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Serving the Reich - The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler
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Serving the Reich - The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler
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The compelling story of leading physicists in Germany--including
Peter Debye, Max Planck, and Werner Heisenberg--and how they
accommodated themselves to working within the Nazi state in the
1930s and '40s. 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
judgment 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 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.
General
Imprint: |
University of Chicago Press
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Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2023 |
Authors: |
Philip Ball
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Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 25mm (L x W x T) |
Pages: |
320 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-226-82934-0 |
Categories: |
Books
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LSN: |
0-226-82934-0 |
Barcode: |
9780226829340 |
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