A Math Lesson From Hitler’s Germany (2017)
undark.org145 points by perihelions a day ago
145 points by perihelions a day ago
The Lost Scientists of WWII is a good read telling the stories of a number of scientists who applied to the British for asylum but who didn't make it: https://worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/q0436
One lesser-known and deeply unsettling fact from academic history is that a significant number of professors at major German universities supported the Nazi regime during its rise to power. Far from being passive bystanders, many actively embraced Nazi ideology, joined the party, or participated in the purge of Jewish and politically dissident faculty.
A detailed exploration of this phenomenon can be found in the books “Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany” by Robert P. Ericksen and “Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus” by Richard J. Evans. An accessible summary is also available via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-role-o...
This isn’t just a historical footnote—it’s a sobering reminder of how institutions of knowledge can be wrong.
Also, institutuons of knowledge are not right or wrong. It's the people and their ideas who are. And they are not ideologically monolithic.
And like the head of École Polytechnique (France's top university) once said in an address to the students: “there are 10% of complete idiots in the population, and I see no reason to assume the ratio is any different in here”.
If you have a political power that rewards stupidity, then those people will become empowered everywhere they are, including in the universities.
Among them were jewish nationalists like Fritz Haber. He was allegedly a very proud german. Didnt help him though.
Also a big fan (and basically the father) of gas warfare
Also saved the world from starvation. And provided Germany with synthetic fuels which prolonged the war. Bit of a mixed bag.
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Alchemy-Air-Jewish-Scientific-Dis...
And with all the trumpist shit going on in US universities right now, I wonder how many professors suddenly feel a need to advertise pro-Donald propaganda in order to keep their funding.
That's not going to happen with the current people, all of whom see credibility as their only tool.
Isn't it just obvious? When the Nazi ideology was widespread, of course it permeated into every domain of the society.
I haven't read the books, but the presentation by this holocaust museum was not informative. For instance, it fails to mention a relevant fact: some people earned their academic position to their activity in the party.
And, most of all, the existence is irrelevant without some prevalence. I would be very surprised if the established scholars that "actively embraced Nazi ideology" were a majority. From the Vietnam wars to nowadays, there have been US academics that embraced war or actively supported genocides, but I think most academics and students are less heinous or indifferent than the average population. That's why some German scholars were oppressed by their government, even when they were not Jews, and chose to emigrate.
> When the Nazi ideology was widespread, of course it permeated into every domain of the society.
One of the architects of that ideology was Carl Schmitt, who formulated the concept of the Totalstaat or "total state" as a state that did exactly what you say: permeated into every domain of society. He considered a state "total" when it was co-extensive with the entirety of its people's endeavors, co-opting or liquidating any alternative authority such as media, academia, or church. This was a novel concept at the time, especially after the swing to liberal (small and restrained) republics in the late eighteenth century. As a novel concept, the total permeation of the Nazi state into academia and the rest of the spheres of non-governmental authority would have been far from obvious at the time to observers of prior governments, but it was also the intent.
The Nazis were not the only ones to adopt an illiberal, totalitarian stance: the twentieth century saw a huge growth in government authority and its permeation through other parts of human life, like academia, in regimes that rejected other aspects of the Nazi ideology. The Soviet Union comes to mind as an example: the government coopted authorities like academia and liquidated others like churches in order to pervade as far as possible every aspect of society.
The fact that it seems obvious in retrospect that Nazi ideology would permeate academia and every domain of society shows how successful the concept of a Totalstaat was, even in an age that looks back with horror upon the Nazis. The way to counter the spread of government is to put strong limits on government, keeping it out of academia, the media, religion, and so forth completely, with no government funding for any of them. If academia requires government funding, the government of the day will always control academia.
>keeping it out of academia [...] with no government funding for [academia]. If academia requires government funding, the government of the day will always control academia.
In this case, you'd have to transfer most research in the biological and physical sciences to NASA-style government departments, at the expense of communication between theorists and experimentalists, otherwise it would not occur. The present system is for "politically sensitive" positions like historians to be covered by endowments, and for economically service-providing research to be performed on government grants.
