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The purge of German science in 1933

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Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#31

Post by actionfromafar »

xyzelement wrote: post #12
foobarian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The depictions of "wrong physics" in the 3 Body Problem show kinda remind me of that. Any kind of thinking that had even a whiff of going against the party line would cause problems for the author. What a weird time. I wonder if it's similar to how we look down on e.g. string theory, except I don't know if that's an apples to apples comparison given that we haven't seen any string theory apples yet :-)

FWIW in the current time we definitely encounter "wrong physics" in places where science and politics intersect. EG - a scientist can easily get smacked down for being "a climate change denialist" or an "antivaxer" or a similar unpalatable label way before the merits of their effort are evaluated.

Funny I was thinking of how so many otherwise intelligent and educated people believe climate change is just a liberal hoax.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#32

Post by dmbche »

wongarsu wrote: post #28
xyzelement wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW in the current time we definitely encounter "wrong physics" in places where science and politics intersect. EG - a scientist can easily get smacked down for being "a climate change denialist" or an "antivaxer" or a similar unpalatable label way before the merits of their effort are evaluated.

Also a "climate alarmist". There is a band of climate science you can freely publish without reputational damage, but don't go over or under it. But that's probably nothing compared to the narrow band of tolerable science when it comes to questions of race or ethnicity. Anything that could be construed as people of some descent being "inferior" in any aspect is pretty risky to publish.

You got some of those edgy papers near? I keep hearing things like this, but at every turn the science being published is hot trash.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#33

Post by Ringz »

wongarsu wrote: post #23
atleastoptimal wrote: post #4

I wonder just how advanced Germany would be nowadays without the World Wars.

The lingua franca in many sciences might still be German instead of English. But for the most part the technology level of Germany is coupled to that of the rest of the world. It's hard to tell how that would have evolved. Maybe keeping the existing research clusters in Western Europe intact would have lead to faster advances in chemistry and particle physics. On the other hand we probably wouldn't have a space stati…

During my studies of computer science, a professor told me that Germans might have programmed in Latin if the war had not intervened. Simply programming in German would not have been „scientific“ enough. Think about it. Latin is highly defined and static. But German could be great for imperative programming /s

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#34

Post by arp242 »

greedo wrote: post #26
arp242 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a Nazi perspective, what you're saying makes little sense. It would be similar to "we should enlist Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh in the army, because they've shown to be excellent at bombing stuff". That would be silly because these people and the organisations they associate with are considered a corrupting influence. In the Nazi view, Jews consisted a corrupting influence. "Hitler and his friends hated th…

Anti-Semitism as a 19th century development doesn't seem historically accurate. While anti-Semites in the 19th century glommed on to racial theories as backing for their hate, the origins of anti-Semitism are millennia old.

It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century. Before that it was an anti-religious thing: anti-Judaism, which was a markedly different and similar to Anti-Catholicism, anti-Protestantism, and things like that.

Especially in the context of the Nazi ideology, this really matters. Recall that the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jews, who were also considered racially inferior, and the plan was to kill many more. Nazis treated the Danish, Dutch, French, English, etc. much better (no mass executions of prisoners of war, and the occupation of those countries was markedly different from the occupation of Slavic countries).

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#35

Post by actionfromafar »

arp242 wrote: post #30
jandrese wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterpoint is that Hitler wouldn't have been able to seize power so easily were it not for the clear "other" to demonize. That's just human nature. Fascists always need some identifiable enemy to rally against and there was no shortage of antisemitism already in the country to work with. This is why they also picked up on hating Gypsys and homosexuals. Fear mongering is one of the most efficient ways to gain po…

Hitler didn't exactly seize power "easily"; it took an attack on the German parliament (possibly orchestrated by the Nazis themselves), a paramilitary force intimidating opposition parties (and at times directly preventing them from voting in parliament), and an assassination campaign. In the end it's a "what if?" type question, but I think a decent case can be made that anti-Semitism was not key to the Nazi success,…

