Szöllösi-Janze M. (ed.) Science in the Third Reich

Berg, 2001. — 289 p.How true is it that National Socialism led to an ideologically distorted pseudo-science? What was the relationship between the regime funding 'useful' scientific projects and the scientists offering their expertise? And what happened to the German scientific community after 1945, especially to those who betrayed and denounced Jewish colleagues? In recent years, the history of the sciences in the Third Reich has become a field of growing importance, and the in-depth research of a new generation of German scholars provides us with new, important insights into the Nazi system and the complicated relationship between an elite and the dictatorship. This book portrays the attitudes of scientists facing National Socialism and war and uncovers the continuities and discontinuities of German science from the beginning of the twentieth century to the postwar period. It looks at ideas, especially the Humboldtian concept of the university; examines major disciplines such as eugenics, pathology, biochemistry and aeronautics, as well as technologies such as biotechnology and area planning; and it traces the careers of individual scientists as actors or victims.
The striking results of these investigations fill a considerable gap in our knowledge of the Third Reich but also of the postwar role of German scientists within Germany and abroad.Editorial Preface (by Gerhard A. Ritter and Anthony J. Nicholls).
National Socialism and the Sciences: Reflections, Conclusions and Historical Perspectives (by Margit Szöllösi-Janze).
The Invention of Humboldt and the Impact of National Socialism: The German University Idea in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (by Sylvia Paletschek).
Geography and Area Planning under National Socialism (by Mechtild Rössler).
Aeronautical Research under National Socialism: Big Science or Small Science? (by Helmuth Trischler).
Consequences of the Politics of Autarky: The Case of Biotechnology (by Luitgard Marschall).
Pathology and Politics in the Metropolis, 1900–1945: London, Berlin and the Third Reich (by Cay-Rüdiger Prüll).
The Relationship between Eugenics and the so-called ‘Euthanasia Action’ in Nazi Germany: A Eugenically Motivated Peace Policy and the Killing of the Mentally Handicapped during the Second World War (by Stefan Kühl).
Believers in an Age of Heresy? Oskar Vogt, Nikolai Timoféeff-Ressovsky and Julius Hallervorden at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research (by Josef Reindl).
The Expulsion of German-Jewish Chemists and Biochemists and their Correspondence with Colleagues in Germany after 1945: The Impossibility of Normalization? (by Ute Deichmann).