

an early hnk between aspects of quantum theory and Einstein's special theory

of relativity, wrote that

after the First

War,

'relativity

came along as a wonderful idea leading to a new domain of thought. Relativity was a subject that It was an escape from the war .

everybody

.

.

himself competent to write about in

felt

a

general

philosophical way.'^^ Einstein himself disowned the notion that his theories

and

were

'revolutionary', preferring the term 'evolutionary'

stressing that his

work was

the result of the foundations laid

down by Newton and James Clerk Maxwell, whose laws of electrodynamics unified

electricity

and magnetism

as a single

measurable

phenomenon. Relativity soon acquired fashionable applications within literature, aesthetics,

economics and philosophy,

far

from

its

original

War

Physics after the First

scientific authenticity. Jose relativity as 'a all

103

Ortega y Gasset, for example, saw

marvellous proof of the harmonious multiplicity of

possible points of view'. ^^

The

reception

In France

it

among

from country

scientists varied

was regarded with suspicion

deem

the United States there was a tendency to

common

sense.

A

to country.

'German' theory; in

as a

professor of physics at Princeton

it

contrary to

condemned

it,

since fundamental physical theories 'must be intelligible to every-

common man

body, to the

as

well

as to

where the mistaken theory of ether still held sway,

Britain,

were slow

to accept

it.

According

explained the presence and

was hypothesized, had

movement of light

to propagate in

waves. Waves,

some medium,

like

it

waves

A wave in a vacuum seemed meaningless.

in water.

Germany, however,

debates.

scientists

wave theory of light, the cosmic medium, supposedly

to the

hypothesis of 'ether', an all-pervasive

In

the trained scholar'.^"* In

And

of physicists

it

was here

relativity

prompted

right-wing in politics

as

science.

The

Johannes

Stark,

lively

that the anti-relativists as

both Nobel

anti-Semitism and the a

a

group

they were conservative in

leading anti-relativist figures, Philipp Lenard and laureates,

fonn

direct connections

the antagonism towards theoretical physics and

more than

and informed

emerged,

decade

quantum

with

physics,

phenomenon of Aryan physics under Hitler They condemned Einstein's theory as

later.

laughable, degenerate and unproven.

Four-dimensional space-

time, curved space and the twin paradox, they declared, lacked physical meaning. Relativity had nothing to insisted; the

politics

do with

science, they

theory was 'ideological' and linked with the internal

of power in German science. Einstein was quick to point

out that the anti-relativist campaign was in

fact

about anti-Semitism.

Philipp Lenard

A striking feature parallel a link

of the

rise

of National Socialism in the 1920s, in

with the growth of the

between German

new

racial purity

between Jewishness and 'bogus'

physics,

was the conviction of

and 'authentic' science;

science.

What

is

a link

remarkable about

104

Hitler's Scientists

the racialization of science in 1920s

Germany was

that

two

its

leading proponents, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, were

ented researchers

tal-

who had made significant contributions to science

long before their ideological notions had taken root. Individual brilliance

and

early personal success in science are evidently

no

guarantee of rational, dispassionate, universalist principles. Personality

and emotions,

scientists

it

seems, are inseparable from the ways in

promote themselves and

scientific milieu, well

breaking discovery,

their science.

The

which

existence of a

funded, independent and ideal for ground-

is

no guarantee

for the shaping of

mature

political consciousness.

Philipp Lenard, with sunken eyes, bushy brows, wild hair and

man of vitriolic and fanatical zeal whose many targets. He suffered for many years from a of the lymph nodes that caused one ear to press down against

an angry beard, was a seething envy had disease

his shoulder. It

son of

a

Bratislava),

Hertz,

was eventually relieved by

wine merchant

in the

radical surgery.

Hungarian

city

Born

of Poszony

he came to Germany, where he worked under Heinrich

who

1888 performed

in

series

a

of experiments which

produced electromagnetic waves (he had a unit of frequency after

him -

the

(later

'the hertz').

named

Lenard subsequently became Hertz's

ant in the University of

Bonn

assist-

before being called to a chair in

physics at the University of Heidelberg. Lenard

won

the

Nobel

work on cathode rays. The 'Lenard window', one of his discoveries, involved a method whereby the beam in the cathode-ray tube could be directed on

prize in 1905, aged forty-three, for his

He

outside targets.

revealed that cathode rays can pass through

atoms, and he explained

where

positive

how much

and negative charges are

Despite his briUiance and success

was

a great hater

anticipating his

Third Reich.

of an atom was empty space

as

separate.

an experimental physicist he

of certain of his peer group

xenophobic and

scientists, his

enmities

racist rage in the early years

of the

He detested Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen, the disoverer

of X-rays, an achievement he thought more properly Lenard had helped Rontgen

his

own.

obtain the highly sensitive tube neces-

sary to generate X-rays, but the older

man

failed, in

Lenard's view.

Physics after the First

to give

him

appropriate credit.

collaborator J.

J.

He

War

105

also loathed his English

former

Thomson. He accused Thomson of exploiting his effect without acknowledgement and

on the photoelectric

research

consequently nourished

deep contempt for English science

a

as a

He denounced Thomson Nobel award acceptance speech.

whole, which he thought to be sloppy. to this effect

when

delivering his

Severely practical, his pecuHar bent meant that he

mathematical expertise and theory.

He

developed

mathematics and mathematical physics

were increasingly

disciplines

tempt for J.

J.

Thomson

love for mathematics.'^

at

a

at

crucial. It has

Cambridge was

By

fell

a

a distaste for

when

point

been

behind in

these

said that his

con-

token of Thomson's

the beginning of the First War, his

hatred of the English had culminated in the conviction that the

were

island race

a collection

whereas the Gennans were

of self-seeking, duplicitous tradesmen, a nation

of heroes. The continent of

Europe, he believed, should impose an intellectual blockade on England. His belief that the English had suffered

was confimied by reading the

tual grace

a fall

racist

from

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Englishman who, seen,

intellec-

meanderings of as

we

have

had ingratiated himself with the Wagner family and adopted

Germany

as his

homeland, endorsing the myth of Teutonic

racial

supremacy.

Lenard had

earlier expressed respect for Einstein,

19 1 3 considered inviting

him

and

as late as

to a chair in theoretical physics at

Heidelberg. But he seems to have revised his attitude towards Einstein in the course of the war, and Einstein began to associate

Lenard with the

many

anti-relativity

campaign

after the war. In 1920, a series

relativity

was delivered

Tagehlatt,^^

showing

that

in

Ger-

of popular lectures attacking

in Berlin. Einstein

that

was building

responded

in the Berliner

he was capable of doughty polemic. 'A

motley group has joined together,' Einstein began,

'to

form

a

company under the pretentious name "Syndicate of German Scientists"

currently with the single purpose of denigrating the theory of

relativity

and

me

as its

author in the eyes of non-physicists.'

of the principal speakers, he noted, to

be

a specialist at all

(is

he

a

a

Mr Weyland,

'does not

doctor? engineer? poHtician?

I

One seem

could

io6

Hitler's Scientists

not find

this out),

in coarse abuse

presented nothing of pertinence.

He

broke out

and base accusations.' In the course of the

article

Einstein claimed that Lenard's objections to relativity 'are already invalidated

on the basis of my general proof that on first approxima-

tion the statements of the general theory of relativity

conform with

those of classical mechanics'.

The

was enough

attack

other factors

may have

fuelled his anger. His only son

in February 1922 as a result

of malnutrition

suflfered

Lenard, moreover, was one of the investors

which became worthless

for bonds, years.

He was

by Jewish

Werner died

during the war.

who exchanged

in the inflationary

gold

Weimar

convinced that he had been swindled of his fortune

politicians.

stration at

undying wrath. But

to inflame Lenard's

Above

he was made the target of a demon-

all

Heidelberg in June 1922,

when he

failed to fly the flag

of his institute at half-mast to honour the death ofWalther Rathenau (a politician, industrialist

irreparable

harm

to

Germany)

in

.

A

band of students demonstrated

were hosed down with water from an

outside the building and

upper

who Lenard believed had caused

and Jew,

storey, doubtless directed

by Lenard; whereupon they broke

and frog-marched Lenard to an auditorium, where they subjected

him

of

to a torrent

disciplined

political invective.

by the university

Lenard was subsequently

honour

for failing to

the official day

of mourning. Thereafter he entered the ranks of

tjie

National

Socialists.

From

this

time Lenard's anti-Semitism became a feature of his

view of science and note to

and

condemn

to insist

on

scientists.

He was

'Jewish physics'

the

first

- namely,

German

scientist

theoretical physics

of

-

experimental physics. In

a return to 'Aryan' or

1922 he charged his colleagues with having betrayed their race,

known

proclaiming that Jews were well

arguments into personal Lenard's Natural

first

conflicts.'^

influential text

Scientists),

their

was

his Grosse Naturforscher {Great

published in 1929,

biographical encyclopedia

marked by

a

pseudo-anthropological

of sixty-five scientific

Aryan-Germanic

parchus of Nicea in the

for twisting objective

first

heredity,

heroes of history,

from the time of Hip-

century bc to Heinrich Hertz,

his

Physics after the First

War

107

erstwhile mentor. Hertz, ironically, was half Jewish, but Lenard

Aryan

entirely ascribes his hero's experimental aptitude to an

mother, and father.

his

unfortunate lapses into theoretical physics to his

The explanation ofjewish talent by reference to the presence

of Aryan blood in their make-up became

Another

rantings.

foible

was

his habit

a familiar

argument

in his

of diverting attribution. For

example, in the case of Einstein's irrefutable equation E=mc^, the relation

of energy to mass, Lenard claimed that the discovery was

owed to

a

little-known Austrian, and purely Aryan physicist, called

Hasenohrl, and that the equation was stolen by Einstein. ^^

The

historian

Alan D. Beyerchen argues that Lenard's career

background

reveals a

upbringing in

a

German borderland, way, and

figures to lead the

human

Nazi

fairly typical for early

his

activists.

romantic yearning for great

his frustrated

need

genuine

to feel

contact and belonging were three of the most

characteristics

'His

common

of converts to the Hitler movement.'^'' Beyerchen

adds that Lenard's envy and frustration over the praise accorded Einstein explains the growth of his anti-Semitism and that his alienation

from the physics community was

major factor

a

in his

resort to extremism.

Nazi Johannes

Stark,

son of

Physicist Johannes Stark a

landowner and native of Bavaria, was

Lenard's partner in the campaign for Aryan physics.

He

enjoyed

a

highly successful early career, discovering in his early thirties the

Doppler

effect in 'canal rays' (a forni

of radiation emitted from the

holes in positive electrodes) and the influence of electric fields spectral lines, the 'Stark effect', for

in 19 1 9. In these early days

invited

him

founded and

which he won

a

on Nobel award

he too was impressed by Einstein and

to write a review article in a science journal edited.

sponded. Stark was one of the

of light quanta in his

he had

For some two years Einstein and Stark correfirst

physicists to

employ the concept

own work and he later wrote a paper describing

an experiment that verified Einstein's light quanta theory. Stark was a prohfic author of scientific papers, but he was

what

io8

the

Hitler's Scientists

Nobel

laureate

James Franck has described

pain in the

as 'a

neck' over intellectual property rights. Franck conceded that Stark

had good

ideas,

and

that

he had them

photo-chemistry would be Einstein, but he had

Before World

a

'early'.

quantum

'He had the idea

Not

process.

as

that

clear as

it.'^°

War

I,

however. Stark had been angered and

humiliated by a clash with Arnold Sommerfeld over a university

appointment.

He

had high hopes of being

which went

ingen,

instead to Peter

called to a chair at Gott-

Debye, one of Sommerfeld's

favourite students. Stark's rationale, following his disappointment,

foreshadowed the

work of a

business

later racist prejudices.

The

fixed appointment

'Jewish and pro-Semitic circle' and

manager [Sommerfeld] '.^^ After the war,

its

was

'enterprising

stern of eye

and

with flourishing walrus moustache, Stark worked in Greifswald, small university town,

where he had become

a

active in nationalist

conservative politics in reaction to the threat of communist revol-

From

ution.

there he

went

to the University

of Wtirzburg, where

he began to involve himself in the politics of physics. In opposition to the generally liberal

German

Physical Society, Stark set up an

alternative reactionary organization called the

German Professional

Community of University

hope of influencing

Physicists, in the

appointments and funding. Thwarted at every stage in to control the physics

and intemperate.

optical properties

When

the thesis of one of as

his proteges,

vitriolic

Ludwig

excessively applied (on the

of porcelain). Stark concluded that he was sur-

rounded by Einstein lovers and resigned to the presidency

ambitions

community. Stark became ever more

was mocked by colleagues

Glaser,

his

his chair.

of the Reichs Physical-Technical

He

had aspired

Institute,

which

would have given him a new and prestigious base in the physics community; but he was passed over and became even more embittered.

came 1921),

to

power

awarded

Stark his

He was

not to get another academic post until Hitler

in 1933.

Then came

Einstein's

Nobel

prize (for

in 1922.

now unleashed his venom against Einstein

book The Contemporary

Crisis in

German

and

Physics.

relativity in

He

stopped

short of outright anti-Semitism, but he characterized the founda-

Physics after the First

War

109

and method of publication

as

anti-German.

Stark charged that Einstein and his followers had

promoted the

tions of the theory

around the world, drawing

'revolutionary' nature of the theory

with

parallels

and

social

political revolution in

Germany

method of self-publicity, according of Germany and German science.

time. Einstein's betrayal

Stark's

book, however, was dismissively reviewed by the

guished physicist for his discovery as historian

Max von

who won

Laue,

a

Nobel

of the diffraction of X-rays by

Mark Walker

has put

less to

distin-

crystals.

This drew,

it,

and ideological attacks against

side, escalating personal attacks

Socialist

a

on one

support of the theory of relativity and opposition to the

racist, political,

and

was

prize in 191

the battle lines for the subsequent struggle over Einstein's science: side, scientific

the

at

to Stark,

on Einstein and

do with science and more and more

its

work which had

his

to

on the other

creator;

less

do with the National

movement. ^^

Laue closed

his review: 'All in

we would

all,

have wished that

book had remained unwritten, in the interest of science in general, of Gemian science in particular, and not least of all in the this

interest

Two a

beer

of the author himself. '^^ years later, six

hall in

Munich

months

in

after Hitler

an attempt to topple the

Lenard and Stark jointly published an Spirit

had led the march from city

government,

article entitled

and Science' in the Grossdeutsche Zeitung for

8

'The Hitler

May

1924.

The

authors compared Hitler with the giants of science, celebrated

Aryan genius and condemned the corrupting influence ofJudaism

down

the ages. Eulogizing the

'spirit

of

total clarity,

of honesty

towards the outer world', the authors linked these virtues in science

with the

spirit

Newton, and

scientists

of the

That same

spirit,

of the great Faraday'.

past: 'Galileo,

Kepler,

they continued, 'we

admire in Hitler, Ludendorff, Pohner, and their comrades consider what living

among

it

means to be privileged to have

us in the flesh'. ^'^

Yet

this

their readers

.

.

.

kind of genius

must not be

deceived: 'the Aryan-Germanic blood, the carrier of this unique

no

Hitler's Scien tis ts

spirit, is

already in rapid decline,' while that 'alien

spirit' flourishes,

the same that 'brought Christ to the cross and Jordanus Brunus to the stake'.

Then came

the rallying cry:

emphasis on protecting that which

we we

have learned to recognize will

as

it

digging

within ourselves

it

—

'We now

place the highest

inherited in our blood, because

the blessing of all mankind.

own

not simply protect our

first start

is

intellectual identity,

we

But will

out again from under the alien-spirited rubble primarily in order to

need lucid minds not only

as scientists

—

segregated according to their occupation

fmd

ourselves again.

We

no, people should not be (a

frequently used Semitic

deception!).'

The phenomenon o{ Deutsche Physik (German Physics) was now Germany in several disparate but converging

revealing itself in influences.

There were those

conservative;

scientists

who were

intellectually

who were opposed to relativity and quantum physics,

since these insights threatened to

undemiine

models of the world. There were those Einstein because they

were convinced

who

that

intuitive,

mechanical

envied and despised

he headed

a disruptive

Jewish conspiracy within the world of physics. Then there were

who despised Einstein's internationalist, World War I, as well as his support of the

conservative nationalists pacifist stand

democratic

during

spirit

of the

Weimar

Republic.

Lenard and Stark embodied all these convictions, ten years before Hitler's accession to

power, thus anticipating in the domain of

physics an enthusiasm for National Socialism and the potential for a

Nazi science.

8.

The quantum

German

Science Survives

revolution, or evolution, as Einstein preferred, w^as

taking place against the background of Germany's recent defeat in

war, poverty and political upheaval and fragmentation. In the

immediate aftermath of the Great into

military civil

economy

crisis, its

War Gemiany had been plunged

close to collapse,

might defeated,

its

alliances in shreds,

its

society vulnerable to revolution

war. Shamed, oppressed by harsh peace terms

its

and

at Versailles,

impoverished, under-funded, Germany's scientific community was in hard straits. In 19 19 the victorious Allied

the International Research Council; but

powers had founded

Gemiany and

Austria, as

countries that had remained neutral during the conflict,

well

as

were

barred.

It

was not

until after the

Locarno Pact

in 1925 that a

more benign spirit prevailed between the former belligerents and Germany was accepted into the council. But when the official invitation came,

it

was turned

down by

the

German and

Austrian

scientists themselves.

German

scientists,

moreover, were boycotted by many of their

foreign peer group, their applications for visiting professorships rejected, their access to foreign-based symposia denied. 1

German

91 9 and 1928

national

science

scientists

conferences.

Out of some 275

on atoms and

—

inter-

international

meetings between 19 19 and 1926, 165 were without representation

Between

were banned from many

German

notably, the Solvay Congresses of 192 1 and 1922

electrons,

and

electrical conductivity

quality of these meetings understandably suffered

of metals. The

from the absence

of the Germans. Einstein did not approve of such bans. invited, alone, to the next Solvay

Gemian, he refused colleagues. 'If

I

as a

meeting

When as

he was

an honorary non-

gesture of solidarity with his

took part in the Congress

I

finally

German

would by implication

112

Hitler's Scientists

become an accomplice be distressingly

to

to an action

which

and

Einstein, despite the enmities of Lenard

A

were those

who

German embassy

to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin in

a

man

is

known

out of Germany;

far

and wide.

we

in

Germany.

London wrote

September 1920: 'Professor

Einstein counts as a cultural factor of the

name

had become

feared he might be lost to

diplomat attached to the

since his

Stark,

during these troubled times, and

a celebrated international figure

there

consider most strongly

I

unjust.'*

first

We

rank for Germany,

should not drive such

could use him for effective Kultur

propaganda.'^

The a

anxiety over Einstein revealed the importance of science in

country in which most features of national pride had collapsed.

'There

is

one thing which no foreign or domestic enemy has yet

Max Planck told the

Academy of Sciences in November 191 8, 'that is the position which German science occupies in the world. '^ Science deserved the support of the German people, Planck argued, not only because it would lead to economic

taken from

us,'

Prussian

was Germany's chief cultural resource. Despite the privations and upheavals during the 1920s, pubhc understanding of science was given a boost in Germany by the

recovery, but because

construction of a Jena.'^

it

new planetarium by

the Zeiss lens corporation in

Enthusiasm for popular astronomy had been generated by

media coverage of

a

new

theory of origins of the universe in a

primal explosion, a notion prompted by the theories of Einstein (although he himself was sceptical about the idea), and the American

astronomer Edwin Hubble's observations of receding Despite economic

crises,

the planetaria prospered through public

support and newspaper sponsorship. Zeiss planetarium

Bauersfeld,

was

earlier

hollow sphere, opting instead for

which served

on

design of the

modern

a

models of

a large

rotatable

collection of projectors creating

to a stationary hemispherical

dome

Guided by electronic motors, the projecillustrating the motion of the heavenly bodies

as a screen.

tors created patterns

in

stars

The

conceived in 19 19 by Walther

originally

who abandoned

luminous images of the

galaxies.

conformity with nature, although vastly speeded up, of course.

German

The

first

Science Survives

planetarium was completed by

engineers and mechanics by

March 1923

October the model was transported

Munich, where

it

at

113

team of

a

the Zeiss factory.

to the Deutsches

(which survived the war). The design of the

from

first

By

Museum

was viewed by thousands of people.

replaced by a larger, second-generation planetarium in

for a perspective

scientists,

at

was

It

May

1925

planetaria provided

a single geographical latitude.

The model

continued in development through the 1920s, until the astronomer

Walter Villiger designed an instrument that could demonstrate the

Between 1923 and 1930 no less than seventeen state-of-the-art planetaria were built in major cities of Germany, including Munich, Jena, Diisseldorf, Berlin, Mannheim and Nuremberg. (Seven of them were destroyed during the war.) Strangely, in view of Hitler's stated enthusiasm for astronomy, none were built during the period of the Third Reich, motions for any desired geographical

latitude.

although the Zeiss corporation continued to take orders for planetaria overseas, five of them in the

Physics and

By

the mid- 1920s physicists

United

States.

Weimar

were beginning

to collaborate

once

again with their overseas colleagues. Science funding, hard to

come

by

in

Germany and

Austria

up

to 1923,

now began

to benefit

from

new system which eked out scarce resources with additional money from industry and some notable sources abroad. A new agency was established in Weimar Germany called Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Society for German Science). The Notgemeinschaft represented the Kaiser Wilhelm a

Society and

its

institutes, the universities

and the academies of science. institutions Its

funds

It

and technical

provided

money

universities

not only for

but for research programmes and individual

came from the Reich government

attracted funding

from General

dation in America.

German

Electric

scientists.

in Berlin, but

it

also

and the Rockefeller Foun-

industry tended to support the rival

Helmholtz Society and applied

scientific projects.

In the tense post-war period the physics

community

in

Germany

114

Hitler's Scientists

was fragmented in

its

politically

detestation

and

of the

but generally united

intellectually,

Weimar

The

Republic.

ultra-right,

represented by the fascist-minded Lenard and Stark, were,

as

we

have seen, antagonistic towards theoretical physics. Yet there were brilliant right-wingers, like Pascual Jordan, also destined to

become

who were making major contributions

to quantum theory. rump of generally conservative physicists, like all scientists in Germany politically constrained by their traditional role as civil servants, who were against the Weimar government, under which they had lost prestige and taken pay cuts. Even a Nazi,

There was,

besides, a

civilized physicists, like

against it,

Weimar and

Planck and Sommerfeld, tended to be

the fragmentation

it

represented, as they saw

of culture and good order. Anti-Semitism was

conservatives, although this scientific

communities

was no

different

from

rife

among

the

attitudes within

in other countries, including the

United

States.

A

token of the anti-Semitism that reigned in many universities

and research

institutions

Willstatter, the

during the 1920s

is

the story of Richard

1920 for plant pigments, and chlorophyll in the

war

who was

Willstatter,

in the

Jewish, invented

Munich.

King of Bavaria, Ludwig

appointment

as

He II,

reports in his

came

triple-layered

close friend of

I

memoirs

to sign the

sign in a

found Munich so intensely anti-Semitic

Jew that

that

when

document of his

murmured

professor, his majesty

present: 'That's the last time

in 1924. His

a

A

During

pre-war and wartime days, Willstatter was appointed

in 19 1 6 to a chair at

the

the prize in

particular).

gas-mask, for which he earned an iron cross.

Haber

won

chemist and Nobel laureate (he

to a minister

for you.'^ Willstatter

he resigned

main grievance was discrimination

his post

against Jews being

considered for appointments and promotion, unless they were outstandingly brilliant.^ But there were other menaces. Willstatter

wrote that Munich had never setded

and

that large

down

after the Hitler-putsch

numbers of patriotic youths were driven

to despair

because of inflation, the injustice of the Versailles Treaty and the hatred of France towards Germany. the wall

when Nazi

posters

He

literally

saw the writing on

went up around the

city

with the

German

Science Survives

'No Gemian youth may

slogan:

in future

sit at

115

the feet of a Jewish

teacher.''

Quantum Mechanics

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr, one of the youngest of the early quantum physicists of the pre-First War era, was responsible for taking quantum theory forward in the 1920s, beyond the original ideas of Planck

and Einstein. His love of scientific collaboration,

and his hopes for an international community of physicists operating as

an ideal society, stands in contrast to the enmities and conflicts

dominated by Stark and Lenard. His

that reigned in the milieu

relationship with

was

Werner Heisenberg, one of his German

to lead to a historic

proteges,

meeting in the depths of the war in occupied

Denmark. Bohr,

a fleshy

who knew him

man

with

by the

there almost like an idiot

down'. Then suddenly

'Now

I

many

The

recol-

.

physicist .

.

face

James Franck

is

typical:

empty, limbs were hanging

'glow went up in him' and he would

a

say:

know.'^ Bohr's biographer Abraham Pais attempted to

explain Bohr's foibles

as a

matter of 'deep thought

remembered how one day Bohr was then

said:

said,

'But

'And .

.

.',

.

.

.

and

.

.

.',

simply forgot to say

it

as

he spoke'.

He

finishing part of an argument,

then was

silent for a

and continued. Between the

moment, then

'and'

and the

mind out loud and went on somewhere

Pais relates, 'the next point

down

head, was described by

eccentric in speech and mannerisms.

as

lection of his appearance 'sitting

a large

had gone through

his

'but',

... he

further

the road'.''

Born in 1885, the son of a professor of physiology in Copenhagen, Bohr had been working in the first decade of the century on a model of the atom originally suggested by Ernest Rutherford at his

Manchester laboratory

atoms to be

in

England. Rutherford understood

much smaller than previously envisaged. He discovered

preponderance of an atom (99.9 per cent of its weight) is in the central nucleus, while the rest is space patrolled by electrons, that the

like planets orbiting a sun.

The problem with Rutherford's model

ii6

was

Hitler's Scientists

that

one of

did not account for the stabiHty of the atom,

it

most important

its

features. Niels

Bohr appHed

which

is

Planck's

quantum hypothesis to the hydrogen atom, the lightest of all atoms, which contains only one electron. According to this model, electrons remained in their orbits because their angular

momentum

came in discrete units: in other words, they were 'quantized'. Bohr won the Nobel prize for physics in 1922 for his work on the atom.

But

model only raised more questions. Otto Frisch, who was part in the quantum revolution as a young physicist in

his

to take

Germany

in the 1920s, puts

Why should the the nucleus, as a set

Bohr claimed? Was

of concentric

its

this

way:

electron be confined to specified circular orbits around

rails

the hydrogen nucleus surrounded by

on which the electron had

did the electron manage,

push

it

on jumping from

surplus energy out as light

to travel?

And how

a bigger to a smaller circle, to

quantum?

All this

was

totally alien to

traditional physics.'"

The questions were even more vexing when it came to predicting

Do

the structures.

two

other around the same

do they go

atom of helium follow each with the nucleus between them? Or

electrons in an circle,

in concentric circles?

avoiding collisions?

What were

Or

somehow The answers

intersecting circles^

the underlying laws?

to some of these questions were provided in the early 1920s by Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, and by Wolfgang PauH from

Vienna. Sommerfeld had including

1924

elliptical

classified possible

orbits

of electrons

orbits of electrons, while Pauh formulated in

whereby more than one electron the same quantum state. Pauh won the Nobel award

his 'exclusion principle',

cannot

exist in

for his discovery.

Given the problems of

direct observation at the level

of the

sub-atomic, quantum mechanics was increasingly about what hap-

pens

when atoms

magnetic and

are subjected to specific influences

electric fields.

-

hght, heat,

The new physics would be driven both

by experiment and by sophisticated mathematical models, the

stuff

German

Science Suruives

117

of the theoretical work of Werner Heisenberg, the head of the

Nazi atomic programme Heisenberg

first

come.

in years to

when he accom-

joined the quantum physicists

panied Sommerfeld

'Bohr

at a

Festival' in

1922

at

Gottingen, where

the celebrated Danish physicist was giving a series of lectures

quantum mechanics. Heisenberg found 'Gottingen,

summer weather

.

.

resplendent with gardens and flowers, and

.

the excitement of the students

He

who

enjoyed the experience to the

filled

'often

on an empty stomach,

full

.

.

.

most of the auditorium'.

despite the fact that

was normal

as

on

in gorgeous

it

was

in those days for a

student in the fourth semester'.

Heisenberg stands out among leagues as a stereotypical

German

to dressing in Lederhosen.

He was

which emerged

from the

in 191 9

endbewegung) founded patriotism and outdoor hills

stilted

youth: blond, blue-eyed, given

member of the 'Pathfinders', German Youth Movement (Juga

in 191 3, an organization that

The

life.

and mountains and

cosmopolitan physicist col-

his

sit

around campfires. They sought to oust

old-world manners and charm with 'inner truthfulness'.

They took an

oath which proclaimed:

'We want

advice and practical assistance whenever there a

good and just

although

it

was

a love

a

to

be ready with

chance of helping ^

of music with many of his colleagues,

said that his playing

without emotion. The son of

had been taught by

is

We want to follow our leaders.'^

cause.

Heisenberg shared

was technically correct but

a professor

Max Born

of Greek, Heisenberg

Gottingen, one of the great

at

mathematical centres of the world. first

promoted

Pathfinders hked to trek in the

It

was

Max

Born, in

who

fact,

coined the term 'quantum mechanics' {Quantenmechanik) in

1924.

By

1

92 1 Born had become director of the Institute for

Theoretical Physics

by Niels Bohr, he had

The time

is

Gottingen; the following year, after a

at

called for

perhaps past

when

new

rigour in the discipHne:

the imagination of the investigator was

given free rein to devise atomic molecular models

now in

a position to

means complete

at will.

Rather,

construct models with a certain, although

certainty,

visit

we

still

through the application of quantum

are

by no

rules.

'^

Hitler's Scientists

1 1

The following year he took on Heisenberg as his assistant and the triangle of quantum research and discovery began. In a memoir of those early beginnings, Werner Heisenberg recollected the three intellectual aspects of the

Munich with

'Sommerfeld's school in

new

discipline:

the phenomenological

approach, the Gottingen centre with the mathematical, and the

Copenhagen group with

the philosophical tendency, though the

transitions are naturally fluid'.

The

^^

sense of impermanence, of excitement, of scientists running

new idea after each revelatory seminar or symposium, gave the new physics the semblance of a mad hatter's tea party. Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich told his students that before they off with a

entered into the house of physics they should take note of the

warning sign outside: 'Caution! Dangerous closed for complete reconstruction!

By

the

structure!

summer of 1925 Heisenberg, while

attack of asthma

on the

Temporarily

'^"^

recuperating from an

of Heligoland, produced 'matrix

island

mechanics', which proposed a formula relating different states

of electrons.

however, principle'.

that

It

was under the

Heisenberg

later

aegis

quantum

of Bohr in Copenhagen,

formulated his famous 'uncertainty

The nub of the principle

is

that the velocity

and position

of a fundamental particle cannot both simultaneously be determined with precision. The 'uncertainty principle' was published senberg's paper

and Mechanics'

'On

in

Hei-

the Intuitive Content of Quantum Kinematics

in 1927.

Meanwhile Erwin Shrodinger, an Austrian-born mathematician and

physicist

with an aptitude for philosophy, demonstrated

a

mathematically equivalent equation, which he called 'wave mech-

The implications of Heisenberg's and Shrodinger's equations stated, and what had now become widely established, that particles - less than one-billionth of an inch - are not easily visualizable and that measuring their properties anics'.

confirmed what Born had already

went beyond the Hmits of intuition and perception. Otto

Frisch,

breaking the caveats of the physicists, nevertheless hazarded an image, following Born's visualization of the

'Here was

a

new model

new atomic model:

for the atom,' he wrote, 'though not so

German

Science Survives

now

easy to visualize; the electron

looked more

cloud than an orbiting

Httle planet.

But

think in models

the best one

we

By 1927

it is still

119

can

Cambridge mathematical

the

brought Schrodinger's equation into

line

like a pulsating

who

for people

like to

offer.'

physicist

Paul Dirac

with Heisenberg's matrix

mechanics, then in a stunning intellectual leap created a quantum

mechanical theory, in line with special

relativity, that

described the

behaviour of the electron. Dirac, an angular young man, once described

as 'shy as a gazelle,

nevertheless stole the Brussels (1927),

show

and modest

at

Victorian maid',

as a

the Fifth Solvay Conference in

which was devoted

to the

new physics.

His contri-

butions stretched the brilliant audience to such an extent that

Shrodinger said to Bohr: 'He has no idea for the bility

of the

new

physics even to

its

difficult his

late

moving

at

worked well

1920s,

of slow-moving electrons,

describing electrons

or near the speed

bounces off an object. Dirac employed Einstein's theory of

describe, elegantly electrons, in

Meanwhile

Then he went on

what came

Max Born

to

be

known

had ventured

as

the 'Dirac equation'.

that the 'waves' in

An

have a

a

specific location;

an electron orbiting

a 'certain probabiHty', as

electron did not

hydrogen nucleus

it,

'of being

here and a certain probability of being found there'.

German

dissatisfaction

physics was once a

more

found

^^

Physics Before the Storm

the late 1920s, despite the manifest

and general

quantum

John Polkinghorne, physicist and

popular expositor of quantum mechanics, puts

day,

to

and profoundly, the behaviour of the motion of

mechanics were probability amplitude waves.

By

for

down when of light, or when

broke

it

special relativity to solve these problems.

had

papers are

practitioners.

While quantum theory, by the descriptions

light

how

normal human being.' The comment evinces the inaccessi-

economic problems of the

with the Weimar Republic, German

taking a major role in the world. There was

period of uneasy calm before the onslaught of Nazism.

One

has

an impression of open-ended seminars, of heated arguments on

120

Hitler's Scientists

long country walks; and always music: concert music, and music

making

in the

home.

Max

There was

who

Born,

'kept

somewhat aloof from

his

students and had a rather formal approach to physics'. Victor

Weisskopf complains and was

reclusive,

Born,

that

who

had

earlier suffered a stroke,

tended to express everything in complex math-

ematical terms. His presence in the opinion of many was awesome.

Weisskopf once went in science

would

to see

isolate

him from

told him: 'Stay in physics. is

involved with

human

Born

to express his

concern that

the concerns of humanity.

a life

Born

You will see how deeply the new physics affairs.

'^^

Naturally

Born could not have

foreseen at this point the eventual development of the atomic

bomb.

A

leading professor in experimental physics was James Franck,

who

had worked with Haber and Hahn on poison gas during the

war. Franck surrounded himself with students and lively

He

had an

intuitive understanding

predict with great accuracy the result

of a calculation even

outcome of an experiment or

when he was

The

the

not acquainted with the

mathematical methods. His students said that he 'had to God'.^^

assistants.

of science, and seemed able to

a direct

wire

leading mathematician was Richard Courant,

who

introduced to Gottingen the 'mathematical practicum', involving study groups of

two or

three students

who worked

together on

assigned problems. Courant, according to Weisskopf, invited his students

Also

home

at

Hilbert was a his students a

to play

and

listen to

music.

Gottingen was the mathematical legend David Hilbert.

man

of severe logic and occasional oddity.

committed suicide,

at

of

ostensibly because he failed to solve

mathematical problem. Hilbert was asked to

before the student's relatives

One

talk at his funeral, so

the graveside he explained that the

maths problem that had defeated the unfortunate youth and caused his

death was in fact

simply looked

at

it

The student, he told them, had wrong premise. When he lectured,

fairly simple.

from the

Hilbert's assistant would write

on the blackboard for him.

Frustrated

with unsatisfactory comments in the classroom he u^ould mutter, 'Crazy, crazy, crazy.'

German

In Berlin during this period lived and

of the leading

121

Science Suivives

worked

woman physicists in Germany.

crucial figure in the discovery

into a Jewish legal family in

of atomic

Vienna

Lise Meitner,

fission in

in 1878,

one

She was to become

a

Germany. Born

Meitner had struggled

to gain a scientific education through private tuition, since school-

ing in Austria for

girls

ended

at

been Ludwig Boltzmann,

the University of Vienna had

the concept of entropy and formulated the

energy

Her mentor

the age of fourteen.

statistical

who refined

description of

states.

Meitner began her research under Boltzmann on alpha of the types of radiation (along with beta and

by radium. Alpha

rays,

it

9,000 miles per second (about

Hahn, and formed the Kaiser

5

mode of address:

It

at

Hahn

he the chemist, she the physinever walking

era:

took them sixteen years to drop

Fraulein and Herr.

circumstances of her research were eloquent testimony to

the difficulties confronting science in

woman working set

women who

had decided on

Gemiany. Hahn and Meitner applied

director of the institute, for

her to

at

where she met Otto

Chemistry. Meitner and

perfectly:

out together, or eating together.

a

to Berlin,

Their relations were always proper for the

The

one

emitted

with him to study radioactivity

Institute for

complemented each other

the formal

rays,

rays)

per cent of the velocity of light).

moved

a partnership

Wilhelm

gamma

was known, shot out of radium atoms

After Boltzmann's death, she

cist.

in

bench

to

Emil

Fischer,

would not hear of

within his laboratory. Eventually he permitted

up her experiments

so long as she

space; but he

a life in

in a

maintenance area in the basement

was not seen elsewhere

obliged to use the toilet

facilities

in the building.

of a neighbouring

She was

cafe.

Berlin

Otto

Frisch, Meitner's

alities

and the milieu

nephew, describes in his memoir the personin Berlin during the 1920s: the

discovery, the routines of research, the easy association

between

many of them Jewish, some of them world famous at the others to become so.^^ Aged just twenty, Frisch came to

scientists,

time,

drama of

122

Hitler's Scientists

work

Berlin to

as a

researcher in the optics division of the

PTR

(Physikahsch-Technische Reischsanstalt), similar to the National Physical Laboratory in Britain, or the Bureau of Standards in

the United States. Meitner helped Frisch find digs in Dahlem, close to her institute but a long bus ride

away from

his laboratories.

She soon introduced him to Otto Hahn, who, according to liked

by whistling

people

tease

to

a

Beethoven's violin concerto, then asking: Frisch

was working on

a

new

jazzed-up 'Is

that

Frisch,

of

version

how

it

goes?'

unit of brightness to replace the

power measurement then in universal use. The PTR was involved at that time in work on atomic spectroscopy. 'I stayed long hours,' comments Frisch, 'trying out half-baked ideas of my Most of my ideas didn't work, but that's how one learns.' own Scientists would meet in the lab canteen, but Frisch regretted that a dozen women known as the 'fever girls', whose job it was to calibrate thousands of clinical thermometers, never came in to eat. Like Otto Hahn, it seems, young Frisch was in the habit of candle

.

.

.

whistling.

He

Concertos

as

liked to give a rendering of Bach's

he walked

down

Brandenburg

a corridor in the vicinity

of Walther

Bothe's lab (another future Nobel laureate working on radioactivity).

Bothe would consequently get

count alpha

being the days before

particles, this

sent out a message ordering the for

distracted while trying to

young

calculators, so

he

whistler to desist once and

all.

Frisch's

mother was

a

concert performer and had taught

him

piano from the age of five. In Berlin, he wrote, he played the piano

more panache than skill' and loved to show off with Chopin scherzos. Lise Meitner would play duets with him, especially a 'with

reduction of Beethoven's septet. Together they went to concerts;

accompanied by and

much

his aunt,

classical

he

first

heard the symphonies of Brahms

chamber music.

Every week there was

a

colloquium

at

the university.

The

front

bench was occupied mainly by Nobel prize winners. Max Planck was invariably in attendance, as were Haber, Einstein and Walther Nernst. Frisch describes seventies,

would

how

Nernst, a short

man now

often get to his feet after a lecture,

in his

waving

his

German

Science Survives

hands around and crying out, 'But that

is

123

just

what

I

said forty

years ago!'

Pranks and lugubrious practical jokes sometimes punctuated the routine of research Frisch recounts tory.

at

how

the Kaiser

Wilhelm

Institute for

Gustav Hertz came to

Chemistry.

aunt's labora-

Hertz refused the cup of tea that had been offered and asked

something stronger, instructing a student

for

visit his

of pure alcohol from the laboratory

shelf.

to fetch

down a bottle

Meitner was appalled and

attempted to remonstrate with him, but he insisted on drinking

whole

glass

of the

any apparent

stuff without

out that he had got the student to

fill

Then

effect.

it

a

turned

the bottle with water

beforehand.

Work, however, was his

I

working

regularly

nap

came home, had dinner

after dinner,

a reading

everything. Frisch gives us an insight into

habits.

and then

I

lamp and worked

sat

until

began to have hallucinations ... the

at seven,

down

had

a

quarter of an hour's

happily with a sheet of paper and

about one o'clock I

began

background of my room, and then

I

to see

at

night

—

until

I

queer animals against

thought, 'Oh, well, better go

to bed.'

Frisch

such

comments

him an

that this

was

for

—

this

concentrated five hours

a pleasant life,

ever

ideal

life: 'I'd

never had

work every

night.'^'^

One

day Meitner introduced Frisch to Einstein

through the entrance pile

of books from

hall

my

of the university.

right

arm

to

my

they walked

hastily transferred a

'I

left

as

and dragged off

my

glove while Einstein patiently waited with his hand held out, typically informal,

seemingly quite relaxed.' Frisch adds a comment,

indicating that despite the everyday calm of the period, there

were dangerous undercurrents threatening to disrupt this contented science

community.

his theories,

he was

'Idolized also

who

did not understand

under vicious attack from some of

colleagues, for precisely the

anti-Semitic flavour. '^^

by millions

his

same reason, and with an increasingly

PART THREE

Nazi Enthusiasm, Compliance and Oppression 1933— 1939

The

g.

When Jewish

scientists

Dismissals

were dismissed en masse from

their jobs in

the spring of 1933, following the rise of Hitler, their jobs

were

promptly taken by their non-Jewish junior colleagues. This so puzzled British

scientist

George Barger, professor of chemistry

at

the University of Edinburgh, that he wrote to Karl Freudenberg, a

well-known non-Jewish professor of organic chemistry berg, asking

how

scientists in

Germany could

collaborate with the

purge by taking these jobs. Freudenberg replied

There

are orders

conviction that

a

which you simply have cure of the

to

as follows:

comply with.

It is

body of the German people was

something which probably only very few

Heidel-

at

will deny.

The way

my

firm

necessary, it

has

been

carried out cannot be subject to lengthy considerations in this country,

simply because there are orders, and

viewpoint of the individual

The Hitler's a

does not matter

dismissal ofJewish researchers

constituted one of the

of

it

Germany,

dangerous

science and

without

its

first state

as if to purify

virus. In

what the

and teachers from

their posts

applications of racial hygiene in

the

body of science and technology

terms of the everyday social practice of

bonds of mutual

protest,

at all,

is.'

respect, acceptance

of the dismissals

and readiness to benefit from the departures,

revealed a profound moral lapse within Germany's communities of science.

Hitler had

along with

been sworn

in as Chancellor

on 30 January 1933,

Hermann Goering, who doubled as Minister of Aviation

and Prussian Minister of the

Interior.

Goering

now

controlled the

police in Prussia and had wide-ranging powers of coercion to purge

The new Minister of Defence was General Werner von Blomberg, a Nazi sympathizer who had become the party's opponents.

128

Hitler's Scientists

by

captivated

Hitler's charisma. Alfred

the ultra-conservative

Hugenberg, the leader of

German National

People's Party, took the

dual role of Minister of Economics and Minister of Agriculture. Hitler,

however,

w2ls

not to be tamed into any kind of power-

sharing. Immediately he called

about using

new

elections for 5

his chancellorship to control the

March, and

opposition democratic parties and to launch attacks sociahsts.

In the

March

election Hitler

set

media, to oppress the

still

on Jews and an

failed to obtain

absolute majority for the National Sociahsts. But with temporary allies in

the form of Hugenberg's right-wing nationalists, he scraped

together a majority of 52 per cent, securing 340 out of 647 seats in the Reichstag. In a turnout of 88.7 per cent, the Nazis obtained

more than

17 million votes.

The

socialists

dropped

to 18.3 per

cent of the vote, and the Centre Party, which had conducted a

courageous campaign in the face of widespread Nazi intimidation,

remained impressively

solid at 13.9 per cent.

newly constituted Reichstag was celebrated

Old Garrison Church

in

The opening of the on 21 March in the

Potsdam, the burial place of Frederick

the Great, in the presence of Hitler and Hindenburg.

spoke moderately to the nation on the radio,

his

Even

as

Hitler

brownshirts were

rounding up the 'enemies' of the regime and transporting them to

Dachau and Oranienburg. Within two days parliamentary democracy came to an end as Hitler won a majority in the Kroll Opera House (the Reichstag being in ruins after an concentration camps

at

arson attack, probably perpetrated by the Nazis themselves) in

favour of the a cloak

Enabhng Act

that gave

him

dictatorial

powers under

of spurious legahty.

week of March thirty brownshirts broke into Jewish homes in a small town in south-west Germany, herded the occupants into the town hall and beat them up. The attack was repeated In the

last

in a neighbouring

week

later,

on

i

town, resulting in the deaths of two men.

April, the Nazis

A

launched the Judenboykott, the

boycott ofJewish businesses across the entire country.

An early indication of the reshaping of academic, scientific life in

Germany was

intellectual

and

the closure of pubhshing houses, or

their Nazification, and the estabHshment of the Reich Chamber of

Tfie Dismissals

izg

Culture in pursuit of Gleichschaltung. Bernhard Rust, aged

fifty,

was

appointed Prussian Minister for Culture in February 1933. His responsibilities included science

and education.

He

declared his

aims:

Everybody must recognize

that

what we

of direction but the fundamental

up

to itself This

movement

whole German people will

have created for itself its

and culture as

will

.

.

Our

.

the only valid

one

is

are experiencing

fact that the

not

is

German people

a

change

waking

is

progressing relentlessly until one day the

have been

won

over to the

new

cause and

own organizations for politics, the economy, means that the new German ideology

Gleichschaltung will

assume the supreme position over

all

the others.^

Rust had since 1930 been an unemployed provincial schoolmaster, relieved of his duties that year by the local authority in

Hanover abusing

for suspected

a schoolgirl.

mental

In the First

instability;

he had been accused of

War he had received a head wound

(and a subsequent Iron Cross), which, in the view of some, was associated with his mental

and behavioural

tion did not affect his political career.

difficulties.

The following

The

accusa-

year he was

elected to the Reichstag, and rose rapidly through the

SA

to the

rank of Obergruppenfiihrer. His early boast was to have succeeded overnight in 'liquidating the school

as

an institution of intellectual

acrobatics'.^

The following

for Science,

Education and Popular Culture.

Thomas Mann, 3

year he was appointed Reich Minister

already a reluctant emigre, noted in his diary for

April 1933 that Germany,

which

now

'lacked any sense of

had 'relapsed into darkest barbarism'; he would 'never sooner die than

come

to terms

with

it'."*

prepared to walk in step was Albert Einstein,

who

tolerance,

had vanished

in

Germany, and

of 'a raw and rabid his

the

and equality of all

mob

of Nazi

that justice militia'.^

but

was not

had declared

before leaving the country for the United States on 10 'civil liberty,

yield,

who

Another

evil',

March

that

citizens before the law'

was

now

in the

power

On 28 March he resigned

membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, pre-empting decision of Bernhard Rust to

expel him.

The academy

Hitler's Scientists

130

Max von

members, including

move

explicit:

no

Laue and

Max

to protest Einstein's expulsion. Einstein

'The conduct of German

intellectuals

made no made his feelings - as a group — was Planck,

better than the rabble.'^

At the end of the the

Law for the

first

week of April

1933 the

new regime passed

Restoration of the Career Civil Service (Gesetz zur

Wiederherstellung des Berufbeamtentums), throwing

of their civil service jobs.

non-Aryans out

socialists

and

A non-Aryan was defined

someone who had one parent or grandparent who was nonAryan - so as to include even those with 'a quarter' Jewish blood. as

Since academics and

were

them

members of

about

civil servants,

a

At Jews

first,

who

many of

including 313 professors, were dismissed. Hitler

scientists,

German

institutes

thousand university teachers,

refused to be deterred by the evident to

Wilhelm

the Kaiser

He was

science.

applications for

damage

would be done

adamant.

exemption were allowed

had been employed before

fought in the war, or

that

lost a father

World War

in the case

I,

or son in the war.

or

who

The

of

had

situation

of those entitled to apply was invidious. Nobel prize winner James Franck, a First

who

War

veteran (one of Haber's poison gas pioneers)

headed the Second Physics

was

that to apply

in the further.

war I

of resignation^

and enemies of the Fatherland

.

.

.

'are

refuse to

make

propaganda by

use of this privilege.'^

denounced him

Some

for stirring

being

Whoever was

supposed to receive permission to serve the

is

Franck's colleagues

Max

his letter

decided

'We Germans of

to collude with the regime:

Jewish descent,' he wrote in treated as aUens

Institute in Gottingen,

state

forty-two of

up anti-German

his resignation.

Born, director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in

Gottingen, also refused to apply. Einstein wrote to him in May:

'You know,

think, that

I

I

opinion of the Germans

must confess as

have never had

favourable

(morally and poHtically speaking).

that the degree

something of a surprise

a particularly

But

I

of their brutality and cowardice came

to me.'*^

The young biochemist Hans Krebs (who was

to

win the Nobel

prize for physiology or medicine in 1952 for his discovery of the

The Dismissals

was

acid cycle)

citric

hospital in Freiburg.

at that

131

time working in the laboratories of a

He has written an impression of the immediate

impact of the anti-Semitic campaign: 'Within

a

few days of

assumption of power, Nazi uniforms appeared everywhere.

Hitler's

Colleagues in the hospital

who

had admitted

at

most only mild

sympathies with Hitler were suddenly to be seen in the uniforms

of Nazi organizations."' Krebs writes that four months

earlier the

of surgery E. Rehn, had signed

dean of the

faculty, the professor

letter which

had warmly recommended his appointment as a teacher

in the

Medical Faculty.

same Rehn,

officially

On

12 April he received a letter

informing him that

from

a

this

the request of the

at

Minister of Education he was to consider himself on immediate leave of absence: 'By order of the Office of the

Academic Rector

hereby inform you, with reference to the Ministerial Order

No. 7642,

The

you have been placed on

that

'demonstrates the

—

threats

discredited

A

leave until further notice.'

between the two documents, Krebs comments,

difference

pressure

I

breakdown of social tenets under ruthless political of being deprived of one's

livelihooci,

of being

by public defamation, of being thrown into

jail

or

concentration camp, or of being murdered'.^"

Meanwhile German schools were

also

being brought within the

ambit of National Socialism and made subject to nation.

On 25

trumpeting

its

Universities,

April 1933, the Nazi

racial discrimi-

government passed with much

Law Against Overcrowding of German

aimed

a

Schools and

reducing the number of places available for

Jewish students. The act

laid

down

school and college enrolments)

a strict

deemed

quota

(1.5

per cent of

appropriate for the size of

the non-Aryan or Jewish population at large.

Textbooks were rewritten and new curricula devised National Socialist ideology with an emphasis on

to inculcate

racial doctrines.

Teachers were required to join the National Socialist Teachers' League, and

as

members of

the civil service were subject to the

anti-Semitic provisions of the Restoration of the Civil Service Act.

Teachers

critical

were required

of the party were dismissed; those

who

remained

Was it of independence and work

to be trained in National Socialist principles.

possible for a teacher to retain a sense

132

Hitler's Scientists

Was

against the system?

remain within

right for teachers to

it

such a system? There were teachers,

as

there

were

who

scientists,

agonized over the predicament.

A

geography teacher, writing in 1938, commented on the

cumstances of the profession, rationale proffered

by

his reflections

am

connecting with the

others, including distinguished scientists like

Werner Heisenberg, who chose

I

to stay rather than leave

trying through the teaching of geography to

hope

power to

give the boys

when,

they grow older, the Nazi fever dies

as

possible to offer

America and

knowledge and

others to

do

honest people those in prison

Before Hitler's

later on,

it,

would

cells?'

in

my

judgment, so that

down and it again becomes ... if

I

went

to

that be honest, or are the only

'^

power schools had come under the auspices provincial states). Now they came under the

rise to

of the Lander (the

auspices of Berhard Rust's

assumed responsibility universities,

I

Germany.

do everything

some opposition they may be prepared

left

cir-

Reich Ministry. His

for appointing rectors

once the prerogative of local

had

also

and deans of the

faculties.

to appointing the leaders of students' unions

office

Rust even took

who would

act as

watchdogs over academics.

Book-burning

On

10

May the

night sky over Berlin

lit

up

as

students and teachers

took part in the burning of books in the square before the Opera.

The

hst

Kaflca,

The

of banned books ran to some 10,000

Marx, Heine, the brothers

act

Mann

titles

and included

and, of course, Einstein.

was organized by the Deutscher Studentenbund (German

Students' League) with the

full

support of Goebbels and Rosenberg.

The watching crowds cheered holocaust of the books was

other university towns. parallel, a

as

the flames rose higher. This

repeated across

And

as if to

Germany

that

month

in

emphasize the quasi-reHgious

Nazi commentator described the cultural task ahead:

Dism issals

77?^

To

operate within the cultural professions separating the tares from the

wheat, and to decide between the

and

spirit

created in

133

is

German from a

alien

.

.

.

fit

What

and unfit ...

new

within the

will,

who

work

to the last retailer

be

participate

from the

genius to the most insignificant helper, from the

the creative

by blood

structures will

tremendous leader corps, made up out of all

any way in the process of forming the national

spiritual

to divide

greatest

man who

does

who hawks literature and journals

in

the streets and at the railway stations.*^

Before the end of the month, Martin Heidegger, the philosopher

and recently appointed rector of the University of Freiburg, delivered to the students and faculty his inaugural address, entitled

The

Self-Assertion of the

new

German

University.

He

proclaimed that the

abroad in Germany signified the resurrection of true

spirit

philosophical inquiry in

its

original pre-Socratic spirit.

Nazism, in

this

view, involved a large element of risk-taking, an adventure of

the

mind and

into the

spirit

unknown. Given

his reputation as a

leading philosopher, Heidegger's enthusiasm lent substantial credibility to the

ger's

regime.

Some commentators have seized upon Heideg-

omission of Hitler's name, or even explicit mention of the

National Socialist Party, in mitigation of

Nazism: he resigned

his collaboration

with

his post in 1934.

The opposite case, however, might be argued: the fellow traveller

who

took benefits from the regime (Heidegger joined the party in

April)

and

failed to criticize

it,

while appearing to remain aloof,

exerted considerable influence over the undecided, the especially.

Heidegger's mistake was to believe that the

would enable

He

his university to

soon discovered

be self-determining,

that National Socialism

young

new regime

self-asserting.

meant subjection of

the university to the oppression of Nazi thugs. In contrast, the rector of Frankfurt University, Ernst Krieck, illusions,

announced

that as 'Fiihrer

who

had no such

of the university' he would

cooperate with the National Socialists and that

'as

principle the university will in future be an organ

and element of

the

state'

which 'under

a

matter of

authoritative leadership will have to carry

Hitler's Scientists

134

out

educational

its

basis

and

goals'.

If there

was

work within

the context of a racial-pohtical

^^

new

a

spirit in

ideologue Alfred Rosenberg,

the air

who

was

it

had

that articulated

by the

called in his prolific papers,

books and speeches for a 'new belief in the Mythus, trust in an inchoate,

mystical 'searching for truth', a 'complete unfolding of self

the 'experienced

Rosenberg

Mythus of the Nordic

insisted,

was

utterly

racial soul'.

opposed

mechanical' path to knowledge.^'*

It

'

from

This Mythus,

to the 'scholastic-logical-

rejected 'mathematical sche-

maticism' and a Hobbesian 'mechanical atomism' for an 'organicism'

which the 'blending together of the individual and the general consummated itself in the form of individuality'.^^ It was not a

in

Weltanschauung that lent itself easily to the spirit ofthe natural sciences

and mathematics, nor to the nation

spirit

of

a technologically

advanced

state.

Meanwhile

the dismissals

went ahead without

protest

from the

majority of students and colleagues, revealing the extent to which the universities and institutes had been hospitable to right-wing

ideology, and anti-Semitism students.

- from

Those Jews who attempted

disabused

as to their

professors

to claim

chances of survival

down

academics and

as

faced heckling in their lectures and treachery

They

to junior

exemption were soon scientists.

among

their

*.

colleagues.

Even those who argued

the special case for isolated exemptions

betrayed a degree of collusion. Heisenberg, pleading with

Max

Born to seek exemption, wrote: Since

.

.

.

only the very

certainly not,

least are affected

nor Courant - the

by the law - you and Franck

political revolution

without any damage to Gottingen physics

.

.

.

could take place

Certainly in the course of

time the splendid things will separate from the hateful."^

The

dismissal

of Jews was met with complacency on the one

hand and acquiescent conformism on the

other. Readiness to take

the places of the dismissed also revealed a strong

opportunism

as

well

as a

component of

form of warped chauvinism. Historian and

The Dismissals biologist

Ute Deichmann

physical chemist

cites the case

who was

in

135

of Paul Harteck,

a

young

correspondence with Karl-Friedrich

Bonhoeffer, a young professor of physical chemistry (and eldest brother of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian), on the question

of the dismissals and the opportunities that thus

who

had studied

in

Cambridge

in 1932,

wrote

arose. Harteck,

to

Bonhoeffer in

April 1933 warning him not to be taken in by the complaints of dismissed Jews. In May he wrote: 'In London the Jews, the half

and quarter Jews of Germany are gathering. ever had

a liking for

Germany,

superficial one, because

In

it.'^^

now you

it

people have

If these

can only have been a very

really don't notice

June Bonhoeffer could write

to

Harteck

anything of

telling

him of

'many openings occurring simultaneously', and that 'you should actually get tive as

one of them'. '^ Harteck,

who

will return to

our narra-

to work on the Nazi atom bomb, made vacant by the Jewish physical Hamburg University in 1934.

one of the team destined

eventually took the chair

chemist Otto Stern

at

Demonstrations of solidarity with dismissed Jews were virtually

unknown.

A rare example of a refusal to take the place of a dismissed

however, occurred in the University of

Jew^,

Diisseldorf.^^

Krayer, a biologist, rejected the offer of a chair which

fell

Otto

vacant

as

a result of a Jewish colleague being sacked and proceeded to

complain to the government about the

dismissals.

himself dismissed and departed for the United

Kurt

States.

Kosswig, a geneticist at the Technische Hochschule

Kosswig refused

to apply the racist doctrines

An

Another was

of Brunswick.

of the regime and

denounced the treatment of Jews. He managed country before being

Krayer was

to escape the

arrested.^''

argument used by those

who were unhappy

about the

dis-

—

for example, Planck, but who stayed on and kept silent Laue and Heisenberg — was the need to preserve German science missals,

for better days. Laue, usually praised for his resistance to Nazism,

even went so

far as to

rebuke Einstein for

his public resignation

from the Prussian Academy of Sciences ahead Act

in

March

scientists

of the Restoration

1933. Einstein remained intransigent in his

view

that

should not support the Third Reich. 'From the situation

136

Hitler's Scientists

Germany you can

in

where such

see just

means surrendering leadership

to the blind

not lack of sense of responsibility

lie

There were timid moves on the collect signatures

behind

also

part of some

Aryan

scientists to

But

dismissals.

'If today thirty

professors get

government by tomorrow there

against the

Does

this?'^^

be

will

one hundred and fifty individuals declaring their soHdarity with '^^

Hitler, simply because they're after the jobs.

and

Civil Servants

An

irresponsible.

of colleagues to protest against the

Planck, according to Otto Hahn, said:

up and protest

self-restraint leads. It

and

incident, small in

the

Nazi

Salute

but significant in terms of the acquies-

itself,

good in science, occurred when Max Planck opened the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Metals in cence of the

German

great and

Stuttgart, a year after Hitler

came

to

power. As Planck came to the

rostrum to deliver an address, the audience watched expectantly to see

whether he would

According it

to an onlooker,

sink again.

He

did

it

a

Planck

'

The writer,

Ewald, commented: 'Looking back

could do

if you didn't

Gesellschaft.'^^ cists to this

want

According

day,

Laue was

it

finally the

let

hand came

the prominent physicist

was the only thing you

to jeopardize the

whole Kaistj Wilhelm

to an anecdote circulated

in the habit

Hitler'.

hand half high, and

'lifted his

second time. Then

up, and he said, "Heil Hitler." P. P.

with the prescribed 'Heil

start

of carrying

arm everywhere he went his arm in a salute when accosted by Nazis. Planck opened subsequent meetings of

among

physi-

a parcel in

each

so as to preclude the necessity of raising

the Kaiser

Wilhelm

Society with the Nazi salute, apparently without a qualm, and

signed

official letters

with Heil

not to emigrate and to stay in his

Hitler.

He

Germany

encouraged colleagues

to await better times,

and

on good terms with

the

speeches indicated a desire to remain

regime.^'*

Understanding Planck's Hitler those scientists

who

salute,

and the acquiescence of

stayed and stepped willingly into the shoes of

the dismissed non-Aryans, involves not only a recognition of the

Tlie Dismissals

137

views expressed by the geography teacher above but an appreciation

of the role of the

civil

servant in

modern Germany. Whether they Wilhelm Institutes, scientists

taught in universities or the Kaiser

were

servants of the state alongside school teachers, postal workers

and tens of thousands of other public employees. The stance of the civil servant

was

to subscribe to forms

traditional

of

apolitical

nationalism. For decades academics in the higher echelons had

enjoyed freedom of research and teaching, and privileged rank guaranteed by their loyalty to the

state

and

their apolitical status. ^^

Subjected to inflation and reductions in pay under the

Weimar

RepubHc,

austerity

'Hunger Chancellor' Briining's

especially the

measures ofJuly 1930,

as

well

as

did not regret the

civil service

to the state,

disruptions in grading, the educated

fall

of the

Weimar

republic. Loyalty

and to the administration in power, however, was

traditionally a lifetime

commitment

that

went far beyond consider-

ation of salary. Hitler's promise of a return to patriotism and 'clarity'

found

a

ready echo in a disaffected

civil service.

moreover, promised restitution for

loss

Nazi propaganda,

of earnings, along with

the restoration of the 'loyalties' that could not include Jews and

The notion of

subversives.

'restoration',

however, was no more

than a thin disguise for anti-Semitism.

When Max called

Planck,

on Hitler

as

president of the Kaiser

to put in a

good word

resignation as president of the

KWI

for Fritz

certain Jewish scientists

own

Haber, whose

to persuade Hitler that

were worth nurturing

to the state. Planck's

Society,

Chemistry had

for Physical

been accepted, Planck evidently attempted might bring

Wilhelm

for the benefit they

transcript

of the meeting,

written in 1947, claims that he told Hitler 'that there were different sorts

ofJews, some valuable and some valueless for mankind, among

the former old families of exemplary

had

to

right.

make

A Jew

one Jew

is,

German

culture,

and

that

one

distinctions in such matters'. ^^ Hitler said: 'That's not is

a

Jew;

all

Jews cling together

Wherever

like burrs.

other Jews of all types immediately gather. '^^

Planck then countered that the importance to Germany of the

work ofJewish

scientists

meant

that

it

would be no

less

than an act

of self-mutilation to force valuable Jews to emigrate, and that

138

Hitler's Scientists

would be

foreign countries

wrote

faster

and

faster.

rage that Planck

I

this

point but began to rant,

Slapping his knee with

Hitler concluded: 'People say that nerves. That's slander.

to reap the benefits. Planck

first

respond to

that Hitler did not

speaking

the

I

sometimes

a

powerful blow,

suffer

from weak

have nerves of steel.' Hitler was in such

and took

fell silent

Haher's

a

his leave.

End

work for the state, his encouragement of sciendevote themselves to the German war machine, his public

Haber's enthusiastic tists

to

rejection of the religion of his forebears for Christianity,

nothing. As far

as Hitler's

went

regime was concerned he was just

for

a Jew,

and an enemy. As if to eradicate the least gesture of honour accorded

Haber

for a lifetime's devotion to

tree planted in the

grounds of his

German

science, a ceremonial

institute to celebrate his sixtieth

birthday was torn up.

At

his

departure from the Kaiser

Wilhelm

Institute,

Haber wrote

of resignation, stating that he had always

a dignified letter

felt

himself to be a good German, despite the fact that he was Jewish,

and

that

able to

wrote

he had always put

do

that,

to Willstatter:

an extent that

extreme that

new

I

his

country

he had no choice but

I

'I

am

bitter as

feel fully

only

can no longer

Since he was no longer

first.

to leave the Fatherland.

never before,

now

and

I

work enough

find

I

Haber

washerman

it

to

odious in the

to begin confidently a

post in a different country.'-*^

him from the United States: 'I can conceive of your inner conflicts. It is somewhat like having to give up a theory on which one has worked one's whole life. It is not the Einstein wrote to

same

for

me

because

I

never believed in

Suffering from heart disease,

finding

work for his Jewish

it

in the least.

'^"^

Haber now devoted himself

staff abroad.

to

Eventually he departed for

Cambridge, England, where he was greeted hospitably enough by the professor of chemistry, William Pope, another poison gas expert; but

Haber was understandably given the cold shoulder by

British lab technicians

who

had fought in the trenches during the

The Dismissals war.

139

He was invited to join the new Daniel Sieff Institute

Weizmann

Institute) in

Einstein wrote to

Hebrew

Haber warning him

never made

it

while visiting

against

(today the

and he accepted.

working with the

blond beast has cooled off a

for the

to the

Middle

his family in

protests

of the Nazis' explicit veto. addresses.

It

East.

Max

died

Max

at

at

bit'.^*^

later. It

a

was done

of bravery

in defiance

Hahn gave short when Professor

Preussische Akademie derWissenschaftenon28June 1934.

Haber's significance for science and

own

ted by his

merely

a

as

conflict

nurturing

is

were the overwhelming majority of

.

.

He said:

He was

not

.

Haber was

his colleagues.

This

a

made

Socialist state inevitable.^'

Haber's Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin

name,

the

technology; he was also highly competent

of organization and financial management

with the National

at

not remotely exhaus-

works and with those of his school.

man of science and

in matters

Jew,

scientific

its

.

memorial

commemorative speech on Haber

a

.

the age of sixty-five.

Planck and Otto act

.

Haber

Basel in Switzerland

Planck organized

year

life a

was considered an

Bodenstein read

He

January 1934

by the Nazis,

service to celebrate Haber's

Max

Palestine

University; yet Einstein could at least be 'pleased that

your former love

Amidst

what was then

a fact that attracts

controversy to

this day.

now

As

bears his

Fritz Stern

comments in his elegant essay on Haber and Einstein, 'The memory lives on - dimly in distorted controversy.'^^

T/]e

Exodus

The exodus ofJewish scientists was devastating in its consequences for Germany. ^^ Some 25 per cent of the pre-1933 physics community was

lost to the

country, including Einstein, Franck, Gustav

Debye —

Hertz, Shrodinger, Hess and lost laureates

Nobel

laureates.

Other

included Stern, Bloch, Born, Wigner, Bethe, Gabor,

Hevesy and Herzberg,

Hemiann Weyl and were

all

scientists

as

well

Emmy

as

mathematicians Richard Courant,

Noether. Most of the

lost physicists

of high originality and unique experience; they were

140

Hitler's Scientists

Almost half of Germany's theoretical

irreplaceable.

and many of

its

top experts in

physicists

went,

quantum mechanics and nuclear

physics.

The

Gemiany was

loss to

States. In Britain,

huge gain

a

to Britain

William Beveridge (who

later

and the United

headed the London

School of Economics and inspired the formation of the welfare state),

A. V. Hill and the biochemist and Nobel laureate Frederick

Gowland Hopkins

up the Academic Assistance Council

set

to

provide jobs for displaced academics. Those

who came

were

the country's culture

have

to

across a

a

profound and

lasting effect

on

to Britain

broad span of disciplines and cultural influences. Leo

the tireless physicist and polymath,

Beveridge to establish dismissed

worked

scientists

moving

to the

became

active in nuclear fission research

United

States in 1938

Szilard,

in collaboration

with

from Germany before

where,

as

we

and the

shall see,

politics

he

of the

atomic bomb. In temis of overall

German

physics

numbers through the

community

1930s,

however, the

did not shrink in absolute numbers

because of an increase in applied physicists in the universities; but the quality of the scientists declined, and basic research stagnated.

Of

all

the

German

universities,

with the exception of Berlin,

Gottingen, a world centre of mathematical physics, was hurt the most. Lost to

this birthplace

of quantum mechanics wer^Max Born,

James Franck, Walter Heitler, Heinrich Kuhn, Lothar Nordheim,

Eugene Rabinowich and Hertha Sponer. In addition to the loss of

many

leading researchers

Gennan

became increasingly isolated, as foreign scientists avoided travelling to Gemiany, ceased collaborating in research programmes

science

with Germans and cancelled membership of scientific societies and subscriptions to journals. It

difficult for

restrictions

At the same time, the regime was making

academics to travel outside of the country and placed

on membership of organizations deemed

inimical to

National Socialism. In the heightened atmosphere of National Socialist 'revolution', the spectre of scientific secrecy loomed, along with the

breakdown

of foreign peer group discussion and collaboration. Gennany was

The Distnissah to

make

many

progress in

141

of applied physics, especially in

areas

processes and technology with military applications; but academically

would begin

it

to

AEG, one of Germany's

behind.

fall

largest

The

companies, noted that according

to records

American citations

had

between 191 3 and 1938 from

risen

while

German citations

(in

(in the

director of research at

Gennany's leading physics review) 3

per cent to 15 per cent,

leading international physics review)

during the same period had dropped from 30 per cent to 16 per cent. In a

move

of race hatred within the

that revealed the depths

government education bureaucracy. Rust ordered on that 'Jews \vho are

15 April 1937

of German nationalit)% are no longer to be

admitted to examination for

a doctor's degree. In addition,

of doctor's diplomas held by the same

to

is

renewal

be discontinued.'^'* The

following week, indicating the strangeness of the times, saw the

opening of the new Kaiser Wilhelm close to the other institutes.

been established I.

A proper home

1937 by

a late

The

as a scientific

Institute

racially

United abused

of Physics in Dahlem,

of Physics had originally

fund towards the end of World

for laboratories

and

offices

States its

rise

as

weU

as

in

Reich

of Hitler major institutions

were not ashamed

scientists.

War

was made possible

Rockefeller Foundation grant,

funding, revealing that even after the in the

Institute

to support a

regime that

10.

Engineers and Rocketeers

After the First War, Germany, one of the great armaments producers

of the world, had ceased to forge guns, armour-plating and ord-

nance

as a result

of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Germany's

ingenuity in aeronautical and maritime technology, born out of

between science and

close synergies

industry,

had been

drastically

and humiliatingly curtailed. According to the treaty, military aircraft

were banned, and the German navy, formerly the

third largest in

the world, had been ignominiously scuttled in the cold grey waters

of Britain's

now

home

boast was

under 10,000

a

fleet

harbour, Scapa Flow. All

pathetic

tons.

Germany could

of obsolete coastal defence

flotilla

Meanwhile the Reichswehr,

Germany army, was not allowed by

vessels

the remaining

the terms of the treaty to

exceed 100,000 men; tanks were banned, and guns were not allowed to

mm. The

exceed 105

tasks

of the army were mainly border-

By another provision of Versailles and Technical Academy (Militartechnische

control and internal policing. the

German

Akademie)

Military

in

Potsdam closed

its

doors.

,

During the Weimar period, however, the government and Ger-

man

industrialists

managed

to continue

weapons development

under cover: by pushing forward dual-use technology, by conducting military research and development in secret, and by placing research

programmes outside the country.

Article 191 of Versailles

had expressly forbidden the building of

submarines by Germany. Nevertheless the secret funds

which paid

for research

German navy set up two

and development

in thirty

some of them foreign, for example, a torpedo factory in Cadiz, some of them clandestine, such as a Berlin 'bacon' company. Meanwhile three German industrial firms, Krupp, A. G. Weser and Vulkanwerft, set up a joint stock company in Holland in 1922 to build eight U-boats with German technology for the different firms,

Engineers and Rocketeers

143

in Kobe, Japan. They also built U-boats for Sweden and Turkey.^ In 1925, moreover, sums of money from the prodigious $195 million Dawes Plan rescue pack-

Kawaski shipyard Finland, Spain,

age were diverted to for

AEG, Krupp, Simens-Schuckert and Thyssen

rearmament projects such

as a special

bureau for 'antisubmarine

warfare questions', which was a clandestine U-boat development

scheme. Under the retired U-boat specialist Admiral Arno Spindler,

embarked on

the navy

determined and complex clandestine

a

development scheme. The plan included submarine conducted by foreign-based German companies; age aimed

at

collecting information

R

and

D

industrial espion-

on foreign submarine develop-

ments; and media propaganda to expose the unfairness of the Versailles

The

ban on Germany's submarine technology.^

Versailles restrictions against the

Gernian

power became

air

during the

continued development of

the focus of anger and injured pride

Weimar years. There was enormous enthusiasm for German people, and gliding became a national passion

flying among

with military overtones. At Wasserkuppe, where

a

war memorial

dedicated to flyers dominated the surrounding countryside, thousands of spectators gathered to watch gliders

An inscription in

swarming

in the skies.

stone read:

We dead fliers Remain

victors

By our own Volk

fly

efforts

again

And you will become a victor By your own effort.-'

German

aeronautical research had developed and expanded

despite the constraints of Versailles. for example,

Ludwig

At the

level

Prandtl and the Gottingen

of basic research,

airfoils

future of German design of lift surfaces for aircraft.

R and D

outside the country, in

Germany managed

to

assured the

And by

Sweden and Spain

placing

for example,

evade Allied scrutiny of aircraft design that

might have obvious military

applications.

At the same time, planes

Hitler's Scientists

144 like the

boat,

high-speed Heinkel transporters and the

Domier

flying

and the diesel-engined Junkers passenger Hner, continued

stretch expertise in aeronautical

to

technology/

Nazi Engineers

The advent of communities little

however, found the German engineering

Hitler,

of widespread demoralization, and not

in a state

The Nazi

puzzlement.

a

ideologues had been sending mixed

messages about the status of technology in the Third Reich. National Socialism in

its

early manifestation

of technocracy and return to nature.

were outspokenly

Some

had involved

a

hybrid

senior Nazis, however,

towards technology. Wilhelm Stapel,

hostile

editor of Deutsches Volksturn, for example, declared that 'the

words

engineer and organizer should be turned into the nation's terms of abuse'. Alfred

Rosenberg, rabid anti-Semite and editor-in-chief

of the Nazi daily paper

Volkischer Beobachter {People's Observer),

attempted to lay the confusion to

notorious Myth of the Twentieth Century

technology 'forget that

based on an

it is

when he wrote in his that those who condemn everlasting German drive

rest

which would disappear together with the downfall of technology'.^ Despite his addiction to vague mystical notions such

Mythus of blood and insisted that loss

the

as

of systematic science, J^osenberg

of German technological edge would 'deliver

us to the barbarians

Mediterranean

his rejection

and leave us

that kills everything vital,

in the condition to

once declined'.

civilizations

he added, 'rather

It

is

which the

not technology

human

beings

who

have degenerated'. Hitler's dictatorship,

meanwhile, announced

of military technology and

new

undreamed of ^ After period in which some 5,000

and technicians had taken jobs

Union, Hitler was offering opportunities

Being

owed no to

rapid expansion

prospects

years of inactivity and hopelessness, a frustrated engineers

a

civil servants,

for their

skills.^

most German engineers were

allegiance as a group to the Nazi party

in the Soviet

apolitical

when

Hitler

and

came

power. By the beginning of the summer of 1933, however.

Engineers and Rocketeers

145

wooed by Nazi propaganda that sought to boost their status within the new Germany, the largest engineering associations joined the Nazi-controlled Reich Society for Technological and Scientific

Work The

(Reichsgemeinschaft technisch-wissenschaftlicher Arbeit).

leading engineering periodical German Technology {Deutsche

Technik) extolled technicians

the

and engineers

as a 'crucial force' in

new aims of the nation state, while denouncing the new physics

and reminding

German

its

readers of the special technical giftedness of the

race.

In the early days the fundamental struggle for the minds and

of engineers involved, in the view of the Nazi ideologues,

hearts

the rescuing of engineers from the clutches of capitalism and their integration into the national

community. But

depended on

this

engineers adopting the Fuhrerprinzip, creating a fusion of technical

and ideological commitment.

ability

Fritz

Minister and builder of the autobahns, put

Todt, Nazi Armaments it

thus in a 1936 issue of

the periodical Deutsche Technik:

It is

so obvious as to

ability is

on

its

own is

be hardly worth mentioning that just

as

technical

not enough for the engineer in the Third Reich, nor

an ambitious will to leadership

One-sidedness of the

[FuhreruHlle]

latter variety

political administrator,

of a purely

may produce

a

political person.

worthwhile speaker or

but not a National Socialist engineer.**

The Rocket Engineers

Meanwhile, project had

on the would and

in greatest secrecy, a remarkable rocket

been taking shape

Baltic coast in time

fantasies

at secret testing sites

development

near Berlin and

under the auspices of the army. The ambitions

emerge

as a

of phallic

combination of advanced technology

terror.

One

day, before the war's end,

the fruit of the engineers' labour and ingenuity

thunderous noise and

fire

from the secluded

would

forests

rise

with

of northern

Germany. As with other military services which conducted their clandestine

146

Hitler's Scientists

German Army Ordnance Weimar years. The head of the army's

projects despite the rules of the armistice,

had been active during the

and Munitions Branch, Lieutenant Colonel Karl Emil

Ballistics

Becker, had gathered about

him a small team of qualified engineers,

including Walter Dornberger and Leo Zanssen.

One

of the tech-

nologies that lay outside the provisions of the Versailles Treaty was

on v^hich Becker had kept

rocketry, 1920s.

As

a result

watchful eye through the

a

he had encountered the young rocket enthusiast

Wernher von Braun,

name

a

would one day be

that

during the

latter part

inextricably

down on London

linked with Hitler's Vis and V2s, which rained

of the war.

The Germans had employed rockets for limited purposes in the World War I, specifically to fire grappling hooks to

trenches in

remove barbed

wire, while the French used

tion balloons and Zeppelins.

But the

them

against observa-

testing conditions

warfare exposed the weakness of rocket technology

The gunpowder,

or black powder, used

of trench

at that

time.

propellant proved to

as a

be extremely hygroscopic, or prone to damp, and tended to burn unevenly.

An important aspect of R and D

for the post-war enthusiasts

aerodynamic shape. As Peter Wegener, it:

fly

'A rocket must have

on

a controllable

a

low

air drag,

a

it

Nazi rocket engineer, put

must be

predetermined course

the denser layers of the atmosphere

is

was

.

.

.

stable,

and

it

must

stability -of flight in

provided by fixed external

Then there was the fuel liquid? The idea to use liquid,

wing-like surfaces and movable rudders.'^ or propellant. Should as

opposed

to the

it

be solid or

more conventional solid fuel, had been pressed enthusiasts. The American Robert Goddard

by three prominent

Clark of the University of Massachusetts and the Russian Konstatin

Tsiolokovsky had recommended liquid ively

improved

Oberth,

a

thrust,

as a

means of gaining mass-

weight for weight. But

German-speaker from Transylvania

it

in

was Hermann

Romania, who

achieved what the historian MichaelJ. Neufeld has termed nal'

influence

on rocketry in

men {The Rocket 1923.

his

book Die Rakete zu

into Interplanetary Space),

Oberth discussed

how

den Planetenrau-

published in

the problems

a 'semi-

Germany

of space flight

in

might be

Engineers and Rocketeers

147

solved by the use of alcohol/liquid-oxygen and liquid-hydrogen/

liquid-oxygen multi-stage vehicles. His book was

mania

imaginary rocket scenarios

for

after

prelude to a

a

the

War

First

in

Germany. Enthused by the promotion of Valier, the

a freelance writer called

Max

motor manufacturing heir Fritz von Opel backed a series

of rocket-car

stunts,

which

led to a craze for rocket spectacles

manner of vehicles, including railway carriages and sleds. In October 1929 Fritz Lang's silent movie Fran im Mond Woman in the Moon) featuring a montage of impressions of space involving

all

(

flight

was

released, creating mass interest in space flight. In

an

attempt to promote the film Oberth had funded a self-taught engineer and conman, Rudolf Nebel, to build a liquid-fuel rocket.

The scheme first

did not succeed. But that same year Johannes Winkler,

president of the Verein

Raumschiffahrt (VfR — Society for

fiir

Space Travel), an assorted group of rocket enthusiasts, conducted private and

on the

company research at Junkers

aircraft

company in Dessau

potential use of liquid rocket fuel for aircraft propulsion.

Less auspicious

was the

'research'

of Max Valier, the writer, and

his

two assistants, Walter Riedel and Arthur Rudolph, who were trying to build a rocket-car engine fuelled

was

killed in a lab explosion.

As

second rocket accident involving sidered passing an act to ban initiative did

all

not succeed, largely,

by

paraffin.

a result

On

17

a teenager, the

Valier

The banning

thought, because Oberth, in

advance of the vote, had managed without accident to achieve

smooth ninety-second

test

of

rocket motor

a

a

Reichstag con-

such experiments. it is

May

of that accident, and

at

the

a

Chemisch-

Technische Reichsanstalt.

Meanwhile,

in

September 1930, Rudolph Nebel (who con-

tinued solitary research on a small rocket called

mum Rakete'] VfR on

a

on

a

fann in Saxony)

fomier military

facility

set

up

north of Berlin.

base the Raketenflugplatz (the Rocketport). aficionados was

MIRAK

a research

team

They

Among

['Minifor the

called the

these rocket

Wernher von Braun, an eighteen-year-old mech-

anical engineering student at the Technische Hochschnle in Berlin.

Born

in Wirtsitz, in

Germany,

in 191 2,

von Braun came from

a

148

Hitler's Scientists

Prussian Junker family; his father was a former Minister of Agriculture.

Rejoicing in

a baronial title

he disdained to

use,

had graduated aged twenty from the Charlottenburg

Technology,

a college that insisted

its

engineering students.

at

the Borsig

assembly

Works

on

von Braun of

Institute

practical apprenticeships for

Von Braun had worked in a machine

factory, as well as in a

shop

foundry and on an

line.

Among those early enthusiasts was a young historian of rocketry, Willy Ley, author of Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel. An unashamed romantic, he described the

swampy Our

district

flight

of wasteland near Berlin on 10

rocket testing-ground was covered with the

new

shoots and

a rocket

May

193

in the distance

elevator, very slowly, to

.

.

But the beast

.

twenty meters. Then

grass

and

flew! it

1

from

a

thus:

young green of pine

birch leaves, the depressions between the

of young willows. Crickets sang in the high

somewhere

of

fell

hills

were

full

frogs croaked

Went up like an down and broke

a leg.^°

Von Braun Joins

the

Army

Despite his youth, von Braun was the following year recruited into the army's secret rocket research

programme by

Bjecker and

Dornberger. At the same time he was enrolled into

a doctoral

programme in applied physics at Berlin University. His thesis, which the army insisted should be kept secret, would describe the rocket development conducted under his direction at the army facility at

When

Kummersdorf. Hitler

came

were seized by the

to

power

state.

in 1933, the records

A member

of the

VfR

of the

VfR

overheard

a

company manager at Siemens informing an official in one of Hitler's ministries: 'Now I've all the rocket people safely on ice around here and can watch what they are doing. '^^

Von Braun's

activities

his paymasters, the

were

army. In

now

entirely

later years

under the direction of

he attempted to give the

Engineers and Rocketeers

149

impression that he had exploited the army, rather than the other

way

about:

Our

feelings

pioneers,

own

ends and

of their the gold

Army

toward the

who,

in

most countries,

who

felt little

resembled those of the early aviation tried to

milk the military purse for their

moral scruples

as to

the possible future use

own brainchild. The issue in these discussions was cow could be milked most successfully.'^

The sentiment echoes

the dependency factor in

how

merely

many

realms of

science and technology, the need to follow the funding, the supply

of equipment, laboratory space: the everyday realities of researchers.

A

combination of

alibi

and understandable pressure to conform,

von Braun's comment on be repeated by talents

In

a

generation of

and knowledge

December

his relationship

at

German

with the regime would scientists

war

the service of Hitler's

1934, just

two

who

put their

aims.

years after he had joined the

army

rocket research team, two years in which three ill-fated early rockets,

known

as

Ai, had blown up on take-off at Kummersdorf,

Wernher von Braun and rockets at a launch

site

his technicians received

on the lonely windswept

shipment of two

island

of Borkum

North Sea. The missiles, known as Max and Moritz after the German version of the comic characters 'The Katzenjammer Kids', were also known officially as A2. The moment of truth had come in the

for the latest

model of Germany's

The A2 was of

a

secret missile

programme.

revolutionary design, the precursor of the

guided missiles of the future.

It

had separate

tanks to prevent explosions caused

by

fuel

leaking.

and liquid-oxygen

There was

a

gyro-

scope between the tanks near the rocket's centre of gravity which

of flight. The combustion

maintained good control in the

first

chamber had been lengthened

to give the fuel

Max was launched on

19

stages

December. The

more time

flight

was

to burn.

perfect.

The

rocket reached an altitude of 1.4 miles before falling by parachute to earth half a mile

from the launch pad. The following day Moritz

performed equally

well.

150

Hitler's Scientists

von Braun whether he thought such a rocket could be used as a weapon. He was equivocal. Yes, it could be used as a weapon, he conceded: but what was the point? Military officers present asked

Its

range was

than that of conventional

less

deliver a better payload.

Von

artillery,

Braun's reaction,

nor could

it

at this early stage,

young engineer could compartmentalize his interpurposes of missile technology, which had started not

revealed that the ests in

the

with military aims but romantic dreams of the conquest of space.

Three months its

As

later Hitler

repudiated the Versailles Treaty and

military provisions, giving the green light to massive rearmament. a result, the rocket

known

development project

at

Kummersdorf,

be

'Experimental Station West', qualified for increased

as

The Gestapo

funding and expansion.

were necessary, banned

all

counter-intelligence, as if

yet uncertain, the object of the group lead in rocket technology.

'the

was

programme was

to maintain

as

Germany's

The most important aspect of their work

for the future, according to

going to be

it

overseas collaboration and transfer of

information. While the ultimate shape of the

The

to

Leo Zanssen of Army Ordnance, was

element of surprise'.^-'

programme would be 'in-house' at every level but outside procurement contracts would be necessary, albeit circumscribed by heavy regulations. The crucial guidance systems technology — involving sophisticated gyroscopic principles —'was placed rocket

with Kreiselgerate secretly

owned by

GmbH, which the

German

itself

was

a

high-tech

company

navy. Inter-service collaboration

was another matter. By 1935 the Luftwaffe under Goering forged an alliance with the rocket programme, bringing in massive new funding and mutual technology gains from work on projects such as rocket-assisted aircraft take-off.

Given the rapid expansion and tumescent ambitions of the army rocketeers, the need for a permanent site on the Baltic now became urgent. Eventually Peenemiinde was chosen, a district along a

lonely stretch of the Baltic coast with capacity for testing factories,

laboratories

and impenetrable

Becker had been promoted

to general

Division; and he was determined to

security.

By

this

sites,

time

and head of the Testing

match Luftwaffe funding with

Engineers and Rocketeers

151

army funding. By April 1937 most of the team had moved

to the

new

at

Kummersdorf

site.

The Gemian rocket project now became one of the first examples of state mobilization of major engineering and for the enforced realization

scientific resources

of new military technology. The project

would be matched, and eventually exceeded, in the course of the war only by the Manhattan Project for the building of the atomic

bomb

in the

United

States.

1 1

.

Medicine under Hitler

Surgeon and part-time author Dr Curt Emmrich records Hitler took

up the

Hamburg

of his

power in

reigns of unchallenged dictatorial

he noticed that colleagues began to turn up hospital,

at first', in

black uniforms. Another doctor noticed that

when

reunion of naval physicians in the same year, only

1933,

common room

in the

'somewhat sheepish

that, as

a

brown

or

attending a

minority were

not members of the National Socialist Party. Physicians,

a

as

group, outnumbered other professionals in

enthusiasm for Nazi Party membership. Within the Reich Physicians'

Chamber Nazi membership peaked at 44.8 per cent. Lawyers

formed the next

largest

Nazi membership, but never exceeded 25

per cent.* Those physicians licensed to practice between 1925 and

1932 showed the

largest

proportion of membership,

cent, while the smallest proportion, 39.

deduces from

'Up

who

to

and

in

this that the

historian

at 53.1

per

among those

Michael Kater

most enthusiastic Nazi physicians were

had suffered professionally during the Great depression.

and including

the Nazi

per cent, was

between 1878 and 19 18. The

registered

those

i

1933,' according to Kater, 'they

camp out of resentment

hope of

for past

a brighter future at the

leaders.'^ Till Bastian, the historian

approached

and present conditions

hands of the predestined

of medicine in the Third Reich,

notes that the profession had been notably conservative and chauvinist

from the outbreak of World War

After Hitler's physicians

rise to

welcomed

power early in 1933 the

new

I.

the majority of German

regime, hoping for a redress of

anomalies in health care, administration, pay and working conditions

under the Weimar Republic. Junior doctors had found

difficult

under Weimar to

that allowed only

doctors in

set

one doctor per 600

Germany during

it

up in practice because of a system patients.

The

salaries

of

the 1920s and 1930s far outstripped

Medicine under Hitler

153

those of comparable professionals, including lawyers. Yet doctors'

pay had sunk to an all-time low in the years before Hitler came to

power. The austerity measures of Chancellor Heinrich Briining's

huge unemployment

administration, and the patients

away from the

surgeries.

numbers of doctors dwindled, due physicians, doctors' pay in 1934

of 1932.

By

had driven

figures,

As the depression

and the

lifted

to the disappearance of Jewish

began to

rise

above the worst figures

1937 the profession was enjoying salaries comparable to

those in 1928.

Racism and anti-Semitism were early 1930s.

seen,

The

rife in

publisher Julius Friedrich

had been instrumental

in

the profession by the

Lehmann,

promoting the

Ploetz and Giinther during the 1920s:

as

we

have

racist ideologies

of

Lehmann used his publishing among

outreach and personal wealth to spread the Nazi message

medical students and practising physicians. His lavishly coloured textbooks were best-sellers within the profession, and he

weekly medical paper medical

titles,

owned

a

Munich. Exploiting the popularity of his

he published

his initiatives,

translated

in

many

volkisch

and

racist tracts.

Among

he funded Ludwig Schemann, the editor of the

works of the

racist

Arthur

he published the highly popular

Comte de Gobineau;

Tlie Physician

and

his

in 1926

Mission

by the

Danzig surgeon Erwin Liek: by the end of the decade 30,000 copies of the title had sold. As an esteemed medical publisher his promotion of racist ideology lent respectability to the Nazi movement among doctors.

Lehmann

died aged seventy a year after Hitler came to

power, but he had already managed to publish leading Nazi figures such

as

Richard Walther Darre and the Nazi ideologue Alfred

Rosenberg. Hitler praised Lehmann for

his tenacity in

combating

the tide of opposition to National Socialism; only subsequent generations, Hitler declared,

would honour Lehmann

for

what he

had done for Germany.^

Lehmann's medical propaganda discouraged medicine and promoted general practice, with the party's writes Kater,

holistic

specialization in

a

tendency associated

view of medicine and

health. 'In principle,'

Hitler's Scientists

154

this holistic

view did not allow

for the singling out

organs for closer attention, but because certain positive bias

one

a negative

harmony with

was

it

of any of the body's

was biologically

slanted, a

attributed to the mechanics of reproduction and

to matters

of the brain. This dependency was

the Nazis' constant emphasis

on

in perfect

things physical as well as

their overall anti-intellectuality/

At the same time, under the influence of National

Socialist thinking

within the profession, doctors began to expound the importance

of the health of the entire nation

as

opposed

individual.^ In the teaching hospitals

medicine was generally features',

criticized

which were described as

anistic-materialist thinking,

and

to the health

universities

by Nazi doctors

for

its

of the

academic 'negative

'liberalism, individualism,

mech-

Jewish-communist human ideology,

lack of respect for the blood and

soil,

neglect of race and heredity,

emphasis on individual organs and the undervaluing of soul and constitution'.^

Jewish Doctors

A week after Hitler's rise to power in January of the Nazi Physicians' League, that 'Jews

and philosemites ought

masters of their

own

1933 the co-founder

Dr Kurt Klare, wrote to note that the

house once more and

to a colleague

Germans

will control their

are

own

destiny'.^ The dismissal ofJewish doctors, who numbered some 16 per cent of the medical profession,^ began in March with the

removal of Jewish

officers

from national medical

associations

and

local groups. This was followed by the Jewish boycott orchestrated

by Goebbels on

i

April,

when Jewish-run business and professional

services, including doctors' clinics,

bounds. In Nuremberg

it

were attacked or put out of

was announced

that social insurance

vouchers issued by Jewish doctors would not be honoured, and

were taken to a park near the Lehrter Bahnhof A Jewish physician in Munich was arrested on

several Jewish doctors

and shot

in the legs.

charges of performing

illegal

abortions and kept in custody for a

week. Another welfare physician

in Berlin

was imprisoned

for nine

Medicine under Hitler

155

months. While the Jewish members of the medical profession braced themselves for anti-Semitic legislation, contracts were

broken, Jewish doctors were forbidden to deputize for non-Jewish colleagues,

payments were suspended and in the province of Bavaria

Jewish doctors were forbidden to work for the public school system. In the province of

Baden membership of Jewish

physicians

on

recognized panels was restricted to their percentage in the population as a

On

whole - deemed

ment aimed I

to

be

1.5."'

from April of 1933 the governdoctors who had set up in practice after

the basis of questionnaires, to bar

August 19 1 4, or

lost a father

all

who

had not seen front-line duty, or had not

or son in the war. Those

who

thought themselves

within the law were obliged to apply for exemption.

By

early

1939 some 2,600 physicians had been dismissed, their places taken

by Aryans. Casual

torture, terror

and murder of Jewish doctors

continued through the year: trumped-up charges included the ,

issuing of incorrect prescriptions, sexual attacks

on women patients,

amongjewish doctors became common. ^^ But still Jewish physicians continued to practise, illegal

abortions and embezzlement. Suicide

partly

under the exemptions, partly because patients

their professional services.

Nazi

activists

the patients ofJewish doctors, accusing

A Jewish

still

valued

vented their rage against

them of treachery.

Doctor's Story

The diary of Doctor Hertha Nathorff, a gynaecologist raised as a Jew within a respectable family in Germany, provides a moving impression of the everyday predicament of many Jewish doctors who stayed on in Germany under Hitler. ^^ Nathorff, whose maiden name was Einstein (she was distantly related to the scientist), trained in medicine in Heidelberg during World War I, and worked for the

Red

Aged

Cross,

where she became chief doctor

thirty-eight in 1933, she

clinic for

in a maternity unit.

was running her

own

gynaecology

150 patients in Berlin. She had a son aged eight, and had

been married

to a senior Jewish hospital doctor since 1923.

