From the bestselling author of Hitler's Pope comes a gripping, in-depth account of Germany's horrific abuse of science and its consequences-then and now. By the first decade of the twentieth century, Germany was the Mecca of science and technology in the world. However, by the beginning of the First World War, Germany began to display some of the features that would blight the conduct of ideal science through the rest of the century. After Hitler came to power in 1933, science and technology were quickly pressed into service by racist, xenophobic ideologies. From 1939 to the war's end, scientists working under military control began research on nuclear chain reaction with the prospect of arming Hitler with an atomic bomb. By 1943, few areas of German science, technology, and industry had not been tainted by degenerate exploitation of slave labor with attendant brutality, human experimentation, and mass killing. How German scientists behaved in the era spanning the beginning...

HITLER'S SCIENTISTS is a fascinating examination of how Nazism interacted with science in a myriad of contexts. The author discusses everything--from the infamous experiments conducted in the concentration camps to the scientific metaphors that shaped public discourse under Hitler's regime. The work concludes with an extended discussion of scientific ethics thenand now. Simon Prebble's narration is superb. His tone is serious throughout, as befits the topic, but he also manages to sound deeply compassionate (for scientists and subjects) and incredulous (at Nazism's deep but deadly stupidities). Prebble delivers a range of foreign and scientific terms crisply, sounding at home with all of them. Cornwell quotes from many documents, and Prebble distinguishes among all readily. G.T.B. 2004 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

 

Hitler's Scientists by John Cornwell
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