Physicists Under Hitler
On The Disabling Consequence of Thinking About Consequences
In 1977, Alan Beyerchen published a careful, fact-filled book, called Scientists Under Hitler. Beyerchen’s topic is really narrower than that, as the subtitle suggests; its topic is “the physics community.”
Think: Einstein, Heisenberg, Hans Bethe, and Felix Bloch. A number of refugees from Hitler’s Germany participated in the Manhattan Project, which ultimately ended World War II (and maybe saved my father’s life; my Dad was in the U.S. Navy and likely to go into Japan, if that had been necessary).
Beyerchen offers a detailed account of the dilemmas faced by German physicists, Jewish and not. Do you put your head down and do your work, if you can? Do you quit? Do you support the regime, or point out what’s good about it? Do you leave Germany? Do you defend Jews, if you are not Jewish? Do you speak out? If so, what do you say?
As Beyerchen shows, the German physicists were not at all a political lot. They were probably the best in the world, and what they most wanted was to do their work, free from government oversight. “The foremost concern of the members of the physics community during the Nazi years was the protection of their autonomy against political encroachment. The vast majority of the scientists under Hitler were neither anti-Nazi nor pro-Nazi.”
You might think that their professionalism would, in the end, amount to opposition to Hitler. Beyerchen asks that question: “To what extent did adherence to professional values constitute opposition to National Socialism?” His answer is stark: “It was not opposition at all.”
And that point raises a further question. Why didn’t the physicists do more to oppose Hitler and Nazism? Why did they do relatively little?
Beyerchen’s answer is striking. Recall that his physicists were not pro-Hitler. And as they saw what was unfolding, and as non-Jewish physicists saw what was happening to their Jewish colleagues, many of them became anti-Hitler. But as they saw it, open protest was “tantamount to suicide.” (Pause over that.)
The scientists were eminently practical people, who were engaged in what has been called “prudential acquiescence.” Still, Beyerchen wants to qualify that phrase. His key point: “The truth is not that the scientists were political cowards, but that they did not know how to be political heroes.”
But this isn’t all that Beyerchen has to say. He gives some of his final words to the physicist Leo Szilard (and I think this is a highlight of his superb, low-key book):
“I noticed that the Germans always took a utilitarian point of view. They asked, ‘Well, suppose I would oppose this, what good would I do? I wouldn’t do very much good. I would just lose my influence. Then why should I oppose it?” You see, the moral point of view was completely absent, or very weak, and every consideration was simply, what would be the predictable consequence of my action. And on that basis did I reach the conclusion in 1931 that Hitler would get into power, not because the forces of the Nazi revolution were so strong, but rather because I thought there would be no resistance whatsoever.”
Szilard’s words are interesting in multiple ways. Utilitarianism is, of course, a moral point of view. But Szilard (who was a physicist, not a philosopher0 wants to urge that “the moral point of view” involves doing what is right, independent of consequences. Opposition, he thinks, is simply right.
We could get a little fancy here and urge that thinking as Szilard does serves to solve a collective action problem: If we all do the right thing (don’t trespass, don’t lie, keep our promises), we will all be better off. (Edna Ullmann-Margalit’s The Emergence of Social Norms is terrific on that.) But seeing things in those (consequentialist) terms might undermine the clarity and force of the moral commitments that Szilard favors.
Beyerchen’s book is a steady ship, but it’s haunting, and so is his Szilard-pervaded denouement. One more time, now in bold: “They asked, ‘Well, suppose I would oppose this, what good would I do? I wouldn’t do very much good. I would just lose my influence. Then why should I oppose it?”