Dieter Hoffman and Mark Walker, ed., The
German Physical Society in the Third Reich: Physicists Between Autonomy and
Accommodation. Translated by Ann M. Hentschel. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012, xxiii + 458 pages. $90.00 (cloth).
The behavior
of scientists, particularly physicists, during and immediately after the Nazi
period in Germany is a subject of immense interest, one that historians of
science never tire of exploring. There is a vast literature on the subject,1 including
books already written and edited by the highly qualified editors of this
volume. Here is yet another effort to explore the external events of that
unfortunate period, as well as an effort to get into the heads of all those
scientists who either by choice or lack of choice lived through it. But this is
not another monograph. Rather, it is a collection of essays written mostly by
historians of science, mostly Germans of a younger generation, one that
possesses the luxury of being able to scrutinize objectively the generation
that spanned the Hitler period.
There are
eleven articles, by ten historians. Each addresses a particular aspect of the
activities of physicists and their physics during and after the Third Reich,
concentrating mainly on the activities of the Deutsche Physikalische
Gessellschaft (DPG), the German Physical Society. The topics include,
for example, ÒThe German Physical Society under National Socialism in ContextÓ
(Walker), ÒMarginalization and Expulsion of Physicists under National
Socialism: What was the German Physical SocietyÕs role?Ó (Stefan L. Wolff),
ÒThe German Physical Society and ÔAryan PhysicsÕÓ (Michael Eckert), ÒThe
Ramsauer Era and Self-Mobilization of the German Physical SocietyÓ (Hoffmann),
as well as several articles on the postwar period, and two articles on similar
societies of German mathematicians and chemists.
The DPG had a
long, distinguished history before Hitler. Germany, after all, was the dominant
country of those involved in the enormously productive European physics
community for a good part of the century before Hitler. The editors were
particularly interested in certain aspects of this broad subject as clearly
identified in the qualification to the title that refers to Òautonomy and
accommodation.Ó This book does not attempt to cover all aspects of physics and
the DPG during the Hitler era but rather it pretty much sticks to the question:
how the physics community, as personified by DPG and its leadership, dealt with
the constraints imposed on it by the Nazis. To what extent did it maintain its
independence and integrity, and to what extent did it adjust itself—that
is, ÒaccommodateÓ—to Nazi control?
First, a short
description of the DPG. As it is constituted today (not really different than
its traditional role), it is strikingly similar to the American Physical
Society (APS). It acts in the service of the German physics community. It runs
conferences and workshops, concerns itself with physics and society functions,
and in general performs the full gamut of activities required by the physics
profession. It has a huge membership—significantly more than APS, with a
large international representation. The chief difference between the two
societies lies in their publication activities. APS publishes a wide array of
top-notch physics journals. It has a multimillion dollar budget for
publication, and employs and houses a vast editorial staff. DPG does not
publish most of its own journals. Its present form, after predecessors dating
back to 1845 (about 50 years older than APS), dates from 1919. Its
presidents, like those of APS, reign for only one or two years, with a paid
staff actually running the organization.
The book
concentrates on the Hitler period, 1933 to 1945, with additional sections on
the immediate postwar aftermath. If I may telegraph the general conclusions of
the book, pretty much shared by all the authors, physicists by and large and
DPG in particular did the best they could to stay independent of the politics
swirling around them. But this group of authors were not as tolerant of
ÒaccommodationÓ as were the physicists of that era. While sympathetic to their
plight, the virtually unanimously judgment was shall we say not totally benign.
This book is
an elaboration of an article with the same title published by Dieter Hoffmann
in this very journal in 2005,2 although
it covers much more ground and of course presents views of a large group of
historians. But, as already noted, there is general agreement among the
authors: DPG tried to act ÒautonomouslyÓ of Nazi doctrine, but was forced in
one degree or another to accommodate. The question that concerns us as much
today as it did three quarters of a century ago is, Should we weigh their
behavior in the balance and find it wanting? While fortunately the issues and
situations confronting us today are hardly as desperate as they were in the
1930s and 1940s, science and politics are still having a good deal of trouble
in remaining independent of each other, not to mention the problem of
accommodation.
