by Philip Ball
He thanked Meitner ‘for trying to make us understand, for guiding us with remarkable tact’. Of the fine words that were later bestowed upon scientists who worked in Nazi Germany, few speak as unalloyed a truth as those on Meitner’s tombstone in Hampshire, southern England. They pronounce her ‘a physicist who never lost her humanity’.
12
‘We are what we pretend to be’
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 novel Mother Night is the story of Howard Campbell, an expatriate American playwright who finds himself in Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. There Campbell is persuaded to make English-language radio broadcasts of racist Nazi propaganda. But unknown to the Nazis, he has been enlisted by the US War Department to lace his broadcasts with intelligence messages coded in coughs and pauses. This role is never made public, and after the war Campbell is brought to trial for his crimes. Campbell’s Nazi father-in-law admits that he suspected Campbell of spying but didn’t expose him because, on balance, he was more useful being allowed to continue his work anyway. He says that Campbell’s broadcasts, not Hitler or Goebbels, were the inspiration for his Nazi ideals. ‘You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane’, he tells Campbell. The moral, Vonnegut adduced, is that ‘we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be’.*1
Carl von Weizsäcker would presumably have defended a person like Campbell, for after the war he asserted that what mattered was one’s intention, not one’s actions. On this reasoning, the apparent support that he, Heisenberg and their colleagues had given to the National Socialists was nullified by the fact that they always disliked the government. But Weizsäcker had perhaps more reason than many to want to believe that. During the post-war denazification process his father Ernst was charged for crimes against humanity as Secretary of State during the war. Weizsäcker Snr pleaded that he had stayed in his post only to aid the underground resistance to Hitler—even though by doing so he was found complicit in the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps.
Vonnegut’s novel interrogates the complexities of collaboration, accommodation and resistance more searchingly than the Germans themselves were generally able to. Faced with the simplistic hero/villain narrative of Campbell’s prosecutors, we are moved by the injustice of his predicament. But we cannot exonerate him because, as he himself comes to realize, the story that he told himself about his motivations during the war prevented him from ever truly questioning what the consequences of his actions were. Vonnegut calls Campbell ‘a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times’. He implies that we cannot invent a private self whose intentions contradict our actual behaviour, since we exist in a world of causes and effects.
Hans Bernd Gisevius, who took part in the 1944 plot against Hitler, recognized this dilemma:
Under totalitarianism it is only possible to obstruct and oppose if one is in some manner ‘on the inside’. But how far can a man participate in a hated system without selling his soul? The more the Opposition came to recognize that the Nazi rulers could be defeated only by their own methods, the harder it was for them to solve the problem of conscience. It became more difficult for them to avoid objective as well as subjective guilt. Undoubtedly many paid too dear a price for the sake of having one or both feet ‘inside’, and many others were unjustly accused of opportunism.
Gisevius’ rather too neat categorization of modes of ‘opposition’ does not, however, quite tackle the difficult matter of where, if anywhere, one places the boundaries between opposition ‘from inside’, damage limitation with no real attempt to change the system, and merely keeping one’s head down and one’s hands as clean as possible.
These distinctions become all the more blurred by the insidious temptation to rearrange memory and history for the sake of self-preservation. This was our motivation, we insist in retrospect, and it is what we come to believe, because the illusion that we knew what we were doing is essential if we are to maintain a coherent picture of our own conscience and moral autonomy. As Nietzsche put it:
‘I have done that’ says my memory. ‘I could not have done that’, says my pride, and remains inexorable. Finally, my memory yields.
The Debye affair
Peter Debye had a catchphrase that his students loved to repeat: ‘But you see, it’s all terribly simple.’ That captures in a nutshell his much-lauded ability to penetrate to the core of a scientific problem and present it in straightforward, intuitive terms. Arnold Sommerfeld averred that this was Debye’s motto not just in science, but also in life. It was all so terribly simple.
