Book Review: Hitler's scientists, part 1

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H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-German at h-net.msu.edu  (October 2006)
John Cornwell. _Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the  Devil's Pact_. New 
York: Viking Press, 2003. xvi + 535 pp. Illustrations,  index,
bibliography. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-670-03075-9.

Reviewed for  H-German by Katja Guenther, Harvard University
Science and  morality

John Cornwell makes the unusual choice of introducing his book  with
a quote from Rabelais: "Science without conscience is the ruin of  the
soul" (n.p.). By doing so he underlines his major concern: how  the
relationship between science and morality can be distorted under  a
totalitarian regime. This is not Cornwell's first venture into  answering
moral questions via historical narratives. His earlier bestseller,  _Hitler's
Pope_ (1999), deals with Pius XII's role in the Holocaust.[1]  Cornwell
held that Vatican diplomat and later pope Eugenio Pacelli  defended
antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism to increase the power of the  Catholic
Church. In _Hitler's Scientists_, Cornwell is once again concerned  with the
relationship between systems of belief and the (fascist) state, this  time
turning to science rather than religion. While _Hitler's Pope_ was  mainly
based on original research and aimed to revise the celebratory view  of
Pius XII, _Hitler's Scientists_ draws together recent scholarship on  the
topic and presents it to a general audience.

Still, _Hitler's  Scientists_ is more than an overview of the existing
literature. Its real  concern is moralistic, posing questions such as "Is
science morally and  culturally neutral?" or "Does a scientist have to be
politically  conscientious?" The book approaches these topics by dealing
with a wide range  of scientific disciplines--the only volume so far with
such an ambitious  scope. Cornwell includes all of medicine, psychology
and psychoanalysis,  geography, geopolitics, mathematics and the physical
sciences in his book.  Previous histories of Nazi science have been mostly
limited to one scientific  discipline.[2] Many have an even narrower focus,
like those concerned with  certain areas of medicine.[3] However, the
book’s chronological structure  fragments the narrative, and the constant
jumping from one science to another  can be tiring and confusing.
Moreover, while Cornwell touches on interesting  aspects of single
scientific disciplines (such as mathematicians' attempts to  portray
their field as relevant to National Socialist aims by emphasizing  notions
of _Deutsche Mathematik_ argued to be in alignment with Nazi  ideology),
many of his accounts are too brief to be valuable. This criticism  is
especially true of his sections on psychology and  psychoanalysis
(chapter 11) and the chapters on racial hygiene and eugenics  (5 and 6),
which lack a coherent narrative. It is hard to understand why  Cornwell,
who is otherwise successful in processing existing literature into  a highly
readable story, fails to do so in the case of eugenics, given the  impressive
body of scholarship on the topic.[4]



Kurt-Werner  Pörtner
("Pörtner-Consulting" - Wissenschaftlicher  Schreibservice)
Petrusstr. 20-22
D-54516 Wittlich-Wengerohr
Tel.  06571/14 52 71
Handy 0171/822 50  18


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