Physics and Astronomy Calendar

Hardly any of the belligerent states in World War II can be shown to have harbored a basically hostile attitude toward science and the advancement of knowledge. All were willing and able to support scientific projects at least to the degree that these were regarded as beneficial for their own war aims. Everywhere scientists were ready to respond to the wartime needs of their country, while at the same time drawing the greatest possible professional advantage from such activity. Nowhere did the nationally configured systems of science and scholarship in the 20th century have reliable, system-specific barriers at their disposal which could prevent links and schemes of cooperation with criminal regimes deemed fundamentally adversarial to their own raison d’être. In a matrix of international comparison, the role of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS) in the Third Reich can be described more precisely over and beyond the striking contrastive attributions of a leading scientific center for National Socialist race policy on the one hand, versus a bastion of scientific autonomy on the other. German scientists had very few ethical, legal or political barriers they had to contend with once they had managed to present their own scientific-scholarly interests as compatible with the political and military aims of the Nazi regime. Against this backdrop, the KWS functioned professionally as a mediator between the professional interests of its members and the regime’s desire for scientific expertise. The KWS was a reliable partner of the Nazi regime on all military and race-political fronts.