Hitler

In the 1930s, the world s greatest migration of scientists took place under the lash of Nazism. It has sometimes been asserted that Hitler may have lost the War because of the talent he forced to flee, and that the American development of the atomic bomb that shortened the War so drastically might have been much slower without that migration. Other, less cataclysmic, consequences also flowed from the migration, and this Section is devoted to one of them. 

Fermi s wife, Laura, was Jewish, and as Hitler s influence over Mussolini intensified, anti-Jewish laws were passed that made Laura s remaining in Italy precarious. Alter accepting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Fermi and his wife took a ship directly to the United States, where they would spend the rest of their lives. Enrico taught at Columbia University in New York City from 1939 to 1942, and at the University of Chicago from 1942 until his death in 1954. 

Tn their years together Hahn and Meitner did significant research on beta- and gamma-ray spectra. They discovered the new element protoactinium-91 and, at Meitner s suggestion, took up, and made great progress with, work on neutron bombardment of nuclei that Enrico Fermi had commenced in Rome. In 1938, this research was suspended when Adolph Hitler annexed Austria and Meitner had to flee Germany. 

After the war, although now famous, Meitner continued her research in Stockholm, interrupted only by trips to receive honorary degrees and other scientific accolades. She shared in the prestigious Enrico Fermi Prize awarded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Committee in 1966. She retired to Cambridge, England, m 1960, to be near her nephew, Otto Frisch, and died there hi 1968 at the age of ninety. Like so many people all over the world during the Hitler period, Meitner s life had been far from easy, but no reasonable person would ever be tempted to call her life empty. 

The news spread quickly, and became charged with implications as Hitler s Nazis began their march through Europe. Two days before the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, Bohr and John... 

The process of nuclear fission was discovered more than half a century ago in 1938 by Lise Meitner (1878-1968) and Otto Hahn (1879-1968) in Germany. With the outbreak of World War II a year later, interest focused on the enormous amount of energy released in the process. At Los Alamos, in the mountains of New Mexico, a group of scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) worked feverishly to produce the fission, or atomic, bomb. Many of the members of this group were exiles from Nazi Germany. They were spurred on by the fear that Hitler would obtain the bomb first Their work led to the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert at 5 30 a.m. on July 16,1945. Less than a month later (August 6,1945), the world learned of this new weapon when another bomb was exploded... 

The Ordnance Corps sensitivity to the urgent demand for war material kept pace with the swift-moving, events in Europe. Thus, most of the pilot plant operations at Picatinny were expanded to all-out assembly line production before Hitler overran the Low Countries... 

The Ploesti oil fields were a vital source of petroleum for Hitler s forces. Special bombs were needed to blow up those fields. Picatinny Arsenal supplied these and the Ploesti installations vanished into thin air... 

Edward IV s Great Hall. Pity they wouldn t be interested in the Chantry, with so little of the chapel left. She laughs. Maybe we should blame Hitler for demolishing that and only leaving the house. That s in a bad state, too, now. I think you ll be pretty horrified. Do help yourself to more wine. ... 

Haber was slow to grasp the implications of the Nazis rise to power. As Germans boycotted Jewish businesses and Hitler s brownshirts removed Jewish students from university libraries and laboratories, the Nazis passed a law on April 7, 1933, to cleanse the civil service and universities of Jews. By this time, Haber s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was financed by the government and its employees were treated as civil functionaries subject to the new law. Haber himself was exempt because of war work and seniority. Eager for a chemical warfare center, Nazi authorities singled out Haber s institute and ordered him to fire its Jews. At the same time, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society told Haber to somehow keep his important senior scientists. He had until May 2 to act. 

Alan D. Beyerchen. Scientists under Hitler. New Haven Yale University Press, 1977. Source for Jews leaving Germany 1933-1935. 

In a few choice words, Sprecher cursed the Nazi regime. "Sure," I agreed. "It s horrible. But here we have Hitler and Sauckel — that s about all."... 

Before Fritz Sauckel took over the conscription of labor before Himmler committed the incredibly sadistic deeds that finally led him to suicide before Hitler announced for the Jews an extermination that was to spread like an instant fever to Poland and then to the whole of Europe before enforced labor of any kind was a Reich policy, foreigners and prisoners of war had already been enslaved, at Schmitz s direction, in the I.G. Farben plants. 

If these statements are acceptable," I commented to Sprecher, "they prove, too, that Dr. Ambros should have received the notoriety that Hitler himself got for the most infamous industrial project in history, the camp at Auschwitz. But Von Schnitzler himself— "... 

Von Schnitzler offered an amazing explanation. "For twelve years," he said of the whole enterprise in which Krauch s Berlin office played a vital part, "the Nazi foreign policy and the I.G. foreign policy were largely inseparable. I also conclude that l.G. was largely responsible for Hitler s foreign policy."... 

Damning words Would a court believe that, without Farben, Hitler s long-festering plans to march across Europe could never have crystallized into an official policy ... 

I decided to have Max Ilgner interrogated again. Ilgner had hung his coat in Berlin ever since Farben was Farben. He had rated enough pull with the Nazis to save from death the only survivor of the Roehm plot on Hitler s life in 1933, and he d hired this man in his office. 

DURING THE ENTIRE PERIOD OF OUR BUSINESS CONTACTS, WE HAD NO INKLING OF FARBEN S CONNIVING PART IN HITLER S BRUTAL POLICIES. WE OFFER ANY HELP WE CAN GIVE TO SEE THAT COMPLETE TRUTH IS BROUGHT TO LIGHT, AND THAT RIGID JUSTICE IS DONE. 

The defendants will, no doubt, tell us that they were merely over-zealous and perhaps misguided, patriots. We will hear it said all they planned to do was what any patriotic businessmen would have done under similar circumstances.. .. As for the carnage of war, and the slaughter of innocents, they will tell us, those were the regrettable deeds of Hitler and the Nazis, to whose dictatorship they, too, were subject.. -. 

It is a matter of common knowledge in Germany that I. G. Farben is financing Hitler. There seems to be no doubt whatever that at least Dr. Schmitz is personally a large contributor to the Nazi Party. 

Before Hitler, Germany was in an economic crisis illustrated by an unemployment of six million people, and our investments were ab-... 

In 1936, when Hitler marched into the Rhineland showered by the confetti of the Versailles Treaty, Farben was already there. Many of the occupying Nazi troops carried equipment that Farben had been taking out of the Rhineland for more than nine years. 

Hitler did not know where all the Farben equipment came from, nor did he know he was marching into territory partly Farben-controlled. But had he known, surely he would have appreciated the value to him in the coming war of Farben s past strategy of economic conquest. 

For in 1927 —the year in which Hitler had made concrete plans to get back the Rhineland, which Germany had once possessed — Farben had seized interests there which neither the young combine nor its predecessors had ever owned. The pretext for the seizure was that Farben had come to redress the industrial injustices of the Treaty of Versailles. 

At dawn on March 12, 1938, German troops crossed the border into Austria. For ethnic reasons, Hitler s plan for governing Austria was not much different from his administration in Germany. Austria was to work for the German industrial mobilization, but her industries were not to be subjugated. 

But this appeal to what Schmitz called "Nazi idealism" could not move Wilhelm Keppler, Hitler s economic advisor in Vienna. Not until Dr. Max Ilgner launched a counter-attack from Berlin did Skodawerke fall back. Paul Haefliger wasn t familiar with all the details. Haefliger said ... 

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