Serving the Reich - 9780226204574
Un libro in lingua di Philip Ball edito da Univ of Chicago Pr, 2014
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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 judgement 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 of 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.
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 judgement 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 of 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.
Informazioni bibliografiche
- Titolo del Libro in lingua: Serving the Reich
- Sottotitolo: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler
- Lingua: English
- Autore: Philip Ball
- Editore: Univ of Chicago Pr
- Collana: Univ of Chicago Pr (Hardcover)
- Data di Pubblicazione: 20 Ottobre '14
- Genere: HISTORY
- Argomenti : National socialism and science Nuclear physics Germany History 20th century World War, 1939-1945 Science Germany
- Pagine: 303
- Dimensioni mm: 228 x 152 x 0
- EAN-13: 9780226204574