And so it seemed. From the end of the war until his death in 1966, there was nothing controversial about Debye. He remained a professor at Cornell, polished his achievements but added little to them, collected awards and accolades, and maintained amiable relationships with his fellow scientists. In 1950 the DPG awarded him the Max Planck medal, which went in the previous and subsequent years to Lise Meitner and James Franck—a gesture of solidarity and reunification from the German physics community. Well after formal retirement and into his ninth decade Debye continued to attend conferences, astounding his colleagues with his stamina and eager engagement with the scientific discourse. His interjections were always insightful, always listened to and respected.*2 ‘To the end’, wrote American chemist John Warren Williams in 1975, ‘his generosity, friendliness, and concern for others were commensurate with his mental prowess.’ He gardened and went fishing, he was regarded as a family man, a devoted husband and grandfather. ‘In his own eyes’, says Martijn Eickhoff, ‘he had got through the Third Reich . . . without a blemish. Neither Debye nor the vast majority of his contemporaries raised the question of whether the general scientific interest [although more pertinent here is surely the social and ethical interest] and his own personal scientific interest had always coincided.’
If Debye’s obituaries touched at all on his position in Nazi Germany and the reasons for his departure, they followed a standard narrative: Debye had fought to minimize state interference in physics, had defended vulnerable colleagues when he could, and had left when the Nazis gave him no other option. It was sometimes suggested that he was pushed out of the KWIP to clear the way for a military takeover, not merely that he took a period of leave after the dispute about his nationality. In 1963 the Ithaca Chronicle insisted that he ‘refused to be browbeaten by the Nazis’, while an obituary by his American student Irving Bengelsdorf claimed that by leaving Germany voluntarily Debye showed ‘great personal courage’.
It was agreed that Peter Debye did not care about politics but only about science. And this was presented as a virtue, or at least as a neutral position. If it made him somewhat politically naïve, there was no shame in that. Time and again his colleagues and advocates were content to leave unexamined bland comments about his ‘striking lack of political interest’—as though this were no different from a lack of interest in opera, say. ‘I never found in Debye any interest in philosophical questions’, wrote his former associate Erich Hückel in 1972. ‘Debye’s way of life seemed to me rather straightforward and uncomplicated.’
It is surprising that it look so long for harder questions to be asked—and unfortunate that this was first done in so crude a manner by Sybe Rispens in 2006. As we have seen, Rispens’ selective marshal-ling of facts to present Debye as an anti-Semite with possible Nazi sympathies and, after leaving Germany, with a determination to resume his position in Berlin at the earliest opportunity, do not survive close scrutiny.
Rispens welcomed the decisions of the universities of Utrecht and Maastricht to withdraw the use of Debye’s name in the wake of his allegations. Others were outraged. The decision ‘is not based on sound historical observations’, said the managing director of Utrecht’s Debye Institute, Gijs van Ginkel. ‘I consider this decision to be faulty on the basis of our present knowledge, and I am also of the opinion that it damages unnecessarily the reputation of Professor Debye and his family, the interests of the D
ebye Institute, and those of the scientific community as a whole.’ When van Ginkel prepared a book that attempted to clear Debye’s name, the University of Utrecht halted its publication, reprimanded van Ginkel, and forbade him from talking to the press.
Many now accept that Rispens’ book was misleading. Even the Dutch Nobel laureate physicist Martinus Veltman, who had contributed an appreciative foreword, realized that he had too hastily endorsed a work of questionable scholarship, and asked for his introduction to be removed from later editions. In May 2006 he wrote to the (then former) Debye Institute in Utrecht to say that
If I had realized the consequences I would certainly have dissociated myself from the matter . . . it is now clear to me that the allegations of Rispens are unfounded and should be assigned to the ‘realm of fables’ . . . The question remains as to who had been damaged most by this affair. The answer is clear: the universities of Utrecht and Maastricht . . . The decision of Utrecht and Maastricht is a slap in their own face. It seems to me that the universities should admit their error, revoke their decision and further forget the matter.
