Einstein's War

by Matthew Stanley

  Einstein returned to an increasingly imperial and inhospitable Berlin. Intellectuals there continued to trumpet the close relationship of science and the war. The annual report of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society declared:

  But our enemies, by their surprise attack, achieved something quite unexpected and, for them, unwelcome: they brought German science and military strength as close together as possible. Of course we knew all along that these two pillars . . . , deep down, have a hidden connection; but we did not know that this connection is so immediate that military strength can be directly promoted by science. [emphasis original]

  It was not just words. It was normal for soldiers to be seen marching down Unter den Linden past the Academy of Sciences. That fall the army moved through the city confiscating anything with a lens—telescopes, binoculars, and opera glasses were all seized and salvaged for the front. Public clocks were darkened at night; bells no longer tolled the hours. The soap shortage even made the Academy a smellier place. The government had begun restricting the buying of new clothes as well. Einstein assured his friends that he had plenty to wear and that they could regard “my aesthetic demands in this regard as minimal.”

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  • • •

  EINSTEIN CLAIMED TO his friends that thinking about the political situation was simply too much: “I shut my eyes as best I can to the insane goings-on in the world at large, having completely lost my social consciousness.” His actions, even if modest, said otherwise. In an attempt to promote peace and internationalism in his profession, he took on the presidency of the German Physical Society. He put aside his general dislike of bureaucracy and titles to try to do some good. He was almost completely unsuccessful. Peace groups such as the BNV had come under increasing harassment from the military authorities: letters were censored, passports revoked, sometimes even imprisonment was threatened. Unable to continue its work, the BNV was forced to shut down.

  A few months after, the art history professor Werner Weisbach wrote asking Einstein to join his new group, the Association of the Like-Minded. Einstein was intrigued by Weisbach’s project. He replied to the invitation: “I am convinced the malady of our times is that moral ideals have almost lost their force.” He worried that a German victory in the war would be seen worldwide as support for nationalism and aggression. But if they lost, “people will lose faith in the empty ideal of power and will extend the principles of justice willingly and fairly to the states. Then our hotly pursued goal of an organization of states eliminating war . . . will get implemented in a short time.” Einstein said he would support Weisbach publicly, though characteristically was unwilling to join the organization itself. It might, he worried, cut into his time for physics. Just joining such an organization was dangerous—Germany continued to be governed by the wartime “state of siege” laws, which gave police control over any kind of political meeting.

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  • • •

  JUST AS DE Sitter was expanding relativity’s reach across the English Channel, the small community of Einstein supporters was dealt a sudden blow. Schwarzschild, whose mathematical skill provided the first solution to the field equations, fell ill in his post on the eastern front. He developed painful blisters, symptoms of a strange skin disease possibly induced by contact with chemical weapons. He was sent to a hospital in Berlin, where he died after two months of fruitless treatment. The German scientific community had lost an extraordinary mind at the modest age of forty-two. His death was a sober reminder that over the course of human warfare far more soldiers have died from disease than from enemy action.

  Einstein was distressed by the loss of Schwarzschild. He wrote to Hilbert that “among the living there are probably only a few who know how to apply mathematics with such virtuosity as his.” His grief was mixed, though. He could not forget that Schwarzschild had enthusiastically volunteered to fight and did everything he could to support a German victory. Einstein’s June 8 public memorial address carefully avoided mentioning Schwarzschild’s role in the war or the circumstances of his death. Instead, it praised his modesty and his “indefatigable theoretical creativity.” In addition to describing his specific technical achievements, the lecture celebrated his ability to derive “artistic pleasure from devising finer mathematical systems of thought.” Einstein’s private ruminations, though, continued to struggle with reconciling Schwarzschild’s scientific prowess with his moral culpability in the war: “He would have been a gem, had he been as decent as he was clever.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The Borders of the Universe

  “The lines of latitude and longitude pay no regard to national boundaries.”

  NEWS OF SCHWARZSCHILD’S death eventually made its way to Britain. Eddington had known him well—they had both worked extensively on the statistics of stellar movements and the physics of stars. In August 1916 he wrote a moving obituary for his friend in the British astronomical journal The Observatory. Oddly, it had many references to how un-German Schwarzschild was: his “characteristics were not those which are usually associated with the scientists of his nation.” Many people, Eddington wrote, complained about German scientists being overly thorough or plodding. Not Schwarzschild, though. He was described as clear and keen. Indeed, he was presented as shattering all the stereotypes of his people: “We would rather say that through him a new spirit was arising in German astronomy from within, raising, broadening and humanizing its outlook.”

