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Seven Hundred Bee posted:This is one of the curious idiosyncrasies about Nazi Germany - on one hand, a part of Hitler's ideology was a return to historic Germany and historic values, on the other hand he wasn't a moron and recognized the importance of science, especially military research. There were lots of smart scientists working in Germany through the war, and with government support. That said, the Nazi state was extraordinarily chaotic, so there was never a single, well articulated scientific policy. Kicking out all the Jewish scientists (or gassing them) isn't why they lost the war. This is way back from page 1, but I just found the thread. There were a few incompetent scientists who exploited Nazi ideology to get themselves appointed to important positions to the detriment of German science. This was especially true in "German Physics" which rejected the "Jewish physics" of Einstein and others, both relativity and quantum mechanics. It's probably more accurate to say the Nazis valued engineering and technology over actual science. A fair number of non-Jewish scientists also left Germany at the same time, like Schrodinger, and while its true that the Nazis managed to lose the war too quickly for it to make a difference, the atom bomb was originally meant for Germany.
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Apr 2, 2013 05:09
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Unluckyimmortal posted:It's difficult to predict what would have happened if Germany managed to hang onto those 12,000 intellectuals, but the number is deceiving in that so many of those driven out were truly at the pinnacle of their careers and at the tops of their respective fields. It's just my opinion, but I've always thought that, had the Nazis managed to get those big names to stay, a Nazi nuclear bomb would have been alarmingly likely; and that just goes to show how early the Nazis started working on their own defeat. There's almost zero chance that any intellectual with a Jewish background or leftist views would have survived and been productive in Nazi Germany if they'd stayed, and every chance they'd leave if they got any chance. Its just completely implausible. There's enough good scientists that did stay and were German enough to survive, like Planck and Heisenberg, but they didn't really get a lot of practical work done. They were in a highly politicized environment where every institution had to serve the state and every appointment was seen through the lens of the Fuhrer principle. Even if more scientists had stayed, they likely would have been little more productive. Finally, the Germans did not have as ready access to nuclear materials for research as the Allies. I don't think they had access to uranium ores and - going by unreliable memory here - I think they also lacked access to large amounts of heavy water. My understanding has always been that a Nazi bomb was never a credible worry.
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Apr 2, 2013 06:53
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Amyclas posted:It's pretty amazing that the regime was able to field such a large war machine in spite of the arbitrary nature of their economy. How much of that is due to confiscation, looting occupied countries, and slave labor, though?
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Apr 4, 2013 03:01
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Konstantin posted:I don't think it would have mattered, since within a decade or so you would have had a nuclear Nazi Germany and a nuclear US. I see that ending only one way, and it would make WWII look like a minor skirmish in comparison. No, there was no danger of Nazi Germany getting nuclear weapons before getting nuked. Being overrun before the bomb was finished was Nazi Germany's smartest move.
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Sep 12, 2014 04:23
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