Debye’s family was inevitably upset by the allegations and their consequences. ‘We believe you have done Peter J. W. Debye an injustice; have marred the Debye family name; and are on the verge of doing your well-known institution an enormous disservice’, his son Peter and his grandchildren wrote to the University of Utrecht. In his defence they outlined his opposition to the Nazis, emphasizing the assistance he gave to Meitner and saying that he left Germany ‘when it was clear that further resistance would be ineffectual’. (They do not point out that this ‘resistance’ was to demands that he change his nationality, not to the general policies of the regime.) ‘When Debye could no longer keep politics out of his realm, he left’, the Debye family contested. ‘He gave up fighting the unjust from the inside. He went to the outside and helped defeat the regime he detested.’
It would be unreasonable to expect anything else from Debye’s family. But it is precisely because Rispens’ simplistic account of events encourages such a simplistic response, such a polarization of attitudes, that it is deplorable. This tendency even infected the Netherlands government’s investigation into the allegations, conducted by Martijn Eickhoff for the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD). Eickhoff’s 2008 report, commissioned to provide an objective assessment, is often nakedly partisan and steeped in resentment and insinuation, which is all the more unfortunate because the quality of the archival research is unimpeachable. Eickhoff shapes this substantial body of valuable material into a work of pop psychology more concerned to construct a spurious motivation for its subject than to set out the facts in all their ambiguity and inconclusiveness. One wonders if Eickhoff feared that a refusal to deliver a definitive judgement would be seen as failure.
As two Dutch professors complained at the time, this eagerness to condemn or exonerate still typifies the country’s position on the war years: ‘On World War II we Dutch know just “good” or “wrong”—nothing in between.’ Even Dieter Hoffmann and Mark Walker, the two historians who have perhaps done the most to explain the subtleties of the German scientists’ responses to National Socialism, could be misinterpreted as they sought to redress the imbalanced picture painted by Rispens. They rightly pointed out that Debye’s actions were entirely representative of those of many of his ‘apolitical’ colleagues—and yet by characterizing Debye as ‘an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances’ they made his actions sound like an uncomplicated and irreproachable response to the extremes of the era.
Because of its long and hitherto proud association with Debye, the chemistry department of Cornell University launched its own inquiry into the affair with the assistance of Walker and Hoffmann. ‘Based on the information to date’, the department’s press release concluded,
we have not found evidence supporting the accusations that Debye was a Nazi sympathizer or collaborator or that he held anti-Semitic views . . . On the other hand, the charge that he might have been willing to accommodate the views of the Nazi regime presents a more difficult and nuanced case . . . One could also ask why he never provided an explanation or rationalization for his actions at the time . . . Clearly, we would like to have a written record by Debye detailing the rationale for his actions prior to leaving Germany. However, to suggest that the lack of such evidence is in itself incriminating is, in our view, not a defensible position.
This was not a unanimous view. The Cornell chemist and Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, who lost most of his Ukrainian Jewish family in the Holocaust and as a young boy narrowly escaped the same fate, was less ready to give Debye the benefit of the doubt. ‘Debye took on positions of administration and leadership in German science, aware that such positions would involve collaboration with the Nazi regime’, he said.
The oppressive, undemocratic, and obsessively anti-Semitic nature of that regime was clear. Debye chose to stay and, through his assumption of prominent state positions within a scientific system that was part of the state, supported the substance and the image of the Nazi regime . . . My opinion is that Cornell should remove Debye’s name from a lectureship and from a chaired professorship named after him. Debye’s scientific achievements remain.
As for the bronze bust of Debye in the department’s entrance hall, Hoffmann said, ‘I would propose that it be moved where it belongs, into the faculty lounge.’
In a letter Debye wrote to Sommerfeld on the eve of his departure from Germany on 30 December 1939 we can find the essence of why he has been both attacked and defended. His philosophy, he explained to his former mentor, was
Not to despair and always be ready to grab the good which whisks by, without granting the bad any more room than is absolutely necessary. That is a principle of which I have already made much use.
What could be wrong with this intention to remain optimistic, looking for ways to contribute something of value and to avoid harmful actions as far as that is possible? What more could one ask? Yet one can offer another reading of Debye’s words: don’t attempt to change or challenge anything, but take opportunistic advantage of what comes your way while evading responsibility for the harm you do.