In January of 1933

we fmd Nathorff wanting to

believe in Hitler

156

Hitler's Scientists

following his

first

by the following month

successful election, but

marked

she had noticed a

her patients in the

clinic.

weeks

after the

Jewish boycott of

April 1933 she reported Jewish surgeons being

operating theatres to their hospitals.

began to work

The

role as a

thrown out of

and Jewish doctors being forbidden entry

Her husband was sacked by

privately.

week

following

and he

his hospital

Jewish doctors were put on to the backs

of open trucks and paraded around the jeered.

by

increase in anti-Semitic remarks

Two

streets

while pedestrians

she was sacked from her part-time

pregnancy counsellor, although she continued to run her

clinic.

May a patient broke down and wept during a consultation; woman had been on the point of gassing herself because she

In

the

believed that, since she once had sexual relations with a Jew, she

would not be

Aryan

able to conceive a pure

child.

A week

one of Nathorff 's medical Jewish colleagues committed unable to cope with the altered circumstances of his visited the

mental asylum to see

had gone mad

Aryan

after

a

woman Jewish

life.

suicide,

Nathorff

physician

being sacked from her job and

later

jilted

who

by her

lover.

One

of her

patients,

unaware

when

'everything will be fine

that

all

Nathorff was Jewish, told her

the filthy Jews have been thrown

out of Germany'. Nathorff info nned the patient that she herself

was Jewish. The patient sent flowers and

a

Nathorff was no longer allowed to patients;

many brought

she was attending her

whom

her flowers

own

funeral.

note of apology.

treat national insurance

at their last visit:

A

she

felt

that

gynaecology professor to

she regularly referred patients told Nathorff that he had

joined the Party in order to control the excesses from within.

She responded angrily combats

The

it

that

when

she wanted to prevent folly she

rather than collaborate with

it.

oppression continued unabated into the following year.

Jewish female colleague broke

down

in

A

Nathorff 's house early one

morning: her house had been searched during the night by the Gestapo looking for subversive

literature.

the clinic of many years' standing

came

Her midwife

assistant at

to inform her that she

had

Medicine under Hitler

been advised

that she should join the

157

Reich Midwife Association,

which precluded her working any longer for a Jew. A patient came in to say that she could no longer come to consultations because her teenage sons had threatened to denounce her. Former patients cut her dead in the street, including her former secretary

had helped through poison to end her

mother, she had

The

tales

a financial crisis.

had

a

for

Jewish grand-

her job and her boyfriend.

of routine persecution, told in her

year after year into the late 1930s. Things

Night of Broken

Kristallnacht,

whom she

came asking

patient

after discovering she

life:

lost

A

Glass,

came

diary, continued,

head on the

to a

9-10 November 1938. That husband and other Jewish

night, according to the diary, Nathorff 's

colleagues sick;

many Jews

telephone

came

were out

night in Berlin treating the injured and the

suffered heart attacks.

She stayed

and coordinating her husband's

calls

to the

all

at

home

taking

The

police

visits.

house the next morning looking for her husband. They

Her husband

threatened to shoot her and her son in the head. arrived, exhausted

from

his night's

work, and was arrested

at

once

and taken away.

On

12

hoping

November

American consulate

she stood in line at the

for a visa, only to

be told to

come back another

day.

Two

days later she learned that her husband was alive, but under arrest for 'racial defilement'.

money

ened her with then

She was

visited

in return for a withdrawal a

collapsed.

by

a

man who

asked for

When

he threat-

of the charge.

gun, she handed over a large

Soon

after,

sum of money and

her husband was

released

from

detention.

The following spring they where they planned

to join

successfully sent their son to England,

him before proceeding

as a

family to

New York. After obtaining permission to travel, they were obliged to

hand over

their silver cutlery

to take only the barest essentials

and jewellery. They were allowed and limited funds in

cash.

The Nathorff family eventually settled in New York, where they started a new life. After several years of hardship, during which Nathorff worked as a cleaner while her husband learned English in order to practise medicine again, they began to prosper once more.

158

Hitler's Scientists

Her husband died in 1987, but she

in 1954;

Nathorff published her diary in German

never returned to Germany.

Tlie Fate of Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein, the world's two most famous living Jews — many would have regarded them as the two greatest living scientists — were distantly known to each other. They had both put

scientific association 'quite indifferent to

and so-called

metaphysical speculation

which

transcendental doctrine', a scheme

critical

new

19 12 to the foundation of a

their signatures in

foundered on the outbreak of world war. They had met

briefly in

the 1920s in Berlin, respecting each other across an appreciable gulf

of mutual ignorance of each other's

disciplines. Einstein

was not

inclined at that stage to give credit to Freud's theory of repression

(although he

would

later,

in 1936,

concede

on the

validity

its

occasion of the psychoanalyst's eightieth birthday), whereas Freud is

recorded

saying of Einstein: 'he understands

as

psychology as I do about physics,' they were able

a basis

'to talk pleasantly to

about

each other'. in

Germany during

the

1932, Freud had agreed to a public exchange of views

with Einstein which would be promoted by the Institute

much

on which, Freud remarked,

As the Nazi Party gathered strength

summer of

as

Int^ernational

of Intellectual Cooperation (founded by the League of

Nations in 1926). Einstein had asked, rhetorically:

of delivering mankind from the menace responded to

his

own

while conceding that

human

there any

way

of war?' Einstein had

question optimistically.

international authority militarily strong

'Is

enough

He

argued for an

to enforce peace,

beings were fiUed with a

'lust for

hatred and destruction'. But that was precisely where there was a role, as Einstein

now

proposed, for psychoanalysis in the

life

of

individuals and nations in the pursuance of peace.

Freud, however, was not inclined to optimism on the efficacy of psychoanalysis

as a cure-all for

September of 1932, he wrote

the aggression of human beings. In

to Einstein:

Medicine under Hitler

There

is

no likelihood of our being able

tendencies. In

lives

to suppress humanity's aggressive

some happy corners of the

brings forth abundantly whatever

man

159

desires, there flourish races

go gently by, unknowing of aggression or

hardly credit

.

aggressiveness equality

.

.

The

by ensuring the

.

.

can

do away with human

Meanwhile they

armaments, and their hatred of outsiders

I

of material needs and enforcing

satisfaction .

whose

constraint. This

Bolshevists, too, aspire to

between man and man

where nature

earth, they say,

is

not the

busily perfect their

least

of the

factors

of

cohesion amongst themselves.'^

When

Hitler

Einstein-Freud

Reich. In

came

to

power

text, entitled

May

the following year, the published

Wtiy War?, was banned in the Third

on

Freud's works were thrown

of books along with he was burning

'in

Einstein's.

Freud

later

the best of company,' a

painful irony, since four of his five sisters

camps by the end of World War

the Berlin bonfire

remarked

comment

were

that at least

replete with

to die in the death

II.

Freud seemed aware of the danger of Hitlerism spreading to Vienna, but he was resigned.

of death

He

like another.''^

'If they kill

me — good.

It is

one kind

admitted in 1934, however, that he

would

leave Austria if a puppet of Hitler's led the country. 'The

world

is

Germany

turning,' he remarked, 'into an [is] its

worst

prison,

and

cell.'^'*

Already, in Berlin, the suffered the

enormous

same Jewish

German

Psychoanalytical Society had

dismissals as the medical profession.

Max

Eitingon, head of the society, was a Russian Jew: he fled to Palestine

and was succeeded by

his

number two,

Felix

Boehm. But German

psychoanalysis was soon under the effective control of Professor

M. H.

Goering, cousin of Hermann, the Air Minister. Professor

Goering

let

it

be

known

that Hitler's

Mein Kampf would be the

basic textbook of psychoanalysts in the

the institute's library was confiscated

as

Third Reich. In 1936 well

as

the assets of the

Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, the institution's publishing

house in Leipzig.

Meanwhile the German Society for Psychotherapy, ization to the psychoanalysts' society,

sister

organ-

had been reorganized under

i6o

Hitler's Scientists

firm Nazi control cal

as

the

newly named International General Medi-

Society for Psychotherapy.

The

president, Ernst Kretschmer,

had resigned and Freud's one-time colleague and

rival,

Carl Gustav

Jung, took over, also assuming the editorship of the psychotherapperiodical Zentralhlatt fUr Psychotherapie.

ists'

Jung was

to defend

himself against charges of Nazi collaboration by insisting that he

had intervened with the regime on behalf of dismissed or persecuted psychotherapists,

many of whom were

had maintained ever since 191 2

Jung was guilty of anti1934 on Freud's deleterious

Semitism. Since Jung expatiated in influence

on

psychoanalysis, Freud

felt

Jung now made

verdict. Certainly

Jewish. Freud, however,

that

vindicated in his long-term

Freud

a personal focus

of

his

critique of psychoanalysis as unremittingly Jewish. Jung argued that

he had merely that

resisted Freud's 'soulless materialism'

Freud encouraged anti-Semitism by

and charged

his readiness to 'scent

out

anti-Semitism everywhere'. In a typical disquisition on the issue in his

It

own

has

periodical,

been

a great

Jung wrote

mistake of

all

in 1934:

previous medical psychology to apply

Jewish categories which are not even binding for all Jews, indiscriminately to Christians,

Germans or

Slavs. In so doing,

medical psychology has

— the

creatively

a childishly banal morass,

while for

declared that most precious secret of the Germanic people

prophetic depth of the soul

decades

my

—

to

be

warning voice has been suspected of anti-Semitism. The

source of this suspicion

more than did all

his

is

Freud.

Germanic

He did not know the Germanic soul any

imitators

.

.

.

Has the mighty apparition of

National Socialism which the whole world watches with astonished eyes taught

them something

better?'^

Glowing encomiums of the Germans' 'depth of soul' a year into Hitler's regime were not likely to encourage the view among practitioners, many of whom were Jewish, that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy were in good hands. Little wonder that Wilhelm Stekel,

one of Freud's

earliest

Chaim Weizmann urging

and most

loyal supporters,

that the University

wrote to

of Jerusalem should

Medicine under Hitler

now become

i6i

the centre for Germany's 'prohibited branch of

psychoanalysis'.

Analysis

continued in

a

clandestine

fashion

in

clinics

for

nervous disorders, the analysands being virtually smuggled into such institutions. Sessions in the

end from 1938, when dangerous.

homes came to an made such practices too

analysts' private

Hitler's police state

The Freudian terminology of

analysis

was masked

with alternative phraseology. For example, the word itself was substituted

by

analysis

deep-psychological treatment of long

^^

duration'.

In the meantime, altogether in to the

'real

United

although psychoanalysis did not die out

Germany, the centre of gravity of the States,

Gemian trained. The migration

practice shifted

where many of the home-grown United

to the

analysts

of practitioners,

States

were

many of

whom had been mentors of the American community of psychoanalysts,

coincided with the worst years of the Depression. Ernest

Jones, analyst

Some falling.

and Freud's biographer, wrote

seventy thousand Jews got away from

Among them

are

know of four or been much worse

in April 1933:

Germany

as

the

blow was

most of the German psychoanalytical

members

The

society;

I

only

five

has

than you seem to think and has really quite lived

up to the Middle Ages

m reputation.

still left

It is a

in Berlin.

very hunnish

persecution

affair.'''

Jones was busy raising funds to receive the influx of psychoanalysts.

The American community of analysts with equanimity. Their

arrival

did not take to the influx

had exacerbated an ongoing

set

of

schisms within psychoanalysis in America, characterized by Ives

Hendrick,

at

a conflict

of 'Jew

against European, older against

younger

the time a youthful radical,

against gentile,

American

as

generations, city against city, personal rivalries of intensely narcissistic people'.^**

Nevertheless,

Ernst Gellner has festations

as

the social anthropologist the late

commented, psychoanalysis and its various mani-

could not prosper in authoritarian regimes such

as

Nazi

1

62

Hitler's Scientists

Germany. In America

it

could offer 'pastoral care' for relationships,

modern

the source of most anxiety in

view of humankind psychoanalysis

life,

and

a realistically tragic

in a violent era. In the post-war era,

moreover,

would form an important element of the procurable

self-improvement market. Freud,

who was suffering from cancer,

remained in Vienna

until

when the German race laws were applied to Austrian many tortuous negotiations in Britain, Berlin and

the Anschluss,

citizens. After

Vienna, Freud was eventually allowed to leave Austria for Britain,

where he took up residence

in

London. Before he was

allowed to

set off for the station the

document,

stating that

ordered Freud to heartily

sign.

recommend

finally

Gestapo arrived carrying

a

he had been properly treated, which they

Freud wrote

his signature, adding:

'I

can

the Gestapo to anyone. '^^

Constraints on Psychology

The fate of schools of academic or scientific psychology in Germany followed the pattern of the predicament of most other communities

of scientists in Germany. Once purged of its Jewish and left-wing psychologists

German

(six

of

fifteen fuU professors teaching

universities lost their posts),

psychology in

psychology survived

after a

fashion, subject to oppression from within and without.

The German Society for Psychology was purged of Its Jewish board members in April 1933, while individual academics vied with each other to demonstrate the Nazi-oriented credentials of their theories

and research programmes. Hitler was extolled

psychologist',

and was characterized

1933 meeting of the

German

nitarianism.

hijacked to

keynote speech of the

Society for Psychology

emotionally deep Chancellor'. ences and congresses

in the

as 'a great

as a

'bold and

The themes of upcoming

confer-

now focused on racial issues and Nazi commu-

Schools of psychological theory were twisted or fit

Nazi ideology. Gestalt psychology was adapted

Jena University to notions of the 'German sought to expound

the racial basis

soul',

at

while other schools

of psychological types. Erich

RudolfJaensch of Marburg University and Felix Krueger of Leipzig

Medicine under Hitler

163

attacked the Berlin University Gestalt school under

Kohler

as excessively materialistic.

Kohler asserted

Wolfgang

a structural

cor-

respondence between the external world and the mind, whereas the Nazi perspective advocated a holism that called for a return to

and heroism. Krueger

feeling, manliness his

enthusiastically

employed

vague notions of psychological holism to promote the need for

Germans

group consciousness, and

to lose their individuality in

even to support geopolitical expansionism and racism.

The

fate

of the Psychological

Institute in Berlin illustrates the

attempts of individual academics to comply with the regime in

order to preserve for

valued school of research in the face of pressure

a

conformity from below

academics in neighbouring

well

as

The

faculties.

who was

was headed by Kohler,

the vindictiveness of Nazi

as

not

Psychological Institute

Jew. The

a

drift

of

his

psychology (which had no relationship to Gestalt therapy in

America of the

1950s, nor the Gestalt theory that

behaviourism) was concerned with the quest for tive impressions

phenomena,

to

oppose

theory of subjec-

of form and their relationship to objective physical

especially in the processes

from Jaensch's

a

was

self-serving critiques,

of vision and sound. Apart

Nazi academics were quick to

point out that one of the eminent cofounders of Gestalt psychology,

Max Wertheimer,

was

a Jew.

Kohler's reaction to the lent.

He

first

wave of dismissals appeared ambiva-

attempted to retain the services of his distinguished Jewish

colleague, Kurt Lewin, while seeming to endorse in public a qualified acceptance

of denominational quotas

New

interview with the Foresees

a Liberal

government was

Germany', he declared to

be

in the professions. In

an

York Times, 7 July 1933, entitled 'Kohler

commended

that the National Socialist

for apportioning top jobs in

the universities and the civil service according to religious affiliation. 'This,'

he

said,

'would have

outside world, and

adherence of

a

tion to Hitler

(as

most tranquilizing

would win over

multitude of

the most valuable.'

a

The

to

German

our

we saw

earlier) that there

on the

new government

citizens,

reflection paralleled

effect

including

the

some of

Max Planck's observawere

different sorts

Jews, worthy and worthless, and distinctions must be

of

made between

164

Hitler's Scientists

them. Given the menace and uncertainties of the time, however,

Kohler was evidently engaged

in diplomatic tactics for survival. His

wrote

Gestalt cofounder, Kurt Koffka, is

a

very courageous man,

like

many

scientists

much more

about

at

'Kohler

this time:

than one could know.'^° But

and academics, Kohler attempted

separating his public role as a scientist civil servant

to survive

from

by

his private

status as a 'free' individual.

On the first day of the new academic year, addressing the students and faculty, he gave a weak Nazi salute, that

at

the same time announcing

he did not see eye to eye with the Nazi regime but

that

he was

obeying the requirements of the university administration. That

month an

article

appeared in the students' newsletter of the Philo-

which Ludwig Bieberbach, noted mathematician and recent convert to Nazism, was dean, asking whether the Psychological Institute had submitted itself to Gleichschaltung. The

sophical Faculty, of

author was Hans Preuss, student leader of the university's Science Office. Preuss charged that the Psychological Institute

hold of communists and Jews and that

German

around

there. Kohler's students rallied

was

students

a strong-

felt

isolated

their professor, counter-

could not be denied that students were

charging publicly that

it

selected, but that this

was

strictly

on

the basis of their scientific

abilities.

The following month members of the Nazi League broke

into

Kohler's offices to search for evidence of treason. Nothing incriminating was found. year,

same

A second raid occurred in April of the following

1934, instigated directly result.

Early in the

torchlight procession in

remarked build a

later:

by Ludwig Bieberbach, with the

summer

the institute students called for a

honour of Kohler. As one of the students

'We were

naive

enough

waU around ourselves and do

to believe that

we

could

science inside, while the Nazis

busied themselves with their Volk.'^^

The

students lost their bid to

parade for their professor, and Kohler was destined to lose his battle to build

up

a special position in

which he could give the Nazis

margin while remaining aloof as an individual and

as a scientist.

In June of 1934 the students of the Psychological Institute

subjected to interrogation by

members of

the

their

German

were

Students'

Medicine under Hitler

165

League led by Berlin student leader Richter. Students were asked, for example,

how they could support a professor who was associated

with the Jew Wertheimer. Under interrogation, some of these students appeared to adopt Kohler's position

know

answered one of them,

that Professor Kohler,'

denies the Jewish problem.

Kohler,

high-ranking

'I

no way

'in

offered his resignation, took

to the extent

official in

quotas:

'^^

who had by now

Nazi students

on Jewish

of arranging

a

on the

meeting between

the Prussian Ministry of Science and

a

Edu-

Hedwig von

cation and a psychology student and his assistant,

Restorff, representing the institute. Their arguments included a

plea for the orderly operation of the Fiihrerprinzip, which, they said,

was threatened by the unruly conduct of students

attempting to run things from the bottom up. As

who were

a result the

Ministry later confirmed their trust in the professor, and issued an

order for the Nazi students to be disciplined.

German

A year later the Nazi

Students' League was neutralized.

But Kohler's

tribulations

were

from over. In June of 1935 the

far

Gestapo instructed the university to

Duncker and Otto von Lauenstein, position was

now

untenable.

fire

two of his

assistants,

for anti-Nazi activities. Kohler's

He

again offered his resignation,

which was accepted on 6 September, and he departed United

States to take

up

Karl

a post as visiting professor at

for the

Swarthmore

College supported by a Rockefeller Foundation grant.

Bieberbach the mathematician and Johann Baptist Rieffert, philosopher and psychologist,

now made

their

move

a

to take over

psychology in the university. Both enthusiastic Nazis, they had plotted with student accomplices to tants as a

in the

denounce the

prelude to unseating Kohler. Rieffert,

institute's assis-

who

had worked

army psychological service, joined Berlin University

offering a course in 'character study'.

From

joined the Nazi Party in March 1933 and the

in 193

1,

this

vantage point he

SA

in July. In July of

1935 Bieberbach urged the appointment of Rieffert

as

director of

the Psychological Institute in the event of Kohler's departure.

He

repeated the request in September, asking that Rieffert should

convert the

work of

the institute to 'race psychology'. In the

1

66

Hitler's Scientists

event Rieffert was appointed temporary director, but his reign was

By the member of

was discovered

short-lived.

following year

been

a

the Social Democratic Party.

from

his university post

By

He

that

he had

was sacked

and dropped from the Nazi Party.

the late 1930s the psychology courses offered in Berlin

versity

and

it

were

a

mix of experimental and developmental psychology

'race psychology' devised

Hans Gunther, seelenkunde)

.

Uni-

as

well

as a

course

An American

'utter barrenness'

by the Philosophical Faculty under titled 'racial soul studies' {Rassen-

visitor,

Barbara Burks, reported the

of the intellectual climate of what had been the

former stronghold of the Gestalt school. ^^

12.

While some

The Cancer Campaign

scientific disciplines in

Germany degenerated under

the influence of Nazi ideology and oppression, some, like basic

biology, merely stagnated, and others even appeared to flourish/

Needham

The

historian Joseph

evil

regime does not, and can not, bring forth the good

science.

But

scholars have

has

commented

that the tree

of an

fruit

of

been revising the bad-tree-bad-fruit

view, taking into account what appeared to be the progressive Nazi

campaign against cancer.

'How many of us know?' asks the historian

Robert Proctor,

that

Nazi health

activists

smoking campaign?

was the most aggressive use of asbestos, bans

launched the world's most powerful anti-

How many

know

of us

in the world,

that the

Nazi war on cancer

encompassing

on

the

pesticides

and

restrictions

on tobacco, and bans on carcinogenic

food dyes?-

The phenomenon

is

of great

interest, since

questions about science itself that politics.

Even

at its

most

scientific

it

it

prompts searching

so easily adapted to Nazi

and apparently progressive, from

the point of view of public health policy, the anti-cancer campaign in

Hitler's

Germany was

inextricably linked with racism and

anti-Semitism.

Having led the world chemistry, the

in dyestufl^s technology

Germans were the

first

decades of the nineteenth century links between coal aniline dyes,

industrial

tar derivatives,

chromates and various forms of cancer. In 1902

Gennan medical

scientists

were the

cancer, and especially leukaemia,

first

to detect a link

and X-rays. The

supported anti-cancer agency was founded in a result

and

to discover in the latter

Germany

of the perception of rising incidence of cancers.

between

first

state-

in 1900 as

1

68

Hitler's Scientists

From

the outset the agency decided

indicating a conviction that the causes

1920s national campaigns under the to include early detection

work

place.

remarkable

Under

on prevention

as a

key,

were environmental. By the

Weimar Republic expanded

and health and

measures in the

safety

the Nazis these initiatives

were taken

to

new lengths.

After Hitler

came

to

power campaigns were launched in

the press

and on radio advocating regular examinations. Poster campaigns advised as

men

to

have their colons checked for cancer

they serviced their motor

cars,

and for smokers to

as

frequently

desist.

Mass

X-rays were carried out in schools, the army, in factories and offices.

Since the Nazi

war on cancer was conducted on

the level of

prevention rather than cure, the determination to succeed switched

from biomedical research and

analysis

to public health campaigns, the gathering

of statistics, or epidemiology, and surveillance for early

detection.^

Combating campaign anti-dust

asbestosis

was

a striking

example of an enlightened

against occupational disease. Early in the regime, an

campaign had targeted asbestos

fibres as a serious hazard,

resulting in mandatory rules for the construction of ventilators and

measures to reduce exposure.

By

German and

1938

Austrian

researchers had found compelling evidence for twelve different types

of cancer associated with asbestos; their findings became the basis for ever- widening research including experiments showing the growth

of tumours in the lungs of exposed mice.

By

1942

a

German review

concluding that asbestos was dangerous contrasted with the American and British view that working with the mineral was harmless.

The following year the Nazi government accepted the principle that workers affected by

asbestosis

should receive compensation."*

Anti-Semitism in the anti-cancer campaign soon emerged in the metaphorical exploitation of cancer by the Nazi ideologues. Richard Doll, a distinguished cancer epidemiologist in Britain after

War

II,

remembers

that while studying in

World

Germany he saw

a film

which Jews were depicted as cancer cells, while curative X-rays targeting these tumours were depicted as Nazi storm slide in

troopers.^

The Cancer Campaign

many forms of behaviour and diseases

Despite the tendency to see

ment, occupation,

and

lifestyle

culture,

endorsed under the Nazis, although

weak

Arthur Hintze,

was

a

religious practices

implicated in the

view of some

globally.

between cancer and

might play

was

that people

of

susceptible than others.

diet;

per cent of

'experts',

were

all

he

also

thought that

Otmar von Verschuer,

a role.

work of Josef Mengele, I

Germany

tobacco to

'civilization',

leading radiologist and surgeon in Berlin, believed

a link

tributed to only

or

was suggested

it

make-up might be more

genetic

that there

were caused by environ-

the conviction that cancers

as heritable,

169

later

suggested heredity con-

cancers. Jews,

however,

in the

of cancer. They had brought

carriers

in the first place

and they traded in tobacco

But because of their genetic weaknesses, Jews were dispro-

portionately susceptible to cancer.

The

enthusiastic use

tions for the

tool

of X-rays for diagnosis had malign implica-

expanding policy of sterilization. X-rays

prompted an

medical attendants

diagnostic

as a

increase in resulting cancers, especially

who worked

Attendants

who

to science'

and celebrated

fell

constantly with X-ray machines.

victim to the disease were as

among

known

Even while one

heroes.

as

'martyrs

sector of the

medical profession was developing the most rigorous protective standards for the use of X-rays as a diagnostic tool, another sector

was planning

technology for the

to exploit the

sterilization

of

'undesirables'.

Under

the Nazis measures to

nants in the workplace put in health

more

a

and

combat

Germany

safety procedures,

matter of rhetoric than

at

a

wide variety of contami-

the forefront of the world

although in time of war this became reality.

Companies

like

IG

Farben,

while subscribing to wide-ranging health and safety measures,

maintained in wartime

a strict limit

of workers to be hospitalized

of 5 per cent on the proportion

as a result

of occupational

illness.

At

the same time, the notion of euthanasia as an answer to illness was

ever present: the regime wished to prevent race',

but

it

also believed in a policy

illness in

of banishing the

the 'master

sick!

In their drive for cancer prevention Nazi nutritionists identified diet as a

major contributory

factor.

Germans were warned

against

lyo

Hitler's Scientists

smoked

excessive consumption of tinned and

and

and encouraged to consume

sugar,

vegetables.

Much was made and

a teetotaller

The

and

was

fact that Hitler

a vegetarian,

non-smoker.

a

between cancer and

link

Swiss and

of the

meats, fatty foods

cereals, fresh fruit

German

statistics

diet

was perhaps

consequence of

a

from the middle of the nineteenth

century which revealed that cancer of the stomach accounted for

more than

a third

of

incidence of the disease.

all

The

gradual

reduction of incidence of stomach cancer, from the high levels of the First War, was most likely a result of an increase in fresh foods,

and

a decline in adulterated foods,

Many

foodstuffs,

The

Hitler

Youth

private matter!'^

dem

Fiihrer!'

their

transportation.

less

an encouragement of

promotion of the well-being of the

health Fiihrer proclaimed: 'Nutrition

As

a

propaganda poster put

(Your body belongs to the

contrasted the Nazi notion of health socialist

modern

fresher than they were.

drive for better eating was clearly

individual health than the

One

to

moreover, had been subject to harmful dye addi-

make them appear

tives to

due

as a

it:

is

Volk.

not a

'Dein Korper gehort

Fiihrer).

Nazi ideologues

communal duty with

conviction that individuals could do

as

the

they wished with

own bodies. Another aspect of diet was the Nazi attachment to

traditional notions

of naturalism: natural foods, such

bread, were superior to white bread,

as

wholewheat

which was deemed

a

Trench

revolutionary invention'. But there were economic considerations,

Heavy meat eating and white bread eating were deemed a drain on the economy. In his four-year plan, Hermann Goering excoriated the practice of fattening animals on grain that should be

besides.

used for cereals and bread. that

it

It

had been pointed out by economists

took 90,000 calories of grain to produce 9,000

calories

of

pork. Suspicions of a

Hnk between alcohol and cancer were well

entrenched in Germany by the 1930s, and that alcohol

being

damaged human

teetotal,

genes.

it

was widely held

Both Hider and Himmler,

put the campaign against alcohol on

a level

of high

priority.

a treacherous poison,

and

Hitler

to alcohol than

were

lost

Himmler beheved alcohol to be claimed that more lives were lost

The Cancer Campaign

on the

field

171

of battle. Despite the popularity of beer in Germany,

not only did the drive against alcohol involve postal campaigns

and rationing, but the 1933 Sterilization Lav^ allowed for the vasectomizing of alcoholics, who were incarcerated in concentration

The and

camps/ effort to

German

to inform the

advance of the

far in

startling truth

was

demonstrate

is

that

rest

originally established.

time, the

fact, for a

smoking included

between tobacco and cancer,

public of the dangers of smoking, was

of the world. Proctor comments: 'The

was

it

a link

actually in

Nazi Germany

German tobacco epidemiology was, in in the world. '^ The battle against

most advanced

a

range of measures that were seen only relatively

recently in the United States and Britain, and are

most of Europe. The Nazis banned smoking

in

still

many

including offices and waiting rooms. There were bans cigarettes,

that the link

lagging in

public areas,

on advertising

with special reference to smokers appearing manly, sport-

ing or sexually attractive, and ubiquitous health notices especially

No-smoking carriages were provided on trains with statutory fmes. The president of Jena University, Karl Astel, director of the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research there, banned smoking on the campus and was known for snatching aimed

at

the young.

from students' mouths. There were cases, even, of drivers on account of causing an accident while smoking. Tobacco,

cigarettes

arrested

according to the propaganda, reduced energy for work, cause of impotence in men;

it

was an 'epidemic',

it

was

a 'plague', a

a

fonn

of 'lung masturbation'. It

was the German physician

Fritz Lickint

strated the first statistical evidence linking

through

'case series' revealing that

likely to

be smokers.

A

decade

und Organismus (Tobacco and

pendium lip,

in 1929

demon-

lung cancer and cigarettes

lung cancer patients were more

later

he was

the Organism), a

to publish his

Tabak

thousand-page com-

revealing the diseases associated with every form of

smoking, chewing or sniffing tobacco, lung,

who

mouth, jaw, oesophagus and

as

well

as

throat. In the

cancers of the

meantime two

formidable studies were put in hand, eventually published in 1939

and 1943. The

first,

by Franz Hermann Miiller of Cologne,

172

Hitler's Scientists

anticipated British and

American epidemiological

ing and lung cancer by seven years. His study

falls

studies

of smok-

into the category

of a 'survey-based retrospective case-control study'.

'^

A

survey was

devised whereby the smoking behaviour of the lung cancer group

was compared with the behaviour of a healthy 'control group' of

The survey was then sent to

similar age.

with further questions about the

The

results revealed that

the relatives of the deceased

patients' habits

and environment.

lung cancer victims were more than

six

times likely to be extremely heavy smokers (ten to fifteen cigars or

more than thirty-five cigarettes a day) than less enthusiastic smokers.

Among

the healthy group, however, there was a

proportion of non-smokers than smokers. Miiller,

under

thirty

when he

much higher who was still

published his paper, concluded that tobacco

was not simply an important cause of lung cancer, but that 'the extraordinary

rise in

tobacco use' was 'the single most important

cause of the rising incidence of lung cancer' in recent decades. ^°

There were no noticeable Nazi or and three Jewish

scientists are

racist

dimensions to the study,

mentioned

in the text. Before the

end of the war Miiller disappeared without

presumed missing

Then

and has been

in action.

Jena University's

at

trace

Institute for

Tobacco Hazards two

medical researchers, the pathologist Eberhard Schairer and his

young

colleague, Erich Schoniger, published a paper in 1943 that

surpassed even Miiller's study for complexity, comparing lung

cancers in

men

and women, and in

rural

and urban populations.

Their most important conclusion was that smoking was to

be

a cause

of lung cancer, but

less likely to

likely

be the cause of

other cancers.

Yet

it

was one thing

to launch

campaign

quite another to stop people smoking.

after

campaign, but

Tobacco consumption grew

in the first six to seven years after Hitler

came

to

power, doubling

between 1933 and 1940. Consumption dropped back by virtually a third by 1944, probably a result of rationing. Was the massive increase a

'resistance' to

German remains that Germany had

stress, as

fact

form of

the

Nazi rule?

Or

an indication of

nation faced the prospect of another war? led the

world

The

in a crucial piece

of

The Cancer Campaign

epidemiology, even though the regime, despite

173

its

best efforts, did

not have the power to discourage people from smoking. Overall, the Nazi

war on cancer showed,

as

Robert Proctor

notes, that 'good' science could be 'pursued in the

democratic spite

ideals.

name of anti-

Public health initiatives were pursued not just

of fascism, but also

in

consequence of fascism.''^

in

1 3

As

Geopolitik

.

in the medical profession,

enthusiastically espoused

and Lebensraum

where Nazism was

and promoted by

its

actively

and

practitioners, seg-

ments of the discipline of geography made contributions to National Socialist ideology.

Out of German geography came

justified the call for an

ideas that

expansion of living space, Lebensraum,

thereby endowing Hitler's aims for conquest with scientific legitimacy.

The

of geopolitics was originally the brainchild of

'science'

Rudolf Kjellen,

a

Swedish

political scientist,

in 1905. Kjellen had, in turn,

rapher Sir Halford Mackinder. Mackinder,

of the London School of Economics

state as

were, like a single organism'.

British

who became

geog-

director

decade of the

a people's 'heartland,

organic in nature, behaving,

He was

required, for a country to expand

Mackinder held

coined the term

in the first

twentieth century, conjured up the idea of

and concept of the nation

who

been influenced by the

convinced of the need,

beyond

its

as it

when

boundaries.

that different racial types adapted

through Dar-

winian natural selection to their geographical environment. In

view the temperate climes of the Bull'

British Isles

type, with an aptitude for

his

produced the 'John

freedom and

civilized values,

whereas the Slavic type, reared on the open steppes of Russia, was

more adapted and

acquiescent to despotic rule. Until complete

adaptation to climate and geography had taken place, the peoples

of the planet, thought Mackinder, should submit to the guidance of the Anglo-Saxon type; and in the event of their recognize the

wisdom of this, Pax

for the benefit of the world. It

was Ratzel, however,

failing to

Britannica should be imposed

^

who

coined the term Lebensraum in a

key essay entitled Der Lebensraum, published in 1901, to describe 'geographical region within

which

living organisms develop'.

a

The

Geopolitik and Lebensraum

work was

principal scope of the

raphy,

he

but

applied

also

175

the study of plant and zoogeog-

treatment

sociobiological

his

of

Lebensraum to warfare between nations.^ Ratzel's ideas

were exploited

in the 1920s

by Karl Haushofer,

a

former general in the Bavarian army, and applied to the process of expelling disruptive minorities in the interests of an expanding

nation

state:

an early version of ethnic cleansing. Haushofer visited

Hitler several times in 1924 in the prison at Landsberg

Nazi leader was detained

after the

The notion of Lebensraum, Volk,

now entered the

he put

it

where the

Beer Hall Putsch.

linked with fear for the survival of

thinking of Hitler. 'Our

in his political testament

German

nation,' as

Mein Kampf, written during

his

incarceration,

must find the courage

our people and their strength for an

to gather

advance along the road that will lead living space to

new

land and

soil,

this

people from

and hence

also free

of vanishing from the earth or of serving others

But was discipline

this

it

present restricted

it

from the danger

as a slave nation.-*

version of geopolitics in any sense a science? As a

owed more

political history

its

to an idiosyncratic version

of cultural and

than to authentic geography. Ratzel and Kjellen

believed that a thorough knowledge of a country's geography was essential for

shaping national policy on

a

declared that Gennany's predicament after

grand

scale.

Haushofer

World War I demanded

geopolitical specialists for the resolution of the crisis of defeat,

bankruptcy and

loss

of territory. Just

urged the importance of science

as

as figures like

the Fatherland's best asset in the

post-war situation, there were those

who

geopolitics as the principal discipline for

To promote

the

new

discipline,

cited the 'science' of

German

claims, the periodical hardly bore the ality

and empirical method

He

as:

Packed with

inflated

marks of objectivity, ration-

that are associated

described geopolitics

recovery.

Haushofer founded and edited

in 1924 the periodical Zeitschriftfur Geopolitik.

plines.

Max Planck had

with

scientific disci-

176

Hitler's Scientists

the science of the earth relationships of poHtical processes the broad foundations of geography, especially

which .

.

.

on

.

.

political

the science of the political organisms in space and their structure

is

Geopolitics

out to furnish the tools for political action and the

sets

directives for poHtical

namely, the

art

life as

whole. Thus, geopolitics becomes an

of guiding practical

conscience of the

politics.

Geopolitics

is

state."*

in

had stemmed from 'ignorance of the geographical

I

on the

part of

art,

the geographic

Haushofer laboured the point that Germany's defeat

War

based on

.

geography,

Germany's

leaders.^

The

discipline

World

realities'

of geopolitics

emerged from an 'elementary craving for better scientific protection of the

political unit'.^

periodical that

primacy

as

He shared with Oswald Spengler the percep-

West was

tion that the

it

in

decHne and argued

was Germany's destiny

of

his

Europe back

to

in the pages

to lead

the defender of civilized values in the world.

Germany

was the heart of Europe, and Europe was the heart of the

civilized

world. After the harsh measures of the Treaty of Versailles,

threatened to

condemn Germany

which

permanent debt, separate

to

its

peoples and deprive the Fatherland of legitimate territory, Haushofer urged geographers to

agreed with him and geographical

become politicized. Not all geographers

the stage was set for tensions between the

classicists

who

argued for an apolitical stance and

Haushofer's growing geopolitical group.

During the Weimar period, even

as

Hitler adapted Haushofer's

leading ideas to Nazi ideology, geopolitical ideas began to feature in education.

The

influence of right-wing politics in geography

increasingly adopted a biologically racist tone. associated with Lebensraum

geographers

Two

were promoted by

key concepts

a constituency

of

who promoted the aspirations of German imperialism:

Drang nach Osten (Push to the

East)

and

of the People and of Culture). The

Volks- imd Kultiirboden (Soil

latter

notion drew together

three interpretations of territory or belonging: the Reich, or state borders; ethnic communities outside those borders; and wider cultural links

with Germanhood."^

Geopolitik

Under

dttrf

Lebensraum

177

the Nazis, from 1933 onwards, geopolitics

compulsory subject

in schools

and

became

a

newly drafted

universities, the

textbooks quoting extensively from Haushofer and Ratzel in support of Hitler's bellicose Lehensraum rhetoric. Schoolchildren were

taught to look forward to the formation of Germany's world

empire, Germanisches Weltreich,

a necessary

outcome of the Father-

land's just quest for Lehensraum.

Students were informed that 'the meaning and the iron will of national socialist statesmanship are the securing of our Lehensraum

and

a sensible

organization of space

ation suitable to

Germany means

.

to

.

.

To

undo

create a spatial organiz-

the

damage caused by an

unavailing population.'^

Haushofer assumed a central role tics

under

Hitler,

National Socialist foreign policy theories,

imply

the father of German geopoli-

ideology.

as a

manifestation of his

Germany

to deplore Hitler's

Union

as

however,

did not

the reverse of his belief that

Germany, Japan and Russia should make status

own

his geocentric ideas for

invasion of the Soviet

The

to praise

He would live,

even though

a racist

as

and he was happy during the 1930s

common

of geopolitics would continue to

cause.

rise

with

Hitler's

rapid conquest of territories to the east after the invasion of Poland

and of Russia. In the wake of the expansion eastwards, the

ment of German

transports of slave labourers westwards, geographers to

work

establish-

settlements in Poland, the destruction ofJews and

establishing

would be

set

demographics and assessing the 'Germanic'

populations and optimal population densities in Russia and the

Ukraine. Anticipating the turn of events after Stalingrad:

Red Army juggernaut

rolled towards Berlin,

these Nazi geopolitical calculations.

as

the

would sweep away

Nazi Physics

14-

Unlike medicine, anthropology and geography, which

by contributing exploitable

the regime

scientific respectability to

physics was

less

ideas

with

a

assisted

semblance of

National Socialism, the discipline of

amenable to being hijacked by Nazi ideologies.

This did not prevent the Nazi physicists Phihpp Lenard and

Johannes Stark attempting to dominate the physics community.

The

story of Nazi physics in the 1930s reveals the extent to

non-Nazi extent to

physicists

which they

allowed themselves to be pressured, and the resisted.

They were

less

prepared to compro-

mise with forces within the discipline than those outside

When

which

Hider came

to

power

in 1933, Lenard

it.

and Stark were

seventy-one and fifty-nine years of age respectively; Stark was

set

to become the more active of the two. Lenard went to see Hitler

and informed him state

and

in

that science in the universities

need of reform.

appropriate posts for suitably

He

was

in a deplorable

offered his services to secure

Germanic

physicists.

We do not know

how Hitler reacted.

^

Lenard meanwhile embarked on

a series

of lectures, which he

eventually edited into a four-volume work, entitled Deutsche Physik

pubUshed

{German

Physics),

opening

lines set the

enterprise: said

'"German

in parts

tone for the

through the mid-i930s. racist

physics?" people

Its

sub-text of the entire

will ask.

I

could have

also

Aryan physics or physics of Nordic-natured persons, physics of

the reality-founders, of the truth-seekers, physics of those

who

have founded natural research.'^

While Lenard hoped

to

be

a

major influence

in the wings. Stark

on controlling, or at least influencing, the key posts in scientific management in Nazi Germany. Stark wanted the presidency of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for Lenard; for himself

had set

his heart

he sought the Emergency Foundation with

its

control of funding

Nazi

Physics

1

79

and choice of research programmes; and he wanted the presidency of the PhysikaHsch-Technische Reichsanstalt acquired in

May

On

of 1933.

signifies a definite

able

welcoming

Stark's

new

a

powers:

renunciation of the apparently already inescap-

predominance of what might

thinking in physics; and tist's

PTR), which he

appointment, Lenard wrote

his

piece in the Volkischer Beobachter^ 'It

(the

it is

a

move

briefly

be called Einsteinian

towards reaffirming the scien-

old prerogatives: to think independently, guided only by

nature.'^

He

added

that Einstein's theories

were

a

combination of

sound knowledge and 'some arbitrary additions that had been strung together mathematically'. These theories 'are to pieces,

which

is

up

to himself,

already falling

the due fate of unnatural products'.

At once Stark sought the Fiihrcrprinzip

now

to apply the fascist 'leadership principle'

— which advocated

strict lines

-

of authority leading

and he dismissed the 'Jews and leading

figures

of the

previous regime' from the institute's advisory committee, a body

which

in

time disappeared

ment of the PTR,

altogether.'*

that

circumstances of overlap and rivalry.

programmes with

in close collaboration

By

for the enlarge-

to include fifty large institutes, 300 laboratories

and thousands of personnel — plans

various research

He hoped

foundered in the prevailing

He

nevertheless established

military applications,

working

with the Luftwaffe and the army.

the following year he had

become

Research Foundation and could

would now control the grammes along 'German'

tell

universities lines,

president of the

German

Lenard that together they

and develop research pro-

meaning

a preference for experi-

mental research over theoretical. But following the appointment

of Bernhard Rust to the supreme ministerial post controlling education, science large

A

and

culture. Stark

found himself in

power-broking members of the Nazi

conflict

with the

cartels.

story that illustrates the fragmentation of the regime in

its

science policies, funding and appointments, and the ultimate failure

of the Deutsche Physik, involves the figure of Werner Heisenberg

and spans the entire decade

to the eve

of World

War

IL

1

80

Hitler's Scientists

Heisenberg's Chair

In August 1934, a

few days

death of Germany's President,

after the

Field Marshal Hindenburg, Hitler

announced his intention

to

com-

bine the offices of the presidency and the chancellorship, thereby

A

aspiring to the role of unchallenged dictator.

organized for 19 August and Against

this

support of

a

referendum was

propaganda campaign was launched.

background, Johannes Stark attempted to gather the

German Nobel

prize-winners, importuning

them

to

lend their names to a manifesto pledging loyalty to Hitler. Heisenberg, Laue, Planck and Nernst refused, insisting that science and politics

had nothing

do with each

to

supporting Hitler was not a political 'avowal of the

German

Volk to

its

other.^ Stark retorted that act;

Fiihrer'.

was, he argued, an

it

But praising Einstein

while refusing to support the Fiihrer, he went on, that indeed

was

The same month,

political.

scientists

working

the Kaiser

all civil

Institutes,

which included

and state-funded

in universities

Wilhelm

servants,

were required

institutions like

to take an oath

of

allegiance to Hitler. Heisenberg notably delayed taking the oath until the following year,

and

meantime

in the

record by taking a prominent part in

which

a

further blotted his

conference in Hanover,

and Einstein's September 1934, theories, were enthusiastically endorsed and promoted. Heisenberg

in

at

seemed bent, from

like so

theoretical physics,

many others, on attempting to

politics.

Later Heisenberg wrote to his

mother explaining

future of science but not the regime. in the small field

for the future.

is

left

for

how

he saw

remaining in Germany and working for the

his task as a scientist

is

separa'te science

'I

must be

satisfied to

oversee

of science the values that must become important

That

is

in this general chaos the only clear thing that

me to do. The world out there is really ugly, but the work

beautiful.'^ Events,

and the ugliness of the world 'out

however, were not to leave him

there',

in peace.

a Nazi decree in January 1935 forcing professors into retirement at sixty-five, the great Arnold Sommerfeld, aged

Following

sixty-six,

prepared

to

leave

his

post

at

Munich

University.

Nazi

Physics

18

Sommerfeld had held the appointment taking over in 1906 from

Ludwig Boltzmann,

employ the theory of probability

The

university and indeed

to appoint

for nearly thirty years since

the

first

physicist to

in investigating energy relations.

Sommerfeld himself were determined

Werner Heisenberg, who

time held a chair

at that

at

Leipzig University, where he ran the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Heisenberg

but he was

now

was

still,

Germany,

the leading theoretical physicist in

and the Munich chair was regarded, special

considered young,

at thirty-seven,

contribution

the

to

in

view of Sommerfeld's an appointment for

discipline,

a

theoretician.

But there was Nazi

now

fierce opposition to

who were

Lenard and Stark,

physicists

Heisenberg from the busily rooting out

scientists who nourished a 'Jewish' spirit — namely an aptitude for theory over experiment. In December 1935 Johannes Stark

delivered a vitriolic speech in Heidelberg, excoriating Einstein and

charging

although he 'has disappeared from

that,

unfortunately his his

spirit'.''

Stark

German

Germany

and supporters continue

friends

was about

to

was followed by scathing Beobachter

and

.

.

mentioned the pillars of the scientific establishment

- Planck and Laue — by name, adding that Heisenberg cal formalist'

.

to act in

Nazi

be rewarded with

articles in the

ideologue

attack

Volkischer

Rosenberg's

monthly

Alfred

Heisenberg replied temperately in the

The

Nazi newspaper

{National

Monatshefte

Nationalsozialistische

'the theoreti-

a chair.

Socialist

Beobachter, in

Monthlies).

February 1936,

defending Einstein's theory of relativity, but Stark was allowed to

append

a rejoinder in

'an aberration

tinued for

which he condemned Heisenberg's work

as

of the Jewish mind'.^ The attacks and ripostes con-

more than

an

a year, until

characterizing Heisenberg as

'a

article, partly

penned by

Stark,

white Jew', appeared on 15 July

1937 in the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps {The Black Corps, issue 28).

The

significance of the publication

auspices of Heinrich

Himmler,

appointed Reichsfiihrer-SS with

who

had

Nazi

state.

was the apparent year earlier been

a place in Hitler's cabinet,

responsibility for special intelligence gathering activities in the

a

and

on social and cultural

The article opened with a general screed:

1

82

Hitler's Scientists

The .

.

.

victory of racial anti-Semitism

for

not

it is

spirit that

a racial

Jew

And

he spreads.

is

to

be considered only

in himself who if

is

the carrier of this spirit

a partial

not

is

war

but rather the

a threat to us,

a

Jew but

a

German, then he should be considered doubly worthy of being combated as

the racial Jew,

who

cannot hide the origin of his

spirit.

Common slang

has coined a phrase for such bacteria carriers, the 'white Jew'.

body of the

In the

article Einstein,

were accused of excluding physics,

real

Haber, Sonimerfeld and Planck

Germans from appointments

and Heisenberg was characterized

'representative of the Einstein spirit in the

The

as 'that

white Jew' and

new Germany'. McCarthy

sub-text to the attack was reminiscent of the

witch-hunts of the 1950s; out, 'by exploiting the assassination

of

a

as historian

in

David Cassidy has pointed

dominant hate ideology of the day, character

key individual could be used to achieve the

influence they craved'. ^° Heisenberg was accused of smuggling an article

defending

relativity

theory into

a

Nazi paper, of attempting

Reich Education Ministry with

to influence the

his treacherous

views, of refusing to endorse Hitler's presidency, of securing his

Leipzig chair by favouritism of the 'white Jewish' establishment, of

harbouring Jews in

his

department.

was no longer

It

whether Heisenberg would succeed Sonimerfeld onslaught boded referred to Ossietzki,

him

ill

as

at

a

question of

Munich; the

for the physicist's future safety.

Jhe

article

the Ossietzki of physics, an allusion to Carl

winner of the 1936 Nobel peace prize

who

von

was even

then languishing in Dachau, where he would die of torture and

The editors of the paper commented should be made to 'disappear'.

starvation the following year. that 'white Jews'

At that

this

point

it

must have been abundantly

clear to

Heisenberg

he could not bury himself in the 'beauty of the work' and

remain unscathed by the ugliness 'out

there'.

He

decided to fight

back, holding in reserve the ultimate decision to resign.

He

was not without supporters

in

Germany. Planck and many

of Heisenberg's colleagues fired ofl"letters of complaint to university deans, and local

and

state

education bureaucracies. Heisenberg also

received the backing of his peers by being elected to various bodies.

Nazi

Physics

183

Saxon Academy and the Gottingen Academy of

for example, the

Sciences.

The

extent of Heisenberg's personal and public dilemma

expressed in

Now

a letter

actually see

I

he wrote to Sommerfeld:

no other

defence of my honour for

your advice

me

to leave

so.

However,

The

is

I

possibility than to ask for

refused here.

in advance.

Germany;

However,

You know

do not want

to

have no desire to

also

I

is

that

do

live

would

unless

here

as a

Schwarze Korps article was published

it

if the

like to ask

would be very

it

it

I

my dismissal

you

painful for

must be absolutely

second-class person.^'

when Heisenberg had

Munich with his young wife, Elisabeth, pregnant first child. They were on their way to the Alps for a

just arrived in

with their

holiday. Heisenberg initially attempted to rebut Stark

by writing a

letter

insisting that

of the case.

of complaint to the Reich Ministry of Education,

if the ministry stood by on the other hand the ministry disapproved of the

he wished to have the

state, as

would any

official

'lieutenant in the

At the same time, Heisenberg took

in precisely the

same terms

Heisenberg's grandfather,

one time belonged

Wehrmacht'

in a similar

major gamble by writing

to the Reichsfiihrer-SS,

to the

a

Heinrich

a

result

former high school rector, had

same hiking club

Joseph Gerhard Himmler, an

As

a

backing and protection

whom his family had a tenuous connection.

Himmler, with

Landshut.

article

he would be forced to resign

the attacks. If allegations,

and the

Himmler's

of

assistant rector

a

father,

gymnasium

in

knew Himmler's see Mrs Himmler in

Heisenberg's mother

mother. Mrs Heisenberg accordingly went to

Munich, where both

as

at

women lived,

at some point in July or August Mrs Himmler was at first reluctant to involve herself in the affairs of her son, but Mrs Heisenberg broke the ice by saying: 'Oh, you know, Mrs Himmler, we mothers know nothing about politics - neither your son's nor mine. But

1937. According to Heisenberg,

we know come

that

we

to you.'^^

have to care for our boys. That

is

why

Mrs Himmler softened and undertook

Heisenberg's letter to Himmler.

I

have

to pass

on

184

It

Hitler's Scientists

was not

wrote

to

until

November

that

Heisenberg asking the

Himmler took up

scientist to

the case and

respond to the charges.

Heisenberg defended himself point by point and Himmler accordingly decided to look into the matter further, initiating an investi-

gation that would take a further eight months, running concurrently

with and independently from an investigation on

his reputation

under way in the Reich Education Ministry. Meanwhile Lenard

and Stark continued

their vitriolic attacks against 'Jewish physics'

with the backing of the Nazi-led Teachers League and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's party deputy,

on

influence

December 1937 considered

The SS of spies in past,

it

who was a

intent

was mooted

his

own

that 'political reliability' should

in

be

condition of university appointments.

his classrooms

moreover, was

had involved the presence

and the bugging of his home. Heisenberg's

also

being scrutinized for evidence of homo-

crime under Nazi law that could land an individual in

concentration camp. There was

a

suggestion that he had married

hurriedly in order to cover up his guilt.

no evidence. ^^ He wrote

to his

mother

The investigation yielded November 1937: 'such

in

a struggle poisons one's entire thoughts,

fundamentally sick individuals soul'.'"*

on exerting

meeting of university rectors

investigation of Heisenberg

sexuality, a a

a

At

science.

During the

who

and the hate for these

torment one

investigation in the winter of

eats into one's

1937-8 Heisen-

berg was interrogated in the basement of the SS headquarters in Berlin by investigators

who

had an academic grounding in physics

and mathematics. It is

likely that the regime's decision to clear his

name had been

more or less made by the spring of 1 93 8, for he was given permission to lecture in England in March of 1938. Himmler sent an official letter to Heisenberg, however, on 21 July 1938, confirming that he, the Reichsfiihrer-SS, did not approve of the attack in

Das

Schwarze Korps and that he had forbidden any further criticisms

of that nature. Himmler invited Heisenberg to come to Berlin to talk

'man

to

man' on the

issues,

but in the meantime he advised

the physicist to separate the personal and poHtical characteristics

of scientists from

his research:

he was

referring, obviously, to the

Nazi

work of

Albert Einstein.

Heydrich,

should be allowed to that

Heisenberg

silence this

generation.

The

The same day he wrote

secret service

his

man,

is

work is

and commenting:

in peace,

we

relatively

to

Reinhard

requesting that Heisenberg

chief,

decent, and

who

185

Physics

believe

'1

could not afford to lose or

young and can educate

new

of Himmler's investigation are to be found in

results

memorandum

sent at

some point

in 1939 to the

'theoretical physics

is

a

Reich Education

Ministry: Heisenberg was a harmless, apolitical academic for

whom

merely the working hypothesis with which

the experiment inquires of nature in suitable experiments'. a

a

'^^

He was

man of decent character who had increasingly supported National was positive towards

Socialism, and

it.

Heisenberg's biographer

David Cassidy comments, 'Whether completely accurate or this

remained the Nazi regime's

Heisenberg

official

assessment of

not,

Werner

until the end.'^^

So Heisenberg's pact with the regime was an to separate science

from the

Einstein's Jewishness.

duress at a time

It

was

a

scientist

implicit

agreement

theoretical physics

shameful pact, and

when Himmler and

engaged in campaigns of

-

it

from

was made under

henchman Heydrich were

his

forced expulsions and arrests

terror,

ofJews.

November

In

Broken

Glass,

1938 the infamous

would

reveal the

onslaught against Jews.

many

full

at this stage, to

survival

Ger-

special perhaps to a scientist

have drawn an equivalence between

his personal

and the survival of physics in the Fatherland.

In the event, Heisenberg

Munich,

despite

job went to the

less

Later, his

benign.

was not chosen

Himmler's support on

least able

of

Germany at the time. Heisenberg appears,

compromises would appear

a

to stay in

despite the high moral price? His predicament reveals a

combination of intense pressures,

of

the Night of

fury and violence of the Nazi

What induced Heisenberg

world-class distinction in

in

Kristallnacht,

to succeed

Sommerfeld

several occasions.

The

of the candidates, Wilhelm Mtiller, author

textbook on engineering, and well

known

for his published

support of Aryan physics. In the meantime the chair in physics

at

1

86

Hitler's Scientists

Vienna, which had been another

possibility,

name had been blocked by

Heisenberg; his

was

also

denied to

influential supporters

of Nazi science. As the persecution of Jews, 'undesirables' and 'enemies' of the state increased, he appeared tation

seemed

safe,

a strangely qualified victory, his

theoretical physics in

Germany

a

weak

but his rehabiliclaim to protect

rationale indeed.

Case of Pascual Jordan

Not all ical,

theoretical physicists in the early days of Hitler

and not

Nazi

all

physicists followed the lead

were

apolit-

of Lenard and

ambit of the physics community there emerged the

Stark. In the

unusual spectacle of an isolated theoretical physicist

who was

every

inch a Nazi. Pascual Jordan promoted a wholly contradictory stance to

Aryan physics by proclaiming an equivalence between National

Socialism and a focus of theoretical physics which had been rou-

by Lenard and Stark

tinely excoriated illustrates

science.

the

pitfalls

He was

the

of drawing first,

as

'Jewish physics'. His story

parallels

between ideology and

but by no means the

last,

to

produce

a

'quantum theory' of society. Pascual Jordan, rabid Hitler enthusiast, an aficionado of Freud's

unconscious and a brilliant contributor to the

new physics, for a time

shared the obloquy poured on Heisenberg (although hf defended

himself with even greater passion and vim).

Nazi

critics

One

of

his harshest

accused him of attempting to sabotage 'logical purity'

and the great Aryan tradition of rigorous science 'with unproven pseudo-religious fantasies'. ^^

We

get a rare physical glimpse of his

and personality to

work on

at

the Peenemiinde rocket plant,

Wegener,

how Jordan would

day composing

a

'I

that he

who shared an office

sent

A

young with him, remem-

neglect his proper research to spend the

textbook on algebra without ever consulting

notes. Jordan suffered

meant

where he was

the mathematical problems of turbulence.

colleague, Peter bers

monomaniacal tendencies

from

a

marked speech impediment which

was incapable of speaking

in continuous sentences.

soon discovered that one had to turn one's back to him while he

Nazi sat in his chair, feet

on

his

Physics

187

desk and one hand on his forehead,

twisting his nose with his thumb. These

he spoke rather

He was

member of Max

a

physicists in

Born's young team of quantum

Gottingen through the 1920s, along with Wolfgang

Pauli and Friedrich

and showed

were the moments when

fluently.''^

how

in

Hund, who took Heisenberg's consequence

behaviour could be developed.

a systematic

He was

early ideas

theory of atomic

from time

also

to time

Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. Jordan saw a link between the ideology of National Socialism and the strange counterintuitive dynamics of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. Just as the new physics was an invited to

epochal discovery about the true force of nature, so too, in his view, was National Socialism no mere ideology, political platform or evanescent manifestation of party politics, but a veritable force

of nature. Nazism, in

his

view, was true in the sense that the second

law of thermodynamics was

true.

Jordan saw the revolution in physics, moreover,

'mirror

as a

image of the revolutionary transformation of the world'.

^^

Describ-

ing the early emergence of quantum ideas, Jordan gave an impression of the sense of intellectual excitement they generated:

Everyone was

filled

away.

The

in this

connexion

embedded

ice

with such tension that

had been broken ...

we had

stumbled upon

beyond

all

now came

a quite It

— only

that

gies

as

later

recognised

National Socialist weapons based on

developed by

its

wholly

would be as

which make

a

merely

scientists

had the power

its

intellectual

new technolo-

to liquidate tanks,

planes and armies. As early as 1935 he was predicting that

too distant future

new

to a head.^°

National Socialism had the power to liquidate enemies, just

clear that

unexpected and deeply

was evident

previous notions in physics,

to resolve the contradictions

apparent — which

almost took their breath

became more and more

layer of the secrets of Nature.

processes of thought,

needed

It

it

may have

at its disposal

'a

not

technical energy sources

Niagara power station appear

trifling

and explosive

1

88

Hitler's Scientists

materials in comparison to toys'.

which

present explosives are harmless

all

^^

Quantum

physics, according to Jordan, revealed an underlying

all-embracing vision of

which conventional cause and

reality, in

overturned and old distinctions between object and

effect are

subject, the individual

stood in terms of the

and

new

society, are eliminated.

physics,

would

Nazism, under-

deliver a death

blow

the morally bankrupt influence of the Enlightenment, with

emphasis on the individual and

its

to its

tendency to objectify nature in

terms of mere mechanistic determinism. In quantum physics he

saw

a direct relationship,

and an exemplar, between the behaviour

of molecules and sub-atomic

particles,

and the Fuhrerprinzip in

National Socialism.

We know

body of the bacterium,

that in the

enormously many molecules constituting molecules which

group of special of the

total

organism; they form a

are .

.

.

this

.

.

among

there are

the

creature, a very small

.

endowed with

dictatorial authority

[steering centre]

of the living

cell.^^

Biology, psychology, consciousness, telepathy, clairvoyance,

could

spirituality, all

in the light

now

be explained, described and controlled

of new quantum insights. Above

all,

political revolution,

involving the redrawing of national boundaries and, the thrust

towards unified continents, could be seen in terms of the physics.

'The

political transformation already

many European

states,

accomplished in so

in the shape of a replacement of the pariia-

mentary forms of government by authoritative and methods,' he wrote,

new

'signifies

in

no way merely

dictatorial a

modernization of the apparatus of government; rather

technical it

is

the

eruption of a revolutionary reconstruction of our entire thought, values and action, gradually encompassing culture.'"

No

longer would

psychology, or holism in

all

areas

of Hfe and

notions about the unconscious in

spirituality, inhabit a separate area

of

had done under the influence of the Enhghtenment, but quantum mechanics would supply a rigorous scientific underthought,

as it

Nazi

Physics

189

pinning for these hitherto 'fuzzy' modes of thought. Jordan con-

ceded

that his ideas

he saw

would be difficult for ordinary people to grasp; between the mind of the 'rare, surpassing

a great gulf

researcher', the brain

of a

and ordinary

'natural-scientific thinker'

minds. But he did not despair of providing explanations that could

be visualized so

that, at least, his ideas

would be

accessible to an

audience.

elite

Jordan was not only attacked by Lenard and Stark, but by other

Nazi

intellectuals

such

as

the eugenicist and idealist philosopher

Kurt Hildebrandt for espousing the abstract and

German

w^ere already corrupting the

relativist ideas that

people. Jordan responded by

counter-charging that Hildebrandt was denying the internationalist

on which the Reich must depend

science

ability to

knew no

defend and extend racial

iota

on

for

technological

its

the machine gun, he declared,

or national boundaries in

internationalist arguments,

budged one

itself:

effectiveness. His

its

moreover, did not mean that he had

his anti-Semitism. In his Physics

and

the Secret

of Organic Life, published in 1941, he dismissed the personal link

between Einstein and the theory of relativity, arguing that someone else

would have discovered

it

anyway.

He

declared, moreover, that

the crucial content of the special theory had been anticipated by the French physicist Henri Poincare.

With Germany conquering its neighbours irresistibly, Jordan now announced the triumph of technology not as a means of plutocratic plundering in the service of individual capitalists, but as

'We

serving of the totality of life of the wider community. willing,'

he wrote,

to military

might

'to see

any abuse in the coupling of science

after military

might has proven

aujhauende force in the creation of a

Jordan's general ideas, disciplines,

interest

its

compelling

new Europe.'^'*

which emerged

in a variety

of forms and

brought him no influence in the Third Reich. The

of his case

in a researcher

and

are not

scientific

sophistication,

is

the extraordinary adaptability of science, even

of remarkable

talent, to bizarre

hybrids of political

myth. Jordan's grasp of modern physics, for

was employed

to shape a fascistic

all its

view of the world

Hitler's Scientists

190

— indicating how readily in some individuals in the service

of totaHtarianism, and that great talent in physics

not a necessary, integrity.

science can be adapted

still

less a sufficient, basis for

moral and

is

political

15-

Himmler's Pseudo-science

autumn of 1935 Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's notorious SS Reichsfiihrer-SS, penned a letter to Dr Ernst-Robert Grawitz, Reich Physician of the SS and Police: In the

Following our brief conversation in the question of left-handedness in

my

about the examination of

in earlier times,

I

now reiterate

thoughts in writing and ask that you instruct Professor Janssen to

some

doctoral dissertations

from

on

period can be cited

this

the introduction of the shield,

which the

albeit

heart

without

this topic.

mankind was

in earliest times

in

Gmund

humans

is

as

A

evidence for

is

much

this. It

mankind switched

mix of power,

of the

fear, cruelty

to suggest that

large proportion

which protected the

located, that

fully neglecting the use

In the lethal

There

left-handed.

left

set

of fmds

was probably with

left

half of the body,

to right-handedness,

hand.*

-

-^mc /^^'^Jt>-i^ fooL.

and dilettantism, pseudo-

science began to flourish virtually unchallenged under the auspices

of the SS in

Germany.

Hitler's

An

autodidact, lacking in judgment

or even the basics of scientific research,

involved in

regime

w^ith

manner of research schemes, starting early in the bogus programmes linked with the origins of Aryan-

death camps. While such

the Third

scientific

Reich

activities

were marginal

research' in the

to the

enormous in

whole, the direction of SS -sponsored

a

brought appalling suffering and death to their

victims and degradation

upon all those associated with their conduct

data.

Born

in 1900,

Himmler was brought up

was interested even a

murderous 'medical

and technological work being conducted

as

'researches' in time

and

to get

all

ism, leading ultimately to the

volume of

Himmler found time

herb garden

as a

boy,

a

He He kept

a strict Catholic.

as a child in animal and plant breeding.

prelude to his obsession with alternative

192

Hitler's Scientists

medicines and homeopathy, which he thought superior to regular pharmacological products

(in years to

come he ordered

A

should be grown in the concentration camps).

on leaving school he studied

teetotaller,

that herbs

vegetarian and

agriculture in

Munich,

graduating aged twenty-two. Shortly afterwards he rejected his

Catholicism to

become a devotee of Adolf Hitler, adopting fanatical of the Germanic people and the need for

beliefs in the superiority

Lebensraum.

Within two years of

Hitler's

assumption of power Himmler

played a key role in establishing the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), a research society that

encouraged

He became

scientific

pursuits.

president.

The Ahnenerbe was

torical

a

curator,

its

of Aryan superiority. In time

characterized

its

and eventually

its

it

at

discovering the origins

claimed to research the natural

made bids to attract genuine scientists. Himmler and most valuable research, which nevertheless

partially

unrecognized, or was even persecuted by

the official sciences'.^ Apart from

injured merit, the divisions

of pseudo-

business in a letter to Goering as the 'implementa-

tion of fundamental

went wholly or

circuit

principally preoccupied with his-

and ethnographical research aimed

sciences proper and

wide

its

chronic paranoia and sense of

Ahnenerbe portrayed

between the

natural sciences

itself as

and the

arts,

breaking

down

and of encourag-

would open up science to the Nazi in trade was a mishmash oP genetics,

ing a type of 'holism' that Weltanschauung. geopolitics,

Its

stock

philology,

anthropology, history and archaeology,

blended with astrology, mythology and the occult. The search for evidence of origins was unrelenting. There was quest, for example, to recover an early text

from

a vault in Italy, for

which

unsuccessfully in 1936, and for

a

decade-long

of Tacitus' Germania

Hitler himself petitioned Mussolini

which SS troops were

still

searching

in 1943.^

Tacitus depicts the

German homeland

ness, a vast virgin territory

as

of mountains and

an unrelieved wilderforests

which

thrilled

the aficionados of the Ahnenerbe, not least Richard Walther Darre,

who was responsible for the epithet Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) and who enthusiastically promoted a Nazi policy of Naturschutz

Himmler's Pseudo-science

of nature). Others saw references to

(the protection

hymns

Tacitus' accounts of Germanic mythical a deity that

the

had

man,

first

193

risen

from the German

siring three sons

German

people. Blood and

ancient

Roman

put

soil

who became

in praise

of Tuisto,

Tuisto gave birth to the ancestors of the

were thus inextricably one. As the

the people of

it:

soil:

racial purity in

Germany 'were

untainted

by intermarriage with other peoples, unique, wholesome,

their

physiques, despite their vast hordes, remain identical: wild blue eyes, flaming hair, huge, strong' {Gennania, chapter 4).

Sweet music

to the racial hygienists.

Himmler was

also

convinced that the leaders of the Third Reich

had descended from the Vikings, and planned an expedition to Iceland to prove the that the origins

fact.

More remotely,

we shall see, he believed

of the Aryan race stemmed from living shoots

conserved in crusts of ice in outer

Under

as

space.'*

the special auspices of the Ahnenerbe, and indeed

particular orders

on the

of Himmler, the zoologist Ernst Schafer mounted

an expedition to Tibet in 1938. His aims were ideological rather than

we

scientific.

He was

could accomplish more

understanding for the are,

convinced

as

SS

that:

men and do much more

new Germany by

being up front about

than by travelling under the disguise of an obscure,

academy;

after

all

we

The aim of the

have

for the lack

of

who we

if neutral scientific

a clear conscience.^

expedition,

which included the anthropologist

Bruno Beger and the entomologist Karl Wienert, was to collect material about the proportion, origins, significance, and develop-

ment of the Nordic race in the region. This same Schafer two years later became chief of a section of the Ahnenerbe for Central Asian Studies and Expeditions, which he hoped to expand into a large institute for the 'rebuilding of German science'. Central to the early philosophy of the Ahnenerbe was an outlandish theosophical

world

ice,

theory

known

as

the Welteislehre, the doctrine of

with echoes of Nordic 'heroic' mythology featuring

apocalyptic struggles

between

fire

and

ice.

This fantastical notion

Hitler's Scientists

194

was revealed

in a

dream

to an eccentric Austrian engineer called

Hanns Horbiger, published in 19 13 under the

Horbiger's Glacial-

title

Kosmogonie — 'Horbiger's Glacial Cosmogony,'' reads the

a

new

developmental history of the universe and the

title

page,

solar system, based

on the opposition of cosmic Neptunism to an

equally universal Plutonism,

following the most up to date results of

exact branches of research,

revised and supported

by

own

his

all

experiences and edited by Ph. Fauth:

with 212 diagrams.^

All the planets, including the

Way

Milky field

is

made up of ice

of the sun,

bits

moon,

crystals.

of cosmic

ice

are

covered in

Drawn by

ice.

Our

the gravitational

explode and vapourize. Solar

prominences are great geysers of exploding steam erupting out into space

where the vapour forms

ice-crystal meteors.

Ice crystals

descend on the planets, forming ice crusts and in the case of the earth rain.

When

meteors explode on entering our atmosphere

they form hailstorms. outer space, and

Our

weather, in other words, comes from

Himmler was keen

to exploit the theory to

make

long-range weather forecasts.

Horbiger goes on to describe the action of luminiferous popular notion in

down

late

ether, a

nineteenth-century physics. Ether slows

objects hurtling through space before orbiting wj^th planets,

but the

fate

of all moons

is

into the surface of their host planets.

which crashed Atlantis.

The

down until they crash Earth once had a second moon

inevitably to spiral

in the ocean, caused

ice ages,

Noah's flood and formed

and the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the

formation of coal and the sinking of Atlantis, were descent of earth's second

The

Welteislehre

was

a

all

owed

moon.

theory of everything, containing

nations, including the origins of the universe

and

its

all

into the sun to be destroyed in a fmal explosion.

space.

It

appealed to

a scientific

'a

than

classical

The

expla-

inevitable

apocalypse. In the fullness of time the earth itself will spiral

a quite different basis

to the

down

theory posited

physics for the forces in outer

unified, fantastic

and splendid world picture,

foundation for a truly Nordic Weltanschauung', which

Himmler's Pseudo-science

195

involved a riposte to Einstein's 'dreadful and mistaken theory' and 'flooding waves of spiritual destruction'

its

Himmler was keen to attract regular to work on the Welteislehre. Under the

scientists to his institute

cloak of an 'Institute of

Meteorology' (Pflegestatte fur Wetterkunde), he drew together astronomers, geologists and meteorologists to demonstrate the theory's vaHdity.

But the Ahnenerbe only succeeded

devastating criticism

editor of the

Illustrierter

run by the National

running

series

research

on

Himmler ously.

on

in particular

this score,

In

ice

lambasted the

Beohachter {Illustrated Observer), a periodical

Socialists, after its editor

on the

from the Nazi

who

and Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard,

physicist

in attracting

The

Welteislehre.

series

announced

long-

a

was pulled, and future

cosmology was conducted more

discreetly.

nevertheless continued to defend the theory vigor-

we fmd him

June of 1937

Otto Wacker of the Ministry

excoriating a hapless

for Science, Training

Dr

and Popular

Education for passing on to him a memorandum from Paul Guthnik

of the observatory glacial

I

I

The scientist had declared that Himmler wrote to the Minister:

Neubabelsberg.

cosmogony was nonsense.

state clearly

its

at

and unambiguously:

I

am

a

defender of free research in aU

forms, and this includes free research into glacial cosmogony.

intend to give

this free

research

my

myself in the best possible company,

German Reich, Adolf

is

commissioning the

him of

many

his job,

been

a

convinced

uniform and Party badge. Writing to

.

.

.

that the

and

unscientific position' with regard to the set

years

tracked

attacking glacial cosmogony',

also

find

disdained by the journeymen of science.^

Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler added

Himmler

I

down the culprit responsible memorandum on glacial cosmogony and

The next month Himmler relieved

in this

the Fiihrer and Chancellor of the

Hitler, has for

adherent of this theory, which

for

warmest support, and as

Moreover

up

a

(the Sicherheitsdienst, the

persecution of witches in

research

that

man he

'was constantly 'takes

a

totally

phenomenon.''

programme within

SS Security

the

SD

Service) to explore the

Germany during the seventeenth

century.

196

Hitler's Scientists

Himmler was keen that the persecution

to demonstrate

by the CathoHc Church and the Jews

The

fact

Like Hitler, fanatical

been

a

against Healthy

Germandom.

some 33,000 items

research involved the collation of

'witch card index'

trial documents combined attack

through witch

of witches had in

in a

archives and libraries. ^^

drawn from some 260

Himmler was preoccupied with

health fads.

He was

about the banning of artificial ingredients in food, blaming

commercial food companies for destroying the natural

German

diet

of the

people.

City folk, living through the winter largely on canned food, are already at their

mercy, but

flour, sugar,

they attack the countryside with their refined

and white bread. The war has interrupted these proceedings;

war we

after the

now

shall take

energetic steps to prevent the ruin of our

people by the food industries."

Even

as

war loomed, among

busy

his

initiatives into

racial

hygiene and aspects of archaic genetics he ordered that SS members

must

Thirty Years' after that date,

SS

back

investigate their family trees going

War -

if a

Jew should appear

he must leave the SS. Later

in a

we

to the

end of the

man's family tree

him

find

writing to

officials:

In Felix Niedner's Norwegian King's Stories [translations of old Norse verse]

I

noticed that in one story

a

man gives

his

king two red horses with

white manes as a gift. Recently I saw a red-brown horse with a white mane ...

I

hereby commission SS-Standartenfiihrer Fegelein to investigate the

genealogy of this horse. '^

The work of assume

a

the Ahnenerbe, for

murderous force

all its

in the course

had the power and scope to combine with practical 'experiments'. At

Himmler would pursue

the

absurd aspects, was to

of the war,

his

when Himmler

unhinged

the same time, as the

racist theories

war progressed

dream of 'miracle' weapons, pestering

scientific institutes to research a catalogue

of hare-brained schemes.

The phenomenon of Himmler's pseudo-science

reveals the

Himtnler's Pseudo-science

igy

prevalence within SS-sponsored science and technology of amateurishness, dilettantism and, m time, sadism and mass murder. Himmler's attempts to create a science special to National Socialism,

dedicated to racial ongins and genocide, give an indication of what might have become of science had Himmler succeeded Hider as Fiihrer.

Mathematik

i6. Deutsche

The

dismissals policy

saw the departure of many distinguished

mathematicians to Britain and the United

In

States.

1934 the

Education Minister Bernhard Rust asked the veteran mathematician

David Hilbert

hov^^

centres of mathematics,

Gottingen, formerly one of the world

had suffered

after the

mathematicians. Hilbert replied: 'Suffered? ister. It

It

removal of Jewish

hasn't suffered,

Min-

doesn't exist any more!''

While some disciplines, like geography, medicine and anthropology, lent themselves easily to Nazification, and even astic

made

enthusi-

contributions to National Socialist ideology, the discipline of

mathematics appeared ation.

a

poor prospect

There was, nevertheless,

Germany, Ludwig Bieberbach,

a

for exploitation or collabor-

mathematician of repute in

who

did his level best to bring

We

mathematics in line with National Socialism. Bieberbach,

a lean,

dapper individual,

as

met Ludwig

dean of the philosophy

faculty at Berlin University,

when he encouraged the

on Kohler's Psychological

Institute

and strove

to

students' raid

impose Nazi

ideology on faculty and students. His project reveals the* extent to

which

a serious

and original thinker could attempt

to the prevailing ideology

to adapt himself

with no conceivable advantage to

his

discipline.

Bieberbach was a difficult

a distinguished

conundrum known

in 19 1 6 (and

as

mathematician remembered for Bieberbach's Conjecture. Posed

not proved until Louis de Branges's solution in 1985),

the conjecture can be applied, for example, to spatial

domain

conjecture

is

relate to those in quite different spatial

angles in

one

domains; the

useful in astronomy. Born in 1886, Bieberbach did

important work on function theory and had a charismatic

how

a

reputation for being

but scatty teacher.

Bieberbach became an enthusiastic Nazi very suddenly in the

Deutsche Matheniatik spring of 1933 as Hitler seized

power

199

new Reich and

in the

anti-Semitism spread in the universities. Bieberbach went over to

no very good reason,

the Nazis for

to shine', according to to put

Max

mathematics into the

it

seems (other than

desire

'a

Born). Bieberbach's tortuous attempt straitjacket

of Nazism suggests that he

might have been under some kind of personal pressure to conform. This occurred to the British mathematician G. H. Hardy. Writing

about Bieberbach's notions in Nature in 1 93 4, Hardy made tive

comment, which acknowledged

mathematicians in times of

crisis,

the pressures

on

a

percep-

scientists

and

while not granting Bieberbach

the least benefit of the doubt:

many of us, many Englishmen and many Germans, who said things during the War which we scarcely meant and are sorry to remember There

are

now. Anxiety

for one's

torment of

folly,

natural

not

if

own

position, dread of falling

determination

at all costs

heroic

particularly

behind the

excuses.

Bieberbach's

Professor

reputation excludes such explanations of his utterances; and

myself driven to the more uncharitable conclusion that he

them

rising

may be

not to be outdone,

I

fmd

really believes

true.^

Bieberbachjoined the

SA

(stomi troopers) in April 1933 and

at this

point was promoted dean of Berlin's Philosophy Faculty, which

incorporated the natural sciences and mathematics.

he was seen around the university in year, after the dismissal

Landau,

who

a

of the Gottingen mathematician

was Jewish, Bieberbach wrote

It

was doubtless under

Edmund

that his departure

signified the important lesson that representatives

do not mix.

By November

Nazi uniform. The following

of different races

his influence that a student

leader in Bieberbach's circle at Berlin University declared, it

would be

than to have

better not to teach it

'I

think

for ten semesters

taught by a Jew.'^

Bieberbach's ideas about a

number theory

German mathematics were

based on

theory proposed by the anthropologist Erich Rudolf Jaensch,

featuring vague connections

between psychology and

racial types.

Bieberbach thought that Jewish and French mathematicians had

a

200

Hitler's Scientists

tendency to abstraction rather than to the truth of hard empirical

and Nordic

reahties gible'

intuition.

Nazi mathematics called for

dimension that could be

clearly visualized

referred to pure mathematics. In an acidulous essay

of

German Mathematics'

ematical Nazi

Every theory

spirit,

in

pure mathematics

artistes

on 'The Reality

written in January 1936 a fellow math-

is

who

which

justified

real objects

document ofjewish-liberalistic

of rootless

it

Professor Erhard Tornier, wrote:

answering concrete questions about are ... a

a 'tan-

even when

.

.

.

is

truly capable

of

such theories

If not,

obfuscation, born of the intellect

juggle with intangible definitions to simulate

mathematical creativity to their unthinking captive audience, which glad if it can slowly learn a few tricks that

it

can

itself

show

use to

is

off.'*

Although Bieberbach constantly harped on the theme of the racial

expression of mathematics, however, he seemed incapable of

of what

articulating a proper description

'may consist of timeless

verities,

meant,

expression of folk characteristics

ately evident than

it

.

.

.

maybe

in artistic styles as

is

cannot be so readily taken in

in 1934,

but the ways they are represented,

and deduced, derive from particular human

characteristics.'

At the same meeting he opined: 'Mathematical research ful

alone an

let

Academy of Sciences

reported to a meeting of the Prussian

treated

this

'Mathematics,' Bieberbach

intelligible basis for the proposition.

this

is

is

less

a

power-

immedi-

works of mathematics

at a glance.'^

Influence of Nazi Mathematics

The attempt

to influence

mathematics extended right into the

schools. Educationist Glaus Heinrich Tietjen, in an essay

on maths

and 'Nordic Man', wrote: Science teaching therefore brings the school pupil into close contact with

two

decisive realities of national

work. These are just the Socialist

movement and

life:

realities

for

which

large-scale

war and the question of

which have begotten

the National

movement must

fight. All the

that

Deutsche Mathematik same,

little

201

account has been taken of these fundamental

issues in the

arithmetic books for the Volksschule, and they are also insufficiently

brought out in the teaching books for the higher schools. These books are brimful of

omy which

economic problems and questions about the global econ-

breathe

much

necessary, therefore, to

forgotten

anyway and

is

national

less

throw out in

some

a

spirit.

good

It

is

both possible and

deal of ballast

cases irrelevant to

what

which

is

The proponents of Deutsche Mathematik were keen

being

is

soon

learnt.^

to see their

discipline taking its place alongside other National Socialist sciences,

such

as

matics

Deutsche Physik and racial hygiene: they feared that mathe-

would be

international

left

behind because of

its

reputation for being

and value-neutral. Nazi ideology

insisted that only

those disciplines which directly served the national polity had a right to exist as

and Philipp Lenard himself had dismissed mathematics

the 'science of counting', declaring that

it

belonged properly in

the humanities. In their enthusiasm to be part of the National Socialist 'revolution',

Nazi mathematicians took to writing

essays

about the link between mathematics and National Socialism, typically

emphasizing the importance of devotion to

for service, the

a cause, the

need

importance of anti-materialism and order and the

rejection of chaos.

The

Persecution ofJewish

Meanwhile, the

fate

and Dissident Mathematicians

of Jewish and dissident mathematicians

1933 was similar to that of other

scientists.

after

Ludwig Berwald was

deported by the Gestapo to Lodz, where he eventually died in 1942, as did Walter Froehlich; Otto Blumenthal was sent to Theresienstadt, the 'model' a

humane

camp,

much promoted

in

Nazi propaganda

as

detention community, where he died in 1944. Paul

Epstein, of Frankfurt University,

summoned by the Gestapo Bonn committed suicide in

committed

August 1939; Felix Hausdorff of 1942, when it was no longer possible in

to avoid being sent to a concentration

was arrested on

Kristallnacht

suicide after being

(9-10

camp. Robert

November

Remak

1938) and detained

202

Hitler's Scientists

temporarily in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1942 he was

Holland and sent to Auschwitz, where he died.

arrested again in

tapo in

Chauder were killed by the Ges1942 and 1943. John von Neumann had already departed

for the

United

Stanislaw Saks and Juliusz Pawel

Courant

States in

also crossed the Atlantic,

burgh. Another

Gottingen was

loss to Hilbert's

and others of modern

Bryn

while

a

founder with B.

a brief

She died

obituary note on her death, letter to the

to

Edinat

van der Waerden

Germany

for a post

tragically in the course

New York moving

Times published

Einstein to write

paper in which he declared:

judgment of most competent Noether was the most

L.

algebra. In 1933 she left

of an operation in the spring of 193 5. The only

Max Born went

community of mathematicians

Mawr in the United States.

an emotional

Princeton; Richard

at

Emmy Noether, probably Germany's most eminent

pure mathematician, and

at

1930 and settled

living

mathematicians,

'In the

Fraulein

mathematical genius [of

significant creative

the female sex] thus far produced.'^

Two the

Germany were made

extraordinary escapes from

war by the mathematicians

Max Dehn

Trans-Siberian railway in 1940. Born

was

a student

of Hilbert

who

early in

and Kurt Godel

in 1878 in

via the

Hamburg, Dehn

had succeeded to

a post held

by

Ludwig Bieberbach at Frankfurt. He was dismissed from this position in 1935, two years later than many Jewish academics on account of his war service. He was arrested by the -Nazis on Kristallnaclit,

but released

a

day

detention centre, and thence fled to

When that

the Nazis invaded

Norway

he must escape eastwards,

due

later

as all

to

overcrowding

Denmark and so to March 1940, Dehn

in the

Norway.

in

routes to the west

realized

were

closed.

Kurt Godel was born in Briinn, Moravia, and educated

at

the

University of Vienna, where he took Austrian citizenship. In 1930, at

a

mathematical conference in Konigsberg, he gave the

first

indication of his famous proof which demonstrated that any system

of mathematics will contain propositions which can neither be

proved nor disproved, contrary to Hilbert's long-held views. Godel spent a period at

at

the

newly founded

Institute

of Advanced Study

Princeton during 1933-4, but returned to Austria the following

Deutsche Matheinatik year and

fell

ill

with depression. Finally Godel and

Austria again for America, crossing Russia

railway in mid-January 1940.

his

wife

left

on the Trans-Siberian

Dehn and his wife had made the same

October of the previous

journey

in late

months

to reach San Francisco via

travelled to

203

year.

Yokohama;

Godel took two the

Dehn

family

San Francisco via Vladivostok and Japan, taking the

same journey time.^

PART FOUR

The

Science of Destruction and

Defence 1933— 1943

1

The

science that led to the

exciting, often hectic

pants

Mania

Fission

7-

first

nuclear weapons began

drama of basic

Some of the

research.

seemed wholly unaware of the implications of

an

as

partici-

their

work.

Others, against the background of Hitler's regime, seemed painfully

conscious of the dangers from the outset.

The

story of the discovery of fission

quences forms

and

its

immediate conse-

a crucial episode in the chronicle

of the successful

Anglo-American creation of the first major weapon of mass destrucand Germany's

tion,

failure to

achieve that dreaded goal.

The main

elements of the story reveal important aspects of the pressures on the scientists involved: of hubris and competition, eagerness to be

reluctance to share recognition, evasion of responsibility.

first,

In the spring of 1933,

as

dismissed from their jobs in institutes.

Otto Hahn —

hundreds of

Gemian

scientists

universities

were being

and

scientific

Lise Meitner's collaborator at the Kaiser

Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry — was in the United States lecturing at

Cornell and meeting colleagues within his discipline. For the

first

few months of the Hitler chancellorship, Meitner therefore

found herself standing in responsibility for

as

director of the institute, assuming

more than twenty-five

scientists,

while watching

the increased presence of brownshirts in the corridors. She wrote

Hahn

to

a

few days

cryptically the

new

after the election

state

of

affairs:

of

'Today the accounting

ordered us to estimate the cost of our national

be replaced with for.'' is

a

March, indicating

5

flag,

black-white-red one which the

Two weeks later,

must for

by the

last

to

week we were

KWG that along with the black- white-red

also display the swastika ... It

Haber

it is

KWG will pay

she wrote again: 'Everything and everyone

influenced by the political upheavals. Already

notified

because

office

to raise the swastika.'^

must have been very

flag,

we

difficult

2o8

Hitler's Scientists

Despite cigarettes.

Otto

restless nights

Among

she kept going

on cups of

coffee and

Germany was her nephew

the departures from

Frisch, her erstwhile piano partner,

who

had been thrown

at the University of Hamburg. He was Copenhagen to work in Bohr's physics institute before moving on to Birmingham University in Britain. Another of her young colleagues, Leo Szilard, of Hungarian-

out of his research job

destined for

Jewish descent, then aged

own to

thirty-five,

accord, even though there was

do

so.

He

decided to leave of

no pressure upon him

as

his

yet

cancelled a planned lecture series with Meitner and

took off for Austria, bound for England, then eventually to the

United

States, his life's savings

hidden inside

his shoes.

He

wrote

later:

I

left

Germany

from Berlin train

to

a

few days

Vienna on

was empty. The same

was stopped

at

after the

Reichstag

fire ...

I

a certain date, close to the ist train

on

took the

train

of April. The

the next day was overcrowded, and

the frontier. People had to get out, and everybody was

interrogated by the Nazis.-'

Reflecting on

you want

this event,

he wrote: 'This just goes to show that

to succeed in this

cleverer than other people,

most

world you don't have

you just have

to be

to

one day

be

if

much

earlier

than

people.'"*

Szilard, a

would

live

man of

out of

remarkable genius and

a suitcase for several years.

political astuteness,

He

immediately

set

about helping Jewish emigres, working with Britain's William

Beveridge to

set

up the Academic Assistance Council

(later

the

Society for the Protection of Science and Learning) based in

London. In the autumn of 1933, standing at a road intersection near the British Museum, Szilard had an extraordinary scientific epiphany in which he understood the potential for releasing energy

from the atom. His

would

alter the

insight

was

to anticipate a technology that

world for ever, endowing the human race with the

ability to destroy itself

Fission

Mania

New

Ernest Rutherford, the abrasive

Cambridge

model

via

that

packed nucleus surrounded by

a tightly

As

orbiting electrons.

maintained

Zealander transplanted to

Manchester and Montreal, had proposed an atomic

resembled

researchers in

209

his

model was

Europe and the United

that scientists

He

was the

Rutherford

States,

would not be

locked within the atom.

increasingly refmed

by

sturdily

able to exploit the energy

first scientist,

however, to

succeed in transmuting elements by bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles (or alpha rays) from radium,

from Austrian

friends in

Vienna and kept through World

Rutherford meanwhile found its

which he had 'borrowed'

that

when he bombarded

War

I.

nitrogen,

atoms turned into heavier atoms of oxygen and lighter atoms of

hydrogen. Alpha

being positively charged, could pene-

and transform lightweight atoms which carried nuclei with

trate

few

particles,

positive charges; but they

were repelled by heavy nuclei with

multiple positive charges in elements like uranium.

Then, the year before Hitler came to power, the English physicist James Chadwick made

a crucial

contribution to nuclear physics

at

Rutherford's Cambridge laboratory. In 1932 Chadwick discovered the neutron, an elementary particle that due to

its

electrically neutral

property could penetrate the electric protective barriers of the nucleus of an atom. That same year Fritz Houtermans, noting

Chadwick's

result,

declared in a speech at the Technical

in Berlin that the neutron

would one day

Academy

release gigantic forces

locked up in matter. But the following year Rutherford told

members of the

who it,

who expected One researcher

British Association that researchers

such energy releases were talking 'moonshine'.

read Rutherford's assertion, and was instantly challenged by

was Leo

Szilard.

That day, 12 September 1933, Szilard was

staying at the Imperial Hotel, Bloomsbury, close to the British

Museum. He remembered H. G. lished in 1914, in

which atomic energy and an atomic bomb

predicted. 'This sort of set

London,' wrote

Wells's The World Set Free, pub-

pondering,

as

I

remembered of Southampton Row

Szilard.

light at the intersection

me

'And

I

walked the I

are

streets

of

stopped for a red

...

I

was pondering

210

Hitler's Scientists

whether Lord Rutherford might not be proved wrong.' At

this

point he saw the possibiUty of a neutron 'chain reaction' that might unleash the energy from within atoms.

As

It

Szilard put

it:

suddenly occurred to

me

that if we could find an

by neutrons and which would emit neutron, such an element

if

neutrons

tivo

element which

when

it

is

split

absorbed one

assembled in sufficiently large mass, could

sustain a nuclear chain reaction.^

By a 'chain reaction' he meant that if an atom were to be fissioned in a mass of material made of an element that is split by neutrons, two separating parts of the atom would stabilize themselves, and in the process might eject two or more secondary neutrons. Two secondary neutrons might then be prompted to split two more atoms, which in turn would release four additional secondary neutrons, which would then split four additional atoms, which would then release eight secondary neuthere was reason to believe that the

trons, splitting eight atoms, releasing sixteen neutrons, splitting

sixteen atoms, releasing thirty-two neutrons

- the

process continu-

ing exponentially in a fraction of a second through billions of atoms

of the element: causing

in the mass

unprecedented in

a

human-devised explosion

history.

nobody listened. In the which was granted in Britain

Szilard spoke to British physicists, but

end he filed for a patent on the idea, on 12 March 1934. Considering the potential for a prodigious weapon of mass destruction, he assigned the patent to the British Admiralty on condition that it should be kept secret. Szilard,

however, was not alone

an atomic bomb. Joliot-Curie,

warned of the

Two

when

pondering the

possibility

of

years later, the French physicist Frederic

Nobel award in Stockholm, of nuclear physics for making weapons of

receiving his

potential

mass destruction:

in

'We

are justified in reflecting that scientists

can construct and demolish elements

at will

may

also

who

be capable of

causing nuclear transformations of an explosive character.'^ Ironically, as

we

shall see, six years later

Joliot-Curie

would allow

his

Fission

scientific hubris to

be

Mania

211

to publish, to get the better

first

of

his in-

danger of an atomic weapon in the hands of Adolf

sights into the

Hider.

But other developments were

in train that

were

to lead to

the experimental preliminary of a viable energy-releasing chain

Through

reaction.

based in

the 1930s Enrico Fermi, the Italian physicist

Rome, had been

systematically researching the properties

when Hitler came to power, name for himself in the previous decade but he had already made a by developing a statistical method for analysing sub-atomic parof neutrons. Fermi was only thirty-two

ticles.

been nicknamed the Pope of physics, become a focus of interest for physicists the The young Hans Bethe remarked to his mentor Arnold

In consequence he had

and his laboratory had world over.

Sommerfeld

that Fermi's lab

was of greater importance

in the

Eternal City than the Colosseum.

Using

with beryllium powder and radon to

a glass vial filled

generate his neutrons, Fermi set about irradiating, one by one,

all

them into the goldfish pond

the chemical elements in the periodic table, transmuting radioactive isotopes. Performing experiments in

outside his laboratory, he discovered that the radioactivity of a

metal bombarded with neutrons increased a hundredfold neutrons had been slowed discovered that

when

down by

water or

fact,

new

all

elements,

called transuranes, or artificial transuranic elements. In

and without knowing

Meitner had not followed trian citizen, she

nor did she

it,

he had

feel

that

it

split

the uranium atom.

Stays

Szilard out

of Gemiany. Being an Aus-

was not under duress

to leave her post in Berlin,

obliged to resign in protest against the persecution

ofJewish colleagues. Later,

know

also

he bombarded uranium, the heaviest of

Use Meitner

'I

He

paraffin.

elements, he produced a mixture of radioactive

which he

when the

after the

war, she regretted that decision:

was not only stupid but very wrong

that

I

did not

leave at once,' she was to write in 1946.^

Ever since

Szilard's departure

Meitner had been absorbed in

a

212

Hitler's Scien lists

baffling series

acted

own

set

about replicating

later shelter a fugitive

their assistant Fritz

his results in Berlin

from the Nazi regime

At the same time, two

life).

