Since the posting on Albert Schweitzer a few days ago, I guess I've had Alberts on my mind. So here's a little something about another well-known Albert who was around during the Great War.
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| Albert Einstein at His Flat in Berlin During the War |
Albert Einstein was a pacifist of long standing and sincerity. In January 1896, with his father's approval, he renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Württemberg to avoid military service. While his friend, Fritz Haber, was a signatory of the Fulda Manifesto [aka Manifesto of the Ninety-Three, a 4 October 1914, proclamation endorsed by 93 prominent German scientists, scholars, and artists, declaring their unequivocal support of German military actions in the early period of World War I], Einstein (now a German citizen again) signed a counter-manifesto—one of only four signatories—that called for an end to the war and the creation of a united Europe.
War had not yet come to Berlin in April 1914 when Einstein arrived in Berlin to accept an appointment to the still-to-be-founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics. [The institute never had its own building; it was located in Einstein's own flat.] In Berlin, he struggled with the separation from his wife, Mileva, and their two sons. Despite the war atmosphere, he would continue his work in general relativity and gravitational concepts. On 25 November 1915, Albert Einstein held his seminal lecture before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, which ended with the words: “Thus, the general theory of relativity as a logical edifice has finally been completed.”
A devout pacifist, Einstein would support antiwar movements through the war. He called Berlin a "lunatic asylum" and expressed a desire to move to Mars "to observe the inmates through a telescope". The strain of wartime conditions, family troubles, and overwork (he produced ten scientific papers and a book on relativity within a year) took their toll on the physicist. In the fall of 1917 he collapsed in agonizing pain and lost more than 50 pounds in two months.
Einstein continued to work, despite failing health, although he could not contact fellow "enemy" scientists. On Armistice Day, a group of revolutionary students seized the University and imprisoned the rector and several professors. Einstein, with his friend and fellow physicist Max Born intervened, eventually negotiating a settlement at the Reichstag. In 1919, one month before the signing of the Versailles Treaty, observations made of a solar eclipse by Sir Arthur Eddington confirmed Einstein's theory about the relationship of time and space and the nature of gravity. From that day on, he would be recognized as an international celebrity.He left the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1922.
From: "Scientific Genius Encounters World Conflict" by Douglas K. Shaffer
And yet he signed the letter that got the Manhattan Project started - because Enrico Fermi needed someone with some name recognition in order to get the President of the United States to notice the recommendation of a handful of European refugee scientists.
ReplyDeleteEnstein barely escaped from the SA Nazis when they sacked his house in Berlin just before Hitler came to power in 1933: he was in the US when this happened. A Sionist, he was extremely sensitive to the Nazis' antisemitism, so he had to abandon his pacifism. "Some name recognition", you say ? You seem to forget that his famous equation "E=mc2" is at the heart of atomic power. The famous letter to Rooselvelt was delivered in August 1939, just before Germany started WWII. It was motivated in part because other German physicists, among them Werner Heisenberg (Nobel Laureate 1932) stood by the Nazis and were believed to be able to develop the atom bomb: initially at least, the Manhattan Project was a race against the clock to outpace the Germans. You should never forget that. And it was not Fermi, himself a refugee Italian Jew physicist, who convinced Einstein to co-sign the letter, but Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee who fled from Germany after Hitler came to power. The "handful of European refugee scientists", as you say, knew very well what they were talking about, both in science (Szilard discovered the chain reaction in 1933), and in politics (they had fled from Nazi Germany). Eventually, Einstein never reappeard on the atom bomb scene, and he did not participate in the Manhattan project.
DeleteThank your lucky stars for the Manhattan Project, without it estimates are of 1,000,000 dead Americans and Allied soldiers and how many more maimed in an invasion of Japan, not to mention the Japanese numbers.
ReplyDeleteNo, you are wrong. Japan was already defeated and a simple naval blockade would have denied the Japanese any access to oil or any other commerce which they were so dependent upon. Instead of using the atomic bomb on a military target the United States chose two undefended civilian targets thus causing the deaths and sickness of hundreds of thousands of women, old people and children. It would have been inconceivable that this weapon would have been utilized against Caucasians in Europe. In 1945 Japan was a defeated nation and many Japanese were advocating for surrender. The Manhattan project led to a hundred trillion dollar arms race which goes on today.
DeleteWrong. The real reason behind dropping the atom bomb was to obtain at last a surrender from Japan (the Japanese military were ready "to sacrifice their country" at all costs to defend it), in order to prevent Stalin (who had just broken his neutrality treaty with Japan, which had been in force throughout the war) to invade Japan. Because in that case Japan would have been split in two, like Germany a few months before. Just imagine that.
DeleteDear pdxtwa - you are definitely wrong here in your analysis. The german's and their european allies readily surrendered when they knew they were defeated. The Japanese on the other hand fought by a different code as evidenced by Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Kamakazi attacks... the list goes on and on. They fought to the death and would have never surrendered. I think that is the fact. I think it took something momentous (and probably destruction the US Govt didn't truly understand at the time) to change the Japanese code and make them give up. I have no doubt that whoever occupied the Oval Office at the time would have done the same action - dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - to bring the war to a quick conclusion and save a million american lives.
DeleteWow this Man was legendary in his time I guess.
ReplyDeleteThis guy is amaz
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