What I learned from researching my book on science under the Nazis has felt terrifyingly relevant this year. What did the Nazis do to science?
First of all, the views of Germany’s public servants had to “coordinate” with those of the Nazis. A purge was kicked off by the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Since most professors fell under the umbrella of civil servant, over 20 percent of the nation’s faculty were fired or forced out. Thousands more staff, scholars, and students were also ejected.
At the University of Berlin, students gathered in Berlin’s Opera Square to “purify” Germany of “foreign” thought by burning over 25,000 books. Hitler appointed his favorite eugenicist, Dr. Eugen Fischer, as the university’s new dean. Private institutions weren’t safe, either. Over 20,000 books from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sexual Science) were burned, destroying founder Magnus Hirschfeld’s collection of works on human sexuality (Hirschfeld was a gay Jewish trailblazer of LGBTQ rights).
All told, across all job sectors, the Nazis fired roughly 30,000 people because they were Jewish, because they were women, because they were LGBTQ, because they sympathized with Jewish people, or because their views did not align with the Nazis.
Physics was essentially decimated. By 1935, one in four physicists had lost their jobs. These physicists accounted for 64 percent of German physics citations at the time, meaning the Nazis swept out the scientists responsible for producing nearly two-thirds of the physics research considered publication-worthy.
Other sciences were also set back. When the Nazi minister of culture asked aloud at an event whether the University of Göttingen’s storied mathematics institute had actually suffered after the expulsion of the Jewish faculty, Professor David Hilbert replied: “Suffered? No, minister, it has ceased to exist.”
Firings soon escalated to genocide. As I mentioned in my post on microbiologist Elisabeth Wollman and her husband Eugène, their fruitful, decades-long collaboration built the foundation that would allow future scientists to understand the nature of viruses, cancer, and HIV. Who knows what discoveries and advances they would’ve made had they not been murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish?
When Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, CDC director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, recently explained he was resigning because he was “not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” I saw echoes of Nobel laureate and a decorated war veteran James Franck’s resignation from the University of Göttingen in protest of the blanket firing of fellow Jewish civil service workers. Franck announced that he refused to serve such a hostile government.
I vehemently insist that it is not hyperbole when I say the Nazi example is where we are currently headed in America. Science is under attack, and it will have devastating and deadly consequences. See The Hill, STAT News, The Washington Post, The Conversation, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Union of Concerned Scientists, Greater Good Magazine, The National Academies, etc. Not even pediatric brain cancer research is safe.
Applications for research funding are now flagged and likely to be denied if they include words like disability, diversity, ethnicity, equity, female, gender, historically, inclusion, inequity, male-dominated, marginalized, racially, segregation, socioeconomic, systemic, trauma, underrepresented, and women.
I’m not alone in my alarm or in seeing historical parallels. A recent New York Times article, “Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science,” notes:
In rapid bursts, Mr. Trump has also laid off large teams of scientists, pulled the plug on thousands of research projects and proposed deep spending cuts for new studies. If his proposed $44 billion cut to next year’s budget is enacted, it will prompt the largest drop in federal support for science since World War II, when scientists and Washington began their partnership. … his assault on researchers and their institutions is so deep that historians and other experts see similarities to the playbook employed by autocratic regimes to curb science. … Upon taking power in 1933, Hitler redefined German science to include the idea that Aryans represent the master race. “If science cannot do without Jews,” he quipped, “we will have to do without science.” Hundreds of Jewish scientists were dismissed, and many fled the country.
While Franck’s colleagues claimed his resignation was tantamount to an act of national sabotage, I saw little in the way of blaming those who chose to resign or flee the country. What I did see was people angry at their colleagues who chose to stay and serve a fascist government.
I feel like Chicken Little screaming about how the sky is falling. I don’t know what we can do to turn this ship around. Call your reps. Take to the streets. As a science journalist, I’m doing the only thing I know how to: write.
More About Me
Olivia Campbell is the New York Times bestselling author of Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine and Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History.
Today (Sept. 1) is the last day of the Barnes & Noble book haul: Score SISTERS IN SCIENCE in hardback for half price!
Signed copies are available online at Newtown Bookshop and Doylestown Bookshop.
A seasoned journalist and essayist, her work focuses on the intersections of women, science, and history. Campbell is the resident “science of folklore” contributor at National Geographic, a freelance editor at Everyday Health, and a thesis advisor for her alma mater, Johns Hopkins University's science writing master’s degree program. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Magazine, People, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, the Wall Street Journal, Aeon, Literary Hub, and History.com, among others. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband, sons, and cats. Find out more on her website.
Yes yes yes. I learned so much about WW2 in school but never what the German people should have done differently to avert the rising tide. I wish that had been the lesson!
Thanks for raising the alarm, Olivia. This is disturbing, indeed.