Serving the Reich – The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler – Philip Ball

Three lives caught between the idealistic goals of science and a tyrannical ideology.Serving the Reich follows three renowned physicists working under Hitler as Nazi scientists attempted to create 'German Physics' - an Aryan science that excluded any 'Jewish ideas', in particular Einstein's Theory of Planck, pioneer of quantum theory, regarded it as his moral duty to carry on under the regime.Peter Debye, a Dutch physicist, rose to run the Reich's most important research institute before leaving for the United States in 1940.Werner Heisenberg, the discoverer of the Uncertainty Principle, became the leading figure in Germany's race for the atomic bomb.Yet after the war most German scientists maintained they had been apolitical or even resisted the Debye claimed that he had gone to America to warn the world about Germany's nuclear research; Heisenberg and others argued that they had deliberately delayed production of the atomic bomb.Mixing history, science and biography, Serving the Reich is a gripping exploration of moral choices under a totalitarian regime. Here are human dilemmas, failures to take responsibility, three lives caught between the idealistic goals of science and a tyrannical ideology.