Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, And The German Atomic Bomb

The book is an invuable resource for people interested in the reality of the behavior of German scientists under Hitler, and their program for their self-serving propaganda afterward. The author was remarkably even-handed and even generous.

This well written book is a thoughtful examination of the experience of German physicists during the Third Reich and is essentially a series of essays on the relationship between German science and the Nazi regime. There is strong topical integration of the essays and some overlap in content, though not to the point of being pointlessly repetitious.

Walker opens with a discussion of the career of Johannes Stark, the prominent experimental physicist who was a fervent Nazi and leader of the "German Physics" movement that regarded relativity and quantum theory as mistakes. Despite his professional prominence and early commitment to the Nazi movement, Stark and his supporters did not fare as well as expected under the Third Reich. His efforts to become the Fuhrer of German physics fell afoul of both professional resistance and vicious bureaucratic politics of the polycratic Nazi state. Over time, the Nazi leadership came to prefer less overtly Nazi physicists like...Read more

The author does a very good job of showing that not everything is black and white. The only comment that I can add is that what people do or say while they are working under an oppressive government can not always be used to prove how any individual really feels or thinks. In Germany, at that time, if an individual of Heisenberg's status spoke openly against the government then he would be risking more than just his job. At the very least he would have had all of his communications monitored, he and his family would have been watched, his travel would have been restricted and at most he could have been jailed or he could have quietly disappeared. If he did not try and sell the idea of continuing the work on either the reactor or some form of nuclear weapon then he would see his funding getting pulled and his position would be diminished.

As the author points out, it is never easy to clearly understand the thinking of an individual by what they say or even do. At...Read more