Serving the Reich

September 22, 2014
German science led the world until Hitler ruined it, as British science writer Ball (Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything) claims in this fine account of how it happened. Ball builds his story around three Nobel laureates: Max Planck, Peter Debye, and Werner Heisenberg. Under anti-Jewish Nazi laws, a quarter of German physicists were dismissed. Planck (1858–1947), one of Germany’s most respected scientists, appealed to authorities on behalf of Jewish colleagues, but refused to repudiate the law. A loyal patriot, he believed the legality of the dismissals did not make them right, but it made them incontestable. Heisenberg (1901–1976) endured attacks for advocating “Jewish” science (i.e., relativity and quantum physics), but participated in Germany’s effort to develop an atomic bomb. Debye (1884–1966) directed the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, following Nazi policies while also helping Jewish scientists obtain jobs in other nations. He emigrated in 1939 only after the institute was ordered to concentrate on war research. Almost all non-Jewish German scientists fretted, compromised, and looked after their own interests. Others have vilified them as collaborators, but Ball, no polemicist, thinks this was a moral failure, common and not confined to Germans. This is an important, disturbing addition to the history of science.

September 15, 2014
An examination of the response of German scientists to the rise of the Third Reich and its interference with their work. Since governments have frequently interfered in the workings of science, its truths have not always been free of dogma. In this open and skeptical investigation of the unpredictable dance of science and politics, former Nature editor Ball (Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, 2013, etc.) trots out example after example of how science can thrive under totalitarianism and be skewed under ostensibly democratic conditions. As he ably explores the collusion between the Nazi regime and such scientists as Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg and Peter Debye, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, Ball finds a more fruitful avenue in the compromised relationship between science and politics, when "the institution of science itself had become an edifice lacking any clear social or moral orientation. It had created its own alibi for acting in the world." Ball subtly works the social and cultural expectations of physicists into the picture, noting the ingrained anti-Semitism in German society-"there was no stigma to being an anti-Semite in Germany (or Austria, or indeed most of Europe) in the early part of the century, and the National Socialist regime removed any vestigial inhibitions on that score"-which led to dismissals. However, as the author writes, "the 'Jewish question' was regarded as a matter of politics, not morality." Ball closely follows the thread of National Socialism's influence on science-not just in its hideous experimentation, but in the Lamarckian sense of ideology guiding the pursuit of finding what it wanted through science. How much did Nazism compromise its scientists? In this polished account, Ball finds that the jury is still out, even as the evidence mounts and the pursuit of firsthand records and documentary testimony continues.

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