OSP BER 34: Science, Medicine, and Technology in Nazi Germany

Week 1 (September 21): Nazism and Science

Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1986)

pp. 1-17, 109-129, 152-236.

Link via Stanford Library (needs Stanford library proxy)

Week 2 (September 28): The German Atomic Bomb Project

Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (Yale University Press, 1977)

pp. 40-50.

Coursework: Beyerchen.pdf

Klaus Hentschel, ed., Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser Verlag, 1996)

Documents 42, 43, 44, 55, 64

pp. 119-127, 152-157, 176-177.

Coursework: Physics_documents.pdf

Mark Walker, Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb (Plenum Press, 1995)

pp. 183-206.

Coursework: Walker.pdf

Week 3 (October 5): "Copenhagen"

Michael Frayn, Copenhagen (Anchor, 2000)

All

Book

Matthias Dörries, ed., Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" in Debate: Historical Essays and Documents on the 1941 Meeting Between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg (Berkeley, 2005),

pp, 49-66.

reserve shelf

Release of documents relating to the 1941 Bohr-Heisenberg Meeting.

Mainly Letter #11

http://www.nba.nbi.dk/papers/introduction.htm

There is a very helpful biography of Heisenberg on the website of the American Institute for Physics.

All

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p01.htm

Week 4 (October 12): Werner Heisenberg

David Cassidy, Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the bomb (Bellevue Press, 2009)

pp. 268-389.

Book

Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts (Berkeley, 1993)

All

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=3066 or reserve shelf

Horst Kant, Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2002)

42 pp.

Coursework: atomic_bomb.pdf

Week 5 (October 19): Eugenics and German medicine

Francis Nicosia and Jonathan Huener, eds.,  Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany (Berghahn Books, 2002)

All

Book

Robert Proctor, "Nazi Science and Nazi Medical Ethics: some myths and misconceptions," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43:3 (Spring 2000)

335-346

Coursework: 43.3proctor.pdf

Week 6 (October 26): Science, Racism, and the Holocaust

Benoit Massin, "The 'Science of Race,'" in Dieter Kuntz and Susan Bachrach, eds. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (University of North Carolina Press, 2006),

pp. 89-125.

Reader

Detlev J.K. Peukert, "The genesis of the 'final solution' from the spirit of science," in David F. Crew, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945 (Routledge, 1994)

pp. 274-299.

Reader

Week 7 (November 2): The German Rocket Program

Wayne Biddle, Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race (Norton 2009)

All

Book

Michael J. Neufeld, "The guided missile and the Third Reich: Peenemünde and the forging of a technological revolution," in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, eds., Science, Technology and National Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

pp. 51-71.

Reader

Week 8 (November 9): The Race for German Scientists

Michael J. Neufeld, "Overcast, Paperclip, Osoaviakhim: Looting and the Transfer of German Military Technology" in Detlef Junker ed., The USA and Germany in the era of the Cold War 1945-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

pp. 197-203.

http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=47764&src=1 or here

Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: a history of the Soviet zone of occupation, 1945-1949 (Harvard University Press, 1995)

pp. 205-228.

Reader

Week 9 (November 16): What does Nazi science tell us about science?

Volker R. Remmert, "What's Nazi about Nazi science?" in Perspectives on Science 2004, vol. 12, no. 4,

pp. 454-475.

Coursework: Remmert.pdf

Yakov M. Rabkin and Elena Z. Mirskaya, "Science and totalitarianism: lessons for the twenty-first century," in Mark Walker, ed., Science and Ideology: a comparative history (Routledge, 2003)

pp. 17-34.

Reader

On the doctors' trial

All

http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/code_expl.htm.

Week 10 (November 23): Student presentations

Week 11 (November 30): Student presentations