ROMANCING NEWTON

At the age of sixteen, Charles Brockden Brown was an ardent antidisciplinarian, at the last moment for it until our own era. “Knowledge must not be departmentalized,” he told his Belles Lettres Club, which met occasionally in Franklin's home in Franklin's Philadelphia, and which was dedicated to considering “science and art within the same circle.”! The question is how long Brown's intellectual ecumenism lasted. Starting in 1794 (some seven years after the Belles Lettres pronouncement), Brown gradually made the acquaintance in New York of several prominent scientists and fellow travelers – Elihu Hubbard Smith, Samuel Miller, Edward Miller, Samuel Latham Mitchill – from whom he seems to have learned that the romances he was writing were antiscientific. Of course, when Brown arrived in New York in 1798 with the intention of settling there, he had already started Wieland, which still exhibits Brown's confidence in his compatibility with science: He defends the verisimilitude of Wieland's insanity by an “appeal to Physicians and to men conversant with the latent springs and occasional perversions of the human mind.” This makes colleagues of Benjamin Rush and Erasmus Darwin. But how long after Wieland and after the decision to live in New York was Brown confident that he and scientists were performing analogous investigations in the same spirit?

The problem with trying to pinpoint Brown's intellectual orientation at any phase of his novelistic career is that it had no phases.

What historical lesson, if any, does the German quest for nuclear power teach us? This book has used the German efforts to harness nuclear fission as a vehicle for investigating how science, technology, and society can interact, and has emphasized four topics towards this end: ideology, “resistance,” apologia, and science policy. A brief summary of these points, as well as how they interact, forms the conclusion of this history.

The relationship between the German physics community and the National Socialist German state was one of collaboration and compromise, in simpler terms, of give and take. The ideological, political, and economic policies of the state forced scientists to embrace applied science, especially the inherent industrial and military utility of scientific research. The scientists, with the powerful backing of industrialists and military leaders, in turn forced the state to make significant ideological concessions, including a rehabilitation of modern physics, in order to enlist the wholehearted support of physicists for the war effort and to ensure the availability of the general scientific training of engineers, scientists, and technicians for the armaments industry.

The end of the lightning war

In late November of 1941, the German eastern offensive ground to a halt. The subsequent Russian counterattack brought the lightning war to a definitive end. For the first time, but not the last, Germany was on the defensive. The Third Reich now faced more and tougher opponents. Immediately after the Japanese attack on the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Germany brought the United States into the European hostilities by a declaration of war.

The “Myth of the German Atomic Bomb” means different things to different people. A German version of this fable emphasizes that (1) the scientists involved with nuclear power in Germany did not make atomic bombs during World War II, affirms that (2) these scientists had not wanted to create nuclear weapons, asserts that (3) they were good enough to have done the job, but their efforts were hindered by forces beyond their control, and finally avows that (4) even if they had been able to create nuclear explosives and had tried to produce such weapons, they would have denied atomic bombs to the Nazis.

This book investigates science and knowledge as power. But what is power? Power can subsume economic, industrial, military, political, and social forces and refer to the transfer of energy as well. Moreover, it is important to examine how power is wielded and controlled, and by whom. A study of science as power falls into the category of science policy in the broadest sense, and the relationships between scientists and various parts of the modern state will be investigated in this context. This book examines what was an extreme case, the German attempt to exploit the economic and military potential of nuclear fission during the last six years of National Socialist rule, from the perspective of the scientists involved in this research.

The Alsos Mission

Nuclear fission research had not been a German monopoly at the start of World War II, and vigorous efforts were made to control and apply nuclear fission in Great Britain and the United States of America throughout the war. The American Armed Forces, understandably concerned about the threat of a German nuclear weapons project, established an extraordinary intelligence gathering unit in the fall of 1943, named the “Alsos Mission.” Although the main target of this espionage was nuclear fission research in Germany, the Alsos Mission was empowered to investigate a broad range of other scientific topics as well. General Leslie Groves, the director of the “Manhattan District” in the Army Corps of Engineers (the American nuclear power project), appointed Colonel Boris Pash as the military and administrative commander of the Alsos Mission, while Vannevar Bush, the head of the Office for Scientific Research and Development (an agency empowered to organize and coordinate the American scientific war effort), nominated Samuel Goudsmit as the highest ranking scientific member of the mission. Goudsmit was well suited for this position. Although he was an accomplished nuclear physicist and well versed in European languages, he was not connected with the American nuclear power project in any way.

The occupation of Germany

When the victorious Allies finally accepted the unconditional German surrender, what was left of the former Reich was in sad shape. Although with respect to loss of life and general destruction the Germans were better off than many of their neighbours, especially Poland and Russia, the future for Germany did not appear bright. Large portions of the major cities were in rubble, the shrunken Reich was swollen by refugees from parts of former Greater Germany, and there were grave shortages of food and shelter. The Yalta Conference of the Allies in February of 1945 decided on a four-way division and occupation of Germany: the Russians in the east, the British in the north-west, the French in the south-west, and the Americans in the south, with Berlin being split into four pieces.

Nuclear fission

By the fall of 1938, Germany had lost her contented face and National Socialism had shed its tranquil mask. Aided by the policy of appeasement employed by Britain and France, Hitler's government had considerably strengthened its foreign and domestic position by the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. As Germany continued to press for further territorial expansion in the face of British and French opposition, the specter of European war reappeared.

Evacuation and self-preservation

Although both the German war fortunes and the home front had deteriorated steadily throughout 1943, the worst was yet to come. The winter of 1943/44 was marked by military defeats and bombing raids, as well as by ever-increasing pessimism. Moreover, the German nuclear power project experienced yet another administrative purge. Hermann Goring and Rudolf Mentzel were coerced by Albert Speer into letting Abraham Esau go.

I had always thought of this book as an individual effort, that is, until I came to write this preface. However, the fact that I am indebted to the individuals listed below in no way implies or assumes that they necessarily are in agreement with what I have written. First of all, I was lucky enough to be able to meet and speak with many of the actors in my drama, which can be one of the great benefits of doing contemporary history. The list of my interview partners includes: Erich Bagge, Gerhard Borrmann, Adolf Butenandt, Werner Czulius, Gerhard Dickel, Heinz Ewald, F. Charles Frank, Ewald Fünfer, Wilhelm Hanle, Paul Harteck, Georg Hartwig, Otto Haxel, Julius Hiby, Karl-Heinz Höcker, Willibald Jentschke, Heinz Maier- Leibnitz, Werner Maurer, Wolfgang Paul, Rudolf Peierls, Michael Perrin, Nikolaus Riehl, Stefan Rozental, Kurt Sauerwein, Kurt Starke, Hans Suess, Wilhelm Walcher, Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Karl Wirtz, and Karl Zimmer. Since this book is a slightly revised version of my 1987 doctoral dissertation for the Department of History at Princeton University, I want to single out those who helped me through six long years of graduate school: Faye Angelozzi, who did more for the history of science graduate students than anyone else, all of my fellow graduate students at Princeton, without whom the Program in History of Science would not exist, and my first, and best, teacher in history, Charles C. Gillispie.

Wonder weapons

Although nuclear weapons at best appeared to be irrelevant to the war effort and at worst represented a potentially dangerous drain on the war economy, the future military and economic promise of nuclear power not only justified continued support, it also made this research into a valuable science policy asset. The state agency that controlled nuclear power could anticipate considerable returns in the future on any investments made during wartime.