by Philip Ball
Much has changed since Haberer delivered his rather damning judgement on the political and moral acumen of scientific communities—and that of Nazi Germany in particular—four decades ago, not least the growing awareness that science has a central role in tackling global crises such as environmental change and epidemic disease. But many scientists still cling to the shibboleth that their business is ‘apolitical’, a search for truth unsullied by worldly affairs. When the state does intrude on and interfere with science, scientists still struggle to find effective means of resistance. They can hardly carry the full blame for that; but history suggests that an aversion to political engagement will make such manipulation by the state all the easier. We should not wait for another dictatorship to cohere out of political and economic frustration and disenchantment before learning the lessons that the stories of Peter Debye, Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg can teach us.
Notes
Introduction
Nobel Prize-winner with dirty hands: Rispens (2006b).
willing helper of the regime: Rispens (2006a), translated in Altschuler (2006), 97.
Hitler’s most important military: Rispens (2006b), translated in ibid., 96–7.
effective Aryan cleansing: Rispens (2006a), 180.
deprived of a hero: Eickhoff (2008), 146.
insufficiently resisted the limitations: press release from the University of Maastricht, 16 February 2006, ‘Opgeroepen beeld moeilijk verenigbaar met voorbeeldfunctie UM’, translated in Altschuler (2006), 98.
The Executive Board considers this picture: ibid.
recent evidence [was] not compatible: press release from Utrecht University, 16 February 2006, ‘Universiteit Utrecht ziet af van naamgeving Debye’.
any action that dissociates Debye’s name: press release from Cornell University, 2 June 2006.
persistent and virulent use: Walker (1995), 2.
One of the vital lessons: Gisevius (2009), 246.
Chapter 1
*1 These invitation-only meetings, usually taking place every three years at the grand Hotel Metropole in Brussels, were sponsored by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay, who had been persuaded to lend his support in 1910 by physicists Walther Nernst and Hendrik Lorentz.
*2 It is sometimes said that Planck made two great discoveries—the second being Einstein.
†3 Light consists of simultaneously vibrating electrical and magnetic fields: it is electromagnetic radiation. Visible light has wavelengths ranging from around 700 millionths of a millimetre (red) to around 400 millionths (violet). The longer the wavelength, the lower the frequency of the vibrations.
*4 The genealogy of this equation is complex—an equivalence of energy and mass was long suspected, and in fact it does not rely explicitly and uniquely on the theory of relativity—see http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/aug/23/did-einstein-discover-e-equals-mc-squared.
*5 Harnack claimed somewhat perplexingly that the institutes were ‘private institutes and state institutes at the same time’. In 1928 the KWG became officially administered by an autonomous scientific council.
*6 The continued use of the imperial name in a republic might seem incongruous. But a proposal by some leftist elements that it be changed after the war was strongly resisted—an indication of the conservatism and adherence to tradition of most of its members. Only in 1948 was the name finally changed; we will see later how that came about.
Prussia . . . could not afford: S. A. Goudsmit, ‘The fate of German science’, Discovery, August 1947, 239–43, here 242.
Like the majority of the professoriate: Beyerchen (1977), 1.
Respect for law: Heilbron (2000), 4.
by nature peaceful: ibid., 3.
The outside world: Pais (1991), 80.
What a glorious time: Heilbron (2000), 72.
the spotless purity: ibid., 5.
You can certainly be of: ibid., 85.
fortunate guess: Pais (1991), 85.
consists of a finite number of energy quanta: A. Einstein (1905), ‘On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light’, Annalen der Physik 17, 132–48. Transl. and reprinted in J. Stachel (ed.) (1998), Einstein’s Miraculous Year, 178. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
as conservatively as possible: Heilbron (2000), 21.
private institutes and state institutes: Macrakis (1993), 34.
At the moment the outlook: Heilbron (2000), 88.
but there is one thing: Forman (1973), 163.
just like art and religion: ibid., 159.
For Germany the maintenance: ibid., 161–2.
the well-being of mankind: founding statement of John D. Rockefeller (1913): see http://centennial.rockefellerfoundation.org/values/top-twenty.
