Serving the Reich

by Philip Ball

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Serving the Reich tells the story of physics under Hitler. While some scientists tried to create an Aryan physics that excluded any 'Jewish ideas', many others made compromises and concessions as they continued to work under the Nazi regime. Among them were world-renowned physicists Max Planck, Peter Debye and Werner Heisenberg.

After the war most scientists in Germany maintained they had been apolitical or even resisted the regime: Debye claimed that he had gone to America in 1940 to escape Nazi interference in his research; Heisenberg and others argued that they had deliberately delayed production of the atomic bomb.

In a gripping exploration of moral choices under a totalitarian regime, here are human dilemmas, failures to take responsibility and three lives caught between the idealistic goals of science and a tyrannical ideology.

  • ISBN10 1322097054
  • ISBN13 9781322097053
  • Publish Date 1 January 2014 (first published 10 October 2013)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Out of Print 3 June 2015
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Chicago Press
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 314
  • Language English