Science in the Third Reich

Margit Szöllösi-Janze editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:1st Mar '01

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Science in the Third Reich cover

Also available in hardback, 9781859734162 GBP50.00 (March, 2001)

This text portrays the attitudes of scientists facing National Socialism and war and seeks to uncover the continuities and discontinuities of German science from the beginning of the 20th century to the postwar period.How true is it that National Socialism led to an ideologically distorted pseudo-science? What was the relationship between the regime funding 'useful' scientific projects and the scientists offering their expertise? And what happened to the German scientific community after 1945, especially to those who betrayed and denounced Jewish colleagues? In recent years, the history of the sciences in the Third Reich has become a field of growing importance, and the in-depth research of a new generation of German scholars provides us with new, important insights into the Nazi system and the complicated relationship between an elite and the dictatorship. This book portrays the attitudes of scientists facing National Socialism and war and uncovers the continuities and discontinuities of German science from the beginning of the twentieth century to the postwar period. It looks at ideas, especially the Humboldtian concept of the university; examines major disciplines such as eugenics, pathology, biochemistry and aeronautics, as well as technologies such as biotechnology and area planning; and it traces the careers of individual scientists as actors or victims. The striking results of these investigations fill a considerable gap in our knowledge of the Third Reich but also of the postwar role of German scientists within Germany and abroad.

'A fascinating collection of essays ... The generation of German historians that has written these essays ... see this period with in Germany with lucidity - something that has vauable, indeed crucial, lessons to teach.'The Times Higher Education Supplement 'The volume is a good reflection of the state of German scholarship on science in the Nazi era, and, with its excellent introduction to that subject, it is a valuable contribution to its historiography as well.'Geert Somsen, Ambix: The Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry

ISBN: 9781859734216

Dimensions: 216mm x 138mm x 13mm

Weight: unknown

300 pages