List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Understanding the Germans
Part One: Hitler's Scientific Inheritance
1. Hitler the Scientist
2. Germany the Science Mecca
3. Fritz Haber
4. The Poison Gas Scientists
5. The "Science" of Racial Hygiene
6. Eugenics and Psychiatry
Part Two: The New Physics 1918-1933
7. Physics after the First War
8. German Science Survives
Part Three: Nazi Enthusiasm, Compliance and Oppression
1933-1939
9. The Dismissals
10. Engineers and Rocketeers
11. Medicine Under Hitler
12. The Cancer Campaign
13. Geopolitik and Lebensraum
14. Nazi Physics
15. Himmler's Pseudo-science
16. Deutsche Mathematik
Part Four: The Science of Destruction and Defence
1933-1943
17. Fission Mania
18. World War II
19. Machines of War
20. Radar
21. Codes
Part Five: The Nazi Atomic Bomb 1941-1945
22. Copenhagen
23. Speer and Heisenberg
24. Haigerloch and Los Alamos
Part Six: Science in Hell 1942-1945
25. Slave Labour at Dora
26. The "Science" of Extermination and Human Experiment
27. The Devil's Chemists
28. Wonder Weapons
Part Seven: In Hitler's Shadow
29. Farm Hall
30. Heroes, Villains, and Fellow Travellers
31. Scientific Plunder
Part Eight: Science from the Cold War to the War on
Terrorism
32. Nuclear Postures
33. Uniquely Nazi?
34. Science at War Again
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
John Cornwell is in the department of history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University. He is a regular feature writer at the Sunday Times (London) and the author and editor of four books on science, including Power to Harm, on the Louisville Prozac trial, as well as Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII and Breaking Faith: Can the Catholic Church Save Itself?
Wide ranging and accessible . . . [A] disturbing and important account. (The Economist)
Cornwell's devastating bestseller Hitler's Pope is a tough act to follow. Here, the author again claims the moral high ground to critique the ethical and political choices of scientists in Hitler's Germany and to caution that science under the Western democracies in the Cold War and the war on terrorism also wielded and continues to wield the "Janus-faced power for good and evil." Today's best writers on the Hitler era have outgrown the kind of marginalizing polemic Cornwell employs here. His analysis of Nazi science, while built on sound research and often thoughtful critique, sinks to the sensationalism of "Faustian bargains," "scientific prostitutions" and Arendt's "banality of evil." Unsavory concepts are qualified as "pseudo-science," "half-baked," or simply "science" in quotation marks so that the undiscerning reader won't mistake them for the real thing. All the hot-button issues are on display here: racial hygiene; eugenics; the Nazi purge of academia and Germany's forfeiture of its greatest physicists to the Allies because they were Jewish; and human experimentation on concentration camp inmates. The author also details the science of war in Germany, from rockets and secret codes to radar and the atomic bomb, and how the Allies plundered the country's military technology and expertise after the fall of the Third Reich. Cornwell is a gifted writer with a fascinating story to tell, which he ably and engagingly accomplishes despite the hyperbole. But in his pursuit of comfort in right over wrong, the author forfeits objectivity and perhaps a greater understanding of the sources and the whys of the Nazi phenomenon. Despite this,, the author's articulate though subtly lurid repackaging of Nazi-era crimes and curiosities should guarantee much attention and brisk sales with general readers. Illus. not seen by PW. Agent, Bob Lescher. (On sale Oct. 13) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Wide ranging and accessible . . . [A] disturbing and important account. (The Economist)
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