Serving the Reich : The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Serving the Reich tells the story of physics under Hitler. While some scientists tried to create an Aryan physics that excluded any 'Jewish ideas', many others made compromises and concessions as they continued to work under the Nazi regime. Among them were world-renowned physicists Max Planck, Peter Debye and Werner Heisenberg.

After the war most scientists in Germany maintained they had been apolitical or even resisted the regime- Debye claimed that he had gone to America in 1940 to escape Nazi interference in his research; Heisenberg and others argued that they had deliberately delayed production of the atomic bomb.

In a gripping exploration of moral choices under a totalitarian regime, here are human dilemmas, failures to take responsibility and three lives caught between the idealistic goals of science and a tyrannical ideology.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

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. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

This is an outstanding work about the social responsibility of scientists, exemplified by considering the actions of three Nobelist physicists during the Nazi regime in Germany: Max Planck, Peter Debye, and Werner Heisenberg. These notable scientists were administrators of institutions during the toxic Third Reich--Planck of the Prussian Academy of Sciences; Debye of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics (KWIP) until his move to Cornell in 1941; and Heisenberg of Leipzig University and then, in 1942, KWIP, to pursue research toward the atomic bomb (enthusiastically, reluctantly, or disingenuously, depending on different accounts). Ball, a journalist and prolific author, e.g., Curiosity (CH, Oct'13, 51-0838), chronicles the pressures on these men to expel Jews from their posts before the war and to pursue war research and support the Nazi ideology during the war. The retrospective furor about their alleged collaboration, accommodation, or resistance motivates Ball to reconstruct their dilemmas and responses. The conflicting accounts of Heisenberg's role in the atomic bomb project are carefully reviewed and their ambiguity noted and discussed. In these episodes, Ball thoughtfully navigates the nuances of attaching motives to acts, avoiding justifying the more strident contemporary accusations and exoneration. This is a stunning cautionary tale, well researched and told. Summing Up: Essential. All academic, general, and professional library collections. --Peter D. Skiff, Bard College

Kirkus Book Review

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 sciencenot 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.