Hahn and

stimulus for her, Otto

as a

Strassmann to

would

of experiments. Fermi's claims about transuranes had

and Walter Noddack, working

physicists, the

Freiburg

at

im

(Strassmann

at risk to his

married couple Ida

Breisgau, had

come

of their own. Writing in 1934 in the German science journal Zeitschrift fur Angewandte Chemie

up with

a surprising interpretation

(Journal of Applied Chemistry), Ida

Noddack

suggested that

when

heavy nuclei are bombarded with neutrons, the nuclei in question

might break into

a

number of large

pieces.

other words, that neutrons of an energy volt

might have

bardments

split

She was speculating, in

less

than a single electron

an atomic nucleus capable of repelling

at millions

of electron

volts.

bom-

Fermi thought the sugges-

Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner tended to agree with The scepticism of both parties was a token of the widely held view among the potential atom breakers that special equipment, such as a cyclotron, would be essential for the task. The cyclotron tion nonsensical;

him.

was

a

device for accelerating charged particles using high voltage

difference in a high-intensity magnetic field.

The van de

generators and cyclotrons were capable of hurling particles jectiles at energies

of up to 9 million electron

charge of the nucleus had

bombardments.

It

was

stiU repelled

volts,

Graaff as

pro-

but the electric

even these highly charged

like suggesting that a peashoc5ter

could

destroy a fortification capable of resisting bombardment with explo-

Noddack reported some years later that she attempted to persuade Otto Hahn that some reference at least should be made in his lectures and publications to her criticism of

sive

shells.

Frau

Fermi's experiments and her speculation that his neutrons had the atom.

split

Hahn apparently responded that he did not want to make

her look ridiculous.^

Meanwhile

in their patient

the

and systematic study of Fermi's

Hahn-Meitner-Strassmann team

in

'transuranic

elements',

Berlin found

many strange products emerging from uranium. Their

results

were published

in various journals over the next three years.

In the spring of 1935, for example, they

were reporting substances

Fission

with three different half

up with an explanation

lives,

Mania

it difficult to come They were fumbling in

and finding

made

that

213

sense.

the dark.

Meitner well knew, Jews in Gennany were being mounting persecution. But she was still thinking in a

All this time, as

subjected to

dissociated fashion of her personal safety in Berlin, rather than the

shame and degradation brought on science

by the regime. She reasoned

come

Planck she could

that

under the protection of

no personal harm. She seemed

to

distracting herself in a dedicated routine

Max

to

be

of work.

Hahn were nominated by Planck for the Nobel for their work in the field. Later Planck unsuc-

In 1936 she and prize in chemistry cessfully

and the path of her career

nominated Meitner alone

for a

Nobel

prize.

It

seems that

Heisenberg, Planck and Laue realized that the prize might offer her special protection in addition to her Austrian nationality.

Planck's

It

was

gesture of support. In 1937, aged seventy-nine, he

last

resigned his presidency of the Kaiser

Wilhelm

Society, to be

replaced by Carl Bosch, Fritz Haber's erstwhile collaborator in the nitrogen-fixing process.

Meitner Flees In 1938,

on

12 March, the

German army entered Austria,

the annexation, or Anschluss, thus the Third

Reich and subject

making

to the

all

enforcing

Austrians citizens of

Nazi race laws in Germany.

Meitner could no longer depend on her Austrian nationality to

The

protect her.

story of her eventual departure

gives a stark impression of the

Nazi police

from Germany

menacing climate created by the

state.

She had received invitations from various colleagues to work highly focused

But by

now

not obtain a

a

work

at

coming

to a decision

and continued her

the institute despite the

mounting dangers.

abroad; but she delayed

her Austrian passport was invalid and she could

German

new law which

one,

as

her status had been overtaken by

refused permission for technical specialists to

leave the Reich. Kurt Hess, a

member of the

institute

charged with

214

Hitler's Scientists

hospitality for visiting scholars,

was quick

anyone

to threaten

Hahn became

spoke out on behalf of Meitner. Even

her defence,^ informing her that she should no longer be a

of the

institute

but might continue her work there

who

cautious in

member

'unofficially'.

Meitner would never completely forgive Hahn for

his pusilla-

nimity.

Carl Bosch eventually

came

to her aid

There had been

by applying

for a permit

invitations for her to

go to

Holland, to Bohr's institute in Copenhagen, to Liverpool, to

Cam-

for foreign travel.

bridge. Bosch's appHcation dated 22

May

noted: 'Miss Meitner

non-Aryan; nonetheless, with the concurrence of

departments, she has been allowed to retain her position

engaged

in important scientific discoveries.

application was turned

down

There

she

as

is

Eventually Bosch's

menacing terms. Meitner copied

in

on the

the Kafkaesque text of the refusal

Hotel, where she had

'^°

is

the official

all

now moved

stationery of the

Adlon

for safety.

are political objections to the issuing

of

a passport to

Professor

considered undesirable that renowned Jews should leave

Meitner.

It is

Germany

for abroad to act there against the interests

ing to their inner persuasion

as

representatives of

of Germany accord-

German

sciences or

even with their reputation and experience.'^

She could not work

in

Germany

as

an active

could not leave the country because she was

On

13 July, after failing to secure

scientist,

and yet she

a scientist.

funds to establish Meitner

long-term in Holland, the Dutch physicist Dirk Coster of Groningen University 'rescued' her, bringing her to Holland with the

promise of an appointment

On

at his

university for at least

worked a normal day so She packed two small cases with her

the eve of her departure she

arouse suspicion.

belongings and spent

Germans

a sleepless

travelling abroad

night

at

the

were not allowed

marks out of the country, so

diamond

one

for

as

year.

not to

essential

home of Otto Hahn. to take

emergencies

more than

Hahn gave

ten

her a

ring he had inherited from his mother.

Although Coster was waiting

at

the station at Berlin, he could

Fission

make

not

Mania

215

contact with her for fear of raising the suspicions of

The

watchful Gestapo agents.

train

took seven hours to reach the

border with Holland. Days before, Coster had been to the border

and spoken with immigration official

officers,

showing them Meitner's

them

to use 'friendly persuasion'

entrance permit and asking

with the German guards to

let

her through. As

When

to cross the border safely.

ingen, Meitner and Coster

the train at

to his

Hahn saying that the

'baby'

car.

Coster, as agreed, sent a telegram to arrived.

Coster in the event could not find her she proceeded to Stockholm,

Manne

not

far

Siegbahn's

new

from Niels Bohr

probably saved her

life,

numbers

sent in large

managed Gron-

arrived in

met each other and he took her

had

at

a result she

last

a

where she had been offered

laboratory and in

since

proper appointment, so a place

where she could work

neighbouring Denmark. The

by 1942 Jews

in

move

Holland were being

to the death camps.

Fission Discovered

and Hahn and

Before Meitner's departure from Berlin she

Strassmann had been intrigued by what looked to be

new

radioactive element

uranium with neutrons

which

resulted

from the

in the Paris laboratory

(Marie's daughter) and Pavel Savitch.

a

mysterious

irradiation

of Irene Curie

A few weeks later,

Curie and

Savitch published an article claiming that the element behaved it

were

a radioactive isotope

of

as if

of lanthanum, about half the weight

of uranium, which suggested that the irradiated uranium atoms had

been

split.

By

the

time Meitner had arrived in Sweden,

Hahn and

Strassmann were attempting to replicate the Curie and Savitch experiments.

They

irradiated a sample

and detected

traces

of radioactivity which appeared to come from

of uranium with neutrons

elements chemically similar to radium, but hours.

They then

added

a

salt

dissolved the irradiated

of barium,

a

its

activity halved in

uranium

in acid

and

non-radioactive element lighter than

radium, and observed that the barium carried the

new radioactivity

2i6

Hitler's Scientists

with

it,

The

leaving the uranium behind in solution.

uranium atom had been

was

that the

was

a radioactive

split

isotope of barium.

and

that

Hahn and

significance

one of the pieces

Strassmann could

not bring themselves to believe what they had evidently achieved, so they continued to test the result in other ways.

Meanwhile, datelined

in a letter to Meitner, dated 19

'Monday evening,

in the lab',

strange result they had achieved: 'Actually there

the "radium isotopes" that

only you.'^^

telling

scientist

Two could

something about

now we

It

was

making

his

it

clear that a joint

paper with a

days later he was writing to Meitner again, asking if she

even

if they are

explanation, since 'we cannot suppress our

perhaps physically

absurd'.^-'

That same day

Meitner was writing to Hahn saying that she could not believe a

are

her to propose something that

was out of the question.

come up with an

results,

her of the

way of acknowledging her momentous discovery that was staring them in

the face, at the same time

Jewish

is

so remarkable that for

is

He wanted

perhaps she might publish. participation in the

December, and

Hahn informed

that

complete rupture of the uranium nucleus had occurred. 'But in

nuclear physics

we

have experienced so many

cannot unconditionally

say:

it is

Hahn had been completing

surprises, that

one

impossible.'^'*

an

article

on

his

experiments for the

journal Die Naturwissenschaften, which declared:

As chemists the experiments

we

have briefly described force us to substi-

tute for the [heavy] elements formerly identified as radium, actinium,

thorium the [much as is

lighter]

elements barium, lanthanum and cerium, but

'nuclear chemists' close to physics

contrary to

On her

all

we

cannot yet take

this leap

which

experience of nuclear physics.'^

receiving Hahn's most recent

nephew Otto

letter,

Meitner went to join

Frisch for a Christmas vacation with friends, the

von Bahr-Bergiuses, at Kungalv on the Swedish coast. Travelling there from Stockholm she could think of nothing, she later confessed,

but the appalling probability that Fermi's transuranic theory.

Mania

Fission

and along with

it

her

own

and Strassmann, had been In his

memoir

217

in vain.

remembered how he came out of his

Frisch

to find his aunt Lise studying the letter fretting

over

Frisch

it.

Hahn

four years of intense research with

was eager

to

tell

from Hahn and

hotel

clearly

own scientific

her about his

would not listen. She insisted that Frisch and then, which he did. 'It's content was so

preoccupations, but she

read the letter there startling,'

he remembered,

'that

Frisch's recollection represents

was at first inclined to be sceptical.'

I

one of the great

insightful

moments

in science in the twentieth century:

Hahn was

Was

it

that.

But how could barium be formed from uranium?

just a mistake?

No,

said Lise,

too good

a

chemist for

No larger fragment

than protons or helium nuclei (alpha particles) had ever been chipped

away from

nuclei,

and

energy was available.

to chip off a large

Nor was

have been cleaved right

it

number not

possible that the

uranium nucleus could

A nucleus was not like a brittle solid that George Gamow had suggested early on, and

Bohr had given good arguments

that a nucleus

was much more

liquid drop. Perhaps a drop could divide itself into

gradual manner, by

finally

first

would

resist

such

of an ordinary liquid drop tends to ones.

But the nuclei

differed

resist its

constricted, that there

they walked in the

the surface tension

two

smaller

one important way:

known

to counteract the

talk

through the implications of Hahn's

snowbound woods.

Frisch

skiing, so they set off together, Frisch

wanted

a

to

on wooden

and Meitner walking briskly beside him. At one point they

down on

and

were

^^

go cross-country skis

in

like a

small drops in a

division into

from ordinary drops

Meitner insisted that they letter as

We

knew

a process, just as

they were electrically charged, and that was surface tension.

two

becoming elongated, then

being torn rather than broken in two?

strong forces that

enough

across.

can be cleaved or broken;

more

nearly

snow-covered log and Meitner pulled out some

of paper and started to do calculations. Frisch remembered:

sat

scraps

21

Hitler's Scientists

The charge of uranium overcome the

effect

nucleus,

we

found, was indeed large enough to

of the surface tension almost completely; so the

uranium nucleus might indeed be

a

very wobbly, unstable drop, ready to

divide itself at the slightest provocation, such

But there was another problem. After

as at

the impact of a neutron.

separation, the

and would acquire high

be driven apart by their mutual

electric repulsion

speed and hence a very large

energy - about 200

Where could

that energy

come

two drops would

million volts in

all.

from?^^

Meitner had the necessary insight for

a solution.

Recalling the

formula for computing the masses of nuclei, she worked out that

two nuclei formed by the division of a uranium nucleus together would be lighter than the original uranium nucleus by about one-fifth the mass of a proton. Whenever mass disappears energy the

is

created,

the right

and one-fifth of a proton mass was exactly equivalent to

amount of energy.

'So here,' wrote Frisch in his

'was the source for that energy; their calculation a

it all fitted.'

memoir,

In order to achieve

of the energy equivalent to the

loss

of one-fifth of

proton from one atom of uranium, Meitner employed Einstein's

famous equation E=mc^, and was amazed by the

result —

200 million

showed that the splitting of i gram (1/28 of an ounce) of uranium would release energy equivalent to 2/4 tonnes electron volts!

It

Why had this gone unnoticed in the experiment^ of Fermi,

of coal.

Strassmann and the Paris team - Curie and Savitch?

Hahn and

Since only a small

uranium had clearly

On

number of atoms of minuscule amounts of

split in their

experiments, the energy released had

gone unnoticed. his return to

in order to

Copenhagen

Frisch conducted an experiment

measure the force of the fragments resulting from the

irradiation of uranium

with neutrons and could demonstrate that

it

was equivalent to Meitner's calculations. Commenting on the result, the late

Max

Perutz suggested that Frisch's experiment confirmed

on scientific method. 'The violence of the reacwrote Perutz in an essay on the splitting of the atom, 'had

Karl Popper's ideas tion,'

remained unnoticed without detected

it

a

hypothesis predicting

by an experiment designed to

falsify

it;

and Frisch

'^^ the hypothesis.

Fission

Meitner and Frisch signed by

them both,

and Strassmann's later,

now

Mania

wrote two

219

The

letters to Nature.

first,

offered a theoretical interpretation of Hahn's

The second, by Frisch, published a week own experiment.^" The letters argued that the

results. ^^

described his

'transuranes' described

by Fermi, and then by Hahn, Meitner and

Strassmann, had been the products of the splitting of uranium,

although they used the term

There

rather than 'splitting'.

'fission'

was no suggestion about the prospects

for harnessing the

huge

energy involved in the discovery, nor of the potential for weapon

making.

Bohr Goes

On

3

to

America

January 1939 Otto Frisch met with Bohr

Stockholm and reported the news of the

splitting

conversation lasted only five minutes and

he had not considered the possibility

the disintegration of a heavy nucleus into

almost

classical

Leon

Rosenfeld,

easily a little a

33

stay in the

United

Advanced Study. Bohr had that

above

-year-old

the University of Liege, set

month

He

two

process that does not occur

energy but occurs

sail

for

it.

of uranium. The

Bohr was

earlier.

larger pieces

below

7 January

was an

a certain

Bohr and

of physics

professor

New

astonished that

readily agreed that

at all

On

house in

at his

York

from

to begin a five-

States at the Princeton Institute for a

blackboard installed in

his

cabin so

he could spend the voyage refining the implications of Frisch

and Meitner's proposed joint

Rosenfeld would

letter to Nature.

remember:

We

had bad weather through the whole

miserable,

on the verge of

seasickness

crossing,

all

and Bohr was rather

the time. Nevertheless,

we

persevered for nine days, and before the American coast was in sight,

Bohr had

a full grasp

of the

new process and

its

main

implications.^^

Bohr and Rosenfeld were now instrumental in spreading word about the fission discovery. The story of their activities and its consequences forms an interesting anl instructive

tale

about

how

220

Hitler's Scientists

scientists at

behave: their competitiveness, the pressures that conflict

many points with higher ideals and the need to curb their personal

vanities in times

of international

much

Rosenfeld,

crisis.

jumped

to Bohr's annoyance,

the

gun by

talking about Hahn's result at a club meeting of the Princeton

now being openly (who now had a post at

Physics Department. But since the discovery was discussed,

on 26 January Bohr and Fermi

Columbia,

New York) addressed the Fifth Washington Conference

on Theoretical

Physics.

They infomied

the group that

Hahn and

Strassmann in Berlin had indeed achieved radiochemical confir-

mation

that

barium was produced when uranium was bombarded

by neutrons, and

that Frisch

now

and Meitner had

concluded that

these results indicated 'nuclear splitting', releasing a tremendous

amount of energy. Among

the

fifty

or so

members

at

the meeting

were Gamow, Teller and Bethe. Even before Rosenfeld had were rushing from the room:

finished his presentation physicists

some

news

to telephone the

to colleagues, others to attempt to

replicate the experiments in their

own

laboratories.

Shortly afterwards, Fermi gave a talk

on the

radio about fission

without mentioning Frisch. Bohr was furious. Rosenfeld reported: 'That was the only time in which

saw Bohr

I

really

angry and quite

burning with passion.' Bohr, accompanied by Rosenfeld, went to see

Fermi to have

it

out with him.

Rosenfeld recollected.

—

it

was

a

'I

'I

saw only

did not witness the interview,'

their faces

when they-came

out

long time - and both of them were quite pale, harassed,

quite exhausted. '^^ Bohr, the

no more than enforcing the

man of legendry

integrity,

was doing

ethic of proper attribution, a matter of

crucial significance in scientific protocol.

At

least

one

scientist

saw the military and therefore

political

implications of the discovery and was shocked to the core.

experiment

Szilard heard

of the

the physicist

Eugene Wigner

fission

at

a

Leo

few days later when visiting

Princeton.

Uranium was

clearly

the element that he had been speculating about ever since he had

paused this,'

at that traffic light in

he wrote

later,

London six years

earlier.

'When heard I

Fission

I

saw immediately

to their charge,

Mania

being heavier than corresponds

that these fragments

must emit neutrons, and

in this fission process, then

it

221

if

enough neutrons

chain reaction. All the things which H. G.

suddenly

It

lines

WeUs

essential,

he believed, that any further

should be kept

He

strictly secret, since

predicted appeared

results

the world was

on

a chain reaction

along these

on

wrote to the British Admiralty, reversing

before Christmas that his patent

the brink

his request

bomb

be released. Then on 25 January he wrote to Lewis

WaD

a

real to me.^^

was

of war.

are emitted

should be, of course, possible to sustain

should

L. Strauss, a

Street businessman, predicting that fission heralded nuclear

energy and more serious 'potential

possibilities'

leading to 'atomic

bombs'.

The following week Bohr went on given temporary lodging in Einstein's

over breakfast on in

5

to Princeton,

office.

where he was

During a conversation

February Bohr realized that the observed

uranium was mainly due

to the rare isotope

fission

U-235, which

is

present in uranium in a proportion of one part to 139 parts U-238.

Two

on 7 February, Bohr posted a letter to the Physical Review remarking on this fact. Bohr proposed in this and a later days

later,

paper, published in August with John Wheeler, that

U-238 would

be an unfeasible source of power, but not U-235, which would be easily fissioned at first as

by slow neutrons

on slow neutrons

occurred

in

(the insight led physicists to focus

U-235, rather than on

neutrons

-

Bohr nevertheless took part in a discussion at month in which he spoke of the difficulty of separat-

later).

Princeton that

ing U-235 from natural uranium. entire efforts

fast

of a country to make

'It

would

take,'

he

said,

'the

a bomb.'^'*

The thrilling news of the nuclear fission had nevertheless exerted an impact on many individuals who had contributed to the era of quantum physics and early research into nuclear physics. Within a week of the official discovery and publication, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the polymath

New

Yorker

who

had studied under

Max

Born and shared digs with Paul Dirac at Gottingen, had chalked up on his office blackboard, according to American physicist Philip

222

Hitler's Scientists

Morrison,

drawing -

'a

an execrable drawing — of a

a very bad,

bomb'. Meanwhile George Uhlenbeck heard Enrico Fermi he looked tower: 'A

would

all

disappear.'

Secrecy, Publishing

Szilard

had understood

how many

confirm

say, as

down the length of Manhattan from Columbia's physics little bomb like that,' and he cupped his hands, 'and it

and Funding

that the critical next step in research

neutrons are emitted in

fission,

was

to

leading to

weapon of mass two groups of experimental physicists

the potential for a chain reaction and hence a destruction.

He knew

were working on

that

umbia University,

that

problem: Enrico Fermi and himself at Col-

New York City,

and

physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie in Paris.

French group under the

a

Given the amorphous, often

unpredictable developments in atomic physics, and given the fact that the

world stood on the brink of a war about

by Germany's

be unleashed

to

ruthless dictator, Szilard believed that every

new

discovery in atomic physics was attended by future peril. If discovery

of the

release

of secondary neutrons was

atomic bomb, he reasoned,

it

was

of the public domain. German

were

scientific journals.

scientists

an

keep the discovery out

scientists, after all,

of reading British and American of knowing whether Germany's

essential to building

crucial to

as

capable

With no way

were already working on

secondary neutrons, or chain reactions, or even thinking about the possibility of an atomic weapon, he nevertheless judged that scientists in the

democratic world should not publish anything that

would assist Hitler's nuclear efforts. The incidents that followed exemplify

the conflict

between the

pressure for scientists to publish and the imperative for a scientist to deprive a tyrant

of the

To what

is

extent

knowledge by free,

intellectual

means to blackmail his enemies.

a scientist responsible for the

others?

Those who doubt

morally and politically neutral,

Szilard's fears

whether the

about the

scientists

effect

misuse of his

that basic science

may

is

value-

well consider whether

of publication were

justified

and

involved acted with integrity or otherwise.

Fission

Leo

Szilard

Mania

223

implored both Femii, in person, and Joliot-Curie,

by correspondence, not

found the

to publish their results if they

secondary neutrons they were looking

than one neutron were liberated, a sort of chain reaction

he commented in

possible,'

circumstances

this

hope I

am

his letter to Joliot-Curie. 'In certain

.' .

Szilard,

and

in general

He ended

hands of certain governments.'

particularly

his letter: 'In the

be sufficient neutrons emitted by uranium,

that there will not .

if

might then lead to the construction of bombs

which would be extremely dangerous in the

more would be

'Obviously,

for.

But he deleted

this line.^^

Fermi,

who was working with

agreed not to publish. But Joliot-Curie and his group were

non-commital.

mid-March 1939 Fermi,

In the event, in

Szilard

and

a post-

doctoral physicist, Walter Zinn, and, simultaneously, Joliot-Curie's

group

in Paris observed the additional neutrons that

Szilard's

confinned

theory of chain reaction. Their results showed that in

addition to the heavy isotopes created

products,

as fission

more

than two neutrons on average (2.42 for U-235) were emitted for

each neutron absorbed to

make

therefore possible, and, although there

be solved, an atom

A

fission.

were

chain reaction w^as

still

many problems

bomb was no longer purely in

imagination. Despite Szilard's pleas, however, Joliot-Curie

ahead and published

his observation in the

1

8

to

the realms of the

March

issue

went

of Nature

(Joliot-Curie claimed years later that he had awaited a further

message from Szilard following Szilard's

first

a

subsequent garbled cable: but

quoted above, seems

letter,

clear

enough

in

its

pleading).

Nature article in

Germany

until after the war, but the train

of events

The consequences of Joliot-Curie's were not discovered

which

justified the principle to

times

when

scientific rivalry

political considerations It

so

Szilard

was appealing:

that there are

should be tempered by overriding

beyond

science.

^^

happened that at Hamburg University in Germany there was

the 37-year-old physical chemist Paul Harteck. Harteck's research —

he was something of an expert on neutrons — had been languishing, starved of funding.

He

had spent

a

year in Cambridge in 1932

224

Hitler's Scientists

working with Ernest Rutherford and Marcus Oliphant on nuclear

which involves the combining of

fusion,

publication

on

i8

March 1939 Harteck

light nuclei. After

its

read Joliot-Curie's Nature

the article and immediately saw the prospect of an unusual opportunity for himself

and

weapons research

his research.

He

decided to approach the

of the German

office

Army Ordnance

Heereswaffenamt) in Berlin to inform them of the

making

On

weapon of mass

a

hence to

solicit

(the

possibilities

of

destruction from uranium fission, and

funding for

his personal research

24 April Harteck, and

his assistant

towards that end.

Wilhelm Groth, wrote

Erich Schumann, head of the Ordnance research

to

office:

We take the liberty of calling to your attention the newest developments in nuclear physics,

which, in our opinion, will probably make

it

possible

to produce an explosive of many orders of magnitude more powerful

than conventional ones

.

.

.

That country which

an unsurpassable advantage over the others.

first

makes use of it has

^^

What would induce a physical chemist, an Austrian who claimed to be apolitical, not a member of the Nazi Party, and not especially weaponry (although he seems to have acted as a some point on chemical explosives to Army Ordnance), to put into the minds of Hitler's weapon makers the idea of making an atomic bomb? After the war Harteck claimed that his interested in

consultant

at

only motive was the purely opportunistic quest for scarce funding.

He

applied to the

army not out of

patriotism, nor because he

supported the Nazi cause, but because the army had plenty of

money.

'In those days in

science ... So

obtained.

I

we had

was always

to

Germany we

got no support for pure

go to an agency where money was to be

realistic

about such things. The

we went to them.'^* Army Ordnance was to take

War

Office

had the money and so

As

it

happened.

its

time to get back

to Harteck, but the fact remains that matters involving the fate entire nations scientists.

and continents can

There was

a direct

at

of

times attend the behaviour of

connection between Joliot-Curie's

Fission

article in

Mania

225

Nature and Paul Harteck's determination to seek funding

from whatever source, and with whatever consequences. That the connection did not culminate in Hitler getting the

America has no bearing on the it

happened, other factors were

in the race for the

ahead of

of Szilard's arguments. As

validity at

bomb

work

that

would prove

decisive

atom bomb.

and Roosevelt

Szilard, Einstein

While research on the most appropriate means of creating reaction with Szilard

become

uranium went forward

Of

remained anxious.

in the

United

the scientists in

all

a

chain

Leo

States,

what was

to

the Allied camp, after Pearl Harbor, Szilard saw the future

significance of allowing Hitler alone to possess an atomic

Since he could not control the tongues and pens of

could hardly be surprised vent to the news about

when

fission,

30 April 1939, abandoning

neutrons and chain reactions.

New

he

scientists,

American mass media gave

the

caution, the

all

bomb. full

On

York Times earned

an assessment of the significance of atom research developments

and the disagreements

Tempers and temperatures increased the

between the

that reigned

American Physical Society

as

visibly

among members of

they closed their Spring meeting with

arguments over the probability of some portion of the earth with

today

scientists:

a tiny bit

scientist

blowing up

a sizable

of uranium, the element which

produces radium.

Dr

Niels

Bohr of Copenhagen,

a

colleague of

Dr

Albert Einstein

at

the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., declared that bombard-

ment of

amount of

a small

the pure isotope

slow neutron particles of atoms would

start a

U235 of uranium with

'chain reaction' or atomic

explosion sufficiently great to blow up a laboratory and the surrounding

country for

Many

many

miles.

physicists declared,

however,

impossible, to separate isotope 235

The

isotope 235

is

only

i

that

it

would be

difficult, if

not

from the more abundant isotope 238.

per cent of the uranium element.

226

Hitler's Scientists

Dr L. Onsager of Yale in

which, according to

University described, however, a

his calculations, the isotopes

which

separated in gaseous form in tubes

new apparatus

of elements can be

are cooled

on one

side

and

heated to high temperatures on the other.

Other

physicists

tively expensive

argued that such a process would be almost prohibi-

and

of isotope 235 would be infmitesimally

that the yield

small. Nevertheless, they pointed out that, if

would work,

separation

wreck

A

as large

single

declared,

an area

neutron

as

New York

Onsager's process of

which would

City would be comparatively easy.

particle, striking the

would be

Dr

the creation of a nuclear explosion

nucleus of a uranium atom, they

sutficient to set off a chain reaction

of millions of

other atoms.

some of the top physicists, including Heisenberg, Weizand Otto Hahn, were in Germany, and since information

Since sacker

about the

latest

research discoveries was leaking continually into

the public domain,

what should be done

to protect the democratic

world from future calamity?

Even while

Szilard

was taking

a lead in raising funds to

conduct

experiments leading to a chain reaction, he was detennined to take positive action in the political

Hitler

would

confiscate Belgian reserves of

the Belgian Congo), he

Queen

and international sphere. Fearing that

formed

Elisabeth of Belgium.

uranium (mined from

a plan to enlist Einstein to

forewarn

But events moved with agonizing

slowness. It

was not

until

mid-July that Szilard and Wigner received an

summer house on Long

invitation to drive to Einstein's

where they informed him of the

latest scientific

Island,

developments.

On

their arrival Szilard described to Einstein his recent experiments at

Columbia and

his calculations

and graphite. At his surprise as

this point,

towards a chain reaction in uranium

according to Szilard, Einstein expressed

he had neither heard nor thought of the

of a chain reaction.

He

said:

possibility

'Daran babe ich gar nicht gedacht!'

(I

never thought of that!)^^ But he was quick to see the implications,

and ready to participate a

weapon of mass

in issuing

warnings even

destruction was a false alarm.

if the potential for

The

three scientists

Fission

drafted a letter,

Mania

227

which they beHeved they should

Belgian Ambassador in Washington, with

a

first

address to the

covering

letter to the

Department.

State

Within three

days,

and before sending the

letter, Szilard

sought

the advice of Alexander Sachs, a biologist, national economist and

businessman. Sachs was insistent that here 'were matters which first

and foremost concerned the White House and

that the best

thing to do, also from the practical point of view, was to inform

The famous

Roosevelt'. topic of the

letter

from Einstein

atom bomb was dated

2

to

Roosevelt on the

August 1939: the opening

paragraph reads:

Sir:

Some

work by

recent

communicated

element uranium

of energy

seem part

me

to

E. Fernii and L. Szilard,

may be

turned into

immediate

in the

which

been

has

me to expect that the new and important source

in manuscript, leads a

future. Certain aspects

of the situation

to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action

of the Administration.

I

believe, therefore, that

bring to your attention the following

facts

it is

on the

my duty to

and recommendations.

In the event, Einstein's plea, via Alexander Sachs,

was not pre-

sented to Roosevelt until 11 October 1939, almost six weeks after

of Poland and Britain's and France's declaration

Hitler's invasion

of war on

3

September. Present

at

the meeting was General

Edwin

M. Watson, nicknamed intimates, his own executive secretary and a military aide. Roosevelt 'Pa', Roosevelt's aide, along with various

greeted Sachs with 'Alex, what are you up to?'

young American inventor, Napoleon proposing a fleet of

Sachs started with a story of the

Robert Fulton, ships

without

who wrote a letter to

sails

that

could attack England whatever the weather.

Napoleon dismissed the

idea:

'Away with your

visionists!'

Acton, the nineteenth-century English historian, cited as

an

illustration

this

Lord

episode

of French short-sightedness which had worked to

Britain's advantage.

history of Europe

Had Napoleon showed a little more vision,

might have been very

diflierent.

the

228

Hitler's Scientists

With

Roosevelt sent for

this

poured a

glass for his visitor

a bottle

and one for himself. Sachs had prepared

containing Einstein's letter and a

a file

of Napoleon brandy and

memorandum by

He then decided to make his own 800-word presentation,

Szilard.

emphas-

izing the prospects for nuclear energy, radioactive materials for

medical use and

finally

'bombs of hitherto unenvisaged potency

and scope'. The President, he concluded, should take measures

to

secure the Belgian uranium reserves and encourage research to be

financed by industry and private foundations.

be formed to

liaise

He ended by

between the

scientists

A committee should

and the administration.

quoting from Francis Aston's 1936 lecture, 'Forty

Years of Atomic Theory':

think there

Personally

I

aU around

us,

infinite

that

power.

and

don't

it

no doubt

exclusively in

Roosevelt

blow

is

that sub-atomic energy

one day man wiU

release

is

and control

available

its

almost

We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope

he will not use

'Alex,'

that

said,

blowing up

'what you are

his

after

is

next door neighbor.^"

to see that the Nazis

us up.'

'Precisely,' said Sachs.

Whereupon action,' It

he

would

the President called

said tersely.

on Watson.

'This requires

^^

take another three years for that action to be*realized.

World War

i8.

The

path to

World War

II

had begun

II

as early as

began to reami in contravention of the

1935,

when

Hitler

Versailles Treaty, before

marching unopposed into the 'demilitarized Rhineland'. By 1938 Hitler had forced through the unification of Germany with Austria, also

forbidden by the terms of Versailles, and in the autumn seized

on

part of Czechoslovakia

German

the pretext of bringing lost territory and

populations back into the Fatherland. Britain agreed to

the carve-up of Czechoslovakia in the

appeased. But his

demands only

hope

increased.

that Hitler

He

seized

would be

what was

of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and in the summer made

left

a pact

with the Soviet Union to divide Poland. Hitler invaded Poland brutally

and with great

loss

of

France and Britain declared war on

no

hostilities until the

3

following spring,

Norway and Denmark in

on

September 1939. September; but there were

civilian life

i

when Germany

attacked

response to the blocking of Scandinavian

waters by the Royal Navy. British troops failed to thwart the

German

invasion.

The next month

Hitler's

mechanized

forces

outflanked the French defences, launching a powerful, high-speed,

well-coordinated attack through the

Low

Countries and thence

through France. Britain's fleeing forces narrowly escaped destruction in the

Dunkirk evacuation. The

armistice

between Germany

and France was signed on 22 June 1940. Hitler was

now

master of

Europe from the Pyrenees

to the North Cape. Britain's plight was would soon become abundantly clear that her fate would depend on technology rather than superior force of arms and men. In Germany, however, the outbreak of war did not see the recruitment of scientists into appropriate war work. Students of

perilous;

and

it

science, postgraduates

and senior

scientists

of every kind, along

with engineers and technical experts, were called into the German

230

Hitler's Scientists

armed

services to fight,

would have on

a

war

with no thought for the repercussions

that

was

to

be technologically demanding.

There were, however, some exceptions,

who

had spent the summer months

been

in preparation

in particular Heisenberg,

in the

German uranium

required to join the

this

United

States.

He

was

which had

research effort,

from the spring of 1939.

Heisenberg Mobilized

In the

weeks

that

preceded the outbreak of war, Werner Heisen-

berg's determination to stay in

had become

clear as

Gemiany

despite Hitler's regime

he travelled around America on

summer lecture and seminar tour. That year he took Chicago,

Ann Arbor and

Indianapolis,

with peer group physicists on the

two

and was

scientific issues.

future leaders of the world's

his regular

New York,

in frequent debate

By

atomic

first

in

a stroke

of irony

bomb programmes

found themselves locked in dispute when Heisenberg and J. Robert

Oppenheimer

quarrelled over a technical detail about electrons at

the University of Chicago.

Conflicting motives were given by Heisenberg for declining invitations to

become an emigre. According

Rabi, Heisenberg proffered told

Rabi

States

that

he was

he would

On

academia.'

a less

afraid that if

he emigrated

lose his place in the

according to Heisenberg's

I.

I.

United

olf German Germany would

to an end.

own recollections,

Germany he had gathered

to the

pecking order

other occasions he argued that

need him when the Hitler regime came

that in

to the physicist

than noble reason. Heisenberg

At Ann Arbor,

he told Enrico Fermi

together a group of

young

physicists:

If

I

abandoned them now,

have

much

consistent

.

I

would

choice in the matter. .

.

feel like a traitor ... I

I

don't think

I

firmly believe that one must be

People must learn to prevent catastrophes, not to run away

we ought even to his own country.^

from them. Perhaps storms there are in

insist that

everyone braves what

World War

It

appears that in the

in

wartime

to devote

bomb and

also discussed

the role of the scientist in

memoir Heisenberg remembers observing that

scientists are

all

23

summer of 1939 Heisenberg

the possibiHty of an atomic

war. In his post-war

II

expected by their respective governments

their energies to building

new weapons. But

he was

convinced in 1939 that the war would be over long before the

first

bomb could be built. This was clearly a reflection on what he knew to be the technical difficulties at the time. Some old friends atomic

a German week ofjuly Heisensail for Germany. The

noted that Heisenberg assumed that in the event of war victory was a foregone conclusion.^ In the

berg

left a

hot and

humid

New York to

following month, the Third Reich was

last

set

war.

at

Throughout the summer of 1939, as the storm clouds of war gathered, Germany's military scientists had been keeping track of the fission discovery and the consequent excitement in the media in the

United

States.

On

30 April 1939, the

New

York Times carried

story proclaiming to the world that the bombardment of a 'small amount of the pure isotope U235' with slow neutron particles of atoms would prompt an explosion sufficient to blow up 'the its

many

surrounding country for

Meanwhile,

in Berlin

bureaucrat

science

on the previous

and physicist

Education Ministry, convened {Urauvereiii).

miles'.

a

in

day,

Abraham

Esau, a

Bernhard Rust's Reich

meeting to

set

up

a

'uranium club'

Esau had been impelled to action by physicists

Gottingen University,

who

at

noted the potential for nuclear power

in uranium; but the Ministry

was not the only Berlin authority

interested in the question of the potential of nuclear fission and

uranium.'* his letter

nance.

As

we

have seen, on 24 April Paul Harteck had written

seeking funding from the research office of Army Ord-

The army had not been

inactive;

indeed

it

had received

another approach broaching the possibility of uranium

from a Nikolaus Riehl, head of Auer Company. (Auer collaborated with plosive

as

an ex-

scientific research at the

the Degussa

company of

Frankfurt in supplying uranium: Degussa exists to this day and until recently was performing that service for Iraq.)^ In the event, the

army was

to take charge

of nuclear

fission research in

its first

phase.

232

Hitler's Scientists

and oversee Esau's proposed uranium

Walker

commented,

has

'the

club, demonstrating, as

Mark

pecking order of science policy in

National Socialist Germany'.^

There were two experts

in

atomic physics

Kurt Diebner and Erich Bagge —

Army Ordnance —

at

who convened an

meeting

initial

of the newly formed uranium club in Berlin on i6 September 1939. Ten days later a second, more crucial meeting took place at the office

Army Ordnance on Hardenberg

of

which

Strasse, Berlin,

included Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, Hans Geiger, Carl Fried-

von Weizsacker (protege of Heisenberg), Paul Harteck and an

rich

men and

assorted group of nuclear physicists, military

bureaucrats. Heisenberg,

still

young enough

to

science

be called into the

army, had been ordered to Berlin under the mobilization decrees.

The

scientists discussed

uranium

exploitation,

from the point of

view of both energy and weapons, and concluded research, theoretical

that

more

and experimental, was needed before aims

and means could be defined. Meanwhile,

Amiy Ordnance had

informed the general secretary of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society

that

the Institute for Physics in Berlin was to be requisitioned for

war

work

(its

director, Peter

Debye,

Dutch

a

relinquish his direction of the institute).

national,

was forced

The work and

to

the person-

on nuclear research under the title Nuclear Physics Research Group. Hence the independence of the institute was nel

were

to focus

from the beginning of the war aims

(a

sacrificed to the

process that had been seen in the First

Institute for Physical Chemistry).

Kaiser

formed

Wilhelm links

Society, under

Nazi

War

state's

at Fritz

war

Haber's

As Mark Walker observes, the

its

new

spirit

and auspices,

with industry, establishing in microcosm

also

a classic

example of the industrial-military complex. Carl Bosch (of Haber-

Bosch fame), the IG Farben executive, took over from Planck president of the Kaiser

Wilhelm

as

Society, soon to be followed

by Albert Vogler, boss of one of the biggest

steel

companies

in

Germany.^ The uranium club was nevertheless fragmented and not strongly led,

reputation the

its

aims not well defined. Diebner did not have

among the

civilian scientists,

and

in

a

high

the whole course of

war the strength of the uranium team did not exceed

a

hundred

World War

scientists.

among

Paul Harteck, alone

233

II

the scientists

it

seemed,

appreciated the vast industrial requirements to bring such a project to a successful conclusion.^

Diebner was appointed administrative head of the

KWI

Physics w^ith loose but overall responsibility for the project.

of the

scientists,

including Weizsacker, were to be based

for

Some at

the

institute in Berlin and at an army laboratory at Gottow. Others would commute from their bases in eight different locations in Germany - Paul Harteck, for example, from Hamburg, Walther Bothe from Heidelberg and Heisenberg from Leipzig, where he retained his chair in physics. Heisenberg's journey between Leipzig

and Berlin took two hours each way. In addition the personnel, with that,

to the dispersal

many hours spent in travelling,

there

is

of

evidence

with some exceptions, members of the different groups did

not hold each other in high regard.^

An insulated shed was built in the grounds of the Kaiser Wilhelm house

Institute for Biology, close to the Physics Institute, to

radioactive cylindrical reactor model: in the

hope

the curious.

that the threat to health

Meanwhile

a

it

was

impHed

called 'Virus

in

its title

a

House'

would

deter

second reactor model was prepared

at

Heisenberg's institute in Leipzig.

The German

scientists

were undoubtedly

in possession

nuclear research data and theory in the public

of the Atlantic since the fission.

Hahn and

uranium

in establishing a nuclear research

with Heisenberg

possession of

reserves in the Joachimsthal mines in

occupied Czechoslovakia. The Nazi

auspices,

state

had taken

programme

directly

a

world lead

under military

a crucial figure in that project.

principal aims, however, exposed a significant deficit.

research

sides

Strassmann discovery of nuclear

The Third Reich, moreover, now enjoyed

the world's largest

of all the

domain on both

programme focused on two

The

Their

nuclear

areas: isotope separation

and

the construction of a reactor. At the same time Walther Bothe, a

top experimental physicist in Germany, was intent on measuring properties of nuclear reactions,

he did there

a

which required

a

cyclotron.

When

survey of cyclotrons throughout the world, he found that

were nine

in the

United

States,

with

a further

twenty-seven

234

Hitler's Scientists

under construction, but none

German

cyclotron

in

Germany.

at his disposal until

The

He would

not have a

1944.

Position Paper

Heisenberg threw himself enthusiastically into writing up paper on the theory and applications of nuclear

months

two top

after the

September meeting

Acquisition of Energy from 1939.

in Berlin,

'The

secret reports entitled

he

Possibility

Uranium

Fission',

a position

fission.

Three

filed the first

of

of the Technical

dated 6

December

He could confirm the feasibility of a controlled fission reactor,

or uranium machine, and further claimed that isotopes

were obtained

constitute a

if one

of the uranium

in a sufficiently enriched form,

it

would

bomb of unprecedented explosive force. He recapitu^°

lated the state

pointed out,

is

of knowledge. Uranium found

composed of two

its

natural state, he

isotopes, or nuclei

of two different

which

masses: uranium-238 (U-238),

much

is

in

present in abundance in

U-235 (being less than i per cent of natural uranium). U-235, however, is more fissionable that is, its atoms are more susceptible to being spht by neutron bombardment — than U-238. Hence a prelude to nuclear fission natural uranium,

and the

and

chain reaction for spectacular release of energy

a successful

rarer

involved the 'enrichment' of the U-235 content of natural uranium

by separation from the more

U-238 content. *moreover, would involve

plentiful

A crucial aspect of the process, of a 'moderator', which slows

down

the use

the speeds of the neutrons to

reduce their chances of being absorbed by U-238 and thus increases their probability

of fissioning the U-235 nuclei. Heisenberg pro-

posed, in theory, two kinds of moderator: carbon and heavy water. In his

initial

design he provided for the use of both these moderators

in a cylindrical pile.

At the same time he speculated about the

possibihty of using enriched

U-235

engines for tanks and submarines

power of which exceeds by

several

powers

that

as

in small

well

as for a

mobile reactors

bomb

as

'the explosive

of the strongest available explosives

often'.''

Heisenberg's second report, delivered to

Army Ordnance

in

World War

February 1940, was more cautious.

and

II

235

He made no mention of a bomb,

stressed the engineering difficulties that faced the reahzation

of

energy purposes.

a reactor for

Reminiscent of the technical problems posed by the notion of fixing nitrogen

separation of

from the

air forty

uranium isotopes

years earlier, identification

in quantity

and

from natural uranium

appeared insuperable, and not only to the Germans,

at

the beginning

of 1940. Not quite, however, since the best prospect for separation

- by gaseous

diffusion

— had been

in process of

development by

Gustav Hertz, who, because of his Jewish descent, had been forced out of his post

as

head of physics

just across the road

at

the Berlin Technical College

from the Army Ordnance

offices.

Work on

his

isotope separation solution had ceased with his dismissal. But that

very solution became in time a favoured method of separation in the Allies' Manhattan Project.

As the began

to

first

way Heisenberg

nag Diebner for adequate quantities of uranium oxide,

insisting that

research.

phase of German research got under

He

he urgently required

recommended

also

a

metric tonne for experimental

the construction of a plant to

produce heavy water, while urging the need for

a cyclotron. In the

meantime Heisenberg's research group experimented with and regular water

as

paraffin

potential moderators.

Plutonium

As

Hitler's 'Lightning

War' got under way, however, German

conquests offered the prospect of solving some of Heisenberg's

urgent needs. Following the invasion of Norway, the captured Vermork, the

fall

of the world's only heavy-water plant. After

of Paris in July, Bothe and Diebner made their way to the

CoUege de France completing

The

site

Wehrmacht

in Paris,

where Joliot-Curie was on the point of

a usable cyclotron.

following year, 1940-41, passed for Heisenberg in failed

reactor experiments in Leipzig and Berlin, while attempts to

produce

significant

amounts of U-235 proved disappointing. In

July of 1940, however, Weizsacker and his colleagues, working

236

Hitler's Scientists

theoretically tor,

on

the development of a 'uranium machine', or reac-

had published a paper for Arniy Ordnance entitled 'A Possibility

of Energy Production from U-238'. They speculated that the next

element beyond uranium, the product of radioactive decay in

a

would have the potential for atomic explosive (he uses, in fact, the term Eka-Rhenium, or neptunium). This would open the way to making atom bombs, precluding the dijfficult business of separating out U-235. But there were still technical problems that stood in the way of success (the importance of reactor using U-238,

employing

fast

was given

copy of the paper.

The

a

neutrons was

still

not understood). ^^ Heisenberg

following summer, in August 1941, Fritz Houtermans, a

brilliant physicist,

confirmed theoretically in Berlin the

possibility

of creating chain reactions from plutonium, the by-product of a

working on

reactor

natural uranium.

The appearance of

Houtermans on the German atomic research scene

He was leanings who

a

socialist

had turned up

from the

in Berlin in 1940

Union with the strangest of stories. Against all wiser counsels

he had taken

a post at the

Ukrainian Physics Institute in Kharkov

in 1935 amidst Stalin's purges.

By December

Moscow

idle

arrested in party.

some

Gottingen-trained physicist with Soviet

explanation.

Soviet

requires

Fritz

after

Under torture he

making an

falsely

1937 he had been

remark about

Stalin at a

confessed to being a Nazi spy. After

two and a half years in Soviet prisons he was released b^,ck to the Gennans by the Soviet authorities in the summer of 1940, a result of the brief honeymoon of the Hitler— Stalin the Nazis, thizer,

Laue,

who

pact.

continued to suspect that he was

He was jailed by a

Soviet sympa-

but was subsequently released through the good offices of

who

secured

him

a

research job in the laboratory of another

unusual figure, Manfred von Ardenne.

Von Ardenne was engaged in the most unlikely of projects, given the secrecy and monopolistic tendency of the in atomic physics.

Von Ardenne was

and inventor with wide-ranging

had

built his

own

amiy towards research

an entrepreneurial

interest in

new

scientist

technology.

He

electron microscope after the instrument had

been invented in 1 93 8, and he had earlier experimented in television

World War

technology, which had brought (a

body

him to

naturally interested in

new

communication) and indeed of the

237

II

the notice of the Post Office

fomis of broadcasting and

When von

Fiihrer.

Ardenne

expressed an interest in atomic energy, the Post Office funded to

do research

in fission studies

him

and electromagnetic mass separators

of isotopes with a view to solving the problem of separating U-23 5.

Von Ardenne

put Houtemians to

work on

chain reactions and, by

August, basing his thinking on the famous Bohr- Wheeler paper of

September 1939, and the report of Joliot-Curie in Nature in April 1939, he had come up with the conclusion, theoretical at this stage, that the

element 94, plutonium, could be created by

a reactor.

Houtermans aware of the implications of plutonium weapons construction? that

It

seems that he was, although

Was

for nuclear it is

unlikely

he realized any more than did the Americans in the early stages

the technical difficulties involved in

making

a

plutonium bomb.

Discovering the problems associated with employing plutonium in a

bomb

never arose for the Germans, because they never got

reactor going. In the

meantime

Fritz

a

Houtermans was apparently

appalled by his plutonium discovery and the possibilities that flowed

from

it.

Houtermans, an individual persecuted by both the Nazis

and the Soviets, had

a

thoroughly awakened political consciousness refugee

who was

leaving for the United States he sent a message, without

knowing

as a scientist

and he acted accordingly. Through

the status of

Anglo-American atomic

would understand:

it

said that they

a

research, to physicists

who

The message also bomb, was trying to

should hurry.

claimed that Heisenberg, fearful of creating a delay the research.

That item of information, which makes Heisenberg appear heroic,

would add

to the

enigma of his personality and the long-

running debates about the part he played in the German nuclear

programme.

238

Hitler's Scientists

British Breakthrough

While the

on both

scientists

sides

of the democratic-Nazi divide

continued with their experiments and speculations on atomic energy and weapons potential, an outstanding obstacle in the path

of atom

bomb

production was the quantity of uranium required

for a chain reaction leading to an explosion.

On

9 June 1939 the physicist Siegfried Fliigge, a colleague of

Heisenberg's

at

the Kaiser

had published an

Wilhelm

article in the

Institute for Physics in Berlin,

German

leading

Naturwissenschaften,^^ calculating that

oxide contained sufficient energy to

lift

science periodical

cubic metre of uranium

i

kilometre of water

a cubic

27 kilometres high. In 1939—40 the amounts of U-235 deemed

make

necessary to

'uranium bomb' by

a

scientists in the leading

developed countries of the world, including the United Britain and

Germany, were

of an atomic

bomb

Hungarian emigre

so

enormous

make

as to

States,

the creation

look highly improbable. Edward Teller, the

United

scientist living in the

States,

was talking

30 tons in 1940, while Britain's James Chadwick and the French theoretician Francis Perrin

were

calculating 40 tons.^"*

The

Italian

Fermi, tongue in cheek no doubt, estimated the amount to be equivalent to a small Certainly not by an

venture carry

a

star!

aircraft.

could such a

Possibly

by

ship,

bomb

be delivered?

but would not such

catalogue of high risks?

The breakthrough on once

How

the question of

again, that remarkable physicist

a

*,

'critical

Otto

mass' involved,

Frisch, Lise Meitner's

nephew. In the summer of 1939 Frisch had left Denmark with two small cases bound for Birmingham University. He had gained a toe-hold in the Physics Department the Australian Marcus Oliphant,

on radar technology.

as

an 'auxiliary lecturer' under

who was working in great secrecy

Frisch continued to

with theoretical work on

fission. In the

English winter of the war he settled

occupy

however,

himself,

grim privations of that

down

to write a

first

review of

advances in experimental atomic physics for the British Chemical Society.

'I

managed

to write that article in

my

bed-sitter

where

in

World War

daytime, with the gas

going

fire

lap,

at

my

Wearing

bedside.'

he finished the

The

article.'^

of an explosion resulting from thought

a

bomb

a

239

day, the temperature rose to 42

all

degrees Fahrenheit {6c)... while

tumbler

II

night the water froze in the

at

his overcoat,

article

on

typewriter

touched on the

his

possibility

chain reaction. Frisch, like others,

unfeasible since the

amount of uranium required

was so enormous. It

was

a conclusion,

he wrote, that he found consoling. Later he

recollected: 'People have often asked

of deliberate camouflage.

what

I

I

can assure you

wrote; that an atomic

bomb was

At Birmingham Frisch made born refugee, the mathematical

been working

me whether that it

wasn't.

in his

really believed

impossible.''^

with an another German-

physicist

Rudolph Peierls, who had

Cambridge, since 1933 on

memoir

IVIiat Little I

Remember that, using

formula derived by Francis Perrin and refmed by

discovered that the

amount of U-235 required

was 'very much smaller than tons, but

and

after all

be

a 'critical size',

one

a

I

had expected;

pound or

it

fission to

possible'.

or

have

was not

great

enough

chance of striking

escaping outside the mass.

a

They

a

he

matter of

wrote

two'.'^ Frisch

that

atomic

he

bomb

The mass of U-235, however, had

'critical mass':

a

Peierls,

for a chain reaction

Peierls stared at each other, 'and realized that an

might be

something Hke

a

now became critical.

Rockefeller grant. Their research relationship

a

a piece

friends

in England, mainly in

Otto Frisch wrote

I

was

for neutrons

to

from

second nucleus before

estimated that

5

kgs (11

lbs)

of

U-235 could produce an explosive power equivalent to 'several thousand tons of dynamite'. This came extraordinarily close to the

bombs that would be dropped on Japan. The groundwork for this historic result had involved a fresh look

equivalence of the atomic

at

the

problem of separating U-23 5 from U-23 8

Such were the assumed enrichment 'critical

as

it

was

difficulties

of making

also called, that

mass' required to

in natural uranium. that separation, or

nobody had

calculated the

make an explosion with U-235. To is a minimum amount

recapitulate: this refers to the fact that there

of the element necessary to sustain

a

chain reaction; quantities of

240

Hitler's Scientists

the material

less

than the

'critical value' are stable (in

no chain reaction can take

the neutrons escape) and Frisch tackled the

aging

the sense that place.

problem of separation or enrichment by envis-

German physical chemist Klaus The experimental equipment was rudimentary. A tube

technique developed by the

a

Clusius.

down

with

a

heated rod inside running

with

a

gaseous form of the material to be separated; the tube wall

would then be cooled with water, and would rise while the heavier would Clusius's separation formula, Frisch like a a

its

centre had to be filled

the enriched lighter isotope sink to the bottom.

concluded that 'with something

hundred thousand similar separation tubes one might produce

pound of reasonably pure uranium-235

measured It is

were cists

Using

in

modest time,

a

in weeks'.

often observed that emigre scientists like Frisch and Peierls

at

the forefront of atomic research because indigenous physi-

were preoccupied with radar and

commented

electronic warfare. Frisch

view of the horrendous

that in subsequent years, in

nature of the

bomb, he was

often asked

why

he did not abandon

the project there and then, without telling anybody. 'The answer,'

he wrote,

'is

very simple.

We

were

at

war, and the idea was

some German scientists had had the same idea and were working on it.' As it was, he and Peierls wrote up their results and sent them in a report to Henry Tizard, the British government adviser on scientific problems anS- warfare. This 'Frisch Peierls Memorandum' was the first documented claim that atomic weapons were feasible and this memo triggered the formation of the Committee, the British body assembled to explore the development of an atomic bomb. (The name reasonably obvious; very probably

MAUD

MAUD

was not an acronym;

it

arose as a result of a cable

Bohr

to a friend in

who

had taught Bohr's sons English was living

Ray

Kent'.

England referring

A member

isotopes was

now

to the fact that the governess in

Kent — 'Maud

of the committee thought

mysterious and misleading

title.)

from

it

a suitably

Britain's effort to separate

established in a division

known

as

uranium

'Tube Alloys'

within the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The

MAUD

Committee was

destined to be part of the top

World War secret scientific collaboration that

241

II

had already

started

between the

and the Americans to develop radar. By the following summer the committee filed a detailed report on a U-235 bomb, stating, 'We have now reached the conclusion that it will be possible likely to lead to decisive to make an effective uranium bomb British

.

.

.

results in the war.'^** It

was

document

this

that

prompted Vannevar Bush, the creator

of the National Research Committee in the United States, to get the

American bomb project underway. Armed with the the

MAUD

report.

final

version of

Bush briefed President Roosevelt about

its

contents on October 1941. Anticipating the development of the Allied velt straight

away saw

its

atom bomb, Roose-

importance, and accepted that

'a

great

money would be required'. He told Vannevar Bush 'to work in every possible way'.^*^ Yet it it was to take until the following August, 1942, for the Americans to make the major practical decisions for development. From the outset, control deal of

expedite the

of atomic research was transferred to

a

Committee,

Military Policy

which included Vannevar Bush himself and James Conant. A US army office for procurement and plant construction was established, its

HQ initially in New York City, hence

its

code name Manhattan

Engineering District or Manhattan Project. The British atom initiatives

were

transferred to the

Groves

Colonel

Leslie

'Greasy',

once described by

I've ever

met

bomb

in

project.

my life',

Aged

(later

a

Manhattan

promoted colleague

Project.

By September

to General),

as 'the

bomb

nicknamed

biggest sonavabitch

was appointed commanding

officer

of the

forty-six at the time of his appointment, he

had distinguished himself as a builder of barracks and was responsible for the construction

ton,

DC.

of the Pentagon military

HQ outside Washing-

His construction experience came in useful, since he was

obliged to build the equivalent of three small

cities at great

speed.

19-

Machines of War

While the uranium club and von Ardenne's laboratory continued to work on the potential for nuclear energy as a reactor and as a 'reactor bomb', to suffer

Reich.

armaments development and production had begun

from the peculiarly chaotic

The

social scientist

Franz

state that

reigned in the Third

Neumann,

writing early in the

war, evoked a striking image depicting the relationship between the

power

Third Reich and the prospects for

structures of the

science and technology.'

Neumann saw

regime under the tight executive rule of but

as a cartel

prodigious

of power blocs,

size)

big business, the

or unstate

civil service

The members of mostly in

—

a

Nazi Germany not its

'Behemoth'

monstrous beast of

(a

a 'polycratic' coalition

and the

of the army,

Party.

were

the cartel sometimes collaborated, but

conflict. Ultimately, the blocs exercised

of Hitler's favour,

'like

as a

dictator, the Fiihrer,

power by

spokes around the hub of a wheel'. ^

incumbent on each of the power brokers

to interpret the

virtue It

w^as

mind of

him and his close circle for signs of approval. myth of the fascist leadership principle, *it meant

Hitler and petition

Contrary to the

that Hitler interfered intermittently, but

had

little real

control over

the direction of research, development and production in the

Third Reich. In an expanded historians

list

of Neumann's

have included the navy, the

cartel

air force,

components,

the SS, the Hitler

Youth, the Four-Year Plan, the Todt workers' organizations and the Ministry for

Armaments and War Production.

It

has also

been

noted that the image of discrete spokes of a wheel around the hub

of the Fiihrer does not allow for the

and internecine

The be seen

reality

of wasteful duplication

rivalry.

overlap of interests, in the role

as

well

of individuals

as

who

occasional cooperation, can

had assembled

executive roles within different blocs of the

cartel.

a

number of

An example

of

Mack in es

of

Wa r

243

with significance for science and technology, was the case of

this,

SS Brigadier-General Ministerial Director Professor Doctor Rudolf Mentzel,

who was

member of

a

member of the Party and honorary holding down influential positions in

founder

the SS, while

the Ministry of Education, the

German Research Council, tific

Reich Research Council and the

principal bodies for dispensing scien-

funding. At the same time individuals were capable of creating

conflicting

influences

ideological

—

within various blocs

for

example, the competing thrusts of anti-Semitism, anti-socialism

and anti-communism, nationalism and an enthusiasm racy.

As the regime's power barons flexed

for technoc-

their muscles

responded to what they believed to be the vision of the allies

close to the

power

centres,

some

aspects

and

Fiihrer, or

of science and

technology were encouraged, some were oppressed and some flourished and exerted influence without encouragement.

the future of Germany's

on

a

regime that lacked

Hence

war technology and production depended

a centralized executive capable

of prioritiz-

ing the competing demands of labour and materiel. Goering was

nominally the country's economic czar and had jealously guarded his directorship

of the so-called Four-Year Plan from 1936 onwards,

but the proliferation of

his

other

tasks,

hard-pressed

economy

Economics Minister,

in wartime.

in charge

Com-

which included

mander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, precluded

his ability to

run a

Meanwhile Walter Funk,

the

of the domestic economy, was

a

party apparatchik, under Goering's thumb, while military pro-

duction was controlled by General Georg Thomas, terized the chaotic mobilization of resources as against

who 'a

charac-

war of

all

all'.-'

Conventional Technology

World War II saw remarkable advances in new technology that became war- winners — radar, computerized codebreaking and the atomic bombs that were to end the war in Japan.

The

course of

Germany's rocket and development

project, far

ahead of its

until the latter stages

rivals,

was

still

in research

of the war, guidance systems

244

Hitler's Scientists

and payloads lagging behind the power systems. Despite these innovations, however,

much of the

fighting in

all

theatres of

was performed with conventional technology developed 1930s and brought rapidly to

Germany's

tacticians

combined use of aircraft, riers,

optimum

levels

had developed tanks, artillery

of efficiency. pre-war years the

in the

and motorized troop car-

to

crucial

Blitzkrieg

this

punch

make rapid outflanking move-

ments. Use of radio communications between land and

was

in the

the Blitzkrieg, concentrating their impact in order to

holes in the enemy's defences and to

war

effect.'*

air forces

Automatic weapons had

increased in their efficiency, especially with the design of clips and

magazines for rapid

fire in rifles;

but

as historian

Gerhard Weinberg

comments, 'Any World War I veteran would have had no

difficulty

recognizing the heavy infantry weapons of 1945.' In one area of

German ordnance reached

its

engineers were to opt for giganticism: this

ultimate tumescence in a 31 -inch

mounted on

a railway track

operation.

would

It

and requiring 4,400 personnel for

only forty-eight

fire

gun named Dora,

shells

at

the siege of

Sevastapol in June 1942 before sinking into rusty oblivion. Another

German

gun,

more than

a

hundred yards long, known

working on the principle of a

would be event,

A

it

on the Channel

as

the V3,

of explosions along the coast to fire at

barrel,

London. In the

was only used against Luxembourg.

significant

by both fuse,

erected

series

sides,

new development

in shell technology,

but more effectively by the

Allies,

employed

was the proximity

designed to explode not on impact but within lethal range of

the target.

which

The

reflected

the explosive

Both

principle involved the emission of a radio signal

back from the target to the

when

sides in the

shell so as to

detonate

the signal reached the right strength.

European

conflict

had developed tank technol-

ogy during the 1930s beyond the ponderous models of World War I. The Germans had concentrated their production efforts on the Mark II and the Mark IV, although it was the efficiency of their deployment, as massed Panzer divisions, or 'amiies', that made for

their decisiveness in

Russia,

Poland and France, and early

working best on the open,

in the invasion

relatively flat spaces

of

of Northern

Machines of

Europe and the

245

of Russia. Superior German

grasslands

Wehrmacht

enabled the

War

Red Army

to bring the

defeat in the early stages of the invasion of Russia.

tactics

to the brink

Three and

of

a half

thousand German tanks rolled back some 15,000 Soviet vehicles.

The

early

German

onslaught masked the fact that Hitler had a

mechanized army supported by a much larger one, dependent on nineteenth-century means of transport — horses,

relatively small

700,000 of them, and the railways.

The

virtual destruction

of Soviet armoured divisions, however,

obliged the Russians to design a

employ

tactics that

formations.

new

generation of tanks, and to

mimicked and even surpassed the German

The T34 was

built for speed,

would

carry

two-way

radios.

Robust,

KV-I (later By 1943 they

while the

surpassed by the 'Stalin') was designed for fire-power.

reliable, relatively basic in

design and highly standardized, the Russian T34S were speedily

mass-produced. The Soviet tank armies, moreover, were accompanied by skilled and well-equipped motorized maintenance teams.

Germans

In response, the

built the Panther,

which equalled the

T34, then the notorious Tiger, which supposedly surpassed Hastily rushed into service in the second half of 1942, the

it.

new

were cumbersome, technically complex and difficult to massproduce and to repair. At the same time, in assembling his army tanks

speedily, Hitler

from

all

had commandeered

a

prodigious array of vehicles

over occupied Europe. According to historian Richard

Overy, there were 2,000 vehicle models

'Army Group Centre alone had

to carry over a million spare parts.

One armoured division went into carrier, iii types

battle

with 96 types of personnel

of truck, and 37 different motor-cycles.'^ Given

the vast distances, the reliance the poor roads, the

mud,

on Russia:

in the assault

autumn

on inferior synthetic

rains,

fuels

and rubber,

turning the terrain into a sea of

and, finally, the cruel Russian winter, these motley assemblies

of machines and vehicles were rendered vulnerable to breakdown

and

collapse.

Due

to training

German armour stages

and

tactics the

in the battles

T34 soon proved

a

match

for

of Kursk and Stalingrad. In the early

of Operation Barbarossa Soviet armoured forces

lost six

or

246

Hitler's Scientists

seven vehicles to every one German; by the autumn of 1944 the

was down

ratio

to

one

to one.^

Given the production advantage of

Germans of three to one by 1943 this ratio spelt disaster for Hitler's armies. Both the Americans and the British were dependent on the Sherman tank by 1944, against which the Panthers and Tigers were marginally the Russians, creating a numerical advantage over the ,

superior; but the Allies

had

a vast

numerical advantage.

As with other mechanized forms of warfare, development was quickly taken

to the zenith

war

existing technology

by

numbers of aircraft.

Jet propulsion, discussed

all

by the Germans and the

belligerents in the

British;

aircraft research

of conventional to

later,

produce large

was developed

as

with rocket research, the

new

technology that required

but

determination to force through a

and

steady evolution, special materials and collaborative research sapped

urgent resources required in the production of large numbers of standardized conventional fighters and bombers.

The first

technological challenge in conventional aircraft was, in the

produce single-engined, single-wing

place, to

could

fly faster

and

further, carry heavier

The second

fire-power than the enemy.

bombers with longer range and the loads.

fighters that

armour and exert

greater

challenge was to produce

ability to carry

ever greater

At the same time, the developments required synchronization

with radar for

air-to-air detection, navigation

ing, as well as radio

and accurate

communication between

target-

bases and other

aircraft.

The Germans

led initially in speed, but the British soon caught

up with the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, in 1938.

The

early

first

delivered to the

RAF

Merlin engines were considered unreliable, but

the manufacturer initiated a quality-control

programme which

involved taking engines randomly off the assembly line and running

them

at full throttle until

this way the engineers By 1940 the Merlin had

they broke. In

discovered which parts had

developed into an extremely

failed.

reliable aero engine, at first

cooled by

an evaporative system working off condensers in the wings, then

by Ethelyne Glycol, which was more ally

the engine could run

efficient

on 100 octane

than water. Eventu-

fuel

developed in the

Machines of

United

States,

War

247

giving aircraft speeds that were further boosted with

more sophisticated superchargers. The Luftwaffe could not compete with

ever

and could only attempt

the high-octane ratings

up by producing larger engines. In consequence German planes had a worse power-to-weight ratio. to catch

If the Lufwaffe's planes

had

advantage

a partial

it

was because of

But the Germans never

their sophisticated fuel injection systems.

succeeded in producing an effective bomber, heavy or

light,

long-

range or medium-range.

Apart from the reliance on synthetic fuel, the failure of Germany's aircraft

much

development was not

as

of corruption. In the

who happened to

German trouble

a

broad front

was placed

in the

hands of an incom-

be one of Hermann Goering's favourites.

aircraft research,

on

of the war the technical

critical early stages

direction of the Luftwaffe petent,

of technological expertise so

a lack

the chaos of the polycratic system and the general climate

development and production ran into after

Goering replaced Erhard Milch,

a

former director of Lufthansa, with Colonel Ernst Udet in 1939. Once a stuntman in the movies, he was weak in character and in

management

skills.

He

had no technical

and had never wanted more than for high living,

to

be

qualifications for the

a test-pilot.

womanizing and hunting and presided over a chaos

of competing pressures from power brokers with an aircraft.

Insanely

bombing, a

job

He had a passion

committed

interest in

to the Blitzkrieg philosophy

in order to achieve accuracy

of dive-

by swooping low, he ordered

twin-engined bomber to replace the ageing single-engine dive-

bomber (JU-87) which was plagued with technical problems, then a four-engined bomber. In order to make a four-engined aircraft that could dive-bomb its targets, the designers had assigned two engines to each propeller, creating insuperable performance problems. air,

Many

of these

aircraft

caught

fire

and seldom managed the imperative

before take

to

off,

dive-bomb

or in the

their targets.

248

Hitler's Scientists

Battleships

One of the

early surprises

of World

War II was the

dramatic demise

of the most expensive and impressive symbols of great-power military hardware: the battleship

and the

Oak by

1939 while she lay the British Britain

home

at

lone U-boat on the night of 13 October

a

anchor in Scapa Flow, the

fleet.

first

was the sinking of

sign of the battleship's unusual vulnerability Britain's Royal

The

battle cruiser.

'safe'

harbour of

Some 800 hands went down with

was stunned; but the Royal Navy had

its

the ship.

revenge two

months later when the German pocket battleship Graf Spec, trapped in the harbour of Montevideo by the British cruisers Ajax and was scuttled by

Achilles,

its

commander on

watched by 250,000 Uruguayans on the

Between 1940 and 1941 Germany's

December

17

1939,

shoreline.

active battleships, the

Sclieer,

Schamhorst and Gneisenau, conducted successful raids on British

shipping in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. But the proudest vessels

of the Reich advanced exists

vessels

of the

war were the

the outbreak of

at

Bismarck and Tirpitz

-

sister battleships

the largest and technologically the most

of their kind in the world.

To

this

day no record

ships' highly accurate, radar-assisted gun-fire controls,

although surviving photographs proclaim their gleaming state-ofthe-art high technology.

They were

driven by three massive diesel

turbines operating three propellers, producing a top speed of 29 knots, and possessed eight 15-inch guns, with 14-inch

armour

The deck housed a hangar which took Arado 196 sea-planes, with two more stowed on the open

plating around the turrets.

four

deck, capable of being launched by compressed air-operated catapults

with special cranes and derricks for

this sense the vessels

tons, built at the

marck's hull If Hitler

no

doubled

was launched by Hitler

it

as

from the

as virtual aircraft carriers.^

Blohm and Voss

had any doubts about the

hint of

retrieval

shipyard in in

sea; in

At 41,700

Hamburg,

the Bis-

person on 14 February 1939.

efficacy

of the battleship he gave

he lectured the assembled crowds on the

spiritual

world view of National Socialism and its organizational and technological

means of

'defeating the enemies of the

Reich

now

and

Machines of

War

for ever'.^ Already planned, in tact,

was

battleships

249 a

generation of monster

of more than 100,000 tons each, twice

as

heavy

the

as

weightiest fighting vessels in existence.

On

19

May

1941, escorted

by the

cruiser Prinz Eugeti, the

on destroying o'clock on 24 May, HMS Hood,

Bismarck headed for the Atlantic via Iceland bent Britain's

merchant convoys. At

the pride of the

somewhat

elderly (she

German vessels. fifth salvo hit

six

Royal Navy, and the was launched

largest battle cruiser afloat, if

in 1920),

came upon

the

two

After just eight minutes of exchanges, the Bis\narck\

the Hood, exploding

its

magazines.

It

took just three

minutes for the great British ship to disappear below the surface.

The hit,

cruiser Prince of Wales,

and retired from the

which accompanied the Hood, was

battle.

Churchill issued the order: 'Get the Bismarck Ships of the Royal Navy, including the Atlantic for

two days

two

at

any

cost.'

aircraft carriers,

of the German

in search

Anticipating discussion of radar in the next chapter, that the Bismarck

also

The people of Britain were stunned.

was tracked by the

it is

searched

battleship.

significant

HMS

British cruiser

Suffolk

using gunnery-control radar, and that the coup de grace was

made

with the use of radar in the plane that found the Bismarck heading for Brest.

"^

On the evening of 26 May a Swordfish aircraft

cockpit biplane, affectionately air

known

speed of 139 mph) delivered

a

as a 'Stringbag',

torpedo which

Bismarck's rudders, cripphng the ship steer other than to

proceed in

a

circle.

The

open a

top

jammed both

fatally so that

wide

(an

with

it

could not

planes

on the

Bismarck were never launched, as the catapult

of action. The following day four ships

mechanism was out of the Royal Navy closed

Only 115 of the

Bismarck's sailors sui-vived

in

and finished her

oflf.

of a crew of more than 2,200. Thereafter Hitler recalled ships to base

and kept them

Later that year,

there.

following the attack on Pearl Harbor and

America's entry into the war, the Royal battle cruisers, the Prince of Wales

the northern coast of Malaya,

had been reported, the British and torpedoes of a

his capital

Navy

lost

two more

great

and the Repulse. Despatched

to

where Japanese troop movements vessels

were attacked by the bombs

large fonnation ofjapanese

bomber aircraft. The

250

Hitler's Scientists

two

battleships

went down with the

airpower on the high w^ere

had

seas

loss

arrived,

of 840

lives.

The day of

and the days of battleships

numbered.

Jet Aircraft

In the early hours of 27 August 1939, four days before Hitler's

invasion of Poland, Erich Warsitz, test-pilot for Professor Ernst

German company of that name, walked Heinkel airfield at Marienehe near the German port of

Heinkel, founder of the

on

to the

Rostock and climbed

von Ohain.

the turbojet pioneer Hans-Joachim Pabst engineers, including Ernst Heinkel,

took

He

off.

by

into a small propellerless aircraft designed

A

watched anxiously

group of

as

Warsitz

maiden

has recorded an account of this historic

flight:

All control surfaces functioned virtually flawlessly, its

loud,

monotonous

wind

stirred

thing

left

and the sun

was

would be

a

dangers, especially

was wonderful flying

stiU rested

.

.

.

when in a

quite

the

new

.

.

We

little

new

airplane

is

not without

But the well-built

its

airplane

justifiably believed we'd conquered

a

age.'

was himself to witness an

but he was unimpressed.

no

turbojet flight in the world

close to the ground. .

like that;

low on the horizon. The only

first

Side-slipping in a

this in its stride

world and ushered

Hitler

It

good landing and

a success

took even

song.

and the turbine sang

He

early jet flight a

few weeks

later,

asked what possible point there was

in flying faster than sound. In the following six years a prodigious

number of

designs of turbojet planes

drawing boards of

were sketched out on the

Hitler's aircraft designers.

But Germany's

jet

pioneers, imaginative and skiUed as they were, laboured under a

host of disadvantages, not least the pressure to deliver

ogy within

unrealistic

new

technol-

time constraints, a lack of high-quality metals

and raw materials and the absence of skilled labour.

The word 'turbine' comes from the Latin

turbo, a

whirHng object,

and refers in its earliest manifestation to a means ofemploying a stream

Machines of

of water to turn

United

a

The

wheel.

25

steam turbines appeared in the

first

and continued in development

States

Europe through the century. In its

War

appearance in the 1790s:

North America and

Britain, a 'gas turbine'

and

air

in

compressed and directed through

fuel

from

a gas

on

a nozzle

had made

producer were

to a turbine wheel.

The early models were hardly efficient, but the principle anticipated the modern gas turbines of the twentieth century. By 1872 F. Stolze of Germany had patented a more viable machine, known as a 'fire turbine'; in the a turbine for

1

88os the English engineer Charles Parsons designed

propeUing

ships,

early pioneering attempts

century was the

began

and

a

French model had been con-

by the turn of the century. The turbine

structed

that links the

with the turbojets of the mid-twentieth

work of another German, Hans Holzwarth, who programme that continued for

in 1905 a gas turbine research

By the early 1930s the turbine principle awaited a designer to make an engine light and powerful enough to propel an aircraft. The principle would involve air being sucked into the thirty years.

engine,

where

fuel in a as to

it

would be compressed and mixed with appropriate

combustion chamber, then expanded through

a turbine so

provide sufficient power to drive the compressor before being

expelled through power-jet nozzles. Ideas for turbojet

power

plants

were explored

1930s in France by Charles Guillaume,

who

prototype in 1921, and in Britain by A. A. it

in the 1920s

Griffiths. In the event,

took the genius and determination of Frank Whittle,

former cadet

at

the

RAF

a

young

College, Cranwell, to create a feasible

engine for Britain. Whittle persevered through the 1930s with financial

backing and no

little

military encouragement. Forming a private

company. Power Jets, with

several friends

of no more than ^20,000,

which was

now loomed with Germany,

and an

engine started

his

based in a disused shed in Rugby. to develop an engine

and

patented an early

initial

life

in a

investment

workshop

By June of 1939 he had managed

tested for

twenty minutes. As war

the test was observed with interest by

the Director of Scientific Research at the British Air Ministry. As a result the

Air Ministry placed

engine for an

aircraft

a

contract with Whittle to

make

an

frame to be designed by the Gloster Aircraft

252

Hitler's Scientists

Company. The lag

behind the

realization

efforts

of Whittle's

initiative,

however, was

to

of the Germans.

The origin of Germany's early lead, in actual flight, was largely owed to a young physics student, Hans-Joachim Pabst von Ohain,

who

financed himself by running a business in Berlin distributing

light bulbs

while striving to build

a

prototype turbojet through the

Max Hahn.

mid-i930s with the help of a garage mechanic, fortunes

Chain's

improved when, aged twenty-five, he was introduced

to

the aircraft manufacturer, Ernst Heinkel, an engineer obsessed with

high-speed

Cn

flight.

17

March

Chain demonstrated

1936,

his

prototype to Heinkel and a group of the manufacturer's engineers.

By his

15 April 1936

a contract

mechanic, providing them with funding and

Heinkel

built a facility for

factory at a

Heinkel had signed

them fenced

off

a

hydrogen-fuelled engine and plarming an

type

rest

flight,

the He-178, in

of

his

testing

specially

aircraft

which Warsitz made

his

August 1939, two years ahead of Whittle's protoGloster Whittle E28/39). By this stage, however,

flight in

(the

Heinkel's

The

team of engineers.

from the

Warnemiinde. By the autumn of 1937 Chain was

designed for jet

maiden

with Chain and

model had

a

keen

rival.

Luftwaffe had not been slow to see the advantages of

jet propulsion in the late 1930s.

engineer with the

Helmut

German Research

Schlep, an aeronautical

Institute for Aeronautics,

had been commissioned by the German Air Ministry turbojet technology for the Luftwaffe

which

t(5,

develop

led to the placing of a

contract for a twin-engine jet aircraft with Messerschmitt, makers

of both engines and

would result maiden flight

in the

in July

The Messerschmitt programme famous Me-262, which made its prototype 1942. The world's first operational jet fighter, air frames.

almost 2,000 were completed before the end of the war; but they

were too few and too American and

late to

British fighters

their slowest speeds, as they

make an impact on

the outcome.

took to attacking the Me-262s

took off and landed. They

covered that the German jet could not make tight turns ler aircraft.

interference

at

also dis-

like propel-

Hampered by lack of clear direction, and - he failed to back the early jet aircraft as

Hitler's fighters.

.»%

I.

The

fountains of the 'Chateau d'Eau" with the "Palais d'Electricite' behind, Paris International Exhibition

of 1900

at

the

2.

Max

Planck, one of

the founding fathers ot

quantum

physics

Fritz

Haber

3.

[poiiititi'i^)

nispecting poison-gas canisters

m World War

I

4- Fritz

Haber

5.

Clara Inimerwahr, Fritz Haber s wife

who committed

suicide in protest again:

her husband's gas-warfare activities

6.

Kaiser Wilhehii

II

opening

a

Kaiser

Wilhelm

Institute in Berlin

on 23 October

19]

7-

Philipp Lenard, Nazi physicist

8.

Lise

Meitner and Otto Hahn, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, 1913

and anti-Semite

9.

Johannes Stark, Lenard's

younger colleague and antagonist of Einstein

/

10.

(left to

right)

Enrico Fermi, Werner

Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, 1927,

Como

II.

Copenhagen

Physics Conference, June 1936. First

row

{left to right):

Heisenberg, Born, Meitner, Stern, Franck; second row: Weizsiicker and Heisenberg, Otto Frisch {second from

Fano; fourth and

fifth

right); thirci

rows, second from wall:

left:

row

{left to right):

Peierls

Pauli, Jordan,

Hund

behind

Kopferniann, Euler,

and Weisskopf; standing along

Bohr and Rosenfeld

Professor

12.

Oberth

{centre, in profile),

inventor of the flying

bomb, with of

his staff

rocket he

a

group

and

a

made

in

The group includes Wernher von 193

1.

Braun right)

{second from the

/

/ 13-

14.

at

Adolf Hitler

Hitler and his

inspects the

first

German U-boats

Deputy Rudolf Hess

the Party Rally,

Nuremberg,

1933

15.

in Kiel in

August lyjs

Sterilization advocate

Bernhard Rust,

Nazi Science Minister, posing

in

uniform

u^Trnf/^

*

^^^'''iS3BpHBBB»'''

1

'<

r^

A 1

17.

6.

Hitler at the 1935 Berlin

Automobile Exhibition

Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard warned President Roosevelt of the dangers of

atomic weapons

in a letter

dated 2 August 1939

i8.

Frederic Joliot-

Curie (pictured here with his wife Irene)

pubhshed

his research

on

secondary neutrons in

March

alerting

1939,

Nazi

scientists to

atomic-bomb potential

19.

Peierls, who at Birmnigham amount of uranium-235 required

Otto Frisch and Rudolph

University calculated that the for a chani reaction

was 'very

much

smaller' than

previously thought

had been

20. After the

moved

first

A4

success,

Armaments Minister Albert Speer

to take over missile production.

Minister Josef Goebbels

{right,

with arinbaud)

Here he watches aV2 launch with Propaganda

{centre),

17/18 August 1943, Peenemiinde

21.

German architect Professor showmg Hitler some of his for Berlin's new outline and

{left)

Albert Speer plans

buildings, 7 February 1938

22. {above)

Measuring the

German

features

of a

23- {aboue

Mk

left)

6 Tiger

German

Tank

in front

of the British hnes near Medjez-el-Bab, 27 April 1943

24. {ahoi'c

ri^^ht)

Wniston

Churchill and his scientific adviser

Frederick Lindeniann

(Lord CherweU,

25. (n^ht)

left)

German

signal

troops sending coded

messages on an Enigma

machine

26. Vi rocket over

in a side road off

London. Photo taken from

Drury Lane,

blasting,

a Fleet Street

among

rooftop.

The bomb

fell

other buildings, the offices ot the

Daily Herald

27. V2 rocket, 15 at

August 1947.

Britain's secunt\ -\cilcd

Rocket Research Department

Westcott, Buckinghamshire, was the central experimental establishment for

applications of rocket propulsion.

Dr J. Schmidt,

formerly

in

The

staff

included twelve

charge of the rocket works

at

German

all

scientists, led

by

the Walterwerke in Kiel

•''^^V^S

-j-f7

.••-,^.-

^B.

'V

>i-x

*•«!'•"

-y^l^^^^l^^^^^^^^^^^l

.

l^^l V r«c.

*^'r'

aw}5lir< .jrtci,^

VI

'£&£'sSii:^.

28.

The Mittelwerke

facility,

where the vengeance

-'.^

rockets were assembled

underground with the use of slave labour

29.

Messcrschniut Me-262, Germany's jet fighter-bomber

Experiments on

30. {above)

prisoner

31.

(lift)

at

a

Dachau

Prnno

Levi, writer

and

chemist, was recruited into the

Buna chemistry

labs at

Auschwitz

in 1944

32. {below)

American troops

discover Heisenberg's reactor at

Haieerloch

33-

Farm

Hall,

physicists

35.

where ten German

were detained

in 1945

Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker,

Heisenberg's younger colleague in the

Nazi

bomb

project

34.

Max von Laue

resisted the

Nazis while

remaining in Germany during the war

36. Paul

Harteck

solicited

funding for

atomic-bomb research from Ordnance

in 1939

Army

37- 'Fat

Man' nuclear weapon, of the type detonated over

38.

Nas^asaki

General Groves

(rij^ht)

and J. Robert Oppenheimer inspect the Trinity

atom-bomb

site

counterintelligence personnel,

May

Kennedy with Wcrnhcr von Braun, November

1963

39-Wernher von Braun surrenders

40. President

John

F.

to

US

1945

Mack in es insisting that they

War

of

253

should be deployed rather

bombers — the

as

Reich's jets joined the swelling ranks of useless 'wonder' weapons that

promised much, delivered

little

and sapped the resources of an

increasingly beleaguered regime. After the war, both the Americans

and the Russians prospered

as a result

of war

form of

spoils in the

Germany's jet technology.

Submarines

While

Britain lacked the ability to detect Hitler's

with radar and intelligence-gathering at sea, the

U-boat

flotillas

German navy

enjoyed enormous advantages against British merchant shipping in the Atlantic.

Even before

the Allied technological advances in radar

and code-breaking, which began

making the

end of 1943, U-boat crews,

to bite towards the

Atlantic sea lanes virtual suicide for

Germany had been attempting to push submarine technology

to

its

limit.

For some years before the war

been expected

a

promising forward leap had

of the research of

as a result

marine engineer called Helmut Walter, a

who

a brilliant

German

designed in the 1930s

system that released oxygen from hydrogen peroxide, thus

enabling the diesel engines to

was

to

decompose

permanganate

a

produce oxygen. Diesel

chamber

to

ing steam and other gases turbine engine.

The

Walter's idea

supply of pure hydrogen peroxide, using

catalyst, to

into the reaction

work while submerged. fuel

was injected

combust with the oxygen, thus at

a

yield-

high temperature that powered

a

exhaust gases and steam were expelled outside

the boat. In his early experiments Walter was initially interested in

speed rather than duration of submersion. 1940, achieved speeds of over 28 knots

An

early prototype, in

submerged when top speeds

of submerged conventional submarines were

less

than 10 knots.

Hitler authorized the construction of two Walter prototypes early in the war, but the project

not

least a lack

was plagued by long-running difficulties,

of urgency consequent on the huge success of

conventional U-boats (the VII and IX

series).

genuine problems of resources, including

a lack

But there were of hydrogen per-

Hitler's Scientists

254 oxide,

which was

of the

fleet

also

employed

in the

Meanwhile

ocean-going raid

rocket programme.

A

new Walter U-boat designs would require the construc-

tion of several production plants, priority.

A4

test

bed, the

a

low

on Walter's

first

which continued

research and development

be

to

U-79 1 would be destroyed in a bombing ,

March of 1942.'' There was, besides, an intractable problem. Hydrogen peroxide is a non-renewable fuel

on Kiel

technical

in

(unlike batteries that can be recharged). Writes submarine historian

Clay

Blair:

room

Since there was not enough

in the

Walter boat for both

a big

rechargeable storage battery and hydrogen-peroxide tankage, and that

tankage was not, of course, unlimited in

of such

a

boat was restricted

.

.

.

until

size,

the submerged endurance

some means could be devised

to

replenish this exotic fuel supply at sea.'^

At the same time, with

a

combination of wind-tunnel experi-

ments and applied mathematics Walter developed a new streamlined hull

model

that increased the speed

of the

vessel.

But by

this

point

time was running out for Germany, and Doenitz's order, following Hitler's approval,

of 700 ocean-going U-boats to be

would not be outcome of the war.

'electro boats'

to the

In the

classes

Schnorchel, or snorkel, widely

a

snorkel was

periscope

to assist

time to

meantime Walter's engineering

upgrading the existing

The

fulfilled in

expertise

was applied

to

of submarine with an improved the 'snort'.

tubes that could be raised like

the craft was submerged.

One

tube sucked in

the diesel engines, the other expeUed the exhaust.

for such a device

as

a difference

known among mariners as

composed of twin

when

make

known

The

air

idea

was hardly new: designers had experimented with

the system since the beginning of the century.

The German version

design developed in the 1930s) suffered major

Dutch submerged by waves the snorkel would suck air from the boat's interior and the exhaust would be released inside the boat. The early snorkels, moreover, consumed double the (based

on

problems.

a

When

Machines of

amount of fuel and made

a

War

255

loud noise, making the

craft

vulnerable

to sonar detection.

Walter invented systems of valves and

and exhaust problems, but the

results

far

vacuum

cure the

floats to

were

from

satisfactory.

Clay Blair comments: 'Hailed by some historians and engineers

as

another great technical achievement, the snort was not that by a

long shot. Rather

it

was

German U-boat crews

a miserable,

temporary device that the

memoir of life in the U-boat service. Iron Coffins {Die Eisernen Sdrge), Herbert Werner recollects the eflect of the air vacuum created within a U-boat when the Walter snorkel float had been jammed: The men gasped

for

air,

hated absolutely.' In his

their eyes bulging.

The Chief lowered

the boat,

bringing the snorkel head below surface in an effort to loosen the

To no

avail.

Breathing became ever more

suffocation

difficult;

imminent. The Chief gesticulated wildly, trying to

down, which might with

a snap

and

air

result in

unlocking the

float

was sucked into the boat with

.

.

tell his .

long

a

The

their faces in pain

and sagged

to the

deck

seemed

men

to lie

float cleared

sigh.

change in pressure burst many an eardrum. Some of the

float.

The sudden

men

covered

plates.'-^

Missiles

In terms of advanced technology and sheer

and commitment of resources. oflfensive missiles constituted

efiibrt

Hitler's bid to build

labs,

facility at

launch pads, admin

early in 1936, designed

in a favoured

offices

and

factories

— had been

II.

The

started

and erected by Luftwaflfe construction teams

services, the Luftwaflfe

a hubristic

Hermann Goering

competition

and the army vied with

each other to pour funds into the enterprise and research programmes.

to apply

World War

Peenemiinde — including workshops,

Nazi neo-classical design. In

between the two

an arsenal of

Germany's boldest attempt

high-tech Big Science to the weaponry of rocket development

of organization

its

projected

laid plans for a

rocket-

Hitler's Scientists

256

and there would be other schemes, including

assisted plane;

pilotless plane, later

known

a surface-to-air missile, to

be

the Vi, or the doodlebug, as well as

known

on the other hand, were

plans,

to

as

known

be

as

as

The army A-4 supersonic missile

the Wasserfall.

for the large

V2.

Domberger's plan before the outbreak of war was

would

missile that

twice

as far as

to develop a

carry a i-ton payload of explosives 160 miles,

the shells of the massive Paris

Gun

of World

War

I.

goal was well within conventional concepts of ordnance,

The

but the technology required was astoundingly innovative. Such missile

and

a

would need to

this at a

time

travel at almost five times the

when no army

a

speed of sound,

rocket had yet broken the sound

barrier.

Wernher von Braun, only twenty-seven

at

the beginning of the

dynamic leader of the engineers. If there were occasional complaints, it was a token of his unquenchable enthusiasm - his tendency to digress from the main business in

war, had emerged

hand.

Von Braun's

as a

principal

and immediate

task

was

to launch the

weighed 1,650 pounds and stood 21.3 feet high, its motors exerting a 3,300-pound thrust. The development and testing of the A3 was well advanced when the team moved to

A3,

a rocket that

Peenemiinde, but von Braun was

also

involved with the joint

Luftwaffe- army rocket-plane project. There were no plans to pilot the proposed liquid fuel-powered aircraft, but for flying

it

von Brau^ was

himself at the research stage, having attended

a

all

Luftwaffe

flying school. Fears for his safety, however, obliged his superiors to

veto his plans to go up in

The A3 had been

a

tested

prototype version.

on

4

December 1937 on

the island of

Greifswalder a few miles offshore from Peenemiinde with about

120 personnel in attendance and various high-ranking spectators.

The weather was

atrocious and the party's tented

accommodation

and telephone wires had been plagued by mice and rats. The first rocket, known as Deutschland, prematurely deployed its parachute after

about three seconds and

fell

back on to the

island,

exploding

on impact. The second did the same. The third reached about 3,000 feet before coming down out of control, and so did the fourth.

Mach in es

Von Braun

decided that

it

of

Wa

2 SI

was the guidance system which was

at

fault.^^

As

far as

von Braun was concerned,

He was

of a crucial learning curve.

moving on

to the

much

the failure of the

A3 was

part

not daunted by the prospect of

larger challenge

of the A4, but could he

be confident of securing the sophisticated technology required to

Von Braun had

reaHze such a missile? role in bringing a

already

been playing

a

key

complex array of academic science and technology

to the project.

Academic Science and

the

German

Missile

The collaboration between the army rocket programme and academia had begun in the mid- 1930s with the contributions of Dr Rudolf Hermann, an assistant at the where Hermann was working on university wind tunnel. Hermann, Peenemiinde with the

to

tend to fmd

irresistible:

sort

Technische Hochschule at Aachen,

sub-scale rocket models at the a

Nazi, was eventually enticed

of prospect

scientists

and engineers

he was invited to construct and manage

wind tunnel in the world. It was autumn of 1939 as Germany went to war.

the largest and most powerful

completed

By

in the

time other Technische Hochschulen, especially those of

that

Dresden and Darmstadt, had begun work on sophisticated guidance technology.

The wind

tunnel project formed a highly significant feature of

Big Science pioneered to bring every aspect missiles

at

Peenemiinde,

under one roof Domberger

of the wind tunnel project time

two

this

a third smaller

at

later

admitted that the budget

300,000 Marks frightened him. In

wind

tunnels were built at Peenemiinde, and

one, employing a

staff

of sixty by the beginning of

by 1943. The point of these machines was to test the

the

and

attempted

budget would be exceeded again and again. Eventually

large supersonic

war

as its directors

of research, development and production of

in 1939, rising to 200

controllability

down models

air drag, Hft, stability

of airplanes and missiles by subjecting scaled-

to high

wind speeds

replicating real conditions in

Hitler's Scientists

258

supersonic to

move

flight.

air

The

tunnels required compressors of great

continuously

at

power

supersonic speeds through a circular

test duct.

The

of Hermann's work was the refining of the fm and

result

fuselage shape of the proposed stabilized supersonic

increasing the the

A3

to the

projectile.

power of the

A4 so as to Dr Walter

create the

first

fm-

Thiel succeeded in

alcohol/liquid oxygen engine used in

25-ton thrust required for the A4.

Before the outbreak of war Peenemiinde, with

advanced

its

technologies and no deployment in the foreseeable future, had

been awarded the same top-priority status as U-boat and aircraft production, and braced itself to expand the workforce from 5,000

meantime the

to 9,000. In the

and the

much vaunted

rocket-aircraft project

collaboration

was shelved,

between the army and the

Luftwatfe dwindled to collaboration on guidance systems and a

proposed rocket-assisted take-off system

The

priority

for

bomber

aircraft.

was to complete the technical developments of the

A4 and push through the construction of a factory in order to commence production two years ahead of the original schedule. The

latter

required large quantities of steel

ammunition

at a

time of severe

shortages due to the invasion of Poland. In conse-

quence. Hitler intervened in the autumn of 1939 to overcome the 'munitions

crisis',

timetable and scahng

relegating the rocket project to

down

from an earher increase theless struggled to

its

steel

to 4,000 tons a

keep the

start

1941, rather than 1943, with a

fateful

original a-

month

month. Dornberger never-

date for production of the

A4

to

completion figure of just eighteen

rockets a month, rising to ninety a

As the

its

supply to 2,000 tons

month by July

1942.

year of 1940 dawned, with the certainty of the

expansion of the war, Dornberger was fighting to maintain the status

of his project, using every argument

at his disposal,

including

warnings that the French, the British and the Americans would

be attempting to catch up in missile research. Meanwhile the construction task barely staggered on, hampered by shortages of materiel, a harsh winter,

accommodation.

power

failures

and lack of suitable worker

Machines of

War

259

Further cutbacks were only prevented by the timely involvement

of Albert Speer,

development of the wrote in

his

who

Hitler's architect,

had been consulted on the

since early in the previous year. Speer

site

autobiography that on visiting Peenemiinde in January

1940 the work of the engineers 'had exerted

upon me.

It

was

like the

planning of a miracle.

by these technicians with romantics.