P.S. in some ways being controlled by people who are wealthy enough to hire professors is more politically charged than being controlled by a democratic government with checks and balances. Be careful who you wish for in matters of replacing the taxpayer's authority with that of private donors...
> In this case, you'd have to transfer most research in the biological and physical sciences to NASA-style government departments
I understand most of the points you've made, but I'm not sure I understand this part. NASA's budget is directly controlled by Congress, so how would moving all research into departments like that be more insulated it from government funding than university researchers getting grants? If anything, it feels like it would make it _more_ susceptible to politics than grants.
That's exactly right, it is the one other alternative and less independent. I think the government realizes that cutting government funding to universities at this extreme level would mean the end of US advantage in the biological and physical sciences, but the parent commenter might not have.
Your knowledge is 30 years behind current historical research. I'm not saying you are totally wrong, but totalitarism as a mean of explaining nazism was abandonned in the early 90s by academia (to be exact: in the 80s in Germany, early 90s in the US and in the mid 90s in France).
It is still taught in school because some states want it taught that way, but WW2 historians do not use it as an explanatory tool anymore (except a part who specialize in Italian fascism, but nowaday even those are the minority in their field).
This tool was created during McCarthism to equivocate the Soviet Union and Germany, and also help explaining that denazification was complete by 1953 (it was clearly not, between the explicitly neonazi DRP, NPD, and the FAP, you also had the REP who was neonazi in its program and his ex-SS leadership, but not explicitely so).
The total staat or initially total war idea was not a nazi idea, they were even against it initially.
This came from the WWI loss, and the perceived lack support in the media and civil society. The German generals were furious about their weak soldiers and officers in the field, with a high percentage of deflectors and vocal liberals. On the other side the French and British were known for their immediate death sentences to such deflectors.
So the army (Ludendorff) pushed for the total war effort after the loss, with extreme new civil laws outside wartime. Everybody ignored those new "Zersetzungs" laws initially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
The Nazis opposed that before 1943, because it was very unpopular. The army were the initial enemies of the constitution and civil liberties, not the Nazis.
A bit bizarre to push this on Schmitt, when it was a common thread throughout fascism.
>As a novel concept, the total permeation of the Nazi state into academia and the rest of the spheres of non-governmental authority would have been far from obvious at the time to observers of prior governments, but it was also the intent.
It wasn't a novel concept. What are you on about? Mussolini seized power in 1922, while Germany was still a functional democracy.
Schmitts Most influential writings were all after 1922, pretending he conceived of the idea while Mussolini was already implementing it is patently absurd. The history of totalitarian thought did not start with Schmitt.
>The way to counter the spread of government is to put strong limits on government, keeping it out of academia, the media, religion, and so forth completely, with no government funding for any of them.
Just FYI. Germany post WW2 has publicly funded universities, churches and media.
If Academia is not funded by the public, who does?
That is why you see the authoritarians always accelerate the privatization and commercialization of the public good. That is why neoliberal beliefs are a precursor; it has become The Right Thing to do.
Those people, whether they are tech-dystopians, christian-nationalists, paleo-conservatives, or Braunhemden -- they instill belief in the public that they should treat the illness with "medicine" that will make the disease even worse. The percentage that really are willing to burn the whole thing down are successful in getting the public to think and act against their own interest. Whether they do that via think-tanks, corporate media-ownership, corporate education or stuffed up policy-makers.
A society does not go down because of Hitler. It is because of collective behavior, which is mostly informed by beliefs.
That is also the reason why the outlook is grim for the USA, because there are way to many Dems that can't make the reflection on what is going wrong, their thinking has been captured by decades of false theories, by narratives that stilled into rigid beliefs. Autocracies don't belief in free markets, they don't belief in meritocracy, they don't belief in freedom, they don't belief in independent media, they don't belief in independent academia, they don't belief in free speech.