I list here
the time line of the DFG Presidents from 1931–1945: Max von Laue
1931–1933; Karl Mey 1933–1935; Jonathon Zenneck 1935–1937;
Peter Debye 1937–1939; Carl Ramsauer 1940–1945, with Wolfgang
Finkelnburg as deputy; for nine years thereafter the DPG was split into
regional groups defined by the occupational powers. Without exception these individuals
were firmly on the side of autonomy, that is, they did their best to insulate
the physics community from the always strong effort to Nazify physics.
Nazifying physics meant trying to abide by the ÒFuhrer principle,Ó that is, a
strong leader at the top (a Nazi, of course) following what passes for Nazi
philosophy. This included unrelenting Anti-Semitism and a strong belief in
experimental physics, coupled with distain for pure theory, as exemplified by
opposition to relativity (Einstein!) and quantum mechanics.
The authors
take on various aspects of the conflict, as can be seen by the chapter titles
noted above. Even so there is a duplication of material, inevitable because of
the closely related issues confronting the DPG. Occasionally one comes across
the same primary quotations in different chapters. But the duplications add to
the consensus—there is little disagreement I could discern in the various
approaches taken—an indication, I believe, of the remarkable objectivity
and fine scholarship of this generation of historians of that period.
The tone of
the DPG was set early in the Nazi period by its leadership. In a famous address
in 1933, Max van Laue very subtly referred to the conflict between Church and
science in the seventeenth century (Galileo), fooling nobody, but without
burning bridges. Von Laue, an anti-Nazi throughout, survived the entire Hitler
period essentially unscathed. The various presidents and others consistently
resisted Nazification. Many worked diligently to help allay the suffering of
their non-Aryan colleagues. The integrity of the physics supported by DPG was
rarely if ever compromised. They were not shy in complaining that
politicization and deportations were harming the war effort. But herein lies
the fatal flaw that prevents the authors from expressing unqualified admiration
for their behavior. As the leaders of DPG never tired of pointing out, if the
Nazis were less blinded by their hatreds, they might actually have had a better
chance of winning the war! And where would the world be then? After everything
that has been written on the subject, my own conclusion is that there should
have been only one right course of action, which only a few German scientists
took, including Schršdinger and Pauli: get the hell out of there!
I am fully
aware of how easy it is to judge their behavior from the distance in time and
culture that separate us. And I am hardly the first to judge from a distance.
Here is what Sam Goudsmit said, in a review of the excellent Beyerchen book: ÒI
can not make out who are the good and who the bad guys. I doubt that it
matters, I think all were badÉ. The question is often asked why the German
scientists did not protest more openly and vigorously against the persecution
of their colleaguesÉ. I have tried to find an answer by imagining myself in
their circumstances. If I had been living in Europe I would not have known how
to react and my actions would have appeared cowardly, especially in
retrospect.Ó3 You can
see in this short quotation how ambivalently even the wisest of us judge the
actions of those who were in the most part not only wonderful physicists but
decent people as well.
Thus the
fundamental question: suppose we found ourselves living in HitlerÕs Germany
(and being not Jewish). How would we behave? To be sure, not many of us are
particularly interested in becoming dead martyrs, which is what would surely
transpire should one overtly confront Nazism during its heyday. But—and
this is a big but—how hard did people try to leave Germany? We find that
apart from the Jews—who had to leave–precious few
physicists chose to. Instead, even the most moral of the physicists chose to
Òride it out,Ó for a variety of reasons. For senior physicists such a painful
dislocation would seriously disrupt their lives, both professionally and
personally. The conventional belief was that after the first wild days things
would calm down. Or, after the Hitler regime ended they would be ready to
reconstruct physics to its former glory.
Shortly after
Hitler took power, in 1933, there was a concerted effort by Nazi physicists,
led by Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, to capture the DPG leadership, but
this effort was easily squelched. Thereafter throughout the war DPG remained
essentially independent, although of course there was hardly any effort to
actually oppose the regime. It should be borne in mind that aryanizing German
physics was hardly a trivial undertaking. Probably 25% of physicists were not
Aryan, to one degree or another, as defined by the Nuremburg laws, and of
course some of them were of the very highest quality.