The nationalization of the great masses: A. Hitler (1926). Mein Kampf. Transl. in G. L. Mosse (ed.) (1966), 8.
Chapter 2
*1 This Zeeman effect is the magnetic equivalent of the line-splitting by an electric field discovered by the German physicist Johannes Stark—see page 88.
*2 More strictly, one calculates the so-called complex conjugate, the product of two wavefunctions identical except that the imaginary parts have opposite signs: +i and −i.
*3 Experimental physicist Johannes Stark’s 1921 book The Present Crisis in German Physics used the same trope but spoke to a very different perception: that his kind of physics was being eclipsed by an abstract, degenerate form of theoretical physics—see page 91.
like a simple farm boy: Kumar (2008), 181.
One must probably introduce: Cassidy (2009), 115.
not only new assumptions: M. Born (1923), ‘Quantentheorie und Störungsrechnung’, Naturwissenschaften 11 (6 July), 537–42, here 542. Transl. in D. C. Cassidy (2007), ‘Re-examining the crisis in quantum theory, Part 1: spectroscopy’, paper presented at Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, ‘Conference on the History of Quantum Physics’, 2–6 July 2007, Berlin, 11.
The more precisely we determine: W. Heisenberg (1927), ‘Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen. Kinematik und Mechanik’, Zeitschrift für Physik, 43, 172–98.
the meaninglessness of the causal law: Cassidy (2009), 178.
the concept—or the mere word: Forman (1971), 4.
denigrat[e] the capacity: ibid., 52.
solely from an inner need: ibid., 44.
liberation from the rooted prejudice: ibid., 88.
inherent irrationality: ibid., 107.
cannot escape the influence: ibid., 108.
The idea of such a crisis: ibid., 27.
the present crisis in mechanics: ibid., 62.
crisis in the foundations of mathematics: ibid., 60.
the present crisis in theoretical physics: ibid., 62.
Chapter 3
the loyal soldier and shield-bearer: Eickhoff (2008), 4.
that the best thing was for me: Debye (1965–6), unpaginated.
just a question of money: Debye (1962), unpaginated.
a charming boy who looked out: Davies (1970), 177.
We came to his house: Debye (1962).
Like the Viennese cafés: ibid.
the physicists [would] talk really about: Epstein (1965), 118.
even then an outstanding physicist: Davies (1970), 178.
Sommerfeld’s most brilliant student: Kant (1997).
I feel myself to be very ‘German’: Eickhoff (2008), 2.
You should not even think: ibid., 16.
A good deal of German culture: Casimir (1983), 192.
made it difficult for me to identify: ibid.
whether, in the broad area: Davies (1970), 215.
Clever but lazy: Cassidy (2009), 190.
Debye had a certain tendency: ibid.
The beginning of something new: ibid., 103.
Chapter 4
*1 The question of what exactly German liberalism was in the 1930s is not straightforward, since political lines were not drawn in the same way as they tend to
be in Western democracies today. Political culture was largely polarized between right and left, in which camps one might identify moderates and extremists—there was scarcely a ‘political middle’ at all. The Weimar government was formed initially from a coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the German Democratic Party (DDP), and the German Centre Party—although this coalition lost its majority in the 1920 elections, leaving the democratic voice fatally weak. But while the DDP in particular was the only true ‘left liberal’ party, there was also a liberal element on the political right, represented by the German People’s Party (DVP).
I shall use ‘liberal’ here to refer to individuals inclined towards democratic ideas, while recognizing that this might encompass quite distinct views on a range of political issues. That, indeed, is the point.
*2 Ebermayer was no anti-Nazi dissenter: his case was far more ambiguous. A homosexual and something of a hack who could write fast and with versatility, he appeared to dislike the National Socialists, and helped to hide his Jewish secretary. Yet some of his fiction and screenplays written during the Nazi era were approved by the authorities, and Goebbels in particular defended him—a favour that Ebermayer repaid after the war by co-authoring a biography of Goebbels called Evil Genius.