Whenever

I

a strange fascination I

was impressed

Peenemiinde

taneously, quite akin to them.'^^

I

also felt, quite

.

spon-

By the autumn of 1940 Speer would

miinde, addressing his considerable organizational

as

.

their fantastic visions, these mathematical

visited

have control of the construction of the production plant

that

.

skills

at

Peene-

to a project

was dogged by cutbacks and administrative confusion,

in an era,

Speerputit, of economic 'incompetence, arrogance, and egotism'.

Minister Todt

new

Early in 1940, Fritz Todt, the

Minister for

Armaments and

Munitions, appeared on the scene, with the authority to exercise

programme as well as a whole array of weapons production. Todt, like Speer, came from a prosperous influence over the missile

middle-class family. officer in

He was

World War I.

having an imperial

Tall

profile.

a qualified

and self-confident, he was credited with

He was

autobahns in the 1930s and for for building the

engineer and had been an

his

famous for building Germany's

'Organization Todt', responsible

West Wall (otherwise nicknamed

the Siegfried

Line), a defensive line 300 miles long opposite France's

Maginot

Line that ran from Basle to Kleve. Todt's organization employed

some

halt a million

men

to

complete the work and consumed

third of Gemiany's annual output

eventually rose to millions once

His

brief,

war had broken

out.

following his appointment on 17 March, was to end

the bottlenecks in

amiy weapons production; but such was the

competing polycratic nature of the Third Reich, even into a

a

of cement. His army of workers

war of national

survival,

as

it

plunged

he had no authority over the navy

and the Luftwaffe. Todt immediately issued orders for cutbacks on projects that could not promise short-term results.

26o

A

Hitler's Scientists

token of the confusions and chaos in miUtary production

Amiy Ordnance

1940 was the surprise suicide of the Becker, for so long

a

high-ranking

ally

in

chief, Karl

of the rocket project.

Discountenanced by Todt's appointment, Becker had convinced Hitler

on

8 April to create yet

another ordnance bureau to oversee

munitions production, which would be run by army military rather than Todt's ministry. But a director of the Krupp armaments corporation persuaded Hitler to change his

mind on

the very same

day, dropping hints as he did so of scandals in Becker's family.

Depressed by the endless imputations against vitriolic gossip against his

Todt was confirmed

own

as

Army Ordnance and

reputation, Becker shot himself

the

man

and the day

in charge,

Becker's death Dornberger and von Braun paid

gained

his enthusiastic

him

a visit

support of the rocket programme.

after

and

The

Peenemiinde project received further tokens of support, moreover,

from Becker's replacement. General Emil Leeb, through the

who

had come up

artillery.

who that summer, after the fall of France, saw the potential of the A4 as a means of terrorizing Britain into suing for peace. He made a bid to raise the status of Peenemiinde to supreme It

was Leeb

priority

above every other kind of weapon, but the scheme was

put on hold because past Hitler.

his superiors

doubted

that they could get

As 1940 wore on and Hitler scented victory

including the capitulation of Britain, priorities

—

it

in the west,

for the riavy, the

— continued to lurch and overlap, resulting in confusion and lack of momentum. Matters were not helped by the promotion of Goering to Reichsmarschall - putting him above his peer field marshals — who now devised an ineffective priority Luftwaffe and the army

plan to ration steel according to just

two

But the fortunes of war were about and bring the rocket programme into Goering's Luftwaffe

mounted

Dornberger recorded

in a

levels

of priority.

to affect Goering's standing

new

focus.

As the

losses

of

in the Battle of Britain in 1940-41,

memorandum

for the attention

of Field

Marshal von Brauchitsch that the A4, the rocket destined to be the

V2, should be regarded of

aircraft against

the employment London and the port

as a 'significant relief for

England, and especially

Machines of

cities'.'^

He

immunity

War

261

pointed out that the advantage of the missile was

to defence,

its

accuracy, and

its

power

to land at

its

any

time of day or night irrespective of weather: in short, he declared, it

would make

Implicit in the

of terror that

a crucial contribution to the 'defeat

memorandum was

would undermine

the notion of the

of England'.

A4 as a weapon

the will of Britain to continue the

war.

A major factor in this strategy had been the extraordinary success of Britain's

radar, a

through the 1930s ing

raids.

technology British

as part

period, but

efforts

had developed

of crucial defence planning against bomb-

Radar had been developed its

scientists

in

Germany through the same

had been fragmented and laggard

of offensive rather than defensive thinking.

as a result

20.

Radar, which

coined by

RDF

—

a

an acromTii for 'radio derecrion and ranging",

is

US

Radar

naval officer (Britain's radar was ar

radio detection finding),

of technology-

as

known

as

one of the most remarkable technological accom-

plishments of the rwentieth centuiy.

deployment

first

widelv regarded bv historians

is

'

development and defensive

Its

m the war enabled Britain to cheat the LutKvaffie

early

of air domination and so to survive until the Americans joined the conflict after Pearl

Harbor in December 1941. Thus radar made the

difference ber^veen defeat and

From

the outset

in the lead.

\"ictor\" in

Gemiany appeared

Europe. be abreast,

to

On 16 September 1935 a parr\- of Geniian naval officials,

including Admiral Raeder.

Commander

of the Gemian

various

govenmient bureaucrats gathered

40 feet

liigh situated at

Liibeck.-

Gemian

at a scaffiDld

Fleet,

and

tower some

Pelzerhaken near Neustadt on the Bay of

They had come as

not acmally

if

to obser\-e radar equipment, kno^^^l in

Funkmessgerat (radio measuring de\4ce). in action.

The

equipment, which included turntables, transmitters, receiver arrays, screens and electrical generators,

by radio 'echo' of two

would send out

a

was

ships 5 miles out in the bay.

radio pulse

which would

the ships and return to a receiver, visual display, creating

attempt, with

de\'ised to locate

the^resence

A

transmitter

scatter (or 'bounce') offi

which would send

a signal to a

an image revelling their presence. The

some r^veaking of antennae, was wholly

successtul

and impressed the onlookers. This early Geniian demonstration was hardly the transmitter

and receiver of radio waves

distant static

or passing objects.

together a makeshift svstem in

first

use of a

to identiiv' the location

Roben Moms

of

Page had put

December 1934 near Washington.

DC. demonstrating the possibihtx" of radar ahead ofRobert WatsonWatt's British experiment conducted in Februar\- 1935. Page could

Radar

be ahead of the very

also claim to

263

German radar effort, conduc-

first

March 1935, when primitive equipment situated on a balcony detected a German warship half a mile distant out in Kiel harbour. ted in

Other crude Italy,

experiments were conducted during 1935 in

'radar'

France, Russia and Japan.

The

relatively sophisticated

demonstration that took place

at

Pelzerhaken on the afternoon of 26 September 1935 was principally

due the

to the research

Navy Research

of the physicist Rudolf Kuhnold,

a scientist at

and two engineers who were young company known as GEMA^ which

Institution at Kiel,

partners in a small

specialized in radio transmitters

and recording devices.

close ties with naval research, but the

GEMA had

company remained

in theory

independent of military auspices as it grew to 6,000 personnel during the course of the war.

The

officials

present at the demonstration

immediately saw the potential for warfare

at sea,

but there was no

intention of sharing their findings with the Luftwaffe. Other private

German companies, such would pursue

The British

to a

their

early story

own

as

Siemens, Lorenz and Telefunken,

radio location researches in time.

of radar reveals interesting contrasts between the

and German approaches, before America entered the war,

new

technology of critical importance. In the case of Britain,

the character and genius of a single engineer proved to be important.

The

British physicist

Watson- Watt,

who

claimed ancestry to

James Watt, the steam engine pioneer, was fifty-two and head of Britain's National Physical Laboratory's Radio Research Station

when in

1934 he was asked by Britain's Air Ministry to look into the

possibihty of transmitting 'damaging radiation' to be used in defence against air attack. In response,

Watson- Watt urged the

strategy

of

using radio signals for early detection of hostile aircraft and received

funding to devise

a

prototype that could perform the

league A. P.

Rowe improvised the

BBC's short-wave Operating that

at

26

his col-

of a radar device

at

the

radio station at Daventry in Northamptonshire.

about 50 metres wavelength,

was already

Radio

first test

On

task.

February 1935, seven months ahead of the Germans, he and

it

employed

a receiver

in use as a detector for long-distance radio signals.

signals are

generated by a high-frequency alternating

264

Hitler's Scientists

number of

current, and the

Radio waves

'frequency'.

cycles per second

is

known

as

the

are electromagnetic radiation just like

have

light waves, except that they

a

much longer wavelength — the

length referring to the distance between the crests or troughs of these waves as they travel. In the use of radio signals for detection

of distant objects,

beam

a

is

emitted and some of the waves scatter

off the target and return as in an echo a receiver at the point

which can be picked up by

of the original transmission. Although radio

wavelengths are relatively large, and those used in radio transmission normally measured in is

many

metres, a relatively short wavelength

required in order to detect detail of the object being targeted.

The problem

for the early radar experimenters

than ten centimetres, referred to

as

was

that

compact

small, so sufficiently

In the case of

second pass the observers saw the display screen for a

were

little

first

Mistakes were

scale

intrinsically

significant experiment,

'beats

radio masts and

on

a

the

of very good amplitude' on

over two minutes. During

registered for four minutes.

tracked for almost 8

on the

to install in an aircraft).

Watson- Watt's

bomber was flown over the Daventry BBC

signals

is

microwave instrument would be

a

less

microwaves, required immense

energy to transmit long distances (since the apparatus

of the wavelength,

waves

a third

run

The bomber had been

miles."*

made by both Germany and

Britain in the early

development of radar; perhaps the biggest on the part of S.emiany,

when

its

technicians decided not to develop a piece of electronic

equipment known and discarded

as a

in the

magnetron, which their researchers tested

mid- 1930s. The view maintained by

British

historians of radar to this day - that the British had a crucial lead raises interesting perspectives on the predicament of science and

technology under National Socialism and under

At

a first

Germany

a

democracy.

public conference dealing with radar, held in post-war

at

Frankfurt in 1953, Watson- Watt lectured his

German

counterparts:

I

believe that [British and American] success in radar depended

tally

on

the infomied academic

fundamen-

freedom which was accorded,

in peace-

Radar time radio research, to

265

my colleagues and myself,

and to the intimacy and

complete confidence between the operational user and the technical researcher and developer. If I appear it is

because

I

immodest

believe the most valuable lesson

in

scientific

and

my summary,

from radar history

of the intellectual and organizational environment from, and

in,

is

that

which

it

grew.^

A German

view of the contrast between American and

British

advances in radar and Germany's effort accords up to a point with

Watson-Watt's.

'An aspect of the German the Allied,' writes the

'was the degree to events.

effort that

German

which

seems to have differed from

historian of radar

Harry von Kroge,

corporate rivalry affected the course

The numerous agreements

that

had

to

of

be made concerning

Hcensing and post-war rights in order to smooth production will certainly

seem remarkable

to

American and

continues: 'A puzzling aspect of

German

British readers.'

radar research was the

delay imposed by severe secrecy in drawing

on

full

many

excellent

late in

the war,

the

universities and polytechnic institutes until very

whereas America and Britain made

Kroge

use of these faculties from

the very beginning.'^

The claim is that American and British technology was developed largely but not exclusively

under the auspices of the military or

the government, with access, civilian

where

engineering expertise.

developed by

a private

The

company w^ith

research institution. There

appropriate, to academic and first

German

invention was

the encouragement of a naval

were serious constraints on their capacity

to seek academic consultation because of the requirements of secrecy.

German and British organization and prioritization of research and development will come later in this chapter, but the point made by Watson- Watt and Kroge can hardly be generalized to include all technologies in Nazi Germany. The Contrasts between

missile engineers, for example,

expertise for guidance systems Scientists

like

drew

freely

and

and wind tunnels

Norbert Wiener, moreover,

at

an early stage on

in the universities.

who worked on

266

Hitler's Scientists

guidance systems in the United States during the war, complained in 1947 that:

the measures taken during the the free intercourse

same peace

project, this

among

war by our on

scientists

have gone so

far that

it is

military agencies, in restricting

related projects or

even on the

clear that if continued in time

of

policy will lead to the total irresponsibility of the scientist, and

ultimately to the death of science.^

Yet

it is

were the

and American attempts to solve

true to say that British

specific problems, especially result (as

microwave-based radar equipment,

was the solution

to

uranium enrichment) of a

generally pluralist and diverse research environment, despite war-

time restrictions. That to the desired result,

pluralist effort,

allowing for different avenues

and ample scope for trial and

error,

drawing on

academe, industry and military research establishments, eventually

found

its

way -

many admitted

despite

difficulties

research effort and thence to production. In

not so

much

a

-

to a central

Germany

genuine pluralism, or free and yet collaborative

of

diversity, as a series

monopolies, hampered rather than

rival

protected by secrecy between the armed services, and, states,

as

Kroge

between commercial companies whose concern was intellec-

tual property rights. later,

there was

Nor was

there a clear route, as in Britain and,

the United States, to a supreme

took priority decisions

command

after the scrutiny

structuTx

which

and recommendations of

qualified committees.

Another

crucial perspective

by the radar

historian

on Nazi

radar technology, outlined

Robert Buderi, focuses on the Germans'

'military mindset'. Hitler

and

his

war

planners,

comments Buderi,

'thought in terms of hghtning offensives, and so did not push the

development of mainly defensive thinking, accentuated

by

radars'.

This 'one-dimensional

the lack of civilian scientists

with the clout

of a Vannevar Bush, and Frederick Lindemann, had effect

on Germany's war

the part of the

German

effort'.^ Finally,

a devastating

there was a reluctance

on

armed forces themselves to be enthusiastic

about radar. General Ernst Udet, the incompetent technology chief

Radar Luftwajffe, objected to research

of the if it

worked,

'flying

267

on

radar

on the grounds

that

won't be fun any more'.

The historian of science Professor David Zimmennan, however, adds another, more personaHzed component of technological success and failure. 'Much of the rapid early progress in the earher years [in Britain],' he writes, 'was a direct result of the drive, energy

and leadership of Watson-Watt.' But he adds

a

cautionary note:

would be Watson- Watt's erratic, almost manic behaviour and lack of administrative skills which would be a significant factor in the failure to mount effective night defences 'Paradoxically,

it

ready in time for the BHtz."' As for secrecy, Britain kept

developments under wraps with the greatest of

Winston Churchill, while

still

early

its

difficulty, since

out of office in 1936, threatened to

reveal Britain's radar secrets in parliament as part of his attempt to raise

public alarm about

German rearmament.

Death Rays and

Radar and code-breaking were

which

Britain

would

were achieved in the

face

aspects of defensive intelligence in

World War

of prejudice and

II,

but these successes

political obtuseness.

The

a people communication of staved off defeat by mastering means

British, in other

who

excel in

the Oslo Report

words, were also lucky. Ironically, for

radar and code-breaking

-

had

British intelligence officials

a

very

German weapons technology had achieved The failure to discover what Germany was

limited notion of what in the

pre-war

era.

planning, especially in early warning detection in the resulted largely

the previous war, as well as lack of judgment. illustrate

On

air

and

from arrogance - the complacency of the

Two

at sea,

victors

of

instances

the state of mind of British intelligence early in the war.

September 1939, less than three weeks after the Wehrmacht's invasion of Poland and the subsequent declaration of war 19

on Germany by France and Great 'liberated'

translation,

no

Britain, Hitler

Danzig, which, according to

warned of

possible defence.

a 'secret

weapon'

made

a British

against

a

speech in

Foreign Office

which there was

The existence of a 'death ray' had been mooted

268

Hitler's Scientists

by

years earlier

British

government

as

department,

Room

40,

early

had approached Winston Churchill, then

Minister for Munitions, to impart his idea for a 'heat it

As

scientific advisers.

19 1 7 an operative in the Admiralty's top secret cryptographic

seems, that he had picked up

Worlds.

It

came

ray', a

from H. G. Wells's The

to nothing, as did

many

notion,

War

of the

other bizarre 'death ray'

suggestions dow^n the years, including radio waves to detonate the

bombs on board raiding aircraft, to

impede

air

crews.

aircraft

'gas emissions' that

engines and 'radio waves' that

were supposed

would

paralyse

The notion that the enemy might possess a weapon exploiting an unknown type of scientific wizardry began to haunt Britain's war cabinet before

a shot

had been

fired.

Prime Minister Neville

Chamberlain urgently demanded information from the British intelligence services, and in consequence the physicist Reginald Victor (R. V.) Jones, appointed that year

at

the age of twenty-eight

as Britain's first scientific intelligence officer,

was ordered

to scour

through available espionage reports to shed some light on the reference. original

Drawing

a blank,

of Hitler's speech to discover that the Foreign Office had

merely misinterpreted referring not to a

its

Fiihrer

had been

to the Luftwaffe.

'death ray' panic, British intelligence received

British Legation in Oslo,

prototype proximity fuse which,

Norway, as

we

a

package confining

have seen, enables

to explode automatically in the vicinity

unknown

The

a phrase in the text.

wonder weapon but

Not long after the from

Jones eventually went back to the

of

a target, a

a

a missile

technology

in Britain at that time. In addition there was a document,

which came

to

be

known

as

the 'Oslo Report'. Seven typed

German outlined a list of top secret German weapons innovations. They included information about rocket research at Peenemunde, two new kinds of torpedo (one controlled by radio, pages in

the other by magnetic fuse), radio distance-measuring

guiding bombers to their aircraft

warning, or radar.

this material,

'Griffin'),

although

targets,

To

it is

and two

this day,

it is

systems for

not certain

beams

for

advanced

who

posted

hkely that Paul Rosbaud (code

name

the anti-Nazi science publisher in Berhn, had been

Radar

Hence

involved.'"

German

came not from

the information

gence gathering by the

British,

269

but the courage of an anti-Nazi

national. British intelligence officials,

however, immedi-

doubt on the information and sought

ately cast

Nazi ploy. They were convinced that the exception of radar,

skilful intelli-

all

were beyond the

to discount

it

as a

such technologies, with capability

of the

British,

hence they were beyond the capability of Germans.

R. V. Jones was alone in believing that the document had a ring of truth. He was particularly intrigued by the report's claim that an

RAF

attack

on Wilhelmshaven

detected 75 miles out

at sea

by

a

in early

September had been

chain of stations emitting pulses of

radio energy. In fact,

by 1939 Germany's offensive radar system

aircraft to their targets,

been

six years in

known

Y-Gerat, or

as

Y

for directing

apparatus, had

development. Originally invented by

Dr Hans

beams transmitted from on Germany's Dutch border, and Schleswig-

Plendl, the system involved intersecting

the continent - Kleve,

Holstein, close to the Danish border

bombers with

-

capable of guiding

great accuracy to a target in the British

German

Isles.

Confi-

dent in the assumption that Britain was well ahead of the enemy,

no thought had been given

need

to the

for countermeasures that

could one day make the difference between winning or losing the war. R. V. Jones, the beams',

whose name

is

synonymous with the 'battle of to combat the directional

now set about finding means

technology, but not without resistance.

Churchill and Tecluiology

While

Britain stood alone, before

industrial

Winston Churchill quickly learned in a conflict in

its

let

Europe,

country was engaged

alone eventual victory.

which enabled Churchill

and development was to hold out.

that his

prodigious in

which science and technology was of central impor-

tance for survival, structure

America with

and economic resources joined the war

The

a

key factor

to screen

The

and

organizational

prioritize research

in Britain's defence

success of Britain's

and

ability

management of technology

270

Hitler's Scientists

was by no means to

a

do with Churchill's

from

his mistakes.

power of the Royal Navy,

war

circumstances and learn

ability to adapt to

Ignorant of science and, by his the

Europe were

in

having

as a scientific

own admission,

complacent about

Churchill's thoughts about a future

almost despite himself

horrors and fears of World

War I. He was

still

shaped by the

nevertheless fortunate in

guide an unusual friend, Frederick Lindemann

(Lord Cherwell). Churchill wrote in his history of World that while at

Chartwell, his last

Known

'the

as

met

the

as secretary to

Prof, he was

in the twilight war,

Minister, Churchill was

still

No.

lines

statistician.

He was

and described

means of advance up

without undue or prohibitive

creating trenches at speeds

channel sufficiently

by background, but

thinking of ground war in terms of the

called 'Cultivator a

Solvay Conference).

and before he was appointed Prime

of the trenches. 6'

first

physicist

a

mud and attrition our armies

II

office

something of a polymath and an able

Even

War

from 1 93 1 to 1 93 4, rusticated family home, he saw a great deal of Lindemann

he was out of poHtical

(whom we

to

much

foregone conclusion, however, and had

up

to

obsessed by a scheme he

as 'a

it

to

method of imparting

and through the

casualties'. It

was

a

hostile

machine

for

miles an hour, and could cut a

3

deep and broad to allow infantry and tanks

no man's land into the enemy trenches. By February of 1940 the cabinet and Treasury had approved the construction of 200 narrow machines of this sort and forty wide ones. In their final form the larger ones weighed more than 100

unimpeded

tons and

access across

were 77

clay a trench

5

feet in length

feet

deep and

and

8 feet high.

7^^ feet

wide

at

They could

an hour, shifting 8,000 tons of soil. Three hundred and

were involved be used,

as

in

making the

Churchill put

it,

parts

'as

part

cut in

the rate of half a mile fifty

and assembling them.

It

firms

would

of a great offensive batde

plan'.

But he was forced to admit, following Germany's Blitzkrieg invasion of France, 'a very different form of warfare' had descended 'upon us like

an avalanche, sweeping

flourish, referring to the

all

before

it'.

In a typically Churchilhan

huge waste of time, money and energy

Radar

expended on the

'cultivators',

271

he averred

war:

after the

'I

am

responsible but impenitent.'"

Unlike the organized chaos of the Reich, with

competing and overlapping direct his

for the attention

on becoming Prime

indolent Fiihrer, Churchill,

its

warlords

and favour of an Minister, assumed

and wide-ranging powers over the technology of war, since

premiership absorbed the job of Defence Minister.

military service ministers, 'friends of mine

these duties, stood

whom

I

The

three

had picked for

on no ceremony', wrote Churchill.

They organised and administered

the ever-growing forces, and helped aU

they could in the easy, practical English fashion.

They had

the fullest

information by virtue of their membership of the Defence Committee,

and constant access to

to

me

.

.

.

There was an

integral direction

of the war

which they loyally submitted. There never was an occasion when

powers were abrogated or challenged and anyone always speak his

and one lived

mind

.

.

in a stream

.

in this circle

worked almost

the machinery

their

could

automatically,

of coherent thought capable of being translated

with great rapidity into executive action. ^^

Casting his

which

mmd back to the prospect of a German invasion with

Britain

was threatened

in the

summer of

1940, Churchill

remembered after the war how he considered the need for scientific and technical innovation .

.

.

to

produce countermeasures. 'This was

no time to proceed by ordinary channels in devising expedients.'

In order to secure quick action, free from departmental processes,

'upon any bright idea or gadget' he kept in close touch with an 'experimental establishment' formed by a Major Jefferis

church, a

man

'possessed',

at

Whit-

according Churchill, 'with an ingenious

and inventive mind' Churchill also appointed Frederick Lindemann .

his 'personal assistant',

and kept him

close.

Lindemann provided

Churchill with a flow of statistics on the various war departments

and offered him advice on

a prodigious number of scientific Lindemann wrote some 2,000 papers during the war.

topics.

Amidst the long-term high-tech developments destined

for

272

Hitler's Scientists

were some panicky amateurish ones. Faced with

success there

Hitler's invasion, Churchill wrote, the best the scientists

come up with a

bomb which

would

stick

or civilians

upon

He

it,

was:

could be thrown

upon

it

.

.

.

would run

though

its

perhaps from a window, and

at a tank,

We had the picture in mind that devoted soldiers close

up

bomb

and even thrust the

to the tank

explosion cost them their

lives.

^^

considered the use of poison gas against invading

also seriously

Germans on

could

Britain's beaches.

In June 1940

Winston Churchill asked for a report on the amount

of mustard or other types of poison gas in stock to be used in

and

aerial

bombardment.''*

The

Germans on the beaches. According

shells

bombard invading

idea was to

to Britain's Inspector of

Chemical Warfare,

Low

spray attacks

after

landing are likely to be effective

on an enemy approaching our shores if

enemy

will

are not

wearing eye

open boats or

frequently repeated, and will

ultimately result in 100 per cent casualties spray. If the

in

among

the

men

be blinded unless they cover their eyes. They cannot do

their

weapons

reduce the

at

the same time.

risk to

Low

hit

shields, a considerable this

by the

number and use

spray attacks are therefore likely to

other low-flying aircraft in

bombing and*machine

gunning.*^

Needless to

say, there

members about

first

were qualms among the

military

and cabinet

use of poison weapons, particularly

the

as

Reich's stocks of poison gas were believed to be five times greater than British stocks; but Churchill insisted on having the poison

weapon option in a state of readiness. By the autumn of 1940, however, Churchill had come appreciate profoundly the scientific and technical nature of the against Hitler.

In a

memorandum

to

war

prepared for the cabinet in

September, entitled 'The Munitions Situation', he stated that the

war was

not:

Radar a

273

war of masses of men hurling masses of

devising ne"w weapons, and above shall best

series

is

air

now being

whole sphere ofR.D.F.

[radar],

altered

.

.

strategic

The

personnel, as well

as

we

for instance, the

hit

enemy

aircraft,

realise

but the munitions

We must therefore regard the

.

with its many refinements and measureless

ranking in priority with the Air Force, of which

in fact an essential part.

by

It is

and from the ground, irrespective of visibility,

would be profoundly

possibilities, as

If,

developed to fmd and

hoped from them, not only the

situation

each other.

scientific leadership, that

cope with the enemy's superior strength.

of inventions

both from the

what

by

all

shells at

it

is

multiplication of the high-class scientific

the training of those

who

new

will handle the

weapons and research work connected with them, should be the very spear-point of our thought and effort. ^^

The

Battle of the

Beams

Following up the information supplied in the 'Oslo Report', R. V. Jones

set

about gathering clues to understand Germany's directional

beams, including scrutiny of crashed Luftwaffe bombers, interceptions

by the code-breakers

at

the decryption

FiQ

at

Bletchley Park

and reports from German prisoners of war. By mid-June Jones had in his hands

documents which revealed the existence of high-

frequency radio signals being transmitted across the British

from the continent. At

this

Isles

summoned to a dramatic 10 Downing Street. As Jones

point he was

and historic meeting with Churchill at

was shown into the cabinet room he found himself confronting

Lindemann and Lord Beaverbrook, Minister for Aircraft Production; also present were Tizard, Watson- Watt and the then Bomber Command chief Sir Charles Portal. Amazingly, the gentlemen were still heatedly discussing the German radio beams and their possible purpose. After half an hour of this R. V.Jones, still under thirty years of age, interrupted the political Churchill, flanked by

and military grandees with told

you

the story right

Churchill

said: 'Well,

a polite

from the

yes

it

opener: 'Would

start?'

would.'

it

help,

sir,

if

I

After an astounded pause,

274

Hitler's Scientists

It

took Jones just twenty minutes to convince Churchill of the

of the Germans' directional radar system and to assure

reality

him

that

countermeasures could be devised. Churchill was

Striking the table, he cried: 'All files, files!' still

I

But others around the

gleeful.

from the Air Ministry

get

table,

is files,

Lindemann included, were

reluctant to believe that radio waves, such as they

had identified,

could travel around the curvature of the earth from Germany to the British

By

the

Isles.

autumn of

however, Jones had discovered

that year,

definitively that three, not two, radio-navigational

being employed

drew the

by German

as directional aids

towards the target and

pilot

point for releasing the

bomb

signals

aircraft.

Two beams

a third indicated the precise

load. Engineers in Britain's

Telecom-

(TRE) consequently

munications Research Establishment

jamming

networks were

which disturbed the frequencies of the

devised

directional

became more knowledgeable and sophisbeams. As ticated in their countermeasures, they managed to alter some beams the technicians

so as to lead the

bombers

astray.

BBC

The

television transmitter at

Alexandra Palace, quiescent through the war, was used to send out signals to

jam

the third bomb-release signal.

German Early Warning Radar Systems

Germany did not possess radar as^an early warning technology had stemmed partly from the absence of

The

conviction that

anything resembling the high radio towers so prominent on Britain's coastlines.

in the

Watson-Watt,

summer of 1937 looking

in fact,

his vacation

for teU-tale aerials in

finding none, he assumed that Nazi radar's secrets. After studying the

had spent

Germany;

Germany had not plumbed

Oslo Report, which mentioned

which would have precluded large R. V. Jones thought otherwise. His suspicions were con-

the use of short wavelengths aerials,

firmed in the

summer of 1940 when he

British aircraft

had been intercepted

received information that

as a result

of a German system

called 'Freya-Meldung-Freya'. Jones reflected that Freya

was

a

Nordic goddess whose necklace was protected day and night by

Radar

Heimdall,

275

watchman who could

a

see vast distances in every

direction.

autumn of 1940, a radar expert with TRE detected radio signals on a wavelength of 80 centimetres in the English Channel which came into operation when British ships were being fired on. He had stumbled on another highly secret Meanwhile,

in the

German radar development, known

Seetakt, an

as

advanced system

integrated with gunfire control.

Jones realized that early

this

gunfire control radar was not the Freya

warning system, which threatened to be of a quite

different

The breakthrough finally came in February when was shown certain 'curiosities' caught in Jones 1 94 1, reconnaissance photos of the Hague peninsula — two circular dishes order of technology.

some 20

diameter on the edge of

feet in

revealed that they were being rotated.

Work

now

could

start

sites

of

all

Further scrutiny a

Freya station.

on discovering the frequencies on which

they operated in order to the

a field.

was indeed

It

jam them,

well

as

as

the task of finding

the other Freya stations stretched out across the

meantime Jones had begun to concentrate on a type of equipment associated with the Freya system, referred to in continent. In the

the Oslo Report and occasionally mentioned in coded

messages

as a

Wiirzburg.

The messages spoke of these Romania and Bulgaria, where, in traced transmissions

as

November of

53 centimetres (the Oslo

50 centimetres). Photo reconnais-

sance failed to turn up a visual clue until

systems being transported to time, British receiving stations

on wavelengths of

Report had given the lengths equipment

German

as to

the nature of the Wiirzburg

1941,

when

a small object

detected on a photograph of a Freya station

Further photographs revealed

at

was

Cap d'Antifer. some 10 feet

a parabolic reflector

in diameter close by. Thereafter Jones

began

to

deduce the

full

complexity of the Germans' early warning system, which was

composed of

the Freya long-range detectors and

associated Wiirzburgs

-

two

types of

smaller systems that controlled the oper-

ation of searchlights and larger systems, Wiirzburg Riesen,

directed the

German

night fighters on to incoming

RAF

which raiders.

276

Hitler's Scientists

He did not rest until he had captured an actual model of a Wiirzburg, when

a

Combined Operations

dropped on Cap d'Antifer

equipment back intelligence in their

and brought most of the

with the aid of a small naval force. British

to Britain

now had all

of 119 British paratroopers

raid

early in 1942

the important

hands and were in

a

components of a Wiirzburg

position to calculate the range of

wavelengths in order to devise appropriate jamming countermeasures.

German

intelligence

had shown no such

and cunning during the period

in

foresight, persistence

which Reichsmarschall Goering

planned, and attempted to carry out, the destruction of Britain's

power by

daylight raids

of Britain

commenced

ing radar system was

as a

prelude to invasion.

North

Chain

Sea.

warn-

composed of twenty-one Chain Home stations

Home Low

invaders approaching the British

and the

air

the Battle

in earnest in July 1940, Britain's early

(some of these structures towering 350 further thirty

When

feet into the sky)

units giving early

Isles

inland, although their visual sightings

a

warning of

Channel

across the English

Royal Observer Corps

and

units acted as

back-up

depended on daylight and

the absence of cloud cover.

German

intelligence

had neglected to identify the purpose of

Britain's highly visible radar towers

structures

and

aerials,

even though the

were recorded two years before the outbreak of war.

Unarmed German

aircraft

had criss-crossed Britain under* the pre-

of making weather observations for the Lufthansa

text

1939

a

Zeppelin codenamed

LZ

130,

under the

airline. In

command of

Luftwaffe signals section, flew along Britain's radar chain attempting to pick

up radio

signals;

but nothing was learned.'^

September the Luftwaffe

From July

to

Royal Air Force,

failed to defeat the

largely due to the abihty of British radar defence to anticipate

incoming raiders and respond with

interceptors.

Although Goering

eventually guessed the purpose of the radar towers, he never under-

stood the importance of their function and did not attempt systematically to

the

put them out of action. As described

bombing of London

in an accidental raid

earlier,

following

on the night of 24

Radar

277

August 1940, Churchill ordered a bombing raid on Berlin and Hitler retaliated by pounding London night after night for a week.

The its

onslaught on London, destructive

as it

was, gave the

RAF and

respite. When Goering returned to his Command was ready for a decisive battle.

much-needed

bases a

original strategy. Fighter

The climax of the battle is customarily dated 1 5 September, when some seventy-nine Luftwaffe aircraft were downed for the loss of thirty-six

RAF

fighters.

Thereafter Goering switched again to

night raids

on London and

postponed

his invasion

Meanwhile,

as

the industrial heartlands, while Hitler

of Britain

indefinitely.

Britain increased

Germany and occupied Europe, improving radar defences. With

its

night raids against targets in

the Reich's engineers

headquarters

at

Zeist

worked on in HoDand,

Major General Josef Kammhuber had by 1941 divided the mainland into a grid of boxes 27 miles wide and 21 miles deep, each containing a Freya early warning dish and two Wiirzburgs - one to detect individual fighter.

raiders

By

enemy

planes, the other to direct a Luftwaffe

end of 1941 the system could detect incoming 200 miles out, and estimate the altitude of aircraft from 150 the

miles away.

The Magnetron

What gave Britain

an inestimable technological advantage in radar,

however, an advantage

that

would be shared with

the Americans a

year before they entered the war, was the development of a small device, about the size of a saucer,

magnetron'.

Its

development

tells

known

as a

an instructive

'resonant cavity tale

of military

science and technology resulting in incalculable advantage to the Allies,

At

and stake

disaster for

Germany.

was the development of forms of radar

that

would

reduce the bulk of equipment needed, and provide flexible and highly accurate information for the users.

What was needed was

a

type of airborne radar small enough to be installed in a fighter aircraft,

working on about 10 centimetres wave length

so as to

278

Hitler's Scientists

pinpoint Luftwaffe night raiders, and yet generating sufficient

power achieve is

The main

to achieve long-range detection.

narrow radar beam so

a

goal was to

pinpoint the target. This

as to

detennined by the width of the antenna compared with the

wavelength. Hence the shorter the wavelength the smaller the

antenna for the same

beam

width.

German radar historian Kroge claims that in the summer of 1935 German engineers at the private company GEMA were working with

a

Albert 1 920.

rudimentary form of 'magnetron', originally invented by

W.

Hull of the American firm General Electric in about

The magnetron consists of a vacuum tube placed in a magnetic

field so that electrons

the tube.

German

follow curved paths while travelling across

researchers found the

venting the expected

maximum

attained consistently: 'only

The

unstable, pre-

by constant tuning of the receiver could

respectable distances be observed at

doned

magnetron

range of 20 kilometres from being

all'.^^

In the

end

it

was aban-

for other solutions.

British research path to a useable

magnetron had

started at

Birmingham University in 1939 with experiments for generating microwaves, which led to the construction of a 'cavity magnetron', a radical modification of Hull's device. Robert Buderi, the historian of radar, states that the invention came about 'accidentally on purpose'. Two physicists, John Randall and Henry Boot, conducting experiments under Marcus Oliphant at Birmingham University, put together the combined virtues of two devices - the magnetron and

traditional

a klystron,

an American invention (from

meaning the breaking of waves on the seashore) part of an attempt to find a microwave power source

the Greek kluzo,

discovered

as

for blind aircraft landing.

As Buderi puts

it,

doughnut-shaped

'The challenge rested in adapting the klystron's

cavities to the

cathode and node structure of the

magnetron, which depended on cylindrical symmetry. '^^ As the

American

physicist I.I.

model was taken

to the

Rabi described United

kind of whistle operating under explains the technicalities:

it

a

year

later,

States, the cavity

electric

when

an early

magnetron was

and magnetic

fields.

a

Buderi

Radar

Not

unlike the

be emitted — ment's

size

way

air

279

flowing in front of a whistle hole causes a tone to

the frequency of which

and shape - the electrons

is

dependent on the instru-

largely

oscillated at a specific radio

frequency

determined by the cavity dimension.^"

The

first

of the completed device

test

February 1940, and three days that

it

watts.

conducted on 21

v/as

later the researchers

could confirm

operated on 9.5 centimetres and generated an output of 400

By May

kilowatts.

the output had increased to a prodigious 12—15

was the dawn of microwave

It

radar,

but hard-pressed,

battered Britain badly needed a major partner in

its

development

and mass production.

Anglo-American Technological Collaboration In early August of 1940 Churchill asked one of his top technology

Henry

advisers,

Tizard, to travel to the United States with a basket

of top secret discoveries; the cavity magnetron was among them.

The

device in

could

fit

its

in the

completed form appeared

palm of

a person's

like a clay

pigeon and

hand. Tizard and his team

demonstrated the operation of the cavity magnetron on 19 Sep-

tember in Washington,

DC, to a dumbfounded audience composed

of members of America's National Defense Research Committee. In the course of the presentation

was capable of generating

it

was revealed

thousand times more output than

a

America's most advanced instrument on centimetres.

Within

a

month

a Radiation Laboratory at

that the tiny device

a decision

wavelength

a

had been taken

MIT, Cambridge,

known as the Rad Lab. By 1943 centimetric radar, employing

less

than 10

to establish

Massachusetts, later

the resonant cavity

mag-

netron, was being used by the Allies not only for night interception in the air but in modified in

Germany.

It

would discover aircraft.

On

form

was only

a

for locating

targets 'blind'

the guidance secrets of the Allies in a crashed

2 February an aircraft

(used to guide

bombing

matter of time before the Germans

bombers on

belonging to

to their targets

a

Pathfinder force

by dropping

flares

ahead

28o

Hitler's Scientists

of the bomber formations) was shot

damaged

man

down

magnetron was retrieved from the wreckage. Ger-

cavity

engineers, referring to the device

confinned that

near Rotterdam and a

it

was

as

a centrimetric radar

the Rotterdamgerdt, soon

device and that

night-fighter search or warning as well as

far

ahead of

us.

I

behind

we

could

declared:

the British and Americans are

expected them to be advanced, but frankly

thought that they would get so at least

be

far

in the

ahead.

same

I

aided

bombing guidance.

Herman Goering, on learning of the equipment,

We must frankly admit that in this sphere

it

I

never

did hope that even if we were

race.^'

Leo Brandt of Telefunken was ordered to reconstruct the device so that it could be employed by Germany's radar, but on i March the equipment was destroyed in a bombing raid. That same

Professor

night,

however, another magnetron was found

down

over Holland and Brandt went to work again.

German

in a

bomber

shot

hastened to incorporate cavity magnetrons

scientists

into their systems for

bomb

guidance, anti-aircraft detection and

gunnery and airborne

radar,

but by the time they were ready to

be deployed the war was approaching

its

end. In the

meantime

Gemiany's researchers found methods of countering the benefits of cavity magnetrons, in particular a detector called Naxos and another device

known as Korfu,

radar wavelengths.

Naxos was

designed to pick up lo-centimetre particularly

useful for

U-boats

on microwave to detect the presence of periscopes. But as fast as the Reich engineers devised countermeasures the Allies were developing 3 -centimetre wavedetecting search planes operating

length radar to catch their quarries.

Radar, however, important

from

attack,

as it

was

to

defend Britain's islands

was not the only form of information processing

helped to reverse the tide of war. Equal to the crucial rewards

was

effort,

that

ingenuity and

Britain's extraordinary success in the field of

deciphering Germany's sophisticated top secret codes.

Codes

21.

The

art

of secret communication and espionage in wartime has

always stood to

make

outcome of the

conflict.

graphy in World War art

a significant difference to the

II,

A

conduct and

remarkable feature of German crypto-

which involved sophisticated state-of-the-

mechanical encryption, was the refusal ofthe Reich's intelligence

mechanical services to believe that indicating a

fatal

codes could be broken,

its

lack of respect for the technological achievements

of their opponents.

On the

German

other hand,

intelligence dedi-

cated considerable intellectual resources to successful decoding of the communications of their enemies and potential enemies.

The story of Germany's highly sophisticated encryption efforts in World War II begins in 1 923 when Winston Churchill published ,

his history

of the Great War, The World

September 19 14 the

The

naval codes.

was

recounting

Germans,

five years after the

who

how

whole world

had been ignorant of the

facts

war had ended, was unwise. Certainly

to affect the decisions

in

of Germany's secret

publication of such a story for the

to read, let alone the

even

Crisis,

British gained possession

it

of the German military towards secret

codes during the 1920s and 1930s.

September 191 4, a German light cruiser, the Magdeburg, was wrecked in the Baltic Sea. The body of a drowned German sailor In

was picked up by the Russians

by arms signal

stiff

few hours

later;

clasped to his chest

with rigor mortis in the cold sea were the cipher and

books of the German navy.

naval attache

came

the Admiralty. telling

a

The

On

6 September, the Russian

Winston Churchill, then

to see official

had received

him what had happened, and

a

First

Lord of

message from Petrograd

that the

Russian Admiralty

with the aid of the cipher and signal books had been able to decode portions of some

German

naval codes.

The Russians

felt

that as the

leading naval power, the British Admiralty ought to have these

282

Hitler's Scientists

books. If the British would send a vessel to Alexandrov, the Russian officers in

charge of the books would bring them to Britain.

books were eventually delivered famous

hall's

secret

Room 40,

When

communications routinely.

write their account of World fleet

to British cryptanalysts in

where they were used

command, whose

War I

the

to

The

White-

decode German

Germans came

to

German

they recorded that 'the

were intercepted and de-

radio messages

ciphered by the English, played so to speak with open cards against

command'.^

the British

One consequence

of the publishing of the Magdeburg

Royal Navy

(repeated in the official history of the

was

year, 1923)

that

Germany upgraded her

in that

affair

same

secret codes in the

inter-war period, investing in a complex mechanical system that

would,

in time, test Britain

limit, calling for science, skills far

beyond the

employed

in

and America's decoding resources

to the

mathematics, technology and engineering

gentle pencil and paper arts of classical scholars

World War I. Breaking Germany's most impenetrable

codes would eventually involve Britain in the building of Colossus, the world's

first

computer, and

a staff

of some 12,000 workers, in-

cluding the cream of the country's mathematicians. After the war, Churchill was keen not to repeat his mistake of 1923.

The

plans of

Colossus were destroyed and Britain's code-breakers were obliged to maintain strict secrecy about their activities until 1975.

algorithm employed in Colossus remains

The special

a secret to this dSjy.

After Churchill's disclosure in 1923, Germany's military authorities

turned to a 'cipher rotor' invention,

a

writing machine that

worked on a system of mechanical 'substitution'. The standard device, which looked like a typewriter about a foot square and 6 inches deep, weighing under 30 pounds, had been developed by

a

German electrical engineer, Arthur Scherbius, for use in commerce, diplomacy and potentially for the the

Greek word

German Navy in BerUn,

in 19 18, Scherbius, then

had boasted

sequence of letters .

.

.

The

military.

for riddle. Describing the

that

when

it

He

called

machine

it

the Enigma,

to the Imperial

aged thirty-nine and living

'would avoid any repetition of the

the same letter

solution of a telegram

is

is

struck millions of times

also impossible if a

machine

Codes

falls

into unauthorized hands, since

283 requires a prearranged key

it

system.'^

Creating

cipher with a rotor machine of the type that evolved

a

Enigma involves striking the typewriter keys corresponding

into the

of the message, or the

to the letters

'plaintext',

on

'ciphertext', the successive lit-up letters

David Kahn

historian

As each

letter

is

and noting the

a glass screen.

Code

explains:

enciphered the

electrical current passes

through the input

plate contact for that letter, enters the rotor at the rotor contact opposite,

winds through the face, passes into the

ciphertext

The

rotor,

emerges

output

plate,

at a different

and goes

position

to the bulb

on the other

underneath the

letter.-^

receiver of the coded message had to set up the

machine with

the same key system coordinates in order to retrieve the original plaintext.

The

standard

Enigma equipment used by the German armed from which three were chosen in setting

forces included five rotors,

up the machine

for each period (normally of a day), giving sixty

possible wheel-orders.

with the twenty-six

Each rotor was

letters

fitted

with an adjustable ring

of the alphabet inscribed on

it.

There

were therefore twenty-six cubed

(that

of these

million different possible set-ups

rings, to give just

of the 'scrambler unit' also

included

a

at

over

i

17,576) different settings

is,

the core of the machine.

plug board, which effected

But the machine

a substitution

before the

current entered the scrambler and the same substitution after left it

to light

up the enciphered

produced by the scrambler both entry and

exit,

it

letter.

itself,

As

it

had

this substitution, like that

was symmetrical and was used

preserved the two

critical features

at

of the

scrambler component of Enigma encipherment: no letter could be

enciphered to if

A

itself,

and the overall encipherment was reciprocal:

enciphered to P, then P enciphered to

AQ. The

use of 10

a further factor of some 150 million number of different ways of setting up the machine to approximately 1 59 billion billion. The set-up chosen

plugged

pairs

introduced

million, bringing the total

284

Hitler's Scientists

for each day

usually as a

was circulated

to

users in each particular network,

all

monthly key-sheet.

In addition, the start position for each individual message had to

be chosen by the originator, and communicated to the recipient

without revealing in various

ways by

to an

it

enemy. This information was conveyed

different users

and

at different

phases of the war.

For most of the war the army and airforce used

namely enciphering the at a start

position (say

enciphered to

KLB,

position (say

start

RTG)

also

machine

to the position

position

DQX

the

simple method,

on the machine

chosen by the operator.

the trigrams

RTG KLB

The

the preamble of the message.

a

DQX)

DQX

sent as part of

recipent had merely to set his

RTG and tap out KLB, revealing the start

of the message proper. So

machine set-up

were

If

if

for the period in question,

decipher any message sent in

enemy knew the he would be able to

an

it.

Scherbius, ambitious to market his machine, had also bought up in 1927 a rival system invented

by the Dutchman Hugo Alexander

Koch. By 1929, the year of his death (he was killed by a runaway horse), Scherbius had sold his invention to the German army and navy, which were to use different versions of

assumption of power in 1933, and Treaty with for cipher

its

prohibitions

his rejection

it.

After Hitler's

of the Versailles

on German rearmament, the demand

machines from the armed services multiplied. Eventually

the Luftwaffe, the SS, the

Abwehr (German mihtary

and counterintelligence) and the

state railways, the

intelligence

Reichsbahn,

Enigma machines, and the navy and the amiy were coordinating their Enigma systems with a view to greater security. The German high command added a fail-safe security system with the aid of a Stichwort, or cue word. Even if the enemy managed to obtain an Enigma machine, and even if he managed to secure were

all

using

the daily key-hsts, the Stichwort broadcast to operational U-boats

would a slip

direct the operators to

of paper containing

a

open

a sealed

envelope in which was

key word. The operators would then

follow a complex procedure, adding settings specified for the daily key.

letters

of the key word to the

Codes

The

The Germans began baffling British,

Polish Code-breakers

Enigma machines in 1926, instantly French and American code-breakers, all of whom

eventually gave up.

new

285

to use

One

country v^hich refused to accept that the

encryption was unbreakable was Poland. Trapped between

the Russian giant and a

Germany which

cheated of territory

felt

now returned to Poland following the First War, the Polish government was convinced Germany's

that

it

could not afford to be ignorant of

secret intentions.

Captain Maksymilian Cieski was in charge of the Polish cipher

He was

bureau, Biuro Szyfrow.

Enigma, which would prove helpful

machine employed by the German

who

settings to the

French secret

to their allies the Poles,

passed service,

and hence

virtual impossibility

now

different in the

a disaffected

Gennan,

on copies of code books and

which

in turn passed

them on

to the Polish cipher bureau."^

Schmidt's treachery enabled the Poles to

machine, but the cryptanalysts

was

lucky breakthrough,

a

of the espionage of

as a result

Hans-Thilo Schmidt,

long run, but the

in the

military

The Biuro had

wirings of the scramblers.

however,

with the commercial

familiar

an Enigma

design

had to break the

settings.

The

of the task prompted an important recruitment

decision.

Cryptanalysis had traditionally been a task ideally suited,

thought, to

classicists

and

linguists. In the light

it

was

of the mechanical

complexity of Enigma, the Polish cipher bureau decided to turn to mathematicians, and

among

their early intake, in 1929,

24-year-old Marian Rejewski. Rejewski, a matriculated in mathematics the university at Poznan,

at

German

was the

speaker, had

Gottingen, before proceeding to

where he studied

statistics

and cryptology.

He found his true vocation attempting to crack the Enigma machine by concentrating on the patterns of the 'message-key' which was repeated twice

at

the

start

of every message. Following

a laborious

process of checking each of 105,456 'scrambler settings',

took the

a year,

Enigma

Rejewski cipher.

at last

which

began to penetrate the mystery of

As the code

historian

Simon Singh

puts

it,

286

Hitler's Scientists

'Rejewski's attack

on

the

Enigma

He

pHshnients of cryptanalysis.'

one of the

is

truly great

accom-

adds that the PoHsh success in

breaking the cipher can be attributed to three

factors: 'fear,

mathe-

The Poles in consequence were able to decode top secret German messages through the 1930s and improve

matics and espionage'.^

their search for the correct scrambler setting with the aid parallel

known

mechanical devices

As the Germans prepared

were

there

however,

their encoders

Enigma system by from

cables

six

bombes.

for war,

increased the security of the

number of plug board

as

of

six to ten, as

now twenty swapped letters before

increasing the

outlined above:

the message entered

number of possible keys, as we have The sudden increase of security was a

the scramblers, increasing the seen, to 159 billion billion.

serious

blow

for the Poles as Hitler's Blitzkrieg warfare

on communications between

air,

armour and

depended

infantry.

Weeks

before the outbreak of war, however, the French secret service

arranged for the British cryptanalysts to meet with Rejewski and his

team

at

the Polish cipher bureau. Before

September 1939, the

British

blueprints of the bombes

through

The

War

II

much of the

war broke out on

had received an Enigma

which had

replica

i

and

successfully cracked the codes

decade.

story of the breaking of the

and the 12,000 cryptanalysts

Enigma code during World who eventually worked at

Bletchley Park in the English countryside, has been told and retold

many

times in recent years. Less

Germans

known

are the efforts

made by

the

to crack Allied secret codes.

German Code-breakers Hitler's ambitions for a

speedy war of aggression, and the inherent

waste and overlap of polycratic give rise to

many

intelligence.

areas

rivalries in the

Reich, were to

of negligence in defence, including

signals

Unlike the extraordinary centralization of the code-

breaking organization centred

at

Bletchley Park in Britain, on

which Churchill kept an avuncular eye, famously resolving a neck in resources with

a

resounding

memorandum

bottle-

ordering

Codes

'ACTION THIS DAY',

there

287

were no

than seven code-

less

breaking organizations in Hitler's Reich. These included the

Foreign Office, the navy, the amiy, the Luftwaffe and various

were some 6,000 personnel working on cryptanalysis, but spread through these different organizations. They were often unaware of the work of their 'rivals', and hence had no idea as to overlap and duplication.^ In 1942 it was suggested security offices. In aU there

be brought under one organ-

to Hitler that the cryptanalysts should

ization controlled

by the Hungarian

Hitler refused to sanction the move.^

Major Bibo; but

specialist

The most

efficient

of these

organizations was the B-Dienst (Beobachtungs-Dienst), or Obser-

vation Service, a naval cryptanalysis unit under the ultimate control

of Admiral Donitz. The B-Dienst was in different parts, a listening service, a

fact

divided into three

decoding operation and an

Even before the war began the B-Dienst simple Royal Navy Administrative Code, or

evaluation service.^

cracked the

fairly

Naval Code, used by enlisted

sailors.

This

made

it

easier for the

B-Dienst to crack the Naval Cypher used by British

officers for

top secret communications. Those naval systems, which were not

mechanical, involved

a

code book with additives which the Ger-

mans reconstructed with

little difficulty.

By

the B-Dienst was deciphering half of all the

the latter part of 1940

Royal Navy's

signals.^

The British and the Americans, however, had developed a mechanical encryption system based on the Enigma model. The British machine was known

as

Typex, or sometimes Type-X; the Ameri-

can device was called Sigaba. Both machines were complex systems for mechanical substitution

The

and adding using

existence of these machines was

reference to

them

in

no

secret.

a five-rotor system.

There was an open

an essay written by Abraham Sinkov,

a

US

army cryptanalyst, published in Rouse Ball's Mathematical Recreations and Essays. Sinkov

methods

commented

that 'So far as present cryptanalytic

are concerned, the cipher systems derived

from some of

these machines are very close to practical unsolvability.''^^

by Simon Singh British

them

that the

Germans did not attempt

It is

stated

to decipher the

and American mechanical systems, since they regarded

as effectively invulnerable.^^

Unlike the Enigma machines,

288

Hitler's Scientists

moreover, the Allied mechanical encoders, and their successor, joint British-American system

known

as

Machine, were used sparingly for high

command

German

IBM -patented

cryptanalysts,

machines, boasted 50 per cent by

The

however, using

war of

after the

some

a

a

Combined Cipher

the

signals traffic.

Hollerith

high rate of success (up to

accounts) in breaking Allied manual codes.

Hollerith machine was invented by

who became

son of migrant Germans,

Herman

Hollerith,

the founder of the

IBM

(International Business Machines) corporation in America. After

graduating in engineering in 1879, Hollerith became an assistant the

US

Census Bureau

in

Washington,

DC. Taking

his

at

cue from

the mechanization of player pianos, Hollerith designed a machine for tabulating data with cards 'read'

punched with holes

that could

be

by means of adjustable spring mechanisms and electrical brush

contacts that could sense the holes as they sped through a feeder.

What was to be known as the Hollerith machine could sort millions of items of data the Holocaust,

at

high speed. As Edwin Black, author of IBM and

comments,

century bar code for his

was nothing

'It

human

less

than a nineteenth-

beings.' Hollerith

soon realized that

system could be used to analyse data thousands of times

than

human

analysts.

His machine had saved the

US

faster

government

now it was in demand for a wide range

$5 million on census labour;

of accounting, engineering, scientific and actuarial problems. Hollerith machine, licensed by

Germany not only

to assist the

IBM, was

war

to

effort, in

The

be widely used in

operations like code-

on Jews and

breaking, but in the task of collecting information others destined for the death camps.

By a

late 1941, after

America entered the war,

hand or book code known

as

a

Naval Cypher no.

new

Allied code,

3 (also

known

as

Anglo-US Cypher or Convoy-Cypher), employed for protecting Atlantic convoys, was in place. But the Germans had broken it by

March 1942

to the extent

signals traffic. Parts

with

IBM

of retrieving up to 80 per cent of the

of the cryptanalyst services were so advanced

methods of decoding that

at least

one operator, Lieuten-

ant R. Hans-Joachim Frowein of the B-Dienst, discovered

method of breaking

into

Enigma using 70,000

IBM

cards.

a

Codes

289

Late in the war the Luftwaffe began to employ a cipher system

known

as

'Enigma Uhr' {Uhr means clock

in

German). Plugged

into the Enigma, the device automatically generated a massive

number of this

was

extra permutations

on the encipherment system, but

also rapidly cracked.'^

The Enigma, Typex and

IBM

technology existed in

a

kind

of limbo between old technology and genuine binary computer technology. Binary systems were eventually exploited and rapidly

developed during the war, cryptanalysts

as

we

by Bletchley Park

see,

shall

and by engineers based at Britain's Post Office research

division at Dollis Hill,

London.

German Computers

A start had been

made in Germany on binary computers with the work of a German engineer, Konrad Zuse, but his inventions were never employed in cryptanalysis. While

still

a student,

Zuse had

taken Babbage's famous nineteenth calculating machine to cal

alone,

logi-

Zuse used a binary, on-off, zero-one representation by means

of holes punched

in paper,

an engineer in the

of

its

next stage. Starting in 1932, aged only twenty-two and working

his parents,

and

later pins that

aircraft industry, a

could be locked.*^ As

job he

left,

to the distress

he became aware of the 'tremendous number of

monotonous

calculations necessary for the design of static

aerodynamic

structures'.

and

So he was designing and constructing

calculating machines suited to solving such problems automatically.

Nobody at that time, he commented, 'knew the difference between hardware and

software'.^"*

In 1933 a manufacturer of calculating machines had told

him

over the telephone that 'computer' technology was already exhausted and that there was nothing

new

to

be done. The manufacturer

came to Zuse's workshop, where the young man converted him by demonstrating the principle of digital, or binary,

nevertheless

code calculations. Thereafter Zuse built his Zi and Z2, which were

test

models of

an electromechanical relay machine. In 1939 Zuse was called up

290

Hitler's Scientists

which prompted the manufacturer to write a letter to Zuse's major informing him that the young inventor should be given leave to complete work that would be useful for the aircraft

into the army,

commanding officer read the letter and said: 'I don't understand that. The German aircraft is the best in the world.

industry. Zuse's

I

don't see what to calculate further on.' Six

as

months

Zuse was freed from military

later

an engineer in the

aircraft industry.

computer

design, creating

electromechanically arithmetical unit.

Z3

the

It

was employed by the German

Z3, which had

relays as well as

an

has also been described

aircraft

manufacturers to solve

simultaneous equations associated with metal for a

his

operational programme-controlled calculating machine.

as

first

work

But he persevered part-time

by 1941 with an electromechanical memory composed of his

service, to

computer based on

valves,

stress.

Zuse's proposal

however, was rejected because of

Meanwhile Zuse began another computer he called Z4, which survived the war after being moved from site to site to avoid Allied bombing. Zuse can lay claim to having made the first programme-controlled model the perception of an

computer, but

it

imminent end

to the war.

was not employed

as

a

wartime

significant

technology.'^

Colossus Versus the Lorenz Machine

*

A historic token of the arrogance of the Reich's intelligence services for

what

Britain in particular could achieve in cryptanalysis can be

seen today

at

Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes north of London.

In a wartime shed

humming,

which

clicking,

is

now

a

museum

there

is

to

be found

a

buzzing contraption. The machine exudes an

acrid stench of hot Bakelite

and vacuum tubes and appears

to

be

assembled from giant pieces of Meccano and an assortment of

oddments from

a

telephone exchange of the 1930s. There are two

composed of panels, switches and festoons of coloured and the whole thing stands about 8 feet high, 3 feet wide and

cabinets

wire,

16 feet long.

A steel

scaffold

with gleaming spools runs

a

length of

telegraph tape past a photoelectric 'eye' that reads off information

Codes

at a rate

29

of 5 ,000 characters per second. In the depths of the machine,

1,500 valves and thousands of plugs and circuits flicker and chatter as

they process the information from the tapes.

Thought ster

is

to

nothing

of World

War

have been long extinct, less II,

than

this

curious electronic

mon-

supreme

secret

a rebuilt Colossus, Britain's

and arguably the country's greatest

scientific

purpose was to break

technological achievement of the century.

Its

Germany's most complex

war of national

and

it

secret codes in a

and

survival,

provides a significant contrast with the conduct of science

and technology under

Hitler.

Colossus was built to do 'Boolean' calculations:

working out

processes using symbols;

logical

expressing ideas such

as 'true, false'

or

in

'and, or'

terms of zeros and ones, or on/ off" signals.

The

a

method of

other words

purely in binary

inspiration

behind

making owed much to the genius of Alan Turing, the Cambridge mathematician who 'invented' the idea of the computer as a its

'thought experiment' to tackle mathematical problems by mechanical

means. Technically

grammable

known

as a 'large

logic calculator'. Colossus

was

electronic valve pro-

built to

decode messages

from the Lorenz machine, the next generation of the Enigma,

which scrambled messages between members of the Nazi high

command, including directives from Hitler himself. According to German historians, the intelligence gathered by Colossus shortened the war by at least two years. The German military writer Hans Meckel believes Colossus prevented Germany having to be bombed into submission, as Japan was, with an atomic bomb. The story of Germany's Lorenz, and

Britain's Colossus, illustrates the crucial

importance of wartime secret codes and Germany's nize the vulnerability of its

The at

own

world's single surviving Lorenz machine

Bletchley Park.

It is

a massive precision

glittering steel rotors encased in cast iron;

needs several people to the

company

land-line

that

lift it.

made

(although

it

it,

failure to

recog-

systems despite their complexity. is

also to

be found

instrument with twelve

it is

heavy and

fragile

and

The machine, which was named after

sent

its

messages mainly by teleprinter

could also use the airwaves) using the

international system of five-bit digital signals,

made up of holes and

292

Hitler's Scientists

spaces to represent letters of the alphabet.

employed two

of confusing

sets

two

character was changed by adding

were

internally generated

managed

sets

Each

way

this

punched message

'lugs'

—

501 in

pattern given by the

—

all

German

that

Germans

moving

of

tiny

to a specific but regularly altered

encoders.

The Germans were con-

A

vinced that the Lorenz code was unbreakable. faith,

the

it

to the tune

Setting the cipher wheels involved

10^'' possibilities.

blind

original input

of characters to

by the machine. In

to obscure each original

mechanical

The Lorenz-type code

additives.

token of their

not only did they allow Hitler to speak directly to

his

on two occasions they actually sent for the next month on the Lorenz

generals using the machine, but

out the cipher-setting sheets

machine

itself

In order to decipher a Lorenz-coded message the

ent needed to pass the received enciphered

an identical Lorenz machine with 'start-wheel' positions ordered

German recipi-

punched

tape through

wheels pre-set to the same

its

on any

These

particular day.

start-

wheel positions determined the configurations of the wheels, a

twelve-wheel one-armed bandit that has been

stop in

what looks

like a purely

were changed every month

Germans

altered

random

at first,

fashion.

but

them each week and

as

the

like

and

'fixed' to spin

The

start

positions

war progressed the

eventually each day.

Colossus was designed to discover the start-wheel positions used

on the Lorenz machines on any

But

particular day.

code-breakers also had to re-create

a

machine

tli@

British

identical in

functions to the Lorenz itself in order to decipher the message. British version

of the Lorenz machine,

teleprinter ciphers

were nicknamed

known

after fish

as a

by the

'Tunny' British),

its

The (all

was

designed by engineers studying the principles of the Lorenz cipher

system without ever having seen an example of the

German original.

How the British managed to improvise the world's first computer, and the accompanying 'Tunny' machine, owes much

to a peculiar

conjunction of mathematical and engineering genius - and a

remarkable element of chance.

Land-hne in occupied

teleprinter traffic

Nazi

territory,

was

virtually impossible to intercept

but the same signals were occasionally

Codes

293

transmitted across the airwaves in the form of a high signal for a

low signal for a mark, creating a binary code. Towards the end of the war the British and Americans, and the Resistance, would deliberately target land-lines and teleprinter transmission space and a

more

stations precisely to force

traffic

on

where

to the airwaves,

they could be intercepted.

The first breakthrough in understanding the nature of the Lorenz cipher occurred on 30 August 1941, when a German operator was given a message with 3,900 characters to send by radio transmission.

He

correctly set

up

his

Lorenz machine and punched the message

by hand. Then the receiving end replied got through and requested that

it

that the message

be sent again. At

this

had not

point a

fatal

mistake was made. Both operators put their Lorenz machines back to the

same pattern of

start- wheel positions

operator tapped out the message once against

all

regulations and

good

strokes in the process. After a

sense.

and the transmitting

more on

the same settings,

He made some

different

few characters he put an

here or an extra line-feed there, or shortened

a

key

extra space

when

word. Thus,

two versions were compared, the two sets of transmitted charac-

the ters

had slipped out of synchronism.

The phenomenon of a repeated message of this sort was nicknamed a 'depth' by the code-breakers. It was like a gift from heaven. Both streams of cipher had been intercepted at

Knockholt

in

Kent and were passed on

at

the receiving station

to Bletchley Park,

they were scrutinized by a top code-breaker realized their significance.

By

what code-breakers

where

immediately

mulling over both versions of the

message for more than two months, he and extract

who

call

his

team managed

'pure key stream', that

is,

to

the

scrambling pattern generated by the Lorenz machine. This was

achieved by a complicated process of matching what they speculated to

be the possible patterns of lug settings on the wheels of the

machine.

It

was the

generated the code.

It

first

clue as to

what

sort

of machine had

now took the skills of a second code-breaker,

young Cambridge chemist turned mathematician caUed BiU Tutte, to work out the structure of the Lorenz machine. a

By early

1942 the code-breakers understood the Lorenz machine

Hitler's Scientists

294

sufficiently well to re-create

a daunting one,

each message

how

was

set

on any

it.

The remaining problem, and

particular day

by the German

senior code-breaker it

a single

operators.

message of

couple of thousand words by hand would have taken

more code-breakers up at

to

two or

Bletchley,

was going to be possible

was

to discover the start-wheel positions for

Solving the start-wheel positions employed on a

it

to

fifty

or

three months. At this point the

Max Newman,

mechanize

that part

had the idea

that

of the deciphering

process.

The

help of the physics group of the Post Office research centre

at Dollis Hill

was enhsted, and within

devised a series of clumsy machines

a

period of a few months they

known

'Heath Robinsons',

as

which used a double teleprinter tape to process information. These contraptions were early versions of the Colossus. But there were

constant problems with keeping the tapes in synchrony and they failed to

do the job

and

swiftly

efficiently.

Tommy Flowers, a senior

Post Office engineer, believed, contrary to almost universal opinion at

the time, that electronic equipment using

valves could operate continuously without faith

many hundreds of

failure.

Acting on

he solved the problem by constructing what was

computer

in the

modern

sense.

He employed some

this

essentially a

1,500 valves as

well as other electronic devices to represent on-off, or zero-one,

binary states. This dispensed with the double-tape problem. Flowers

and and ease

the

his

team

built the first Colossus

machine

worked within hours of being set up with which the two organizations, the

it

huge

in just eleven

at

months

Bletchley Park.

British Post Office

The and

cryptanalysis unit at Bletchley, collaborated contrasts yet

again with the wasteful rivalries of the Reich.

The authorities at Bletchley had not been prepared to underwrite the cost but the Director of Post Office Research had sufficient faith in

Flowers and

his

team

to take

what was

interesting to reflect that

it

on

as

own

budget.

essentially the first

electronic computer, albeit with a stored

work which must rank

his

It is

working

programme, undertook

amongst the most important

in

compari-

son with any other of the millions of computers that have been

brought into use subsequently.

Codes

The

295

Colossus generated the key streams - that

is, the sequence of symbols on the wheels of the German Lorenz machine — intern-

ally in its electronic circuits. It

read the intercepted message tape at

5,000 characters a second, comparing the tape of the intercepted

enciphered text with these internally represented key streams.

Then, making some very sophisticated

cross-correlations,

it

found

the start-wheel positions for the particular enciphered message.

Information processed by Colossus reassured the Allies that Hitler

had swallowed the elaborate deception plan put

in place in the

months before D-Day. This involved the deployment of 'phantom armies'

on the south and

east coasts

cardboard tanks and bogus landing

Germans

of England, composed of

craft,

into thinking that the Allies

aimed

at

would invade

deceiving the across the Pas

de Calais. As a result the Gemians were unprepared for the

assault

on the Normandy beaches. Colossus also deciphered messages from Field Marshal Karl von

Rundstet

after

D-Day

ordering the

German

generals to keep the

Panzer divisions in reserve in Belgium instead of unleashing them

on the

Allied armies to the south. This gave the Allies greater

confidence to consolidate the invasion without diverting forces to counteract a large-scale tank

assault.

PART FIVE

The Nazi Atomic Bomb 1941-1945

22.

On Sunday Berlin to

Copenhagen

September 1941, Werner Heisenberg travelled from occupied Denmark. Heisenberg's official purpose was to 15

participate in a lecture series

ganda

on

Gemian propa-

astrophysics at a

Copenhagen; but he was evidently looking

institute in

forward to meeting

his old

mentor and colleague, Niels Bohr.

The war was going well for Germany. With Poland, France and the

Low

Countries

and the Wehrmacht cutting swathes

fallen,

through the armies and the

territories

German hegemony of Europe and Hitler's armies

a

it

looked

to stay out

as if

fait accompli.

looked unstoppable in Russia, and the United

seemed determined do

of Russia,

the East was a

States

of the war. Britain might even yet

deal with Germany, bringing the conflict in Europe to

a

swift end.

In September of 194 1 Heisenberg

the

war would not have

may

long to run, that

win and that German atomic

well have assumed that

Germany was bound

to

physics was at least abreast if not ahead

of developments in Britain and America. Given the many unsolved

and imponderables,

difficulties

that the exploitation

probably seemed to Heisenberg

it

of atomic physics for either power or weaponry

beyond the war's end. In 1941 no method of separating U-235 from natural uranium had been practically perfected in Germany; but even if it were to be perfected at some future date, only lay well

negligible

amounts could be produced despite the commitment of

enormous

industrial resources.

Indeed Niels Bohr himself had

talked in 1939 of transforming the a factory in

order to achieve

whole of the United

this fissionable

Since Heisenberg had no clear idea of the as far as

he knew, were

of the vast

seemed

effort

to put the

still

States into

'enriched uranium'. critical

mass

(scientists,

thinking in terms of tons), the question

and time necessary

U-235 path

to a

to obtain those quantities

bomb beyond

feasibility for the

300

Hitler's Scientists

He knew,

foreseeable future.

however,

that a

achieved with plutonium, the by-product of

bomb might

be

but there

a reactor,

No

were many outstanding technical problems involved.

such

reactor had yet been built, nor was the construction of one even

approaching completion. Then again, even available, the

German atomic

how

a

make

to

The

with

by both

what was

if

plutonium became

had no precise idea

as to

it.

of Heisenberg's atomic

state

important for said,

bomb

scientists

or

said,

bomb

at least

physics at this time was

understood to have been

sides in the conversations that

took place between

Heisenberg and Bohr in Copenhagen. In time, their separate versions

of these conversations would be of crucial importance

conscience of at

to the

one of them: Niels Bohr.

least

There have been disagreements about when and where these conversations about atomic physics took place. But an

by Heisenberg seems

lished letter written

to shed

as

yet

unpub-

more Hght on

these disagreements.^

Heisenberg wrote

a letter to his

wife w^hile he was actually in

Copenhagen during that third week of September. It was written in three stages: on the Tuesday, on the Thursday evening, then on the Saturday before his departure. arrived in

Copenhagen on

city firom the station

He

wrote

under

the

a clear

that the discussion

the misfortunes of our time;

alone with Bohr.

him

was

and

when he

told his wife that,

starry sky to

across the

Bohr's house.

soon turned to human questions and later,

after

he wrote, he

midnight

sat for a

long time

when Bohr accompanied

to catch a tram.

Two their

It

He

Monday, he had hurried

days

later,

on the Wednesday, he again

home. He reported

was present

who

when he found

tactfully

to his wife that a

withdrew dunng

they disagreed in they

left

berg's hotel.

later years,

Bohrs

at

young EngHshwoman a political

conversation

himself obliged to defend 'our system'.

that another conversation, the

when

visited the

It is

likely

famous conversation over which

took place

at

the end of that evening,

the house to walk again to the tram or to Heisen-

Then, apart from other meetings

that

took place

Niels Bohr's institute, there was a third social meeting

at

(unknown

Copenhagen

came

until this letter

to light)

301

on the Saturday, when

On

was pleasant beuveen the two men.

ever\'thing

Bohr

occasion

this

read aloud and Heisenberg played Mozart's piano sonata in

Major, the sonata that ends with the Alia Turca movement. significance

the

return later to

of

this

I

A

shall

evidently cordial

last

meeting. Heisenberg, accompanied by his younger colleague Weizsacker,

had made

this visit to

Copenhagen because of the

perception of Nazi propagandists) of an earlier in

March of 1 94 1

visit

On that occasion Weizsacker had lectured before

.

on

the Danish Physical and Astronomical Societ\-

removed from

a

theme

the cnses and carnage of Hitler's war, namely:

The aim

the world infinite in time and space?'

win over the

success (in the

by Weizsacker

hearts

and minds of Danish

"Is

evidently was to

and

intellectuals

scientists,

and in particular the researchers within Niels Bohr's famous tute.

far

insti-

In March. Weizsacker had also accepted an invitation to

deliver a lecture entitled 'The Relationship

Mechanics

and

Kantian

between Quantum

After

Philosophy'.

some wrangHng

between Weizsacker and the Reich Education Ministr\% the Party

Copen-

chancellery also gave Heisenberg permission to travel to

hagen provided

that

he kept

a low" profile.^

Heisenberg's reception by the Danish scientists was cool.

he came

to give his arranged talk

Friday, only a

on cosmic

up

at

the

last

minute.

The

on the Copenhagen

radiation,

few members of the German colony

attended, turning

When

in

scientists

from Bohr's

boycotted the session. At one point during the

institute

visit,

however. Weizsacker accompanied the director ot the Gemian Cultural Institute to Bohr's institute,

posium

lecture

sacker, so

it

on

stellar fusion. It

where he repeated

was on

reluctant Bohr."*

Bohr

fraternizing with the

lunch several times his hosts

quite naturally

was

Institute's director at

and

a

pains not to be seen

Gennans.

According to Bohr's offended

occasion that

has been reported by the Danes, contrived to force an

encounter between the German Cultural

to

this

symWeiz-

his

assistant, at

Stefan Rozental, Heisenberg

Bohr's institute

by suggesting

that

it

dunng

that

was important

came

week, and

for

Germany

302 to

Hitler's Scientists

win the war. According to some of the Danish scientists, Heisen-

berg made offensive remarks to the necessity'

.

effect that

Bohr remembered in later years

war was

that

a 'biological

Heisenberg had

said

would be unwise to doubt it.^ Bohr was apparently angry at Heisenberg's comments, but, as we have seen above, he saw Heisenberg socially on more than one occasion and they had an opportunity to walk in the open that Hitler's victory

air,

was inevitable and

where they could

committed

talk freely.

to paper, but there

is

provenance, and therefore best

berg scribbled

bomb — on

a

of their conversations was

an anecdotal account of uncertain out of the picture, that Heisen-

left

which he passed

to

later insisted that their critical

Bohr thought

place outside;^

Whatever

it

drawing of a nuclear reactor - or perhaps

a piece of paper,

Heisenberg

None

that

that

it

a nuclear

Bohr. conversation took

had occurred

in his study.''

the case, the conversation seems to have got off to a bad

with an exchange about Germany's destruction of Poland.

start

Bohr thought

the invasion unforgivable, whereas Heisenberg saw

saving grace in Germany's

less

destructive treatment of France.

Heisenberg went on to say that he thought Germany's imminent

good thing. Heisenberg then changed tack Bohr make contact with German officials in

victory over Russia a

recommend that Denmark in order to to

secure a degree of protection in the event of

the Nazi occupation of Scandinavia turning nasty,

Bohr being

partly Jewish.

At the

this

point Heisenberg, according to his

subject

scientists to

Bohr considered

inquire whether

to

own account, changed

do research on uranium

in time

of war.

it

right

for

To which Bohr

responded: 'Do you really think that uranium fission could be utilized for the construction

Heisenberg recollected reactions to this question.

at

of weapons?'^ various times after the

He was

consistent in

war

different

remembering

he told Bohr of his knowledge of a link between uranium

that

fission

and a bomb, hardly an item of news, since the speculation had been published two years earlier for Times.

all

the world to read in the

New

York

He later recorded that he informed Bohr that he was engaged

in research

on

a

nuclear weapon, but writing in 1957 to Robert

Copenhagen

303

Jungk, author o{ Brighter than a Thousand Suns, he declared that he

had told Bohr:

'1

know that this is in principle possible, but it would

require a terrific technical eftbrt, which, one can only hope, cannot

be realized in

this war.'^

Heisenberg nevertheless recollected in

memoir Physics and Beyond that Bohr was to take in the

most important

part

'so horrified that

he

his

failed

of my report, namely, that an

enormous technical effort was needed' Heisenberg commented that the point he was endeavouring to make was 'so important precisely .

because

it

gave physicists the possibility of deciding whether or not

bombs should be attempted'. Scientists had it in their power, Heisenberg remembered telling Bohr, to advise their governments that 'atom bombs would come too late for use in the present war, that work on them therefore detracted from their the construction of atom

effort',

or else they could argue that they might be brought into the

conflict 'with the letter to

utmost exertions'. Heisenberg, according to

Robert Jungk,

finally

on

put his cards

the table:

'I

his

then

Bohr once again if, because of the obvious moral concerns, it would be possible for all physicists to agree among themselves that one should not even attempt work on atomic bombs, which asked

in

any case could only be manufactured

at

Bohr, according to Heisenberg, bristled

monstrous at this

cost.'^*^

suggestion. Hei-

senberg interpreted Bohr's reaction almost a quarter of a century later in

an interview with David Irving, controversial historian and

author of The German Atom Bomb. Heisenberg told Irving that the idea of physicists collaborating not to

Bohr .

.

.

'terribly unreasonable'

desire

on

my

and tantamount

Heisenberg

part'.

make atom bombs seemed to

said that

being

to

a 'pro-Hitler

he could see Bohr's

point: 'Hitler had driven these good people to America and so he

make atomic bombs.' He went on to tell Irving, however, that 'if we made atomic bombs we would bring about a terrible change in the world. Who knows what would can't

be surprised

happen from

this?

if

I

they

was scared of everything,

also this possibility.'^'

Hitler's Scientists

304

Bohr's Unpublished Letters

The

character of Margarethe, Bohr's wife in Michael Frayn's play

Copenhagen, asks

The

the outset:

at

historian Paul

recent

critics,

'Why did he come

to

Copenhagen?'

Lawrence Rose, the harshest of Heisenberg's

believes that Heisenberg

went

Copenhagen

to

to

persuade his old mentor to collaborate in the Nazis' atomic research. In 1941, as noted above,

looked

it

was the victorious

as if Hitler

East. Hence what upset Bohr accordRose was not fear that a German atomic bomb was imminent,

conquerer of Europe and the ing to

'but rather disgust that

imminent Pax

in the

Heisenberg was planning for atomic research

Nazica'.^^

author of Heisenberg's War, the Allies

were

Thomas Powers, on the other hand, Heisenberg had got across to

insists that

one piece of information, loud and

clear: 'the

bomb'. In Powers's view, Heisenberg had

interested in a

German bomb

betrayed the single most important fact about the

programme — Allies,

the fact that

it

existed.

New

as

evidence from the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen as far as

thing rather different had passed

torment him in

During and

Bohr was concerned some-

between them and had given cause

later years.

after the

the Allied side

need

war some of the leading atomic Scientists

were disturbed by

to justify their research.

We

example, wrote that he squared

their

have seen

his

We

have seen

how

Einstein, a

President Roosevelt to take action

Germany would

dedicate

its

work and

how

Otto

felt

the

Frisch, for

conscience with the reflection

that the Germans were probably racing to be

bomb.

telling the

an unusual kind of hero.

tends to show, however, that

on

Heisenberg was

through Bohr, the direction of German research: hence

Heisenberg emerges

to

Germans

first

to

make an atomic

man of peace, encouraged

on

physicists to

the reasonable basis that

atomic research. Later in

we shall see how the physicist Joseph Rotblat resigned the American bomb laboratory at Los Alamos as soon as

this narrative

his post at

he realized

that the

Germans were nowhere near

weapon. In other words, the justification

for the

possessing the

bomb

in the eyes

of a significant constituency of scientists from Leo Szilard to Joseph

Copenhagen

305

Rotblat rested on the conviction that the Germans might just be ahead.

They

dealt

with their moral scruples by considering the

horrifying notion that Hitler might get there

world into

first

and blackmail the

capitulation.

How was Bohr affected by these considerations? Bohr, the highly civilized, internationalist scientist, acutely sensitive to poHtical

moral nuances, was release

of

a series

Copenhagen

in

clearly deeply affected.

But

it

and

has taken the

of documents from the Niels Bohr Archive in

2002 to gauge the precise extent and nature of his

thinking.

Copenhagen meeting,

In the long-running debate over the

reference has often been

made

to the draft

of an unsent

letter

on Bohr's side of the story. The released papers comprise eleven documents in all, none of them actually sent. The most interesting of these deal from Bohr

to Heisenberg,

which could shed

with Bohr's fierce objections to the

letter

light

Heisenberg sent to the

author Robert Jungk, published in English in Brighter than a

Thousand Suns in 1957.

Of great

interest are Bohr's repetitions

and

progressive emphases and deletions, revealing a deeply troubled

consciousness about the impressions he had gained from his conversation with Heisenberg

and the remote consequences of those

impressions.

According to Heisenberg,

if

in the

Jungk

letter,

he had told Bohr:

[atomic bombs] were easily produced the physicists

would have been

unable to prevent their manufacture. This situation gave the physicists that time decisive influence

on

further developments, since they could

argue with the government that atomic available during the course

He

at

bombs would probably not be

of the war.

Jungk that he had said, further, that the construction of atomic weapons was 'in principle possible, but it would require a terrific technical effort, which one can only hope, cannot be realized told

in this war'.^^

But

in draft after draft of Bohr's unsent riposte to this claim he

expressed, with subtle, and significant, changes of emphasis, his

3o6

Hitler's Scientists

conviction that Heisenberg had by no means given stand that Germany's nuclear that

it

was forging ahead

him

to under-

weapons programme was lagging, but

at full

speed.

hi the earliest draft, however, he concedes that Heisenberg

spoken in 'vague terms' on

I

also

remember

me

precise text reads:

you spoke

manner

in a

the firm impression that, under your leadership,

everything was being done in

you

The

quite clearly ... in vague terms

that could only give

that

this topic.

had

Germany

was no need

said that there

were completely

familiar

working more or

less

to

develop atomic weapons and

to talk about the details since

you

with them and had spent the past two years

exclusively

on such

preparations.

''*

In the next draft, however, Bohr's reference to Heisenberg's

'vague terms' disappears, and he hardens the certitude of the 'impression', allowing

no room

for vagueness or indeed the least

misunderstanding:

I

remember

quite definitely the course of these conversations

without preparation, immediately you informed conviction that the war,

if it lasted sufficiently

with atomic weapons, and

and your

friends

that

it

.

.

when

was your

would be decided

did not sense even the slightest hint that

were making

In a further draft,

now

I

me

long,

.

eiforts in

which

is

another direction.

you

^^

entitled 'notes to Heisenberg',

he

mentions the implications of this strong impression. Writing

of his escape to Sweden and thence to England

in the

autumn of

1943, he declares:

The

question of how

far

Germany had come was

naturally of the greatest

importance both for physicists and for government authorities. opportunity to discuss

naturally reported

impression

I

got

.

.

had the

question thoroughly both with the English

and with members of the English government and

intelligence service I

this

I

.

all

of our experiences including in particular the

during the

visit to

Copenhagen by you

...'*'

Copenhagen

He first

mentions that

also

it

was

307

in 1943 that

he learned

'for the

time about the already then well-advanced American-English

atomic project'.

on

In yet another draft, repeating 'the very strong impression

me', ful

Bohr

also declares:

'You added, perhaps when I looked doubt-

[about the advance of German atomic

to understand that in recent years

bomb

science] that

I

had

you had occupied yourself

almost exclusively with this question and did not doubt that

it

could

be done.'^^ In an even later draft, however, he declares for the

However, the

first

time:

discussions [in other words, his report in 1943 to the Allies

about the German advances in atomic physics] had no decisive influence

one way or the other, since

it

was quite

of intelligence reports, that there was no a large undertaking in

Germany

clear already then, possibility

on the

basis

of carrying out such

before the end of the

war.'**

- of the strong impression he had gained of Gemian atomic advances — could have had no So here he begins

to stress that his report

conceivable consequences for Allied plans, to

as

they knew, according

Bohr, that the Germans were well behind.

The importance of

the

Bohr

drafts,

it

seems to me,

is

Bohr's

anxiety that his reports in 1943 to the British and the Americans of

Germany's uranium programme could have added unwarranted scientific

and pohtical impetus

the Allied atomic

to the speed

he appears agonized by the suggestion in Heisenberg's letter to

the lines,

(clearly stated to the

world

Jungk) that he had misunderstood or

misread Heisenberg and that spurred on the

and determination of

bomb programme. Reading between

his

misunderstanding might have

Allies.

The most questionable element of the final drafts is his insistence autumn of 1943 Allied intelligence knew that Germany had made no progress in the research and development of an atomic bomb, and certainly would not be capable of completing one before the end of the war. The Allies had no certain knowledge of the failure of the German project until December of 1944, when the that in the

3o8

Hitler's Scientists

intelligence

team known

anyone have guessed

would

My

analysis in

the

Bohr

drafts

the

that the

is

war

Danish

gained the impression that Heisenberg had hinted, in

Germany was working on an atomic bomb. As

have seen, the news did not disturb him so 1

Nor could

autumn of 1943 how long

in the

summary of

'vague' terms, that

in

Alsos arrived in Strasbourg.

last.

scientist

we

as

94 1, that he could not spend

much

the time,

at

fmal afternoon on the Saturday

a

enjoying Heisenberg's company, reading out loud and listening to music. But

it

was only

in retrospect after the

war

that

he had many

reasons to ponder the ethics and the pohtics of the atomic

bomb, post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all the more so as it became clear that Germany's bomb turned out to be a damp squib. The repetitions and the mounting exculpations in the draft suggest a troubled conscience.

between the

berg's message,

influence

Was

it

conveyed

he seems to be thinking

possible,

lines, that his reports

about

his

impression of Heisen-

might have had an

to the Allies in 1943,

on the determination with which the

bomb? Copenhagen and

Allies

pursued their

research and development of the

Heisenberg's

Bohr have

trip to

raised contentious,

Hitler's scientists

were

with

long-running debates about whether

and

able,

his conversations

willing, to

make atomic bombs.

According to historian of science Mark Walker, such 'what if questions have no definite answer, and perhaps exactly for this

reason extraordinary and implausible significance has been attributed

to a single

symbol of the Myth of the German Atomic Bomb: Werner

Heisenberg's mythical conversation with his Danish colleague, friend,

and mentor Niels Bohr in occupied Copenhagen during the

Walker debate

is

is

on the whole

right,

it

of 1 94 1

^^ .

much of the unknown

about intentions and the inner state of two men's

and unknowable consciences. And significance of the debate

German

seems to me, for

fall

scientists

actually behaved.

ought It

is

to

seems to

as

yet, at a subterranean level the

much

about

have behaved

me

how

as it

that in the light

is

the Allied and

about

how

of the Bohr

they

letters

Copenhagen

the interest of the

Copenhagen

affair

309

now

enables us to focus not

only on the conscience of Heisenberg, but the troubled ratiocinations of Bohr,

one of the most decent

unhke Heisenberg, (although

this situation

release Heisenberg's

The

has

left

scientists

evidence of

his

on

earth,

inner state of

who, mind

may alter if and when the Heisenberg family

unpublished correspondence).

constant drafting and redrafting,

irritation, indicate that

as if scratching

Bohr could not accept

that

away

at

an

he might have

misunderstood Heisenberg and in consequence given impetus to the creation of the

atom bomb.

This does not give us

Denmark was not Europe

where moral

after 1941:

fmal verdict, however, on Heisenberg.

a

the only country Heisenberg visited in occupied

he

visited, as

his activities raise

many

we

shall see,

Holland and Poland,

questions about his motives and

integrity.

At the end of the war Heisenberg and the principal German physicists involved in the

Nazi nuclear research programme were

held in a house outside Cambridge in England.

bugged and

their conversations are

the light of later events

now

The rooms were

available for scrutiny. In

we shall revisit the question of Heisenberg's

character and deeds: the question as to whether he was a hero, a villain

or a fellow traveller.

23- Speer

In

December

1941, three

and Heisenberg

months

after

Copenhagen, the head of army research told the

Heisenberg's return from

in

BerHn, Erich Schumann,

German uranium scientists that their research would receive

continued support provided there was

a

reasonable chance of

'attaining an appHcation in the foreseeable future'/

undertook to write up and

pects,

a

a

report

on

their progress

The

scientists

and future pros-

meeting for assessment was scheduled for February

1942.

The

report,

when

it

was completed,

stated that

in the present situation preparations should

be made for the technical

development and utilization of atomic energy. The enormous significance that

it

has for the energy

economy

in general

particular justifies such preliminary research,

problem

also

is

and for the Wehrmacht in the

all

more

in that this

being worked on intensively in the enemy nations,

especially in America.^

The

creation of a

German atomic bomb, according

to the

docu-

ment, depended on isotope-separation techniques or the generation

of plutonium from

a

working

reactor,

which

depended on

in turn

the acquisition of necessary materials.

At

this

point there was

a

dramatic parting of the ways between

atom bomb project and the German programme. The

the Allied

Frisch and Peierls breakthrough in Britain had depended technically on their making connections between fast neutrons and the rapidity

of reaction in U-235: started the

years

and

it

was the Frisch-Peierls

Americans, although

^/Qscio

a

completed

initiative that jump-

bomb

still

lay four

million, or $2 billion, expenditure away. In

many, however, the connections made by Frisch and simply not envisaged.

Peierls

Ger-

were

311

Specr a n d Heisenber^

Unimpressed by

the

Army Ordnance

progress,

scientists'

responded by cutting their funding and returning the Kaiser Wil-

hehn

Institute for Physics to

its

fomier

sponsorship of the parent society.

By

status

under the academic

April 1942

Abraham

Esau,

head of the Physics Section of the Education Ministry's research agency (Reich Research Council), had resumed control of the

uranium

project. In the

meantime there had been two

related

meetings on nuclear research in Berlin between 26 and 28 February 1942, at

one of which Heisenberg delivered

a

paper entitled 'The

of Energy from

Theoretical Foundations for the Production

Uranium

Present

Fission'.

the meeting was the science and

at

education supremo Bernhard Rust.

Heisenberg delivered a

fairly accessible

presentation

on nuclear weapons

fission accompanied by an optimistic account of the

He

potential.

If one

told the meeting:

could assemble

of neutrons from

its

a

lump of uranium-23 5

surface to be small

large

enough

for the escape

compared with the

internal

neutron multiplication, then the number of neutrons would multiply

enormously

in a very short space

energy, of

5

1

of time, and the whole uranium

would be

million-million calories per ton,

fraction of a second.

Pure uranium-23 5

is

fission

liberated in a

thus seen to be an explosive of

quite unimaginable force.

He

also

he

a reactor, pile a

mentioned the plutomum path said:

new element

is

created (atomic

number

probability as explosive as pure uranium-23 force'.

5,

94)

which

is

in aU

with the same colossal

"*

Given

that there

rect critical mass, as

ance,

bomb. Talking of

to the

'through the transmutation of uranium inside the

for

we

have seen above,

seemed designed

it

expectations.

resources to

were many imponderables, including the cor-

It

it

was

provoke

a

strange perform-

interest

and high

Was Heisenberg attempting to soUcit the appropriate make a bomb? When virtually unlimited resources

were offered by Albert Speer the offer.

to

was possible

in June that year,

that

Heisenberg spurned

he was merely attempting to curry

312

Hitler's Scientists

favour in order to remain an important figure in atomic physics,

but that surely had

its

dangers since the

German

armies were not

at

point prospering in Russia, and America had entered the war

this

with

its

prodigious industrial might.

Yet, while Heisenberg sought, and was given, increasing responsibility for the atomic physics

variety of extraneous duties

on

a task that

and

programme, he was taking on a He was hardly focused

activities.

should have absorbed

He had turned forty years

all

his energies.

of age in December 1941 and through

1942 seemed to lose himself increasingly in philosophical specu-

demanding experimental

lations rather than

physics.

year he found time to collate into a single text a

and

essays

which pondered the

During

that

number of lectures

helplessness of the individual in

the face of national and international conflict and struggle. 'The individual can contribute nothing to

this,'

he wrote, 'other than to

prepare himself internally for the changes that will occur without his action.'^

He

advocated the importance of helping others, while

counselling that effectively there was httle to be done except to

acquiesce in one's

fate.

The

individual

is

absolved of responsibility

for external events:

For us there remains nothing but to turn to the simple things: conscientiously

asking

much

fulfil

the duties and tasks that

about the

why

next generation that which is

or the wherefore.

still

life

we

should

presents to us without

We should transfer to the

seems beautiful to

us,

build up that

which

destroyed, and have faith in other people above the noise and passions.^

Speer Heads

On

7 February 1942, three

Arms

Production

weeks before Heisenberg dehvered

his

upbeat lecture on the potential of an atomic weapon, Albert Speer visited the

now

Wolf's Lair eastern headquarters, where the Fiihrer was

personally directing the conduct of the

front as Fritz

war on the Russian

Commander-in-Chief Todt, Minister of Armaments and Munitions, was

already

Speer and Heisenberg

closeted with Hitler

as

313

Speer arrived. Shouting was heard within

the room and when the Minister emerged, according to Speer, he

seemed

'strained

and fatigued from

discussion' 7 For

a

long and —

it

appeared — trying

months there had been tensions between Hitler

and Todt. In Todt's view, which included an overview of the

economy, munitions supply, men and

now

war could not

be won. Germany's only option was to come to

solution. Hitler,

not

materiel, the

a

question of amiaments but of will.

Speer and Todt talked for architect a seat

a political

however, continued to believe that victory was

on

a while,

*^

and the Minister offered the

the plane that was to fly

him

to Berlin early the

next morning — an offer that Speer accepted. Hitler did not summon

Speer to

his

The Fiihrer,

presence until one o'clock in the morning.

according to Speer, looked tired and preoccupied.

He

continued

depressed until the discussion turned to Hitler's pet building projects,

then he brightened up.

architectural

As

dreams

a result

The two men

about flying with Todt, deciding to sleep

when

investigation took place

circumstances, that

up discussing

of the lateness of the hour Speer changed

passenger and was killed

An

sat

until three o'clock.

as

his

his

mind

Todt was the only

in.

plane blew up on take-off.

and sabotage was ruled out, but the

described by Speer in his autobiography, indicate

Todt might have been

assassinated.^

That very afternoon Hitler appointed Speer to take over Todt's wide-ranging

responsibilities.

'I

thought that he had expressed

himself imprecisely,' wrote Speer, 'and therefore replied that

would his

try

my

best to be an adequate replacement for

construction assignments.

that

"No,

in

all

Dr Todt

his capacities,

I

in

including

of Minister of Amiaments," Hitler corrected me.'^" Thus

Speer, aged just thirty-seven, was thrust into a position of supreme responsibility for science as it

affected the

war

Goering burst into

and technology

effort.

Yet even

in the

as

Hitler's presence (Speer

Reichsmarschall had

lost

hunting lodge 60 miles

no time rushing

distant) to

demand

Third Reich,

as far

he accepted the order,

comments

to the

that

HQ

that the

from

his

he should take over

Todt's responsibilities 'within the framework of the Four-Year

314

Hitler's Scientists

The

Plan'.

tensions that had existed

illustrate, again,

the wasteful rivalry

between Goering and Todt and competition that Hider

countenanced and even encouraged within

commented, his

'As Minister of Armaments,

his dictatorship.