And yet, these are the soft sticks the 1% used to get the 99% to hand the keys over to them.
And now, the power of those 1% will not be threatened, because the rigid beliefs the people hold onto will self-handicap them. Mix it with sadopopulism and you have a winning strategy.
The most recent Veritasium video touched on this — Emmy Noether worked under Hilbert and made significant contributions to general relativity, worked at University of Göttingen (Jewish, and first woman professor) until 1933.
What a coincidence! I happened to navigate to this page just after watching the video on another tab. And this was my exact thought.
Mathematics at Göttingen under the Nazis
Saunders Mac Lane
"Now in retrospect, the whole development is a decisive demonstration of the damage done to academic and mathematical life by any subor- dination to populism, political pressure and pro- posed political principles."
This quote stood out:
"It’s not so much that people are persecuted because of their
beliefs, but there is a certain trend where careful reasoning, the
search for truth, all the delicacies of having a balanced point of
view, acting on facts, being honest about what you do and don’t
know, your uncertainty, all these values we have in science and
scholarship are at risk."
[0] https://academic.oup.com/book/26406/chapter/194768451
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20210209-the-greatest-s...
"It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialism because it is not an intellectually defensible program. It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try be means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation. At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one’s fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of “his” book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it." If at the start, the cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body. The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually choked to death."
- Hans Scholl
Medical student, philosopher, WW2 medic, patriot.
For these words (among others), beheaded at the age of 25, along with his sister Sophie (22), and friend Christoph (24).
You can see aspects of that in Trumpism. The daily changing tariffs and refusal to go back on people imprisoned through admin errors don't make much sense.
Brave kids.
Incidentally, I found it interesting that one of Scholl's beheaded White Rose allies is venerated as an Orthodox saint and passion bearer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Schmorell
> About a year later, Hilbert attended a banquet and was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust. Rust asked whether "the Mathematical Institute really suffered so much because of the departure of the Jews." Hilbert replied, "Suffered? It doesn't exist any longer, does it?"
Math lessons from Red China between 1960s and 1980s send their regards. Joke aside, it's interesting to see how different political beliefs lead to opposite viewpoints for the same experience.
Due to deeply scarring experiences in communist China, some Chinese immigrants in America are extremely wary of the Democratic Party, believing they've been following in the footsteps of the Communist Party by substituting morality for rules and narratives for truth. These immigrates are like those Cuban immigrant: they turned red (I read somewhere that some research showed that most Chinese immigrants started with blue as they really believed in liberalism) and voted Trump.
On the other hand, some other Chinese immigrants with the same experience reached the opposite conclusions. Their painful experiences made them suspicious of Trump's Republican Party, which they view as resembling authoritarian movements by prioritizing ideology over facts. These immigrants typically became more blue and supported Kamala Harris and Democratic candidates.
“ It’s going to take most of our lifetimes to redo what’s going to get undone in the next four years,” Ault says
Honest question; why does everyone seem to assume the Trump administration will only be another 4 years? Is it hard to imagine him getting a 3rd term, or 4th or 5th?
The reason I ask is because I’m genuinely puzzled by this, not trying to make a political statement. I can’t imagine any incentive for trump to relinquish power so I’d assume he’ll attempt to hold onto it as he did at the end of his last term. Why does no one else acknowledge this nonzero probability? It seems everyone is taking for granted it’s only another 4 years and that makes me wonder if I’m crazy or if everyone else is just saying that because they haven’t thought it through.
The 22nd amendment and age. (for me anyway)
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-22/
Not saying he won't try to circumvent it (definitely wouldn't be shocked) but if anything would trigger meaningful civil conflict, this would be it. (in my opinion)
I'm not sure he's competent enough to pull that off. I hope he isn't. I definitely think it's his goal
I'm not sure the states will go along with it.
Sure, he tried to get Georgia to alter their vote totals so he would be the winner. And when that failed he got states to submit a second slate of electors with him as the victor. But in both those instances somebody didn't yield to him (Kemp, Pence). I have no doubt in 2028 he'll try to obtain a third term; it's just I think there'll be little gain for elected officials to let him.