*3 This disassociation of Hitler from anti-Semitic extremism finds a particularly poignant expression in the diaries of the Jewish historian Willy Cohn, who could write even in October 1939, after listening to one of Hitler’s speeches, that it was moderate and ‘not particularly anti-Semitic’, and that ‘one should acknowledge the greatness of the man who has given the world a new face’. Like many German Jews, Cohn considered himself more German than Jewish. In 1941 this patriot, a veteran of the First World War with an Iron Cross, was deported with his wife and two daughters to Kaunas in Lithuania, where they were shot along with 2,000 other Jews.
†4 The 1935 Nuremberg Laws (‘for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’) modified this requirement in an attempt to specify the distinctions more clearly: ‘Jews’ were those who had at least three Jewish grandparents, or two if the person was a practising Jew or was married to one. This meant that people who were formally a quarter Jewish were exempt. The 1935 laws also forbade intermarriage or sexual relations between Jews and Aryans. As these laws indicate, the whole notion of ‘Jewishness’ is complicated in the Nazi era, being thrust on individuals who felt little affinity for the culture and beliefs of their Jewish forebears. Historian Stefan Wolff argues that using the term ‘Jew’ in this period risks acquiescing to the Nazi racial ideology unless it is cordoned between quote marks.
*5 This apparently telling remark was reported only after the war, so its authenticity has been questioned.
*6 A strange story has circulated about Heisenberg and his mentor Born. In his 1985 book The Griffin, the Los Alamos physicist Arnold Kramish claims that an anonymous associate of Born’s told him of a return visit that the exiled Born had made to Heisenberg in Göttingen some time around 1934, when he was subjected to ‘anti-Jewish sneers and obscenities’, culminating with Heisenberg spitting at Born’s feet. Kramish’s confidant said that Born had confessed this incident very reluctantly on his return to England, and that his wife subsequently admitted that it had reduced Born to tears. Since this story places Heisenberg in such an exceedingly bad light, one must demand good evidence of its veracity. Kramish, whose book demonizes Heisenberg relentlessly, gives none.
The episode is repeated by historian Paul Lawrence Rose in his book Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project (1998), which is far more scholarly than Kramish’s but equally critical of Heisenberg. Rose, however, claims that Kramish was wrong about the date of the affair, saying that it happened instead in 1953. He thanks Kramish for privately providing details, but he too gives no further documentation. Not only is there no mention of the allegations in Born’s autobiography or in any other accounts of Heisenberg’s life, but it is hard to see how it could be consistent with the lifelong friendship that the two men apparently sustained. Physicist Frederick Seitz rightly says that the story ‘do[es] not appear to fit in with the true relationship between the two scientists’. Seitz also refers to a letter from Born’s son Gustav to a friend who, after seeing Kramish’s book, had written to ask about the incident. ‘I have serious doubts about [it]’, Gustav wrote. ‘From my entire recollections I cannot conceive that Heisenberg would have produced anti-Jewish sneers and obscenities and would have spat on the floor in front of his former professor, whom to the best of my knowledge he revered.’
For Rose this merely showed that Born was so embarrassed and upset that he hadn’t even mentioned it to his son. Rose’s view of Heisenberg is so negative that he finds the story entirely consistent with what he believes about Heisenberg’s character. Among historians he is more or less alone in that belief.
*7 Other accounts make Hitler’s response more melodramatically ominous: if Germany must do without science for a while, he is said to have intoned, so be it.
Last week we received instructions: Hentschel (1996), 17.
in 1933 the barriers to state-sanctioned measures: Kershaw (2008), 40.
very moderately, tactfully: Hentschel (1996), 17.
only in retrospect is it so apparent: Beyerchen (1977), 69.
observers inside and outside: Rockefeller Archive RF RG 1.1 Projects, Series 717, Folders 9–11, ‘WET Diary’ (W. E. Tisdale), 1 August 1934.
behind the pretty facade: Kurlander (2009), 23.
From 1929 on, it became more: Gisevius (2009), ix–x.
must bear a considerable measure: ibid., x.
overemphasis on individualism: ibid.