Speer

Dr Todt

could carry out assignment from Hider only by issuing direct orders to industry.

Goering, on the other hand, Plan,

felt

Commissioner of the Four-Year war economy.''

as

responsible for running the entire

Speer brought organization to the chaotic and hard-pressed

armaments production

at a

point

when

the

war was turnmg against

Hider. Although lacking Todt's experience, he possessed

combin-

a

ation of aptitudes and a strong technocratic background. Speer's father

was an architect with

his

own practice in Mannheim,

and

his

son Albert enjoyed a privileged childhood which included lessons

from

a

even

at school,

French governess. Speer claimed that he enjoyed

and

Zeppehns, enjoying

as a child,

he had

a

passion for cars and for

a 'technical intoxication in a

He

yet scarcely technical'. ^^

and intended studying

statistics

world

was the best mathematician

that at

was

school

that subject at university, but his father

'presented sound reasons against this choice', wrote Speer, 'and

would not have been

had not yielded

logic if I

to his arguments'.

instead, studying at the Insritutes

Munich and

I

mathematician famihar with the laws of

a

He became an architect

of Technology

at

Karlsruhe,

Berlin-Charlottenburg. As a student in Berhn, Speer

heard Hitler speak for the

first time and was captivated by his combination of 'reasonable modesty' and 'hypnotic persuasiveness'.

member of the National Sociahst Party in 193 1 and found himself drawn not so much towards Nazi pohcies

Speer became

by

stages

as Hitler's

tural

a

personality and

power to expedite his ambitious architec-

dreams.

As Minister of Armaments and Munitions Speer saw

his task in

which America entered the war and things went worse on the Russian front, as an innovator charged

1942, the year in

from bad

to

with the task of freeing up inactive and misdirected production, curbing consumer products for the domestic market, bringing

women focus

into industry

and recalling technicians from active duty

on weapons development and production. He declared

to

in his

Speer and Heisenherg

memoir all

that 'pressure

spontaneity'.^^

and coercion'

He wanted

to

in the

Reich supposedly to

initiative. Inevitably this

of the Fuhrerprinzip methods on which the Third

a reversal

from above

regime had 'destroyed

encourage the free-enterprise

dimensions of the economy by rewarding

meant

315

ran.

'There was more than enough criticism

below, but the necessary complement of criticism

to come by.'^'^ With a characteristic flourish, Speer recollected after the war how his production success depended on the enthusiasm of thousands of

from below was hard

technicians

who were

he encouraged exploited the to this task.'

on

in

new sense of responsibility

stimulated by the

the

war

industries.

he wrote,

'Basically,'

'I

phenomenon of the technician's often blind devotion From his post-war vantage point, Speer commented

the dubious ethics of the 'blind' enthusiasm of these technicians.

'Because of what seems to be the moral neutrality of technology, these people

more

were without any

technical the world

dangerous was

scruples about their activities.

this indifference

of the technicians to the direct

consequences of their anonymous

activities.''^

been speaking of Heisenberg. What he ever,

is

the

The

imposed on us by the war, the more

fails

to

He might well

have

acknowledge, how-

murderous exploitation of slave labour

in the

German

economy that had started under Todt, with forced labour from East Europe, expanding to hundreds of thousands during

his

period of

office.

Speer's mild exterior concealed a ruthless drive for

would

in time take over General

power which

Thomas's army economics

office

him into retirement), and bringing the navy within He would never run aircraft production, but he would

(pushing

his

ambit.

get

on

excellent terms with Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Goering's

number two.

Speer Meets Heisenberg

Speer wrote in

his

in Berlin.

At the

autobiography of regular working lunches with

Fromm in a private room in Horcher's restaurant end of April 1942 Fromm remarked that the best

General Friedrich

3i6

Hitler's Scientists

now lay with new He mentioned a group of scientists who were working bomb that had the power to destroy whole cities and could

chance Germany had of winning the \var

weapons.

on

a

even throw Britain out of the war. Speer had already been approached by Dr Albert Vogler, boss of one of the German

steel

who

had

and president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society,

giants

complained of the inadequate funding

for nuclear research

from

the Ministry of Education and Science (which had taken over

from

Army

Ordnance). So Speer suggested that Goering assume

direction of the

Reich Research Council

nuclear research could

in the

hope

that funds for

now expand rapidly. Goering was appointed

to the post in June 1942.

At about

this

time Speer arranged

a

conference

at

Harnack

House, the Berlin headquarters of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society,

meet the nuclear had

scientists:

now assumed

among them,

to

Heisenberg. Heisenberg

principal responsibility for the atomic physics

programme and been promoted to director 'at', as opposed to 'of, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, with effect from October.

He

had

also

been appointed

to a chair at Berlin University. Also

present were high-level representatives of the

of the army, navy and

weapons departments

air force.

Heisenberg spoke on the theme of 'Atom-smashing and the

development of the uranium machine and the cyclotron'. According to Speer, Heisenberg then complained bitterly of a lack of funds

and

materials,

armed

and the drafting of scientists and technicians into the

services, in contrast to the

being made in the United

whereas Germany had been

few years

earlier,

ties

of nuclear

States. at

fission,

'in

effort that

he believed was

Heisenberg told Speer that

the forefront of nuclear research a

the Americans

Heisenberg commented that

huge

were

now

probably well ahead.

view of the revolutionary possibili-

dominance

in this field

was fraught with

enormous consequences'.^^ According

to his

own

version of the meeting, Speer asked

how

nuclear physics could be applied to the manufacture of atom bombs.

His reply, according to Speer, 'was by no means encouraging'.

Heisenberg apparently

said that the scientific solution

had been

Spcer and Heisenberg

found and a

that, theoretically, there

bomb. But

317

was no obstacle

to building such

maximum

the technical prerequisites, assuming always

support for the project, were daunting and would take

at least

two

years to put in place. Field Marshal

how much

Milch asked

be needed to destroy

a city,

nuclear explosive

and Heisenberg

would

replied, according to

on Heisenberg's memory, 'as large as football'. ^^ This has been taken by both

tw^o different accounts, based a pineapple' or 'as big as a

Heisenberg himself and others to mean that he understood the correct critical mass of

U-235 -

as

adding to the debate over the true standing of how to

kilograms rather than tons status

of Heisenberg's under-

make an atomic bomb.

When Speer asked him what he required,

Heisenberg apparently

mentioned the lack of a cyclotron: there was one but for reasons of secrecy advantage. But

—

it

was not possible

in Paris, to use

it

he

said,

to full

when Speer proposed that as Minister of Armaments

he should forthwith order cyclotrons

as

big

as

or even bigger than

the ones available in the United States, Heisenberg objected that

due

to lack

with

of expertise in Germany

a smaller

Heisenberg

model.

to present

By

it

would be

necessary to

start

the end of the meeting Speer asked

him

personally with a

list

of

all

that

he

required in order to push forward nuclear research. Speer recollected the result. After a

few weeks the

scientists applied for several

hundred thousand marks, some small amounts of steel, nickel and and the

They wanted a bunker, some barrack buildings, promise that their experiments would be given highest

priority.

Speer wrote in

other scarce metals.

autobiography that he was 'rather put

his

out by these modest requests in

a

He

or 2 million marks and correspond-

suggested that they take

i

matter of such crucial importance'.

ingly larger quantities of materials, but the offer was rebuffed since it

'could not be utilized for the present'. In a statement that seems

extraordinary in hindsight, and was to lend credibility to the notion that

Heisenberg was deliberately sabotaging

research

programme, Speer

sion that the

reflected:

'I

his

own

nuclear

had been given the impres-

atom bomb could no longer have any bearing on the

course of the war.'^^

3i8

Hitler's Scientists

Atom Bomb

Speer Abandons the

Speer spoke with Hitler about the nuclear research programme on 23 June 1942.

he was

The

'familiar

making

Minister had decided to keep his report brief,

with

tendency to push

Hitler's

But

senseless demands'. ^^

Hitler,

who

fantastic projects

had

a

as

by

tendency to

pick the brains of amateurs and gossips, had already received a garbled account of the nuclear prospects from his photographer,

Heinrich Hoffmann. Hoffmann was friendly with Post Office Min-

Ohnesorge,

ister

interests

who

had been supporting the nuclear research

of Manfred von Ardenne, for

working. Hitler,

as

Speer put

it,

whom

Houtermans was

was under the impression

that the

would turn the earth into a glowing star. In a brief on the theme of an uncontrolled chain reaction, Speer

nuclear scientists reflection

remarked: 'Actually, Professor Heisenberg had not given any fmal

answer

my

to

question whether a successful nuclear fission could

be kept under control with absolute certainty or might continue a

chain reaction. '^°

was

also raised in

The

1942 by Edward Teller,

with two colleagues. atomic

bomb —

from

the atmosphere, and

—

if so,

years.

his

whether

paper on

it

annoyance with the

Italian

his

after

it

the

bomb would ignite

would merely

destroy

New

^^

autobiography that 'on the suggestion of

the nuclear physicists' the atomic

autumn of 1942

a

the military head of the project.

on whether or not

destroy the world'.

Speer claimed in

been told

wrote

Fermi 'when he suddenly offered to take wagers

his fellow scientists

Mexico or

who

On the day before the first test of the American

the Trinity-test

General Groves, would express physicist Enrico

as

question of an uncontrolled chain reaction

bomb

project was scuttled by the

he had again asked them about deadlines and

that they could not

count on anything for three or four

So he authorized the development of an 'energy-producing

uranium motor navy for

its

for propelling machinery'

inspecting Germany's

would be In the

which

interested the

submarines. Later he wrote that Walther Bothe, on first

cyclotron, explained that the machine

useful for medical

and biological research.

summer of 1943, moreover, Speer gave permission for the

Speer and Heisenberg

use of

uranium cores

war he wrote: 'My

for solid-core

319

ammunition. Long

after the

of our uranium stocks of about twelve

release

hundred metric tonnes showed

that

we no

longer had any thought

of producing atom bombs.'

Pondering the

possibility

of a Gemian atom bomb, Speer specu-

lated in his autobiography,

with the hindsight of knowing the

of the Manhattan Project,

that

to

make an atomic bomb

it

might have

just

proved possible

deployment by 1945, but

for

costs

it

would

have absorbed the resources of every other project. Speer was inclined to blame the rocket

programme, 'our biggest but our most

misguided project', and the ideological waywardness of Philipp Lenard, with his repudiation of nuclear physics and relativity theory. In a fmal reflection, however, Speer concluded that even in the

Germany could never have matched

best of circumstances,

'superior productive capacity that allowed the

undertake

this gigantic project'. ^^

United

the

States to

At the earliest, according to Speer,

Germany might have produced an atom bomb by 1947; but even consumption of the latest reserves of chromium ore would have prevented Germany from continuing the war beyond i so, the

January 1946,

Two

at

the very

magazine

that

latest.

war was over Heisenberg wrote

years after the

German

in Nature

physicists

were spared the decision as to whether or not they should aim at producing atomic bombs.

The

1942 guided their

circumstances shaping policy in the

work

now

mo vers. ^^

poured prodigious resources into Wernher

von Braun's rocket programme, weapon, the be

first

Allies

year of

automatically toward the problem of the utiliz-

ation of nuclear energy in prime

But, while Speer

critical

continued to

with an atomic bomb.

as

fret

the best

hope

for a

wonder

about Germany's potential to

320

Hitler's Scientists

Heisenberg's Reactor

On

the very day that Speer was briefing Hitler

on the progress of

nuclear research, 23 June 1942, there was an explosion in

German

Heisenberg's laboratory in Leipzig which covered a technician

with radioactive uranium powder. Hearing of the emergency,

Heisenberg had looked in

he was

called again

tore, shearing

when

briefly before returning to a seminar;

the

through hundreds of bolts.

Leipzig to concentrate

left

Kaiser

two

hemispheres of his reactor

Wilhelm

Institute

on

A week later Heisenberg

his research duties in Berlin at the

of Physics.

Heisenberg's 'uranium machine' experiments aimed a self-sustaining reaction difficulties.

The

but

model

obtaining

at

mainly languished, dogged by technical

difficulties,

exacerbated

now by

air raids,

would

continue through to 1943, holding back further experiments until late

1943. Interviewed after the war, Paul Harteck,

who

was

a

when

he recol-

can you be a leader in such technological matters

when you

genuine experimentalist, expressed

his frustration

lected Heisenberg's direction of the project:

But

how

have never run an experiment in your whole That's no excuse whatsoever! theoreticians of our age

While Heisenberg

new

one of the best

expound

weU, nevertheless both had never been involved

of a

is

and Weizsacker, in addition to being

theoretical physicist and philosopher, could also

venture before.

That's ridiculous!

life?

it is

Heisenberg continued to commute for the

development

almost unbelievable.^'*

first

year of his Berlin

appointment. After heavy raids in the spring of 1943

moved to

a small

mountain cottage

where they would be

at

very good

in a large experimental

How could they think they could lead the

technology? That was poor judgment;

a

his^yiews very

his family

Urfeld in southern Germany,

effectively separated

from Heisenberg

until

after the war.

As

-

his reactor research

thus proceeded in

fits

- and hence and

starts,

his

work on

the Nazi

bomb

Heisenberg was spreading his

energies, interests and concentration ever wider, busily

fulfilling

Speer and Heisenberg

running seminars, lecturing, travelling

his role as a Berlin professor,

to

make

321

guest appearances throughout Nazi-occupied Europe,

directing graduate research and keeping

up with

his

personal

research interests in cosmic radiation and the foundations of quan-

tum mechanics. He was of academics and Society, an

also taking

intellectuals,

elitist

an active part in Berlin

circles

Wednesday and good which

including the famous

Prussian group of the great

harked back to the salad days of the Wilhelmine period.

compare by

interesting to

occupation of

number

his opposite

atomic

in the Allied

project —J. Robert Oppenheimer, who 'only once found time for an overnight excursion'. ^^

Despite his chair

of the Kaiser

at

Institute

of honour and further recognition, both for 'It

was,' writes

when finally given, were so tenuous that no amount

of honour accorded him could ever make up for

this

had not somehow declined once again.

In 1943 he

David Cassidy,

and respect, which he always required, had been withheld

so painfully long and,

his status

bomb

in three years

of Physics, Heisenberg appeared

himself and for theoretical physics.

as if recognition

is

Berlin University, and his acting directorship

Wilhelm

insatiable for tokens

It

contrast the dedicated workaholic pre-

or reassure

won the distinguished Copernicus prize

University of Konigsberg. In

March of that

him

that

^''

of the Reich

year he was asked by

the Nazi daily paper Volkischer Beobachter to write an article to celebrate

Max

Planck's eighty-fifth birthday. In October he was

recommended by Goering Throughout

for the

Service Cross, First Class.

the year Goebbels put Heisenberg

of his propaganda paper Das Reich. part of his

War

life as a

And

physicist to travel in

while

it

on

the front pages

had been

former years,

his

a

normal

journeys

now assumed an aura of promotion and propaganda as he responded to the subtle

and not so subtle pressures of the regime. Whereas he

own

had

travelled

two

years of the war, he

under

his

was

impetus in the

now

late

1930s and the

first

subjected to special 'invitations'

from the Ministry of Education, or from the dean of Berlin University,

Ludwig Bieberbach,

the Nazi mathematician. According to

322

Hitler's Scientists

Cassidy, his

clearly

visits

were 'being used

to bolster faltering

support for the Reich', but Heisenberg appeared to acquiesce readily

whatever the circumstances.

Heisenberg in the Netherlands

Heisenberg made

a

number of trips to occupied Europe between fly the German cultural flag; although his

1942 and 1944, mainly to defence of 'our system', his

wife from

as

he had put

Copenhagen

in

it

in the letter

September of 194 1, could not have

excluded the advantages of National Socialism. These a visit to the

Netherlands in 1943.

been met with

he wrote to

trips

included

The occupation of Holland had

large-scale resistance, strikes

and non-compliance,

followed by brutal suppression and the deportation ofJews. These

measures were in turn met with further resistance, notably students and teachers at the torian

Werner Warmbrunn,

Dutch cited

universities.

by Cassidy,

as

According

many

as

among to his-

one-third

of those executed during the Nazi occupation were students

Nowhere was

resistance

more vehement than

at

,

the University of

Leiden, where students had gone on strike and teachers had resigned in protest against the dismissal

November of

of Jewish members of faculty in

There was some room

1940.

motives of Heisenberg

as

for ambiguity in the

he travelled around Holland

in

October

of 1943, lecturing, meeting physicists and even talking, with the infamous Dr Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Nazi. Cassidy

comments: 'Dutch strengthened by the desired.

had been

interest in scientific collaboration visit

—

precisely the

outcome

the official had

At the same time, the stated possibility of scientific collaborgood argument for the preservation of Dutch labora-

ation was a tories

and research. '^^

After the

war Dutch scientists remembered disturbing encounters

with Heisenberg. Hendrik Casimir told

a

member of the

science intelligence unit that Heisenberg had admitted

Allied

knowing

about the existence of concentration camps and Germany's plunder

of occupied

territories.

Heisenberg had nevertheless expressed

personal opinion that he wanted

Germany

to prevail.

his

According

Speer and Heisenberg

323

to the informant in the intelligence unit,

'Democracy cannot develop

said:

energy to rule Europe. There

sufficient

Germany and Russia. And Europe under German leadership would perhaps be the two

are, therefore, only

then a

Heisenberg had

possibilities:

lesser evil.'^^

Casimir wrote in a

autobiography that he and Heisenberg took

his

walk and talked about Germany

against the onslaught

as

the defender of the

West

of the eastern hordes. Neither France nor

England, Heisenberg said, would have been sufficiently determined or strong to play a leading role in such a struggle. Casimir goes on:

Of course,

objected that the

I

especially their

mad and

many

iniquities

cruel anti-Semitism,

Heisenberg did not attempt to deny, but he said one should expect

a

still

less

of the Nazi regime, and

made

this

unacceptable.

to defend, these things;

change for the better once the war was

over.^^

The the

conversation confirms that Heisenberg thought in terms of

Two-War

Idea: that

Germany was engaged

hordes.

The

home

war was

first

of Soviet to

two

distinct

Western democracies, the second

struggles, the first against the

against Russia, the

in

communism and

the eastern

be regretted; the other was necessary

for the salvation of Western Europe.

While another

in the Netherlands

scientist

berg's physics,

who

and

appeared to be capable of separating Heisen-

of kindness, from

his acts

German politics and

Heisenberg became involved with

nationalism. This was

had worked with Heisenberg

in

his evidently

pro-

Hendrik Kramers,

who

Copenhagen

in the old days.

Kramers, like Casimir, was keen to see Heisenberg in the hope that

he would

German

alleviate

some of the

difficulties

occupation. Heisenberg,

it

of doing science under

seems, helped with counter-

manding an order of the German authorities to send Dutch scientific

Gennany and with easing travel restrictions for scientists and reopening the physics laboratory at Leiden. The friendship, despite Heisenberg's work for the regime during the war, is another equipment

to

ingredient ot the

complex

case of Heisenberg, for

Kramers was

a

Hitler's Scientists

324

man

of integrity and courage.

said that

An

acquaintance of Kramers once

Kramers was one of the handful of genuinely decent

persons that

God had sent down

to earth to

make

the miserable fate

of the Jews more bearable. Kramers and Heisenberg talked physics,

and even discussed working together on physics.

Kramers was able

a

problem

in fundamental

to write later that year to

Heisenberg

'to

you once more how happy your visit has made me, stimulating again old ideals'. But he dechned, in the end, to enter into any tell

form of scientific collaboration, 'the

for 'this

is

not,'

he told Heisenberg,

time for joint publication.'^"

Poland and Hans Frank

While Heisenberg's ities,

another of

trip to

the Netherlands

his trips leaves httle

is

fraught with ambigu-

doubt that Heisenberg had

become morally anaesthetized to the atrocities of the regime to which he had devoted his scientific genius. This was the 'cultural' trip he made to Poland in December of 1943, eight months after the vicious quelhng of the Warsaw uprising.^' The Governor-General of occupied Poland was Hans Frank,

who

had

a

connection with Heisenberg and

his elder brother,

were contemporaneously students at secondary Erwin: all school, the Max-Gymnasium in Munich, and known to each other. three

Heisenberg and Frank were

also in the Pfadfinder, the

German

scout movement, and both became members of the Neupfadfinder, the 'new pathfinders', which celebrated a mix of Teutonic mysti-

cism and outward-bound ated in law and

activities.

Meanwhile Hans Frank gradu-

started a meteoric rise within the

Nazi Party, joining

the storm troopers and acting as legal representative in various hbel suits against

Party

members

in the 1920s.

After the invasion of Poland Hitler planned to turn the country into a

German

colony, destroy

the status of slaves.

Some

its

culture and reduce

150 academics

at

Cracow

sent to concentration camps, where about

Jews, were hquidated.

of the war.

The

a third

its

people to

University were

of them, mostly

university stayed closed until the

end

Speer and Heisenberg

Under

325

Frank's administration the Jews of Warsaw

were driven

into a ghetto in the city. Frank declared to his cabinet in

1941, 'As far as Jews are concerned,

way with

they must be done

time he ordered the

in

I

want

to

you

tell

one way or another.

December

frankly that

At the same

'^^

and transportation of Poles

arrest

as slave

some 800,000 Poles were sent to Germany as slave labourers by August 1942. Meanwhile the transportation ofJews to Treblinka had begun in July. By October some 300,000 had been

labourers:

deported.

A movement began to form among the remaining Jews in Warsaw aimed at resisting the inevitable liquidation of the ghetto. On 19 April 1943, some 3,000 German troops launched an attack on the ghetto, killing 14,000 Jews. The remaining 7,000 were transported to Treblinka. In

December of that

year Heisenberg

made

Poland in

his trip to

order to deliver a lecture and to accept the hospitality of Governor-

General Hans Frank.

How much

What we know from

Frank's atrocities in Poland? Exile, written

death,

memoir,

about Inner

after his

both were aware of the extermination ofJews in

Poland before Heisenberg's

when she comes

her book,

a

by Heisenberg's wife about her husband

that they

is

know

did Heisenberg

visit there.

The

question

is

raised in

to describe her father's indignation that

people should think so badly of Germans to believe that they could

do such

I

can

things:

still

see

my

father standing in front of

venerable and law-abiding outlook,

Heisenberg once showed him at

the institute

'So this

is

a report

what

what you get from cannot do things

My it

father lost

has

come

all

to,

actually vv^ent into

the

first

it is

man with a a rage when

and

self-control

you believe

impossible!'

a

colleague

cynical mass executions started to shout at

things like this! This

listening to foreign broadcasts

like this,

a

he had received from

who had been a witness to

of Jews in Poland. us:

who

He was

me.

all

He was

the time.

not

a

is

Germans

Nazi, he had

prematurely retired from his position following the National Socialist takeover. '•'

326

Hitler's Scientists

Heisenberg was originally invited to lecture

in

Cracow by

Wilhelm Coblitz, director of the Institute for German Work in the East, which had been established by Frank in the spring of 1940. Heisenberg had been keen to come, but he did not obtain permission on

occasion from the authorities. Coblitz again invited

this

May

of 1943, writing in Frank's name, and assuring him that Frank would attend the lecture. Late in September con-

Heisenberg in

firmation

came

again from 'Herr Generaldirektor

ing Heisenberg and his wife to be his guests.

Dr

Frank', invit-

Mrs Heisenberg could

not make the journey, but Heisenberg eventually travelled to

Cracow some time of Hans Frank's stolen

from the

in the first half of December.

castles,

Poles.

He

stayed in one

which had been furnished with artwork

According to Professor Bernstein,

who

has

some Poles tried to gain access to the lecture but were turned away at the door. Only Germans were welcome. An article appeared in the Germanlanguage newspaper Krakauer Zeitung on 18 December stating that the physicist lectured to a large audience on quantum physics. The talked with a Polish survivor of the period,

was 'The Smallest Building Blocks of Matter'. Knowing what had been done in Poland by

title

his

erstwhile

acquaintance Hans Frank, and given the duties that weighed upon

him at the time, Heisenberg's willingness to go Cracow appears to show that he turned a bHnd eye to what had been happening there. As for Frank himself, he was found guilty of crimes againsfrhumanity during the Nuremberg Trials and was hanged on 16 October 1946. Heisenberg made another foreign

January of 1944,

trip in

time to Copenhagen to adjudicate on the question of the Bohr's Institute

this

fate

of

of Physics. Bohr along with most of the Jews of

Denmark had already escaped abroad. Heisenberg was instrumental in returning the institute

Danish

scientists.

with

its

precious cyclotron back to the

The German occupation

authorities

had placed

on the transaction, but it appears that Weizsacker had prevailed upon his father in the Foreign Office to waive them on later 3 February. Heisenberg returned to Copenhagen two months conditions

German Culture Institute and to dine publicly with the vicious local occupation commander SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer

to lecture at the

3^7

Speer and Heisenberg

Dr

Best.

An

official

was: 'Heisenberg

is

Danish verdict on Heisenberg

not a Nazi but

is

after the

war

an intense nationahst with the

characteristic deference to the authorities in control of the nation.

'^"^

24-

On

I

March

Haigerloch and Los Alamos

1943, while Heisenberg and his colleagues had

attending a lecture

bomb

the Air Ministry in Berlin

at

human body,

explosions on the

Eighth Air Force began

a

bomb

repaired to the

the

RAF

massive raid over the shelter,

on the

been

effects

of

and the American

capital.

The audience

v^here they quaked under the

reverberations as the Ministry buildings crashed to the ground

above. After the all-clear Heisenberg emerged to face a ninety-minute

walk out to the suburb of Fichteburg and the home of his parents-in-

where he was lodged while workmg at his institute in Dahlem. Rubble was strewn everywhere; flaming pools of phosphorus lit up

law,

the darkness.

He

was anxious

to get

Wolfgang and Maria, who were

The

his

twin children,

visiting his parents-in-law.

experience of that night stands out in Heisenberg's memories

for the conversation he

who accompanied city,

back to

had with another scientist, Adolf Butenandt,

him.^ As they walked through the devastated

Butenandt kept up

a tale

of woe about the collapse of German

science, the destruction of the laboratories, the dearth of research

students and the scientists killed. Heisenberg

was mainly intent on

tells

us that he himself

saving his shoes from phosphorus

fire,

dousing them in the puddles and scraping off the inflammable

The scene he depicts, from the perspective of the post-war designed to show that a hapless scientist could do little in

material. era,

is

those troubled times except save his shoes, and that was difficult

enough. In the

weeks

that followed the air raid, decisions

were taken

to

move the atom research programme away from the institute in Dahlem to a more remote and safe location in the south. The need to move south became all the more imperative after the RAF carried out a heavy

bombing

raid

on

Leipzig,

which destroyed

Haigerloch and Los

much of Heisenberg's Institute as his home of fifteen years.

Alamos

329

of Physics with

all

his

papers

as

well

Heisenberg's colleague Karl Wirtz began to prepare a reactor

experiment in

a

new basement

Wilhelm

laboratory of the Kaiser

Dahlem, but the conditions were not ideal view of the frequent bombing. Meanwhile the long process of

Institute for Physics in

in

removing the institute Alps, got underway.

Hechingen,

to

was directed

It

town near the Swabian by Walter Gerlach, a Munich a small

known to be patriotic, although unsympathetic

professor of physics,

to the regime. Gerlach

had recently assumed control of the nuclear

physics division of the Research Council of the Reich.

A

high-voltage plant was established in the boiler house of a

brewery of a

part a

new

site

Hechingen, while

in

textile mill.

and

was here

it

institute a

its

many

war at

a

perched on two

is

that the

castle.

The

vast factories

its

the

in

to find a safe location for

remote cliffs

up

set

settled

village called

on

a

Haiger-

above the River Eyach,

inn-keeper of the Swan inn leased to the

storeroom in an underground cave below the

Haigerloch

with

But Gerlach needed

known before

loch. Haigerloch

and workshops were

'uranium burner', and he eventually

reactor, or

he had

offices

contrast

cliffs

between America's bomb

and processing

sites, its cities

effort

in the desert

tens of thousands of personnel, could not have

of

and

been more

extraordinary and indicative of the feebleness of Germany's research project. Haigerloch

had more in

Dracula movie than the but here, over

station,

scientists

site

common

Count of Germany's most advanced power with

a set for a

many months, and with much

difficulty, the

supervised the transportation of their cubes of uranium,

heavy water and graphite.

The

researchers cycled over

distance

often

miles.

from Hechingen every morning,

a

But there were many hours, over the long

period of preparation,

when Heisenberg whiled away

his time,

playing Bach fugues on the organ in the chapel attached to the castle

high above.

One fantastic

of Heisenberg's period of

my

assistants

life.

I

remembers:

'It

was the most

have never so often been obliged to

think of Gounod's Faust and Weber's Freischutz

as

I

was

in that

330

Hitler's Scientists

The

extravagantly romantic setting.'^ reactor,

enterprise of initiating a

however, lagged through shortages of uranium and other

materials.

Heisenberg's Assassin

During the dreamlike Haigerloch period, before Christmas of 1944, w^hile the British

and the

and Americans fought

Red Army

their

way through

approached inexorably from the

berg was targeted for

a bizarre assassination attempt

east,

France,

Heisen-

by the chief of

the Manhattan Project, General Groves, using the services of the

OSS

(Office of Strategic Services, the principal

organization).

Berg to

The idea was to

travel to Zurich,

a physics lecture

posing

with

on

as a physicist

was

arrival.

course of the lecture Heisenberg betrayed

working on an atom bomb. Berg,

to shoot the scientist there

room.^ Paul Scherer,

informed the

assign an agent called Morris ('Moe')

where Heisenberg was scheduled to deliver

8

a pistol. If in the

own life,

intelligence

December in the presence of specialists. Berg, (he knew little physics in fact), would be armed

1

the fact that he was this

US

OSS

who was

a local

of Heisenberg's

He would

also report

conversations: but there

Berg might attempt

is

US

the risk of

and then in the lecture

intelligence contact,

had

and was aware of Berg's

trip

on Heisenberg's movements and

no indication

to kill the physicist.

reported by Scherer to the

at

OSS

that

he understood that

Among the

conversations

was Heisenberg's insistence

that

he had never been privy to an attempt to take over Niels Bohr's physics institute in

Copenhagen, but

by timely intervention.

He

also told

that

he had saved the centre

Scherer that Walter Gerlach,

the director of the nuclear physics division of the Research Council,

had suffered

a

nervous breakdown.

The seminar took strasse at 4.15 in the

people present and the Martinuzzi, another

on Ramimore than twenty cold. Berg sat with Leo

place at the University of Zurich

afternoon. There were no

room was

OSS

intensely

agent, his pistol in his pocket.

Berg describes Heisenberg as looking 'Irish' and as having 'sinister eyes'.

The

lecture

was on S-matrix theory —

a

purely theoretical

Haigerloch and Los

Alamos

331

quantum mechanics with no application for atomic bombs — which Heisenberg deUvered walking up and down before the topic in

When

blackboard, occasionally consulting his typewritten notes.

Heisenberg finished,

ended

at

a lively technical discussion

followed, which

about 6.40 p.m.

After the meeting broke up, Berg talked privately with Scherer.

Scherer told Berg that Heisenberg was working on cosmic

not on an atomic bomb, and that such take the a

Germans two

vague plan

weapons project would

a

Their discussion

to ten years.

to kidnap or 'transplant

rays,

also

included

Heisenberg and family to

the US'."

Later that week, before Heisenberg's departure from Switzerland, Scherer invited a

group of people

including Heisenberg and Berg.

house for dinner,

to his

The dinner party was

the scene of

several conversations about the war, later reported

by some of those

Dutch

Gugelot has

present including the

physicist Piet Gugelot.

recent years corresponded with the author

in

Thomas Powers about

the incident,^ claiming that a 'very severe argument' took place in

which Heisenberg was challenged about Nazi atrocities against Jews in

Holland and France. Heisenberg denied

atrocities,

all

knowledge of such

but offered the defence, alluding to Germany's isolation

World War I, that 'when you lock people up inside four walls and no windows they go crazy'. On being challenged that he was after

a

supporter of Hitler's government, Heisenberg declared that he

was not

a

Nazi but

a

explanation of his position which to

come: the notion of the

Heisenberg

said that Russia

many could be

a

He

German.

then went on to offer an

would remain

Two

consistent in years

Wars. According to Gugelot,

was the

real

problem, and only Ger-

bulwark between Russia and European

ation. This apparently appealed to those present,

Gugelot

left

the party in disgust at this point,

civiliz-

who were

which meant

Swiss.

that

he

missed another significant exchange in which the physicist Gregor

Wentzel

said,

'Now you

which Heisenberg

we had

have to admit that the war

replied: 'Yes, but

it

lost.'

is

would have been

so

To

good

if

won.'*'

The remark would mark him down

as a

Nazi sympathizer in the

332

Hitler's Scientists

eyes of his post-war

critics. Ironically, it

was

also

noted by Berg,

whose superiors took it as an indication that Germany had no atom bomb, because Heisenberg evidently agreed that Germany had indeed

lost the

war.

At the end of the evening Berg, the erstwhile potential

accompanied Heisenberg through the deserted the physicist's hotel.

would remember about

They

that the

his regard for the

son Martin,

did not talk physics; but Heisenberg questions

Nazi regime.

mountains

who was

assassin,

of Zurich to

young man asked searching

Heisenberg left Zurich for in the Bavarian

streets

his family's

temporary

in time to arrive

home at Urfeld

on Christmas Eve. His remembers that last

a child at the time,

Christmas in the isolated 'mountain cabin'. His mother organized Christmas music and

There was very

a little play in

ingredients for biscuits.

children for

which the children took part. had managed to save some

to eat, but she

little

When

his father returned,

snow was

hikes and sometimes the

'little

could not look over

it

he took the so high that

I

walking where one could walk'. In the

evenings, wrote Martin Heisenberg, his father would play the piano

while

his

candles' full

mother

sang.

There was

a 'Christmas tree

of water into

a

The Americans,

as

a

real

bucket

corner of the living room'.^

Meanwhile, the American

plans for

with

and Heisenberg, ever cautious of fire, 'would put

Bomb

we have seen, did not begin to lay down practical

making an atomic bomb

until

August 1942. But

it

was not

of the following year, 1943, that J. Robert Oppenheimer

until July

was appointed director of the Los Alamos laboratory — where hundreds of scientists would

live

and work. Son of non-practising

Jews of New York City, Oppenheimer had Europe.

He

had been

a student

travelled extensively in

of Max Born

in

Gottingen in 1927,

quantum mechanics, Leiden and Zurich, after which he returned

participating in the exciting early period of

followed by periods to the

United

Institute

at

States to teach at

of Technology

Berkeley and

in Pasadena.

He was

at

the California

a brilliant

and

charis-

Ha igerloch

and Los Alamos

333

him the comphnient of imitating his speech mannerisms and even his way of hghting cigarettes. In his book Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship Haakon Chevaher, who was betrayed by Oppenheimer to the American matic teacher; his students paid

secret services as a potential spy,

wrote

of the

a description

scientist

in 1937:

Tall,

nervous and intent ... he

with

a great deal

one

side,

Einstein,

moved with

of swinging with

one shoulder higher than the other and

at

first

terribly

practical stage in the

.

.

.

gait, a

kind of jog,

head always

He

looked

a little to

like a

young

overgrown choirboy. There was

the same time like an

something both subtly wise and

The

an odd

his limbs, his

innocent about his

development of the

face.^

bomb was

the

construction of a small crude reactor in a deserted squash court in

Chicago by Enrico Fermi and physicist Arthur Compton, with Leo Szilard assisting.

It

was known

as

Chicago

Richard Rhodes has pointed out,

Chernobyl

in the midst

that

of a crowded

Pile

i

-

city'.

The

'pile'

bricks of graphite interspersed with sealed cans of

powder and cubes of natural uranium a critical size to

prevent too

were absorbed by uranium

December

many

contraption, as

a

was potentially

The

metal.

'a

small

was made of

uranium oxide

reactor required

neutrons escaping before they

The

nuclei.

1942, demonstrating that

it

pile

went

'critical'

on

2

could sustain the production

of energy and plutonium.

Making Project to

bomb was

a

make

a quite different matter.

the world's

first

thirty different plants across the

research centre at Los

grounds of

a boys'

United

Alamos (know^n

heimer. General Groves

scientists

inititially

scientists apart

A

huge

with the principal

for secrecy as Site

Y)

came

to

New

work under Oppen-

attempted to maintain secrecy

that success

communicating with each

factory, said to

in the

by strict compartmentalization. Oppen-

heimer was convinced, however, researchers freely

States,

school in the deserts near Santa Fe in

Mexico. Here most of the and keep the

The Manhattan

atom bomb involved more than

depended on the

other.

be the longest building in the world

at

Hitler's Scientists

334

was planned at Oak Ridge in Tennessee for separating U-235 from U-238 by means of gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic techniques. A third plant was established at Hanford on the that time,

Columbia

A

separate

Anglo-

Canadian-French plant was established under the British

scientist

J.

river

D. Cockroft

produce

to

at

plutonium.

Chalk River, Ottawa, where heavy water was

produced. All these

mighty constructions and

activities,

workers, were kept secret from the world.

and the German

involving 150,000

The German

secret

had no idea what the Americans atom bomb exploded. As fate would have it, Germany's principal physicists would all be together in one room in England when the news of the first weapon used on a services

were planning

scientists

until the first

Hiroshima, burst on the world on 6 August

civilian population, at

1945-

Ah OS The

Allies

knew

that there

intelligence services

Groves records

were

in his

were considering the

was

a

Nazi

bomb programme,

largely ignorant

memoir

of the

that before the

possibility that the

details.

D-Day

but their

General

landings 'we

Germans would prepare

an impenetrable radioactive defence against our landing- troops'.^

The British, occasionally informed of the fact of the German atomic programme by the Austrian science publisher Paul Rosbaud, were reasonably convinced that the German research was considerably behind the Americans; but the Americans themselves were increasingly anxious in case the

Germans had made more progress than

evinced by available intelligence. In preparation for the invasion of Europe

of Germany,

a special

and the eventual defeat

mission was proposed by the British and

Americans charged with gathering information about

scientific

know-how, personnel and hardware. The head of this mission was the Dutch scientist Samuel Goudsmit, a physicist and multi-linguist, who had emigrated to the United States in 1927 and who knew

Ha igerloch

and Los

A la mos

335

Heisenberg personally. The unit Goudsmit took over was named

meaning

'Alsos',

pun on General

'grove' in Greek, possibly a

Groves's name. Goudsmit,

who knew few

of the

details

of bomb

developments, has commented that he \vas an ideal head of Alsos,

was expendable.

since he

he wrote in

his

Goudsmit's

fell

I

into the hands of the Germans,'

account of the mission, Alsos, 'they could not hope

any major

to get

'If

bomb

secrets off me.'

target in

first

^*^

Europe, following the invasion of

Normandy, was Joliot-Curie's laboratory at the College de France in Paris. By December 1944 the team entered Strasbourg, where Weizsacker had taken over the university physics department. Weizsacker had already

fled,

but Goudsmit's team found

of documents which revealed that the Gemians were the Allies in nuclear

bomb

research.

had not even managed to construct

The Germans, he

a quantity far

behind

discovered,

a successful chain-reacting pile.

Groves's fear now, however, was the prospect of nuclear weapons infomiation, or research scientists, falling into the hands of the

Having discovered

Russians.

Auer company was manufacGermany, in a region that would

that the

turing uranium metal in East inevitably

fall

into the hands of the Russians, he ordered that the

factory be destroyed

by bombing

raids.

Meanwhile Goudsmit had managed in the

Hague, to fmd

testimony of his grief a letter in

to return to his family

home

memoir provides poignant He had not heard from them since receiving it

deserted. His

March 1943 bearing

the address of a Nazi concentration

camp. Climbing into the life,

I

found

cards that I

a

little

room where

I

had spent so many hours of my

few scattered papers, among them

my parents had saved so

carefully

through

stood there in that wreck that had once been

by

that shattering

emotion

friends at the hands

Maybe

I

all

of us have

felt

of the murderous Nazis -

could have saved them."

my

high-school report

all

these years ...

my home

who

have

I

As

was gripped

lost family

a terrible feeling

and

of guilt.

Hitler's Scientists

336 Reflecting,

later,

on the German

ation of the Germans,

Goudsmit wrote: 'That

such precise records of their their that

proper

'I

know

in

files

talent for systematic organiz-

evil deeds,

why

is

which we

they kept

later

found

in

Germany.' That, he went on, was the reason

the precise date

my father and my blind mother were It was my father's seventieth

put to death in the gas chamber. birthday. '^^

By January

1945 the

German atom

physicists

Walter Gerlach,

Kurt Diebner and Karl Wirtz had abandoned the Berlin laboratories,

them quantities of uranium and heavy water. They were bound for southern Germany and Hechingen, close to Heisenberg's taking with

reactor pile at Haigerloch. (Evidently Gerlach did not succeed in

transporting the entire stock of uranium oxide, for, according to historian

Antony Beevor,

the

NKVD, arriving with the Red Army

from the south on 24 April 1945, found Insititute for Physics '250 kgs

uranium oxide; and twenty

at

the Kaiser

Wilhelm

of metallic uranium; three tons of

litres

of heavy water'. Evidently

a prize

that Stalin and Beria had long anticipated.)^^

By March Goudsmit Allied troops.

entered Heidelberg in the

wake of

the

Here he found Bothe, who talked volubly about

civilian applications

of nuclear research, but refused to discuss

German weapons development. By the time the Alsos team reached Hechingen and Haigerloch, Heisenberg had moved op, and so had Weizsacker, although not before hiding the German nuclear group's research documents, which were eventually found in a sealed

drum lowered

In and around

into a cesspool.

Hechingen the Alsos team took into custody Laue

and Otto Hahn. They were not connected with nuclear research, but Goudsmit believed they would be crucial to the reconstruction

of German science in the post-war

era.

The team

Wirtz, Bagge and Horst Korsching in the same

was picked up

in

Munich

was captured the day

at

the beginning of

also

rounded up

district.

Gerlach

May, and Diebner

after.

Meanwhile Heisenberg had fled to his home in Urfeld, travelling by bicycle through a devastated Germany, a distance of 100 miles from Hechingen. He was picked up by Alsos on May 3 and taken.

Ha igerloch like

in

many of the

Rheims.

Heisenberg

other

When

researches if they as pathetic.

scientists, to

I

Allied

shall

337

European headquarters

Goudsmit spoke with him American colleagues wish

said: 'If

uranium problem

and Los Ala m os

for the to learn

be glad to show them the

first

time,

about the

results

of our

come to my laboratory.'''* Which struck Goudsmit

PART SIX Science in Hell 1942— 1945

Labour

25- Slave

Dora

at

The outbreak of war in September 1939 had

exacerbated a shortage

of labour on the land and in industry in Germany, especially in mining, which suffered

A

remedy ready

to

of 30,000 workers on the Ruhr. hand was the employment of foreign labour — a shortfall

an inevitable consequence of war and occupation. Polish workers drafted

on

to the land

(saviours in time

were

of need).

at first

By

described

as Retter in der

munitions industries, including the rocket plant

By

the spring of 1941

Not

1940 they were being deployed in

some 600

at

Polish workers

Peenemiinde.

were joined by

1,000 contract Italians and about 100 French workers. In these early years of highly secret

development the numbers of foreigners were

limited for reasons of security. In the years 1942 to 1943, as the

up

for production,

both

at

A4

rocket project was geared

Peenemiinde and

assembly annexes - the Zeppehn plant

at

at

the project's

new

Friedrichshafen and the

Rax-Werke plant in Austria - the need for unskilled labour became acute. The key figure was Arthur Rudolph, Peenemiinde's chief

who was

engineer,

war made

originally preparing to use Russian prisoners

available in increasing

numbers

swallowed up drafted German troops prisoners

were mostly

left to

as

of

the Eastern front

the early days Russian

(in

die of starvation

and

disease). In April

of 1943, however, the rocket chiefs were offered another solution in the forni

of SS concentration camp prisoners.

In the early days, while the

camps were

principally a

means of

incarcerating those suspected of real or alleged opposition to the

regime, the SS had attempted to profit from camp-based enterprises.

By

1942, however, the primary purpose of the

Poland was the extermination ofJews. That deadly coincided with a decision by enterprise

Himmler to begin

whereby the SS provided camp

a

camps

shift in

in

purpose

new form of slave

prisoners to private and

Hitler's Scientists

342

govemnient

industries at an 'economic' rate.

and Administrative Main Office day for unskilled labourers and

typically

six

The SS Economic

charged four marks per

marks per day for

skilled ones.

The SS provided accommodation, minimum sustenance and security.

Such was the overcrowding, the harshness of the conditions,

especially in winter, the star\'ation rations, the lack of hygiene, the

and the workload,

brutality'

quence of the

Arthur Rudolph preceded

Heinkel

was an inevitable conse-

that death

slave labour regime.

factor}^ in

his deal

with the SS by

a visit to

the

Oranienburg, north of BerUn, in April 1943.

There he found 4,000

slave labourers

— mainly

Russians, Poles and

m cramped conditions and kept imprisoned behind

French - livmg

and barbed wire. Rudolph wrote

electric fences

a

memorandum

noting the advantage of exploiting prisoners especially in view of the 'greater protection for secrecy'.^

is

The historian Michael Neufeld points out that the memorandum (a circumstance weU

indicative of the chief engineer's advocacy

known

to

Dornberger and von Braun),

slave labour

as

well

as

management, of

'months before the creation of the infamous Mit-

telwerke underground

facility' in

the Harz mountains (in other

accounts, includmg that of von Braun, the blame for slave labour in rocket production

On

June

II

was put exclusively on Himmler).^

1943 Hitler raised the priority' ot the rocket pro-

gramme 'above all other armaments production', and Dornberger was made a Brigadier-General the next day. Rudolph now asked for 1,400 concentration camp prisoners for Peenemiinde. The first arrivals came two weeks later from Buchenwald near Weimar together with sixt\^ SS guards. By one account (that ot Willy Steimel, a criminal convict

employed

as a

prisoner administrator at

Buchenwald) the regime involved an eleven-hour day with one day free disease

a

week. Within four months three prisoners had died of

and two of injuries.

One was

shot escaping and four others

died desperate deaths by drinking rocket

As

if to seal

the importance of the vengeance weapon. Hitler

now

invited Dornberger and

Lair

on

7 July.

fuel.

Once

von Braun

again Hitler was

to visit

him

shown

film of the

at

the Wolf's

A4

in

Slave Labour at Dora

featuring the successful

flight,

343

October launch

3

in the previous

year. According to Dornberger, Hitler declared that the rocket

should carry

a

lo-ton warhead and that 2,000 missiles should be

manufactured every month.

When Dornberger explained that such

figures were not possible,

a 'strange, fanatical light flared

Hitler's eyes.

into

Dornberger feared

one of his mad

rages.' It

effect!'^

was

what

crazed incantation: 'But

that Hitler

I

at this

want

was going

up

in

to break out

point that Hitler uttered his

is

annihilation

-

annihilating

Before the end of the meeting Hitler awarded von Braun

a state professorship

and signed the necessary documentation on

the spot.

At

this

meeting Hitler had

employed on the project as a 'basic principle'

carried out

by

for reasons

By

immediately disobeyed.

insisted that foreigners

early

of security. But

all

Peenemiinde was

that

to have 2,500 detainees

would have

plants

week in August, however,

1,500

the carefully

of some eight years were disrupted by an unexpected

laid plans

visitation

third

order was

the assembly plants should be

from concentration camps, the other

between them. By the

his

August Dornberger ordered

production in

prisoners.

should not be

from the

skies.

The Peenemiinde Bombing Raid

Through the course of 1943

British intelligence

had been gathering

information and taking high-altitude photographs of Peenemiinde

and other

secret

these missions

weapons

were an important

factor in an Allied operation

the

bombing known as summer of 1943 security had been

Peenemiinde;

district

and SS guards were maintaining

was not heavy

flak batteries

The raid on Peenemiinde on

entirely unexpected.

RAF

million kilograms of explosives

The

raid destroyed

strict

every

vigilance at the

in the

across the night sky,

on

at

the night of 17-18 August

At one o'clock

bombers droned

tightened

were strengthened around the

level at

perimeters.

of

'Crossbow'.

sabotage and aerial

By

gathered on

The photographs

plants.

the plant's

most of the

morning 600 dropping

1.5

facilities.

residential areas

of the East

Hitler's Scientists

344

Peenemiinde site for the A4 development, including the settlements housed engineers, and barracks where some 3,000 foreign workers were living behind wire. Walter Thiel, the chief engine that

was

designer,

killed along

with

The Development Works as

well

as

his family in their air raid shelter.

buildings

administrative offices:

were extensively damaged

von Braun was seen scrambling

around in the ruins trying to recover plans and documents.

There had been about 12,000 workers resident at

the time.

More

Peenemiinde

at

than 700 were killed, 500 of them foreign.

where the rockets were assembled were

factory buildings

undamaged. The destruction looked much worse than the and most of the damaged buildings were camouflage, which discouraged the

of the

raids. Historians

raid,

some 740

however, was

both German and

Wasserfall lost

blow and the

significant

momentum

as

ruins as a kind of

British, claim that

two months, which meant

rockets were not launched. a

reality

RAF from carrying out further

the rocket effort was set back by about that

left in

The

largely

The death of

Thiel,

anti-aircraft

missile

well the development of a two-stage

rocket that might have reached deep into the British

Isles.

Martin

Middlebrook, whose book The Peenemiinde Raid exhaustively chronicles the incident, adds to these consequences the profound effect

on German morale.

There were many individual

young woman with a fur coat over her nightdress who had run away from Peenemiinde screaming that she wanted to go home, to the Luftwaffe general for whom the raid on Peenemiinde 'was the one burden too many and

tales

who committed

of shock, from

suicide'.'^

Peenemiinde had been found: the 'sleeping beauty', called

it,

decision.

tTie

as

some had

had been awoken and the incident prompted

Himmler moved

of the rocket programme

a fateful

swiftly to involve himself in the future

now

A week

that

its

removal and

dispersal

had

Himmler

arrived at the

Wolf's Lair and persuaded the Fiihrer to give the SS

a share in the

become

inevitable.

after the raid

management of A4 production and

the brief to

move

the factory

camp prisoners. Testing Poland. The Reichsfiihrer-SS had

underground and

draft in concentration

would be moved

to a site in

Slave Labour at Dora

345

apparently persuaded Hider that the raid had been the result of espionage: secreting the production plant underground

ensure greater security

as

well

as

would

protection from further bombing.

new

would be in the hands of SS-Brigadefiihrer (Brigadier-General) Hans Kammler, an individual of remarkable ruthlessness. Himmler was determined to have a role in the complex jostle for power that surrounded the A4

The

construction of the

project.

for

And

yet, in the light

producing

of

facilities

expanding reputation

his rapidly

miracles, Albert Speer

still

remained ultimately in

charge.

By

26 August, just

week

a

after

Himmler's

talks

site for the underground factory had been chosen:

used

as

storage for oil and chemical

mountain near the

would be known the decision there large

enough

for

city

as

prisoners

in the

Kohnstein

of Nordhausen in the Harz mountains:

were two

it

two

sets

tunnels, about a mile in length, each

of parallel

were rushed

rail tracks,

On

one of which ran

28 August concentration

to the site to begin

penetration of the second tunnel through the length tain

of tunnels

Mittelwerke (Central Works). At the time of

through the length of the mountain.

camp

weapons

with Hitler, the

a series

work on the of the moun-

and twenty cross-tunnels between the two.

Meanwhile research and development

sites

were being

and throughout Ger-

persed around the Peenemiinde

district itself,

many

in the Bavarian Alps,

as

far afield as

Kochel

dis-

where the

wind tunnels were to be reassembled. Despite the difficulties of communication between the separated entities, development on the A4 was resumed within two months; but the involvement of slave labour

expanded

to an

treatment of concentration

unprecedented level and the brutal

camp workers had few

parallels.

Four

thousand male prisoners were drafted into the Mittelwerke tunnels within six weeks, mostly Russian, Polish and French, but no Jews (they would be drafted in the summer of 1944). The would rise to 8,000 in November. Kammler told his staff: 'Pay no attention to the human cost. The work must go ahead, and in the shortest possible time.' The SS accordingly created a living at this stage

figure

hell.

Hitler's Scientists

346

A

French resistance

Mittelwerke

he experienced

as

The Kapos and SS blows

Jean Michel, wrote an account of

leader,

down on us,

drive us

on

in

mid-October 1943:

an infernal speed, shouting and raining

at

threatening us with execution; the demons!

for fifteen hours. Arriving at the dormitory

Drunk with

exhaustion,

noise

The demented rhythm

bores into the brain and shears the nerves.

reach the bunks.

The

.

.

.

we

we do

lasts

not even try to

collapse onto the rocks,

onto the ground. Behind, the Kapos press us on. Those behind trample over their comrades. Soon, over

a

of their existence and racked with

thousand despairing men, thirst, lie

at

the limit

there hoping for sleep

which

never comes; for the shouts of the guards, the noise of the machines, the explosions and the ringing of the [locomotive] bell reach

them even

there.

The work went on day and night and the tunnels were frequently racked with explosions

as

the rock was dynamited to extend the

tunnels, filling the atmosphere with

washing

facilities

They have

collapse.

no longer have the them.'^ In the

Hygiene and

dust.

first

dysentery.

strength to

sit

They

drums

oil

'Some deportees

half to create latrines. Michel writes:

and

choking

were non-existent and the men cut

are too

foul their trousers.

over the

in

weak They

even to get to

barrels,

seven months of the operation 6,oo€ prisoners

died (including those transported back to the death camps). In

December of

1943 Albert Speer toured the Mittelwerke and

subsequently wrote to 'that far

Kammler

praising

him

for an

exceeds anything ever done in Europe and

even by American

improvements

standards'.^ After the

to the barracks,

known

as

achievement

is

unsurpassed

war he took

credit for

Dora, that were being

erected for the prisoners outside the tunnels. As in other instances, his self-serving

post-war remarks are

unreliable.**

Speer clearly bore responsibility for the horrors of Mittelwerke,

which he shared with Himmler and Kammler. There is evidence that Dornberger and von Braun had also advocated the use of slave labour

as part

was soon

to

of a productivity calculation.^

have

a

Von

Braun, however,

curious brush with the SS that

would

distance

Slaue Labour at Dora

him from Himmler and

347

the SS in decades to come, providing

him

with an aHbi of sorts against accusations that he was imphcated

in

slave labour exploitation.

In February of 1944, according to a manuscript article written

by him

after the

war, von Braun received a phone

Himmler's headquarters scared when he was

He

in East Prussia.

call to

report to

recollected that he

felt

shown into the Reichsfiihrer's office. Himmler,

who reminded von Braun of a schoolteacher rather than a monster steeped in blood, greeted the to

von Braun, Himmler now

us?' It

was

young rocketeer said,

'Why

politely.

a plain invitation to leave the service ot the

Von Braun

dedicate his services to the SS.

to

be the end of the

to

army and

replied that in General

Dornberger he had the best boss he could wish

seemed

According

come over

don't you

to have.

That

affair.

The following month, however, von Braun and his close associKlaus Riedel and Helmut Grottrup were arrested and charged

ates

with having stated that the main task of their research was to a spaceship'.

They had

commenting

that the

A4 was

also

been overheard,

'create

their accusers alleged,

war was turning out badly and

that the

an 'instrument of murder'. In addition, and more seriously,

they were guilty,

it

was

said,

of being associated with communist

cells.

Only by

the energetic services of Dornberger and,

direct intervention

released after later.

for

it

appears, the

of Speer with Hitler was von Braun eventually

two weeks. The

others

Even though von Braun appears

were

set free a short

while

have been in some danger,

to

he might well have been executed had the charges stuck,

arrest

turned out to be

a stroke

of fortune for

as

head of space research

It

bolstered his image as a scientist

non-political stance and

persecuted by the SS.

had perpetrated the

in the

United

who was

The

who

his

his

subsequent career

States in the

post-war

era.

had doggedly maintained

a

even credited with having been

truth of the matter

was

that

allegations in order to take over the

Himmler

A4 project.

26.

The

'Science' of Extermination

and

Human Experiment

The

spread of the ideology and practice of pseudo-scientific

hygiene' in

Germany

in the 1920s anticipated, as

we

'racial

have seen, the

gradual promotion and acceptance of forced sterilizations, culminating in the policy of forced 'euthanasia', after the

outbreak of war.

It

was

a

which began

in earnest

short step, thereafter, to the

extermination of Jews and others killed on the grounds of race hatred.

Candidates for

sterilization,

according to the special act of June

1933, included a catalogue of congenital mental and physical con-

and alcoholism.

ditions, as well as hereditary blindness, deafness

The poor state of psychiatry and mental hospitals in the aftermath of World War I led to attention being given to patients worth treating,

minimum

provision for the rest and general sterilization

of those discharged beyond the walls of their asylums.

Nazi groups were routinely taken to mental

institutions to

view

the pointless predicament of the inmates; schoolchildren were

exposed indirectly to 'euthanasia' by being

set

questions in the

classroom about the cost of maintaining useless existences. In the

propaganda of the times the prospect of national

war of national to

make huge

that

survival,

when

sacrifices,

crisis,

such

the normal were being called

would

justify the elimination

were 'not merely absolutely

valueless,

of

as a

upon lives

but negatively valued

existences'.'

Meanwhile

the reformists had by their very initiatives

- advocat-

ing occupational therapy and research into 'abnormality' in the

wider community - encouraged,

in the

words of Michael Burleigh,

not 'questions concerning the socio-economic environment', but 'the control function tive data banks'.^

of registering widespread deviance

The widespread

in primi-

practice of occupational therapy

Tlte 'Science' of Extermination

had actually contributed sub-class within a

and

to the 'creation

Human

Experiment

349

of a psychiatrically defined

group of people already consigned

to the margins

of society'.

The scope of

sterilization,

organized and administered by the

medical profession, widened with the passing years, taking in convicts, prostitutes

and even children considered uncooperative in

orphanages. In time, even social problems hke poverty were

From

attributed to heredity.

1941 the policy was extended to Sinti,

Gypsies and Jews. Complications and

procedures were widespread. Between 1934 and 1944 that

between 300,000 and 400,000 people were

in the Greater

of the

fatalities as a result it is

estimated

forcibly sterilized

Reich.

Next came

the legalized killing of children with mental and

physical deformities.

The

process began in late 1938,

ordered Karl Brandt, one of

when

Hitler

his personal physicians, to travel to

Leipzig to look into a request on the part of parents for the 'mercy killing'

of their

child.

Brandt was thereafter authorized to

initiate a

programme involving the murder of handicapped children in hospitals by means of lethal injection. The initiative was a prelude to the expansion of 'euthanasia' to include large

numbers of

with mental

a Fiihrer

illnesses,

given the force of law by

October 1939. The decree was backdated

to

i

adults

decree in

September,

as if to

coincide with the outbreak of war, lending the weight of national crisis

to the measure. Hitler's eventual decree allowing the process

of 'euthanasia' would charge Phihpp Bouhler and Karl Brandt 'with responsibility for increasing the authority of physicians, to be

designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable

according to the best available health, can

be granted

a

was estabhshed, known

mercy

as

human judgment of their death'.

A

state

of

bureaucracy of murder

the Euthanasia Office, or Aktion T4,

as

we shall describe later, whereby patients were assessed by participating doctors and transported to centres for gassing.

became a precursor pace from 1942.

for the Final Solution

The

process

ofJews, which gathered

Typical of the synergy between the Euthanasia Office and 'aca-

demic' science were the

activities

of the Kaiser Wilhelm

Institute

Hitler's Scientists

350 for Brain

Research

at

Berlin-Buch, which had enjoyed large grants

from the Rockefeller Foundation. After the T4 operation got under

way

in 1939 Professor Julius Hallervorden at this centre

opportunity to increase the

institute's

of brain material. His main access killing facility in

Gorden

to

specimens was

the appearance of a bath-house,

with poison

gas.

were gathered into

Hallervorden was present

where they were at

and had the brains removed speedily and laboratory

at

a

killed

some of the murders

specially treated in a

Wilhelm renamed institute - Max

the hospital before being taken to the Kaiser

specimens remained in the

Institute (these

Planck - until

The T4

a euthanasia

Brandenburg. The victims, mainly from the

Hospital, a local mental institution,

room with

saw an

neuropathological collection

as late as 1990).

project, so

named

after the address

of its headquarters

at

4, 'Reich Work Group of Sanatoriums and Nursing Homes' in Berlin, involved special killing facilities spread throughout Germany. The facilities were supervised by qualified physicians who selected the victims for elimination in gas chambers made to

Tiergarten

look

like

shower rooms, anticipating the exterminations

death camps.

not worth as

The

living',

in the

prelude to mass killing of Jews, and other

was the

'i4fi3'

'lives

programme (otherwise known after the label on the

Operation Invalid, or 'prisoner euthanasia'),

file

which recorded the bureaucratic arrangements

prisoners in concentration camps. According to

the 'i4fi3' initiative constituted the other institutional,

whereby

two

bridges,

to kill 'excess'

Robert J.

Lifton,

one ideological and

early concepts

of

'racial

hygiene'

led via the medicalization of killing to the Final Solution. Nazi

physicians thus supervised the

murder of millions of victims of the

death camps, selecting on the ramps those

and those

who

should be spared for

smooth operation of the finally,

embodied the depraved Nazi

form of heUish

On

gas chambers.

who should be murdered

work and overseeing the The medical doctor thus,

vision of mass

murder

as a

racial therapy.

20 January 1942,

Grossen Wannsee,

a villa

outside Berlin.'* There

a

meeting took place

at

number

58

overlooking the Grosse Wannsee,

were

fifteen

high-ranking

officials

am

a lake

present

Jlie 'Science' of Extermination atid

and Reinhard Heydrich took the to cooperate in the a draft

chair.

Human

Experiment

Heydrich asked

351

all

present

implementation of 'the solution'. Reading from

prepared by Eichmann, Heydrich ordered that Jews should

be brought under appropriate direction

in a suitable

manner

to the

by sex, the Jews that could work would be pressed into service; it was expected that large numbers 'will fall away through natural reduction'. According to the statistics prepared by Adolf Eichmann 11 million Jews would die. The deportations began in March 1942 and would continue until 1944. East for forced labour. Separated

Death camps were designed and

remote

areas

of former

Poland - Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno and Majdanek. Transportation would become

a priority,

staffed in

Sobibor,

involving a complex bureaucracy of timetables, rented railway cars,

shunting arrangements and provision of guards. Eichmann's

were despatched

representatives

for these purposes to France, Bel-

gium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria,

Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Technology of Extermination and Disposal

come to light showing how 'normal' cremation of human bodies was trans-

In recent years information has

technology employed in the

fonned from 1942 onwards and

raised to

unprecedented

levels

of

'productivity' as a result of the pressures for mass killing in the

Final Solution.

The scope and

incineration,

is

it

ingenuity and for individual

skill,

clear,

efficiency of the engineering of

gave impetus to the policy. Technical

careful planning

and corporate

and organization and the drive

financial

reward combined to make

the killing rates possible. Earlier histories

archives in

Germany, Poland and

added sources result

of the crematoria

of the

in

fall

Moscow, made

Israel.

Auschwitz were based on

To

this material has

been

available in the early 1990s as a

of the Berhn Wall. The historians Jean-Claude

Pressac and Robert-Jan

knowledge together essay,

at

Van

Pelt

brought their expertise and

in 1994 with the publication

'The Machinery of Mass Murder

at

of a remarkable

Auschwitz', making

Hitler's Scientists

352

the chronicle of crematorium creation in Auschwitz-Birkenau an

examplar for the

grisly technological 'progress'

throughout the

Third Reich. State-of-the-art technology of

1930s in

Germany involved

a

human cremation by

the early

burner, a complex economizer that

recycled heat from the combustion gases and the 'crucible'

—

the

core of the furnace which took in the cofFm. The problem with this

model was the expense and

much as two-thirds of the entire furnace. designed a new system of cremation technology

economizer took up

German

engineers

since the circuits of the

size,

as

by employing compressed cold

air,

dramatically reducing fuel con-

sumption and speeding up the incineration process. The design was patented in 1928. In 1935 the compressed air innovation was further developed by Kurt

Topf and Sons In

May

Priifer,

an engineer

at

the noted furnace makers

at Erfurt.

of 1937 the SS invited tenders for

Dachau concentration camp,

since the

a

crematorium

at

numbers of deaths were

outstripping the capacity of local crematoria, where, in any case,

the presence of camp corpses was inviting

unwelcome

publicity.

A

bid for the SS tender came in from the firm of Walter Miiller of Allach.

It

employed

a cold air

was cased

crucible and

in

compressor, but

neo-Grecian

style

it

had only one

marble: the SS decided

not to go ahead. In 1939, with the

growing need

central budgetary office in

time Priifer

at

for

camp

crematoria, the SS

BerHn invited tenders once more. This

Topf and Sons proposed

a robust, oil-fired,

mobile,

model with a double crucible, again using the compressed air technology. The 'yield' was two bodies an hour, instead ofjust one, and at today's exchange the price was ^^23,000, instead of Miiller's /;25,ooo for a single crucible model. The SS ordered one

utiHtarian

of Priifer's designs for Dachau and another for Buchenwald, which

was

close to the furnace factory at Erfurt. Early the following year

two models, one for Auschwitz, at the site of a former army barracks where 10,000 Polish prisoners were to be 'quarantined', and another for the concentration camp at

the SS ordered a further

Flossenburg.

Tlie 'Science' of Extermination

The

vicinity

of Auschwitz,

a

and

Human

Experiment

353

town of some 12,000 inhabitants, as a model colony

had originally been selected by the Reich of eastern expansion,

a

settlement exhibiting fanciful medieval

architecture and ideal recreational facilities for dancing, music and a

range of

would

live

expression with bucolic resonances. Workers

artistic

within an enclosed fantasy reminiscent of the Victorian

The scheme, emanating from the would within months degenerate into a

Arts and Crafts communities.

Blood and

Soil fantasies,

living hell of barbed

and electronic wire,

starvation, disease, torture

Among

under the guise of medical experiment and genocide. 'design' features

more than 150 Priifer

of the camp were

inmates,

many of thein

was delighted with the

suffering

orders, as

the

be shared by

single latrines to

from dysentery.

he was personally receiv-

ing a 2 per cent commission on the profit of each item: but he was also

aware that Kori,

a rival

company with

links to the SS,

had

designed a similar cheap and mobile crematorium fired by coke a

when

time

oil

at

was rationed. Stimulated by the competition,

Priifer redesigned the

new Auschwitz crematorium

coke and enhanced

efficiency

its

by equipping

it

to fire

with an

on

electric

forced-draught fan capable of removing 4,000 cubic metres of

smoke an hour and an crucible.

He

electric

blower

to force cold air into the

estimated that the machine could incinerate thirty to

thirty-six bodies in ten hours, or seventy bodies for a

He

cycle.

twenty-hour

could also report that the machine would require only It came to be known as Auschwitz's worked flawlessly. In consequence Priifer was

three hours' maintenance a day.

crematorium

now

I

and

it

commissioned

to construct a similar

Mauthausen camp, which up

On

to this point

crematorium

had been

a

Kori

for the client.

March 1941, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler visited Auschwitz and made an on-the-spot decision to expand the camp I

so as to house 30,000 prisoners immediately

camp

at

and to create

a further

Birkenau for 100,000 prisoners of war. From these

'resources'

human

he would provide an IG Farben-owned plant with

10,000 forced labourers for constructing

facilities for

production of

synthetic fuel and rubber. Karl Bischoff, a former warrant officer in the Luftwaffe,

once charged with preparing

airfields in

France,

Hitler's Scientists

354

was

to

head the building work

at

Auschwitz. Bischoff calculated

the need for unusual crematorium capacity and called for Priifer.

Together they designed a crematorium which boasted five furnaces, with three crucibles to each furnace; that

fifteen crucibles in

is,

all,

capable of despatching sixty bodies an hour, or 1,440 bodies every

twenty-four hours. Later in 1941

a confident Priifer assured the

that a four-crucible furnace configuration

would

indicating, in a configuration of five furnaces,

SS

be possible —

also

twenty corpses burn-

ing simultaneously and thus incinerating i ,920 bodies every twentyfour hours. In the acid,

meantime the

was used, not on

pesticide lice

Zyklon B,

or insects, for

prussic or hydrocyanic

which

it

was intended,

but to murder 250 'incurable' camp inmates and 600 prisoners of war.

The

months there were

still

large

alive after

the at

two

in

Wannsee conference,

to site a

at

But

victims,

in these early

Auschwitz because

consequence of contaminated

A decision was taken made by May

1942, four

months

after

new fifteen-crucible crematorium

Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The paperwork gear,

proliferated, as the Final Solution

and Auschwitz-Birkenau was chosen

pal centre for genocide.

in subsequent years

The

from two

as

into top

in June 1942 as a princi-

crematoria,

shower rooms, increased

to three, then four, then five facilities.

orders for a fourth and a fifth crematorium

today's exchange rate ^230,000.

Topf and

went

The number of commissioned

with adjoining gas chambers disguised

to

days.^

numbers of deaths

of an outbreak of typhoid fever water.

some

use of the poison was not entirely efficient;

by one account, were

were worth

at

But the correspondence between

the SS indicate that the client picked over

bills

and had

be sent constant reminders for bad debts.

The surviving documentation and the torrent of engineers' prints, strains

moreover,

on

tell

'capacity',

a story as

blue-

of technical struggles against time and

well

as

bitter squabbles

over materials,

design features and standards, delays in delivery, costings and profit

margins. There

is

an impression of constant

arguments over cracked chimney

crises

and furious

stacks, inefficient ventilation,

and

Tfie 'Science' of Extermination

blower systems,

insulation and

Human

Experiment

demand

the ever-growing

as

355 for

incineration constantly outstripped the engineers' ability to deliver. expertise:

no

were involved

in

As the capacity increased, so did the engineering

sub-contractors

components and

less

than eleven

the

specialized construction for crematoria

supply

of

IV and

III,

V, with large numbers of furnace and ventilation engineers working

on

site.

Civilian sub-contractors

fireproofmg,

drainage,

were

waterproofing,

roofing,

prussic acid detectors. In the case

involved in problems of

also

of crematorium

elevators

III,

and

the SS asked

for a feasibility study inquiring whether a furnace could be used to

heat 100 showers.

The

final gassings

and incineration of the estimated million

victims

murdered

acre of

Hungarian Jews

crematoria

II, III

at

Auschwitz-Birkenau alone involved the mass-

months of May and June 1944 in and V. According to the records crematorium V in the

was quickly overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers and the corpses

were burned

Zyklon B ran short into the pit

at

in pits

dug outside the

When

summer, victims were thrown

the end of the

and burned

gas chambers.

alive.

While destruction of Hungary's Jews went ahead, Topf was settling

its

accounts with the SS, leaving

correspondence over minor items, such cylinder and a 'loan' of a few

litres

a

as

of engine

long and querulous

the use of an

oxygen

oil.

October 1944, with the Red Army approaching, crematorium IV was set on fire by its Sonderkommando operators; the building In

was torn down

after the insurrection

had been violently suppressed

by the SS. By the end of November Himmler had ordered an end to the gassings

and crematoria

II

and

were dismantled. The camp

III

was evacuated on 18 January and two days remaining hard structures. Crematorium o'clock

on

the

later the

V

SS blew up the

was dynamited

at

one

morning on 22 January and the Red Army turned to find nothing but snow-covered rubble.

up the following day Priifer

on

8

was arrested by the Americans

May

1945. His boss,

end of the month.

after the

Gemian

Ludwig Topf, committed

Priifer

was soon

surrender

suicide at the

released, but before

he

left

Hitler's Scientists

356

managed

captivity he

the

American

that

to secure a contract for a furnace

He

military.

was never heard of again; but

he was rearrested by the Soviets and ended

it is

from likely

his days in the

Gulag.

Human J.

B.

Experiments

Haldane, distinguished physiologist and geneticist, one of

S.

Britain's

enthusiastic poison gas pioneers, related in an inter-

most

view with

a journalist

how, when he was

Oxford physiologist John Scott Haldane) shaft to test the state

of the

shut

him

coffm that

in an air-tight

purpose was to ascertain the

of

effect

on

only

left

the

At age twelve, he was put by

gasses.

diving suit and

of a freezing

drowned.

'It

let

lake,

down

to a

where he was kept

told his interviewer, 'by the time

neck and most

him down head

his

free: the

boy of certain mixtures feet

beneath the surface

for half an

hour and almost

a pleasant experience,' I

a coal

his father into a leaking

depth of 40

was not altogether

sent

On another occasion his father

mine

air.

nine, his father (the

was pulled up

I

Haldane

was wet

to the

bitterly cold.'^

The case of Haldane father and son

is

experiments in the Nazi death camps, but

a

long way from the

it

seems important to

observe from the outset that the temptation to experiment on

human subjects (in this case, even one's own precious son) has been shown to be extremely strong and widespread in medical science. Nazi science, as we shall see in the latter part of this book, was by no means unique in practising experiments on human subjects. The impetus

is

ever-present: the importance

is

where the

lines are

drawn and whether the prevailing norms of law, regulating such experimentation, are in force.

Medical research beings

as

guinea

pigs.

in self-experiments

do not repudiate the use of human Without tests on human subjects, whether

scientists

conducted by researchers or

clinical trials

of

untested drugs on volunteers (often medical colleagues or cour-

ageous and penniless medical students), there would have been no progress in medicine. CertainlyJ. B.

S.

Haldane,

as

an adult, became

The

'Science'

of Extermination and

Human

one of the most famous self-experimenters medicine. But science and

a social

conditions for any form of human as a result

357

in the history

of British

scientists, as this

emphasized, do not operate in

drawn up

Experiment

tests

book

has repeatedly-

and moral vacuum. The key or experiments, in guidelines

of the post-war Nuremberg doctors'

are

trials,

appropriate consent (one's under-age son hardly seems a suitable candidate, even if he did give his consent), absence of influence,

humane

undue

conditions, avoidance of unnecessary pain and

authentically scientific aims.

Nazi

who

scientists

their potential as

exploited concentration

human

disregard for ethical

camp inmates

for

guinea pigs were guilty not only of blatant

norms of medical experiments on humans, but

were invariably involved in inflicting sadistic injury with no possible scientific

purpose in view. These

activities,

beginning in 1939 and

continuing to the war's end in 1945, also formed connections with the Nazi racial hygiene slave labour

movement,

poHcy and the

the 'euthanasia' operation, the

Final Solution itself

understood, to emphasize the point yet again,

world view

that

They

as

an aspect of

saw certain ethnic and 'medical' groups

sessing worthless lives

Such people were expendable was

to

diseases.

to forms

Himmler and

a

active

his

SS,

would

subject

of 'medical' research, without consent and

with no regard for suffering and

was

on

of

be expected that groups within the Nazi medical

world, aided and abetted by

camp inmates

a

pos-

in the interests of the 'purity'

the Volk, or to aid the health and safety of German troops It

as

-Jews, Gypsies, Untermenschen, the retarded,

homosexuals, those suffering with incurable

service.

be

are to

risk

of life.

If this

was science,

it

dark and depraved inversion of it.

The groups of perpetrators were not confined to warped pseudoscientists

camps.

working in hidden and isolated situations within the death

Some 350

qualified doctors (including university professors

and lecturers) were involved in concentration camp experiments, which means one out of every 300 members of the German medical

community.^ Professor Kurt Gutzeit, gastroenterologist

at

the

University of Breslau, conducted hepatitis experiments on Jewish children from Auschwitz. Professor Heinrich Berning of Hamburg

Hitler's Scientists

358

University carried out famine experiments on Soviet prisoners of

war, carefully noting their symptoms

they starved to death.

as

Wilhelm

Professor Julius Hallervorden of the Kaiser

Brain Research

in

Berlin-Buch ordered,

as

of brains of the victims of euthanasia for researchers.'' Professor

Intitute for

Anthropology

ation with Josef

his

Mengele

that they

in Auschwitz.'"

were acting under

regime

Wilhelm

Although the camp

war by claiming

orders, these 'scientists',

and leading role

of their

own

in the organization

execution of such 'research' programmes. In perpetrators

Kaiser

engaged in extensive collabor-

doctors sought to exonerate themselves after the

volition, played an active

hundreds

neuropathological

Otmar von Veschuer of the in Berlin

Institute for

we have seen,

this

and

context, the

were not always acting under outside pressure, from the

itself,

or from Himmler's Ahnenerbe, but were enthusiastic

facilitators

of programmes they themselves had initiated." With the

norms of

civil

and criminal law widely suspended throughout

Germany, doctors who had

knew that they The facts are

a

mind

to venture into these activities

could do so with impunity. well

known and

have been recounted in

a

number

Some of the programmes were related to improving the survival prospects of German fighting of key works over the past four decades.'^

men. Prisoners of war were immersed long

after

being ditched or shipwrecked in

in freezing water to estimate

how

a pilot or

seaman might survive freezing tehiperatures

forced to drink seawater to its

consumption. Prisoners

chambers to to

test

endurance

test

the

a

winter

human

were placed at

high

sea.

Inmates were

physiological limits to

in special low-pressure

altitudes.

Others were subjected

phosgene and mustard gas contamination, or infected with

diseases that

might be contracted by German

soldiers in Africa. In

experiments related to plans for the repopulation of Eastern Europe, castration

and

sterilization

procedures were performed on healthy

men and women. Hormone injections were forced on homosexuals, deemed to be a danger to the health of the German Volk. In a procedure that has become a byword for Nazi experimental atrocity, the eyes

of men,

women

and children were injected with

The

'Science'

Human

of Extermination and

Experiment

359

Dr Josef Mengele's laboratory at the Birkenau camp, twins were selected from the camp for 'genetic' and 'germ' experiments. dye. In

In one experiment at Buchenwald, prisoners

poisoned bullets in order to see

work. The intention

to kill

of much of the Nuremberg

how

were shot with

swiftly the poison

and mutilate runs through the trial

when

evidence, even

would details

the type of

experiment appeared to be usefulness to survival research. Seeking a

word

to characterize the science of such killing for

Telford Taylor, prosecutor

at

the

Nuremberg

opened on 9 December 1946, chose death.

its

doctors'

own trial

sake,

which

thanatology, the science

of

^^

The

following chapter sections give an impression of a range of

experiments in just five camps and the links between the camp experimenters and academic science in universities, hospitals and scientific institutions in

Germany.

Dachau^'^

High-altitude and low-pressure experiments were conducted

at

Dachau concentration camp in 1942 under the leadership of a Dr Sigmund Rascher, a captain in the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe and an SS

officer.

At the time of the Nuremberg

trial

Rascher was

missing and presumed dead. Rascher had prompted the use of prisoners for experiments in a letter to regretting a lack of data based

human guinea

Himmler in May of 194 1 by

on 'human

subjects to be put at his disposal, pigs

might

die.

material'.

warning

He

asked for

that such

human

Himmler's adjutant, Rudolf Brandt,

made available. The experiments were carried out in the spring and summer of 1942 with the use of a mobile pressure chamber. The tests duplicated the responded, confirming that prisoners would be

effects

of falling from great heights without parachute or oxygen.

In one report, quoted at the

Nuremberg doctors' trial, Rascher on a '3 7-year-old Jew' who was

cited three successive experiments

subjected to

such

'fall',

'falls'

from an

altitude

of 12 kilometres. After the third

the victim died in evident agony.

A

further section of

360

Hitler's Scientists

Rascher's report contained an autopsy describing severe trauma in the pericardium, the brain, the heart and the Hver.^^

Other victims

in other

experiments included Poles, Russians and

Jew^s accused of Rassemchande

(racial

shame), indicating that they

had been guilty of marriage or intercourse with an Aryan, or case of an Aryan victim, a

in the

non-Aryan. Other reports vividly describe

the physical and psychological agonies of the victims

in the pressure

chamber.

Dachau was also the site of freezing experiments, which followed on the high-altitude tests and continued until the spring of 1943. Victims were forced to stand or lie naked in the open air in the depths of winter from nine to fourteen hours. Some were forced to remain in a tank of iced water for

up

who

to three hours,

sometimes

removed and despatched to the Pathological Institute at Munich. A variety of rewarming 'remedies' were employed. One method urged by Himmler, based on anecdotal stories handed down from fishing communities, was to bed the victims with women volunteers from the camps — mostly Gypsies.

longer.

The

organs of victims

died were

In these experiments, authorized by Fiihrer Kurt

Deputy Reich Physician

Blome, some eighty of about 300 inmates

died.^*^

A

prisoner nurse called Walter Neff recorded the following eye-

witness event:

Two

Russian

\ officers

were brought from the prison

arrived at about four o'clock in the afternoon. Rascher had

and they had to go

Hour the cold

hour went by, and whereas usually unconsciousness from

after

which

them

set in after sixty

to sleep

of the Russians us.'

The

They

them stripped,

in the vat naked.

case stiU responded fully after to put

They

barracks.

minutes

two and

by injection were

said to the other:

at

the

latest,

the

two men

a half hours. All appeals to

fruidess.

About

'Comrade, please

tell

in this

Rascher

the third hour

one

the officer to shoot

other replied that he expected no mercy from

this fascist

dog.

shook hands with each other and uttered the words 'Farewell,

Comrade.'

.

.

.

The experiment

lasted at least five hours before death

The

The two

supervened.

Munich

The

for

Human

Experiment

361

bodies were taken to the Schwabing Hospital in

on freezing experiments became known outside Nazi At the end of October 1942 a conference on methods was held at the Deutscher Hof Hotel in

circles.

pilot survival

Nuremberg with waffe

of Extermination and

post-mortem examination.'^

data

medical

'Science'

officers.

ninety-five participants including senior Luft-

One

speaker gave a presentation on 'Prevention and

Treatment of Freezing' and another spoke on 'Warming-up Freezing to the Danger Point'.

It

was obvious from the

after

details

of

experiments that victims had died. But there was no report of objections from the audience.'^

Dachau some 1,200 inmates were subjected to malarial infection by exposing them to mosquitoes or by injections from the glands of mosquitoes. Victims had a little box containing mosquitoes fixed to their hands so that they would be stung. After contracting the disease victims were treated with a variety of strong Also

at

drugs, including quinine, neosalvarsan, pyramidion, antipyrin and

combinations of such drugs.

Many

died from overdoses of these

medications. According to evidence placed before the judges

Nuremberg

trial,

300 to 400 died

at

the

malaria was the direct cause of thirty deaths and

as a result

of later complications.

These experiments were under the general direction of

a

Dr

Klaus Schilling, emeritus professor of parasitology in the Faculty of

Medicine

at

of the League of Nations and recipient of grants feller

Commission from the Rocke-

Berlin University, director of the Malaria

Foundation in

New York and the Kahn Foundation in Paris.

Already aged seventy-three,

when he made

his research

contact with Himmler,

had run into the sand

who

research the possibility of immunization against for soldiers serving in Africa.

him

Dachau to malaria, a problem

sent

to

According to evidence brought out

of Dachau, Schilling was directly responsible for the deaths often prisoners.*''

Dachau was

also the scene

of research into methods of making

seawater potable. Representatives of the LufA^affe, the navy and

IG

362

Hitler's Scietitists

May

Farben met in

of 1944, and

ments on human guinea drink seawater.

pigs,

it

was agreed

to

conduct experi-

some of whom would be obhged

to

The Medical Inspector of the Luftwaffe approached

Himmler for forty

suitable experimental subjects; the Reichsfiihrer

"'^ ordered that Gypsies would be made available.

The victims of this experiment, which was devised and run by Wilhelm Beiglboeck, Consulting Physician to the Luftwaffe, were divided into four groups. The first received no water; the second was required

to drink ordinary seawater; the third to drink seawater

processed by the 'Berka' method, which disguised the

taste

of salt

The fourth drank seawater which method employing a substance called

water, but was nevertheless saline.

had been desalinated by

a

'Wofarit'.

The

tests

endured

were

carried out in the

autumn of 1944 and

the victims

According

to an eye-witness prisoner

that these patients

drank from the slop buckets of

terrible agonies.

nurse:

It

happened frequently

moments drained water fi-om the air-raid Some patients actually lapped up the water floor for mopping. had to weigh the men taking part

the orderlies, or in unobserved

protection buckets in the haU.

poured out on the

I

in the test every day,

and noted

that the daily loss

of weight was up to

two pounds.-^

\

Sachsenhauscn and Natzweiler

Professor Karl Brandt, personal physician to Adolf Hider,

Commissioner

for Health

and

Reich

Sanitation, instigated in 1943 a series

Sachsenhauscn and Natzweiler concen-

ofjaundice experiments

at

tration camps. Hepatitis

had become

a

problem

for fighting troops,

especially in southern Russia. In some companies 60 per cent of the troops had gone down with the disease. Inmates from Auschwitz

Jews of the Polish Resistance Movement) were forcibly brought to Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler camps for the experi(eight

ments which

later

culminated

in torture

and death.

TJie 'Science' of Extermination

At

these

same camps wounds were

lesions infected

with mustard

World War I. Others were it

and

in liquid fomi.

purpose of the

tests

was

Experiment

inflicted

gas, the

363

on victims and the

poison gas widely used in

forced to inhale the poison, or to imbibe

Some were

Ahnenerbe laboratory

Human

The Himinler made his

injected with the substance.

to discover an antidote.

Natzweiler available to the chief exper-

at

imenter. Professor August Hirt of the Strasbourg Medical Faculty.

A former prisoner testified as to the effects after their arms had been treated with the gas in liquid form:

After about ten hours

.

.

.

burns began to appear,

were burns wherever the vapour from

men went

blind.

The

pains

to stay near these patients.

Inmates

at

were

this gas

all

so terrific that

it

A

and B, cholera and diphtheria. Hundreds

of them died. The research was conducted by also professor at the University

typhus experiments

vaccine.

was almost impossible

^^

Natzweiler were infected with typhus, yellow fever,

smallpox, paratyphoid

had some

over the body. There

had reached. Some of the

a

Dr Eugen Haagen,

of Strasbourg. In the case of anti-

group of 'healthy' inmates was selected

resistance to the disease

Then

a

aU the persons in the group

typhus. Meanwhile, other inmates,

with no vaccination, were

that

and injected with an anti-typhus

would be

known

also infected.

infected with

as the 'control group',

At the same time, other

inmates were deliberately infected with the disease simply in order to

keep the typhus virus

alive

and

available.

^^

Ravensbruck

At Ravensbriick camp

women were subjected to

transplant experi-

ments involving bone, organs and nerves. In one case the scapula of an inmate was removed and transplanted into

a

patient at

Hohenlychen Hopital. Wounds were created and deliberately infected with gangrene and other infections. Bullet wounds were simulated and subsequent infections encouraged. The prime mover in the

sulphonamide experiments was Dr Kerl Gebhardt,

surgical

364

Hitler's Scientists

consultant to the Waffen-SS and Himmler's personal physician.

Gebhardt was blamed for save the after

life

failing to use sufficient

he had been attacked on 27

Czech

sulphonamide to

of Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler's second in command)

patriots

had grenaded

May

approaching Prague. Four

and fragments of

his car

horsehair and springs had been driven into his spleen.

leather,

He developed

and died of infection on 4 June. Professor Karl Grawitz began an intensive research programme and Gebhardt took peritonitis

human experiments employing sulphonamide at Ravensbriick.^'* Some seventy-five camp inmates were given deep wounds, deliberately infected with bacteria and wooden splinters. charge of the

Sulphonamide was then administered unspecified

number of patients

died

to

some and not

experiments were conducted using X-rays, which

Sterilization

policy behind mass sterilization

vital organs. In a letter

Himmler in June 1942 was made evident:

from SS administrator Viktor Brack

to

10 millions of Jews in Europe there are,

millions of men and that these

.

.

.

An

as a result.

caused extensive damage to the victims'

Among

others.

I

the

figure, at least 2 to 3

women who are fit enough to work.

I

hold the view

should be specially selected and preserved. This can,

however, only be done

if at

the same time they are rendered incapable

to propagate.^^

*.

Auschwitz and Mengele

book Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection ofJews, Gypsies, and Others in Germany, igjj—ig43, the German geneticist Professor Benno Miiller-Hill tersely describes the extermination and 'scientific' experiments at Auschwitz under Josef Mengele and In his

others, based

on extensive

archival material.

camp for IG Farben, Auschwitz, as is well known, became a death camp in 1943. As many as 10,000 prisoners arrived each day by train. The victims were killed in Planned

as a

slave-labour

The

'Science'

sealed gas chambers

Human

of Extermination and

Experiment

365

by means of Zyklon B, the hydrogen cyanide

poison manufactured by Degesch, which was almost half

by IG Farben. The bodies were burned eventually capable of destroying

owned were

in crematoria that

some 5,000

corpses a day.

number of 'lives not worth living' presented an opportunity to Professor Otmar von Verschuer, director from 1942 of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for

The

existence of Auschwitz with

Anthropology,

Human

large

its

Genetics and Eugenics. Verschuer and his

Eugen Fischer were both enthusiasts for the racial hygiene movement. Verschuer's special interest was genetic analysis of pathological and normal traits of humans, especially based on twins. As the war progressed, however, Verschuer was no longer able to travel through Germany to investigate twins with rare

predecessor

hereditary disease destined to be put to death by 'euthanasia'.

Josef Mengele was born in 191

the second son of a well-to-do

1,

SA

devoutly Catholic family. Joining the medicine, anthropology and genetics and, fmally, Frankfurt,

arrival

1934, he studied

in

Munich, Bonn, Vienna

where he worked under Verschuer

of Hereditary Biology.

Institute

of Auschwitz

at

He became

after military service

on

in the

chief medical officer

the eastern front.

On

his

Verschuer secured funding for him to carry out work on

heredity.

Mengele and other doctors and anthropologists had ample opportunity to

'select'

prisoners

on the railway ramp as they arrived. Auschwitz were divided into two

Here the Jews who arrived at main groups: mothers and children and the old were left (to

sent to the

Birkenau) to be gassed; the able were sent to the right

Monowitz) selected

as slave

workers for the IG Farben

some hundred

pairs

of twins and about

a

plants.

(to

Mengele

hundred

families

of dwarfs and deformed prisoners.

The

dwarfs and handicapped individuals were examined and

underwent psychological

tests;

those that did not die of disease

were usually despatched by Mengele with

which

their organs

were preserved and

laboratories at the Kaiser

Wilhelm

a lethal injection, after

sent

Institute for

on

to appropriate

Anthropology.

366

Hitler's Scientists

Mengele pursued various research

projects involving trwins at

Auschv^itz, in association with Verschuer and others.

work can be Jewish

reconstructed from a report

slave-assistant,

Dr Miklos

made by

Some of this

his

Hungarian

Nyiszli, as well as accounts

by

other inmates. Earlier research on Gypsies had discovered two families

with hereditary anomalies of the eye

tism, or partial discoloration

work by using twins

selected

of the

iris);

among the

(that

is,

heterochroma-

Mengele developed

this

inmates. Nyiszli described

how he prepared eyes of four pairs of twins Mengele had murdered with intracardiac injections. The eyes were sent to the Kaiser

Wilhelm

Institute

of Anthropology, where they were studied by a

Dr Magnussen, who was

writing a paper

on

the subject.

In 1 944 Mengele began a project on twins which was of considerable interest to Verschuer.

Were

there reproducible, racially deter-

mined differences in serum following an infectious disease? Mengele infected identical and fraternal Jewish and Gypsy twins with typhoid

bacteria,

analysis in Berlin

of death.

took blood

at

various times for chemical

and followed the course of the

disease to the point

The

27-

On

dawn

an icy

in

Devil's Chemists

Poland early in 1944 Prinio Levi, chemist,

writer and Auschwitz inmate, was routines of hard manual labour to

purpose was to pass or

fail

him

summoned from the murderous attend an oral examination. The work

as suitable to

as a

technician

one of the laboratories of the synthetic rubber plant known

in

as

Buna, owned by the IG Farben chemical industry conglomerate.

The examiner was sat

Dr Pannwitz,

a

'tall,

thin, blond'

who

war,

Froin that day

many

ways.

filled his

I

I

have thought about Doctor Pannwitz many times and in

have asked myself how he

really

functioned

conscience; above

all

...

wanted

I

to

human

The examination went

well.

meet him again

make

wrote

sequence of memories so deeply buried,

degree

his

remember the

was interested If This

is

in

my good

is

after the

scarcity

a

Levi had to

thesis.

.

.

.

merely from

a

a violent effort to

as if he

were trying

events of a previous incarnation. Luckily Pannwitz

one of Levi's

dielectrical constants'.

was

how

Pannwitz asked Levi on what sub-

recall a

It

man;

soul.^

ject he

book

as a

time, outside of the Polymerization and the Indo-Gemianic

personal curiosity about the

to

man,

'formidably behind a complicated writing table'. Levi reflected

after the

he

a

He had

special subjects,

passed the

test.

'measurements of

In the preface to his

Man, Primo Levi wrote:

fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944, that

German Government had

decided,

owing

to the

growing

of labour, to lengthen the average lifespan of the prisoners destined

for elimination;

it

conceded noticeable improvements in the camp routine

and temporarily suspended

killings at the

whim

of individuals.^

368

Hitler's Scientists

For the next nine months Levi was oWiged to continue manual labour outside,

and carrying sacks of chemicals: 'The [chemi-

lifting

seeped under our clothes and stuck to our sweating limbs and

cals]

chafed us like leprosy; the skin came off our faces in large burnt patches.'-^

Although Monowitz,

Buna

factory, the

Levi's

camp, was one of the

journey to work involved

begin an eight- to twelve-hour labourer received a

litre

working

a

march of 4 miles

At midday each

day.

of soup, containing

a

few

or turnip in hot water. In the evening, the same

The

of rotten potato or swede and chick peas.

closest to the

scraps

to

slave

of cabbage

amount with

bits

bread, 350 grams

per portion distributed each morning, was supplemented with additives, including sawdust.

more than

little

and

i

A

,000 calories a

prisoner

at

Monowitz consumed

day of a diet that lacked proteins

fats.

A

token of the mental resilience of these brutahzed inmates:

his

companion Jean Samuel belonged to an amateur mathematical group which had formed under Jacques Feldbau, a brilliant French mathematician.

They

and from work, and

talked mathematics

on the long marches

bartered their precious bread for

to

books pur-

chased by their guards on logarithmic equations.

was winter again before Levi was invited into the chemistry laboratory and ordered to start work in the pohshed, spotless conIt

fines.

But there was

Buna

plant

work

to be done;

and the days of the

were numbered:

The ravaged Buna enormous

little

lies

under the

first

snows,

silent

and

stiff like

an

corpse; every day the sirens of the Fliegeralarm wail; the Russians

are fifty miles away. rectification

The

electric

columns no longer

eters

have been blown

But,

at last,

power station exist, three

has stopped, the

methanol

of the four acetylene gasom-

up.'*

Levi has gained entrance to those laboratories with their

'weak aromatic smell of organic chemistry.' The smell made him start back 'as if from the blow of a whip.' He felt that he had been

The Devil's Chemists

369

transported back into the world of his youth in Turin, to 'the large

semi dark

As

it

room

at

the university'.

was, Levi had

to

little

do except

erect experimental tubes

and instruments, then dismantle them when bombing ened; put arrival

them

them down

up, then take

raids threat-

again, waiting for the

of the Russians.