Brian Kemp is still the Government of Georgia. There's not much reason to expect him to do something different in 4 years. There's also a very large growing backlash to Trump so I don't expect people like DeSantis to stick with him.
Sure, all these seem like legitimate obstacles for him, but he has 3+ years to get rid of Brian Kemp and others who might stand in his way. With (near) infinite resources at his disposal he could create the highest paid and smartest set of lawyers ever assembled to create a roadmap to lifetime appointment.
——> Worth mentioning that this is the result of Operation Paperclip. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
The scientists came here or were kidnapped by the Soviet Union.
The excellent mathematical history "The Music of the Primes" by Marcus du Sautoy covers this period:
"Within the space of a few weeks, Hitler had destroyed the great Gottingen tradition forged by Gauss, Riemann, Dirichlet and Hilbert. One commentator wrote that it was 'one of the greatest tragedies experienced by human culture since the time of the Renaissance'. Gottingen (and some might argue, German mathematics itself) has never recovered from its destruction by Nazi Germany during the thirties. Hilbert died on St. Valentine's Day in 1943... his death marked the end of the city's position as the Mecca of mathematics."
The central rational for the initial Nazi assault on the Gottingen department of mathematics was its Marxist leanings, with Nazi street protests decrying the 'fortress of Marxism'. Note that 'Landau, who was Jewish, was allowed to stay because he had been appointed before the outbreak of the First World War. The non-Aryan clause in the civil-service law of April 1933 did not apply to long-serving professors or those who had fought in the war.' Later Landau was targeted for his Jewishness, forced to resign, and died in 1938 in Germany after a bried exodus to Britain.
People should be somewhat cautious in applying these historical examples to the USA today - indeed, the corruption of the American academic system began long ago in the 1980s, when Bayh-Dole legislation initiated the corporatization of research via the exclusive licensing of tax-payer funded research to private interests, who then stopped financing their own proprietary industrial research centers like Bell Labs. Now American universities are packed with shady entrepreneurs who routinely cook data and found startups in the hope of large financial payouts via acquistion by large corporations. This has lead to rampant fraud, a culture of secrecy and distrust, and various other ills.
Many of my academic colleagues are considering emigration. A nontrivial fraction have already begun (or in certain prescient cases completed) the process. It is sad to say, but it is difficult to imagine a career in science in the US right now. I am also considering whether that future for myself is best pursued elsewhere. Or, I'm sadder to say, whether the opportunity has been foreclosed upon for good. There is no way to know yet what the future truly holds, but the rhyme history offers for our times is an unpleasant one to imagine.
Where are they planning to go if you mind me asking? My brother is considering moving to Canada, but he's already living in Ohio, so that wouldn't be a huge move in absolute geographical terms. Another friend is in the process of moving to Spain, but there really doesn't seem to be a particularly safe place.
Most nations appear to have their own brand of populist hard-right political leaders at the moment and I've cautioned people that unless they know a lot about where they are moving to, they are likely to just be exchanging one scary regime for another and taking on outsider immigrant status in that new society.
I'm genuinely curious about this, no sarcasm of cynicism here.
It isn’t just the young. My father is a professor of clinical psychology with a long and storied career and is looking outside the country. He works a lot with the government on psychometric personality evaluation for security clearances and has gotten lists of words that are banned and guidances towards discrimination against certain groups in denying security clearances. He’s seeing grants for his doctorate and post doctorate students denied if their focus is not aligned against certain groups (including pregnant women and depression in men, as odd as it sounds). He came of age in the 1960’s, and this is everything his parents and his generation fought against come to fruition. He is torn between staying and putting up a fight or going somewhere where he is valued and give value to people who seek his mentorship without constraints and political ideology imposed on it. Frankly, I think he should give to humanity what he has to give and let my generation do the fighting - if there’s any that we will do.
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