Werner Heisenberg as “Goodwill Ambassador” (9/24)

I really enjoyed the way Walker wrote about history in his book Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb. He wrote from a different perspective that what I am used to. In history, just as in fairy tales, it is easy to want heroes and villains. History is so much simpler when people are viewed as being good or bad and reasons for actions are cut and dry. However, this is not the reality. Walker focuses on the humanity, ambivalence, and motives of historical figures. It’s hard to accept that prominent figures sometimes don’t know what they’re doing. I would have never thought that cooperation with the Nazis could ever be “ambiguous and ambivalent” as Walker writes that it could be (123).

The one ambivalent historical figure that I learned about was Werner Heisenberg. It was extremely fascinating to me to learn about his political and scientific activity. Heisenberg was used as part of political propaganda for the National Socialist state. It is interesting to see how party officials were trying to portray Germany in a positive light, especially in countries that it occupied or conquered. Heisenberg’s career was traveling to these lands and speaking of German accomplishments in physics. Heisenberg was exploited by the Nazi state, even though he was previously labeled a “White Jew” by “German” physicists such as Stark.

Last spring I took a class on the Holocaust with Professor Berk, but we never covered this aspect of the German state. In that class we talked about propaganda campaigns against the Jews, characterizing them as dirty, sexual, subhuman beings. I never knew that propaganda was also used not only to bring down Jewish citizens but to bolster the German state. In particular, achievements in science served as a form of propaganda. In this case especially it is easy to see how linked politics and science can actually be.

While reading, I had to ask myself why Heisenberg participated in any of this. While he might have been ambivalent politically during this intense time of Hitler’s dictatorship, wasn’t he smart enough to know that he was being exploited by the Nazi state? Was he ok with that? He termed himself as being part of the resistance, instead of collaborating with Hitler. I found his justification interesting. He said that while he did not outwardly speak against Hitler, he tried to make real change by working within the system and impeding certain movements (Walker 123, 177). He did more than others who “passively” resisted by only having an “inner emigration,” waiting for the government to change (123, 177). In contrast, Heisenberg believes that he was quite “active” in his opposition, even though we have very different notions of what that means today.