Product Description

Nazi Germany had a head start in the science and technologies that dramatically transformed armed conflict in the twentieth century, leading to ultimate weapons of mass destruction, and the means of delivering them, ballistic missiles. John Cornwell's powerful history tells the story of Germany's scientists, from Hitler's rise to power in 1933 to his fall in 1945. He describes the behaviour of researchers in the huge span of scientific disciplines in which Germany excelled and led the world. Some were Nazi enthusiasts, many more were fellow travellers. Few resisted or rebelled and their efforts prolonged the war. Their failure to translate leading-edge expertise into military success is a crucial feature of world history. Their degenerate exploitation of death-camp victims and slave labour brought lasting shame on the entire German scientific community. Cornwell's disturbing book, however, raises questions about the conduct of all scientists whatever their nationality or ideology. Cornwell vividly describes how Adolf Hitler used and abused science to his own ends, borrowing from pseudo-biology to develop his murderous racist theories, seizing on rocket science and jet propulsion as desperate last bids to terrify his enemies and stave off defeat. He explores the German quest for an atomic bomb, resolving the intriguing story of Werner Heisenberg and his trip to Copenhagen: the final truth about the failure of Germany's nuclear research. Cornwell sets the genius and the eventual corruption of German scientists against the background of Germany's emergence as the technological powerhouse of Europe by the first decade of the century. In the final stages of his story he explores the record of scientists, East and West, since Hitler's fall. Have scientists behaved any better in the course of the Cold War and beyond?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #754627 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

Review
A timely study of the world's first great scientific-military-industrial complex. Ideally, observes Cornwell (History/Cambridge Univ.; Hitler's Pope, 2001, etc.), science is about the free exchange of ideas and information for the social good. Such qualities marked German science throughout the Enlightenment and into the 20th century. But even before the rise of the Nazi regime, German scientists were busy developing theories to prove the supposed superiority of their people-and, of course, perfecting plenty of death-dealing technologies. When Hitler came to power and pressed science and industry into the service of the state, many of those scientists, "notably doctors and anthropologists," obliged-promulgating, among other things, a nationwide anti-smoking campaign in the bargain. Many other scientists fled, including some of the nation's best physicists and chemists. To counter the brain drain, Cornwell writes, the renowned scientist Max Planck called on Hitler to plead "that certain Jewish scientists were worth nurturing for the benefit of the state"-which Hitler rejected, saying, "A Jew is a Jew." Germany's loss was the Allies' gain in such critical areas as cryptography and, of course, the development of nuclear weaponry, which, Cornwell observes, Hitler was not much interested in anyway, in keeping with what Albert Speer remarked was his "antimodern" stance "in decisions on armaments." Anti-modern in most other aspects of science, Hitler nonetheless kept legions of scientists busy, forging strong links among the Reich's death and labor camps and Germany's universities, research facilities, and hospitals. Cornwell's account is mainly straightforward, and he rightly points out how pseudo-science came to dominate pure science as the Third Reich evolved. Ever the controversialist, he closes with a rhetorical likening of modern politicized and militarized science to that practiced under Hitler's regime-save that, he writes, scientists in those days could emigrate, whereas today "in the globalized domains of science and technology there are no oases of irresponsible purity into which a scientist can retreat." A lucid survey synthesizing a broad range of historical research. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
John Cornwell directs the Science and Human Dimension Project at Cambridge University, and is an award-winning journalist and author. His books A Thief In The Night: The Death Of Pope John Paul I and Hitler's Pope: The Secret History Of Pius XII were both bestsellers worldwide. John Cornwell lives in London, Cambridge and Northamptonshire.

Customer Reviews

Highly readable - and chilling
Cornwell sets out in detail how German scientists (in the main) collaborated with Hitler's regime. Apart from the usual subjects (V weapons, atomic power) he contributes a lengthy and essential background section giving an overview of the development of German science from the mid 19th century on, followed by a thorough examination of the state of most areas of science in the 1930s.

Perhaps it might have been helpful to give a wider perspective here on the Nazi period. Scientists collaborated, but so, surely, did most other professional groups? It would have been helpful to see some comparisons.

Cornwell takes his story forward through the Cold War and exploitation, both Western and Soviet, of wartime German science - and, by extension the slave workers who were sacrificed to it. He then turns to the foundations of the post war German economy, which he argues were based, ultimately, on the same slave workers. These were for me the most sobering parts of the book.

He is at pains to draw lessons for the present and the future, and to stress the need for scientists to act responsibly. It's impossible to disagree, but given that scientists are part of the societies they serve, it is hard to see how we can expect much better in the future. This is where the wider context - placing scientists alongside other professions and interest groups - might have been helpful (though at the cost of vastly expanding the scope of the book).