IG Germany's chemical

Farhen

Auschwitz

had sunk to abysmal depths of in-

industries

humanity amidst the frozen

at

mud

synthetic products at Auschwitz.

and ruins of Buna's factory for

IG

Farben, which had once led

the world in the creation of synthetic substances, was slave labour in

its

now

using

How had this great industrial

chemical laboratories.

enterprise, the largest

company in Europe (fourth largest in the world

after General Motors,

US Steel and Standard Oil)

was

this

conglomerate,

processes,

a

,

sunk so low? What

world leader in the technology of chemical

doing in the heart of the Auschwitz complex using

such as Primo Levi

as

brute slaves?

men

The story of the rise and fall of IG

Farben takes us back through developments century in Germany, revisiting great

at

the beginning of the

German figures in science who

had won Nobel awards for their inventiveness.

As Germany expanded nineteenth century

it

industrially

and

militarily

form of coal, which served

as

sources of energy for steam

and domestic heating and provided the raw material products. arrival ally

the

first

power

for synthetic

decade of the twentieth century, and the

Germany became economicdeposits. Once again, and experience of its chemists came to Germany's aid. country's lack of nitrogen, and dependence on the good

of gasoline and

diesel engines,

and strategically vulnerable for want of oil

the talent Just as the will

By

through the

enjoyed unlimited energy supplies in the

of the British Empire and

in the quest for synthetic

its

navy, had stimulated research

ammonia,

so

Germany's

scientists

and

engineers embarked on research to discover fonns of synthetic

petroleum from coal and

its

derivatives.^

One method was

Hitler's Scientists

370

hydrogenation, by which different varieties of coal are reacted with

hydrogen

known coal

gas at high pressure

as 'Bergius',

and high temperature. The process,

involved splitting the complex molecules of

and introducing hydrogen with massive pressure so

liquid oil molecules.

The

as to

make

leading pioneer of this method, Friedrich

Bergius, learned techniques of high-pressure technology from Fritz

Haber in Karlsruhe and Walther Nernst in Berlin before establishing a plant in

Hanover, where he began his first experiments in synthetic

fuel using artificial coal

By

developed from

cellulose.

19 1 3 Bergius filed a patent for synthetic petroleum developed

from hydrogenation of brown and bituminous

coals

from which

he gained conversion yields of 85 per cent. By 191 5 he had begun a

new

plant in

Rheinau near Mannheim. Germany's need

War

petroleum during World

I

was

critical,

oilfields

made

chemists, Franz Fischer and

Hans

deficit temporarily.

Meanwhile,

in

two

1914,

Tropsch of the Kaiser Wilhelm Miilheim on the Ruhr, discovered as

new

but Bergius's

technology lagged and the capture of the Romanian

up the

for

'F-T

synthesis',

Institute for

Coal Research

a different process, later

at

known

based on an original idea developed by the

The mixture of carbon monoxide

chemical giant Badische Anihn- und Soda-Fabrik (BASF). process involved passing water gas

(a

and hydrogen, produced by treating coke with steam)*over a hot catalyst to produce a mixture of hydrocarbons. These were called Kogasin and were used

as fuels.

A

year before the outbreak of

hydrogenation of World War I, BASF carbon monoxide to produce hydrocarbons. The following year, filed a patent for the

in contrast to the

BASF

process, Fischer

and Tropsch developed

a

2:1 hydrogen-carbon monoxide volume mixture they called synthesis gas, which became the basis for future synthetic fuel

research.

The eventual success of Germany's synthetic fuel industry was owed to the discovery of efficient catalysts at IG Farben in the 1920s. The technology involved the sphtting of coal and tar ring structures into smaller molecules in the

Hquid phase, and the

discovery of alternadve catalysts that hydrogenated the smaller

The Devil's Chemists

molecules in the vapour phase (or gaseous

be

distilled into different

Most of Germany's

371

state).

Fuels could then

octane fractions.

was made by the Bergius

synthetic fuel

hydrogenation process, which employed huge compressors generating pressures of up to 10,000

pounds per square inch. The Bergius

method produced high-octane aviation fuel and high-quality gasoline, whereas the F-T synthesis method was more suited to diesel oil,

lubricants

Synthetic

and waxes. fuel

development

expensive than normal sustained

oil

Germany, ten times more

in

refming, was

artificially

stimulated and

by the Nazi regime. Government support based on pro-

digious orders and subsidies drove the expansion of the processes after Hitler's declaration

Goering

in 1936.

of the Four-Year Plan under Hermann

As the prospect of war loomed,

fuel suitable for tanks, trucks and aeroplanes

hardened bunker

sites

vast quantities

of

were stockpiled

in

around Germany.

Meanwhile I G Farben had made a decision to produce synthentic rubber by a procedure that involved the molecule butadiene and the element

out of a

sodium (Na), hence

new

Schkopau

plant at

the International Exhibition availability

'buna'. in 1937

at Paris.

The first buna rubber came and

won

the gold medal at

But the expense and the

of natural rubber meant that production remained slow.

The outbreak of war

in September 1939 altered everything. Hitler more than two months' supply of rubber in with no went to war

stock.

There was

to

be no deal with Britain, and Germany was in

danger of being starved of rubber. The drive to produce synthetic

now became a major priority and IG Farben set about selecting sites for new plants. Germany was looking eastwards and IG Farben was already pondering the huge potential of new markets rubber

across the landmasses to Asia.

In an extraordinary twist of fate, while

over the advantages of the Auschwitz

Himmler had been musing

site as a

model

eastern colony,

Dr Otto Ambros, an executive in charge of rubber and plastics at IG Farben, had settled independently on precisely the same area of the map. Foremost in his

mind was

the need to build a factory

which required more than 525,000 cubic metres of water each hour

Hitler's Scientists

372 in a region that enjoyed in

good

rail

connections. His scrutiny of areas

occupied Poland had brought him in

conjunction of three

The

Przemsza.

now

wrote

its

1940 to focus on the

and the

rivers: the Sola, the lesser Vistula

town to this site was Auschwitz. Ambros mayor of that town asking for details about the

closest

to the

region and

late

outlying villages, the schools provision and the

number of inhabitants. The mayor replied with a wealth of facts and figures in January of 1941. The timing coincided with the circumstance of two crucial interests. Himmler (who had been a fellow student of Ambros at school) had it in mind to build up an eastern colony of Germans and to exploit large numbers of slave labourers that were becoming available. IG Farben's managers faltered for a time, concerned that the town of Auschwitz would never fulfil the conditions it proposed for its German workers. 'Auschwitz and

treme

filth

and

squalor,'

its

villages give

complained

and impression of ex-

a reporter for the

company.^

Within weeks, however, these problems dissolved with confirmation of the symbiotic relationship between SS provision of slave labour and

IG

Farben's

commitment of money and

construction

materials.

Because of acute labour shortages Germany's major industrial

companies had come to accept with enthusiasm the principle of

employing both foreign workers and

slave labourers

from the

concentration camps. Meanwhile, Himmler's SS saw industry and the slave force

as a

means of building

its

kingdom of

resettled

Germans.

The mutual

interest leading to the collaboration

Farben and the SS became

Buna

build the

a

To

non-German labour

was

plant quickly, the

urged on with violence and threat of death. Vrba, transported to Auschwitz in June

Men

ran and

fell,

were kicked and

shot.

A

.

.

.

quiet

way through

men

in

impeccable

corpses they did not

worker, Rudolf

Wild-eyed kapos drove

men

civilian clothes [were]

want

force

1942 describes the scene:

blood-stained path through rucks of prisoners, while SS the hip

between IG

symbiosis of cruelty and violence.

to see,

their

shot from

picking their

measuring timbers with

TIte Devil's Chemists

bright yellow folding rules,

373

making neat little notes in black leather books,

oblivious to the blood-bath7

Sergeant Charles J. Conrad, a

member of a work party composed

of 1,200 British prisoners of war,

IG Farben 1

saw

testified to the active brutality

of

staff:

employees of the Farben firm beat

several civilian

six

inmates while

they were working in the factory while three or four civilians looked on.

They

beat

them with

pieces of iron and

wood

for not

doing their work

properly.^

The

IG fuel

Fall

and Rise of Farben

Farben's exploitation of forced and slave labour in

and rubber plants throughout Germany would

its

rise

synthetic

from 9 per

cent of the labour force in 1941 to 30 per cent by the end of the war.^ There

Auschwitz

would be some

III

was the

fifty

sub-camps

in the

largest, serving the vast

Auschwitz

Buna

area.

plant designed

mainly for the production of synthetic rubber. Primo Levi described the plant as

'as

big

as a city'. It

Some

covered 12 square miles. ^°

300,000 concentration camp inmates were involved in the slave labour

programme by 1944 and some 30,000 of them

although,

as

with the synthetic rubber production, not

synthetic material, except methanol, ever

Germany's

vast effort in

lost

became vulnerable

control of the skies.

drank, with

war

fuel, fibres,

clusters

of interrelated plants that

to aerial

bombing

as

the Luftwaffe

effort

ammonia and calcium along with

a variety

carbide were

Nitric acid, propellants.

Calcium carbide (made from lime and coke

was the

basis

essential for explosives

of acetylene, which was

all

of other products.

made from ammonia, was

furnaces)

rubber

Nitrogen, methanol (which many inmates

fatal results),

crucial for the

drop of

the plants.

producing synthetic

and other products involved eventually

left

a

died,

and

in electric

in turn the basis

butadiene, from which synthetic rubber was made.

The

of

process

Hitler's Scientists

374

required small proportions of natural rubber, which were brought

Germany via submarine from Japan. The production of these materials depended on availability of types of coal, coke, coal tar, power generation and transportation.

to

There were plant),

six principal

complexes (excluding the Auschwitz

two of which, Leuna and Ludwigshafen, turned out enor-

mous quantities of crucial chemical products in addition to synthetic fuel and rubber. Leuna, in addition to making some 46 per cent of Gemiany's synthetic rubber, was producing heavy water

for the

Nazi atomic programme.

war an indictment was filed against twenty-four members of the board of IG Farben on 3 May 1947 on behalf of the United States; among them was Otto Ambros. The charges After the

included waging war, plunder and spohation, but the crucial crime

was

'slavery

The

and mass murder'.

precise language of the slavery and

murder charge was

as

follows:

Farben, in complete defiance of aU decency and

abused

its

excessively long, arduous,

and exhausting work,

health or physical condition.

The

human

among

slave workers by subjecting them,

sole criterion

utterly disregarding their

of the right to

was the production efficiency of the said inmates."

The

considerations,

other things, to

live or die

\

which opened on 27 August 1947 at the Palace of Nuremberg, began in the style of an anti-trust suit, with

trial,

Justice in

many hours of organizational exposition. and murder charges were introduced

It

was not

until the slavery

that the court

began

to hear

eye-witness accounts of former inmates. Typical of the testimonies

was

by Rudolf Vitek,

this

were pushed of the IG in

a physician

work by the kapos, foremen, and overseers an inhuman way. No mercy was shown. Thrashings, in their

ill-treatment of the worst kind, fashion.

'^^

One

after

even direct

killings

were the

another of the witnesses spoke of IG Farben's

participation in selections that selected,

and inmate: 'The prisoners

would mean death

for those not

of company workers witnessing the hanging of prisoners.

The Devil's Chemists

^JS

of Farben people being aware of the gassing and cremation ofinmates

of Auschwitz.

in other parts

At

least

one of the judges, Paul M. Herbert, wanted

equivalence between

IG

draw an

to

Farben's production drive of buna and

the deaths of workers as a direct result of the lethal pace of labour.

Herbert declared:

It

was Farben's drive

for speed in the construction

of Auschwitz which

resulted indirectly in thousands of inmates being selected for extermin-

ation

by the SS when they were rendered

as a result

The

work. The proof

of extermination was used to spur the inmates to

establishes that fear

greater efforts

unfit for

and that they undertook tasks beyond their physical strength

of such

fear.'^

Nuremberg tribunal of judges was and inhumanity at Buna was the responsibility not

majority view of the

that the cruelty

of the corporate people

at

Farben but of the Third Reich

regime which had imposed the regulations that led to those crimes.

The

down by

sentences handed

the court to the twelve

Farben executives ranged from eight years

IG

Otto Ambros) to

Only five of the twelve were found guilty of and mass murder (and all received sentences ranging from

one and slavery

(for

a half years.

The

six to eight years).

evidence that

Du Bois,

remarked

enough to please a chicken thief. He he would write a book to tell the world of the had been produced in the court. Within four years

that the sentences

declared that

chief prosecutor, Josiah

he made good

were

his

'light

promise with

his

grim account of German

industry and the Third Reich, called The Devil's Chemists.

Judge Herbert commented on the to pass

judgment upon the

also to set forth

established

Primo

guilt or

trial: 'It is

important not only

innocence of the accused, but

an accurate record of the more essential

facts

by the proof'*

Levi, for

whom

the telling of the 'essential

facts'

became

a consuming purpose, wrote after the war: 'one must want to

survive, to

tell

the story, to bear witness ... to survive

we must

Hitler's Scientists

376

force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the

form of civilization.'^^ had been General Eisenhower's determination

It

IG Farben should be broken up

that

as

'one means

of assuring

world peace'. The Allied Control Council had decided Farben

assets

should be seized and the legal

title

war

after the

that

all

the

vested in the

Control Council. The ultimate aim was to deprive the company of its

war-making

capacities

and to break

it

into separate businesses.

Nothing happened until after the Western Allied High Commission replaced the Control Council in June

onwards the plan

to break

1949.

From

up the conglemerate into

its

that point

forty-seven

was thwarted. Instead the businesses were consolidated into three of the old major companies: Bayer, BASF and Hoechst. In 1955 the successors to the great IG Farben held their first share-

units

holders' meeting,

which voted

to allow

owners of Bayer stock

be anonymous. The other two foUowed

suit thereafter. In

to

Sep-

tember of 1955 Freidrich Jaehne, sentenced to a year and a half

Nuremberg, was elected chairman of Hoechst. The following year Fritz ter Meer, convicted of plunder and slavery, in prison at

^^ was elected the chairman of the supervisory board of Bayer. The Buna plant at Auschwitz survived the war and is productive

Primo Levi himself could note with bitter irony in 1984 infamous Carbide tower still loomed over the plant, and the

to this day. that

its

former Buna plant had become the in Poland.

largest synthetic

rubber factory

28.

Wonder Weapons

In the course of 1942, with reversals in Russia, Hitler

America

in the

war and increasing

had ordered a total mobilization of science

weapons designers embarked on

a

range of uncoordinated and competitive forced innovations in

a

for the

war

In response

effort.'

desperate bid to retrieve the initiative.

There the

today a genre of popular books and videos that

is

more

exotic of these

weapons

as indicative

technology which might just have

won

book which shows on

artist's

its

cover an

the war.

cite

of superior Nazi I

have in mind

impression in

full

a

colour

of a delta-wing six-engined jet aircraft, Nazi emblems on the wings,

swooping over the

A

city

of New York

city

with the caption:

view of what might have been. The Arado E555/1 Flying Wing was

designed to operate

40,000

Had

feet.

as a

the

long-distance

at altitudes in

war continued nearer 1950, then

two examples being pursued by might just have become

But even

bomber

a

this

excess of

scenario of

P-80 Shooting Star over Manhattan

a reality.^

this 'reconstruction'

dwindles to the conventional by

comparison with attempts to propose that Germany had developed in the early 1940s an advanced technology, kept a closely guarded secret

even

described

to this

day by the CIA. For example,

as a 'flying saucer'.

a species

of aircraft

Alleged expert witnesses had seen

during the war over Germany an unidentified flying object probably obtaining

'its

blue plasma'.

round

its

effect It

own

There was

also

was, axis'

by discharging and instantaneously igniting as

one observer

and 'looked

said, 'a

like a

luminous

burning balloon' by night.

an 'anti-gravity' machine, and

the electronics of aeroplanes (of which

a

disc spinning

more

a

device that wrecked

later).

Hitler's Scientists

378

Gemiany had

attained high levels of rocket

and

jet propulsion

would prove enviable to the Allies, but these futuristic Third Reich science and technology, nar-

technologies that fantasies

of

a

rowly cheated of victory by of time, fomi

straints

a

Hitler's

poor leadership and the con-

popular species of pseudo-history. Apart

from the rocket developments and the attempt to create an atom

bomb,

there were, indeed,

sluggish, mercifully ill-fated

bomb and possibly a 'dirty' radioactive many hasty research programmes which

continued until the fmal weeks of the war; but most were wasteful

and impracticable diversionary inevitable.

from

on

reliance

Whether they were

slave labour,

staving off the

from

and

reality

There was,

specifically Nazi,

debatable. Certainly they

is

revealed the desperation of a chaotic regime further

at

Some were designed to be awesome and vengeful rather

than strategically effective. apart

aimed

tactics

moving

further and

rationality.

for example, the prototype

of a Porsche super combat

tank weighing 185 tons, sporting a gun with a prodigious 15 centimetre calibre,

as large as

the guns

on

the battleship Bismarck.

In the fmal days of the Reich, moreover, a 1,000-ton tank, nick-

named

'the

mouse', was in development.

Among aeronautical innovations there were prototypes cal

of verti-

take-off and landing aircraft on the drawing boards of the

Heinkel company, dubbed the 'wasp' and the 'lark'.*rhere were exotic plans, too, from the factories of Daimler Benz and Mercedes, for high-speed intercontinental

way by

part of the

continue the

rest

bombers which would be taken

a carrier aircraft,

before being launched to

of the journey to the target

area; the

concept

involved the crew baling out (presumably on the shores of the continental United States) to be picked up by a waiting submarine.

BMW

came up with a design for a jet aircraft in which Meanwhile the pilot would he prone so as to be able to endure forces of up to 14 'g' (pilots in a seated position were normally capable of withstanding only 9

'g'

before blacking out).

As resources became ever more scarce there was a spate of experiments with new materials, or the application of traditional ones to

new

purposes.

Hermann Goering,

for example,

was keen

Wonder Weapons

379

make locomotives out of cement. One of Himmler's

to

was

projects

a

favourite

'new' substance called 'durofol', which was suppos-

edly a kind of 'miraculous' non-inflammable material, a replace-

ment

for iron

and non-ferrous metals. In

fact

of compressed wood. Himmler ordered that should

made of

durofol, and urged

vehicles and buildings.

It

proved

to

a

it

was merely

a

form

prototype motor car

use in a variety of other

its

be highly pliable and

anything more than gear levers, car fenders and

useless for

window

frames.

After his release from Spandau prison, Albert Speer compiled in his

book The

of 'wonder weapons' and

Slave State a catalogue

other 'advanced technological' programmes, mainly initiated or

encouraged by Himmler. Himmler's wide-ranging schemes

chaos of overlap and competition, often backed by Hitler,

trate the as

illus-

powerful members of the regime indulged their dilettante

fantasies.

Among called

Himmler's

initiatives

was

'oxygen turbines' for U-boats,

a

programme

a project to

to

produce so-

be headed by an

Himmler

individual totally unqualified in submarine engineering.

up

also set

a

Reich Agency

for

High-Frequency Research

Dachau, with the use of concentration camp

ways of bringing down enemy

moted

'wonder' combat

a

'scientists' to

aircraft 'electronically'.

pistol

which never shot

at

invent

He

pro-

straight;

a

high-speed motor boat — unsolicited by the navy — which never

took to the water; and

a 'Zisch' flying

boat which never took to

the skies.

Following the attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944, Himmler's influence and the flow of schemes and peremptory orders for research

knew no

bounds.

Not only was he

new

Reichsfiihrer-SS, head

of the Gestapo and of the police, but he began to exert influence over every area of the Wehrmacht

Commander-in-Chief of the army reserves, as well as Commander of army divisions on the Upper Rhine and another group on the Vistula. As the war drew to its inevitable conclusion, the 'miracle as

weapons' continued to flow from eccentric inventors. Himmler rarely let an idea

One scheme

go unexplored by

involved

a

his

uninformed enthusiasm.

'remote control' machine that would

380

Hitler's Scientists

switch off electrical devices by means of exploiting the 'insulating material of the atmosphere'/ This material,

it

was hypothesized,

the 'insulating foundation of all electro technology', and by

ing

insulating effect

its

it

is

remov-

should be impossible for any electrical

device of a 'familiar construction and implementation to function'.

This bizarre notion, proposed by an amateur, was taken seriously

by Himmler, and

in

consequence by

to thwart his 'research

As

late as

on

scheme

a

to exploit fir-tree roots as a

Nor was this merely the latter-day

crazed leader of the vanquished.

earlier

It

was precisely on

notion of Himmler's that alcohol could be

1943 he had sent a

sort daily. Please

look into

can do the same thing with

When Himmler Employ strikes

our

all

one of his deputed

this

like the

of

of alcohol

we

bakeries.'^

scientific officers,

an SS Haupsturm-

a directive

hurtled from

to Pohl:

a different

me

litres

matter and see whether

Niemann, dismissed the notion,

fiihrer

May

directive to his underling Oswald Pohl: 'Bakeries

our bakery in Dachau could supply 100 to 120

of this

a par

somehow

from the exhaust fumes of bakery chimneys. In

'caught'

like

their lives.

January 1945, with the Reich crumbling, Himmler

source of gasoline and other fuels.

with an

who knew that

programmes' could cost them

spent time and energy

panic of a

his underlings,

SS commander

for these experiments ^.

.

Niemann

as being absolutely negative toward the entire question.

tone of his report either.

I

am

I

don't

of the opinion that in wartime, the

yield of even small quantities of alcohol

is

important.'^

months on, Himmler was pursuing the ludicrous notion that precious fuel for running the Nazi war machine could be obtained Six

from geranium flowers. be planted to

be pursued

test

He

ordered that

fields

of geraniums should

the potential of the idea, warning that

'systematically'.

it

should

Wonder Weapons

381

The People's Fighter

Towards the end of the war the new weapons initiatives aimed at delaying inevitable defeat were low-tech rather than high-tech, and assumed

a lack

of skills

as

well

as a

premise of virtual suicide.

Teutonic pride had entered an era of sloppy technology and

a

bombing aircraft manu-

disregard for the lives of the Reich's pilots. As the Allied

campaigns increased in facturers

were invited

intensity,

Germany's leading

September 1944

in

to tender for the design

and production of a single-engine jet plane, cheap to build, easy to fly,

and

to

to submit.

be produced in tens of thousands, with just twelve days

The

idea

from the outset was

to exploit

Flying Hitler Youth {Fheger-Hitlerjugend), boys

with

minimum

as

Germany's

young

as sixteen,

training, to fly mini-jets in a fmal defence

Reich. Reichsmarschall Goering was

thrilled,

it

of the

was reported,

at

young bombing

the prospect of thousands of people's fighters, their brave pilots taking off"

from the autobahns

against the Allied

formations.^

A token of the unrealistic helter-skelter of development: Heinkel won

an order for the mass production of their 'successful' people's

one week

The prototype. He- 162 Salamander, took to the air on 6 December 1944; a subsequent test-flight, on 10 December, proved fatal for the pilot as the wooden wing came away — a result of faulty glue. The centre fuselage to which the engine was attached was made of metal; the ailerons of plywood. The production schedules called for 1,000 planes to start production on i January 1945, while Junkers would commence fighter design

after submission.

another thousand in various underground

facilities,

and the Mit-

telwerke underground factory, where Vis and V2s were in production,

would

start

assembly of

a further

2,000 units.

It

was

envisaged that the plants would eventually produce these numbers

every month.

The manufacture of components was farmed out to many of them underground.

dispersed factories and workshops,

The parts were mostly brought to assembly some were even brought by messengers in testing

and controls were

to

be

points by truck and

backpacks.

set aside in the interests

Normal of speed;

382

Hitler's Scientists

the contract for the plane

based on the

first

warned

that 'serial production will

drawings and that the

The

escaping notice has to be accepted'.^

rewarded with 10,000

and 500

cigarettes

keeping to their absurd

risk

of

be

potential failure

a

design teams were to be bottles

of vemiouth for

targets.

In a technical critique of the fighter, the historian Ulrich Albrecht

comments: Actual experience showed that the people's fighter was truly operational fighting vehicle.

muzzle pressure tore away gear

parts

showed weaknesses. The

dimensioned. Lateral

stability

When

the

far

from being

machine gun was

a

fired,

of the aluminium covering. The landing

ribs

of the leading wing edge were under-

was poor.

Stalling characteristics

needed

to

be improved.''

Many

were

pilots

killed trying to land the plane: typically, the

rudder was caught by the jet exhaust, resulting in collapse and the loss

of the

overtook

The scheme was

aircraft.

its

a failure

even before events

potential deployment.

Suicide Missions

The an

ultimate

aircraft

weapon of desperation

in the air

was tke design for

which assumed the death of the combatant

mission {Selhstopferung)

.

in a suicide

The notion was originally devised as a result

of volunteers expressing their willingness to crash their planes on to the landing craft

of an Allied invasion

fleet

approaching the

One of its keenest exponents was Hanna who appealed to Hitler to sanction the scheme.

shores of Nazi Europe.

Reitsch, a test-pilot,

The

Fiihrer agreed to further

give

it

his blessing.

work on

the proposal, but did not

Reitsch became famous for her daring exploits,

which included flying and crash-landing a version of a pulse jet flying bomb - the Vi pilotless aircraft intended for a new Blitz on

Wemher von Braun

also associated

with the scheme,

having designed a rocket plane which involved

a suicide pilot in

Britain.

was

the early stages of the war. Another plan was to develop a rocket

Wonder Weapons

383

plane which could take off as raiding Allied aircraft came into view.

The

known as the Natter (or adder),

of choice was

aircraft

designed

of rockets: unfortunately, once these weapons

to carry an array

were despatched, the plane would become unstable and could no was assumed

longer be flown;

it

the maiden

of a prototype the

flight

would

that the pilot test-pilot's

the aircraft was launched. Experiments

were

bale out.

On

neck was broken

still

continuing

at

as

the

end of the war. As Germany ran out of fuel regime designed

ram

a raiding

suicide

a

bomber

was implicit

pilot to fly the

in the fmal

months and weeks, the

type of armoured glider which was supposed to or

from

fire at it

in the tactic.

The

close quarters. Either way,

tactical

concept was for the

heavy explosive payload close to an enemy bomber

formation, to detonate the charge and bale out. 'Because parachuting during the approach to the

enemy was

but practically excluded, one could label

Another prototype schmitt,

was an

glider,

theoretically possible,

this a "suicide

bomb".'^*^

made of wood and designed by Messerwas to be ferried above the bomber

aircraft that

formations then released to gHde

down and

attack.

It

had poor

manoeuvrability and never entered combat. Yet another suicide concept, based on the carrier idea, involved a bazooka', a glider carrying directly at a

bomber

two unguided

before the pilot

Dirty

made

his

manned

rockets, to

'flying

be

fired

getaway.

Bombs

Boris Rajewsky, director of the Institute for the Physical Foundations

of Medicine and involved in health and safety standards in

Germany's mines, sought funding in February 1943

to explore the

potential for 'biological effects of corpuscular radiation, including

neutrons, with regard to the possibility of their use

but above

all

the biological basis of radiation protection' "

weapon,

.

that the research

was not

'dirty

bomb'

and ultimately the United

It

appears

in the event funded, but the application

has given credibility to the idea that Nazi

developing a

as a

weapons

researchers

were

to target civilian populations in Britain, States.

Hitler's Scientists

384

Some

historians

have suggested that

a radioactive

bomb

could

have formed the warhead of a giant rocket (A9/ 10), plans for which

were

at least

on

the drawing boards at Peenemiinde; and that

when

these schemes appeared too far in the future for feasibility, the

engineers began to consider delivery by smaller rockets launched

from submarines. Evidence for scarce

a plan to

make and

deliver radioactive

possibility.^^

There

beyond the realms of

are occasional references in the latter part

Picker,

prototype of the

'a

was surrounded with Schaub, chief a

of the

to a Uraniumbombe, by, for example, Hitler's stenographer,

Henry

is

and largely circumstantial, but, given the wide range of

outlandish and murderous projects, hardly

war

bombs

bomb by SS

ADC

'greatest

to Hitler,

officers

German uranium bomb', which secrecy'. ^^

who

working

at

Dr

According to Julius

had been informed about such

the Mittelwerke,

it

was the

'size

of a small pumpkin' and composed of 'several small uranium bombs set

around If there

a is

conventional explosive '.^"^

any truth in the suggestion that Hitler might have

possessed such a

weapon

it

would have had

the same status as other

poisonous gas weapons and nerve agents available on both during the war.

Its

use by Hitler, moreover,

constrained by his caution in relation to

first

sides

would have been

use of other chemical

weapons: that retribution would have been swift and massive. The only people hkely to have been harmed by these dirty bombs would

have been the slave workers conscripted from concentration camps to

work on such

products.

Hitler's Poison

The

story of Nazi

Gas

Germany's development and stockpiling of

December 1936 when Dr Gerhard Schrader, an IG Farben research chemist working on insecticides, discovered a highly lethal substance that attacks the human nervous system. It came to be known as 'tabun', which is in the range of organic phosphorus compounds.'^ Tabun disrupts a neurotransmitter, a natural chemical in the human body, known as cholinesterase.

poison gas began in

Wonder Weapons

which

reacts

with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to allow nor-

mal muscular movement. itedly in the central

and

385

When

acetylcholine collects uninhib-

nervous system,

it

causes severe contractions

rigor, especially in the respiratory system.

The

victim

literally

chokes to death. Schrader was ordered to army headquarters in Berlin, where he

demonstrated the power of the new agent on dogs and monkeys, which died within twenty minutes of exposure. The substance

became

a

top secret potential 'weapon'.

The head of army poison

gas strategy.

Colonel Rudriger, commissioned Schrader to continue

refming

discovery

in

his

hand plans

The

at a factory at

Elberfeld in the Ruhr, and put

for a special poison gas plant at Spandau.

following year, however, Schrader came up with

a

second

discovery in the form of isopropyl methylphosphorofluoridate,

which proved even more to

be

known

as 'sarin'.

In

lethal in

animal

tests

September 1939,

IG Farben

to build a plant for the

Silesia, at a

place called Dyherfurth.

than tabun.

a decision

It

came

was taken by

production of tabun and sarin in

Funding ultimately came from

the army, but the chief facilitator of the programme was Otto Ambros of IG Farben. Dyherfurth would eventually expand into a vast factory more than a mile and a half in length and half a mile

wide, with underground

facilities,

employing 3,000 workers under

conditions of the highest secrecy and security.

Work

the plant

at

was psychologically oppressive, because of its remoteness, as

the extreme danger of handling toxic substances.

well

as

Workers

lived

in special enclosed barracks. Despite protective clothing, operatives

were regularly affected and at least ten died after accidental contamination.

Germany,

In the meantime, at other plants around

forms of gas warfare, of the World

War

I

variety,

developed, including phosgene, chlorine and mustard

were widely used

in experiments,

within the concentration camps,

von

alternative

were being gas.

Animals

and so were human guinea pigs as

we

have seen. Baron Georg

Schnitzler, a director of IG Farben, testified after the

Ambros knew of experiments on human beings. In addition to many tens of thousands of tons of

war

that

^^

stockpiled

386

Hitler's Scientists

mustard

and phosgene, an estimated 12,000 tons of

gas, chlorine

tabun were discovered

at

the end of the war.

A number of deHvery

systems had been developed including types of personnel mines,

hand grenades, hand sprays and poison

delivered

bullets

by

machine gun.

Vengeance

The

Weapons- Vis and Vzs

ultimate deployment of the advanced technology of missile

technology

at

Peenemiinde and the

Mittelwerke was in an

irrational

slave labour tunnels

of the

and wasteful strategy of revenge, or

German weapons). The first to

they were called Vergeltungswaffen (revenge

('Vergeltungswaffe

were popularly known by the

retaliation. In

i'),

land on the south-east of England, the

'doodlebugs', 'buzz-bombs' and 'flying bombs'. a pilotless

monoplane made of

It

Vi

British as the

was

essentially

thin pressed steel and plywood.

Catapaulted from a ramp by steam piston, or fired from an

aircraft,

the missile could soon reached a cruising speed of about 300-plus

miles per hour at altitudes tree-tops.

The

as

high

as

4,000 feet or

pulse jet engine was fuelled

of gasoline with compressed

air as

An

air

a

a

low

as

the

tank of 150 gallons

the oxidizer.

system was operated automatically by pre-set directional compass.

by

as

The guidance

gyroscopic device and a

log driven by a rPose airscrew

ceased to turn once the allotted distance had been completed,

thereby instructing the elevators to depress and so bring craft

and

its

down

the

explosive payload to the ground.

The first Vis landed on London on 13 June 1944; by the end of the month 2,452 had been launched. A third was destroyed or crashed before reaching the English coast, another third crashed

haphazardly in open country, but the remainder, about 800, landed in the

London

area or in the vicinity of

incident occurred

on Sunday

1

8 June,

when a flying bomb exploded

on the chapel of Wellington Barracks 121

people, sixty-three of

them

Southampton. The worst

in central

soldiers,

London,

killing

while they were

at

worship. In the

autumn of 1944

the

Vis were

also fired in large

numbers

Wonder Weapons at

Antwerp

armies. In

387

to harass supplies destined for the invading Allied

all

some 10,000 Vis were launched against Britain. About

2,500 landed in London; more than 6,000 people were killed and 18,000 injured. ^^

As

we

have seen, the

V2 went

into production in

May

1944

at

the underground Mittelwerke plant in the Harz mountains sup-

ported by slave labour. against

The

missile,

which was supersonic and

which there was no defence, was ready

for launching in

September 1944 during a lull in the flying bomb attacks. The first two, launched from a site near The Hague in Holland, landed without warning on

Chiswick

evening,

at

Epping,

east

London, and

at

killed

in the

Parndon Wood, near

of London. Each missile carried

Three people were

explosive. site

September almost simultaneously

8

in west

a

payload of a ton of

and seventeen injured

at

the

of the Chiswick explosion. Between that date and 27 March

1945 some 1,054 rockets

More

Londoners. 1944

at

fell

(about five a day), killing 2,700

than 900 were fired during the

quarter of

last

Antwerp.

If Hitler

had intending bringing Britain

terror devices

to

its

was, of course, a vain hope.

it

knees with these

From

the

German

point of view, the vast effort and ingenuity applied to the V2s in particular

was

irrational in

its

motivation. Interrogated after the

command

war, Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Goering's deputy in

of the Luftwaffe,

The primary

said:

reason

why

so

much manpower was

tied

up

in the pro-

duction of V weapons was simply that great promises about miraculous

weapons had been made these promises in

to the people,

some way or

and they

now wanted

to

redeem

other.^^

This stated motivation was confirmed in the interrogation of Dr Karl Frydag, an aircraft production chief

[The V2] has been pursued because of the propaganda foolish thing. Speer, the

the

'V weapons was

armaments

effect

and

it

was

a

minister, stated that the purpose of

to 'counter the British night attacks with

something

Hitler's Scientists

388 similar,

without the expensive bombers and practically without

The main German

losses.

reason was therefore a psychological one for the benefit of the

people.''^

The campaign, which drew away duction with very

Httle result,

Hitler in the fmal

months

resources from aircraft pro-

probably did more for the morale of

of the

war than

for his people.

PART SEVEN In Hitler's

Shadow

Farm Hall

29-

On

30 April 1945 Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun in his

He was

Berlin bunker.

power twelve surrendered

a

Germany was

years

week

of age and he had been in

fifty-six years

and three months. The Third Reich and the war was

later

in ruins,

its

officially

communications

shattered, millions of its

people homeless, hungry and wandering the country

Two bombs

months rained

on

later,

down on

fight, ten leading

3

July 1945,

as

physicists,

which continued

most of them involved

Nazi wartime nuclear research programme, arrived

Ouse

close to the river

as refugees.

thousands of incendiary

the cities of Japan,

German

officially

over in Europe.

ten miles west of

at a

Cambridge

to

in the

mansion

in England.

One of their number, the physical chemist Paul Harteck, recognized Ely Cathedral

Dakota

as their

circled to land at a military base near

Huntingdon.

Farm

Hall, a red-brick

Georgian house on the edge of the

of Godmanchester, was surrounded by private parkland and wall.

It

to the

remains to

day

much

as it

was, although

it is

a

high

now

close

busy A14 connecting the Midlands with East Anglia. During

the 1940s

MI6

this

village

it

was owned by

as a 'safe

house' for

Britain's

Foreign Office and used by

members of resistance groups waiting

to

be parachuted into secret dropping zones.

The rooms of the house had been scientists' arrival

metal recording

army to

rigged in preparation for the

with hidden microphones connected to shellacked discs,

which would be monitored by

interpreters. Transcripts

London and thence

a

team of

of the recordings were to be sent on

to General Groves, chief

Project. This eavesdropping exercise

of the Manhattan

was known

as

'Operation

Epsilon'.

Groves's interest in these scientists in the aftennath of the Euro-

pean war was not so

much

to discover

how much

the arrested

Hitler's Scientists

392

German that

the

making of an atomic bomb,

had already been ascertained, but

Russians. nity,

knew about

scientists

Would

their attitude towards the

they go over to the Russians, given the opportu-

and work on

recordings,

for

a Soviet

atomic bomb? The transcriptions of the

which remained

secret for fifty years, constitute an

unusual historical record. Here were Germany's top physicists,

caught in

a

limbo between the end of one era and the beginning

of another, discussing recorded,

Two

how

among

themselves, unconscious of being

they saw their goals, achievements and

failures.^

of the leading figures were veterans: Otto Hahn, the emi-

who had discovered nuclear fission, and the Max von Laue, who had won the Nobel prize for work on X-rays and who had managed to stay aloof from the

nent radiochemist

mild-mannered his

regime. Neither played a crucial part in Germany's wartime nuclear research, but

Goudsmit,

as

we

have seen, had wanted these older

American and

distinguished scientists in

British hands, since

he saw

an important role for them in Germany's post-war reconstruction. Bespectacled Erich Bagge, the group; he had to

Farm Hall

at thirty-three,

worked on

in the 1980s

was the youngest of

isotope separation (on a return

visit

he boasted to the current owners that he

had sometimes climbed over the wall to make assignations with local girls). ^

The

rest

of the group included Kurt Diebner of Army

Ordnance, described by

his captors as 'an unpleasant gersonality';

Walter Gerlach, white-haired and of mihtary bearing, in the

German atomic

research

a

key figure

programme and with connections

who had written that first letter article on secondary reading the Joliot-Curie Ordnance on Army to inside the Gestapo; Paul Harteck,

neutrons in Nature; Karl Wirtz, an expert on heavy water; Horst Korsching, with dark cinematic good looks, described by as 'a

complete enigma'.

Finally, there

his captors

were Carl Friedrich von

Weizsacker and Werner Heisenberg.

would Hve hidden from the world; their greatest discomfort, lack of communication with their families back in Germany. Their daily lives were regulated by periods for For

six

months the

study and exercise.

scientists

They had newspapers, and

for evening rec-

reation they hstened to the radio, or attended a piano recital

by

Farm Hall

Heisenberg, before playing cards up

of war

acted as orderlies

Within

a

week of

are

don't think they

know

microphones

Oh

laughed: 'Microphones?

midnight.

German prisoners

staff.

Diebner

their arrival

wonder whether there

till

and serving

393

said to Heisenberg:

Heisenberg

installed here?'

no, they're not

as

cute

'I

as all that.

I

the real Gestapo methods; they're a bit

old-fashioned in that respect.'^

The Farm

Hall tapes, quoted below from Professor Jeremy

Bernstein's edition of the transcripts, reveal that the

men

displayed

no pangs of conscience, and readily exculpated themselves of official association with the regime.

Nazi

scientists in

They

did not think of themselves

as

any meaningful sense whatsoever. Erich Bagge

and Kurt Diebner had been

full

members of

the party, whereas

Max von Laue and Werner Heisenberg were the only who had not been members of any Nazi association

Otto Hahn, internees

whatsoever. Diebner maintained that he had suffered under the Nazis and that he had only joined the Party because he wanted to

be assured of

a

decent job

membership, he claimed, leagues. Erich

it

He

to prevent the arrest

Bagge claimed

the Party by mistake: his

thought

after the war.

that

for

his Party

of Norwegian

he had been made

a

col-

member of

name since she him. Heisenberg commented to a

mother had

would be good

had used

sent in his

visiting British scientist. Professor Patrick Blackett, that

Bagge was

some ways' a 'proletarian type', and that is 'one of the reasons why he went into the party, but he never was what one would call 'in

a fanatical Nazi'.'*

Gerlach nevertheless claimed that no one had to join the Party

Bagge retorted that Gerlach was protected because personal acquaintance of Goering's and that he had a

against their will.

he was

a

brother in the SS; then he

commented that Nazi excesses,

concentration camps, were a consequence of the

stresses

including

of war.

Hitler's Scientists

394

Hiroshima

On

6 August 1945

news reached the

seclusion of this rural prison

house that was to shatter the calm routines of the ten German physicists.

From

this

ation ceased. That in charge told that the

Japan.

point onwards

all

discussion about Nazi

Otto Hahn

that

it

had been reported on the news

Americans and British had dropped an atomic

The

affili-

evening, shortly before dinner, the British officer

officer evidently

provided various

details: that

bomb on hundreds

of thousands had died, that many thousands of workers had been involved in the creation of the bomb, that ^{^500 million had been spent and that the explosion was equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.

Hahn, according shattered

was 'completely

to the British officer's report,

by the news',

since he believed that his original discovery

He said that he had originally contemwhen he understood the 'terrible potentialities of the

had made the bomb possible. plated suicide

discovery' and that he

and he was

now felt these potentialities had been realized

The British eavesdroppers reported to their Hahn calmed down 'with the help of considerable

to blame.

superiors that

alcoholic stimulant'.

When Hahn

passed

on the news

to the scientists

ment and disbehef Then Hahn Americans have

a

uranium

who

offered the observation:

bomb

had

between puzzle-

assembled for supper, their reactions alternated

then you're

all

'If

the

second-raters.

Poor old Heisenberg.' Laue rubbed Heisenberg

with

this

it

by

in

said:

scoffing:

'The innocent!'

'Did they use the

word uranium

in

connection

atomic bomb?'^

His companions replied 'No!' in unison.

'Then

it's

got nothing to do with atoms,' Heisenberg went on.

'But the equivalent of 20,000 tons of high explosive

is

terrific'

When Gerlach suggested that the Allies had achieved this through a

plutonium bomb, or what he described

neptunium, the product of a reactor, or what an 'engine'

(93, as

we

Heisenberg expressed

as

a

the

bomb made

of

Germans termed

have seen, decays into 94, or plutonium),

his incredulity: 'All

I

can suggest

is

that

some

Farm Hall dilettante in

them

who knows

America

very

into saying: "If you drop this

little

about

it

doesn't

work

continued to speculate on

scientists

has bluffed

it

has the equivalent of 20,000

it

tons of high explosive" and in reality

While the

395

at all.'

how

had been made, the question of scientific responsibility Wirtz

said:

we

'I'm glad

didn't have

the

bomb

arose.

it.'

Heisenberg snapped back: 'That's another matter.'

A

few moments

later,

the Americans to have

'One

Weizsacker

done

it.

I

said:

think

it is

can't say that,' insisted Heisenberg.

'I

think

it is

madness on

dreadful of their part.'

'One could equally well

way of ending the war." The reflection, of course, coincided precisely with the rationalization that would constitute the Anglo-American defence of the atom bombing of

say "That's the quickest

'

Japan in succeeding decades. 'That's

what consoles me,'

said

Hahn.

The question of the amount in weight of pure '235' necessary for a bomb, and the means of achieving that weight, was discussed. At one point Hahn said to Heisenberg: 'But tell me why you used to

me

tell

anything.

that

Now

one needed 50 kilograms of 235 in order to do you say one needs two tons.' Heisenberg said he

moment, but Hahn's question was significant, for it demonstrated that the Germans had discussed the making of a bomb — a fact that they later denied in did not wish to

commit himself

at

that

public.

Again, they returned to the morality of the bomb.

'Once

I

wanted

to suggest that

bottom of the ocean.

bomb

of such

I

all

Hahn

uranium should be sunk

always thought that one could only

a size that a

said:

to the

make

whole province would be blown

a

up.'

Back and forth went the arguments. Had the Americans achieved a

breakthrough by an invention or

-

the

Germans —

failed? Self-doubt

a discovery?

and

And why had

self-castigation

were

they

in the

air.

At nine o'clock the guests gathered around the radio the

BBC

report:

to listen to

main news broadcast, which contained the following

Hitler's Scientists

396

Here

is

the

scientists

News:

-

dropped on pov^er

as

It's

dominated by

tremendous achievement of Allied

a

the production of the atomic bomb. a

Japanese army base.

two thousand of our

It

One

alone contained

has already

as

much

been

explosive

great ten-tonners.

more headlines, listing statements from President Truman, Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower, the newscaster added with consummate bathos: 'At home, it's been a Bank Holiday of sunshine and thunderstorms; a record crowd at Lord's has seen Australia make 273 for five wickets.'^ The newscaster now enlarged on the details of the dropping of the bomb. Some 125,000 workers had built the bomb factories, and 65,000 had worked in them. All was achieved with maximum After

secrecy: 'they could see

huge

quantities of materials going in,

nothing coming out — for the small'.

size

Uranium had been used

were convinced

that the

in

bomb

of the explosive charge

making the bomb, and

could be 'developed

is

and very

scientists

further'.

still

The fact that atomic energy could be released on a large scale meant that

it

will 'ultimately

be used

in

The newscast ended with

peacetime industry'.

the reading of a statement written

Winston Churchill, who had by this date lost the first general election at the end of the war in Europe to the Labour Party. It spoke of the long scientific path to the bomb^ and of the earher by

breakthrough that

first

occurred in Britain, followed by collabor-

ation with the Americans, and the construction of the

United

States in order to avoid the susceptibility

development

to

German

air raids

over Britain.

bomb

in the

of research and

Then he allowed

himself a spasm of British and American pride, heavily contrasted

with German

scientific failure.

By God's mercy efforts.

British

These were on

a

and American science out-paced

considerable scale, but far behind.

of these powers by the Germans

at

The

German

possession

any time might have altered the

of the war, and profound anxiety was

He ended

all

felt

with the solemn reflection:

by those

who were

result

informed.

Farm Hall

397

We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to to peace

upon

among

nations,

and

of wreaking measureless havoc

that instead

may become

the entire globe they

conduce

a

perennial fountain of world

prosperity.

After the broadcast the guests launched once tion.

'with mass spectrographs ful

more

into conten-

Harteck speculated that the the Americans had managed

with

a

on

a large scale

photochemical process'. Such

Heisenberg, 'seeing

'Which

as

100 times

is

or they have been successa process

was

it'.

had'.

'The Americans are capable of real cooperation on scale,' said

possible, said

they had 180,000 people working on

more than we

it

a

tremendous

Korsching. 'That would have been impossible in Ger-

many. Each one

'How many

said that the other

was unimportant.'

people,' Weizsacker asked, 'were

working on the

Vi andV2?' 'Thousands worked on

that,' said

Diebner.

Then Heisenberg remarked: 'We wouldn't have had the moral courage to recommend to the government in the spring of 1942 that they should

Clearly, he

employ 120,000

meant

that

just for building the thing up.'

he would have been

afraid to

make promises

to the regime that could not be kept.

Then came a proposition that was to become the basis of the 'myth' of the German nuclear weapon project - the promotion of a declaration

the Nazi

of exoneration, connecting the self-exculpations of

bomb

sand Suns,

scientists

Tom

with Robert Jungk's

Brighter than a

Thou-

Powers's Heisenberg's War and even aspects of

Michael Frayn's Copenhagen. As Jeremy Bernstein summarizes the myth:

'We could have done

didn't

do

it

on

it,

we knew how

to

do

it,

but

we

principle.'

The myth was

to

make

appearance in Jungk's book:

its

'It

most dramatic, public and

early

seems paradoxical that the German

nuclear physicists,' he wrote,

living

under

a sabre-rattling dictatorship,

and attempted

obeyed the voice of conscience

to prevent the construction

of atomic bombs, while their

Hitler's Scientists

398

who

professional colleagues in the democracies,

few exceptions concentrated

had no

fear,

with very

whole energies on production of the

their

new weapon/ Three years

of Jungk's book,

publication

the

after

in

a

correspondence with Paul Rosbaud, Laue would report that Weizsacker had attempted to create this myth. Laue called

or the version. 'The leader in

he wrote.

'I

these discussions was Weizsacker,'

all

did not hear the mention of any ethical point of view.

Heisenberg was mostly

silent.'*

On the evening of the broadcast, 'I

believe the reason

want

didn't to

win

the

do

to

didn't

on

principle. If

it,

do

believe that but

is

Weizsacker

Hall,

we had

all

all

said:

the physicists

wanted Germany

I

am

discussion

thankful

now

had intended

a fact that

agonized by

scientist, already

of the bomb,

we

nobody contradicted him -

scientists

Farm

was because

it

war we would have succeeded.'

responsibility for the creation

The

at

we

Hahn, the veteran

that

the Lesart,

it

not

make

a

bomb

It

at this

returned to the question to

we were

said flatly:

didn't succeed.'

at least,

his sense

was

of

don't

'I

significant

juncture.

as to

whether the

or not. Weizsacker

said: 'It

convinced that the thing could not be

all

completed during the war.' 'Well that

I

that's

not quite

uranium engine but and

at

the

I

never thought that

bottom of my heart

engine [reactor] and not a

was

I

bomb,

I

Weizsacker continued with

we ought to we must admit

think

make that

the same energy into did,

'J

really glad that

it is

it

we

as

was

Hahn

left

want

we would

'I

don't

did not succeed,

to succeed. If we

the Americans and had

Then

the room.

now because we

didn't

be an

to

one-track self-exculpation:

excuses

quite certain that

would have smashed up

his

it

must admit.'

In the midst of these exchanges

but

would say making a we would make a bomb

objected Heisenberg.

right,'

was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our

wanted

had put

it

not have succeeded

as

they

as

they

the factories.'

Eventually Heisenberg

said:

'I

think

we

ought to avoid squab-

Farm Hall

399

bling amongst ourselves concerning a lost cause. In addition,

must not make things too

Then Wirtz plunged

difficult for

with

in

a strident

inventiveness and American rashness: that the

Gemians made

Americans have used

would

dare to use

'I

comparison of German think

it

is

the discovery and didn't use

it.

must say

I

we

Hahn.'

I

characteristic

it,

whereas the

didn't think the Americans

it.'

As Hahn and Laue discussed the event, describing the news as a tremendous achievement without parallel in world history, Gerlach,

who

as

we

have seen was in charge of the nuclear programme

with Speer's backing,

and

his

left

for his

room, where the eavesdroppers,

companions, too, heard him sobbing aloud. Harteck and

Laue eventually went to comfort him. Gerlach

moment made

a

discovery

let

this

When we will

bomb, but

thought of

get back to

be looked upon

I

us at least be the

Germany we

as

said to

the ones

said:

'I

never for

myself "If

first

to

make

Hahn

has

use of it."

will have a dreadful time.

who

a

We

have sabotaged everything.

We won't remain alive long there.' Hahn went along to see Gerlach and asked him: 'Are you thank God upset because we did not make the uranium bomb? on my bended knees that we did not make the uranium bomb. Or Later

I

are

you depressed because

we

could?'

Gerlach

the Americans could

do

it

better than

said: 'Yes.'

'Surely,' said

Hahn, 'you

are not in favour

of such an inhuman

weapon as the uranium bomb?' To which Gerlach responded, 'No. We never worked on a bomb. I didn't beHeve that it would go so quickly. But I did think that we should do everything to make the sources of energy and exploit the possibilities for the future.'

Could Gerlach have been entirely honest in this? It was not strictly true that the Germans did not have a bomb in mind during various stages of nevertheless said:

atom research planning during the war. Hahn 'I am thankful that we were not the first to drop

the uranium bomb.'

400

Hitler's Scientists

So the arguments went on, ranging over the internecine and

failures

of the

conflicts

years, including Heisenberg's predilection for

theory over experiment, and returning again and again to technical details.

Hahn and Heisenberg spoke

Later yet in the evening

They

together.

put

down

Germany

man's sorrow

to the

it

which Heisenberg

talked about Gerlach's distress,

disapproval of Nazi crimes.

was

country's defeat.

at

Germany's

defeat, despite his

Hahn responded that although he loved had hoped for

for this very reason that he

Both men, according

to the notes taken

eavesdroppers, maintained that 'they had never wanted to a

bomb and had been

alone

pleased

when

it

was decided

his

by the

work on

to concentrate

everything on the engine [reactor]'. In the notes that completed the day's report, the eavesdroppers

recorded:

Although the guests have spent

a

bed about

1:30,

most of them appear

somewhat disturbed night judging by

occasional shouts

considerable

retired to

which were heard during the

amount of coming and going along

to

the deep sighs and

night.

There was

also a

the corridors.^

commanding officer called Laue make sure that Hahn did not do any himself Laue replied that he was more worried about

Earlier that evening the British in to request that the scientists

harm

to

Gerlach,

many

who seemed to

have had

'a real

nervous breakdown, with

tears'.

The Moral High Ground

The next day the bid to seize the moral high ground continued apace, with Hahn venturing: 'If Niels Bohr helped, then must say I

he has gone

down

in

my

estimation.'

Then Weizsacker came out with moral superiority.

He

said:

and the English made

a

his

full-blown assertion of

'History will record that the Americans

bomb, and

that at the

Germans, under the Hitler regime, produced

a

same time the

workable engine.

Farm Hall

401

In other words, the peaceful development of the uranium engine

was made

in

Americans of war.'

Germany under

and

the

EngHsh developed

this

ghastly

weapon

^*^

Many

years later

Laue commented: 'during the

was developed

sation, the version [Lesart]

physicists really

that the

conver-

table

German atomic

had not wanted the atomic bomb, either because

was impossible

it

the Hitler regime, whereas the

to achieve

it

during the expected duration of the

war or because they simply did not want to have it at all'.^^ That day the internees agreed, some of them reluctantly, to draw up

a

memorandum

project.

It

outhning the nature of their nuclear research

8

August,

in

starts

by aU

present.

in

1945 with the anticipated 'building of

'result

army dated

with the discovery of fission of the atomic nucleus

uranium by Hahn and Strassmann

atus' at

in an

The memorandum,

was drafted by Heisenberg and Gerlach

exercise book, and signed

Haigerloch.

of pure

practical uses'.

The

scientists

BerUn a

in 1938,

power-producing appar-

noted that nuclear

scientific research,

fission

which had nothing

The memorandum

and ends in

to

was the

do with

states that the realization that a

become feasible, and conseof nuclear energies, dawned 'almost simul-

chain reaction of atomic nuclei had

quently the exploitation

taneously in various countries'.

The document war

a

goes on to claim that

'at

the beginning of the

group of research workers was formed with instructions to

investigate the practical apphcation

showed by 1941

that

it

of these energies'. Their work

would be

'possible to use the nuclear

energies for the production of heat and thereby to drive machinery'. It

did not appear feasible

at

the time 'to produce a

bomb

with

the technical possibiUties available in Germany'. Their research

required not only uranium but also heavy water; however, pro-

duction of heavy water was stopped by Allied attacks on the plant at it,

Norsk Hydro. By the end of the war, as the memorandum puts experiments were in hand to try to obviate the use of heavy

water by the concentration of the rare isotope U-235.

Quite apart from the neglect of Lise Meitner's part in discovery,

the

document

represents

the

first

attempt

fission

at

self-

402

Hitler's Scientists

exculpation by the tion. In the

with the

German physicists intended for pubHc consump-

event the document was not pubHshed, but

accords

it

of the campaign conducted by some of them in

spirit

subsequent years. Ironically, the very

fact

of their detention pro-

vided the opportunity for them to agree on the story they would tell

countrymen and the world. Absent from the

to their fellow

document, moreover,

push forward uranium research with the aim to

for funding to

create

Paul Harteck's approach to Bernhard Rust

is

weapons of mass

report in 1940

destruction. Absent too

on the neptunium path

to a

is

Wiezsacker's

bomb, and Houtermans's

speculations about plutonium. Absent too was the theoretical

research

on graphite

as a

moderator.

Heisenherg's lecture

Between

8

and 22 August the detainees' discussion turned

whether they would be prepared to cooperate with the issue

in

of great

how

They agreed referred to as

them from

common

between

their

auspices.

that the British

and Americans,

the 'Anglo-Saxons',

whom

they often

would do everything

to

keep

the Russians. Weizsacker continued to^ express his

bomb; and while admitting

'antipathy' for the

in

its

an

of significance too

interest to their captors; an issue

these scientists regarded the relationship

future research and

Allies,

to

that

he had

'a

lot

with the Anglo-Saxons', professed to despise their

governments. Heisenberg said that 'each of us must be very careful to see that he gets into a proper position'. Weizsacker told Heisen-

berg: 'If you are in

Germany,

continuation of physics in

seemed

to reveal a

former age,

whole

a great deal

Germany

throw-back

of the responsibility for the

will

to the

be yours.' The comment mindset of

scientists in a

when the great Herr Professor was responsible

discipline: a

for the

system that was not to survive.

Following several days of discussions about the technical aspects of the building of an atomic bomb, Heisenberg was eventually asked by his companions to give a lecture on the subject; place

on 14 August.

^^

But despite

a

week of

it

took

reading newspaper

Farm Hall accounts and broadcasts, is

clear that

between

well

as

403

thinking about the problem,

as

it

Heisenberg had not understood the key difference

a reactor

and

a

bomb. 'Nearly everything Heisenberg

in this lecture,' writes Jeremy Bernstein,

who

is

both

says

a historian

of

the period and a former practising physicist in this area of atomic

and the comments of his colleagues

physics, 'misses essential points, '^^

are worse.

Bernstein's assessment, in the light of the is

Farm Hall

transcripts,

important, for there have been assertions to the contrary

Germans

— by

the

themselves, by Jungk in Brighter than a Thousand Suns, and

notably by

Thomas Powers

book

in his

Heisenberg' s War.

Powers

writes in his biography of Heisenberg: 'The general discussion

prompted by Heisenberg's of the

scientists really

lecture

.

.

understood

.

made

bomb

physics

Harteck, von Wiezsacker and Wirtz - while dently hearing

much

that

of the implications of

knew how -

to build a

was new

this

clear that only

it

some

— Heisenberg, were evi-

the others

to them.'^'* Bernstein's rejection

statement

- namely,

bomb, but deprived

Heisenberg

that

knowledge

Hitler of his

vehement and exemplifies one side of the divide in the longrunning debate, contradicting the view that Heisenberg knew how is

to build a

bomb

but frustrated

The importance of the lecture

that

is

it

its

realization.'^

publication of Heisenberg's

Farm Hall

how

should enable us to determine just

close

Heisenberg was to understanding the principles and the practical

problems of making an atomic bomb. This historical

judgment, according

grasping the physics. This

is

to Bernstein,

how

is

less a

question of

and more

a

matter of

the physicist Bernstein

comba-

on Heisenberg's knowledge of the physics build an atom bomb at the time of this lecture:

tively states his verdict

necessary to

The notion 'really

that this lecture

understood

bomb

showed

physics'

Powers has any understanding at and the comments made during understood is

is

all it.

how to make a bomb

that the four scientists

so ludicrous that

mentioned

one wonders

if

of the physics contained in this lecture

Moreover, the fantasy all

that

Heisenberg

along but kept 'the secret' to himself

equally absurd. This lecture was given to

show

that the 'professors'

Hitler's Scientists

404 could figure out

how

a

bomb was

made.

It

represented the high-water

mark of their understanding.^^

Much

as

I

admire the assiduous research and the narrative

Thomas Powers, I am inclined to concur with Bernstein's as the more accurate interpretation of the physics.

skill

of

verdict

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

30.

The Farm Hall transcripts make for a strange scientific psychodrama at

the war's end: a comfortable imprisonment, prompting psycho-

logical

growing antagonisms,

interpersonal tensions and

stress,

reminiscent of Sartre's Huis Clos. Ill-assorted in background and

common the fact who had worked for common the remarkable

personality, the detainees nevertheless shared in that they

were

scientists

the Hitler regime.

They

of different

talents

also shared in

they failed to acknowledge moral responsibility for their

fact that

collusion with the Nazi regime. Apart

was

little

evidence of soul-searching

from Hahn and Laue, there

among

Gemian

the

only self-jusfication and a preoccupation with

Germany.

survive and thrive in a post-war

how

things

which

are

Some of the Farm

unique in the world

'The

.

.

.' .

.

.

news

took Laue to acknowledge that

it

and loathing of the Hitler regime

fear

- 'we have

Hall detainees reacted with shock after

of the Hiroshima bomb, but

was

they would

A rare shred of articulated

recognition of the evil of Nazism was Wirtz's remark

done

physicists,

it

bomb:

that led to the

emigres' passionate hatred of Hitler was the thing that set

he remarked in

As we have

it all

in motion,'

seen,

even Bagge, one of the two card-carrying Nazis, managed

duck

responsibility for his Party

a letter to his son.'

membership by blaming

it

on

to his

mother.

Looking

to the future,

era, the scientists

and

their scientific fates in the

were inclined

to

draw an

post-war

implicit moral equival-

ence between Anglo-American democracy and the Soviet Union, making it clear that the crucial consideration was not which of the

two power blocks represented scientific activities

might

a free

flourish

with

two power blocks would lend them programmes.

'If

we

find

we

and good

society,

integrity,

status

where

their

but which of the

and fund

their research

are only able to eke out a

meagre

4o6

Hitler's Scientists

existence under the Anglo-Saxons, whereas the Russians offer us a

job for say 50,000 roubles, what then?' asked Weizsacker, rhetoric-

On

ally.

one occasion Heisenberg

"No, we

.

.

said to

go back to Germany

am

we

are so pleased

be allowed to remain on the English side."

Heisenberg

Hahn:

'I

say:

and

'^

don't want to do petty physics

do any proper physics and

I

again, naturally they, too, will realize that

I

If the final decision

.

'Can they expect us to

will refuse the 50,000 roubles as

grateful to Later,

said:

is

that

I

can't

then going to consider doing physics with the Russians

after

all.'

Heisenberg, the Final Verdict

So what

we

are

the brilliant

to

make, fmally, of Werner Heisenberg? Was he

who

hero

he an incompetent physicist

had he

known how? Or

who would have made

He was

not

the period in

an atom

bomb

does he remain for ever the enigma of

Michael Frayn's Copenhagen? know^ about him for

bomb? Or was

deprived Hitler of the atom

we

worth recapitulating what

It is

certain.

Nazi; he disdained to join the Party even during

a

which

it

looked

as if

Germany had won

had many reasons to despise the Nazis, not

least his

He

the war.

persecution by

Stark and Lenard and the investigation of his hfe by*the SS; he

expressed his loathing of the Nazis and their regime to his wife on various occasions. a great

to

love of

He was

German

Germany was

nevertheless a patriot, a nationalist, with

culture, landscape, music. His attachment

neither crudely bucolic nor based

history of Teutonic mythologies.

and

He

his desire to protect his subject

of physicists for

There under loved

is

a

loved

on

the pseudo-

his discipline, physics,

and bring on

a

new

generation

Germany beyond Nazism seems genuine.

no evidence

he was anti-Semitic.

that

He

had studied

Max Born at Gottingen, and everything indicates him. When he won the Nobel prize for physics for

prize he

that

he

1932, a

was convinced Born should have shared, he travelled into

Switzerland in order to send

a letter to

they had not been cited together.

Born expressing sorrow

Among

his close colleagues

that

and

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

friends

he numbered Einstein, Wolfgang

and above

Bohr -

Niels

all

of whom

all

He was a great physicist, one

mathematically.

distracted leadership

was

of progress. But there

flaw

a

was,

it

we

as

have

no evidence

is

that

much

What we know war

aims.

last

to Albert

entire war.

Nor

is

a

on the

long and was even bold

that

he supported

minor mitigating

factor in that

as

is

opposed

illegality

and Poland, despite

flag in places

his certain

to the

and the

did he have the slightest scruple,

about flying the Nazi

lack

Speer of all people.

he defended only the war with Russia, the West, he did not reflect

its

he aspired to lead in order

however,

for certain too,

While there

major factor in

bomb. Like many people, he was

convinced that the war could not to suggest as

fragmented and

his half-hearted,

almost certainly a

to deprive Hitler of the atomic

Hitler's

had

He was clearly the wrong person to direct the Nazi

bomb programme and

enough

Peieris

had Jewish ancestry.

lack of aptitude for experiment, and he could be careless

seen, his

atomic

Rudolph

Pauli,

of the greatest theoretical physicists

If his science

of the twentieth century.

407

war with

brutality

as

we

of the

have seen,

Hke Denmark, the Netherlands

knowledge of the

atrocities

commit-

ted in these places. Finally, at Lesart, the

Farm

Hall,

he evidently sided with Weizsacker in the

version aimed

under Hitler

as

at

presenting their stewardship of physics

not simply apolitical, but noble.

to portray himself as a hero, but for having

worked

for

He

did not attempt

he never expressed openly

Hider and contributing

to the

a regret

morale of

Nazism.

The worst that

that can

be said of Heisenberg,

he was morally and

politically obtuse.

of academia in which the great professor 'irresponsible purity', ation', as

I

am

Born

convinced,

is

into a tradition

exists in

an ambit of

he had that 'inexcusable habit of combin-

Thomas Mann put

it

in

Dr

The most damaging was its power to give

Faustus.

aspect of this fellow travelling under Hitler

the regime credibility and status in the eyes of the fence-sitters and the undecided, and especially the young.

Heisenberg ever regretted that

he

falsified his

his

wartime

memory of it.

There role,

is

no evidence

that

and every evidence

4o8

Hitler's Scientists

The

of

falsification

memory

in the post-war era has driven

mostly in North America, to continue to examine and

historians,

Mark Walker community and most of its members

explore the significance of science under Hitler. As puts

German

the

it,

entered into financial

scientific

Faustian pact with National Socialism, trading

'a

and material support,

official

recognition, and the illusion

of professional independence for conscious or unconscious support of National Socialist policies culminating in war, the rape ofEurope,

and genocide'.^

It

needs to be added, moreover, that few areas

of science under the Third Reich were free of

employment of slave

taint

from the

labour.

Walker's perspective

is

based on the distinction that should be

made between scientists who embraced National Socialism with enthusiasm — the likes of Lenard and Stark — and those who simply stayed in

of

Germany, working within

science, remaining,

on the

face

morally and politically aloof from Nazism, while arguing

it,

that science

is

an

apolitical, neutral pursuit.

This distinction was

routinely maintained by historians and journalists, with a measure

of plausibility, during an era in which the main task was to identify the villains, and the obvious heroes, while leaving the rest

fellow travellers this

—

in a

kind of untouchable taboo

background, moreover,

likes

it

was

all

While Heisenberg and Hahn were not Stark, persistent

the

Against

too easy to characterize the

of Heisenberg and Hahn, not merely

Lenard and

status.

—

as neutral,

hut

villains in the

as

heroes.

mould of

and pernicious myths have been con-

structed maintaining that they resisted Hitler by 'sabotaging' the

bomb programme. The origins

fullest

extent of the

exposed in the Fami Hall

is

myth-making

at its

tapes, for close attention to

these conversations reveals the extent of their readiness to engage

not only in

false

over the nuclear in the

United

The

status

virtually in

scientists

(many of them expelled from Germany)

States.

of fellow

travellers in the

Nazi regime acquires

unique distinctiveness in relation to Germany's

view of the

this

exculpations but in claims of moral superiority

view

it

is

familiar appeal to value-free science.

possible to

a

scientists

According

to

do good science under any employer.

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

patron, regime or auspices.

And yet,

409

precisely within this claim

it is

for apolitical, value-neutral, untouchable, 'taboo' status that the

fellow traveller stands revealed, in Professor Walker's words,

more dangerous than

'often far

as

either Hitler's true believers or his

bitter opponents'. It

was the exceptions, few and

far

mathematician,

not bear to

who

live,'

left

who

between,

nature of true courage and integrity. Take

revealed the

Hermann Weyl,

Gottingen for the United

States.

'I

the

could

demon who had

he wrote, 'under the rule of that

dishonoured the name of Germany, and although the wrench

was hard and the mental agony breakdown,

But was

I

The

integrity in opposition to the

outstanding example

is

when he referred to

his

Often, day, ...

I

how

his life

changed

he wrote:

I

asked myself if they were

As often .

.

as .

persecuted in

I

could

On my

I

car into

But

all a

I

of the previous

dream. Unfortunately they were

took

Czech

real

man who thought

I

he was being

had to happen with

declared publicly.^

moreover, of the moving example of

Professor Heinrich Wieland, the

a

territory. All this

my feelings

Freise has written,

known. Wieland won

terrible events

helped those affected, for example with timely

one occasion

the utmost secrecy.

Gerda

Laue, whose form

Galileo as a thinly disguised cover to talk

when awoke and remembered the

warnings

as a scientist

speech in Wiirzburg in

about the oppression of Einstein. Describing in 1933,

my feet.'"*

regime without being

Max von

of quiet passive resistance started with 1933,

suffered a severe

Germany working

possible to remain in

it

I

shook the dust of the Fatherland from

and retain one's arrested?

so cruel that

whose courage

Nobel

is

perhaps

less

well

work in organic of chemistry at Munich in

prize in 1928 for

chemistry, and succeeded to the chair

succession to Liebig, Baeyer and Willstatter.^ Wieland organized his

departments so

as to

ensure that he employed

students as demonstrators and arranged for studies unofficially

when

them

many to

half-Jewish

complete their

they were forbidden grants and places.

His laboratory was nicknamed the 'ghetto room'.

4IO

Hitler's Scientists

He

refused to use the Hitler greeting

reprimanded Nazi students

who were

—

'Heil Hitler'

— and

threatening to denounce a

fellow student for fraternizing with a half-Jewish student called

Hans Konrad

Liepelt. In 1943 Liepelt

other students for collecting for possession

trial

for

illegal radio.

to help the arrested students, visiting their

and providing lawyers. In the autumn of 1944 Liepelt faced

and Wieland appeared for the defence. Liepelt was nevertheless

found guilty and executed on 29 January 1945. Freise, who was a student of Wieland's, concedes scientists

role

six

needy Jewish students and

of treasonous reading matter and an

Wieland attempted families

money

was arrested along with

who were

most

that

not Nazi supporters managed to adopt

a

dual

of 'autonomy' and 'adaptation', whereby they kept within the

bounds of state law and focused on the purity and their research,

which they deemed

that they acquiesced in the face writes,

was one of those

outside and

a

higher good.

of the

objectivity of

The

political drift. ^

inference

is

Wieland, she

who refused to see his science as an activity

beyond the

political circumstances in

which he was

obliged to live and work. His notion of 'autonomy' involved the social context

of his work and

academic institution

his loyalty to the

was not absolute. Wieland was a resistance worker, but he was fortunate to have engaged in non-cooperation publicly with impunity.

His Nobel award probably helped, but he had

and he was an exception in

that

still

he got away with

coyrted danger

it.

Lise Meitner's Letter

There was another kind of important exception: the

scientist

who

served the Hitler regime and later gained insight, culminating in

remorse and

self-criticism.

One

of the most eloquent

scientist as fellow traveller in the

critics

of the

Third Reich was Lise Meitner,

whose arguments are all the more telling as she includes herself in her vehement condemnation of those who worked under Hitler. In June 1945, a month in which the truth about the concentration camps was published and broadcast

in Britain,

Meitner poured out

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

her heart in

Hahn, her old

a letter to

him, but the

spirit

of the

was

letter

411

collaborator. to

It

did not reach

be repeated in subsequent

correspondence. Towards the end of this long and powerful

what she had heard

she wrote that

letter

'of the uncontained horrors in

the concentration camps exceeds everything that one had feared'.^

on

After she had heard

the

BBC

'a

very factual report from the

and Americans on Belsen and Buchenwald', she 'took

British

howling out loud and could not sleep the whole her

memory of seeing

state,

night'. Recalling

people arriving from the camps in

she wrote that 'Heisenberg and

many

to

a pitiful

millions with

him

should be forced to see these camps and the martyred people. His

Denmark

appearance in

in 1941

is

unforgivable.'

Portions of the rest of the letter deserve quoting in

poignant detail

one of the most important denunciations of

as

Hitler's fellow traveller scientists

You

all

worked

for

a

And you

buy

tried to offer

must write

this to

you, because so

much depends

for

and yourselves on your recognizing what you allowed and many others believe declaration that

you

that a

way

for

are conscious that

you would be

it is

too

then your criminal

late for that.

men and

war — and

They

say that

children in that finally that

you

against the senseless destruction of I

write

all

this

uttered.

both Germany

to

happen

to publish an

you

let

first

.

.

.

...

1

open

But many believe

betrayed your friends,

them

stake their lives

you betrayed Germany

when the war was already quite hopeless, you yet believe me,

beings

through your passivity you have

incurred a joint responsibility for what happened that

human

murdered without any kind of protest being

to be

only a

you helped here

off your conscience

persecuted person, but millions of innocent

were allowed I

by a former member of their circle:

Nazi Germany.

passive resistance. Certainly, to

and there

their

all

did not once

itself,

on

a

because

arm yourselves

Germany. This sounds irredeemable,

to

you out of

the most honourable

friendship.

She ends with an admission of her her having

left it until

own

guilt, a

consequence of

1938 to leave Germany, having been forced

412

Hitler's Scientists

out by events rather than yourself may perhaps

recall,'

how when was

Germany

I

still

stupid, but a great

you: 'As long

in

wrong

only

as

and moral decision. 'You

a poHtical

that

we and

she wrote,

I

(and today

I

know

that

had not immediately

left)

it

was not only

I

often said to

not you have sleepless nights, things will

not be better in Germany.' But you had no sleepless nights, you did not

want

to see,

great

and

you

to help

it

was too uncomfortable.

small.

I

was

1

could give you so

me

that

later,

Meitner returned

all I

moral

fault

by staying there

not to leave

it is

sions of the ten

Germany

Farm Hall

powerful

Meitner's

Lise little

remorse,

as

science in

its

systematically ignored,

me

own

that

it

The admission

and moral preten-

Scientists

criticisms,

Hitler's

scientists

West Germany accommodated

the

Wilhelm Society and

of her

detainees.

new situation of a divided Professor Mark Walker claims that

itself to

an attempt

in 1933, since in

supported Hitlerism.'^"

I

The Post-war Fate of Hitler's

showed

is

very clear to

contrasts dramatically with the self-exculpations

Despite

many examples,

write here

to the question

remaining in Germany: 'Today

a grave

effect

to believe

all.^

Three years guilt in

beg you

nation.

^

the leadership of the Kaiser

successor, the

Max

Planck Society,

down-played or misrepresented

quential collaboration with National Socialism since the

its

'has

conse-

end of the

The Society and its institutes became a football between the victors. The Soviets tried to take it over for East Germany and put a communist in charge. The French tried to take valuable parts of it to France. The Americans considered the society as a whole war'.^^

redundant, but were willing to recognize certain of the institutes

independent

by

entities.

establishing

insisted,

its

The

as

British, however, nurtured the society

They Kaiser Wilhelm

headquarters in their zone of occupation.

however, on

a

name

Society was renamed the

change.

Max

By

1948 the

Planck Society. Hahn,

who had

Heroes, Villains atid Fellow Travellers

become

the Society's

the old name.

He

first

413

post-war president, fought hard to retain

threatened to resign and to take the organization

over to the Soviets. In the end he capitulated. In

its

effort to

appear rehabilitated and distanced from the Nazis

the society severed itself

government funded the old

with German industry and declared

ties

its

committed exclusively

to basic research.

society entirely.

The new

federal

Funding was short and the

Emergency Foundation for German Science, established after emerged once again. This act indicated, in the view

the First War,

of Mark Walker, 'an attempt to turn back the clock to the period and treat the Third Reich

widespread in Germany attempted to

set

up

funding, called the

pected of a

after the

as a

brief aberration, an attitude

Second World War'.^^ Hahn had

a centralized clearing

house for research and

'German Research Council', but

fascist taint

and

Weimar

a decentralized

it

was

sus-

system of science policy

was developed. In 1946, the year he took over the direction of the Kaiser

Wilhelm Society, the most distinguished role for a scientist in Germany, Hahn accepted the Nobel prize in Stockholm for his discovery of fission. Meitner, who had done so much to prepare for,

and elucidate, Hahn's and Strassmann's

result,

did not share

the prize.

By

the

Hahn had emerged

1950s

as

a

leading

German

spokesperson on the ethics and politics of science. In early 1954, for example, he

wrote

a

paper on the exploitation of nuclear energy

which was widely promoted Three years

later

when he and

in

Germany and around

the world.

he became an international focus of controversy

seventeen of his colleagues,

members of a

so-called

'Nuclear Physics Group', attacked Chancellor Adenauer's govern-

ment for cooperating with NATO in a scheme to stockpile nuclear weapons on West German soil. The group argued the dangers of tactical

the

nuclear weapons, pointing out that, if they were used against

Warsaw

Pact countries,

radioactive fallout.

Among

Germany would

the signatories to the denunciatory

manifesto, published in the three largest

Max

bear the brunt of the

German newspapers, were

Born, Walther Gerlach, Werner Heisenberg,

Max von

Laue,

414

Hitler's Scientists

Josef Mattach, Fritz Strassmann, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker and Karl Wirtz: several of them were former detainees of Farm Hall. initiative

of this band of ageing

successful,

was not,

scientists

Max Born;

how he,

how former

up alongside

lined themselves

and

is

in turn,

The

happened,

as it

but the importance of their collaboration

Third Reich figure like

scientists

was prepared

a

noble

to

be part

ofit."

Adenauer chose Pascual Jordan,

In an ironic twist of destiny,

the physicist

who had

equated quantum physics with National

Socialism, to argue the case of the Christian

of an expanding nuclear armament of

Democrats

NATO

in support

in Europe. Jordan

resurrected a catalogue of his old will-to-power arguments. Hahn's

group of physicists, he charged, were

ments about fundamental democratic

Born,

who

citizen'.

political

less

capable of making judg-

questions than the 'average

The incident drew a harsh broadside from Max

accused Jordan of a past that stank of compromise and

self-delusion.

Born went on

to

condemn

publicly Jordan and his

aptitude for manipulating people and their ideas to justify the

primacy of power. Born's anger was not

been brazen enough

surprising.

in 1948 to seek a reference

from

Jordan had

Max

Born,

attaching an exculpatory apologia for his conduct under Hitler.

boasted in the document that he had done

all

in his

power

He to

defend quantum physics from the attacks of Lenard ^nd Stark and

worked on the atom bomb or on rockets (which was a lie, as Peter Wegener could testify). Born simply sent by return of post a list of his friends and family members who had been killed under the Nazi regime. Heisenberg, on the congratulated himself on not having

other hand, was inclined to accept Jordan's defence. In the remaining years of his

life

Hahn continued

to

be the

dean of science in Germany. Eventually Meitner confirmed her reconciliation with

with

his at the

him when

opening

in 1959

Atomic Research. Hahn died

she symbolically joined her

of the Hahn-Meitner full

name

Institute for

of honours in July of 1968 in

Gottingen.

Werner Heisenberg, who was happy to help Pascual Jordan himself, was no less speedily embraced by West

rehabilitate

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

415

Germany in the post-war era. A year after he was released from Farm Hall he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm (soon

Max

Planck) Institute for Physics and Astrophysics

to

be renamed

at

Gottingen. In the remaining quarter century of his

life

(he died

97 1, aged seventy), he appears to have been reinstated as an honoured member of the scientific establishment both at home and

in

1

abroad.

He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in London and

was the recipient of many awards,

He

travelled the

world attending

was on the whole

prizes

and honorary doctorates.

scientific conferences,

where he

well received.

Bohr and Heisenberg, who had once formed one of the most famous friendships in physics, were never truly reconciled. Bohr steadfastly refused to discuss what had passed between them during the war. They met and were civil to each other, but the old Niels

friendship

was never rekindled. Heisenberg cut an

for the rest that

he and

of

The

his

isolated figure

John Wheeler told the story wife went out one evening in Copenhagen to a

his Hfe.

physicist

restaurant near the harbour. In the middle of their dinner a

entered and said: 'That's

sat

down

to eat alone.

Heisenberg.

Wheeler turned

man

to his wife

and

'^"^

The tension between Bohr and Heisenberg eventually flared when Robert Jungk's book, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, appeared in 1956 (1957 in English) claiming a high moral stance for Heisen-

to take this

wrote

a

number of draft letters

Bohr died that

to have believed that Jungk had been persuaded view by Heisenberg himself Bohr, as we have seen,

Bohr seems

berg.

in 1963

were

hand.

He

still

them.

without ever having rehearsed with Heisenberg

famous meeting

there

to Heisenberg, but never sent

those

in

wartime Denmark. As the years passed,

who

represented

him dead and refused to shake his Gennany as a delegate to the UNESCO cut

conferences for a European atomic research centre, and in 1955 he

was invited

to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures

and science

at

the University of St

Andrews

on philosophy

in Scotland.

Heisenberg's colleague, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, the

author of the Lesart that promoted the moral superiority of the

Nazi

bomb

physicists,

became head of the

theoretical section of

4i6

Hitler's Scientists

Heisenberg's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Gottingen in 1946. In

1957 he was appointed professor of philosophy

Hamburg; aged

Max

fifty-eight in 1970,

at

the University of

he was appointed head of the

Planck Institute of Research into the Conditions of Life in

the Scientific-technical

World

He

in Starnberg.

has continued to

give interviews and to write, providing a sanitized account of the

bomb

Nazi atom

effort.

He

continues to deny that scientists under

Hitler ever intended building a

bomb.

Germany times more

In an interview in

March 1996 he said that the Americans spent 1,000 on their atom bomb than the Germans. Germany, he declared, would not have spent such vast resources on something of such in

uncertain value. '^ In contrast the exponents o£ Deutsche Physik ended their days in disgrace.

Johannes Stark was put on

war (Heisenberg July 1947

as a

trial as a

testifying against him).

Nazi

He

was found

guilty in

'major offender' and sentenced to four years' hard

labour, although the sentence was later suspended.

on

the end of the

at

his estate in Bavaria. Philipp

He died in

1957

Lenard, on the other hand, had

reached the age of eighty-three by the war's end, and had long

withdrawn from active participation in Nazi ties

were keen

to try

him

activities.

for responsibility for

Nazi crimes, but an

appeal by the acting rector of Heidelberg University

hook.

He

The authori-

let

died in 1947.

him

off the

^

Erich Bagge, the youngest of the Farm Hall detainees, joined

Heisenberg in Gottingen before moving on to

Hamburg.

development of the

He

first

German nuclear-powered

who

ship, the Otto

had been thrown into

depression following the news of the Hiroshima

bomb

Munich, where he had once held

He

a

Farm Bonn. In at

Germany and to a chair in physics in moved on to the Ludwig Maximilian University

Hall, returned to

rector.

assisted in the

died in 1996.

Walther Gerlach, the individual

1948 he

at

promotion of nuclear energy

maritime construction in Hamburg-Geestacht and

Hahn.

of physics

In the mid-1950s he served as the technical-scientific

project leader of a study group for the in

a chair

in

a chair in physics, to serve as

died in 1979. Paul Harteck, the physical chemist

who

Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

had alerted German

weapon United

reading JoHot-Curie's

after

biophysics

at

Hamburg

States,

Institute in

Army Ordnance

Troy,

to the possibihty article in Nature,

after the war. In 195

where he became

New York,

417

1

of a nuclear

moved

into

he emigrated to the

a professor in the

Polytechnic

until his retirement in 1974.

He

died

in 1985.

Max von Laue helped to re-estabHsh the German Physical Society in his long retirement (he died in a road accident in

and assumed,

German culture, when Germany was a respected

i960), an important role in the normahzation of

providing a hnk with an earHer era

Mecca of world science. The end of the war saw the great Max Planck aged and exhausted.

No

stranger to tragedy (his elder son

was

killed in the trenches in

19 16, and his twin daughters died in childbirth), his younger son

Erwin was murdered by the Nazis in 1945 for his alleged part plot against Hitler. Towards the end of the war he was caught

bombing

raid

on

Kassel and

in a in a

buried for hours in a shelter. Finally

home and Hbrary were destroyed in an Allied bombing raid on BerHn. He fled from the Russians, hiding out in woods until he was rescued by the Americans. He spent the two remaining years his

of

his hfe

hving with

his

grand-niece in Gottingen, where he

died in 1947. His grave there

is

marked by

a simple rectangular

tombstone with the equation denoting the constant in nature which carries his

Among suffered

name. other scientists in related disciplines, Konrad Lorenz

no repercussions

for his

work during

the war.

He was

captured by the Russians and practised medicine for four years

while in detention.

He

returned to Austria in 1949 and founded

the Institute for Comparative Behavioural Studies (Ethology) in

Altenberg. In 1961 he was appointed director of the

the

Nobel

human and

prize for Physiology or

animal behaviour. In 1982,

years of age, he

what was

Planck

Physiology in Seewiesen near Starnberg, and in 1973

Institute for

won

Max

to

for his

when he was

work on

seventy-nine

was appointed director of the Ethology Section of

become

Academy of

Medicine

the

Sciences.

Konrad Lorenz

Among

his

Institute

of the Austrian

published books were

On

41

Hitler's Scientists

Aggression,

which argued the deterministic nature of violence, and

The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity, against unrestricted population lution.

He

a

campaigning book

growth and environmental pol-

died in 1989 aged eighty-five.

Otmar von Verschuer, who

benefited from death

ments, was similarly rehabilitated after being classed ler'

and submitting

become at at

died

as a result

of car accident

Josef Mengele was imprisoned in

but the authorities did not guilty

of After

his release

195

1

he had

Human Genetics

Ten years later he was guest of honour

the Second International Conference

Rome. He

experi-

a 'fellow travel-

By

to a denazification process.

professor and director of the Institute for

the University of Miinster.

camp

know he

on

Human

Munich

at

the end of the war,

his identity or

fled in

Genetics in

in 1969.

1949 via

what he had been

Rome

to

Buenos

Aires, then travelled

from country

He became

of Paraguay in 1959, where he continued to

live in

a citizen

anonymity

the sea in 1979.

until his death

to country in

from

South America.

a stroke while

swimming in

3

A

1

.

Scientific

Plunder

British aeronautical engineer, later a distinguished

Cambridge

how as a young RAF of 1945 to inspect summer early in the Germany officer he flew to the Reich's wind tunnel technology. As he sat with a German

academic, Professor Austyn Mair, relates

rocket engineer by the side of a river in southern Bavaria, the

A4 missile. The German engineer asked V2 exploded on a city hke London. Mair

conversation turned to the

when a remembers how the man appeared to

what

it

was

like

gloat as he asked the question.

him and said nothing,' says Mair. 'I was astonished by his callousness.' The incident illustrated for one young British officer the difference between the Germans and the Allies as scien'I

just stared at

tists

and engineers.^

In the laboratories, workshops, foundries and testing grounds of Hitler's vulcans, the Allied armies

slavery

and sadism; they

organization and industry.

also

came upon

found discipHne, high technology,

The products, inventions and discoveries

research and development

huge

circuit

of plans,

programmes and production

facilities.

of Nazi science and technology covered

Many

the dark horrors of

a

of the designs were buried or destroyed to evade seizure;

and materials were blown up, abandoned or hidden; personnel attempted to flee or to go into hiding. Groups of American and British scientific intelligence officers were often profoundly

plants

impressed

at

production

what they found,

facilities;

sometimes,

especially in the case as in

the notions

lack of Nazi achieve-

the case, if the Allied scientific officers

had imbibed

on the

relationship

expounded

in

their countries

between democracy and science

good science

aircraft

the case of the Nazi nuclear

programme, they were contemptuous of the ment. Whatever

of

- only good

- they would have been

superiority in science and technology.

in

societies

no doubt

produce

as to

Allied

420

Hitler's Scientists

In the early 1940s, after the

and France, two outstanding of science Joseph

Merton

Needham

United

in the

of Poland, the

fall

Low

writers, the biochemist

and the sociologist Robert

in Britain

States,

Countries

and historian

argued that there was

between good science and technology and the

a

marriage

virtues of liberal

democracy. They meant that the exercise of scientific imagination flourishes in an

environment that is

and

atically sceptical

rational, free, objective,

standable in the light of events.

system-

Their comments were under-

universalist.

They were

reacting to Hitler's

onslaught on civilization throughout continental Europe.

were

also declaring that the

under democracy

are put,

by

They

products of science and technology definition, to just

and

ethical use.

The

notion was in clear reaction to the implied Faustian bargain of Nazi science: a pact

with the devil Hitler that produced

technology,

impressive

irrational goals:

The

profoundly

flawed

plain,

whereby

Overcast',

dedicated

to

bad science for bad ends.

oversimplification inherent in the

was soon made

and

flashy, initially

however, by

British

a

Needham-Merton myth

scheme known

and American

as 'Project

scientific officers (the

French and the Russians had their projects too) aimed to plunder every technological plan and product, every useful engineer and scientist to

their

The been 5

be found in the ruins of the Third Reich, whatever

depraved associations and auspices. original objective

of the race for

June 1944,

of war had

D-Day landings, on when Lieutenant-General Sir Ronald Weeks, Deputy

good or

as

is

seizure of

German

aims ... will

It

may be

Staff",

declared that

better than ours'. research, design

was 'one of the most

[it]

scientific spoils

articulated in Britain not long before the

Chief of the Imperial General

ment

«

vitally

that this

He

'German equip-

was convinced

that the

and development programmes

important of our immediate post-war is

the only form of reparation

which

be possible to exact from Germany. Everything possible to

ensure that it is exacted must be carefully planned now.'^ In 1945 the

American Secretary of Commerce, Henry A. Wallace, enunciated a parallel rationale for the technological plunder of the Nazi war machine: 'The transfer of the outstanding German

scientists to this

Scientific

Plunder

421

country for the advancement of our science and industry,' he told

Truman, 'seems wise and

President

logical. It

is

well

known

there are presently under U.S. control eminent scientists

own, would advance the

contributions, if added to our

knowledge

scientific

of

Russians, and to a

British in justifying their determination to exact reparations

form of technology by sending

in the

The

frontier

French, similarly competed with the Americans

lesser extent the

and the

for national benefit.'^

that

whose

intelligence teams into their

zones of influence. Sometimes these Allied teams trespassed on each other's zones of interest, behaving like gangsters: threats,

even resorting to

blackmail and kidnap, to obtain anything of value.

The Russians dismantled whole

factories

and transported them

along with the workers to Russia. Helped by the British, the

Americans, led by Colonel Holger Toftoy (Chief of US Ordnance

Rocket Branch), shipped and

all

to the

United

States

the spares they could lay their hands on.

Vi and V2 rockets The Americans also

grabbed an entire supersonic wind tunnel from Bavaria,

a

submarine

with an advanced propulsion system, and many different types of

aircraft

including jet prototypes and rocket planes.

transported to the Air in the

United

If the

of all at

Document Research Center

States included tons

Americans revealed

this material,

colluding with

little

at

The

loot

Wright Field

of designs. interest in the

Nazi associations

they showed even fewer qualms of conscience

German scientists guilty of employing slave labour

and other crimes. Within weeks of being rounded up mainly

in

Bavaria, about 120 researchers handpicked by von Braun himself were taken to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, and set to work on

guided missile research.

At

first

the

Germans were housed

in barrack

plentiful food, salaries,

some

They enjoyed

freedoms, such bus.

At the

indignation engineer,

as

level at

a

weekly

of ordinary

the

arrival

trip

to the

USAF

accommodation.

privileges

cinema

and limited

in a chartered

personnel, there was evident

of the Germans.

Hans Amtmann, who was

One

aeronautical

originally billeted

with

his

how he and a group of compatriots repaired a tennis court with much hard labour and ingenuity. When

family at Wright Field, relates

422

Hitler's Scientists

they started playing on

who

officers,

it,

they were thrown off by American

appeared to resent the

enjoying themselves. But by 1948, in the aircraft industry,

fact that the

still

Amtmann was

working

the proud

baker Champion automobile and had bought

where he

area,

settled his wife

a

Germans were Americans

for the

owner of a Stude-

house in the Dayton

and children.

Eventually the key team of von Braun's Germans was

Redstone Arsenal

work A4,

in earnest

as

in Huntsville,

moved

Alabama, where they were

on the Redstone

missile,

to

set to

which was an advanced

well the Jupiter and Pershing missiles. In i960 the remnants

of the original German group again to

NASA

at

were

active

transferred

in

once

where the

the Marshall Space Flight Center,

programme was

Saturn

still

development.

Michael J. Neufeld has noted

that the reconstruction

of an entire

technological system from one defeated country to the victors'

country was probably unique. Despite American doubts about state

ownership, the arsenal system of weapons development and

production was part of

a

long tradition in the United

Redstone von Braun oversaw

his

States.

At

'under-one-roof principle of

research and development of missiles, with contracting-out restric-

ted to sub-systems and mass production.

concentration

camp

What was

labour; the input of the concentration camps,

of course, had already been provided.

By March of 1946 cast,

missing was

'Project Paperclip'

«

had replaced Project Over-

providing a stronger legal basis for the long-term exploitation

of fornier enemy

scientists

and engineers and new scope to bend

President Harry Truman's rules regarding Nazi

war

criminals:

namely, that they emphatically should not be allowed into the

United

States as

bona

fide immigrants.'*

When

investigators launched a search for evidence

Mittelbau-Dora the

atrocities (the

A4 had been

Germans from States

US

had dissociated themselves from any

for the

where

facility

Toftoy protected

The Peenemiinde

war crimes

and witnesses

underground factory

in production),

scrutiny.

the

his

scientists in the

team of United

guilt for the atrocious

treatment of slave labour at Dora, pinning all blame on the SS Their .

American masters were happy

to

go along with

this exculpation.

As

Scientific

the

Cold War went

Plunder

423

into deep freeze, the reasons for amnesia about

the past required Httle rationalization. Peenemiinde was reborn in

US

Huntsville, an essential part of the

and intercontinental

aircraft missiles

some of

the

Germans

army's research on anti-

ballistic

missiles

(ICBMs);

numbers of former Nazi engineers

(the

eventually rose to 500) jokingly referred to Huntsville as Peene-

miinde South. While logical

know-how

was important, and

it

made

little

sense not to exploit the techno-

in the interests still is,

that

of the defence of the West,

we who set much store by recording

the crimes of Nazi science should recognize that there was, and is,

the blood of slave labourers

A

token of

a refusal to forget

it

on the

missiles that

still

defend the West.

occurred on the eve of the Apollo

moon-shot, when von Braun strode out of a press conference on being asked by rocket

a journalist

whether he could guarantee

that the

would not land on London.

Soviet Plunder

The

Soviet

Union behaved no

'Technology

transfer',

in the aftennath

better,

and in some ways worse.

forced and voluntary, to the Soviet

of war

is still

shrouded

Union

in mystery. Estimates for

numbers of German scientists, technicians and engineers who ended up

in the Soviet

scientists.

industries

100,000.

