Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under HitlerUniversity of Chicago Press, 2014 M10 20 - 314 pages This historical analysis of Heisenberg, Planck, Debye, and other German physicists during WWII “is a stunning cautionary tale, well researched and told” (Choice). After World War II, most scientists in Germany maintained that they had been apolitical or actively resisted the Nazi regime, but the true story is much more complicated. In Serving the Reich, Philip Ball takes a fresh look at that controversial history, contrasting the career of Peter Debye, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, with those of two other leading physicists in Germany during the Third Reich: Max Planck, the elder statesman of physics, and Werner Heisenberg, who succeeded Debye as director of the institute when it became focused on the development of nuclear power and weapons. Mixing history, science, and biography, Ball offers a powerful portrait of moral choice and personal responsibility, as scientists navigated “the grey zone between complicity and resistance.” Ball’s account of the different choices these men made shows how there can be no clear-cut answers or judgement of their conduct. Yet he also demonstrates that the German scientific establishment as a whole mounted no serious resistance to the Nazis, and in many ways acted as a willing instrument of the state. Serving the Reich considers what this problematic history can tell us about the relationship between science and politics today. Ultimately, Ball argues, a determination to present science as an abstract inquiry into nature that is “above politics” can leave science and scientists dangerously compromised and vulnerable to political manipulation. A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award winner |
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
2 Physics must be rebuilt | 22 |
3 The beginning of something new | 34 |
4 Intellectual freedom is a thing of the past | 43 |
5 Service to science must be service to the nation | 65 |
6 There is very likely a Nordic science | 82 |
7 You obviously cannot swim against the tide | 107 |
10 Hitherto unknown destructive power | 187 |
11 Heisenberg was mostly silent | 197 |
12 We are what we pretend to be | 232 |
We did not speak the same language | 251 |
Notes | 268 |
288 | |
Image Credits | 295 |
297 | |
Other editions - View all
Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler Philip Ball Limited preview - 2014 |
Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler Philip Ball Limited preview - 2023 |
Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler Philip Ball No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
Academy alpha particles anti-Semitism Aryan atomic bomb awarded Berlin Bernhard Rust Beyerchen 1977 Bohr Bohr’s chemical claimed colleagues Copenhagen Curie Debye’s Deutsche Physik director Dutch Eickhoff Einstein electrons element energy Farm Hall fission Führer German physicists German physics German science German scientists Ginkel Göttingen Haber Hahn Heilbron Heisenberg Hentschel 1996 Himmler historian Hitler Hoffmann ibid insisted Jewish Jews Kaiser Wilhelm Institute knew KWIP Laue leaders Leipzig Lenard letter liberal Lise Meitner mass matter Max Planck military moral Munich National Socialists Nazi Germany neutron never Nobel Prize nuclear nucleus one’s Peter Debye physicists political position professors protons Prussian quantum theory question radioactive rays reactor regime resignation response Rispens Rockefeller Foundation Rockefeller Foundation Archives Rosbaud Rust Rutherford Samuel Goudsmit scientific seemed social society society’s Sommerfeld Stark Telschow theoretical physics Third Reich tion Tisdale told University uranium Warren Weaver Weimar Weizsäcker Werner Heisenberg wrote