HS, part 4

[KWP59 at aol.com]

It is not clear why Cornwell avoids this issue. Perhaps he  wished to
avoid siding with any of the parties in the _Historikerstreit_ , or  perhaps
the "popular" genre of this work made him try to avoid getting into  more
academic debates.[12] In any case, the underlying assumption  that
science under Hitler was not anomalous explains the absence of  Hitler
in his book. Apart from one chapter ("Hitler the Scientist"), which  portrays
Hitler as a poorly educated, superstitious believer in  pseudo-science, the
"Führer" is strangely absent from a book with his name in  the title.
What are the consequences, then, of Cornwell's belief that Nazi  science
is continuous with other science? It implies that misuse of science  is not
limited to the Third Reich--which supports Cornwell's major goal: to  
illustrate
how science can go wrong and how it can lead to dangerous  aberrations by
scientists who, without necessarily being malevolent  themselves, place the
burden of responsibility for their science and its  purposes on political 
regimes.
Cornwell instead appeals to all scientists to  be politically conscious, to 
rely
on their own moral judgments.


Kurt-Werner  Pörtner


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