HS, part 3

[KWP59 at aol.com]

Within this debate, Cornwell adopts historian Mark Walker's  view, which
demystifies the traditional story of heroes and villains. In  _Nazi Science_,
a more popular version of an earlier work, Walker proposes a  "spectrum
of 'shades of gray'" for studying science under Hitler (p. 2).[10]  Cases
like Heisenberg's are less clear than that of Nazi physicist  Johannes
Stark or the regime-critical Albert Einstein--a broad gray zone is  found
between the black and white of "Nazi" and "anti-Nazi." In this  light,
Cornwell's use of Heisenberg is intended to be symbolic of the  larger
problem of the scientist's moral dilemma, the central theme of his  book.
However, a deeper discussion of this point is lacking. Why is  the
Heisenberg myth so persistent? Why are historians, scientists  and
journalists all still so concerned with Heisenberg? And why do  certain
people--like Heisenberg--become visible in the first place, while  others
do not?

Cornwell does not address these important questions.  (It should be
noted that the point of the book is not to condemn or acquit  Heisenberg.)
Rather, he connects the Heisenberg debate to the larger question  of the
alleged uniqueness of Nazi science. Nazi science was not  unique,
Cornwell argues, and "experimentation on groups and individuals  without
their consent has occurred before" (p. 445). Human  experimentation,
whether out of simple curiosity or the desire for fame, is a  "temptation"
without which "there would have been no progress in medicine"  (p. 445).
But this argument about the continuity between Nazi and non-Nazi  science
runs aground on the impossibility of providing an  unproblematic
representation of the Holocaust, an issue raised most notably  by Saul
Friedländer.[11] To give just one example, the provision of the  horrible
technical details of mass extermination seems problematic in  the
absence of any discussion of the “limits of representation” of  the
Holocaust with regard to its science and technology. In his  chapter,
"The 'Science' of Extermination and Human Experiment,"  Cromwell
writes: "Together they designed a crematorium which boasted  five
furnaces, with three crucibles to each furnace; that is fifteen  crucibles
in all, capable of dispatching sixty bodies an hour, or 1,440  bodies
every twenty-four hours. Later in 1941 a confident _Prüfer_ assured  the
SS that a four-crucible furnace configuration would also  be
possible--indicating, in a configuration of five furnaces, twenty  corpses
burning simultaneously and thus incinerating 1,920 bodies  every
twenty-four hours" (p. 354). Such detailed statements suggest that  the
technical aspects of Nazi science cannot be represented  without
trivialization, and that any account of Nazi science “normalizes”  matters
that should instead be treated as singular? Cornwell’s recognition  of
these important problems is limited to his occasional quotes  around
scientific terms exploited by the Nazis.

Kurt-Werner  Pörtner


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