  This unusual memorial makes more sense when we see that it was but one shot in a broader battle being fought that summer. British astronomers were in the middle of a ferocious debate about, essentially, whether Germans could even do science. Perhaps their conduct during the war had placed them outside the kind of civilized discourse needed for scientific work. These opinions had been simmering widely since the war started, but burst into The Observatory via the anonymous regular column “From an Oxford Note-Book.” Although the column had no byline, everyone knew it was written by H. H. Turner, a distinguished professor of astronomy at Oxford. The column usually was a bit like the water cooler in an office—a place where Turner shared quips, gossip, and anecdotes about astronomy. Athletic and genial, Turner was well liked by everyone, and the column captured his avuncular role in the astronomical community.

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  • • •

  THE MAY 1916 column started off with a dry discussion about whether there was a need for any new scientific journals. Then Turner suddenly declared that the Germans had made it impossible to return science to its prewar state. At the beginning of the war, he remembered, it seemed as though science could be “above all politics”—working in a rarefied realm untouched by such mundane things. Now he had changed his mind:

  We have seen how engagements and relationships, which we all thought were “above all politics,” and safe to be respected even in time of war itself, have, nevertheless, been broken and tossed aside in a moment if Germany took the fancy that it could thereby benefit itself. Many of us do not see how, after such an exhibition, we can face the mockery of new understandings and undertakings with such a nation.

  He acknowledged that tempers might calm after the war was over. Nonetheless, he wanted a decision made about whether to exclude German science now. And would time really make any difference? Hadn’t the Germans already shown their true colors? “Is not the die really cast already?”

  This anger—in a professional journal—was all the more notable for its source. Turner was once a pioneer of scientific internationalism. He had worked extensively with foreign scientists and oversaw many transnational projects, including the first standardized international star map. Eddington had even recommended him in 1914 to be the new foreign secretary of the RAS. In that letter he praised Turner as uniquely qualified through his extensive international connections and “intimate” relationships with scientists in other countries. Turner knew, and had worked closely with, astronomers in all parts of the w
orld.

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  • • •

  BUT NOW THE trauma of the war had erased decades of cooperation. Instead, Turner contended that the nature of the German character was fundamentally contradictory. It was “intellectual without being refined.” Germany could “discipline its mind but cannot control its appetites.” He quoted the official British investigation into wartime atrocities to state that Germany was essentially a “pre-Asiatic horde.” “The dilemma is inexorable: we can readmit Germany to international society and lower our standard of international law to her level, or we can exclude her and raise it. There is no third course.” Turner argued that scientists could simply no longer deal with their German and Austrian colleagues.

  Further, he wrote, the war had shown that scientists could not hold themselves apart from politics. The integrity of an experiment, the persuasion of a mathematical proof, could only be as trustworthy as the civilization from which it had come. And the Germans had forfeited their right to that trust. Turner imagined a future in which their entire language would no longer be heard at a scientific conference.

  The next issue of The Observatory contained a lonely response. Eddington wrote a letter, titled “The Future of International Science,” that imagined a world where science could be free from nationalism and racism. Refusing to deal with scientists because of what country they came from would be a disaster, he wrote. He first pointed out the practical difficulties. Astronomers did not have the privilege of ignoring whole chunks of the planet—“the lines of latitude and longitude pay no regard to national boundaries.” But his objection to Turner was based on more than just problems of measurement. It was based on what it meant to do science: “Above all, there is the conviction that the pursuit of truth, whether in the minute structure of the atom or in the vast system of the stars, is a bond transcending human differences—to use it as a barrier fortifying national feuds is a degradation of the fair name of science.” Shallow and selfish patriotism, he warned, would destroy the progress of science.

  Eddington reminded his readers that many German scientists regretted signing the Manifesto of 93, and some were even undertaking the dangerous task of helping British citizens interned behind enemy lines. The Berlin Academy of Sciences had twice refused to eject its foreign members; the German astronomical community continued to send publications to English members (as much as they were able).

  Eddington’s tactic was to humanize the enemy, a method he had learned as a Quaker. Vilifying an abstract nation was one thing. Thinking about individual people was something else. He wrote:

  Fortunately, most of us know fairly intimately some of the men with whom, it is suggested, we can no longer associate. Think, not of a symbolic German, but of your former friend Prof. X, for instance—call him Hun, pirate, baby-killer, and try to work up a little fury. The attempt breaks down ludicrously. . . . The worship of force, love of empire, a narrow patriotism, and the perversion of science have brought the world to disaster.

  This was precisely the approach used by Quaker pacifists trying to bring the war to a close. An enemy who has a face, with whom you share values and history, is much harder to kill. Eddington brought his strategy into the realm of science. He simply asked everyone to view things from the standpoint of a German scientist, not the German government.

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  OTHER BRITISH SCIENTISTS were not receptive. Joseph Larmor, a fellow physicist at Cambridge, publicly responded to defend the exclusion of Germans from science. Larmor, of an older generation and also a Member of Parliament, lectured his apparently naïve young colleague. He told Eddington that this exclusion was the most prudent move. National priorities needed to be considered differently from personal preference. He completely rejected the call to see things as the Germans do. He not-so-subtly reminded Eddington that the British government had given certain groups the right to sit out the war on grounds of conscience, and those groups should be content with that privilege. Translation: you Quakers don’t have to fight, but that means you don’t get to criticize the rest of us either.