Those pressur-

May

and August 1945 included rocket and Large numbers of specialists in all the armament

between

ized to go

nuclear

Union range from 6,000 to

were mostly forced from

their beds

on

the night of

21-2 October 1946.^

Helmut Grottrup,

a

key figure

at

Peenemiinde, went over to the

Russians, possibly because other Peenemiinders

were accusing him

of betraying the location of Nazi rocket documents. The Russians set

him up

as

head of

a rocket research institute near the Mittel-

werke, eventually sending him to Moscow. The Russians then forced a

number of German

specialists at

gunpoint to depart for

Russia. Grottrup continued to exist in fairly comfortable

accommo-

many of his compatriots were imprisoned. The testimony of Werner Albring, one of the leading German

dation, but

424

Hitler's Scientists

experts in aerodynamics in the Third Reich, illustrates scientists

how

were

by the Russians

'recruited'

they were treated.^

An

at

the end of the

important factor in

who went

to

America were

who went

wives and children). Those told that they

was

a

would be allowed

to

Nazi

war and

his decision to

with the Russians was the promise to allow families to (scientists

how

go

stay together

also eventually

joined by

over to the Russians were

remain in Germany; but

this

lie.

Germany Albring was

After a brief period in East

transferred to

an island called Gorodomlia on the lake of SeHgersee, situated half-way between

German

scientists

Moscow and Leningrad. He was one of 150 who along with their famiHes formed a com-

model of Soviet camps designed working under enforced conditions, they hved in

munity of about 500. In for scientists

wooden

a familiar

huts surrounded

and

restaurant

by

a forest.

a general practice

There was

medical

facility.

a school, a small

The

entire island

was surrounded by barbed wire. Albring's incarceration six years.

week.

The

If they

scientists

were

late

were required

on

arrival,

to

work

lasted for

forty-eight hours a

they were fined. For relaxation

some took up gardening and painting. The girls formed a choir and there was a chamber ensemble. They attempted to fomi a debating club; but this was immedithey played handball and tennis;

ately

banned.

^

Albring was convinced by the time that he wrote

1957 (he continued to scientists in

work on

Russia played

a

it

much

his

until 1987) that the

book in German

less significant role in

science than those in the United States.

He was

rocket

convinced that the

Germans came from 'on high' rather than from real need, as a means of preventing, them from going over to the West. Work and research conditions were extremely primitive. They were equipped with nothing more than pencils and paper. pressure to engage

The tute,

island

group formed part of the 88th

which was directed by

a

Scientific Insti-

Soviet general. Grottrup,

based in

Moscow

freedom

for his compatriots but

with other German

mans remained separated from

Moscow

scientists,

who was

pleaded for more

none was forthcoming. The Ger-

their

Russian colleagues and never

Scientific

saw the

fruit

working institutes,

literature.

far

Plunder

of their labours in appHed

425

results

and

tests.

They were

from appropriate aerodynamic and thermodynamic

wind tunnels and test sites, and without contemporary The scientists were continually evaluated by their masters

in confrontational sessions; yet Albring

remained convinced

the Soviets could have done everything the

themselves; that they were talented scientists in their

He claimed the Germans contributed little

that

Gemians were doing

own

right.

or nothing to the success

of the Sputnik, but he believes that he and his colleagues contributed to anti-aircraft missiles,

speeds.

He

was

finally

thereafter refused to

which needed

to fly in tight curves at high

allowed to return to Germany in 1952, but

work on armaments technology

for the

GDR.

PART EIGHT Science from the Cold

War on

War

Terrorism

to the

32.

On

Nuclear Postures

the final day of an academic colloquium held in

2002 in

Cambridge

to discuss

November

Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen,

group of conference speakers drove out on

a

Sunday morning

a

to

Farm Hall, the former detention house of the German physicists. We were surprised to discover that the facade of the house overlooked a busy road that runs from the village of Godmanchester to the towns of St Ives and Huntingdon. Published photographs of the house have been taken most often

from the back of the premises,

giving the impression of remoteness.

The

actual circumstance

of

the house had the effect, for me, of breaking the spell of isolation that surrounds

distance

its

story,

from two

large

and of bringing Farm

American

There were Mark Walker,

Hall,

air bases, into

which

is

a short

the present.

historian of science; Paul Rose, author

of a biography of Heisenberg; Jeremy Bernstein, nuclear physicist

and

writer; Walter Gratzer, biochemist,

and author of The Under-

growth of Science; the playwright Michael Frayn; and his wife, the

author Claire Tomalin.

The current owners of the house also joined

us

-

at

Cambridge University, and

Professor Marcial Echenique, professor of art and architecture

where the

physicists

had listened

bomb on

6 August 1945,

of the ten

scientists.

have

felt

his wife.

room, with

Sitting in the panelled

The

its

deep Georgian windows,

to the

we made

news of the Hiroshima

a party

of nine, just one short

party of scientists back in 1945 might well

cramped, claustrophobic. Unlike the reception rooms on

room on the first floor had low ceilings The view towards the river Ouse and England's most expansive commons, open land free for the people, was inviting and bathed in sunshine; the room itself, however, was sunless. Remembering the presence of the scientists, in 1945, prompted

the second floor, the sitting facing north.

divided feelings.

430

Hitler's Scientists

The colloquium on

the previous day had been contentious,

punctuated by outbursts of emotion. Professor Rose had been shouted

down

for

on an overhead

showing

photograph of Werner Heisenberg

a

projector, suggesting that he looked 'brutish'.

Michael Frayn, on being accused of sympathizing with the Nazi scientists,

had responded with

polite as a razor',

'as

As

icily

English sang-froid; he had been

remarked one of the

we exchanged

participants.

about the house and our knowledge

feelings

of the circumstances of the detentions, tensions arose once again

between the academics. the

It

was

difficult,

news of the dropping of the

to avoid those questions

decades.

The

task

of

first

evoking the

of conscience that had nagged

telling the story

of Nazi

was inseparable from considering the

guilt

British

and American

moment when

atom bomb on Japan broke,

down and

scientists

ethics

and

their

politics

during the war and afterwards.

scientists,

the

of

The

subterranean theme of the conference, and its intermittent eruptions

once again, on the Anglo-American

of anger, had shed cold

light,

construction of the

nuclear

first

weapon of mass

destruction and

its

use against the Japanese.

The most familiar argument of those who justified, and continue to justify, is

first

use of nuclear

weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

that the decision shortened the

lives.

war

war and saved

countless

Another compelling argument, employed,

historian

they could not,

tators that

violence.

John Keegan,

There

to contrasting

is

as in

are defenders

kill rates:

that the

atomic

bomb warned

the past, get their

of the

act,

American

for example,

by

dic-

way through

moreover,

who

appeal

300,000 Japanese killed by atom bombs,

compared with some 50 million slaughtered during World War I by conventional means, privation, labour camps and displacements. But there

are equally familiar

opposing arguments to the legitim-

acy of first use: that Japan was on the brink of capitulation, that the

Americans saw the Japanese determined to use the

bomb

as

sub-human, and

to impress Stalin.

nent military leaders on the American side

that

Truman was

There were promi-

who opposed the

the bombs. General Eisenhower and General MacArthur, generals Arnold and Le

use of

air force

May, Admirals Leahy and King were

all

Nuclear Postures

against

With

first use.'

43

the vantage point of

fifty years,

moreover,

the late John Rawls, author of Theory ofJustice, argued in 1995 that

Truman

end the war without nuclear weapons

failed to

for sheer

lack of statesmanship.^

The most powerful argument focuses a

on

a

thousand

Szilard, in a petition to President

Truman

weeks before the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb, wrote

precisely about that

weighty consideration:

The development of atomic power

will provide the nations

means of destruction. The atomic bombs first

weapons crossed

with weapons

that could lead to future use

more powerful. Leo

just three

the

bombs, however,

the proposition that the use of nuclear

boundary

times

against the

step in this direction,

power which ment. Thus

will

become

and there

liberated forces of

at

sets

our disposal represent only

of their future develop-

the precedent of using these newly

nature for purposes

of destruction

may have

to bear

the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation

unimaginable

new

almost no limit to the destructive

available in the course

nation which

a

is

with

on an

scale.

Szilard's fears for the

weapons and

unlimited destructive

for proliferation

power of nuclear

were not unfounded.

The H-bomb

The physicist Freeman Dyson recounts how when he came to work at

Cornell University under Hans Bethe in 1947, he embarrassed

everybody that

at

lunch by remarking in

Eddington proved

hydrogen.''^

it's

all

impossible to

Dyson remembers

that there

innocence,

make

a

it's

bomb

lucky out of

was an awkward silence

A colleague took him aside afterwards him that a lot of work on hydrogen bombs was in progress

and the subject was changed. to inform

and

that

he was never to mention the subject again.

Dyson

reports that in those days, just

two

years

on from Hiro-

shima and Nagasaki, the Los Alamos veterans were

politically

involved in pleading for the surrender of all nuclear science under

432

Hitler's Scientists

strong international authority. Bethe,

who

'was troubled by these

questions', often discussed the morality of nuclear

weapons with

Dyson. In October 1949 Bethe was being courted by Edward Teller to join the team that was to build the hydrogen bomb, and seemed

make up his mind. Teller remembers Bethe him after a meeting to say: 'You can be satisfied. I am still coming to Los Alamos.' Less than a week later, when Teller talked to him again, Bethe said that he had changed his mind. 'He did not give me an explanation,' remembered Teller.^ It was not unable

at that stage to

turning to

the

time that Bethe changed

last

In the previous year,

Robert Oppenheimer,

J.

suffering pangs of conscience over

famous confession

lished his

some

'In

sort

mind.

his

who was

of Time magazine:

in a February issue

of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no

overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have

and

this

The was

is

a

knowledge which they cannot of many of the

stated motivation

to prevent Hitler

from being

first

scientists at

with

have

bomb, only one of their number, Joseph

from the such

a

December of 1944

in

Rotblat, resigned basis

not to

authorities

tell

his

colleagues

on which

and

built was as a deterrent,

consequence the project should now be abandoned.

by the

Los Alamos

that Hitler did not

convinced that the only moral

project,

weapon could be

sin;

nuclear weapon.

a

it

was discovered

known

lose.'

When a

still

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pub-

that in

H^was obliged reasons

his

for

withdrawing. Rotblat stands out

as

an extraordinarily courageous and prin-

cipled individual, prepared to resist the pressures of the prevailing

of opinion.

tide

body dedicated weapons, and

He

to

later

became

a

co-founder of Pugwash, the

world peace and to the elimination of all nuclear

won

the

Nobel peace

prize. After

America's use of

atom bombs on Japan, scientists like Rotblat, Leo Szilard and Niels Bohr argued that nuclear knowledge should be shared with the Soviet Union; but that was a view neither Truman nor Churthe

chill ter)

of

(nor

Clement

was inclined

Stalin,

and

Attlee, Britain's post-war

to take. Fear

Labour Prime Minis-

of Hitler had been replaced with fear

in the confrontation

of the Cold

War

a

new, more

Nuclear Postures

433

arms race began. According to Rotblat,

lethal

who

learned of

the remark retrospectively, General Leslie Groves, head of the

Manhattan

Project, said privately:

main purpose of the project

By

1949,

some

is

to

six years earlier

'You

realise,

subdue the

of course, that the

Russians.'*'

than the Americans had expected,

first atom bomb. The United States had Dyson discovered in 1947, on a hydrogen bomb under the scientific leadership of Edward Teller, and eventually carried out a first test on i November 1952, vaporizing the

the Russians tested their

already

begun work,

as

Pacific island of Elugelab

with

12-megatonne

a

bomb

1,000 times

more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The Russians followed suit just nine months later, in August 1953. It was believed

at

the time that the Russians had produced a lighter

device than the American

bomb

that feasibly could

an intercontinental

ballistic missile; this

to the arms race.

According

be carried by

only lent further impetus

to other accounts, the

analyses of the radioactivity released

by the

test

American

indicated that the

explosion was caused by nuclear rather than thermonuclear fusion.^

Both for a

sides pressed on,

loo-megatonne H-bomb, despite the environmental dangers.

Given the tions

with the Russians, under Kruschev, aiming

was little

of the Cold War, and powerful convic-

ruthless politics

on both

sides

about the aggressive intent of the other, there

that individual scientists could

do

to restrain the determin-

ation of their leaders; the technology for a

known in theory at an

early stage

to step into the shoes

of those

that, as

hydrogen

and there were

who

bomb was

scientists

prepared

demurred. This did not mean

some ethicists have argued, moral and political consciousness in the lives and work of the H-bomb scientists.

had no place

The

scientists'

H-bomb

scope of influence in the development of the

can be illustrated by the contrasting careers of Edward

Teller in the United States and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet

Union, both cited Sakharov, II,

was

who

of the H-bomb'.*^

was aged twenty-four

a brilliant theoretical physicist

pure research war.

as 'fathers

He

after

working

refused to join the

in a

at

who

the end of World

munitions factory for

Communist

War

had begun to focus on

much of the

Party and twice declined

Hitler's Scientists

434

invitations to get involved in nuclear

weapons

research. In 1949,

however, he was commanded by Beria, the chief of secret police, to lead the

Russian equivalent of Los Alamos: Built

by

place in the Urals.

To

'Installation'.

punishment. In

his

slave labour,

have refused would have involved severe

weapon of mass

was

his participation

between the United

States

maintenance of the peace.

He

was elected

from atmospheric

who wanted more

precisely

The very moment of the the field and

triggers

not to

start

tell

us

what

fall-out

match

in order to

him to

to stay out

do or

how

what Sakharov now decided

explosion, the shock

which crushes the

of this

of radioactive

and quarrelled with Khrus-

scientist, telling

'Sakharov, don't try to is

effect

tests

the United States. At a public banquet

Khruschev coarsely rebuked the behave."' But that

Academy

authorities.

be carried out

tests to

number completed by

to the Soviet

of Hero of Socialist Labour; but

title

Sakharov was concerned about the

politics:

and the

of power

essential to the balance

soon opened between him and the

across the planet

the

destruction,

and the Soviet Union, and consequent

of Sciences and awarded the

chev,

situated in a secret

of the regime under which he lived and worked, he

brutality

a rift

called the

memoirs, however, Sakharov claims that despite

the terrifying nature of this

thought

was

it

was

it

grass

and

to

to do:

wave which moves along

flings itself at

th» earth ... All

an irrational and yet very strong emotional impact.

thinking of one's responsibility

of

How

at this point?'"

Sakharov continued to warn about the dangers of radioactive fall-out.

He

pleaded on behalf of dismissed colleagues

been detained and

initiated

in the Gulags;

human

more remarkable

as

he interceded for

rights campaigns. His

his salary,

subjected

him

had

political prisoners,

initiatives

were

the

all

he was constantly courting personal danger.

Cautious of throwing him in

docked

who

withdrew

jail,

the authorities vindictively

his privileges, slashed his car tyres

to constant surveillance.

When

he

won

the

and

Nobel

peace prize in 1975 he was refused permission to travel to Norway; his

second wife, Elena Bonner, received the prize and delivered

his

Nuclear Postures

43

5

acceptance lecture on his behalf. His Nobel prize nevertheless gave

him

greater

prominence and outreach

which angered and

rights,

in his

campaigns for

incited the Kremlin.

When

human

he vocifer-

ously opposed the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he was exiled

Gorky,

for seven years to

a city off limits for foreigners.

of a telephone, he continued to

on hunger

strike;

on

battle

Deprived

with the authorities by going

several occasions his minders resorted to

force-feeding him. Following Mikhail Gorbachev's

rise in

1985,

Sakharov was released from Gorky and returned to Moscow, where

he became

a

member of parliament and worked tirelessly for a and human rights until his death aged sixty-nine.

pluralist society

Edward Teller, a Hungarian of Jewish background, had begun work with Stanislav Ulam on a hydrogen bomb, known as the Super, early in the days of the Manhattan Project. Ulam, a brilliant

mathematician, did most of the calculations based on Teller's

At

Ulam found

first,

Teller's design for the

with

unfeasible, but Teller persisted

bomb

his idea

end of 1950, when President Truman ordered programme should proceed without delay. According eventually

to

Richard Rhodes,

came up with

adding refinements of

memoirs, completed Rhodes's

thesis,

a

Ulam

mathematically

even beyond the that the

Stanislav

H-bomb

Ulam who

at last feasible.^

own, accepted. In

^

Teller's

the age of ninety-two,

Teller,

recent

he repudiates

dismissing Ulam's contribution and claiming for

himself all the credit for inventing the

of

was

design that was

his

at

it

ideas.

H-bomb.

confirms the pressures, personal

Teller's criticism

rivalries

and

conflicts

within scientific communities, even over the dubious hubris of

who

created the biggest

in his all

memoirs Teller

destruction. In a footnote

addicted to exertion, a characteristic so marked that

joke ...

I

working. Teller's J.

weapon of mass

writes acidulously: 'Stan [Ulam]

should have liked to

No

know how

Stan looks

was not it

became

when he

at a is

one ever caught him red-handed.'*^

enthusiasm for making

a

hydrogen

bomb

contrasts with

Robert Oppenheimer's reluctance in the late 1940s and thereafter.

Teller took this reluctance as an indication of disloyalty to the

United

States.

He recalls Oppenheimer saying during the war: 'We

436

Hitler's Scientists

have

a real

job ahead.

No

matter what Groves demands now,

have to cooperate. But the time to

do things

and

differently

resist

coming when we

is

we

have

will

the military. '^^ Oppenheimer's

comment was by any criterion natural for a scientist looking forward when,

to the day

as a researcher,

and direction.

military pressures

He comments

'shocked'.

in his

he would be independent of

sounded wrong

military authorities

however, professed

Teller,

to

be

memoir: 'The idea of resisting our to me.' Teller later accused

Oppenheimer of plotting to undermine the H-bomb. While it is true that Oppenheimer was morally against the project, this did not amount to anything approaching treason or subversion. Testifying

at a

DC,

hearing in Washington,

in the

spring of 1954, Teller was instrumental in having Oppenheimer's security clearance withdrawn.

He

former chief for

criticized his

complaining about the 'exaggerated secrecy in connection with the

A-bomb' and reported Oppenheimer as the thermonuclear development, Teller was asked at a

it

government hearing:

Dr Oppenheimer

not believe that

if he

saying that

undertook

more openly'.^"* 'Do you or do you

'should be done

is

a

security

risk?'

Teller

responded with the remarkable weasel words that in the event destroyed Oppenheimer's reputation individual.

He

as a patriot

and

a

trustworthy

said:

number of cases I have seen Dr Oppenheimer act - 1 understood Dr Oppenheimer acted - in a way which for me was exceedingly

In a great that

hard to understand.

and

I

thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous

his actions frankly

extent

I

feel that

hands which

Many

I

I

appeared to

would

issues

me confused and complicated. To

like to see the vital interests

understand better, and therefore

trust

this

of this country in

more.'^

colleagues thereafter decided to have nothing further to

do with Oppenheimer. rose inexorably; he

Teller's reputation

became an

and responsibihties

adviser of presidents.

now

He encouraged

an expansion of the deployment of nuclear weapons and he was the originator of

known

as

SDI, the

the Star

Strategic

Wars programme.

Defence

Initiative,

popularly

Nuclear Postures

437

In 1988 Teller and Sakharov had an encounter at a meeting of

the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington,

DC.

Sakharov

used the opportunity to lanibast Teller on two occasions about the Star

Wars programme

a

as

scheme

that

would undermine the

nuclear balance and therefore offer a greater threat to peace and security. Teller has

the hydrogen

continued to defend

bomb, and

the Strategic Defence Initiative, arguing

have done so would have constituted

that not to

develop

his eagerness to

a

suppression of

knowledge. Joseph Rotblat comments on

this rationale:

'The underlying

notion that the acquisition of knowledge overrides siderations

is

unsustainable. Josef

Mengele

all

other con-

justified his "experi-

Auschwitz on the grounds that they would provide

new

knowledge. '^^ Rotblat continues, 'There are other principles

that

ments"

in

override

it,

humanitarian principles. Scientists must always

ber that they are

human

beings

first,

scientists

may sometimes

ence to ethical principles

second.

remem-

And

call for limits

adher-

on

the

pursuit of knowledge.'

Sakharov vehemently opposed atmospheric nuclear testing in

knowledge of the

the sure Teller,

in

contrast,

effects

on many thousands of people.

advocated such

tests

precisely

because

it

would advance knowledge and aid the security of the United States. Teller rationalized his position by insisting that small doses of radiation 'that

is

were not harmful:

'a

Joseph Rotblat comments,

claim,'

contradicted by the generally accepted norms

on

radiation

exposures'.'^

Teller has been judged harshly by his peer scientists

on both

sides

of the East— West divide during the Cold War, to the extent of being dubbed the

Dr

scientist

who

will

go

down

in history as 'the real

Strangelove'.

Freeman Dyson records

in his autobiography

how one

day he

returned to his house to hear someone playing Bach's Prelude

No.

8 in E-fiat

Whoever was The sound

minor on the piano.

playing

floated

up

it,

he was putting into

to us like a chorus

it

his

whole heart and

soul.

of mourning from the depths,

438 as if

Hitler's Scientists

the spirits in the underworld

sitting at the piano,

was Edward

were dancing

to a slow pavane.

There

Teller.

Dyson's verdict: T decided that no matter what the judgment of

upon this man might be, I had no cause to consider him my Edward Teller, for all his civilization, represents in his enemy. urgent insistence on ever-bigger thermonuclear bombs and ballistic history

'^*^

defence systems the apotheosis of the dark drives that impelled the

Germans to force their rocket programme and the urgent suspicions that

drove the Americans to produce the atomic bomb. The legacy

of Peenemiinde, built with the labour of the Harz mountains, the

fall

is

slaves in the tunnels

the array of ballistic missiles which, despite

of the Berlin Wall, continue to threaten the existence of the

planet.

The

legacy of the Manhattan Project

is

the atomic and

thermonuclear warheads which form the payloads of those

as

missiles.

Weapons

Tactical Nuclear

Even

of

the doctrine of massive nuclear deterrence in the form of

thermonuclear bombs of ever-larger yield dominated the thinking

on both

were urging the

and West, American

scientists in the late

1940s

military to take note of new developments.

They

sides, East

were conquering the offer nuclear shells

problem

warheads so small

and smaller

NATO

size

was not going

as to

When

missiles.

to such an extent

to reach

th^ they could

form the payload of artillery

in 1955

it

became obvious

that

goal of opposing the Soviet

its

amiies with 100 divisions, the notion of creating a battlefield deterrent with tactical nuclear

The notion was especially as

it

weapons took

enthusiastically received

was believed

that the

shape.

by

American

NATO

scientists

generals,

had stolen

the decade the Soviet

The edge did not last long. By the end of Union was also deploying tactical missiles

and the advantage was

lost.

a

march on the

Soviets.

NATO's

quantity of tactical nuclear weapons, to follow suit,

and prone

response was to increase the

which only invited the

Soviets

making the concept of deterrence ever more complex

to accidents.

The Americans continued

to develop

Nuclear Postures

439

smaller and smaller calibre guns with dual use capability, conven-

and nuclear. But the Soviets again followed

tional

The same went built at

for missiles.

The immediate

suit.

successors to the

A4

Peenemiinde were developed by both the Soviet Union

and the United

States as tactical intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

The US army Subsequent

missiles

A4

of the

built identical copies

called

were the Redstone, deployed

Hermes.

in 1958,

which

could deliver a i- or 2-megaton warhead. That was succeeded in 1962 by the Pershing, which could deliver 400-kiloton warhead over

A4 was

version of the

which

a

a 60-, a

range of 740 kilometres.

SSiA, which developed

the

200- and

The

a

Soviet

into the SS12,

carried a 500-kiloton nuclear warhead.'''

The American

war

strategic doctrine for a

against the

Warsaw

Pact in Europe was based on a willingness to substitute nuclear

weapons

of course, implied that

for conventional forces. This,

NATO had adopted a first-use strategy. When President Kennedy came

to

power, the Pentagon developed

which more or

trine,

Soviets guessing; but

would

on both been

sides in a

that

Kennedy had

in future attempt to

conventional forces.

meant

less

Had

a 'flexible response'

NATO

also

doc-

would keep

the

decided that the West

oppose the Soviet Union with credible 'battlefield' tactical

European

weapons been used

conflict, the continent

would have

entirely devastated.

In 1974 the Soviet

Union

increased

its

armoury of intemiediate-

range nuclear weapons, the SS20S, in an apparent attempt to gain

an advantage.

The SS20 system was

included three

MIRV warheads.

spread demonstrations in Europe, its

Pershings with

was deployed

across Europe.

after

move

NATO

that resulted in

wide-

responded by replacing

Ground Launched Cruise Missile system, which

a

progress, a dangerous build-up

only ceased

highly mobile and the payload

In a

A new

missile

arms race was in

of new generations of weapons

that

Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, initiating

retrenchments that would end in the

fall

of the Soviet system.

440

Hitler's Scientists

MAD along with historians, poHticians and

Scientists,

down

joined the chorus

strategists,

have

the years proclaiming that nothing

less

than the principle of mutually assured destruction has enabled the

world Bohr,

of the two world wars. Even Niels

to avoid a repetition a

man of the most

delicate conscience, asked

the United States whether the atomic

enough the

to

end the war. Here

bomb was

Richard Rhodes on

is

on

arriving in

going to be big that

theme:

'If

bomb seems brutal and scientists criminal for assisting at its birth,

consider:

would anything

less

absolute have convinced institutions

World Wars, of

capable of perpetrating the First and Second

human The proof of Rhodes's argument lies

destroying with hardware and callous privation lOO million beings, to cease and desist?'^^ in the fact that the

And

yet, so far so lucky.

media and left

world has indeed avoided

many

historians

on

The Cuban

believing that

muUed

crisis,

fortieth anniversary in

its

world war.

a third

over by the

October 2002,

was luck, rather than the prospect of

it

mutually assured destruction, that avoided a nuclear holocaust on that occasion.

We Know, although

As John Lewis Gaddis succinctly puts

'Fortunately

new

no black hole lurked

evidence confirms

The new evidence Cuba had been given

how

easily

it

in his

the other end,

at

one might

involves the fact that Soviet

Now

have.'^^

corhmanders on

discretion to use tactical nuclear missiles,

without permission from Moscow, against an invading American submarine commanders in the Atlantic were

force; that Soviet

similarly given latitude to use their initiative

weapons while out of contact with naval

An

with the use of nuclear

superiors.

even more dangerous predicament arose

the year in killing

which

a

Korean

269 passengers,

Soviet air-space. In

reported that

US

Airlines jumbo jet

sixty

Soviet missions in

had been put on

misunderstanding of the import of a

alert, a

NATO

the end of 1983,

had been shot down,

of them Americans,

November

bases

at

after straying into

NATO countries mistake due to

exercise

a

code-named

Able Archer. In the following weeks, the cumulative impact of the Star

Wars

project, the collapse

of arms-control

talks

and general

Nuclear Postures

suspicion of Reagan's

'evil

441

empire' rhetoric found the Soviet

Union

anticipating a surprise attack, with attendant readiness to pre-empt.

The

war by accident persist during an era in which the current Russian deterrent - still comprising 6,000 nuclear war-heads - decays and becomes increasingly subject to hazards of nuclear

under-funding and mismanagement, during an

era,

moreover,

which such weapons and new generations of such weapons

in

are

proliferating.

On that

June 1997, the Washington Post carried a report claiming the US government was deploying a versatile new kind of I

nuclear

ground

bomb

intended to penetrate the earth and destroy under-

These new nuclear

facilities.

capabilities

US

according to the paper, to be added to the the end of the Cold War.

It

was described

weapon known as the B61 model- 1

1

were the

as 'a slim,

gravity

first,

arsenal since 1989

and

12-foot-long

bomb'. The

bomb was

developed and deployed without pubHc or congressional debate and in contradiction to official assurances that

no new nuclear weapons

were being developed. The governinent, according to the Washington Post,

the

contended that the B61-1

1

was 'merely

a modification to

B6 1 — 7 gravity bomb'

According

to

Greg Mello, head of the Los Alamos Study Group,

an arms-control lobby group in

new bomb was

that claims for

New

its

Mexico, the danger of the

low-yield nuclear fall-out were

liable to establish rationalizations for

its

apparently threatened Libya with such

a

The

use.

bomb

US

government

over its construction

of an alleged underground chemical weapons factory. The greatest danger, however, was that the the

'delicately

forged

undermining the

embodied

in the

new weapon

international

US commitment

violated the spirit of

ban on to

nuclear

nuclear

testing',

disarmament

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

on from this early warning, the nuclear weapons whistleblower Ian Hofman, also associated with the Los Alamos Study Six years

Group,

filed

two syndicated news

stories in

February 2003.^^

The

decision has been made, according to the study group, to push for

nuclear testing of a

obtained of

a

new

class

of mini-nukes. According to minutes

meeting of federal defence executives and weapons

442

Hitler's Scientists

Pentagon on lo January 2003, the preHminary being laid to update nuclear weapons technology.

scientists at the

groundwork

Hofman

is

writes that advocates of a

new

generation of low-yield

nuclear weapons argued that the current

US

overpowered weapons designed

Cold War

smaller

state-terror

He

threats.

for the

quotes weapons

Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos

full

of

rather than physicists

at

proud of

laboratories as

developing weapons which they informally refer to

meaning the

was

arsenal

as 'dial-a-yield',

ability to control variable radiation yields.

Have scientists allowed themselves to be mere voiceless onlookers in the face least

of these developments?

York Review of Books

on

As the world's leader

in

has survived since 1945

towards

.

8 July

1

bold warning comes from

2002,

at

Weinberg argues that:

conventional weaponry,

.

.

programs or resumed nuclear

Weinberg then

have

a

reflects

weapons by new

US

new

piece of history: Britain's

a

generation of battleship that

entire fleet obsolete, enabling Britain's rivals to catch suit.

that, like

between

Britain

great

as

an equalizer between strong nations

economic and conventional

national security

spread

a naval

now arms

and Germany.' Weinberg concludes

countries or even terrorist organizations.

The

up merely

Dreadnoughts,

nuclear weapons can act

US, with

made

'Other countries,' writes Weinberg, 'could

compete with Britain by building Dreadnoughts, and race began

weapons

testing.

sombrely on

decision in 1905 to build a

by following

very strong

We cannot tell what countries may be tipped

decision to develop nuclear

a

we

taboo against the use of nuclear weapons that

interest in preserving the

its

A

one world-class physicist, Steven Weinberg. Writing in the New

is

It

like the

power, and weaker

should be clear by

now

that

not always best served by building the best weapons.

proliferation of nuclear

weapons

of nuclear power for peace,

argument.

military

has kept pace with the

reinforcing

Weinberg's

Nuclear Postures

Atoms

The

policy makers and scientists

for

443

Peace

who

harnessed nuclear

power

for

peace believed that there would be a peace dividend in cheap,

The Soviet Union built the first nuclear Ominsk near Moscow in 1954. Two years later followed suit with its Windscale power plant in Cumber-

clean, unlimited energy.

power Britain

station at

was

land. Finally, in 1957, the Shippingport reactor in Pennsylvania started up.

The economics of

power were

nuclear

inextricably

linked with the production of plutonium for atomic weapons; at the Shippingport plant, moreover,

tests

were being conducted on

the feasibility of a nuclear-powered submarine.

of nuclear power was, and continued to be,

a

The development

government-funded

operation, for the costs were prodigious and the returns uncertain.

By

the mid-1970s there

were 514 nuclear power

plants

up and

running, or under construction, throughout the world, but the

The environmental move-

expansion was about to lose impetus.

ments of the 1970s as

cast

doubt on the

safety

the problems of waste. There had been

of nuclear plants

two

as

well

accidents in the early

days of nuclear power. In September 1957 an explosion occurred at a

nuclear waste-disposal

when 70

Kyshtym in the Soviet Union, material blew up, contaminating 400

facility at

tons of radioactive

square miles of agricultural land for years.

following

month

A

resulted in a large emission

Windscale the

fire at

of radioactive

gas

and

the plant was closed.

Any power

lingering doubts about the potential hazards of nuclear plants

nuclear plant

became

a

shocking

on Three Mile

reality as a result

of a leak

at

the

Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

on 28 March 1979. Much worse was the explosion at the power Chernobyl in the Ukraine on 26 April 1986. Contamination

plant at

from the incident spread throughout the Ukraine,

Belorussia,

Poland and Scandinavia. Very large numbers of the populations of Eastern Europe have been affected through the absorption of radioactive material into the food chain.

before the

full

extent of the

damage

by the end of 1988 the accident had

is

It

may be

known.

another decade

It is

estimated that

cost the Soviet

Union some

Hitler's Scientists

444

;C^^-S billion. In addition to indifference to safety

The Chernobyl

was

a

human

error,

it

was considered

that

major cause of the accident.

accident reminded the world that nuclear

power

meant nuclear fall-out and the by-product plutonium, which could be used

in

weapons production.

In 1974 India conducted

its first

a reactor

which

had been constructed with help from Canada and the United

States.

nuclear explosion

test

with plutonium produced by

Meanwhile a queue of other nuclear power club. Through

countries was waiting to join the the spread of nuclear power,

forty countries

had the potential

Among them

were the 'threshold

to build nuclear states'

had not signed the non-proliferation Israel It

and

Iraq.

the early 1970s but

the case of Israel and Iraq.

know-how

announced

weapons by 1980.

(so-called because they

treaty): Brazil, India, Pakistan,

Of particular interest was

appears that Israel had the

some

that the

for nuclear

weapons by

components would be kept

unassembled unless another power in the Middle East prompted

them

to

change

their minds.

It

was the French (tempted by com-

mercial rather than political considerations)

Hussein to Israelis

start a

nuclear

who

enabled Saddam

power programme which led to the strike on the Iraqi reactor at Tammuz

making a pre-emptive

June 1981. North Korea's first nuclear reactor, at Yongbyou, was provided by the Soviet Union. The country built a plutonium in

Yongbyou in 1987. « There have been many reasons for nuclear physicists throughout

separation plant at

the world to ponder carefully the long-term consequences of pro-

viding their governments with nuclear weapons potential.

be an obtuse researcher

who

could argue that

responsibility in such circumstances.

scientists

would have no

It

33

Have

•

Uniquely Nazi?

science and scientists behaved better since the

Reich? Historians continue to ponder what was

fall

of the Third

distinctively

unique

medicine and technology under Hitler; whether

about science,

where Nazi science begins and ends. A unique aspect of science under Hitler was the attempt by doctors and anthropologists to supply a scientific basis for murderthere are clear margins

ous

'racial

an Aryan

hygiene'. Authentically scientific proof for the claims of racial superiority

were never found, but the regime

constructed and promoted a pseudo-scientific racist biology that led to the death camps, placing Nazi science in a sphere

all

of its

own.

Human experiments without

consent reached horrifying depths

of depravity and cruelty under the Nazis; but experimentation on groups and individuals without their consent has occurred before, during and since Nazi

During the war the Japanese ran

rule.

a

network of camps through the occupied countries of the Far East in

which teams of

researchers (notably the notorious Unit 731)

conducted experiments involving

lethal

pathogens and chemical

poisons on thousands of human guinea pigs. Slave labour was a feature of Nazi technology and industry, and

employed even by German But murderous

university departments during the war.'

slave labour

before, during and after

was

used by the Soviet Union

also

World War

II.

The

building of the

Sea-Baltic Canal with enforced Kulak labour cost 1

50,000

lives.

as

White

many

as

Links with Nazi slave labour, moreover, continued

beyond the war's end. German manufacturers

like

which had used forced labour under National

Daimler-Benz,

Socialism, started

building automobiles for the civilian market within weeks of the war's end, their machine tools

workshops. The transition to

still

usable in dispersed factory

a profitable

peacetime production.

446

Hitler's Scientists

based originally on collusion with the

Reich and the

racial

barbarism of the Third

active cruelty towards the regime's victims, explodes

myth that the German economic miracle arose from a post-Nazi

'zero-hour'.-

Even

the Nazi suicide mission tactics towards the end of the

regime have not proved exclusive to Nazi

rule.

And

the 'prone'

position required of pilots in the design of later prototypes of

German Nazi

fighter planes, taken

F-80E

by some

historians to

be

a peculiarly

were copied by the Americans in a modified Lockheed

feature,

after the war.^

Michael

J.

Neufeld, pondering what was 'specifically Nazi' in

character other than slave labour in the Nazi missile suggests that, at

first sight,

there

is

'not very much'.'*

of the military-industrial complex shared

much

programme,

The emergence

in

common

with

the Manhattan Project, including secrecy, prodigious state funding, the scaling force.

up from modest beginnings

Yet what

historical

is

to massive plant

widely neglected, he claims,

is

and work-

the unique

circumstance of the Third Reich. Without the Nazi

predicament of competing power centres combined with the dilettantism

been impossible associates to

would have modest endeavours of von Braun and his

and amateurism of Hitler and Goering, for the

have developed into the massive Peenemiinde project

without an industrial base. 'As

programme

a result,' writes

built an institution

and

a

Neuf^d,

'the rocket

weapon which made

sense, given the Reich's limited research resources

capacity

it

and

little

industrial

— a perfect symbol of the Nazi regime's pursuit of irrational

goals with rational, technocratic means.

'^

This focus on the unique historical context that attends the corruption of science under Hitler should rapidly changing social,

which science

economic and

make

us vigilant for the

political circumstances in

has been operating since 1945.

Uniquely Nazi?

Cold War

Science in the

Pondering what was

in a

Nazi in character about science

specifically

under the Third Reich

is

447

probe the ethics and politics of scientists

to

wider ambit than Gemiany:

how

the scientists of the

Western

democracies and the Soviet Union behaved towards their plines,

towards their societies and towards nature

itself

disci-

during the

Cold War.

World War

II

brought about widespread changes in the conduct

of science and technology which became permanent features in the post-war

era.

Many

of the standards of

exchange of knowledge were suspended by

freedom and

scientific all

the belligerents.

members was

reduction of scientists to the status of faceless team also a result

industrial

of the consequent growth of Big Science through

state,

and military auspices from 1940 onwards.

The most Scientific

The

dramatic alteration was in the West.

The

Office of

Research and Development under the government

sci-

ence chief Vannevar Bush commissioned more than 2,000 research

programmes

in the course

industrial research

of World

and development

War units

II.

The

projects involved

employing

tens

sands of scientists and technicians in companies such as

and General

MIT

Electric, as well as

would fund

scientists free to

Pont

major university laboratories

and Caltech. Bush, however, intended

era the state

of thou-

Du

on

science

a

grand

that in the scale,

like

post-war

while leaving

decide the direction of basic research.

Late in 1944 Vannevar

Bush was commissioned by President

Franklin Roosevelt to write a proposal about the future of science

and technology. Roosevelt died before Bush had completed the

document, so he presented President Truman with tract,

entitled Science,

proposed

a

remarkable

the Endless

new

science funding, to be run

perity

relationship

in July

He

between government and

NRF

would work

in the interests

military might, to be sure, but also for

and towards the

his visionary

of 1945.

by a body he called the National Research

Foundation (NRF). The

American

Frontier,

intellectual

and

of

economic pros-

cultural flourishing

of the

Hitler's Scientists

448

entire nation. His proposal for a barrier

military funding basic research

and

civilian control

of the choice and direction of

would prove, however,

Any complacency

between government and

a vain

hope.

about the freedom of science in the West in

the post-war era must be qualified, therefore, by the overwhelming

and combined power of industry and the military States, a

in the

United

combined hegemony over science that The growth of Big Science was

was barely ques-

tioned through the 1950s.

also

evident in the smaller developed countries like Britain and France.

Government funding Britain, for example,

for research

and development expanded

During

'^

period the predicament of science in the United

this

came

States

R and D expenditure

from 44 per cent of total

in the 1930s to 57 per cent in the 1960s.

in

to resemble the state grip

on

science in authoritarian

came under surveillance, never more evident than McCarthyite communist witch-hunt trials, when many

regimes. Science in the

distinguished figures

were deprived of funding and driven

into

exile.

In

1

96 1 the retiring President

D wight D.

Eisenhower made

famous

his

and went on to warn

'industrial-mihtary complex' speech

that:

this

conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms

industry

is

economic,

new

in the

political,

American experience. The

even

spiritual

-

is

felt in

house, every office of the Federal government

comprehend

Other

its

critics

every .

.

.

total influence city,

-

every State

we must

not

fail

to

grave implications.

would extend

the combination to the 'university-

industrial-military complex'.

The

results

of the wartime synergy of the miUtary and science

were by no means

deleterious in every case. Particle physics, astro-

astronomy and space exploration benefited from the research done at Los Alamos, as well as the rocket developments that were heir to Peenemiinde. Many might feel, however, that

physics,

Uniquely Nazi?

the vast sums of money spent physics might have been

Work on

449

on space programmes and Big Science

better spent elsewhere.

molecular biology in the United States and Britain

benefited from the field of biophysics and flourished

knowledge and

expertise gained in wartime.

radio, radar, the electron microscope, supersonic

of

and vacuum tech-

chemotherapy contributed to the expanding

niques, electronics and field

as a result

Work on radioactivity^

of biology for medicine.

Yet not every endeavour

in the field

of biology for medicine

turned out to be irreproachable, despite the reaction in the democracies to the

in the

medical crimes of the Nazis. Several prominent cases

United

invoked

at

the

States reveal the extent to

Nuremberg

doctors'

trial

which the

standards

were violated from the

The

very outset by denizens of the country of the code's authors.

Tuskegee

Syphilis

Experiment involved

Afro-Americans suffering from

syphilis

a decision

not to

treat

400

between 1932 and 1972

in

order to detennine the course of the disease.^ Between 1950 and

1969 the United States government carried out

a

range of

tests

involving chemical and biological agents, radioactive materials

and drugs on unsuspecting

or subjects with very

civilians,

little

— people in the military, prison inmates, mental — patients involving chemical and biological agents.^ Other scandals political clout

involved the exposure of people to at

the

radiation.'' In the

Hanford Nuclear Reservation

taminated a quantities

district

in

1960s scientists

Washington

state

con-

of some 8,000 square miles by releasing

of radioactive substances into the atmosphere to

assist

the military in assessing contamination from Soviet plutonium factories. ^° In a series

the 1950s

of nuclear

tests

conducted by Britain during

on Australian islands and the Australian mainland, military

personnel were deliberately exposed to the effects

blasts to establish the

of radiation. In the Soviet Union, German,

Italian

and

Spanish prisoners of war, along with officers of the Vlassov

army, incarcerated on Wrangel Island, were being subjected to

experiments

on

the

as late as

1962 to determine the

human body. Other

effects

of radiation

experiments involved 'the

effects

of

Hitler's Scientists

450

prolonged submersion

national reported 'torture' as a political prisoners

1975 Amnesty Inter-

at great depths'. ^^ In

component of

the treatment of

detained in Soviet psychiatric hospitals for inde-

terminate periods. ^^ Parallel

with the issue of non-consent to dangerous

experiments was the

human

of industries in the democratic West to

failure

inform the general public, workers and consumers of the dangers

of toxic contaminants in

a

wide range of waste materials and

products. Rachel Carson revealed the dangers of pesticides in her

book

and Ralph Nader exposed the

Silent Spring (1962),

priorities

of profit over safety in the motor industry. Authors Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner have

The Deadly

Politics

shown

in their

book

of Industrial Pollution (2002)

Deceit and Denial:

how

the lead and

vinyl industries did not merely withhold or suppress information

but sought to mislead the public by issuing reassuring propaganda, containing manipulated scientific research, claiming that dangerous

products were beneficial. Less than a year after the reunification of East and it

was revealed

been using men,

that East

women

German

scientists

and children

as

West Germany,

and physicians had

human

guinea pigs in a

programme intended to perfect hormone drugs in an effort to develop compounds that would boost the performance of East German athletes.'^ It appears that;^the research was conducted on children without their consent (or that of their state-sponsored research

parents)

and

that athletes

were pemianently

injured.

Information Revolution

Meanwhile the wheel of science and technology turn, giving rise to novel forms scientists.

The

of ethical and

has continued to

political pressures

on

innovations in telecommunications and computer

technology from the 1960s had inevitable and far-reaching conse-

quences for the providers

The

as

well

as

the recipients.

deregulation of broadcast media and telephone systems,

against the

background of

satellite

technology and coaxial and

Uniquely Nazi?

saw

fibre-optic cables,

a

45

growing challenge

to national broadcast

systems from commercial media companies. The

military

had led

way with satellite technology, but civilian application was not far behind. The new technology of communications was leading to a shrinking world - the global village. At the same time, cheap the

and extensively improved communications were meeting the needs of information transmission, expanded by the power, capacity and speed of modern computers.

The

microprocessing saw

a shift

from technology dominated by the

military to the enthusiasm of a

The of

development of

proliferation of chip technology in the

transition to mass

IBM

market led by

civilian

consumers.

consumerism involved the determination

to enter the market.

IBM's

project involved the con-

tracting-out of software operating systems to Microsoft, a small

company founded by computer and

of which more than half were in the small business

home market

sector.'"*

The information was

Gates and Paul Allen in Seattle. In 1978

revenues were $10 billion; by 1984 they had risen

sales

to $22 billion,

Bill

interaction,

revolution had arrived;

which emerged from

its

next quantum leap

a project to link the partici-

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) throughout North America. Lawrence G. Roberts devised a 'packet switching' system which broke up pating computers of the Pentagon's

messages for transmission by the best available routing, to be reassembled

at

the

other end.

This system of computer-to-

computer networks spread through government and businesses, and by 1983

versities

ARPA

institutions, uni-

designed a system

through the same 'packet switching' for interaction between the

As the market

for

communications came

to

different existing networks.

Net,

as interactive

meant viduals,

Net

PCs

be known. The Net

e-mail (electronic mail), enabling vast

homes and

also

businesses to

meant, in time,

a

communicate

vast

grew, so did the

numbers of

indi-

interactively.

The

and ever-growing source of

information of every kind, uncontrolled, unrefereed and mostly free.

A means of ordering this mass of information was provided by

452

Hitler's Scientists

the

World Wide Web, which developed out of a system

by

Tim

Berners-Lee

CERN,

for

the

international

created physics

laboratory in Geneva.

The advent of the computer had from and engineers

scientists

earliest

days enabled

in every discipline to create sophisticated

models, to number-crunch and analyse

modelling receptor

its

sites in cells, to

at

ever greater speeds.

building

From

artificial intelligence

architectures, to calculating the behaviour of Black

Holes and

entire universes, the advent of small, powerful and relatively cheap

computers was speeding up the

With

ledge and discovery.

rate

of generation of know-

the advent of e-mail, scientists began

creating research groups without

frontiers, ideological, national or

geographical.

IT, Publishing and Biotechnology

During an

era in

which computer technology was transforming

the ease of collaboration and exchange of information scientists,

economic and

imposing market sciences, along

criteria

with

political

on

between

developments in the West were

the world of academia.

other disciplines in universities,

The

natural

were being

forced to adapt to a culture of accountability and assessment accord-

ing to 'productivity' in tenns of publication.

The

proiiferation of

papers and articles has not necessarily increased the quality of

published work:

it

has certainly led to information overload. At the

same time, academic of subsidies,

Many

States, Britain,

learned monographs that will

which once operated on the

basis

have come under increasing pressure to be profitable

or cease pubhshing.

United

publishers,

of the great academic imprints in the

France and

Germany have

ceased to publish

in the natural sciences, preferring trade

titles

pay their way. Meanwhile, the publishers of many learned

journals have

become

increasingly commercial, while abandoning

hard copy distribution and opting to offer onhne packages to

academic

libraries at exorbitant rates: this in turn has created crises

within journal publishing, which impacts on the ever-expanding

Uniquely Nazi?

need for

scientists to

453

be published in order to justify their funding,

tenure and promotion prospects.

The

'globahzation' that resulted

nets of information technology

from the worldwide webs and

though the 1990s had

its

optimists

and its prophets of gloom, with convincing arguments on both sides.

The borderless economy in which money, technology, industry and goods move without hindrance throughout the world promises a future in

which every home,

become an

in the

'electronic cottage'.

But globalization

economic have-nots, destined

its

words of Alvin

to

Toffler, will

also has

its

losers,

be tranquillized by digitized

entertainment or to nourish hatreds that threaten to break

trivial

out in violence.

An ominous and science point

consequence of the IT revolution for academia,

especially,

fulfilled,

is

the circumstance foretold, and up to a

by the philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard in his

essay

The Postmodern Condition (1979), subtitled 'a Report on Knowsaw that the extent of the domination and pen-

ledge'. Lyotard

etration of IT

the

would be a globalized information domain in which only kinds of knowledge to survive would be those amenable

to translation (meaning cultural translatability as well translatability in

terms of information technology).

Lyotard's vision

is

best

explained by imagining a world of scientific and educational publishing similar to the Reader's Digest magazine. Articles

for publication are those suitable for translation

syndication to result

is

editorial

a

all

chosen

and editing for

the different national and language editions.

kind of highly bland product that serves

The

maximum

economy of scale.

Lyotard's insight into the repercussions of

IT forms

part of his

modern ideals: the French pursuit German Enlightenment project of free

theory of the collapse of the great

of liberty and equality; the

knowledge

now

for

all.

inseparable

Information technology in Lyotard's view

from commodity

is

capitalism, scientific research

being dependent on investment linked with improved performance

which

itself

is

dependent on technological advances. As

a result,

science ceases to celebrate the pursuit of truth and the dissemination

Hitler's Scientists

454

of

free

knowledge, and handles knowledge

a

as

commodity

traded for profit. Lyotard's dark vision of the future of science already shows

signs

of ominous realization in the realms of

biotechnology.

The period of

from

respite

which began

military priorities

in

1989 after the collapse of the Berlin WaU, with the promise of

peace dividends for medicine, agriculture and the

substantial

environment, in the form of massive funding, had not meant relaxation of political and ethical pressures

on

a

scientists. If anything,

those pressures have increased.

R and D in the medical sciences in the United States, including molecular biology, genetics, neuroscience and biochemistry,

dominated by the National Washington,

DC, whose

Institutes

is

Bethesda near

at

annual budget by 2000 reached

whose

digious $18 billion and

of Health

a

pro-

goals were, clearly, the applied

science of cures and palliatives in close collaboration with the

American pharmaceutical industry and has raised

many

its

markets. That synergy

questions about the relationship between medical

science and business.

The Human Genome

Project, costing $3 billion,

was

a

scheme

(now scaled down to 35,000) new century. Reaching for parallels

to sequence the estimated 100,000

human

genes by the turn of the

with Big Science, big budgets and space-age outreach*,some called it

'biology's equivalent of the Apollo space

human genome not

the

only promised

a

programme'. Mapping transformation of our

understanding of what makes us tick biologically, but tantalized

with the prospect of altering, for better or for worse, what humans

might become. The rhetoric proclaimed cures for some 4,000 diseases, including Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis,

cancer and cystic

fibrosis.

rewards awaiting those

But there were

who would win

also

many forms of

remarkable financial

the race to exploit the

new

knowledge commercially.

The

architects

of the project had not been insensitive to the need

Nobel laureate James Watson, the director, had insisted budget of $90 million to be spent on research into bioethics.

for control.

on

a

Yet

in 1992, just a

year into the project, signs of future ethical and

Uniquely Nazi?

political

problems began to emerge. Watson opposed the decision

NIH

of the

455

to

file

on

for patent

under the auspices of the

batch of brain genes produced

a

Watson

project.

felt

so strongly that

he

resigned.

US

In April of 1992 Bernadine Healey, director of the Institutes

known

of Health,

as

cDNA

obtained by

a

filed for patent

on nearly 3,000 gene fragments,

(complementary

DNA),

breakneck 'mechanical'

sifting

genetic information

method. The process

numbers of

enables researchers to isolate large

potentially useful

genetic fragments swiftly, before their precise function

The a

process was developed by

Dr

National

is

specified.

Craig Venter, then employed by

Washington-based federal-funded genetics laboratory. Venter's

research was applauded by

many

scientists, since

promised to

it

Watson com-

hasten the discovery of therapies for major diseases.

plained that Bernadine Healy had acted precipitately in

pioning mechanized

short-cuts;

moreover,

attempt to copyright unspecified genetic fragments

The those

issue

cham-

he described her as 'lunacy'.

^^

of patenting goes to the heart of tensions between

who see science as free,

objective, univiersalist,

and those

who

argue that science can only flourish when discoveries are patented or

copyrighted and profits from

its

success

Healey defended the patenting of

between science

as

ploughed back. Bernadine

cDNA

as

a decisive

'pro-competitive', as she put

science as 'anti-competitive'.^^ She was, of course,

'pro-competitive'

For

NIH

his part,

as

it,

choice

opposed

wedded

to

to the

^^ .

Watson's unhappiness over the brain genes and the

was not only

a reluctance to

but also stemmed from

his

have forms of nature patented,

conviction that such issues should

involve the views of scientists and not just politicians, bureaucrats

and business people.

Scientists

who

claim that science

is

apoUtical,

value-free and morally neutral might not agree with him.

In a world of academic and commercial research in

ledge

is

which know-

increasingly seen in terms of 'intellectual property rights',

organized and disseminated in the interests of efficiency and profit, the undermining of scientific freedom increases apace.

October 2001 the science weekly Nature reported

a

On

4

rebellion

Hitler's Scientists

456

throughout Europe against

on a gene

patent

a

for breast cancer held

by the American company Myriad Genetics. In by many

professionals to

a situation

claimed

be unprecedented, Myriad was

also

attempting to enforce the provision of a diagnostic service in

gene

relation to the

as

well

as

claim property rights over the genetic

information. Myriad had requested that its

labs in Salt

all test

Lake City; but scores of

samples be sent to

geneticists

diagnostic labs have continued to perform their testing.

^^

The

The Human Genome relating

time,

it

has

etics,

diagnostics

Do we animals or

Ethics of Cloning

Project

to patenting and

is

subject to continuing controversy

intellectual property rights; at the

provoked polemic over the and the

issue

humans with as a result

a

Sachs so

as to

encourage the birth of cloned

of reproductive technology? James Watson

Germany by publicly promoting

of genetic diseases such

give the

between gen-

high rate of certainty that they will suffer

ran into trouble in the late 1990s in early identification

relationship

same

of cloning.

have the right actively to

abnormalities

as Fragile

X

and Tay

to abort. He was accused who had advo^ated 'eutha-

mother the option

of lining himself up with Nazi nasia'

and dozens of

own BRCAi

of 'lives not worth

scientists

living'.

The Germans,

sensitive to the fact

Tay Sachs has a high rate in Jewish populations, had a point: who, after all, is to say when a life is not worth living? Cloning, however, puts a new slant on the same issue. The cloning experiments of I. Wilmut et al., pubHshed early that

showed that sheep embryonic eggs (ocytes) can reprogramme the nuclei of differentiated cells, enabling the cells in

1997,^^

to develop into any type.

remarkable, not

The

implications for medicine appear

least the possibility

heritable diseases

and developments

human embryos. As

of the eradication of certain in

for cloning entire

stem

human

cell

research using

beings, as opposed

to specific tissues for therapeutic reasons, questions

have been posed

Uniquely Nazi?

by

about the possible

ethicists

of the uniqueness of such

loss

human being. The problem, according to biologists, of reproducing

ity

457

is

not so

much the possibil-

The

brain and central

'identical personaHties'.

nervous system develop to

a significant

extent epigenetically (that

is,

not solely on the

in

both cloned animals and monozygotic twins. The

as

described by many specialists w^ho counsel caution,

basis

a

of genes), and hence exhibit differentiation real is

problem,

the possibil-

of introducing abnormal chromosomes. Richard Lev^ontin

ity

explains:

[In the cloning process] the nucleus containing the egg's is

removed and

the egg cell

is

fused with

the donor that already contains a

chromosomes

full

a cell

containing

nucleus from

duplicate set of chromosomes. These

are not necessarily in the resting state

divide out of synchrony with the embryonic

and missing chromosomes so

chromosomes a

that the

cells.

embryo

The

and so they may result will

be extra

be abnormal and will

will

usually, but not necessarily, die.^°

This is

why Wilmut and his colleagues produced only one successful

Dolly out of 277 safe.

What

telomeres,

it

tries.

means

In other

words the cloning process

for the cloned

embryo brought

which control the ageing process

to

in the

could be deteriorated, leading to early abnormalities. ous

still

is

offspring of such a cloned animal or it

germ

the prospect of thus affecting

human

term

donor

is

not

is

that

DNA,

More omin-

line cells in the

being. In other words,

has taken nature aeons of evolution to establish the process of

reproduction, and,

as yet,

we

are not entirely sure of the conse-

quences of interfering with germline

cells. If

better rate of success in producing cloned success with sheep,

we

what

rate

there

were

to

be

a

humans than Wilmut's

of consequent abnormalities would

consider acceptable?

The new and continuing developments

in

biotechnology have

bestowed extraordinary insights into the relationship between evolution,

the building blocks of

life

and prospects

for advances

Hitler's Scientists

458 in medicine.

The advances

dilemmas for scientists and

traditions.

But

new and

knowledge have presented new

that threaten to outstrip

historical circumstances

they did with Hitler's test in

in

rise to

power,

unforeseen ways.

our

have

ethical standards

also occurred, as

that will put scientists to the

34- Science at

On act

the

II

War Again

September 2001, the United

of mass murder, committed by

power of

was traumatized by an

States

a terrorist

group

that

had turned

science and technology against innocent civiUans

going about their everyday Hves. Within the space of several hours the Western world

became

a

far

more

vulnerable, fragile and

perilous place. Virtually every aspect of science, in the

American government, had become consequent war on

The

attacks,

weapons and a

a potential

in the

terror.

followed by anthrax terrorism,

'dirty

view of the

weapon

fears

of biological

bombs' delivered by suicide bombers, have had

profound impact on the government management of science and

technology in the United States and in other Western countries. Scientists

may be

experiencing the impact, counting the

cost, for

decades to come.

September

1 1

for science that

saw an end

to the delivery

were supposed

President George

W. Bush

to follow the

supervised the

towards intelligence, defence systems and

of pre-emptive 'mininukes'. tration

scheme

and

strikes,

The

including the

a

new

of the peace dividends fall

of the Berlin Wall.

of priorities back

shift

newly shaped doctrine

generation of low-yield

between the American adminis-

relationship

scientific research, already strained

by the President's

for a trillion-dollar ballistic missile shield

sign the international

Kyoto Protocol

DC,

his refusal to

for protecting the environ-

ment, became more tense. The National Bethesda, Washington,

and

Institutes

of Health

at

formerly an open, collegial place,

The National Science Foundation, charged with supporting pure science, came under

became ring-fenced with high

security.

pressure to scrutinize the relevance of

were being made

a

month

its

funding

targets.

Awards

after the attacks for projects that

would

460

Hitler's Scientists

study 'human, social responses' to the terrorism; even

its

much-

vaunted earher promotion of more funding for mathematics has

been rewritten

to attract grant appHcations that can

be appHed to

secret intelligence.^

Nov^

whole range of pathogens

a

uses, for

medical benefits and for

government

calls for biologists

are

deemed

to have dual

terrorist outrages.

There

are

be aware that their work can

to

be exploited to develop weapons of mass destruction. Biological

we

weapons,

have been warned, present

a serious

and growing

threat that poses similar dangers to nuclear proliferation. lation

made by

the

US

A

calcu-

Congress Office of Technology Assessment

suggests that 100 kilograms of anthrax spores spread effectively

the

wind and allowed

to drift over

right conditions, cause a Ministry

3

Washington,

DC,

George

million deaths.

on

could, in the

Poste,

who

chairs

of Defence task force on bio-terrorism in Britain, told

pharmaceuticals industry conference in

2002 that biology must

'lose its

London on

6

a

November

innocence', face up to implicit

dangers of certain kinds of biological data even in legitimate projects

more regulation of information. The sort of project Poste had in mind was the creation of so-called 'stealth' viruses that evade the immune system. A month later, the United and accept the need

States

moved

for

to block

the Biological and

new means

for verifying compliance with

Toxin Weapons Convention

lished in 1972). In

December 2001 an

(originally estab-

international conference

seeking to press for compliance broke up in disarray and without

agreement. Since then

mitment

to a

we have seen confirmation of President Bush's comnew generation of nuclear weapons, with clear indi-

cations that such

weapons

will

no longer be regarded

as

deterrence

but for pre-emptive use against nuclear and non-nuclear powers alike.

We

have entered an era in which the United

States, the

lone superpower, has assumed the role of world policeman - a circumstance that Leo Szilard prophesied for either America or Russia, whichever should

Washington

is

win the Third World War.

convinced that future

conflicts will

be conducted

Science at

War Again

461

with superior American science and technology: surveillance, information, smart bombs, smart electronics.

computer-generated imaging from with

virtual warfare

a safe

War and

will

distant

too real consequences on

all

American interventions

in Afghanistan

be waged via environment: targets.

its

The

and Iraq seemed to confirm

the view that the Pentagon can win wars without significant casualties

among

its

believe that arise.

Where

own

it

can,

military. This can only

and must, tackle perceived

will such

threats start

technology and medicine

America

in the

Doing good

now

and

finish?

threats as they

Will

all

of science,

be seen

as

either for or against

How

do

scientists retain their

war on terrorism?

integrity against this

encourage America to

background?

science at any time and in any country in the

century described in the span of this narrative has involved familiar,

time-honoured massage

ethical principles. Researchers

statistics,

who

data,

appropriate other people's discoveries or ideas

cannot be said to be 'good

scientists',

events of World

War

industrialization of science

moral or

in either a

professional sense: certainly their results are unlikely to

The

falsify

a

be any good.

the widespread inilitarization and

II,

and technology, the expansion of Big

Science, the obstacles to freedom of information, the shroud of

secrecy and the development of weapons of mass destruction under-

mined

for ever the notion of basic science driven

by individual

talent divorced from consideration of consequences and social and political auspices. The infiltration of science in the Cold War by

industry, business, the military,

government planning,

intellectual

property rights and the scramble for funding has blurred the separ-

between basic and applied research, reducing the individuality of scientists and exposing them to an array of moral and political

ation

scruples.

The tendency

has been for scientists to ignore these

scruples, as did Hitler's scientists,

'irresponsible purity'. In the

by withdrawing into

post-September

is

even

Doing good

cocoon of

11 era the scruples

have increased and the temptation to withdraw ethically

a

politically

and

greater.

science today involves a principled vigilance for

462

Hitler's Scientists

consequences, an awareness of the impact of scientific discovery on

on the environment, on

society,

nature.

The good

scientist evi-

dently does not place dangerous knowledge or techniques into the

hands of the untrustworthy.

by any means

The good scientist attempts to publicize

possible the social

and environmental consequences

of potentially dangerous knowledge.

The good scientist, moreover, ments, as

we

means

as

rejects the use

to an end. That principle

have seen in the expanding

genetics,

is

fields

of people

as instru-

increasingly complex,

of biotechnology and

where proliferation of knowledge and techniques involves

difficult ethical choices.

The

imperative

calls

for ever

be made between persons and things

distinctions to

more

subtle

in an era

of

rapidly advancing reproductive technology and potential for genetic

enhancement.

Resolving moral dilemmas in science, however, involves not merely isolated choices but

a

committed pattern of behaviour,

long-term resistance to compromise leading to feelings of

self-

respect: integrity.^

The

greatest pressures

the interface

on the

between the

integrity

Max

from

at

professional practice of science and the

demands of the fund-awarding narrative,

of scientists are exerted

patrons.

At every

stage

of

this

Haber's decision to promote poison gas to

Fritz

arm in a Nazi sali»te, to Paul made vacant by a dismissed Jew, to

Planck's decision to raise his

Harteck's acceptance of a chair

Heisenberg's decision to accept Hans Frank's hospitality in Cracow, to

Wernher von Braun's

use of slave labour,

pressures of hubris, loyalty, competition and to

compromise. In the

do

ness to

a

final analysis the

we

have seen the

dependence leading

temptation was

a

prepared-

deal with the Devil in order to continue doing

science.

The

Faustian bargains lurk within routine grant appHcations, the

pressure to publish for the sake of tenure and the department's

budget, the treatment of knowledge and discovery that can realities

today.

be owned, bought and is

inseparable

from the

sold.

as a

commodity

Handling these pressures and

difficult task

of being a good

scientist

Science at

Are these pressures less

War Again

by the auspices of a more or

largely resolved

democratic government and

a

463

view was widely promoted during the

seen, the

we have

benign constitution? As

by the

early 1940s

British biochemist and historian Joseph Needham, and by Robert

Merton, that science reaffirms the values of Western

liberal

democ-

racy—rationality, objectivity, freedom, internationalism, systematic

—

scepticism

There have been

totalitarian regimes.

ence on

this

were then under

values that

from European

threat

interesting shades of differ-

theme. While broadly agreeing with the

D.

thesis, J.

more acceptable than others. And whereas the physicist Samuel Goudsmit believed that democracy encourages good science, Merton also Bernal proved

believed that

At

soft

on Stalin,

good

as if to judge

authoritarians

science actually encourages democracy.

sight the symbiosis

first

some

between science and democracy

presents a powerful alternative to the irresponsible purity not only

found among German

scientists

of the 1920s and the Third Reich,

but widely familiar since the end of World

however,

that scientists

War

working within more or

societies are inclined to abdicate responsibility

their democratically elected

assumption first

is

governments always

The danger less

Cold War,

democratic

by assuming

know

best.

and the threat of war - whether

or, as

of information and

now,

war on terrorism —

a

free access to

technology. Should

a

is

that

That

government knows

and

political

and

expertise,

a

democracy keep

sought to demonstrate,

power, but neither do they

vacuum.

Scientists

freedom

silent

on

that the

may

exist in a moral, social

to

employ, disseminate or

withdraw. They are not obliged to work under auspices to,

not

have the power of knowledge

which they can choose

impart knowledge

are

best?

Scientists, as this narrative has

political

we

knowledge within science and

scientist in

demand, or surrender knowledge on demand, hoping

have

is,

naive in the extreme. As with truth in the media, the

casualty of war,

talking

II.

of,

or

those they distrust or believe to be rep-

rehensible.

Norbert Wiener provides us with

was approached by an American

a telling

aircraft

example. In 1947 he

corporation requesting a

Hitler's Scientists

464

technical account of his guidance research. Refusing to pass over

Wiener invoked some basic principles relating to weapons creation. 'The policy of the

the information.

scientific responsibility in

government

during and

itself

after the war,'

bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, provide scientific information

and may

is

not

he began,

made

has

clear that to

it

a necessarily

'say in the

innocent

act,

entail the gravest consequences.'^ In these circumstances,

Wiener continues,

the tradition of free exchange of scientific infor-

mation requires careful scrutiny 'when the

scientist

becomes an

of life and death'. Wiener goes on:

arbiter

The experience of the

scientists

who

have worked on the atomic

bomb

has indicated that in any investigation of this kind the scientist ends

putting unlimited powers in the hands of the people inclined to trust with their use.

information about

make

it

a

weapon

It is

weapon

the controlled missile represents the

atom bomb and

still

of our

The

it

half a century ago,

practical use

country.

produce any

whole

I

Wiener

to

be used. In that respect

will

cannot conceive

effect

when he

argues:

kill

foreign civilians

and to furnish no protection whatsoever a situation in

to civilians in

which such weapons can

other than extending the kamikaze way of fighting to

nations.

specialist

technology,

as

knowledge of the 'laws of nature' well as speciahst knowledge of the

consequences of that technology. political decisions

ledge, or,

on

by

Scientists

can affect social and

choosing not to share or advance their

the other hand, by refusing to Hmit

Witness, for example,

who

is

imperfect supplement to the

of guided missiles can only be to

Scientists possess specialist

and

least

to bacterial warfare.

indiscriminately, this

is

civilization

In a further reflection, as chillingly relevant today as

wrote

he

perfectly clear also that to disseminate

in the present state

practically certain that the

whom

by

Dr Jeffrey Wigand,

its

know-

dissemination.

the tobacco executive

decided to expose at great cost to himself the tobacco industry's

Science at

efforts to

Wigand

War Again

465

downplay knowledge of the health hazards of smoking.

said:

'I

felt

that the industry as a

whole had defrauded the

American people. And there were things

that

I

needed

felt

to

be

said.''*

Wigand's story gives the

lie

voice, as they are invariably

to the notion that scientists

mere cogs

have no

The made all the Rotblat, made no

in corporate machines.

circumstances of the communications revolution have

The

difference.

gesture of a lone hero, like

difference back in 1945, Project.

He

when he

resigned from the Manhattan

was forbidden under pain of imprisonment from com-

municating the reason for

his departure

colleagues, let alone the media.

Today

from Los Alamos have the

scientists

collaborate with like-minded, responsible practitioners,

to his

ability to

making the

widest possible use of new information technology and the media.

Can

scientists exert greater pohtical

the face of the

and

ethical responsibiHty in

overwhelming power of those

who own and control

most of science and technology? Science today by non-specialist groups of

already influenced

is

citizens operating outside

government and commercial

organizations.^

of

official

The movement can

be broadened and deepened, influencing public opinion on an array of social issues

-

health, poverty, education, criminal justice,

human rights, the environment, nutrition. The blurring of the margins between markets and academic world and government access to the

media through the

internet, create opportunities for

multi-disciplinary, non-hierarchical groups to felt.

It

is

possible for scientists

industry, the

institutions, as well as greater

and

make

their

views

non-scientists, together, to

question the impact of new developments in science, medicine and

technology, from genetically modified crops to

embryonic stem

cell

from the use of organophosphates hampers rather than

SSRI drugs, from human beings,

research to attempts to clone

in farming to patenting that

aids the application

of medical science. The

most important issue, however, remains the panoply of new generations

of weapons of mass destruction.

Nearly sixty years

after

Vannevar Bush's dream

administered funding agency, basic science

is

still

for a civilianlargely shaped

466

Hitler's Scientists

and managed by government and military patronage in the United States, the

lone superpower.

The National

Science Foundation

manages some $4 billion (of which only an estimated $2.5 billion is spent on basic science) of a federal and D budget that spends

R

annually

some $75

Pentagon.^ Even

Foundation

is

billion, half

available to the Pentagon.

prodigious and unscrutinized is

of which

is

administered by the

so, research supported by the National Science

The

power over

extremely dangerous, calling for

concentration of such

science and technology

themselves to

scientists

insist

on

an increasing critique of the direction, the choices and the bias of

new weapons. Will

scientists today, in

which they

are ever

an increasingly crisis-ridden world, in

more dependent on paymasters

to pursue their

vocations, behave like the fellow travellers under Hitler

Heisenbergs, Weizsackers and the von Brauns

from the government and the

knowledge and bringing

down

the

taking benefits

military, while claiming that as

individuals they are aloof from society that they are not in

—

—

and politics? Will they argue

any way responsible for the uses to which their

discoveries are put?

Or

will they take part in

the barriers that insulate defence research from

public scrutiny, criticism and influence?

There

is

an urgent need today for

skilled practitioners in their disciplines

developed grasp of politics and ethics,

who are not only who pos^f ss a highly

scientists

but

who are prepared to question,

probe, expose and criticize the trends of military-dominated ence.

Under Hitler,

the dissident scientist risked imprisonment and

death; but at least, in the early days of the regime,

emigrate in the hope of doing science under auspices.

Today

sci-

it

was possible to

more benign

political

the dissident does not risk imprisonment or death,

but in the globalized domains of science and technology there are

no

oases of irresponsible purity into

The

which

best defence against the prostitution

scientists to unite in small

create

and

can

retreat.

and abuse of science

is

for

large unofficial constituencies, to

communicating communities of

Rotblat's words, are

a scientist

'human beings

scientists

first

and

who,

in

Joseph

scientists second'.

These constituencies could provide the pluraHst checks and balances

Science at

that alert the

pubhc

War Again

to irresponsible exploitation

46-7

of science that poses threats not just to the American 'homeland', but to societies and peoples everywhere; to the environment, to peace, to human rights

and

to nature

itself.

Notes

Introduction: Understanding the

1

Germans

See Ulrich Schwarz, Der Spiegel (20 January 2003), pp. 82-8; andjorg Friedrich,

Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg ig40-ig45 (Munich,

2002). See also the

posthumous

essays

the Natural History of Destruction,

of the

late

W.

G. Sebald,

On

by Anthea Bell (London,

trans,

2003).

2 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], Warfare in a Fragile

World: Military Impact on the

holm, 1980), 3

Human

Environment (Stock-

p. 87.

Joseph Haberer,

and

Politics

the

Community

of Science

(New

York,

1969).

4 Geoffrey Cocks, Psychotherapy

(New 5

York, 1985),

Third Reich: Tlie Goring Institute

p. 19.

See Michael Wildt, Generation Reichssicherheitshauptamtes

6 See

in the

FIAT Review

des Unbedingten:

Das Fuhrungskorps

des

(Hamburg, 2002).

of German Science 193 9- 1946, published by

the Office of Military

Government

for

Germany

Field Agencies

Technical (Wiesbaden, 1947). 7 Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Tltousand Suns:

Atomic 8

Scientists, trans,

Thomas Bomb

A

Personal History of the

by James Cleugh (London, i960),

Powers, Heisenberg's War:

The

p. 102.

Secret History of the

German

(Boston, 1993), p. 482.

9 Lewis Wolpert,

The Unnatural Nature of

Science

(London, 1992),

p. 170.

10

Quoted in French in Jean-Jacques Salomon, Le (Paris, 2001), p. 127.

Scientifque

et leguerrier

470

Hitler's Scientists

Chapter 1

Walter Dornberger, V2,

i

:

Hitler the Scientist

trans,

byjames Cleugh and Geoffrey Halliday

(London, 1954), pp. 70-73. 2

Quoted

in

and

Coming of

the

Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the BaUistic Missile

tlie

Reich: Peenemiinde

Era (Cambridge,

MA,

1999),

p. 118. 3

Albert Speer,

SS

Supremacy,

The Slave trans,

State:

Himmler's Masterplan

Heinrich

for

by Joachim Neugroschel (London, 198 1),

p. 84.

4 Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German

5

Politics

Between National

Unification

and Nazism 1870—1945 (Cambridge, 1993),

Quoted

Michael H. Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel

in

p. 492.

Hill, 1989),

p. 178.

6

Quoted

ibid., p. 178.

7

Quoted

ibid., p. 178.

8

Speer, Slave State, p. 83.

9 See for example Geoffrey Brooks, Hitler's Nuclear Weapons: The

Development and Attempted Deployment of Radiological Armaments by

Nazi Germany (London,

1992).

10 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans, by Ralph p. 10,

11

note

Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein: igzi

Manheim (London,

1992),

I.

(London, 1988),

A

Life, vol.

Young Ludwig, i88g-

I:

p. 51.

12 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans, by Richard and Clara

13

Winston (London,

1995), p. 317.

Adolf Hitler, Table

Talk, 1941-1944: His Private Conversations, trans,

by Norman Cameron and R. H.

Roper (London, 14

Quoted

in

Stevens, ed.

by H. R. Trevor-

2000), p. 509.

Wolfgang Wagner, The

History of

German

Aviation: The

First Jet Aircraft (Atglen, 1998), p. 121.

15

See Weindling, Health, Race and

16

Quoted

in

1999), PP- 134-35-

Hitler,

492.

Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton,

17 Speer, Third Reich, p. 463. 18

Politics, p.

Mein Kampf

p. 379.

Notes

471

19 Ibid., p. 380.

20

Ibid., p. 384.

21

Ibid., p. 387.

22 Hider, Table Talk, 23

p. 720.

Ibid., p. 323.

24 See Brigitte Nagel, 'Die Welteislehre: Ihre Geschichte und ihre

Bedeutung im "Dritten Reich"',

in

Medizin,

Natuninssenschaft,

Technik und Nationalsozialismus: Kontinuitdten und Diskontinuitdten, ed.

by Christoph Meinel and Peter Voswinckel

(Stuttgart,

1994),

pp. 166-72.

25

See Klaus Hentschel, The Einstein Tower: Construction,

Relativity

Theory,

An

Intertexture of Dynamic

and Astronomy,

trans,

by Ann M.

Hentschel (Stanford, 1997), p. 137. 26 Hitler, Table Talk, 27

Ibid., p. 3.

28

Ibid., pp.

29

Ibid., p. 84.

30

Ibid., p. 85.

31

Ibid., p. 308.

p. 182.

59-60.

Chapter 1

See Diana

Physical Science Ibid., p. 105.

3

Quoted

5

Gertnany the Science Mecca

Kormos Barkan,

2

4 Ibid.,

2:

Walthcr Nernst and the Transition

(Cambridge, 1999), pp.

to

Modern

i04ff.

ibid., p. 106.

p. 107.

Constance Reid,

Hilbert

(New York,

1996), p. 73.

6 Ibid., pp. 82-3. 7

For the story of Perkin, see Simon Garfield, Mauve:

How One Man

Invented a Colour that Changed the World (London, 2000). 8

Wolfgang Wetzel,

Naturwissenschaften

und chemische

Deutschland: Voraussetzungen und Mechanismen

Industrie

Hires Aujstiegs

im

in

ig.

Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 50-51.

9 See Jeffrey Allen Johnson, 'The Academic-Industrial Symbiosis in

German Chemical Research, 1905-1939',

in

The German Chemical

472

Hitler's Scientists

Industry in the Twentieth Century, ed.

2000), pp. 10

Roy

1

Porter, The Greatest Benefit

Humanity from Antiquity 11

by John E. Lesch (Dordrecht,

5 If.

Thomas Mann,

to the

Mankind:

to

Present

A

Medical History of

(London, 1997),

p. 325.

Doctor Faustus (London, 1999), p. 18.

Chapter J Fritz Haber :

1

See Fritz Stern's essay 'Together and Apart: Fritz Haber and Albert Einstein', in Fritz Stern, Einstein's

German World (London, 2000),

pp. 59-164-

2

The

best biographies of

Haber

are those

by Dietrich Stoltzenberg,

Fritz Haber: Chemiker, Nobelpreistrdger, Deutscher,fude: Eine Biographie

(Weinheim, 1998); and Margit Szollosi-Janze,

Haber 1868-1 g^4:

Fritz

Eine Biographie (Munich, 1998). 3

Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber, p. 28; Szollosi-Janze, Fritz Haber, p. 44.

4

Quoted

5

For the foundation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and

in Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber, pp. 352-3. its

institutes

see Kristie Macrakis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in

Germany (New York, 6 See

1993), pp.

von Harnack's memorandum

to the Kaiser

1909. For a critique of this see ibid., pp.

7

Fritz

Haber,

Briefe an Richard

Werner and Angelika Irmscher

of 21 November

I5ff.

Willstdtter,

igio—igj4, ed. by Petra

(Berlin, 1995), p. 10.

8

See Vaclav Smil, 'Millennium Essay', Nature (29 July 1999),

9

Stern, Einstein's

German World,

Nazi

i2fF.

p. 415.

p. 119.

10 Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the

German 11

I

am

Battle Fleet

(London, 1965),

grateful for the Richards

'The Growling Nuclear Danger', 2002), p. 20.

p. 18.

quote to Steven Weinberg: see

New

Weinberg draws an

York Review of Books (18 July

interesting parallel

between the

arms race of the Dreadnought and the nuclear arms scientist,

I

can recognize

a

kind of technological

from the building of the Dreadnought

his

race:

restlessness at

to this year's

'As a

work

Nuclear Posture

Review.' 12 For details and

background

to the British battleship

programme,

see

Notes

Roger D. Thomas,

Dreadnoughts

in

473

Camera: Building

the Dreadnoughts,

igo^-igzo (Stroud, 1998). 13

See

T. Sumida, 'British Capital Ship Design and Fire Control

J.

Dreadnought Eva

into the

Journal of Modern History, 51

,

(1979),

pp. 205—30. See also Peter Padfield, The Battleship Era (London, 1972), especially the introduction.

14

Quoted

Deception and cites

The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion,

in Walter Gratzer,

Human

the following

Duhem's

(Oxford, 2000),

on chauvinism and

lectures, translated

IL, 1991); Scientist's

Frailty

and Harry

W.

under the

Paul,

The

p. 171.

Gratzer, Undergrowth, p. 162.

16

Quoted

ibid., p. 162.

17

Quoted

ibid., p. 163.

18

Quoted

ibid., p. 167.

19

Quoted

ibid., p. 170.

title

German

Science (La Salle,

Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tlie French

20 Quoted in Helge Kragh, Quantum Generations: the Twentieth

Quoted

Gratzer usefully

bigotry in science: Pierre

Image of German Science 1840-igig (Gainsville, FA, 1972).

15

21

Self-

A History of Physics in

Century (Princeton, 1999), p. 145.

in Gratzer, Undergrowth, p. 174.

Chapter

4:

The Poison Gas

Scientists

1

Quoted injungk,

2

See Christoph Gradmann, "Vornehmlich beangstigend" - Medizin,

Tliousand Suns, p. 16. '

Gesundheit und chemische Kriegfiihrung im deutschen Heer 1914191 8', in Die Medizin und der Erste Weltkrieg, ed.

Eckart and Christoph 3

Quoted

in

Gradmann

by Wolfgang U.

(Pfaffenweiler, 1996), pp. 13 1-2.

Malcolm Brown, The

War Museum Book

of the

Biological Warfare, vol.

L The

Imperial

Western Front (London, 2001), p. 77.

4 Ibid., p. 77. 5

See SIPRI, The Problems of Chemical and Rise of

6 Otto

7

CB

Weapons (Stockholm, 1971), pp.

Hahn,

My

Life,

trans,

(London, 1970),

p. 120.

Brown, Western

Front, p. 248.

3off.

by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins

Hitler's Scietitists

474 8

Quoted in G.

9

Edward M.

B. Carter, Chemical and Biological Defence

1916-2000 (London, 2000),

10

Quoted

p. 2.

nimgen des preufiischen Generals Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. p. 167,

11

note

Quoted stellung

Down

Spiers, Chemical Warfare (Chicago, 1986), p. 22.

Adolf Wild von Hohenborn,

in

at Porton

Briefe

Kriegsminister

als

imd Tagebuchaufzeichund Truppenfiihrer im

by Helmut Reichold (Boppard

am Rhein,

1986),

2.

in Dieter Martinetz,

Der Gaskrieg 1914/18: Entwicklnng, Her-

und Einsatz chemischer Kampfstoffe (Bonn, 1996),

p. 21.

12 See Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber, p. 356. 13

My Life, p.

Hahn,

122.

14 Ibid., pp. 122-3. 15

Ibid., p. 130.

16 Ibid., p. 130.

17 Ibid., pp. 130-31. 18

Ruth Lewin Sime,

Lise Meitner:

A

Life in Physics (Berkeley, 1996),

p. 58.

19

Quoted

20

Ibid., p. 449.

21

Ibid., p. 450.

22 Quoted 23

Quoted

24 Stern, 25

in Szollosi-Janze, Fritz Haber, p. 479.

ibid., p. 450.

in Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber, p. 317.

Einstein's

Quoted

in

German World,

Lewis

York, 1974),

S.

p. 124.

Feuer, Einstein and the Generations (ffScience

p. 49.

26 Quoted in Vaclav Smil, Enriching and

the

2001)

the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch

Transformation of World Food Production (Cambridge,

Chapter^: The

For

MA,

p. 231.

27 Quoted in Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber,

1

(New

a discussion

Politics,

pp.

2 Ibid., p. 86.

1

p. 575.

'Science' of Racial

Hygiene

of the Krupp prize see Weindling, Health, Race and

12-18.

Notes

3

See Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian the Origins of Comparative Ethnology

and

4 Robert N. Proctor, bridge, 5

475

MA,

(Cambridge, 1982),

p. 104.

Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis

(Cam-

1988), p. 13.

Alfred Ploetz, Die Tikhtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen (Berlin, 1895).

6

Quoted

in Proctor, Racial Hygiene, p. 17.

7

Quoted

ibid., p. 25.

8

Quoted

ibid., pp.

9

Quoted

ibid., p. 28.

10

Quoted

ibid., p. 29.

11

Niels C. Losch, Rasse

12

23-4.

(Frankfurt

am

Quoted

Ute Deichmann,

in

MA,

Fischers

Biologists under Hitler, trans,

by Thomas

1996), p. 323.

Proctor, Racial Hygiene, p. 36.

Chapter

1

Werk Eugen

Main, 1997), pp. 37-8.

Dunlap (Cambridge, 13

Konstrukt: Lehen und

als

Quoted

6:

in Stefan Kiihl,

Eugenics and Psychiatry

'The Relationship between Eugenics and

the so-called "Euthanasia Action" in Nazi

Germany:

A

EugenicaUy

Motivated Peace Policy and the Killing of the Mentally Handicapped during the Second

World War',

in Science in the Third Reich, ed.

Margit Szollosi-Janze (Oxford, 2001),

p. 188.

2

Ibid., p. 189.

3

Quoted

in ibid., p. 201.

4

Quoted

in Gratzer, Undergrowth, p. 292.

5

Michael Burleigh, cide

6

A

Ethics

(Cambridge, 1997),

critical

tract are

by

and Extermination:

Reflections on

Nazi Geno-

p. 114.

discussion of, and quotes from. Binding

and Hoche's

provided in Rolf Winau, 'Die Freigabe der Vernichtung

"lebensunwerten Lebens"', in Medizin im

'Dritten

Reiclf,

ed.

by

Johanna Bleker and Norbert Jachertz (Cologne, 1993), pp. 162-74.

476

Hitler's Scientists

Chapter 1

For an assessment of

Quantum

7; Physics after the First

classical

Quoted

3

Russell

McCormmach,

bridge,

MA,

5

physics in the First

War

see Kragh,

Generations, pp. i3off.

2

4 E.J.

War

in

Jungk, Thousand Suns,

p. 15.

Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist

(Cam-

1982), p. 70.

Hobsbawm, The Age ofEmpire 1875- igi 4 (London,

1987), p. 243.

Kurt Mendelssohn, The World of Walther Nernst: The Rise and

German

Science

6

Quoted

in Barkan, Walther Nernst, p. 192.

7

Quoted

ibid., p. 200.

8

Michael White and John Gribbin,

9

Ibid., p. 33.

(London, 1973),

Fall of

p. 118.

Einstein:

A

Life in Science

(London,

1993), P- 33

10 Ibid., p. 105.

November

11

The Times, 7

12

Quoted

in

13

Quoted

in Kragh, Qiiantum Generations, p. 99.

14

Quoted

ibid., p. loi.

19 19.

Kragh, Qiiantum Generations,

15 Alan D. Beyerchen,

Community

in the

Scientists

p. 102.

under Hitler:

Politics

and

the Physics

Third Reich (Ne"w Haven, 1977), p. 83.

16 27 August 1920; anthologized in Klaus Hentschel and schel, eds. Physics and National Socialism:

An

Ann M. Hent-

Anthology of Primary

Sources (Basel, 1996), pp. 1-2.

17

Mark Walker, Nazi

(New

York, 1995),

18

Beyerchen,

19

Ibid., p. 102.

20 Quoted in

Science:

Myth, Truth and

the

p. 9.

Scientists

under Hitler, p. 124.

ibid., p. 104.

21

Walker, Nazi

22

Ibid., p. 12.

Science, p. 6.

23 Hentschel and Hentschel, Physics and National

24

Ibid., p. 8.

German Atomic Bomb

Socialism, p. 7.

Notes

Chapter

German

8:

477

Science Suruiues

1

Quoted

in Kragh, Quaiituni Generations, p. 146.

2

Quoted

ibid., p. 140.

3

Quoted

ibid., pp.

4 See

Helmut Werner, From

trans,

5

140-41.

by H. Degenhardt

Murdin

for alerting

Quoted

in

Richard

unci Freiinden

me

the

Aratus Globe

(Stuttgart, 1957):

I

to the

am

Zeiss Planetarium,

grateful to

Dr

Paul

to the Zeiss initiative.

Willstatter,

Aus meinem Leben: Von

(Weinheim, 1958),

Arbeit,

Mujie

p. 235.

6 Ibid., p. 340. 7

Ibid., pp.

8

Quoted

338-40.

Abraham

in

Pais, Neils Bohr's Times: In Physics, Philosophy,

and Polity (Oxford, 1991), 9 Quoted

ibid., p. 11.

10 Otto Robert Frisch, Wliat 11

Little I Remember

(Cambridge, 1979),

Helmut Rechenberg and Gerald Wiemers, igoi—ig76:

Schritte in die

12

Quoted in David C.

13

Werner Heisenberg,

Heisenberg

(New

People, Places,

14

p. 4.

Quoted

in

Werner Heisenberg

neue Physik (Beucha, 2001), p. 25.

Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner

York, 1992),

and

eds,

p. 19.

p. 146.

Encounters unth Einstein and Other Essays on

Particles

(Princeton, 1989), p. 38.

Jungk, Thousand Suns,

p. 18.

15 John Polkinghorne, The Quantum World (London, 1986),

p. 14.

16 Victor F. Weisskopf, The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist (New^

York, 1991),

p. 31.

17

Ibid., p. 32.

18

Frisch, Wliat Little, pp. 29ff.

19

Quoted

in

Richard Rhodes, The Making of

York, 1986),

20 Frisch, Wliat

p. 318. Little, p.

34.

the

Atomic Bomb

(New

478

Hitler's Scientists

Chapter g: The Dismissals 1

Quoted

Ute Deichniann, 'The Expulsion of German-Jewish

in

Chemists and Biochemists and their Correspondence with Colleagues in

Germany after

The

1945:

Impossibility of Normalization?',

in Szollosi-Janze, Science, p. 247.

2

Quoted

in Wilfried

van der Will, 'Culture and the Organization of

National SociaHst Ideology 1933 to 1945', in German Cultural Studies:

An 3

Introduction, ed.

William

L. Shirer,

by

Rob Burns

The Rise and

Nazi Germany (London, 1961), 4 Donald Prater, Thomas Mann:

(Oxford, 1995),

A Life

5

in Sime, Lise Meitner, p. 137.

6

Quoted

ibid., p. 138.

7

Quoted

ibid., p. 139.

8

Max

Born, The Born— Einstein and

by

Max

(Oxford, 1995),

Letters:

Max and Hedwig Born from

Born, trans,

History of

,

p. 198.

Correspondence between Albert

igi6

to

ig55, with Commentaries

by Irene Born (London, 1971),

9 Hans Krebs (with Anne Martin)

A

p. 248.

Quoted

Einstein

p. iii.

Fall of the Third Reich:

p. 114.

Reminiscences and Reflections (Oxford,

1981), p. 61.

10 Ibid., p. 61. 1

Quoted

in

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERrust.htm.

12

Quoted

in

van der Will, 'Culture',

13

Quoted

in Nicholas Boyle,

and

the Global

p. 113.

Who Are We Now?

Market from Hegel

to

Christian

Humanism

Heaney (Edinburgh, 1998),

p. 200.

14 Alfred Rosenberg, Selected Writings, ed. by Robert Pois (London, 1970), p. 89. 15

Ibid., p. 87.

16

Quoted

17

Quoted in Deichmann,

18

Quoted

in Sime, Lise Meitner, p. 143.

'Expulsion', in Szollosi-Janze, Science, p. 250.

ibid., p. 251.

19 Gratzer, Undergrowth, p. 277.

20

Ibid., p. 277.

21

Hentschel and Hentschel, Physics and National

22 Hahn, 23

My

Quoted

Socialism, p. xliii.

Life, p. 145.

in Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler, p.

i.

Notes

479

24 Helmuth Albrecht, 'Max Planck "Mein Besuch bei Adolf Hitler":

Annierkungen zum Wert einer historischen Quelle', Albrecht, ed., Naturwissenschaft und Tedmik

in

Helmut

in der Gesclikhte (Stuttgart,

1993), P- 49-

25 Jane Caplan, Government without Administration: State and Civil Service in

Weimar and Nazi Germany (Oxford, 1988),

p. 324.

26 Planck's account of his interview with Hitler, published in Physikal-

m

ische Blatter

1947,

is

reprinted in

Albrecht,

full in

'Max

Planck', in

Das

Dritte Reich

Albrecht, Naturwissenschaften, pp. 41-2.

27

Ibid., p. 42.

28

Quoted

29 Quoted 30 Quoted

in Stern, Einstein's

German World,

p. 157.

ibid., p. 159. ibid., p. 159.

Anthologized in Leon Poliakov and Joself Wulf,

3

und

seine

eds,

Denker: Dokumente (Berlin, 1959), pp. 306-7.

32 Stern, Einstein's German World, p. 163. 33

For the exodus see Kragh, Quantum Generations, pp. 230 Beyerchen,

Scientists

and

ft.;

under Hitler, pp. 4off.

34 Hentschel and Hentschel, Physics and National Socialism,

p. 145.

Chapter 10: En^qineers and Rocketeers 1

Holger H. Herwig, 'Innovation Ignored: The Submarine Problem -

Germany, Innovation

Britain, in the

and the United

Interwar Period, ed.

R. Millett (Cambridge, 2 Allison

W.

Sakville,

1998), p. 232.

German p.

1

thesis.

'Strategic

Experiences', in

Arm

University of Washington,

Herwig, 'Innovation Ignored',

1963, pp. 173-4; cited in

Williamson Murray,

by Williamson Murray and Allan

'The Development of the German U-boat

1919-1935', unpublished Ph.D.

3

1919-1939', in Military

States,

p. 233.

Bombing: The British, American, and

Murray and

Millett, Military Innovation,

10.

4 Ulrich Albrecht, 'MiHtary Technology and National Sociahst Ideology', in Science,

Technology and National Socialism, ed. by

Renneberg and Mark Walker (Cambridge, 5

Quoted

in

Andreas Heinemann-Griider,

Monika

1994), p. 92. '

"Keinerlei Untergang":

480

Hitler's Scientists

German Armaments Engineers During

the

Second World War and

of the Victorious Powers', in Renneberg and Walker,

in the Science

Science, Technology, p. 32.

6 For the background to

Untergang"

Heinemann-Griider,

this see

Renneberg and Walker,

',

Spezialisten:

"Keinerlei

Science, Technology, pp.

7 Ulrich Albrecht, Andres Heinemann-Griider and

Die

'

30-50.

Arend Wellmann,

Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker

in

der

Sowjetunion nach ig45 (Berlin, 1992), pp. 19-20. 8

Quoted

im (7

Heinrich Adolf, 'Technikdiskurs und Technikideologie

in

Nationalsozialismus', Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 48

August 1997),

Haven, 1996), 10

p. 442.

Wegener,

9 Peter P.

Tlie Peenemtinde

Wind

Tunnels:

A

Memoir (New

p. 22.

Quoted in Freeman Dyson,

Disturbing the Universe

(New York,

1979),

p. 108.

11

Ibid., p. 108.

12

Quoted

in Neufeld,

13

Quoted

in Michael

The Rocket, J.

p. 22.

Neufeld, 'The Guided Missile and the Third

Reich: Peenemtinde and the Forging of ution', in

Renneberg and Walker,

Chapter 1

1 1

:

a

Technological Revol-

Science, Technology, p. 57.

Medicine under Hitler

\

Kater, Doctors under Hitler, p. 56.

2 Ibid., p. 57. 3

Klaus-Dieter VerlagJ.

F.