Even though liberal democrats: Kurlander (2009), 5.
much that is good: Cassidy (2009), 208.
although he had a loathing: R. Jungk (1956), letter to W. Heisenberg, 29 December. Available at http://werner-heisenberg.physics.unh.edu/Jungk.htm.
Certainly opportunism and fear: Haberer (1969), 153.
religion, science and art: Kurlander (2009), 53.
On close examination: ibid., 47–8.
Weber’s abrupt change of heart: ibid., 72–3.
The Third Reich was the product: ibid., 3.
One becomes ever more lonely: Mosse (ed.) (1966), 385.
The Jewish people: Hitler (1926). Mein Kampf. In ibid., 7.
pure moral religion stripped: Müller-Hill (1988), 90.
If you want to understand: Roth (2003), 210.
the aspects of Nazi ideology: Kurlander (2009), 18.
You simply do not conform: ibid., 164.
to prevent the worst excesses: ibid., 162.
lethal indifference: Kershaw (2008), 4.
Self-preservation is not a particularly: ibid., 148.
is the result of a very deep and general feeling: Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RF Officer Diaries, disk 16 (Warren Weaver), 24 May 1933, 82.
an influence for moderation: ibid.
They are almost frightened: ibid.
the new government has to give: ibid.
will not satisfy the crowd: ibid.
not particularly anti-Semitic: in N. Conrads (ed.) (2007), Kein Recht, nirgends. Tagebuch vom Untergang des Breslauer Judentums 1933–1941. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne.
one should acknowledge: ibid.
Civil servants who are not of Aryan descent: Hentschel (1996), 22.
The world-renowned intellectual freedom: Rockefeller Foundation Archive, RF Officer Diaries, disk 16 (Warren Weaver), 88.
I don’t think he had time: ibid., 86.
temperamentally unfit: Heilbron (2000), 202.
all the troubles will be gone: Macrakis (1993), 53.
If 30 professors appealed: ibid., 68.
received the assurance that the government: Heilbron (2000), 154.
In the course of time: Sime (1996), 143.
anti-Jewish sneers and obscenities: Kramish (1986), 44.
do[es] not appear to fit in: N. Riehl & F. Seitz (1996).
Stalin’s Captive, 62. Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia.
I have serious doubts about [it]: ibid., 63.
I remember one distinguished member: P. Rosbaud, letter to L. Goudsmit, undated. In Samuel Goudsmit Papers, Series IV, Box 28, Folder 42. American Institute of Physics.
The general excuse was: ibid.
I noticed that the Germans: L. Szilard (1979), ‘Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, Part II’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists March, 56.
Many of them added: Rosbaud to Goudsmit, op. cit.
Would the populations: Kershaw (2008), 148.
After Hitler came to power: Heilbron (2000), 210.
all kinds of Jews: ibid.
That is not right: ibid.
it would be self-mutilation: ibid., 211.
uttered some commonplaces: ibid.
People say that I suffer: ibid.
and whipped himself: ibid.
said to Planck that he was not an anti-Semite: ibid., 213.
the consolidation of available forces: Macrakis (1993), 58.
utterly crushed: Heilbron (2000), 213.
disciplined thought must attend: ibid.
Nobody of the Nazi leaders: Rosbaud to Goudsmit, op. cit.
Chapter 5
*1 Somewhat less useful to his homeland were Haber’s failed attempts in the 1920s to develop a method for extracting gold from seawater to help pay off Germany’s war reparations.
*2 This action was taken by one of Rust’s subordinates, without his knowledge, while he was ill.
*3 Einstein was not blind to this possibility. In June 1933 he wrote to Laue: ‘I have learned that my unclear relationship to those German organizations which still include my name in the list of members could cause problems for my friends in Germany. For this reason, I would like to ask you to make sure that my name is removed from the lists of these organizations. These include, for example, the German Physical Society [DPG] . . . I am explicitly empowering you to do this for me.’ Laue’s response was surely heartfelt: ‘Although I am very thankful that you are trying to make things as easy as possible for us, I nevertheless could not do these . . . things without the deepest sadness.’ The DPG, however, accepted the resignation without comment, as though it was nothing exceptional. Einstein never rejoined after the war.