Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler
- ISBN-10
- 022620457X
- ISBN-13
- 9780226204574
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 303
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-10-20
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Author
- Philip Ball
Description
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 after whom Germany’s premier scientific society is now named, 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’s gripping exploration of the lives of scientists under Nazism 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 three men and their colleagues made shows how there can be no clear-cut answers or judgement of their conduct. Yet, despite these ambiguities, Ball makes it undeniable 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 of 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.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2023-10-20
- 314 pages
- Paperback
- University of Chicago Press
-
- 2014-10-20
- 314 pages
- Ebook
- University of Chicago Press
-
- 2013-10-10
- 320 pages
- Paperback
- Random House
Similar books
-
Under Hitler's Banner: Serving the Third Reich
By Edmund L. BlandfordIn this book the author examines the experiences of Germans who reached adulthood during the period of the Third Reich. These citizens prospered under Hitler before he led them into a new war, thus altering their lives.
-
Nazi Women of the Third Reich: Serving the Swastika
By Paul Roland• Four months pregnant, Vera Wohlauf, wife of a serving SS officer, took sadistic pleasure in rounding up victims for Treblinka. • Like creatures from a Grimms' fairytale, female members of a Nazi 'welfare' organization scoured the ...
-
Intellectual Collaboration with the Third Reich: Treason or Reason?
By Sven Widmalm, Maria Björkman, Patrik Lundell... der Historiker Hermann Aubin und die deutsche Ostforschung. Dusseldorf: Droste. Nagel, C., 2005. Im Schatten des Dritten Reichs: Mittelalterforschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1970. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Nonn ...
-
Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Fought For The Third Reich
By Bryan Mark RiggAs many as 150,000 Jews and partial-Jews (or Mischlinge) served, often with distinction, in the German military during World War II. The men interviewed for this volume portray a wide range of experiences-some came from military families, ...
-
Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb
By Mark WalkerSee chapter 10. Kleinert, (1979); Hentschel, (1990); Hentschel, Studies, (1992); Hentschel, Turm, (1992). Forman, (1973). Forman, (1974). Forman, (1973); Forman, (1974); Forman, “Helmholtz.” Noakes and Pridham, (1990), 697–99.
-
Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler?s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe
By Bryan Mark RiggHow One of Hitler?s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe Bryan Mark Rigg. about the Messiah. See Likkutei Dibburim, 1:13, 82, 87, ... Interview with Meir Greenberg, BMRS; Jacobson, ''Journey to America,'' 4; Zaklikovsky, America, 50. 8.
-
Under Hitler's Banner: Serving the Third Reich
By Edmund L. BlandfordPersonal accounts of life under the Hitler regime.
-
The Common Good
By Robert B. Reich""Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship.
-
Female Administrators of the Third Reich
By Rachel CenturyThis book compares female administrators who specifically chose to serve the Nazi cause in voluntary roles with those who took on such work as a progression of established careers.
-
Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany
By Jonathan PetropoulosDer Fall Bloch Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (Vienna: Czernin, 2006); and Anne-Marie O'Connor, The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2011). 23.