Thomann,

'Dienst

Lehmanns und der

am Deutschtum: Der

medizinische

Nationalsozialismus', in Bleker and

Jachertz, Medizin, p. 65.

4 Kater, Doctors under 5

Hitler, p. 25.

Michael Hubentorf, 'Von der "freien Auswahl" zur Reichsarzteord-

nung -

Arzdiche

Standespolitik

zwischen

Liberalismus

Nationalsozialismus', in Bleker and Jachertz, Medizin,

6

Quoted

in

und

p. 45.

Hendrik van den Bussche, 'Arztliche Ausbildung und

medizinische Studienreform im Nationalsozialismus', in 7

Quoted

in Kater, Doctors under Hitler, p. 183.

8

Werner

Friedrich

Kummel,

'Antisemitismus

ibid., p. 119.

und Medizin im 19/20

481

Notes

Jahrhundert', in Menschenverachtung und Opportunismus: Zur Medizin

im Dritten Reich, ed. byjiirgen Peiffer (Tubingen, 1992),

p. 44.

9 Kater, Doctors under Hitler, p. 185.

10 Ibid., p. 188.

Hertha Nathorff, Das Tagebuch: Berlin-New York, Aufzeichnungen

11

igjj

ig45 (Munich, 1987).

bis

experiences

is all

taken from

The following

material

this diary.

12 Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, 'Why War?',

Open

Series of

Letters, vol.

Quoted in Ronald W.

1

on NathorfF's

in

An

International

2 (Paris, 1933), p. 47-

Clark, Freud: The

Man and the

Cause (London,

1980), p. 490.

14 Ibid., p. 490. 15

Zentralblattfiir Psychotherapie, januAry 1934;

quoted and trans, in Clark,

Freud, p. 493.

16 See Kathe Drager, 'Bemerkungen zu den Zeitumstanden Schicksal der Psychoanalyse

und der Psychotherapie

in

und zum

Deutschland

zwischen 1933 and 1949', in Psychoanalyse und Nationalsozialismus: Beitrdge zur Bearbeitung eines unbewdltigten

Martin

Lohmann

(Frankfurt

am Main,

Traumas, ed. by Hans-

1994), pp. 41-53.

17 Nathan G. Hale, Tlie Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis States:

in the

United

Freud and the Americans, igij-igS^ (Oxford, I995)> P- 125.

18

Ibid., p. 115.

19

Quoted

in Clark, Freud, p. 511.

20 Mitchell G. Ash, Gestalt Psychology Holism and

the

in

German Culture

Quest for Objectivity (Cambridge, 1998),

21

Quoted

ibid., p. 334.

22

Quoted

ibid., p. 335.

23

Ibid., p. 340.

i8go-ig6'j:

P- 33^.

Chapter 12: Tlie Cancer Campaign 1

For

a detailed assessment

Deichmann,

Biologists.

Nazi War on

2

Proctor,

3

Ibid., p. 36.

4 Ibid., p. III.

of basic biology in the Third Reich see

Cancer, p. 4.

482

Hitler's Scientists

5

Ibid., p. 46.

6

Quoted

ibid., p. 124.

7 Ibid., p. 153. 8

Ibid., p. 173.

9 Ibid., p. 195. 10

Quoted

1

Ibid., p. 249.

ibid., p. 196.

Chapter ij: Geopolitik and Lebensraum

Mackinder',

'Halford

BiobibUographical

1

G.

2

See Henning Heske, 'German Geographical Research in the Nazi

Kearns,

9 (1985), pp. 71-86.

Studies,

Period', Pohtical Geography Quarterly, 3

Hitler,

Mein Kampf,

4 Quoted

in

and Power 5

Quoted

(New York,

Quoted

1986), pp. 267-81.

Geopohtics:

The

Struggle for Space

1972), p. 7.

Geoffrey Parker,

in

5 (July

p. 590.

Robert Strausz-Hupe,

(London, 1998), 6

Geographers:

Geopolitics:

Past,

Present and Future

p. 30.

ibid., p. 30.

7 See Mechtild Rossler, 'Geography and Area Planning under National Socialism', in Szollosi-Janze, Science, p. 62. 8

Quoted

in

Tliought in

David Thomas Murphy, The Heroic Weimar Germany igi8-igjj (Kent,

Earth: Geopolitical

OH,

199'^), p.

242.

Chapter 14: Nazi Physics 1

Hentschel and Hentschel, Physics and National

2

13

3

Hentschel and Hentschel, Physics and National

May

1933.

4 Walker, Nazi 5

Science, p. 20.

Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 336.

6 Ibid.,

Socialism, p. 100.

p. 330.

7

Quoted

in ibid., p. 349.

8

Quoted

in

9

Quoted

in Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 379.

Powers, Heisenberg's War,

p. 41.

Socialism, p. 49.

Notes

483

10 Ibid., p. 381. 11

Quoted

ibid., p. 384.

12

Quoted

ibid., p. 386.

13

Ibid., p. 389.

14

Quoted

ibid., p. 390.

15

Quoted

ibid., p. 393.

16 Ibid., pp. 391-92. 17

Quoted

in

M. Norton Wise,

'Pascual Jordan:

Quantum Mechanics,

Psychology, National Socialism', in Renneberg and Walker,

Science,

Technology, p. 233.

18

Peter P. Wegener, The Peenemiinde

19

Quoted in Wise,

Wind

'Pascualjordan', in

Tunnels, p. 28.

Renneberg and Walker,

Science,

Technology, p. 224.

20 Quoted in Jungk, Thousand Suns, 21

Quoted

in

p. 20.

Wise, 'Pascualjordan', Renneberg and Walker,

Science,

Technology, p. 226.

22

Quoted

ibid., p. 238.

23

Quoted

ibid., p. 226.

24 Quoted

ibid., p. 250.

Chapter 15: Himmkr's Pseudo-science

1

Anthologized

m

Helmut Heiber,

ed., Reichsfiihrer!

.

.

.

Briefe

an und

von Himmler (Stuttgart, 1968), p. 41. 2

Quoted

in

Margit Szollosi-Janze,

Sciences: Reflections, Conclusions Szollosi-Janze, Science, p. 3

I

SociaHsm and the

and Historical Perspectives', in

i.

am indebted to Simon Schama for the link between Tacitus

Ahnenerbe: see

his Landscape

Quoted

in

Deichmann,

6 Gratzer, Undergrowth,

Biologists, p.

Science, p. 4.

255.

p. 233.

7

Quoted

in Szollosi-Janze, 'National Socialism', Science, p. 4.

8

Heiber,

Reichsfiihrer!, p. 57.

9 Ibid., p. 57. 10

Quoted

and the

and Memory (London, 1995), pp. 82-3.

4 Szollosi-Janze, 'National Socialism', 5

'National

in Szollosi-Janze, 'National Socialism', Science, p. 3.

484

Hitler's Scientists

11

Quoted

12

Heiber, ReichsfUhrer!,

in Proctor,

Nazi War on

Cancer, p. 138.

p. 80.

Chapter 16: Deutsche Mathematik 1

Quoted

Helmut Lindner, '"Deutsche" und "gegentypische"

in

Mathematik: Zur Begriindung einer "arteigenen Mathematik" im

Ludwig Bieberbach',

"Dritten Reich" durch

in Naturwissenschaft,

Technik und NS-Ideologie: Beitrdge zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Dritten

by Herbert Mehrtens and Steffen Richter (Frankfurt

Reichs, ed.

Main, 1980), 2

Quoted by

3

Quoted

am

p. 88.

Karl Sabbagh,

Dr Riemann's

Zeros (London, 2002), p. 100.

in Ash, Gestalt Psychology, p. 335.

4 Leon Poliakov andJosefWulf (eds.). Das Dritte Reich und Seine Denker (Berlin, 1959), P- 3 16. 5

Ibid., pp.

312-13-

6 Ibid., pp. 314-15. 7

Quoted

8

The

in Reid, Hilbert, p. 208.

story of these extraordinary escapes

Jr in Notices of the

AMS,

is

told

by John

W. Dawson

49:9 (October 2002), pp. i,o68ff.

Chapter ij: Fission Mania 1

Quoted

in Sime, Lise Meitner, p. 136.

2

Quoted

ibid., p. 136.

3

Leo

Szilard, His Version of the Facts: Selected Recollections

ence, ed.

MA, 4 Ibid.,

by Spencer R. Weart and Gertrud Weiss

p. 14.

5

Ibid., p. 17.

Quoted

in

Jungk, Thousand Suns,

7

Quoted

in

Sime, Lise Meitner,

Jungk, Thousand Suns,

p. 53.

p. 310.

p. 65.

9 See Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the 1999), p. 163.

10

Szilard (Cambridge,

1978), p. 14.

6

8

and Correspond-

Quoted

ibid., p. 165.

Dawn

of the Nuclear Age (Boston,

Notes

11

Quoted

ibid., p. 166.

12

Quoted

in Sime,

13

Quoted

ibid., p. 234.

14

Quoted

ibid., p. 235.

Use

485

Meitner, p. 233.

15 Die Naturwissenschaften, 27:1 (1939),

theses supplied

by the

Earlier: Essays on

late

Science,

Max

15.

p.

Translation and paren-

Perutz, / Wish I'd

Made Yon Angry

and Hunmnity (Oxford, 1998),

Scientists,

P- 23.

16 Frisch, Wliat

Eittle,

pp.

1

15-16.

17 Ibid., p. 116. 18

New

York Review of Books, 20 February 1997.

19 Nature, 11 February 1939.

20 Nature, 18 February 1939. 21

Quoted

in Rife, Lise Meitner, p. 202.

22 Pais, Me/5 Bohr's Times, 23

Quoted in William Lanouette and Bela

A 24

p. 454.

J.

Biography of Leo Szilard (Chicago, 1992), p. 179.

A. Wheeler, 'The Discovery of Fission', Physics Today, 20

ber 1967), pp. 49-52; quoted

Nazi Atomic Bomb

the

Project:

A

Study

German Culture (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 83-4. His Version, pp. 69-70 and note 24.

25

Szilard,

26

The connections of the Bernstein in

(New 27

(Novem-

w^ith a corrective footnote [9] in Paul

Law^rence Rose, Heisenberg and in

Szilard, Genius in the Shadows:

Hitler's

tale are skilfully

Uranium Club: The

Secret Recordings at

Farm Hall

York, 2001), pp. 1-2, 14.

Quoted

in

Rhodes, Atomic Bomb,

p. 290.

28 Harteck divulged his thinking on

Joseph

Bomb

drawn together by Jeremy

J.

Ermenc, which

Scientists:

is

this

matter in an interview with

published in Ermenc's

Memoirs ig^g-ig^^ (Westport, 1967),

Bernstein, Uranium Club, pp.

1-2,

who

book Atomic p. 97; see also

adds the comment: 'His

motivation appears to have been not too different from that of Willie Sutton,

who was famous for saying that he robbed banks because that

was where the money was.' 29 Quoted in Rhodes, Atomic Bomb, 30 Quoted

ibid., p. 314.

Quoted

ibid., p. 314.

31

p. 305.

486

Hitler's Scientists

Chapter

World War

iS:

1

See Bernstein, Uranium Club,

2

Quoted

in Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 414.

3

Quoted

ibid., p.

4

Mark Walker,

p. 2.

413.

Gernian National

and

Socialisi}i

Power i9jg—ig4g (Cambridge, 1989), 5

II

the

Quest for Nuclear

p. 17.

Bernstein, Uranium Club, p. 26.

6 Walker, Gerfnan National Socialism, p. 18. 7 Ibid., pp. 19-20. 8

See Michael 1985)', in

Schaaf",

'Der Physiocheniiker Paul Harteck (1902-

CENSIS-REPORT-33-99

9 See Bernstein, Uranium Club,

p.

(Hamburg,

'Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium the Max-Planck-Institut

ftir

1999), p. 96.

127; and comment

in

Horst Kant,

Project', preprint for

Wissenschaftsgeschichte (2001),

p. 6.

10 For the original of the specific passage see Kant, 'Werner Heisenberg', p. 6; see also Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 421.

11

Quoted

12

See Kant, 'Werner Heisenberg', p.

13

Die Naturwissenschaften, 27 (1939), pp. 402-10.

in Cassidy, Uticertainty, p. 422. 7.

14 Rose, Heisenberg, pp. 97-98. 15

Frisch, Uliat Little, p. 125.

16 Ibid., p. 126. 17 Ibid., p. 126. 18

Quoted

in Pais, Niels Bohr's Tiuics. p. 494.

19

Quoted

ibid., p.

494.

Chapter ig: Machines of 1

Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, National Socialism', in

War 'Scientists,

Renneberg and Walker,

Engineers and

Science,

Technology,

pp. 1-2. 2

Ibid., p. 2.

3

Neufeld, The Rocket,

p. 120.

4 See for example Richard Overs', Wliy the Allies

I

Tci//

(London, 1995),

Notes

487

A

pp. 2o8tf.; and Gerhard L. Weinberg, History of World 5

Overy, Wliy

War

{Cambridge, 1994), pp.

II

the Allies

World

at

Arms:

A

Global

536ff.

Won, pp. 217-18.

6 Ibid., p. 212. 7 For extensive details of the Bismarck see Ulrich Elfrath

Herzog, trans, 8

Tlie Battleship Bismarck:

A Documentary in

by Edward Force (West Chester,

Volkischer Beobachter, 15

and Bodo

Words and

Pictures,

1989).

February 1939.

9 See discussion in Alan Beyerchen,

'From Radio

Military Adaptation to Technological

United Kingdom, and the United

Change

States', in

to Radar: Interwar

in

Germany, the

Murray and

Millett,

Military Innovation, p. 295.

10

Quoted

11

Clay

12

Ibid., p. 512.

13

Quoted

in

Wagner, German

Blair, Hitler's

Aviation, p. 22.

U-Boat War: The Hunted ig42-ig43 (London,

1999), P- 512.

ibid., p. 314.

14 Neufeld, The Rocket, 15

Quoted

ibid., p. 126.

16

Quoted

ibid., p. 137.

p. 70.

Chapter 20: Radar 1

David Zimmerman,

waffe (Stroud, 2001), p.

2

An and

3

ed.

GEMA ische

German

radar can be found in

GEMA: Birthplace of German Radar and Sonar, trans,

by Louis Brown is

the Defeat of the Luft-

xiii.

authoritative account of early

Harry von Kroge,

Radar and

Britain's Shield:

(Bristol, 2000).

an acronym for Gesellschaft fur elektroakustische und mechan-

Apparate.

4

Zimmerman,

5

Robert Watson- Watt's entry on radar

Britain's Shield, p. 57.

in the Chambers Encyclopaedia

(1973), vol. XI, p. 423.

6 Kroge,

GEMA,

p. 159.

7 Norbert Wiener, Atlantic Monf/j/y, January 1947.

488

8

Hitler's Scientists

Robert Buderi, Radarfrom War

9

Zimmemian,

10 For 11

Rosbaud

Winston vol.

I,

Tlie Invention that

the

World: The Story of

Britain's Shield, p. xiii.

see

Arnold Kramish,

Tire Griffin

(London, 1987).

War (London, 1949-54),

Churchill, The Second World

S.

p. 645.

12 Ibid., vol.

II,

p. 16.

13

Ibid., vol. II, p. 149.

14

Quoted

in

Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman,

Killing: Tlie Secret History of Gas

15

Changed

Peace (London, 1998), p. 202.

to

A

Higher Form of

and Germ Warfare (London, 1982)

,

p.

1 1

2.

Ibid., p. 112.

16 Churchill, The Second World War, vol.

II,

pp. 407-8.

17 Buderi, Invention, p. 91. 18

GEMA,p.

Kroge,

43.

19 Buderi, Invention, p. 85.

20

Ibid., p. 86.

21

Quoted

ibid., p. 211.

Chapter 21: Codes 1

Quoted

in

Simon Singh,

Tlte

Code Book:

and Codebreaking (London, 2000), 2

Quoted

in

David Kahn,

Tlie Secret History of

p. 142.

Seizing the Enigma: The Race

German U-Boat Codes, igjg-ig4j (London, 3

Ibid., p. 32.

4

The

Codes

to

Break the

*

1996), p. 31.

intriguing story of the Polish decoders has been told in a variety also

Rudolf Kippenhahn, Code

History and Exploration, trans,

by Ewald Osers (London,

of books. See Singh's Code Book and Breaking:

A

1999), PP- 172-80. 5

Singh, Code Book, p. 155.

6 Erich Hiittenhain, 'Erfolge dienste

im Zweiten

und MiBerfolge der deutschen

Weltkrieg', in Die Ftmkaufkldrnng und

im Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. by Jurgen

ihre Rolle

Rohwer and Eberhard

(Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 101-2.

7

Chiffrier-

R. A. Haldane, The Hidden World (London,

1976), p. 119.

Jackel

Notes

8

For

remarkable history of

a

489

German

Heinz

radio intelligence see

Bonatz, Die deutsche Marine- Funkaufklanmg igi4-ig45 (Darmstadt, 1970).

9 Stephen Budiansky, Battle of Wits: Tlie Complete Story of Codebreaking in

World War

(London, 2000), pp.

II

286ff.

Andrew Hodges, Alan

The Enigma (London,

10

Quoted

11

Singh, Code Book, p. 192; also Michael Smith and Ralph Erskine,

in

Turing:

1992), p. 165.

Action

this

Day (New York,

12 Interview with

2001), p. 371.

Dr Derek Taunt, former Bletchley Park

cryptanalyst,

12 February 2003. 13

Konrad Zuse, 'Some Remarks on the History of Computing Twentieth Century', Century:

A

in

A

History of Computing in the

Collection of Essays, ed.

Gian-Carlo Rota

(New

by N. Metropolis, J. Hewlett and

York, 1980),

14

Ibid., p. 611.

15

Friedrich L. Bauer, 'The Early

in the

Twentieth

p.

611.

Development of Digital Computing

in Central Europe', in Metropolis et

al..

History of Computing, p. 518.

Chapter 22: Copenhagen 1

The

Max

the keeping of Professor

letter, in

Helmut Rechenberg of the

Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, was referred to by

Michael Frayn at the Jesus College 'Copenhagen Colloquium', 22-24

November 2 This differs

2002.

from the account of Powers, who, with no accompanying

source, writes that Heisenberg in

Copenhagen

at

6.15

left

Beriin

on the Sunday and

on the Monday evening

arrived

{Heisenberg' s War,

p. 121). 3

Walker, Nazi

Science, pp.

147-8.

4 Cassidy, using an account by Stefan Rozental, recounted in Walker,

German National

Socialism, p. 224, places the incident in

whereas Rose places p. 272, 5

note

it

in

September 1941;

9.

Walker, Nazi

Science, pp.

149-50.

see

March

1941,

Rose, Heisenberg,

490 6

Hitler's Scientists

Werner Heisenberg, trans,

Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations,

by Arnold J. Pomerans (London, 1971),

7

Pais, Niels Bohr's Times, p. 484.

8

Quoted

9

Quoted injungk, Tlwusand

in

Powers, Heisenberg's War,

p. 201.

p. 124.

Suns, p. loi.

10 Powers, Heisenberg's War, p. 124; for the source quoted see p. 510,

note 11

17.

Quoted

ibid, p. 126.

12 Rose, Heisenberg, p. 281. 13

Quoted injungk,

14 Niels 15

16 17 18

Tliousand Suns, p. loi.

Bohr Archive (NBA), document

i.

NBA document 7. NBA document 9. NBA document iia. NBA document 11

a.

19 Walker, German National Socialism, p. 222.

Chapter 23; Speer and Heisenberg 1

Quoted

in Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 443.

2

Quoted

ibid., p.

3

Quoted

in

Nuclear Research

4 Quoted 5 Quoted 6

Quoted

443.

David

ibid., p.

Irving,

The German Atomic Bomb:

Nazi Germany (New York, 1967),

in

Tlie History of p.

408.

no.

in Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 450. ibid., pp.

450-51.

7 Speer, Third Reich, p. 272. 8

Joachin C.

Fest, Speer:

The Final

Alexandra Dring (London, 2001), 9 Speer, Third Reich, 10 Ibid., p. 276. 11

Ibid., p. 278.

12

Ibid., p. 33.

13

Ibid., p. 296.

14 Ibid., p. 297. 15

Ibid., p. 297.

p. 279.

Verdict, trans,

p. 129.

by Ewald Osers and

Notes

491

16 Ibid., p. 315. 17

Quoted Bomb,

18

in

Rose, Heisenherg,

p. 180; see also Irving,

German Atomic

p. 120.

Speer, Tliird Reich, p. 316.

19 Ibid., p. 316.

20

Ibid., p. 317.

21

Leslie

R. Groves,

Project

(New^ York, 1983), pp. 296-7.

Now

It

Can Be

Told: Tlie Story of the Manhattan

22 Speer, Third Reich, p. 319. 23

Quoted

in

24 Ermenc,

Rhodes, Atomic Bomb,

Scientists:

25 Rhodes, Atomic Bomb,

26 Cassidy, Uncertainty, 27

Ibid., p. 472.

28

Quoted

p. 405.

Memoirs, p. 115. p. 567.

p. 464.

ibid., p. 473.

29 Hendrik Casimir, Haphazard Reahty: Haifa Century of Science

(New

York, 1983), p. 208. 30

M. Dresden, H. A. York, 1987),

Kramers: Between Tradition and Revolution

(New

p. 485.

31 For the main

details

of this story

I

am

obliged to Jeremy Bernstein's

unpublished paper 'Heisenberg in Poland' (2003). 32

Quoted

ibid.

33

Quoted

ibid.

34

Quoted

in Cassidy, Uncertainty, p. 470.

Chapter 24: Haigerloch and Los Alamos 1

Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, pp. i87ff.

2

Quoted injungk, Tlwusand

3

See Powers, Heisenberg's War, notes for chapter 34, pp. 563^., citing

OSS

CIA

and

Kaufman

et

al.,

4

Quoted

5

Ibid., p. 565,

6

Quoted

in

Suns, p. 155.

papers, including Berg's

Moe

Berg: Athlete, Scholar,

Powers, Heisenberg's War,

own Spy

notes. See also Louis

(New York,

1974).

p. 400.

notes 21, 22.

ibid., p. 402.

7 Letter from Martin Heisenberg to Powers quoted ibid., p. 404.

Hitler's Scientists

492 8

Haakon

Chevalier, Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship (London,

1966), p.

1

1.

I

am grateful

to Jeremy Bernstein for

to this description; Bernstein says that

it

10

man twenty years later. Groves, Now It Can Be Told, p. 207. Samuel A. Goudsmit, Alsos (New York,

11

Ibid., pp.

47-8.

12

Ibid., pp.

48-9.

13

Antony Beevor,

14

Quoted

drawing attention

accorded with

his

memory

of the 9

in

Berlin:

Goudsmit,

The Downfall ig 45 (London, 2002), pp. 324-5.

Alsos, p. 113.

Chapter 2y. Slave Labour 1

Quoted

The Rocket,

in Neufeld,

1996), p. 15.

"p.

at

Dora

187.

2 Ibid., p. 187. 3

Quoted

ibid., p. 192.

The Peenemiinde Raid 17—18 August ig4j

4 Martin Middlebrook,

(London, 2000),

p. 223.

5

Quoted

in Neufeld,

6

Quoted

ibid., p. 211.

7

Quoted

ibid., p. 212.

8

Ibid., p. 212.

The Rocket,

p. 210.

9 Ibid., pp. 207-8.

Chapter 26: Tlie 1

'Science'

of Extermination and

Human

Experiment

Burleigh, Ethics, p. II J.

2 Ibid., p. 116. 3

Christiane Rothmaler, 'Zwangssterilisationen nach

dem

Gesetz zur

Verhiitung erbkranken Nachwuchses', in Bleker andjachertz, Medizin,p. 137.

4 For a recent scholarly account of the Wannsee Protocol see

Roseman, The

Villa,

the Lake,

the Meeting:

Wannsee and

Mark

the Final

Solution (London, 2002). 5

Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert Jan van

Mass Murder

at

Pelt,

'The Machinery of

Auschwitz', in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp,

Notes

493

by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington,

ed.

Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van

1994), pp. 183-245. See also Pelt,

Auschwitz

(New

York, 2002), pp. 176—7; and Robert Jan van

and Carroll William Westfall,

Pelt

Historicism

(New Haven,

Architectural Principles in the

6 Pressac and van Pelt, 'Machinery', in

omy,

Age of

1993), pp. 150-51.

Gutman and Berenbaum,

Anat-

p. 209.

7 T. C. Bridges and H. Hessell Tiltman, Master Minds of Modern Science

(London, 1930), 8

p. 104.

Alexander MitscherHch and Fred Mielke, The Death

by James Cleugh (London, 1962),

German Medicine and

9 Christian Pross, 'Nazi Doctors,

Truth', in The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code:

Human

Grodin (New York, 10 See

Benno

George R.

mann.

J.

Human

Rights in

Annas and Michael A.

Miiller-Hill, Murderous Science: EUmination by Scientific

and Others

in

Germany, igjj—ig^^,

trans,

Fraser (Oxford, 1988), p. 20 and passim; see also

Biologists, p.

by

Deich-

229.

Robert N. Proctor, 'Nazi Doctors, Racial Medicine, and Experimentation', in Annas and Grodin, Nazi Doctors,

12

Historical

1992), p. 36.

Selection ofJews, Gypsies,

11

by George

Experimentation, ed.

Doctors, trans,

p. 17.

Human

p. 18.

See for example Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and

(New

the Psychology of Genocide

Hitler;

Hendrik van den Bussche,

'Dritten Reich': Kontinuitdt,

York, 1986); Kater, Doctors under ed., Medizinische Wissenschaft im

Anpassung und Opposition an der Hamburger

Medizinischen Fakultat (Berlin, 1989). 13

Trials of

War

Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals uruier

Control Council

Law

10,

vol.

1

(Washington,

DC:

Superintendent

of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950); Military Tribunal, Case

i.

United

States v. Karl

Brandt

et al.,

October 1946-

April 1949, pp. 27-74. 14 Details are outlined in ibid, passim. 15

Telford Taylor, 'Opening Statement of the Prosecution 9, 1946', in

Annas and Grodin, Nazi

16

Deichmann,

17

Quoted

Biologists, p.

in Paul

Doctors, pp.

December

72-3.

257.

Hoedeman,

Hitler or Hipipocrates: Medical Experiments

Hitler's Scientists

494 and Euthanasia

Third Reich, trans, by

in the

Ralph de Rijke (Lewes,

1991), p. 168.

Mitscherlich and Mielke, Death Doctors, p. 71 note

1

,

'Opening Statement', 19

Hoedeman,

21

22 Quoted

in

;

see also Taylor,

p. 75.

Hitler or Hippocrates, p. 23.

20 Taylor, 'Opening Statement',

Quoted

i

Hoedeman,

p. 78.

Hitler or Hippocrates, p. 181.

ibid., p. 147.

23

Taylor, 'Opening Statement', p. 81.

24

Till Bastian, Furchtbare Arzte: Medizinische Verbrechen im Dritten Reich

(Munich, 1995), pp. 78-9. 25

Quoted

in Taylor,

'Opening Statement',

p. 81.

Chapter 27: The Devil's Chemists

1

Primo

Levi, If This

(London, 1990), 2

Ibid., p. 15.

3

Ibid., p. 142.

4 Ibid., 5

The

a

is

Man;

Tlie

Truce, trans,

by Stuart Woolf

p. iii.

p. 145.

story that follows

is

derived from

Anthony N.

Stranges, 'Ger-

many's Synthetic Fuel Industry, 1930-1945', in Lesch, The German Chemical Industry, pp. lijff.

Dwork and van

6

Quoted

in

7

Quoted

ibid., p. 232.

8

Quoted

ibid., p. 233.

Pelt, Auschwitz, p. 205.

9 Stranges, 'Synthetic', in Lesch, The German Chemical Industry, 10 Carole Angier, Tlie

p. 210.

Double Bond: Primo Levi, a Biography (London,

2002), p. 303.

Crime and Punishment ofl.G. Farben

11

Quoted

12

Quoted

ibid., p. 143.

13

Quoted

in

14

Quoted

in Borkin, Crime and Punishment,

15

Levi, If This

in

Joseph Borkin,

(London, 1979),

p. 138.

Dwork and is

a

Tlte

Man,

van

Pelt, Auschwitz, p. 234.

p. 47.

16 Borkin, Crime and Punishment p. 162.

p. 155.

Notes

495

Chapter 28: Wonder Weapons

1

See for example Friedrich Hansen, Biologische KriegsfUhrung im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt

am

Herwig and Heinz Rode,

2 Dieter

Bombers igj5-ig43, 3

Main, 1993), pp. 126-7.

Geoffrey Brooks,

trans,

Luftwaffe: Secret Projects

by Elke and John Weal

Hitler's Terror

-

Strategic

(Leicester, 2000).

Weapons: From VI to Vimana (London,

2002).

4 Speer, Slave 5

State, p. 146.

Ibid., p. 147.

6 Ibid., p. 148. 7 Ulrich Albrecht, 'Military

8

Technology and National

ogy', in

Renneberg and Walker,

Quoted

ibid., p.

Socialist Ideol-

Science, Technology, p. 107.

in.

9 Ibid., p. 113. 10 Ibid., p. 120. 11

Quoted

in

Ute Deichmann and Benno Universities and Kaiser

Research

at

many', in

ibid., p. 180.

Miiller-Hill,

Wilhelm

Institutes in

'Biological

Nazi Ger-

12 See Geoffrey Brooks, Hitler's Nuclear Weapons: The Development and

Attempted Deployment of Radiological Armaments by Nazi Germany

(London, 1992), pp. 121-6. 13

Quoted

ibid., p. 121.

14

Quoted

ibid., p. 121.

1

The

story of

sarin

is

Gerhard Schrader and the development of tabun and

told in Harris

and Paxman,

A Higher Form

of Killing, pp. 53ff.

16 Ibid., p. 62. 17 For precise see

Roy

numbers and

analysis

of both the Vi and

Irons, Hitler's Terror Weapons:

The

Price of Vengeance,

foreword by Richard Overy (London, 2002). See et

al..

The

Blitz:

Then and Now,

vol. 3

V2 campaigns

also

Quoted

in Irons, Hitler's Terror Weapons, p. 161.

19

Quoted

in ibid., pp. 161-2.

a

Ken Waketield

(London, 1990).

18

with

496

Hitler's Scientists

Chapter zg: Farm Hall 1

The

definitive edition

of the secret recordings

is

Bernstein, Uranium

Club. See also the eariier edition. Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts,

2

with an introduction by Sir Charles Frank (Berkeley, 1 993)

Unpublished interview with Professor Marcial Echenique, 24 Nov-

ember 2002. 3

Bernstein, Uranium Club, p. 78.

4 Ibid.,

p. 229.

5

Ibid., pp. iisff.

6

BBC

Written Archives Centre; quoted

ibid., p. 357.

7 Jungk, Thousand Suns, p. 102. 8

Bernstein, Uranium Club, p. 122, note 53.

9 Ibid.,

p. 137.

10 Ibid., p. 138. 11

Ibid., pp.

12

The

352-3.

English and

German

texts are

reproduced in

ibid.,

pp. i69ff.,

along with a technical commentary. 13

Ibid., p. 185.

14 Powers, Heisenberg's War, p. 451. 15

Sime, Lise Meitner,

p. 320.

16 Bernstein, Uranium Club, p. 185.

Chapter jo: Heroes, Villains and Fellow Travellers

Quoted

in

2

Quoted

in Bernstein,

3

Walker, Nazi

4

Quoted

1

5

in

Sime, Lise Meitner, pp. 321-2.

Uranium Club,

p. 214.

Science, p. 269.

Rose, Heisenberg,

p. 300.

Gerhard Hildebrandt, 'Max von Laue, der "Ritter ohne Furcht und Tadel"', in Berlinische Lebensbilder, vol.

I:

Wilhelm Treue and Gerhard Hildebrandt

Naturwissenschaftler, ed.

by

(Berlin, 1987), p. 233.

6 Gerda Freise, 'Der Nobelpreistrager Professor

Dr Heinrich Wieland:

Zivilcourage in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus', in Hochverrat?: Die 'Weifie Rose'

und

ihr

Umfeld, ed. by

(Constance, 1993), pp. 135-57-

Rudolf Lill and Michael KiBener

Notes

497

152-4.

7

Ibid., pp.

8

Meitner to Hahn, 27 June 1945. Printed

(Weinheim, 198 1),

Sensation

p. 18

iff.;

in F. Krafft,

quoted

in

Im

Schatten der

Rose, Heisenberg,

pp. 301-2.

9

Quoted

ibid.,

10

Quoted

ibid., p. 302.

11

Mark Walker, 'Twentieth Century German the

pp. 301-2.

Twentieth Cetitnry, ed.

(Amsterdam, 1997),

Science', in Science in

by John Krige and Dominique Pestre

p. 809.

12 Ibid., p. 810. 13

Lawrence Badash, 'Otto Hahn, Science, and Social Responsibility',

Hahn and

in Otto

14

by William R. Shea

(Dordrecht, 1983),

p. 176.

Thomas Powers's

interview with John A. Wheeler, Princeton,

March 15

the Rise of Nuclear Physics, ed.

5

1990: Heisenberg' s War, p. 459.

Michael Schaaf, Heisenberg,

Hitler

und

die

Bombe: Gesprdche mit Zeit-

zeugen (Berlin, 2001), p. 128.

Chapter 31: 1

Scientific

Plunder

Interview with Professor Austyn Mair, Cambridge, 28

November

2002. 2

Quoted Spoils

3

in

and

Quoted

Tom

Bower,

Secrets of Nazi

in

Tlie Paperclip Conspiracy:

Germany (London,

Battle for the

1987), p. 66.

Burghard Ciesla and Helmuth Trischler, 'Legitimation

through Use: Rocket and Aeronautic Research

and the USA',

in Science

Mark Walker (London, 4 Bower,

The

Paperclip

and Ideology:

A

in the

Third Reich

Comparative History, ed. by

2003), p. 157.

Conspiracy,

passim;

and Neufeld,

The Rocket,

pp. 270lf.

Die Spezialisten,

5

Albrecht

et al..

6

Werner

Albring,

(Hamburg, 7

Ibid., pp.

1991).

126-7.

p. 12.

Gorodomlia: Deutsche Raketenforscher

in

Rufland

Hitler's Scientists

498

Chapter j2: Nuclear Postures 1

Sean Dennis Cashnian, America, Roosevelt, and World War

(New

II

York, 1993), PP- 368-69. 2

John Rawls, Papers, ed.

3

Szilard,

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by Samuel Freeman (Cambridge,

His Version,

5

1999), pp. 565—72.

p. 211.

4 Dyson, Disturbing the Universe,

Edward

MA,

p. 51.

Teller (with Judith L. Schoolery), Memoirs:

Century Journey

in

Science

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Politics

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p. 283.

6 Sir Joseph Rotblat Lecture

Defence

the

Royal United Services

Institute

ft)r

Studies, January 2003; see www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear.

7 Perutz, / Wish I'd 8

at

Made You Angry

Earlier, p. 58.

A

See Teller's Memoirs; also Richard Lourie, Sakharov: (Brandeis, 2002);

and Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs,

Biography

by Richard

trans,

Lourie (London, 1990). 9

Quoted

Joseph Rotblat,

in

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vs.

St Sakharov', Times Higher Education Supplement, 26 July 2002.

10

Quoted

in

David HoUoway,

and Atomic Energy, igjg-ig56 11

Stalin

and

the

(New Haven,

Bomb: The

Union

Soviet

1994), pp. 316-17.

Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb York, 1996).

(New

^

12 Teller, Memoirs, p. 257, note 40. 13

Quoted

ibid., p. 163.

14 Ibid., p. 581. 15

Ibid., p. 572.

16 Rotblat, 'Tale'. 17 Ibid. 18

Dyson, Disturbing

19

See David Miller, The Cold War:

the Universe, p. 92.

A

Military History

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PP- 349ff-

20 Rhodes, Atomic Bomb, 21

p. 784.

John Lewis Gaddis, Now We Know: Rethinking Cold War (Oxford, 1997),

History

p. 261.

22 'U.S. Arsenal Stocked with 1,700 Mininukes', Oakland Tribune, 25

Notes

February 2003; 'Development of valley Herald, 25

499

New

Nukes Receives OK',

Tri-

February 2003.

Chapter 33: Uniquely Nazi?

November

2000, p. 504.

1

Nature, 30

2

See for example Neil Gregor, Daimler-Benz

in the

Third Reich

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Haven, 1998). 3

Hans H. Amtmann, The Vanishing Paperclips: America's Aerospace

Secret

(Boston, 1988), p. 94.

4 Neufeld, 'The Guided Missile', p. 71. 5

Ibid., p. 71.

One World

6 David Reynolds,

(London, 2000), 7

A

Global History Since ig43

p. 497.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica; Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention; 8

Divisible:

The

Associated Press.

William Blum, Rogue

State:

A

Guide

to the

World's Only Superpower

(London, 2002). 9 Robert N. Proctor, Value-Free Science? Purity and Pouter

Knowledge (Cambridge, 10

John May, The

11

Willem A. Veenhoven

the

Human

MA,

in

Modern

1991), p. 239.

Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age: The Hidden History,

Cost (London, 1989), pp. 82-3.

Fundamental Freedoms:

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A

Case Studies on

World Survey, vol.

I

Human

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(The Hague, 1975),

P- 31-

12

Ibid., p. 30.

13

George

J.

Annas and Michael A. Grodin, 'Introduction',

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Annas

Doctors, p. 5.

14 Reynolds, One World 15

in

Divisible, p. 513.

Interview with Brenner in John Cornwell, 'Gene Spleen', Sunday Times Magazine, 26 July 1992,

p. 19.

16 Ibid., p. 20. 17

For the monoclonal antibodies Designsfor Life: Molecular Biology

'scandal' see Soraya after

pp. 353-518

Sunday Times,

13

October 2002,

de Chadarevian,

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500

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20 Richard Lewontin, Ge)iome and Other

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Nature, J. J.

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at

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4 Apart from the Disney movie The Insider there material

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Chapter J4: Science 1

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Britain's Shield:

Radar and

the Defeat of the Luftwaffe

Index

Ai rocket 149 A2 rocket 149-50

Althoff, Friedrich 50

A3 rocket 256-7, 258

Ambros, Otto

A4

ammonia 40, 51-2, 53-4 Amnesty International 450 Amtmann, Hans 421

Alzheimer, Alois 89

rocket 21, 257, 258, 260-61, 341,

342-3, 344, 345,419, 439

Abd

el

Krirn 67

Academic Assistance Council

140,

Advanced Research

Projects

anthropologists 8

Agency

anti-Semitism 137, 153, 182

and anti-cancer campaign 168-9

(ARPA)45i

dismissals

141

and persecution ofJewish

doctors and scientists 10, 34,

Agfa 53

Ahnenerbe

(Ancestral Heritage) 192,

aircraft 377, 378,

to

Versailles Treaty 142

detection

at

jet 30, 246,

night 95

250-53

and people's fighter 381-2 research and development 143—4,

and suicide missions 382—3 (Euthanasia Office)

349-50 Albrecht, Ulrich 382

Werner 423-5

alcohol

campaign

1

1

53

3

in universities

and research

institutions 11 4- 15

Ardenne, Manfred von 236-7, 242, 318 Arendt,

Hannah in Jerusalem

8-9

Aristotle 75

army,

German

Army

Ordnance, German 231-2, 236

142

Aryan race

Albert, Prince 42

Albring,

and schools

Eichmann

246-7

T4

medical profession

rife in

446

on building of due

constraints

127, 130, 131, 134-6, 154-5,

156-7

193, 195, 196

Aktion

Anschluss 213

anthrax 459, 460

208

Adenauer, Konrad 413, 414

AEG

2,11-2, 374, 375, 385

research into origins of 192—3 asbestosis,

combating of 168

aspirin 45

against

170-71

Association for

German

alpha rays 121

Astel, Karl 171

Alsos 334-7

Aston, Francis 228

Biologists 82

Hitler's Scientists

514 astronomy

growth

235,241, 319, 333,435,438, in enthusiasm for

and

446, 465

building of planetariums 112—13

atomic

bomb

5, 7, 11,

and Alsos 334-7 fission research

U-238

and Speer's meeting with Heisenberg 316—17

231-2 by Nazi

at self-exculpation

scientists

397-9, 401-2,

408, 415-16 and Bohr's unpublished

and Szilard 209-10

and United

drafts

see also

304-9

Attlee,

Heisenberg

at

Copenhagen

299,

nuclear physics

Clement 432

human experiments

at

364—6

use of slave labour from by

IG

Farben 369, 372, 374-5

300-303, 305-9 mass question 238-40,

critical

225-6, 227-8,

Auschwitz 351, 352, 353-4, 358

Bohr and

conversations between

States

241, 310, 332-4, 396

and Britain 240-41, 310, 396

and

separation of U-235 from

234-5, 239-40, 299-300, 334

anny and nuclear

bomb

scientists

and plutonium 236—7, 300, 311

231, 236, 238, 299-320, 440

abandoning of by Speer 318-19

attempt

morahty of German argument 12-13

25-8, 120,

Auschwitz-Birkenau 353, 354

311

B61-11 441

discovery of fission and chain reaction theory 26, 121, 2 212, 215-28, discussions

German 13,

1

o- 1 1

Baeyer, Adolf von 40

between detained scientists at

Farm Hall

develop by Germans and

Haigerloch and research 329—30 Heisenberg's position paper

on

8-9

BASF

W.

^

62

(Badische Anilin-

und Soda-

Bastian, Till 152

394-400,

12, 334,

Battle

of Britain 276-7

batdeships

430 Hitler's attitude towards

25-8,

Bauer,

248-50

Max

56

Bauersfeld, Walther 112

318

Bayer 43,

argument and

opposing arguments for

first

use

of on Hiroshima 430-31 justification

thesis

Fabrik) 51-2, 53, 54, 370, 376

nuclear fission 234—5

justification

of evil'

Barger, George 127

Bamett,J.

reasons 12, 27

and Hiroshima

Bagge, Erich 232, 392, 393, 405, 416 'banality

394-404, 405,408

failure to

B-Dienst (Observation Service) 287, 288

231-3

by AlHed

scientists for

376

Becquerel, Antoine-Henri 97

Beevor, Antony 336 Beger, Bruno 193

researching 304-5

and Manhattan Project

53,

Becker, Karl Emil 146, 150-51, 260

27, 151,

Behring, Emil Adolf von 40

Index Beiglboeck, Wilhelm 362 'bell

F.

W.

Blumenthal, Otto 201

BMW 378

curve' 85

Beneke,

515

43

Bodenstein,

Max

139

benzene ring 43

Boehm,

Berg, Morris 330, 331, 332

Bohr, Niels 99, 187, 326, 400

Bergius, Friedrich 370

Bergius hydrogenation process 370,

conversations with Heisenberg

Copenhagen on atomic 13, 115, 299,

371

goes to

Berlin 12 1-3 Bernal,

Felix 159

J.

300-303, 305-9

America 219-20, 221

and Heisenberg 415

D. 463

Berning, Heinrich 357—8

nature of thinking over atomic

Jeremy 397, 403-4, 429 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von 81

and nuclear

Berwald, Ludwig 201

post-war years 415

Bethe, Hans 139, 211, 431,

and quantum physics

Bernstein,

bomb 305—7

Beyerchen, Alan D. 107

219-20, 221

fission

unpublished

432 Beveridge, William 28, 140

drafts

1

15-16, 117

304-9, 415

wins Nobel prize for physics (1922) 116

Bibo, Major 287

Boltzmann, Ludwig 121, 181

Bieberbach, Ludwig 164, 165,

Bonaparte, Jerome 74

198-200, 321

Bonhoetfer, Karl-Friedrich 135

Bieberbach's Conjecture 198

book-burning 132-3

Binding, Karl 89

Boot, Henry 278

biochemistry 43, 44

Born,

Biological and

Toxin Weapons

Convention 460 biological Biologic,

weapons 460

Die (periodical) 82

Max

7, 93,

reductionist approach to scientific

research in

414

53, 213, 214,

232 Bothe, Walther 122, 233, 318, 336

44—5

Bragg, William Henry 93—4 Brandt, Karl 349, 362 Brandt, Leo 280

biotechnology 454—8, 462

Brandt,

Bischoff, Karl

353-4

Bismarck (battleship) 248, 249

Edwin 288 Clay 254, 255

Bletchley Park 286, 289, 290, 294 Blitzkrieg

17-18, 120, 130,

Bosch, Carl 47, 51, 52,

biophysics 449

Blair,

1

139, 140, 202, 406,

Bouhler, Philipp 349

biology

Black,

at

physics

244

Blomberg, Werner von 127

Blome, Kurt 360

Rudolf 359

Braun, Wernher von

14,

148—51,

256, 343, 344, 346-7, 382, 423 arrest

and

release

347

background 147-8 head of space research States

joins the

in

United

347

army rocket research team

148-50

ii6

Hitler'.^:

Braun,

Wernher von —

and anti-Semitism 168-9

avit.

and rocket developn^ent 21.1 46,

and combating

and

256-7 and

Sdcini
slave labour exploitation 12,

and smoking 171— Carson, Rachel

346-7

Si7e«f Spring

Britain

246-7, 251-2

aircraft

asbestosis 168

169-70

diet

and atomic

bomb

450

Casella 53

240-41, 310, 396

Casimir, Hendrik 322,

],2t,

Churchill and technolog\- 269-73

Cassidy, David 1S2, 1S5, 321, 322

and codes/code-breaking 28 1-2,

cathode rays 40, 97, 104

287-8

286,

Centre Party 128

Dreadnought Project 54-6

Chadwick, James 209, 23

and eugenics 85-6, 88

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 24,

growth of Big Science 448 Jewish

scientists

coming

to

78, 105 1

40

on German

limited information

weapons technology- 267—9 nuclear

power

plants 443

and radar 261, 263-4, 265-7, -69. 2-3-4, rivalry

277,

:i76,

278-9

with Germany 54—5

seizure of German science and

technology

after the

war 420-21

Chauder, Juliusz Pawel 202 chauvinism

and science 58 chemical industr\- 52, 58, 367—76 chemistry 41-2

Chernobyl accident 443-4

Haakon 333

Chevalier,

Chicago

Pile

i

3 33

children

British scientists

characterization ot

and World War

I

5

legalizeci

kiUing of mentally and

physically handicapped 349

93-5

chlorine gas 56—7, 385

brownshirts 12S Briining, Heinrich 137, 153

Buchenwald 359 Buderi, Robert 266, 278-9

Buna

Chamberlain, Neville 268

*.

deployment of during World War

61-3 Churchill,

Winston 267, 286-7,

396-7, 432

factory 367, 368-9. 372. 373,

and science 36

375. 376

Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm 48

and technology 269-73

Buiitknn~ 65

Tlic

Burleigh, Michael 89

Bush, George

W.

World

civil ser\-ants

459. 460

Bush, Vannevar 241, 447-8, 465 Butenandt, Adolf 328

Clark,

281

Crisis

136—8

Robert Goddard 146

cloning ethics

of 456-8

Clusius, Klaus 240

cancer campaign

and alcohol

1

11,

70-7

167-73

coal

369-70

Coblitz.

Wilhelm 326

I

Index Cockroft, J. D. 334 codes/code-breaking 280, 281-95

and Colossus 282, 290-91, 292,

Darwin, Leonard 87

Darwinism

made by Germans

Allied codes

to crack

286-9

and Enigma machine 253, 282-4,

71

Davenport, Charles 86-7

Dawes

294-5 efforts

517

Plan 143

de Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri

Maurice Clerel 75 death rays 267-8

Debye, Peter

285—6, 289

Max

108, 139, 232

and Hollerith machine 288

Dehn,

and Lorenz machine 291—2,

Deichmann, Ute 135 democracy

293-4, 295

and Magdeburg

affair

281-2

and Poles 285-6

and science 16—17, 463 Deutsche Technik

Cold War 432-3, 461 science in

202, 203

(German

Technology)

Colossus 282, 290-91, 292, 294-5

communication technology 450-51,

145

392, 393

Dirac, Paul 102, 119 dirty

465

bombs

378,

Compton, Arthur 333 computers 451—2

Doblin, Alfred 61

German 289-90

involved in

doctors

and information revolution 451—2

8,

383-4

152-3

human

experiments

357-8 Jewish 154—8

Conrad, Charles J. 373 Copenhagen

9,

Diebner, Kurt 232, 233, 235, 336,

447—50

(play) 13, 14, 397,

429

Dohrn, Anton 72

Correns, Carl 83

Doll, Richard 168

Coster, Dirk 214-15

Donitz, Karl 287

Courant, FUchard 120, 139, 202

Dora

cremations 351-5

Dornberger, Walter 21-2, 27, 37,

'Crossbow' 343-4

Cuban

146, 256, 257, 260, 342, 343, 346

missile crisis

'Cultivator

No.

6'

(gun) 244

Drang nach Osten (Push to the

440

270-71

East)

176

Curie, Irene 215

Dreadnoughts 54-6, 442

Curie, Marie 97, 99

Du

cyclotron 233-4, 317

Duhem,

Bois, Josiah 375

Pierre 59

Duisberg, Carl 52-3

Dachau camp

human

Duncker, Karl 165

352, 379

experimentation

at

359—62

Daimler Benz 335, 378

durofol 379 Diisseldorf University 135

Darre, Richard Walther 153, 192-3

dyestuffs 41-2, 52, 167

Darwin, Charles 76—7,

Dyherfurth factory 385

Origin of Species 76

78,

97

Dyson, Freeman 431-2, 433, 437-8

5i8

Hitler's Scientists

Eddington, Arthur 102

energy supplies 369—70

education 31-2

engineers 144—8

Ehrlich, Paul 43, 45

Enigma machine

Eichmann, Adolf 351 Einem, Carl von 64

Epstein, Paul 201

Einstein, Albert 36, 51, 68-9,

Esau,

Abraham 231-2,

99-100, 123, 138, 180, 202,

ether theory 103

304

ethics

eugenics 79, 82, 84, 85-90

becomes important resource

in

euthanasia 10, 89-90, 169, 348,

Germany 112

349-50, 357

no

of 59,

Euthanasia Office

leaves Nazi

Germany

129, 139

Roosevelt on atom

bomb

Ewald,

Aktion T4

P. P.

136

Experimental Station West 150 experiments,

227

quantum theory 107 nuclear fission 226-7 and and

see

evolution 71

and Freud 158

letter to

311

and science 14—16

awarded Nobel Prize 40

background 100— loi

criticism

253, 282—4, 285—6,

289, 291

and photoelectric

effect 40,

97-8

and quantum theory 100 refusal to attend

Solvay conference

human

see

human

experiments

light

exterminations 348—56

and

'i4fi3'

programme 350

and T4 project 349-50 technology employed in the cremation of bodies 351-5

111-12 Fulda manifesto

refusal to sign

use of Zyklon

B

354

58

and

theory

relativity

4,

101-3,

renouncing of German citizenship

and Jewish

faith loi

Farm

and Stark 103,

107,

108-9

Max

370, 371 ^

429-30

and

transcripts 13,

'fellow-travelling'

394-404,

German

scientists

408-12

II,

Ferrni,

Enrico 26, 211, 212, 216-17,

220, 222, 223, 318, 333 Final Solution 349, 350, 351, 354,

159

Emergency Community

IG Farben

Feldbau, Jacques 368

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 448 Eitingon,

method

405, 408

Einstein, Mileva (wife) loi

Tower 33-4

see

Hall

talks

from Prussian Academy

ofSciences 129-30, 135-6

Einstein

synthesis

Farben

105-6, 189

resignation

F-T

357

see

Notgemeinschaft der deutschen

First

Wissenschaft

World War

sec

World War

Fischer,

Emil 67, 121

Emmrich, Dr Curt 152—66

Fischer,

Eugen

Enabling Act 128

Fischer, Franz 370

24, 80-81, 365

I

Index Fisher, Sir John 5

Flowers,

Gaddis,

Tommy 294

bombs

Flying Hitler

see

V

Eugenics 86 Galton, Sir Francis 85, 86

i

Youth

John Lewis 440

Galton Laboratory for National

238

Fliigge, Siegfried

flying

519

Hereditary Genius 85

38

Four-Year Plan 243, 314, 371

gas warfare see poison gas

Fowler, Ralph 94

Gasset, Jose Ortega y 103

France 58

Gebhardt, Kerl 363-4

chauvinism between Germany and

GEMA263,

58-9 Franck, James 61, 66— 7, 108, 115,

War

(1870) 58

Frank, Hans 324-5, 326 Frankfurt University

1

Mond Woman (

(film)

393, 399,

33

in the

Moon)

147

13, 14, 397,

429

Freiburg University 133

Gerda 409, 410

French, Sir John 62, 64 Freud,

Sigmund

96, 158—60,

Freudenberg, Karl 127 Freundlich, Irwin Finlay 33

Freya system 274-5, 277

Otto

26, 116,

1

18-19, 121-2,

123, 208, 216-17, 217-19,

Physical Society 108, 417 Professional

Community of

German Psychoanalytical Society 159 German Research Foundation 179 German Society for Psychology 162 German Society for Psychotherapy (renamed International General Medical Society for

238-9, 240, 304

German Students League 164—5 German Technology see Deutsche Technik

German Youth Movement Gieseler, glacial

Fromm,

Glaser,

Friedrich

315—16

Frydag, Karl 387-8 fuel, synthetic

370-71, 373

FUhrerprinzip 52, 145, 165, 179, 188,

315

Ludwig 57

Fulda manifesto 32—3, 57-8, 69

1

17

Gestalt psychology 162, 163

Froehlich, Walter 201

Fulda,

400,416-17 theory 83—4

Psychotherapy) 159-60

162

Frisch,

Gemian German

cell

University Physicists 108

freezing experiments 358, 360—61

Freise,

Gerlach, Walter 329, 330, 336, 392,

gemi-hne

Frayn, Michael 430

Copenhagen

278

geopoHtics 174—7

geraniums 380

120, 130, 139, 140

Franco-Prussian

Frau im

Gellner, Ernst 161

H. 33

cosmogony theory

33,

193-5

Ludwig 108

GleichschaUung

8, 9,

128, 129

globalization 453

Gobineau, Arthur Comte de 23—4, 153

Essay on the Inequahty Races 75, 77-8

Fulton, Robert 227

Goddard, Henry 87

Funk, Walter 243

Godel, Kurt 202-3

of the

Human

Hitler's Scientists

520

Hermann

Goering,

22, 127, 170, 243,

Wilhelm

runs Kaiser

313-14, 316, 371, 378

Chemistry

Institute for

Physical Chemistry (Berlin) 51,54

M. H. 159

Goering,

Institute for Physical

137, 138

255-6, 260, 276, 277, 280,

Gorbachev, Mikhail 439

and wife's suicide 65

Goudsmit, Samuel 334-6, 337, 392,

wins Nobel award for ammonia discovery 66, 69

463

work

Graf Spec (battleship) 248

and death

in later years

138-9

Gratzer, Walter 429

Grawitz, Ernst-Robert 191

Haber, Charlotte (second wife) 69

Grawitz, Karl 364

Haber, Clara

(first

Gross, Walter 88

Haberer, Joseph

Groth, Wilhelm 224

Haeckel, Ernst

Grottrup,

Helmut

wife) 49, 57, 65

Haber, Siegfried 47

A. A. 251

Griffiths,

8

76-7, 82

4, 73,

Natural History of Creation 72

347, 423, 424

Haffner,

Groves, Leslie 241, 318, 330, 333,

Hugh

29

Hague Convention

334,335, 391-2,433

Hahn, Otto

Gugelot, Piet 331

Guillaume, Charles 251

63, 66, 68

122, 207, 212, 213, 336,

392, 393,

399,400

death 414

gunfire control

and Farm Hall discussions 400

on warships 93—4

and gas warfare 63, 65-6

guns 244 Gunther, Hans

F.

K.

and Meitner 121, 214

4, 80, 153,

member of Nuclear Physics Group

166 Gutzeit, Professor Kurt 357

413

Gypsies 360, 362, 366

Nobel

61,413

\

Haagen, Dr Eugen 363

and nuclear

fission discovery 26,

Haber,

Fritz 4, 34,

61,

47-60, 71

prize for discovery of fissior^

215-16, 217

post-war years 412—14

and ammonia discovery 40, 41,

reaction to Hiroshima 394, 395

51-2, 66

appearance and character 48-9

Haigerloch 329-30

background and education 47-8

Haldane,J. B.

depression 69,

felt after

World War

I

views on gas warfare 67-8

and poison gas 7-8, 47, 56-7,

60,

61-2,63,65,67,93 research into gold reserves in

seawater 70 resignation

356-7

Hale, George 59

Hallervorden, Juhus 350, 358

70

ethical

S. 62,

from Kaiser Wilhelm

Hardy, G. H. 199 Harnack, Adolf von 50 Harris,

Arthur 'Bomber'

5

Harteck, Paul 135, 223-4, 231, 233, 320, 391, 392, 397, 402,

Hausdorff, Felix 201

416-17

Index

521

Haushofer, Karl 175-6, 177

post-war years 414—15

Healey, Bernadine 455

and potential

'Heath Robinsons' 294

and quantum physics

Hechingen

reaction to Hiroshima 394-5

329, 336

Heidegger, Martin

and Scliwarze Korps

133

4,

Heinkel, Ernst 250, 252

Heisenberg,

Werner

181— 2,

politics

180

speech on potential of atomic

weapon

experience 328

13, 231,

article

and separation of science and

14, 132, 134,

392, 393

and atomic

330-32 4, 1 1 7- 1

183

179, 180-86, 300, 319, 320-24,

air raid

assassin

bomb programme

12,

299-300, 304, 311-12,

3

1

SS investigation of 184-5 support for 182—3 supporter of Hitler's war aims 407

316, 320

Poland 324, 325-6

awards and honours 321

trip to

background

turning blind eye to atrocities

1 1

committed by Nazi regime 324,

and Bohr 415 conversations with

atomic physics 13, 115, 299,

Bohr over

326, 407

Copenhagen

at

300-303, 305-9

decision to stay in

Germany and

and uncertainty principle in

United

States

13,

'uranium' machine experiments

pact with Nazi regime 185, 230

320 Heisenberg, Martin (son) 332

and Farm Hall discussions and lecture 13, 398-9, 400, 402-4,

Helmholtz, Hermann von 44

407

Helmholtz Society 113

fmal verdict of 406— 10

Hendrick, Ives 161

and Himmler 183-4, 184-5

knowledge of physics necessary build a

hepatitis

to

bomb 403-4

and 'matrix mechanics'

362

Herbert, Paul

M.

375

Hermann, Rudolf 257 Hertz, Gustav 61, 123, 139, 235

1 1

meeting with Speer 316-17

Hertz, Heinrich 104, 106-7

and Munich chair 181

Hess, Kurt 213

in the Netherlands

118

230

322-4

Hess,

Rudolf 184

and notion of Two Wars 323, 331

Heydrich, Reinhard 185, 351, 364

and nuclear research programme

Hiemer, Ernst 24

26, 230, 233, 237, 317,

403-4

opposition to by Nazi physicists

181-3

picked up by Alsos 336—7

234-5

David

4,

39-40, 120, 198

Hildebrandt, Kurt 189

HiU, A. V. 140

philosophical speculations 312

position paper

Hilbert,

on nuclear

Himmler, Heinrich

181, 191 -7, 347,

379 fission

and Auschwitz 353

background 19 1-2

522

Hitler's Scientists

Himmler, Heinrich —

view of Russians 34—5

cont.

health fads 196

Hobsbawm,

and Heisenberg 183-4, 184-5

Hoche, Alfred 89

and pseudo-science 19 1-7

Hoechst

research

programme

persecution of witches 195—6

41-2, 48

Hahn's reaction

to 394, 395

Heisenberg's reaction to 394-5

technology 22

astrology and astronomy interests

bomb

25-8, 318

attitude towards missile technology

21-2 bio-political rhetoric

23-5

bio-rhetoric against the Jews 24-5 biological notions of race

23—4

Chancellor 127, 128

commits

Horbiger, Hanns 33, 194 Fritz 209, 236,

Hull, Albert

after

W.

experiments

World War

Dachau 359-62

at

Ravensbriick 363—4

and Japanese 445 and poison gas 363, 385 Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler

camps 362-3

456

Hund,

Mein Kampf 24,

Huntsville 423

and rocket development 258,

science

hydrocyanic acid

bomb

see

Zyklon B

7, 36,

431-8

hydrogen peroxide 254 hydrogenation 370

342-3 scientific

Friedrich 187

hydrogen

128

Project 454—5,

Humboldt, Wilhelm von 50

and technology 27, 29, 31—2, 37 and Lebensraum 175 repudiation of Versailles Treaty 150

449-50

at

Human Genome

28, 31, 159, 175

II

Auschwitz 364-6

lack of understanding of science

power

278

at

suicide 391

and Jews 137

rise to

237

Hugenberg, Alfred 127-8

human

31, 33, 113

and the atomic

249

Hopkins, Frederick Gowland 140

Hubble, Edwin 112

Hider, Adolf 180, 248

new

(battleship)

Houtermans,

August 362, 363

approach to

Herman 288

Hollerith machine 288

Hood

430

12, 334,

441—2

Ian

Hofmann, August Wilhelm von

Hollmann, Friedrich von 74 Holzwarth, Hans 251

196-7, 379-80 Hintze, Arthur 169

as

Hofman,

Hollerith,

195

and wonder weapon schemes

Hiroshima

376

Hoffmann, Heinrich 25-6, 318

into

and rocket programme 344, 345 and Welteislehre }2^ i93' 194^

Hirt,

53,

Eric 96

education and view of

hydrophones 94

28—37

and vegetarianism

31, 170

IBM

view ofjet

250

IG Farben 52-4,

aircraft

451 169, 367,

369-76

Index exploitation of slave labour from

Auschwitz 369, 372-3, 374-5 and production of poison slavery

gas 385

and mass murder

charges against after the

war and

523

Japan 391, 445 Jeans,

dismissals

Jewish mathematicians persecution of 201-3

371-2 thwarting of break-up of after the

war 375

Jewish

dismissal

with universities 44

Germany 139-40

inheritance, notion of 82-3 Institute for Solar Physics (formerly

to

keep some

of Theoretical Physics 181

Mathematics (second) 39-40 International Exhibition (1900) (Paris)

137—8

34,

victimization of 8

and World

Tower) 34

International Congress of

War

I

60

Jews attacks against 128

dismissal

from

civil service

34

experiments on in concentration

camps 359—66

38-9,95 International General Medical Society

Psychotherapy

1

extennination of 348, 349, 351—6,

364-5

60

International Institute of Intellectual

and

International Organization of

Eugenicists 87—8 International Research Council

Hitler's bio-political rhetoric

24-5

Cooperation 158

images in

as a disease

24-5

Poland 324-5

purging of medical profession of 159, 162, 163

III

451-2

Joliot-Curie, Frederic

(Intelligence Quotient) 87

Iraq

10, 34, 127, 130, 131,

Planck's attempt to persuade Hitler

450-54

IQ

of

exodus of and consequences for

information technology revolution

Internet

to

134-6

and science 72

for

exemption

dismissal 30

industry

Institute

scientists

applications for

India 444

Einstein

and persecutions of

154-5, 156-7

and synthetic rubber production

ties

250-53

Jewish doctors 154—8

374-5

trial

James 99

jet aircraft 30, 246,

444 David 303

Irving,

210— 11, 222,

223, 224-5, 335, 392

Jones, Ernest 161 Jones, R. V. 268, 269, 273-4,

275-6

Israel

and nuclear weapons 444

Jordan, Pascual 114, 186-90, 414 journal publishing 452—3

Jaehne, Freidnch 376 Jaensch, Erich

Rudolf 162, 199

Judeiiboykott 128

Jung, Carl Gustav 160

Hitler's Scientists

524

Krebs, Hans 130-31

Jungk, Robert Thousand Suns

Brighter than a

Just,

Kreiselgerate

GmbH

1

50

12-13, 302-3, 305, 397-8, 403,

Kretschmer, Ernst 160

415

Krieck, Ernst 133—4

Gerhard 57

KristaUnacht (Night of Broken Glass) 157, 185, 201

Kroge, Harry von 265, 266, 278

Kahn, David 283 Kaiser

Wilhelm

Institutes 8, 28, 34,

Krueger, Felix 162—3

Krupp, Friedrich

50-51

71—3

'Fritz'

Biology 233

Kuhl, Stefan 86

Brain Research 350, 358

Kuhn, Heinrich 140

Chemistry 121, 123, 207

Kuhn,

Metals 136

Kiihnold, Rudolf 263

Physical Chemistry 51, 54, 137

Kyshtym

Philalethes 87

(Soviet

Union) 443

Physics 141, 233, 311, 329 Psychiatry 89, 90

Kaiser

Wilhelm Society (renamed

Max

Planck Society) 50-51,

113, 137, 178, 232, 412

labour

camp

use of concentration

prisoners as slave 341-7, 369, 372-3,

Kammhuber, Josef 277

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste

Kammler, Hans 345

Landau,

Kater, Michael 143-4, 152

Langevin, Paul 69, 99

Keegan, John 430

Laue,

F.

53-4,

83, 84

199

40, 109, 130, 135,

392, 393, 398,401,405, 409,

Kekule, August 43

Kennedy, John

Edmund

Max von

3

374-5

439

417

von 165

Kershaw, Ian 28

Lauenstein, Otto

Khruschev, Nikita 434

Law Against Overcrowding of German Schools (1933) 131

Kjellen,

Rudolf

174, 175

Klare, Kurt 24, 154

Le Rossignol, Robert

Klein, Fritz 25

League of Nations 68

Koch, Hugo Alexander 284

Lebensraum (living space) 24, 174-7

Koch, Robert 43 Koffka, Kurt 164

Lehmann, Ernst 81-2

Kohler, Wolfgang 163-5

Lehmann, Julius

Kolbe,

Hermann

5

Leeb, Emil 260

58

Koppel, Leopold 50-51, 67

Friedrich 80, 153

Lenard, Philipp 97-8, 103-7, 109, 114, 178, 179, 195

Korsching, Horst 392, 397

anti-Semitism 106, 107

Kosswig, Kurt 135

attacks against

Kraepelin, Emil 89

background 104

Kramers, Hendrik 323-4

criticism of Wehciskhre 195

Krayer, Otto 135

Deutsche Physik

Jewish Physics' 184

1

78

Index

dislike

Mackinder,

of the English 105

Halford 174

Sir

Madelung, Erwin 61

hatred towards peer group

Magdeburg

104—5

scientists

525

objections to relativity theory 103,

affair

281-2

magnetron 277—80 Mair, Austyn 419

105, 106

post-war years and death 416

malaria 361

view of mathematics 201

Manhattan Project

work on cathode

rays 40, 104

Levi,

319,

333,435,438,446,465

Mann, Thomas

Lenz, Fritz 24, 87

Primo 367-9,

373.

375-6

27, 151, 235, 241,

7, 22,

129

Doctor Faustus 45

Lewin, Kurt 163

Markowitz, Gerald 450

Lewontin, Richard 457

mathematics 39-40, 198-203

Ley, Willy 148

and Bieberbach 198—200

Lickint, Fritz 171

influence of Nazi 200-201

Liebig, Justus

Liek,

Erwin

41,

persecution ofJewish and dissident

44—5

mathematicians 201—3

81, 153

matrix mechanics 118, 119

Hans Konrad 410

Liepelt,

Lifton,

von

MAUD Committee 240-41

Robert J. 350

Lindemann, Frederick

37, 94,

Locarno

Max

Planck Society (fonnerly Kaiser

Wilhelm

99-100, 270, 271

Society)

412-13

Maxwell, James Clerk 98

Pact (1925) 11

Loeb, James 89

Me-262 jet

Lombroso, Cesare 75 Lorentz, H. A. 100

Meckel, Hans 291

aircraft 30,

252

medicine 152—66

on psychology 162—6

Lorenz, Konrad 82, 417-18

constraints

Lorenz machine 291-2, 293-4, -95

fate

Los Alamos 332, 333, 431, 432

holistic

Los Alamos Study Group 441

and Jewish doctors 154—8

II,

view of 153—

and Lehmann's

Ludendorff, Hans 33-4

Ludwig

of psychoanalysis 158—62

King of Bavaria

1

14

racist

propaganda

153

Luftwaffe 242, 247, 260

Mein Kampf 24,

Lusitania 7, 63

Meitner, Lise 66, 122, 123, 211-15,

Lyotard, Jean-Fran(jois TIjc

Postmodern Condition

28, 31, 159, 175

413

453-4

Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich 36, 84

background 121 flees

Germany 213-15

and Hahn 121, 214

MacBnde,

E.

W.

McCormmach,

88

Russell

Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist 95

Macfie, Roland Campbell 86

letter to

Hahn

expressing guilt

410-12 and nuclear

fission 26, 121,

215-19 Mello, Greg 441

207—8,

Hitler's Scientists

526 Mendel, Gregor

83, 84,

96

Mendelsohn, Erich 33 Mengele, Josef 169, 358-9, 364-6,

(NRF) 447 National Science Foundation 459,

466

418,437 mentally

National Research Foundation

NATO 438

ill

and euthanasia 89-90, 348, 349 legalized killing of children 349

Natter

(aircraft)

383

Nature S8, 94, 199, 219, 223, 319,

Mentzel, Rudolf 243

392,455-6

Mercedes 378

Naturphilosopliie 45

Merlin engines 246—7

Natzweiler camp 362-3

Merton, Robert 420, 463

navy,

Messerschmitt 252, 383

Naxos 280

German

142, 143

Michel, Jean 346

Nazi Physicians League 24

Microsoft 451

Nebel, Rudolf 147

Middlebrook, Martin 344 Milch, Erhard 247, 315, 317, 387

Needham, Joseph

military technology

144-5

88, 167, 420, 463

Nernst, Walther 38, 40, 51, 67, 99,

122-3

missiles see rockets

Neufeld, Michael J. 342, 422, 446

Mittasch, Alywin 51, 52

Mittelwerke 342, 344-6, 387

Neumann, Franz 242 Neumann, John von 202

molecular biology 448-9

neutrons 209-10, 211, 212

Monowitz camp 368 Morocco 67

Newman, Max 294 Nicolai, G. F. 58

Morton, George 75

Niemann, Haupsturmfiihrer 380

Moseley, H.J. C. 93

Nietzsche, Friedrich 33

motor manufacturers 378

nitrogen cycles 41

Miiller, Franz

Hermann 171-2

Miiller, Karl Valentin

79-80

nitrogen fertiHzers 47, 53 ^ Nobel awards 40

Wilhelm 185 Miiller-Hill, Benno 364

Noddak,

Munich

Noether,

Muller,

University 180-81, 185

Ida 212

Noddak, Walter 212

Emmy

139,

202

mustard gas 363, 385

Nordheim, Lothar 140

Myriad Genetics 456

Nordic Ring 79 North Korea 444

Nader, Ralph 450

Notgemeinschaft der deutschen

Nagasaki

13,

430

Wissenschaft (Emergency

German

napalm 6

Community

Naples Zoological Station 72

Science) 113, 178-9,413

for

Nathorff, Hertha 155-8

Novocaine 45

National Institutes of Health

Nuclear Non-Prohferation Treaty

(Bethesda) 454, 455, 459

441

Index nuclear physics 12-13, 26, 207-28

amiy and nuclear

527 see also atoniic

Nuremberg

231-2 breakthrough on

trials

23, 326, 359,

374-5

mass'

'critical

bomb; nuclear

physics

fission research

question 238-40, 311

chain reaction theory and keeping

dilemma 221, 222, 223,

secret

Oberth,

Development 447 Ohain, Hans-Joachim Pabst von 250,

226-7 discovery of the neutron 209

252

discovery of nuclear fission 26, 121,

210-11, 212, 215-28, 231-3

and Fermi's transuranic theory 211, 212,

Hermann 146—7

Office of Scientific Research and

Oliphant, Marcus 224, 238, 278

Opel, Fritz von 147

Operation Barbarossa 245—6

216-17

Heisenberg's position paper on

Operation Epsilon 391

Operation Gomorrah 6

nuclear fission 234-5

and plutonium 236-7, 300, 311

Oppenheimer, J. Robert 221—2, 230,

publication of chain reaction

321, 332-3,432,

discovery in Nature and

optical instruments 44

consequences 223—6

organic chemistry 43

scientists

results

dilemma over publishing

on

fission

U-238

234-5, 239-40, 299-300, 334 setting

organic dyes 40

Oslo Report 268-9, 273,

222-3

separation of U-235 from

435-6

up of uranium club 23 1—2,

274

OSS

(Office of Strategic Services) 330

Ossietzki, Carl

von 182

Ostwald, Wilhelm 40

232-3 spread of w^ord of fission discovery

Otto

Halm

(ship)

416

Overy, Richard 245

219-22 Nuclear Physics Research Group 232 nuclear

Page, Robert Morris 262-3

power 443-4

nuclear w^eapons

6,

207-28, 429-44,

arms race between United States

and Soviet Union 432-3

and Cuban

Abraham

440

development driven by

fear

Soviet

Panther tanks 245, 246

patenting issue 455, 456, 465 Pathfinders 117, 324

hazards of nuclear war by accident

PauU, Wolfgang 116, 187 Pearson, Karl 85—6

440-41

bomb

7, 36,

438-9

and 'threshold

115

367

Pasteur, Louis 58

of

Union 432-3

and hydrogen

Dr

Parsons, Charles 251

missile crisis

tactical

Pais,

Pannwitz,

460

43 1-8

Peenemunde

12, 26, 37, 150, 186,

255, 257, 258, 259, 260, 341, states'

444

343-5,438

528

Hitler's Scientists

Peierls,

Rudolph

and quantum physics

239, 240

resigns presidency

Penrose, Lionel 88

4, 40,

96—8

of Kaiser

Wilhelm Society 213

People's Fighter 381-2 Perkin, William 42, 43, 48

planetariums 112— 13

Perrin, Francis 238

Plendl,

Pershing missile 439

Ploetz, Alfred 78-9, 80, 88, 153

Perutz,

Max

Dr Hans 269

plutonium 236-7, 300, 311, 443,

218

Pevsner, Nikolaus 6

444

pharmaceutical industry 45

Pohl, Gustav Freiherr

phosgene 63, 385

Pohl,

93-1

3

Poincare, Henri 99, 189

photoelectric effect 40, 98, 105 physics/physicists

von

Oswald 380

poison gas 60, 61-70, 384-6

10, 141,

and chlorine 56-7, 61-3, 385

178-90 attacks agamst 'Jewish Physics'

by

Stark and Lenard 18 1-2, 184

and Churchill 272

deployment of during World War 7-8, 47, 60, 61-6, 93

exodus of scientists 139-40 fragmentation of the regime and

experiments on concentration

camp inmates

179

363, 385

modern 95-100

hostility

Nazi 178-90

League of Nations resolution on

and Nazi Party membership 152

and quantum mechanics

7,

96-100,

no, 115-19, 187-9 and

108-9, no, 189 seen

as essential for

weapons and

Solvay Conferences on

see

3

-1

Henry 384 Pionierkommando 1

,

Polish workers 341

Popper, Karl 218

Porsche 378 Poste,

36: 61

112, 114, 122, 130,

George 460

Poulton,

Edward 87

Powers, Thomas 304, 331, 404

139,213 acquiescence of to Nazi regime 136

attempt to persuade Hitler of necessity of keeping scientists 34,

Poland 324-6

Pope, William 138

Picker,

5

67, 354, 355,

Pollen, Arthur 55-6, 93

Reichsanstalt 122, 179

Max

B

Polkinghorne, John 119

Physikalisch-Technische

Planck,

and Zyklon

Polish code-breakers 285*^6

Solvay

Conferences 1 1

sarin 385

365

defence technology 95

and Weimar

(1920) 68

and

and tabun 384-5, 386

theory 101-3, 105—6,

relativity

towards use of 64-5

some Jewish

137—8

post-war years and death 417

Heisenberg's

Prandtl,

War

Ludwig

13, 397,

403

143

Pressac,

Jean-Claude 351

Preuss,

Hans 164

Prince of Wales (batdeship)

249-50

I

Index

Robert 75-6,

Proctor,

84, 167, 171,

radar 261, 262-7,

Project Overcast 420-21, 422

273-80

Anglo-American collaboration

Project Paperclip 422

Kurt 352, 353, 354, 355-6

Prussian

and Ploetz 78-9 spread of ideology of 348

173

Priifer,

529

Academy of Sciences

129,

27-80 and Battle of Britain 276—7 and Britain 261, 263-4, 265-7,

135

pseudo-science 191— psychiatry

278-9

269, 273-4, 276, 277,

88-90

contrasts

psychoanalysis 158—62

between German and

British

development 264-6

Psychological Institute 163, 164

development of magnetron 277—80

psychology 162-6

devising of countermeasures by

PTR see Physikalisch-Technische

Britain against

German

274, 276

early

development of 262—

publishing 452-3

early

warning radar systems and

Pugwash 432

Germany 274—7 and German 'military

Reichsanstalt

Pupin, Michael 59

Push

to the East see

mindset'

266-7

purest thorium 38

Drang nach Osten

and Naxos 280 Seetakt 275

quantum

physics

7,

96-100,

1

10,

and Y-Gerat 269, 274 radiation, electromagnetic

115-19, 187-9

96-7

Raeder, Erich 262 Rabi,

I.

I.

Rajewsky, Boris 383

278

Ramsay,

Rabinowich, Eugene 140

hygiene

4, 8, 10, 24,

71—84,

World War

background

I

79-82

to origins

Ratzel 174-5

of 71-8

and Darwinism 76—7 dismissal

ofJewish

state application

and germ-Hne

cell

in link

Ravensbriick camp 363-4

Rawls, John 43

scientists as first

Redstone

of 127

Rehn,

theory 83-4

Gobineau's essay on race 75, 77-8

growth

Rascher, Sigmund 359, 360

Rathenau, Walther 106

153, 357, 445 after

between Nordic

supremacy, right-wing

politics

and 79-80

missile 422,

439

E. 131

Reich Chamber of Culture

128, 132

Reich Physicians Chamber 152 Reich Research Council 311, 316 Reich Society for Technological and Scientific

Work

145

Hans 87

and Haeckel 76—7

Reiter,

Lamarckianism and Weismannism

Reitsch,

82-4

William 59—60

Randall, John 278

race laws (1935) 24 racial

Sir

Hanna 382

Rejewski, Marian 285-6

530

Hitler's Scientists

relativity

Roosevelt, Franklin D. 31, 36—7,

theory 101-3, 189

attacks against 103, 105-6, 108—9,

no

227-8, 241,447

Rosbaud, Paul 268-9, 334 Rose, Paul Lawrence 304, 429, 430 Rosenberg, Alfred 132, 134, 144,

religion

and science 35—6

Remak, Robert 201-2

153

Remarque, Erich Maria 64

Rosenfeld, Leon 219, 220

Repulse (battleship) 249-50

Rosner, David 450

Restoration of the Civil Service Act

Rotblat, Joseph 14, 304, 432, 433,

131, 135

Restorff,

437, 465,

Hedwig von

466-7

Rowe, A. P. 263 Royal Oak (battleship)

165

Rhodes, Richard 435, 440 Ribot, Theodule 73

248

Rozental, Stefan 301

Richards, Sir Frederick 55

rubber, synthetic 371, 373-4

Riedel, Klaus 347

Riidin, Ernst 89-90

Rudolph, Arthur

Riedel, Walter 147 Rieffert,

Johann

165-6

Baptist

Rupprecht,

Riehl, Nikolaus 23

Roberts, Lawrence G. 451

programme

Russians

Prince of Bavaria

see

Soviet

Union

Rust, Bernhard 129, 132, 141, 179,

26, 37, 145—8,

243-4, 255-7, 265-6, 319, 446

A2 149-50 A4 21, 257,

Crown

64-5

Rockefeller Foundation 141, 350 rocket

147, 341, 342

Rudriger, Colonel 385

198, 311, 402

Rutherford, Ernest 94, 99, 258, 260-61, 341,

1

342-3, 344, 345, 419, 439 and academic science 257-9

Sachs, Alexander 227

bombing

Sachsenhausen camp 362*-j

raid

of Peenemiinde

Sackur, Otto 57

343-5 brought into in Battle

new

focus after losses

of Britain 260-61

cutbacks in project by

150-51,255-6

202

Salvarsan 45

sarin 385

to

World War

I

146

and wind tunnel project 257—8

Rontgen, Wilhelm Konrad

Schafer, Ernst 193 Schairer, Eberhard

344-6

and slave labour 341—3, 345—7

104-5

Saks, Stanislaw

Samuel, Jean 368

Himmler and 344, 345 moving of factory underground the Mittelwerke

Saddam Hussein 444 Sakharov, Andrei 433-5, 437

Hitler 258

development and research 145-8,

use of in

15-16,

209

4, 7, 40,

1

72

Schallmayer, Friedrich Wilhelm

73-4, 88 Schaub, Julius 384

Schemann, Ludwig 153 Scherbius, Arthur 282, 284

Index

531

Scherer, Paul 330, 331

innovations developed

Schilling, Klaus 361

as

schizophrenia 90

plundering of by Allied armies

Schlep,

Helmut 252

419-25 post-war characterization of 5

Schmidt, Hans-Thilo 285

Baron Georg von 385

Schnitzler,

1

Mecca of science 38—46

reasons for failure under Hitler

27-8

Schoniger, Erich 172

survival

schools subject to racial discrimination

131-2

of

11

1—23

under Hitler 7-12 scientists,

German 463-7

acquiescence with Nazi regime

Schopenhauer, Arthur 33 Schrader, Gerhard 384, 385

Schumann, Erich 310

136-7, 408 distinction

between those who

Schwarze Korps, Das 181, 183

embraced National Socialism

science

and those

and Allied leadership 36—7

Cold War 447-50 ethics

420-23

14-16

as

fellow travellers

and individual conscience 12—13

post-war

and racism 75-6

pressures and

reaftmnation of Western liberal

working

science education 31—2, 43, 44, 48

German

fate

for

1

1,

408-12

of Hitler's 412-18

demands 15—16

Americans

3-6, 38-46

seawater experiments 358, 362

Second World War

see

World War

advances 28, 40

Seetakt 275

banning of scientists from

Seyss-Inquart, Arthur 322 shell

III

Sherman tank 246 Shrodinger, Erwin

and chemistry 41—2 and Britain

58-60 exhibits at International Exhibition

slave labour

smoking snorkel 254-5 Society for Racial Hygiene 79

blocs 242-3

in racialization

and industry 72

241-7, 357, 368, 369,

and cancer campaign 171-3

1

fragmentation and conflict between

power

139

Simon 285—6, 287 Sinkov, Abraham 287 372, 373, 374-5, 408, 422, 445

flourishing of some areas under

growth

7, 118, 119,

Singh,

(1900) 38-9, 95

National Socialism

II

technology 244

international science conferences

criticism of by France

after the

war 421—2

democracy 463

science,

408—10

Union

exploitation of by United States

and democracy 16-17, 463

and

did not

423-5

and chauvinism 58 in

who

exploitation of by Soviet

of 103-4

Soil

of the People and of Culture Volks- und Knlturboden

see

Hitler's Scientists

532 Solovine, Maurice

68—9

Solvay Conferences in Physics First (191 1)

99-100

Wars programme Defence

see Strategic

Initiative (SDI)

Johannes 104, 107-10, 114,

Stark,

178-9, 180, 181, 416

(1921/22) III

attacks against Einstein

Fifth (1927) 119

Solvay, Ernest 99

116, 118, 180-81

and

theory 103, 108—9

relativity

Somnierfeld, Arnold 93, 108, 114,

attacks against 'Jewish Physics'

184 opposition to Heisenberg

sonar 94 Soviet

Star

Union

84,

1

8

post-war years 416

245

amis race with United States

'Stark effect' 107

432-3,439 and atom bomb 433

Staudinger,

exploitation of Nazi scientists and

sterilization 10, 82, 89, 90, 169, 348,

engineers 423-5 Hitler's

Hermann 67-8

Wilhelm 160-61

Stekel,

349, 364

view of Russians 35

Sterilization

Law

and nuclear power 443 and nuclear weapons 438-9, 441

Stern, Fritz 68

plundering of German science and

Stoltzenberg,

Otto

135, 139

Hugo

67

Strassmann, Fritz 26, 212, 215-16

technology 421

and

Stern,

(1933) 171

slave labour 445

Strategic

Defence

Initiative (SDI)

436, 440

tanks 245 Speer, Albert 9, 259, 311, 345, 346

abandoning of atom

bomb

submarines

5,

94, 142-3, 253-5, 379

suicide missions 382-3, 446

Syndicate of German Scientists 105

318-19 background 314

synthetic fuel 370—71, 373

heads arms production 312—15

synthetic rubber 371,

on

Szilard,

Hitler 25, 26, 27, 29

meeting with Heisenberg

316-17

Leo

37^—4

36, 140, 2o8,*209-io,

220-21, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 333,

431,460

and the Mittelwerke 346 at

Nuremberg

The Slave

State

trials

379

23

T4 project 349-50 T34 (tank) 245

Spengler,

Oswald 176

tabun 384-5, 386

Spindler,

Arno

Tacitus, Gennaiiia 192-3

143

nuclear weapons 438-9

Sponer, Hertha 140

tactical

SS1A/SS12 439

tanks 244-6, 378

SS20 system 439

Taylor, Telford 359

StaHn, Josef 36, 84

Technische Hochschulen 28, 43, 44, 257

Standard Oil

Teller,

Stapel,

trust 53

Wilhelm 144

Edward

435-8

238, 318, 432, 433,

Index

533

Terman, Lewis 87 terrorism

and codes 287—8

459-60

collaboration with Britain over

themiodynamics 40

radar

278—9

Thiel, Walter 258, 344

eugenics in 86—7

Thomas, Georg 243, 315 Thomson, J. J. 94-5, 97, 105

exploitation of former

Thomson, WiUiam (Baron Kelvin)

and hydrogen

scientists

nuclear

96 Tietjen, Glaus Heinrich

200-201

Henry

Tizard,

Todt, Fritz

plants 443

441-2 and psychoanalysis 161

248

R and D in medical sciences in 454

240, 279

scandals over experiments 449

259-60, 312-13,

9, 145,

bomb 435—8

power

and nuclear weapons 438—9,

Tiger (tank) 245, 246 Tirpitz (battleship)

enemy

and engineers 420—23

universities 133-4, 140

314 Toftoy, Holger 421, 422

dismissals 134

Topf, Ludwig 355

with industry 44

ties

Tornier, Erhard 200 transuranic theory 211, 212,

uranium

216-17

97, 211, 212, 234, 238

uranium club 231, 232, 242

Tropsch, Hans 370

Truman, Harry

S.

422, 431, 432

Vi (doodlebug)

Tschemiak, Erich von 83

V2

I, 5,

Tsiolokovsky, Konstatin 146

V3

(gun) 244

Tuisto 193

Vaher,

turbine 250-51

van

Turing, Alan 291

Tuskegee

Syphilis

146, 256,

386-7

419

147

Robert Jan 351

Venter, Graig 455

Experiment 449

Tutte, Bill 293

Verein

fiir

Raumschiffahrt (VfR;

Society for Space Travel) 147,

twins

148

experiments on 358—9, 365, 366

Typex

Max

Pelt,

i, 5,

22, 146, 256, 387-8,

Versailles Treaty 6, 10, 67, 70, 142,

287, 289

143, 150, 176,

typhus 363

Verschuer,

229

Otmar von

365, 366, 418

submarines

Victoria,

Queen

Udet, Ernst 247, 266-7

Vietnam

6

Ulam,

Vikings 193

U-boats

see

Stanislav 43

5

42

uncertainty principle 118

Villiger,

United

Virchow, Rudolf 77

States 6, 52-3, 86, 141

Walter 113

arms race with Soviet Union

Vitek,

432-3,439 and atomic bomb 225-6, 227-8,

Vitoria, Francisco de

241, 310, 332-4, 396

De

Rudolf 374 Indis 75

Vogler, Albert 232, 316

80, 169, 358,

Hitler's Scientists

534 Volks- unci Kulturboderi (Soil

of the

People and of Culture) 176 Vrba, Rudolf 372-3 Vries,

Hugo

Weyl, Hermann 139, 409 Wheeler, John 415 Whittle, Frank 251-2

Wieland, Heinrich 409—10

de 83

Wien,

Max

93

Wacker, Otto 195 Wagner, Gerhard 24

Wiener, Norbert 265—6, 463—4

Wagner, Richard

Wigand, Jeffrey 464-5

Mark

Walker,

Wienert, Karl 193

3

109, 232, 308, 408,

Wallace,

Henry A. 420-21

Wallis, Barnes Neville 5

Walter,

Helmut

253, 254, 255

Wannsee meeting

Wildt, Michael 9

Wilhelm

409, 412, 413,429

350—51

(1942)

Warmbrunn, Werner 322

II,

Kaiser 72

Richard

Willstatter,

1

14-15

Windscale 443 Winkler, Johannes 147 Wirtz, Karl 329, 336, 392, 395, 399, 405

witches persecution of 195-6

Warsitz, Erich 250

Ludwig

Watson, James 454-5, 456

Wittgenstein,

Watson-Watt, Robert 262, 263,

Woehler, Friedrich 41 Wolpert, Lewis 14

264-5, 267, 274

wave mechanics

1 1

weapons, wonder 377—88

Weber,

Max

29

4,

Woltmann, Ludwig 73 wonder weapons 377—88

World War

4

6, 7,

I

32

of on Germany

Wednesday Society 321 Weeks, Sir Ronald 420

effect

Wegener, Peter

use of poison gas 7-8, 47, 60,

role

146, 186

61-6, 63, 93

Weigert, Carl 43

Weinberg, Gerhard 244

use of rockets 146

World War

Weinberg, Steven 442

82, 83

Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich von 235, 301, 320, 326, 335, 392, 395, 398, 400-401, 402,

conduct of science and

path to 229

Wrangel

Island

449

415-16

cosmogony

X-rays

4, 40, 97,

104-5, 169

theory) 33, 193-5

Wentzel, Gregor 331

Y-Gerat 269

Werner, Herbert 255 Wertheimer,

West Wall

Max

*

229-41

technology 447

Weisskopf, Victor 120

Welteislehre (glacial

II

brings about widespread changes in

Weindling, Paul 73

Weismann, August

1 1

of physics in 93—

163

(Siegfried Line) 259

Westphal, Wilhelm 61

Z1/Z2/Z3/Z4 289-90 Zanssen, Leo 146, 150 Zeiss, Carl

43-4

535

Index

Zeiss

planetanum 112- 13

Zeitschriftfur Geopolitik 175

Zimmerman, David 267

Zinn, Walter 223 Zuse, Konrad 289-90

Zyklon B

67, 354, 355, 365

Cornwell

chi;;

science and

•-

ews

,.

Hitler's idiosyncratic notions of

jutlandish

th

pseudoscience of Himmler

while portraying on extraordinary community of

brilliant

men and women whose

limit

and

their discoveries

include

tested to the

of atomic fission;

Lise

War

I;

Meitner, discovered the secrets

and Werner Heisenberg, head

Nazi atomic bomb program. At

some

by

the exigencies of the time. These

Haber, the poison gasser of World

Fritz

Otto Hahn, who, with

stories of

was

integrity

of the great

some

the

he

time,

German-speaking

of the

the

tells

figures of

the century, outstanding both as scientists

and as human

Max

von Loue, and

beings: Albert Einstein, Leo Szillard,

Max

Born.

Raising questions as urgent today as they

were through

the

twentieth century, Cornwell asks whether scientists are truly

responsible

for

consequences of

the

discoveries;

their

whether bod regimes can produce good science. As

ence becomes embroiled of

new

in

moss destruction and the war against

advances

biotechnology

in

outstrip

sci-

weapons

generations of

as

terrorism,

traditional

ethics,

Cornwell's account of Nazi science forms a crucial com-

mentary

for

thinking people.

all

JOHn CORnUIEII, ning author

and

department of

journalist,

He

is

Hitler's

Cambridge

a regular feature

on science

Times

Magazine (London) and

books on science,

Times bestseller

the

philo-

writer

New Scientist and tor of four

at

is in

and

history

sophy of science University.

prizewin

the

in

lives in

Sunday

author and edi-

addition to the

He

Pope.

at the

New

York

England.

JACKET DESIGN BY JESSE MARINOFF REYES JACKET ART BY MARK YANKUS

\ Portrait of

AdoK

Hitler

©

German

CORBIS; V-2

scientists

mber

of

Hudson

©

I

'

I

'

rinted

in

©

AKG-lmoges;

Penguin Group (USA) Street,

/wpenguincom

V K

rocket, 1944

Hulton/Archive

USA

New

York,

NY

Inc.

10014

n is "[Hitler's

h

t

i

e r

i

demonstrates, Pius

brilliantly

predecessors to

their

find at the

very least a 'candid word'

.

.

Nowadays we may

.

be— a man

a saint should not

of them from under his

when

own windows, were

"Explosive

.

.

.

[Cornwell]

narrow

of

millions of

and

heart, all

his

saint should be,

a man

who

could not

corners of Europe,

some

in Hitler's

Pope

that

FRIEDLANDER,

very

is

Los Angeles Times

difficult to refute."

— The

New

York Times Book Review

.cBtt»

"Scathing."

"A devastating

refutation of the claim that this Pope's

wisdom. Instead of a

a

portrait of

power-hungry manipulator

accomplish but,

know what a

human beings from

^^>j~^_^_g^pg«ljwj^

Church

not

spirit

—SAUL

makes a case

Washington Post

led to their systematic extermination."

^^

to

— The

brought the authoritarianism and the centralization of

XII

most extreme stage.

we do know what

sistic,

pope

s

•

Pope] redefines the entire history of the 20th century."

"As Cornwell

but

FOR

e

his ecclesiastical

more narrowly,

man worthy

diplomacy can

who was prepared

to

lie,

to

any way be characterized as

appease, and

purpose-which was not to-^ave

and advance

to protect

in

of sainthood, Cornwell lays out the story of

the

power

lives

a

narcis-

to collaborate in

order

or even to protect the Catholic

of the papacy."

— JAMES

CARROLL,

Atlantic Monthly

I

"Ignorance by choice

is

culpability with malice aforethought.

Read

this

book."

—MICHAEL PAKENHAM,

-

K "A devastating indictment of should deny

his

British journalist,

Pius

as guilty of moral treachery so grave that

elevation to sainthood.

.

.

gives us an account that

.

is

Pope reads

national crises from lous,

like

a

thriller

as

it

book

his

papacy and

and

largely dispassionate."

— The

Philadelphia Inquirer

unsparing, though temperate

takes us through the high-powered negotiations

an unusual perspective.

persuasive and impassioned

defames

Cornwell, a Cambridge University scholar and prominent

^'—^^

'Hilter's

it

The Baltimore Sun

is

.

.

.

Given the campaign

disturbing

in its

and

to beatify Pius XII, this meticu-

presentation of a profoundly flawed

obsessed with absolute papal authority no matter what the consequences f

inter-

man

for others."

—Detroit Free Press