Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture

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		Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture
		Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture

No one better represents the plight and the conduct of German intellectuals under Hitler than Werner Heisenberg, whose task it was to build an atomic bomb for Nazi Germany. The controversy surrounding Heisenberg still rages, because of the nature of his work and the regime for which it was undertaken. What precisely did Heisenberg know about the physics of the atomic bomb? How deep was his loyalty to the German government during the Third Reich? Assuming that he had been able to build a bomb, would he have been willing? These questions, the moral and the scientific, are answered by Paul Lawrence Rose with greater accuracy and breadth of documentation than any other historian has yet achieved. Digging deep into the archival record among formerly secret technical reports, Rose establishes that Heisenberg never overcame certain misconceptions about nuclear fission, and as a result the German leaders never pushed for atomic weapons. In fact, Heisenberg never had to face the moral problem of whether he should design a bomb for the Nazi regime. Only when he and his colleagues were interned in England and heard about Hiroshima did Heisenberg realize that his calculations were wrong. He began at once to construct an image of himself as a 'pure' scientist who could have built a bomb but chose to work on reactor design instead. This was fiction, as Rose demonstrates: in reality, Heisenberg blindly supported and justified the cause of German victory. The question of why he did, and why he misrepresented himself afterwards, is answered through Rose's subtle analysis of German mentality and the scientists' problems of delusion and self-delusion. This fascinating study is a profound effort to understand one of the twentieth century's great enigmas.

媒体推荐

"During the Second World War, the nightmare of a Nazi atomic bomb project under the leadership of Werner Heisenberg played a significant role in propelling the world into the nuclear age. After the war, German scientists including Heisenberg took credit for diverting the regime from pursuing a bomb, for moral as well as practical reasons. In this important and absorbing book, Paul Lawrence Rose meticulously documents a radically different view of what happened in Germany during the war. Rose has made an indispensable contribution to the literature of this important episode."--David Goodstein, California Institute of Technology

作者简介

Paul Lawrence Rose is Mitrani Professor of Jewish Studies and European History at Pennsylvania State University. His recent books include Wagner: Race and Revolution (1992) and German Question/Jewish Question (1990).

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The author has done an excellent job of historical research, but this material and the whole book is flawed for three main reasons:
1) If Heisenberg is the representative of some supposed cultural influence on the way German scientists morally behaved, the same pattern should have been observed in Göttingen, for instance, which was the center of German Science then (Quantum Mechanics and Abstract Algebra were born there). But with the sole exceptions of Teichmüller (a mathematical genius and fanatic Nazi) and Hilbert (who was already very old and sick), all the leading mathematicians and physicists of Göttingen fled the country because of their opposition to the Nazi regime. This simple historical counterfactual renders the main "culturalist" thesis of the book untenable.
2) The author clearly lacks proper training in physics, and the technical details he describes is intended mainly to impress the non-scientific reader - the pitfall is that for a trained physicist it is almost nonsensical to imagine that someone of Heisenberg's stature would make the silly mistakes ascribed to him by the author. The point is that he draws too much on information given by Hans Bethe, a less than reliable source on Heisenberg as anyone who knew both men were aware (but not the author, it seems).
3) Heisenberg read ancient Greek fluently and in fact he read the Greek philosophers in order to reflect upon his scientific activity. It was this broad and humanistic vision of physics that attracted Ettore Majorana to Heisenberg at Leipzig and estranged him from Fermi and his group in Rome (it should be remembered that for Majorana a proper ethical stance was always more important than scientific achievements). It seems to defy our common sense to mantain that a man with this backgroud would be the morally silly character portrayed in the book. In fact, impartial accounts given by other scientists who knew Heisenberg (Weisskopf, for example) shows a different picture.
The mixture of void grand metaphysical speculation and scientific and historical ignorance is a common feature of much that today is published in France as "cultural" studies of science. If it were not for the interesting historical material dug by the author, his book would neatly fall into this category - cheap French journalism.

I remember learning about Hiesenberg's Uncertainty Principle in college chemistry; a simple but elegant fact of nature. Behind the brilliance of the concept lies a most complicated, complex and nebulous personality.
What kind of person of such intelligence would actively participate in Nazi science, let alone the possible development of the most destructive weapon known to mankind for Nationalist Germany during World War II? I had always accepted the notions that Dr. Heisenberg was just trying to protect German science or German Scientists; that he was really trying to assist German Jews; that he was trying to protect "Jewish Physics;" that he felt an unusual loyalty to the German state, but not its leaders; or that he really tried to preempt the German atomic bomb with false information or an inflated degree of difficulty in developing the bomb. Somehow none of it quite seemed to fit. What of the meeting with Neils Bohr in Copenhagen? It is a shame that Dr. Bohr did not leave a record of the meeting!
In any event, Professor Rose has provided an outstanding work placing Dr. Heisenberg in the setting, culture, and mind set of Germany and her people just before and during World War II. This book is a significant historical work and provides historical insight and historical fact in the context of World War II Germany and its culture.
After reading this book, I am convinced that Dr. Heisenberg was less than honest with himself. He clearly aided Nazi Germany and expected Germany to dominate Europe, as would German science. I think that it is also evident that Dr. Heisenberg had deceived himself as to his knowledge of the atomic bomb.
When I finished this book, my uncertainty about Dr. Heisenberg's role in Nazi science was put to rest. He was an active participant, something that he could never acknowledge.

Whether or not you agree with the author's conclusions, Rose's book provides a response to Powers's"Heisenberg's War," and provides material which was not available to Cassidy in "Uncertainty..." Some of the material, such as the supposed antisemitic rant by Heisenberg in the presence of Max Born, I found barely credible, due to a reliance on second hand sources.
Nevertheless, Bohr's post war coolness toward Heisenberg as well as Heisenberg's failure to honestly confront the evil of the Nazi regime after the war are evidence that Rose's negative view of Heisenberg is closer to the truth than Powers's mostly positive one. I would strongly urge those interested in Heisenberg and the other German physicists of that era to purchase both the Rose book and the Powers book, and then to decide for themselves.

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