Ah the fine line between fascist:

“if you died you were weak and deserved to die”

vs nazi:

“you are weak, you deserve to die”

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#36

Post by paganel »

greedo wrote: post #26
arp242 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a Nazi perspective, what you're saying makes little sense. It would be similar to "we should enlist Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh in the army, because they've shown to be excellent at bombing stuff". That would be silly because these people and the organisations they associate with are considered a corrupting influence. In the Nazi view, Jews consisted a corrupting influence. "Hitler and his friends hated th…

Anti-Semitism as a 19th century development doesn't seem historically accurate. While anti-Semites in the 19th century glommed on to racial theories as backing for their hate, the origins of anti-Semitism are millennia old.

Anti-semitism wasn't a major factor in European history until the (second-ish part) of the 19th century, for the simple reason that the European Jewish population wasn't that big of a presence for hundreds of years. Once the Enlightenment and French Revolution happened and once the Jewish population started to get some rights (which gets us into the 19th century) then things changed.

Yes, I do know about the very unfortunate anti-semitic acts carried out in German cities as part of the First Crusade, but that kind of proves my point, starting with the 1200s-1300s the Jewish population throughout (what would later be called Western) Europe stopped being a thing.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#37

Post by sebastian_z »

xyzelement wrote: post #6

It occurs to me that anti-semitism is a disease that ultimately destroys its host. If Germany "simply" wanted to win WW2, it should have cultivated its Jewish scientists (and by the way, 100K Jewish soldiers served their country in WW1) instead of eradicating them as per this article. Not to mention, diverting scarce wartime resources towards the program of concentration camps and ethnic extermination is not just pur…

Indeed, that is what Sebastian Haffner argues in The Meaning of Hitler: In December 1941 he abandoned the goal of world conquest in favour of the Final solution–exterminating the Jews [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Hitler

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#38

Post by neffy »

xyzelement wrote: post #6

It occurs to me that anti-semitism is a disease that ultimately destroys its host. If Germany "simply" wanted to win WW2, it should have cultivated its Jewish scientists (and by the way, 100K Jewish soldiers served their country in WW1) instead of eradicating them as per this article. Not to mention, diverting scarce wartime resources towards the program of concentration camps and ethnic extermination is not just pur…

It's an interesting question, and on the face of it, yes, the Nazi's probably would have won with the Jewish people on board. Similar arguments can be made about their invasion of Russia, given the support they would have received against Stalin without their accompanying genocide.

The big but in this, is whether they would have gotten there to begin with. Picking on the Jews was a huge cash/property grab, which was used to buy their support with general German population. Are the Nazis still the Nazis without the genocide? Do they even end up wanting to start a war?

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#39

Post by kromem »

arp242 wrote: post #30
jandrese wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterpoint is that Hitler wouldn't have been able to seize power so easily were it not for the clear "other" to demonize. That's just human nature. Fascists always need some identifiable enemy to rally against and there was no shortage of antisemitism already in the country to work with. This is why they also picked up on hating Gypsys and homosexuals. Fear mongering is one of the most efficient ways to gain po…

Hitler didn't exactly seize power "easily"; it took an attack on the German parliament (possibly orchestrated by the Nazis themselves), a paramilitary force intimidating opposition parties (and at times directly preventing them from voting in parliament), and an assassination campaign. In the end it's a "what if?" type question, but I think a decent case can be made that anti-Semitism was not key to the Nazi success,…

Well, "most people" didn't actually vote for the fascism. The ticket was split enough that it ended up being minority rule.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#40

Post by [deleted] »

j7ake wrote: post #5

This goes to show how prestige and reputation built up over centuries can be destroyed in a matter of decades. Also the prestige and reputation of institutions rest solely on the superstars that are in that institution. A single prominent scientist can carry the prestige of an entire institute. This means when they leave, the reputation goes with it.

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