Which is the correct interpretation? Neither will in fact suffice, for the simple reason that Debye gives no sign of having pondered the distinction himself. His is simply a statement of shallow optimism, which will work fine—and is even praiseworthy—unless circumstances render it untenable. In Nazi Germany Debye was out of his moral depth.
It makes no sense to seek some pseudo-legalistic judgement of Debye’s guilt or culpability. Eickhoff concluded that Rispens’ picture of a famous scientist with ‘dirty hands’ was unfair, but that Debye was nonetheless guilty of ‘opportunistic behaviour’. He claimed that Debye cultivated a ‘principle of ambiguity’ which enabled him to act selfishly in every circumstance while avoiding blame—from any direction—for the consequences. That reckoning exemplifies all that is wrong with many attempts to adjudicate on the Debye affair, for it ascribes to Debye a considered, consistent and calculated attitude that underpins his decisions. This ‘principle of ambiguity’ is nothing more than an elaborate way of saying that we’re not sure why Debye did what he did, while making the error of assuming that Debye himself always had a moral compass to consult. In short, it refuses to accept that he—and by extension, Planck, Heisenberg, and their colleagues—was a fallible, improvising, and often unreflective human being who could not relinquish a hope that things will somehow turn out all right in the end. Klaus Hentschel laments the tendency of his fellow historians of science to disregard this aspect of human nature: few, he says, ‘have the courage to relinquish the fictitiously tidy integrity of their characters’. They consider that to accept contradictory or ambiguous impulses is to capitulate, to fail in one’s duty to provide a coherent account of why historical figures did what they did. Yet how often do we even know why we do what we do?
There are some who seem to believe that the truth of
the Debye affair will emerge from yet closer examination of the archives: a diary note proclaiming sympathy with National Socialist anti-Semitism, say, or evidence that Debye was working with Allied intelligence to secure Hitler’s downfall. But either possibility would be so out of keeping with every aspect of how Debye lived his public life that we would then have to regard the latter as an utter sham from cradle to grave. Debye was, in short, not that kind of person. The personality that his statement to Sommerfeld reveals is neither that of a craven opportunist nor of a brave and noble individual. It is of a man who assiduously avoided hard moral choices, and did so not by bending with the wind, but rather by cleaving to a traditional notion of duty—to science and to a system of honour—that made such choices seem unnecessary, even unwholesome. If we wish to condemn Debye for anything, it is not for his passive support of the Nazis, nor for a tacit, retrospective sanitization of his wartime actions, nor for ingratiating opportunism. All such accusations are equivocal at best. But Debye seemed reluctant to accept that a scientist has any obligations except to science. It is precisely because this has laudable as well as dangerous aspects that we find it so hard to agree on how to judge him. To deny any shades of moral greyness, however, would be to condone the picture painted in the apologia of Heisenberg, Weizsäcker and the DPG, in which the German scientists were either Nazi dupes or blameless professionals.
In personal matters Debye was a private man. We cannot be certain that he did not, on occasion, wonder if he had done the right thing in Germany. Maybe his apparent expediency and lack of concern for political matters, remarked by most of the people who knew him well, masked an inner world where he wrestled with his ethical dilemmas. Since even his family offer no evidence of that, however, it seems unlikely. In any event, it would even then scarcely exonerate him. A person who has experienced what Debye had experienced, who held positions of considerable authority in Nazi Germany and who had to make difficult choices and compromises as a result, and who has come to be regarded as something of a role model, is surely failing in their social duty if they behave subsequently as though all is well and there are no questions to be asked. Even if it were no more than a public persona, this refusal openly to interrogate the dark truths of that era is itself an act of moral irresponsibility. We can argue about the rights and wrongs of Debye’s actions in Nazi Germany; his own silence is the unequivocal failing. ‘After the war’, says Roald Hoffmann, ‘Debye made no apology for his actions. Richard von Weizsäcker, the wise former German president, said in 1985, “Versöhnung ohne Erinnerung gar nicht geben kann.” There can be no reconciliation without remembering . . . I think Debye’s post-war silence shows that he would have liked us to forget.’