  Eddington anxiously responded to Larmor to clarify his position. He was frustrated at the difficulty of writing anything that would not be misinterpreted. He had tried to be moderate but was read as a radical: “It is really very difficult to know how to use the English language.” He continued to try to shift Larmor’s position toward his own. Viewing things from the German standpoint also meant hoping that the Germans would try to understand the British perspective, wouldn’t it? Surely the Germans told outrageous stories of British atrocities, just as the British press manufactured its own tales? He signed off with a demurral that he did not want to bring politics into an astronomical journal, but that Turner forced his hand. After a hasty signature he added a postscript: “Naturally I do not regard the position taken by conscientious objectors as in any way connected with ‘viewing things from a German’s standpoint.’”

  Before the next issue of The Observatory could appear, events on the Continent made reconciliation even more unlikely. The French fortresses at Verdun had suffered crushing German assaults since February 1916, and the British High Command planned an offensive along the Somme River to relieve pressure on their ally. Some 3 million artillery shells were stockpiled, and the preparatory barrage lasted a week (the final hour saw nearly a quarter-million shells fired). On July 1 at 7:30 a.m., officers blew their whistles, signaling soldiers to throw back a drink of rum and climb out of the trenches. Most of the British infantry were inexperienced troops (the so-called Pals battalions of friends who had enlisted together). The generals thought these green soldiers incapable of serious tactics, so the order was simply to advance shoulder to shoulder in straight lines.

  The infantry did so, cheerfully confident that the massive shelling had completely subdued their enemy. They were wrong. The same finely crafted trenches that allowed Schwarzschild to do his calculations kept virtually all the enemy soldiers alive and ready to fight. Five hundred yards of uncut wire and undamaged German machine guns resulted in the worst slaughter of any day in the entire war. Twenty thousand soldiers died. Forty thousand were wounded. Battlefield surgeons had plenty of opportunity to use their new tools of antiseptic powders and blood transfusions. The British poet Siegfried Sassoon was present. He described “staring at a sunlit picture of Hell.” Capt. W. P. Nevill famously brought four soccer balls for his troops to kick across no-man’s-land as they advanced. He never came home. Raymond Asquith, the son of the prime minister, was shot in the chest. He casually lit a cigarette so the men under his command would continue to attack. He died within hours. J.R.R. Tolkien, a signals officer during the battle, described officers being killed “a dozen a minute.” He found psychic shelter from the fighting by crafting intricate stories of elves, orcs, and dragons. He described writing “by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.”

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  • • •

  THE DEVASTATING LOSSES and pathetic gains of July’s fighting—some 600,000 casualties for six miles of territory—hardened attitudes at home. Turner’s response to Eddington’s attempt at pacification channeled all this anger. Eddington had asked what stands in the way of international cooperation in science. Turner’s brutal answer: “My reply is that the facts stand in the way—hard, horrible facts.” Eddington, he wrote, “proposes to shut his eyes to these facts, and to test the situation by the play of our imaginations in connection with some individual.” He jabbed at Eddington’s “own shrinking from horrors”—how could a conscientious objector truly understand the nature of the war? The Quaker seemed to be ignoring reality:

  Is it not an actual fact that babies have been killed in ways almost inconceivably brutal, and not as a mere individual excess, but as a part of the deliberate and declared policy of the German army? Is it not a fact that the Lusitania was sunk with a national rejoicing that puts the cold-bloodedness
of former pirates to shame? Is it not a fact that German men of science have gone out of their way to declare their adhesion to these things, and that one of them who ventures some excuse still boasts of a “quiet conscience”? If we cast our memories back before the war, it is easy to recall that we should have vowed these things incredible; but that does not alter facts.

  His litany of German war crimes was hung around the necks of all German scientists. There seemed to be no going back. The atrocities (both real and imagined) were so horrible that it became impossible to remember old friends before they became villains.

  The Battle of the Somme continued into the autumn, eventually seeing the British Army pioneer the first use of tanks in combat. About the same time those mechanical monsters debuted, an enormous German airship raid dropped bombs across England. With these technological horrors in the back of his mind, Eddington prepared for the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Newcastle. He presented a paper on general relativity. Or tried to, at any rate. Since he was still not fluent in the theory, his paper was based largely on de Sitter’s letters and was incomplete and opaque. Indeed, he had just managed to find a copy of Einstein’s review article from May. He tried to explain exactly what the principle of relativity was, and how the elevator thought experiment worked. He was actually more comfortable with the mathematics of the theory than the meaning, though he warned the audience that the equations were “highly complicated in form” and could not be easily written down. His inexperience with the technical issues went unnoticed by the sparse listeners in the audience. There were few people interested in an exotic theory from Berlin.