History of science.
Don't get distracted by the title! When I noticed it while browsing in the book store in an airport, I was at first worried that this would another one of these overly opinionated books, more interested in imposing a view on me the poor reader than in good writing, and in letting me make up my own mind. I started reading in the plane, and was pleased to find that the author manages to paint a captivating portrait of a group of German scientists who were faced with a Faustian choice; Fritz Haber (poison gas), Werner von Braun (rockets), Werner Heisenberg (atomic bomb), Otto Hahn (fission), Max von Laue (nuclear physics) to mention only a few. For the most part, the book reads like a novel, and with his superb writing, the author Cornwell brings the characters to life. Many of the German scientists in the 1930ties were Jewish, or partly Jewish, and they were dismissed by Hitler in 1933, or the years up to the war. Many of them emigrated, and others ended up in concentration camps. Some ( Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Hans Bethe, and more) went to the USA, and became the core of the team, the Manhattan Project who built the first atomic bomb, the one used by the US government against Japan in 1945.

The bigger picture in Cornwell's book is the role of ethics in science. By weaving together the individuals, their thoughts, their ambitions, and their flawed judgments, Cornwell is not excusing anyone, but rather, he is helping us understand that we all must take responsibility for our actions. We can perhaps understand how present day scientists, and in fact all of us are faced with Faustian choices of our own.

I liked this one of Cornwell's books a lot better than his perhaps better known one, `Hitler's Pope'. It had me hooked from the start, and I couldn't put it down. Cornwell is not just relying on old historical sources. Since Michael Frayn's play `Copenhagen' a few years ago about the meeting in Copenhagen in the fall of 1941 between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, new documents have been made available from Bohr's archives which help us understand Heisenberg's motives better. Cornwell displays a remarkable judgment in making use of them

My reading of Heisenberg: If you accept a dinner invitation with the Devil, it is best to eat with a tea spoon. While Heisenberg, a humanist at heart may have understood this, at least initially, he soon found himself, perhaps as a result of blind ambition, eating at the trough with both hands deep into the stew, all the way up to his elbows.

It is perhaps ironic that the theme of the Faustian choice has a prominent place in German literature, from the medieval "Faustus" tale to Goethe, Weber's Freischuetz, to Martin Luther's Protestantism, and to Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (Mann's moral despair over his country's complacent embrace of Nazism).

In fact the theme of Cornwell's novel is universal, and it is as timely now as it was 60 years ago, and even 300 years ago. Review by Palle Jorgensen, May 2005.

Ethics and/in Science
Don't get distracted by the title! When I noticed it while browsing in the book store in an airport, I was at first worried that this would another one of these overly opinionated books, more interested in imposing a view on me the poor reader than in good writing, and in letting me make up my own mind. I started reading in the plane, and was pleased to find that the author manages to paint a captivating portrait of a group of German scientists who were faced with a Faustian choice; Fritz Haber (poison gas), Werner von Braun (rockets), Werner Heisenberg (atomic bomb), Otto Hahn (fission), Max von Laue (nuclear physics) to mention only a few. For the most part, the book reads like a novel, and with his superb writing, the author Cornwell brings the characters to life. Many of the German scientists in the 1930ties were Jewish, or partly Jewish, and they were dismissed by Hitler in 1933, or the years up to the war. Many of them emigrated, and others ended up in concentration camps. Some ( Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Hans Bethe, and more) went to the USA, and became the core of the team, the Manhattan Project who built the first atomic bomb, the one used by the US government against Japan in 1945.

The bigger picture in Cornwell's book is the role of ethics in science. By weaving together the individuals, their thoughts, their ambitions, and their flawed judgments, Cornwell is not excusing anyone, but rather, he is helping us understand that we all must take responsibility for our actions. We can perhaps understand how present day scientists, and in fact all of us are faced with Faustian choices of our own.

I liked this one of Cornwell's books a lot better than his perhaps better known one, `Hitler's Pope'. It had me hooked from the start, and I couldn't put it down. Cornwell is not just relying on old historical sources. Since Michael Frayn's play `Copenhagen' a few years ago about the meeting in Copenhagen in the fall of 1941 between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, new documents have been made available from Bohr's archives which help us understand Heisenberg's motives better. Cornwell displays a remarkable judgment in making use of them

My reading of Heisenberg: If you accept a dinner invitation with the Devil, it is best to eat with a tea spoon. While Heisenberg, a humanist at heart may have understood this, at least initially, he soon found himself, perhaps as a result of blind ambition, eating at the trough with both hands deep into the stew, all the way up to his elbows.

It is perhaps ironic that the theme of the Faustian choice has a prominent place in German literature, from the medieval "Faustus" tale to Goethe, Weber's Freischuetz, to Martin Luther's Protestantism, and to Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (Mann's moral despair over his country's complacent embrace of Nazism).

In fact the theme of Cornwell's novel is universal, and it is as timely now as it was 60 years ago, and even 300 years ago. Review by Palle Jorgensen, June 2005.