During the war
years, 1940–1944, Carl Ramsauer was president, and Wolfgang Finkelnberg
was deputy. There was an informal journal published by DPG—Physikalische
BlŠtter edited by Ernst BrŸche, which was started toward the end of
the war and continued until 1972, and which could very loosely be compared
with Physics Today. It was used partly as a vehicle for the postwar
whitewashing efforts of German physicists. I was intrigued by the several
discussions in the book about Ramsauer, Finkelnberg, and BrŸche, for a personal
reason: I was very much involved, at different times, with all of these
gentlemen. Decades ago I had spent a sabbatical leave at JILA, in Boulder, with
much of the time working on a critical review project with a JILA physicist,
L.J. Kieffer, examining the state of electron-atom cross section measurements.
At the time this was an experimental field that contained a lot of data, but
much of it inaccurate and even erroneous.
I quickly
learned of the work of Ramsauer and BrŸche. First Ramsauer, and then BrŸche,
had performed what turned out to be the most reliable of total cross section
measurements in a wide variety of atomic and molecular gases. The
Ramsauer–Townsend effect, an anomalous variation of cross section with
energy that could not be explained on the basis of classical collisions, was
one of the experimental consequences of quantum mechanics, and an early
confirmation of it. I greatly admired the work of Ramsauer and BrŸche, and was
able to give them high marks for the quality of their measurements in that
critical review. In 1948 one of the first postwar conferences on atomic physics
was held at Brookhaven National Laboratory (the forerunner of the International
Conference on Photonics, Electronic and Atomic Collisions). I gave a paper
there (my first one). A German physicist appeared—Wolfgang Finkelnberg.
He was among the first German physicists to get to America after the war. I
have to say—he didnÕt give a good impression. Very Prussian, I suspected
that he was an ex-Nazi. But I was wrong. As RamsauerÕs assistant at DPG he also
played a role in protecting the physics community against ÒAryanization.Ó I
thus had a very soft spot in my heart for all three. And yet, as stalwart as
were these defenders of physics, here is an excerpt from a letter written by
Ramsauer in 1942 to Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister for Science, Education, and
Culture: ÒThe legitimate struggle against the Jew Einstein and against the
excrescences of his speculative physics has spread to the whole of modern
theoretical physics and has brought it largely into disrepute as a product of
the Jewish spirit,Ó separately quoted by both Hoffmann and Eckert. Reading this
quotation 70 years after it was written was still capable of shocking me!
The uniform
conclusion of all the authors is that after the war, DPG and its members
essentially closed ranks. Even the Ògood guysÓ that Goudsmit refers to were
very protective of their more compromised colleagues, and often went out of
their way to write supportive letters. Even Lise Meitner did so.
The exemplar
of the righteous physicist was Max von Laue. Although rebuked several times, he
managed to stay out of real trouble throughout the war. But even he adapted a
lenient position concerning some of his more shall we say pliable colleagues.
An interesting
case in point is one discussed in detail by Gerhard Rammer, in the last
Chapter, ÒCleanliness among Our Circle of Colleagues: The German Physical
SocietyÕs Policy toward Its Past.Ó He writes about a doctoral physics student
immediately after the war, Ursula Martius. She gave a talk at a postwar physics
meeting, published in a German journal for all to read. Abstracting from a long
quote contained in RammerÕs article, she states: ÒPeople who still appear to me
in nightmares were sitting there alive and unchanged in the front rows.
Unchanged, if you donÕt consider the simple blue suit, instead of the uniform
of the missing party badgeÉ,Ó and much more, written in an angry tone. Rammer
states: Òthis article was absolutely exceptional. Not a single comparable case
is known to me of a physicist making such a public appeal.Ó Shortly thereafter
(she did complete her degree) she emigrated to Canada, where she developed a
very distinguished career as a physicist–archaeologist (under her married
name Ursula M. Franklin—see her impressive entry in Wikipedia). She was,
in my opinion, the quintessential embodiment of the child who claimed that the
Emperor has no clothes.
To summarize,
while I did have similar difficulties on occasion in keeping the various
individuals and organizations apart, as did Goudsmit, I was impressed by the
vast amount of information contained in this volume. I was equally impressed by
the fact that this collection by skilled historians evaluated that miserable
period of history both objectively and accurately. As they point out more than
once, physicists are human beings as well as scientists, and possess the same
qualities—good and bad—as everyone else. Hoffmann and Walker
deserve our thanks and congratulations.
Benjamin
Bederson
60 E 8th St,
Apt. 24K
New York, NY
10003 USA
e-mail:
ben.bederson@nyu.edu