The German Uranium Project
… and the Farm Hall protocols
A presentation as part of the seminar »Science, Technology and War in the 20th Century« at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, winter semester 2023/2024. The lecturer for the seminar was PD Dr. Désirée Schauz. Held on February 2, 2024.
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The beginnings of modern physics
1901: “On the law of energy distribution in the normal spectrum” Bildquellen Portrait of Max Planck: Portrait of Max Planck. Photograph by Transocean, Smithsonian Libraries
“On the electrodynamics of moving bodies” Bildquellen Einstein, at the age of 25.: Wikimedia Commons
The First World War
Germany’s scientific community at that time included only a few pacifists. One of their best-known representatives is Albert Einstein, a native of Württemberg who taught in Berlin during the First World War and received a Prussian citizenship in 1914.
Attitudes of German scientists
- Pronounced patriotism & nationalism
- Kriegseuphorie & »Selbstmobilisierung«
- The German research community also grows around poison gas research during the war years
- This does not exclude researchers who previously focused on international cooperation, such as
- Otto Hahn. He conducted research in England and Canada before returning to Germany in 1907
- War is seen as justified
- German war crimes are denied or rationalized
- Physicists seem to be particularly enthusiastic about war
- Exceptions have been rare
German war crimes …
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The destruction of Belgian cultural treasures, such as the Library of Leuven, earned Germany and the Germans the reputation of behaving “like the Huns”.
In response to scathing articles in the press of the Entente states, German academics responded first with the “Manifesto of the 93” and later with the “Declaration of the University Teachers of the German Reich”. Both manifestos partly denied German war crimes against the Belgian population and partly defended them, emphasizing the right of the Germans to “survive”. The following outrage pushed the German academic community internationally even further to the sidelines.
The chemist Fritz Haber developed poison gas at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, which was used for the first time on April 22 1915 at Ypres.
In Haber’s view, poison gas could not only be one of the most effective weapons, but also one of the most humane. (Paraphrased)
His wife Clara Immerwahr, also a chemist and a staunch pacifist, shot herself a few days later in the garden of the villa they shared1.
Despite Haber’s status as a war criminal, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918 for his work on ammonia synthesis. Also known as the “Haber-Bosch process”.
… and the involvement of German nuclear scientists
Signing of the Manifesto of the 93 et al:
- Fritz Haber
- Max Planck
Signing of the declaration of the university professors of the German Reich and others:
- Otto Hahn
- Max von Laue
- Max Planck
(In)direct participation in war:
- Otto Hahn (poison gas research, under Fritz Haber)
- Lise Meitner (X-ray nurse in the Austrian army)
Prior to the war, important scientific journals, especially physics journals, were published in Germany and in the German language. After the manifestos had been published, many academic libraries cancelled their subscriptions. In the process, English language journals gained in importance.
A hit, from which German academic publishing would never recover.
- However, there is no evidence of a direct correlation. ↩︎
Bildquellen
- German Uranium Machine 1945: Brookhaven National Laboratory, courtesy, AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Goudsmit Collection
- Deutsche Infanterie während eines Gasangriffs in Flandern. (1916-1918): Deutsches Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R05923
- Fritz Haber: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft | Unbekannt
- German Uranium Machine 1945: Brookhaven National Laboratory, courtesy, AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Goudsmit Collection
