Saeculum Mirabilis/Note

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Indice del libro
Albert Einstein (anni '30)

NOTE[modifica]

[Tutte le note e i riferimenti sono lasciati negli originali (DEENFR) ]
Abbreviazioni
  • ACCF – American Committee for Cultural Freedom
  • ADA – Americans for Democratic Action
  • AEA – Albert Einstein Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
  • CCF – Congress for Cultural Freedom
  • CIC – Committee on Intellectual Cooperation
  • CPAE – Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
  • CPUSA – Communist Party of the USA
  • CRC – Civil Rights Congress
  • ECAS – Emergency Committee of American Scientists
  • ECLC – Emergency Civil Liberties Committee
  • FAS – Federation of American Scientists (origin. Federation of Atomic Scientists)
  • FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • HUAC – House Un-American Activities Committee
  • JTA – Jewish Telegraphic Agency
  • MLN – Modern Language Notes
  • MR – Monthly Review
  • NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
  • PCA – Progressive Citizens of America
  • UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
  • UNO – United Nations Organization
  • UWF – United World Federalists
  • WZO – World Zionist Organization

Il Carteggio Einstein[modifica]

Einstein e Luigi Pirandello
Einstein e Luigi Pirandello

Albert Einstein lasciò le sue carte personali all'Università Ebraica di Gerusalemme, dove sono conservate nell'Albert Einstein Archive (AEA). Nei riferimenti ogni elemento è citato con la data, numero di fascicolo AEA, numero di documento. Molti manoscritti originali furono dattiloscritti dalla segretaria di Einstein, Helen Dukas, e una quantità considerevole venne tradotta in (EN) . Quando in (DE) – ed in alcuni casi in (FR) – gli originali sono rimasti intradotti e così li ho lasciati nel mio studio (se invece ho necessitato di fornirne una traduzione per motivi interpretativi, allora lo specifico con "tradotto da Monozigote").

Introduzione[modifica]

  1. Lo scienziato e romanziere britannico C. P. Snow, che conosceva Einstein, tentò di rispondere alla domanda sul perché solo Einstein, piuttosto che, diciamo, Rutherford o Bohr, fosse "nella classe Bradman" e concluse che se Einstein non fosse esistito la fisica del ventesimo secolo sarebbe stata diversa: "this one could say of no one else, not even Rutherford or Bohr". Snow suggerì inoltre che a Rutherford mancasse "Einsteinʼs moral independence or resource" e, sebbene Bohr poteva possedere queste qualità, non poteva proiettarle. C. P. Snow, Variety of Men: Statesmen, Scientists and Writers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), 79, 90.
  2. Si veda Abraham Pais, ʻSubtle is the Lordʼ: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 7–8.
  3. Einstein to Sigmund Freud, 10 May 1931, Albert Einstein Archive, Hebrew University, Gerusalemme (d'ora in poi AEA), 32–559; rist. in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954), 104–5, e anche, ma con altra traduzione, in David E. Rowe e Robert Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 421–2. Questa lettera, descritta nella sua forma pubblicata come scritta nel tardo 1931 o primi 1932, è stata ora datata definitivamente. Per una discussione molto interessante su Einstein e Freud, sia sulla loro relazione personale che sugli elementi paralleli del loro status iconico nel ventesimo secolo, si veda John Forrester, ʻA Tale of Two Icons: “The Jews all over the World Boast of My Name, Pairing me with Einstein” (Freud, 1926)ʼ, Psychoanalysis and History, 7/2 (2005), 205–26. Un avvincente studio completo dei contributi di Einstein e Freud alle rivoluzioni intellettuali del ventesimo secolo sta in Richard Panek, The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes (Londra: Penguin Books, 2004).
  4. Verranno forniti riferimenti completi a questa letteratura secondaria man mano che i temi verranno discussi nel corso del libro. Di seguito vengono citate alcune delle opere principali. Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: His Life and Times (Londra: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971); Albrecht Főlsing, Albert Einstein (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1998); Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), a cui ho fatto spesso riferimento per le informazioni generali. Tra le biografie, Pais, ʻSubtle is the Lordʼ: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, ha per me un posto speciale: Principalmente interessato alla scienza, contiene anche alcune importanti intuizioni sul carattere di Einstein e sugli atteggiamenti politici basati sull'amicizia dell'autore con Einstein. Si vedano specialmente i capitoli 1, 3, e 27. Abbastanza recente è la breve biografia di Steven Gimbel, Einstein: His Space and Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Cfr. anche Peter L. Galison, Gerald Holton, e Silvan S. Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Alexander Vucinich, Einstein and Soviet Ideology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Fred Jerome, The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hooverʼs War against the Worldʼs Most Famous Scientist (New York: St Martinʼs Press, 2002); Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Fritz Stern, Einsteinʼs German World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001); Zeʼev Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel: Zionist Icon or Iconoclast? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Jamie Sayen, Einstein in America: The Scientistʼs Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima (New York: Crown Publishers, 1985).
  5. Otto Nathan e Heinz Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace (1960; New York: Schocken, 1968). Rowe e Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, citazione a p. xxi.
  6. Tuttavia, l'introduzione storica a Rowe e Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, rappresenta fino ad oggi il resoconto più completo delle opinioni politiche di Einstein nel loro insieme ed è una lettura essenziale.
  7. Non pretendo che questi pochi paragrafi possano rappresentare una storia completa del liberalismo; sono solo riferimenti alle principali associazioni del termine. Una storia recente e completa del liberalismo, in effetti il primo resoconto storico completo in inglese da molti anni, è quello di Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), specialmente la Parte II sul periodo 1880–1945. Per la citazione da Friedrich Hayek, cfr. The Road to Serfdom (Londra: George Routledge and Sons, 1944), 10, e , da Karl Mannheim, Diagnosis of our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist (Londra: Kegan Paul, 1943), 5.
  8. David Armitage, ʻThe “International Turn” in Intellectual Historyʼ, Global Journal, 15, 22 gennaio 2013, 22–5. Una versione più completa si trova in Darrin M. McMahon e Samuel Moyn (eds), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 232–52.

Capitolo 1[modifica]

  1. Susan Neiman, ʻSubversive Einsteinʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 62.
  2. Cfr. Nathan & Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace.
  3. Jagdish Mehra, ʻEinsteinʼs Philosophy of Lifeʼ, typescript, n.d., AEA 60-492.
  4. Einstein to Mehra, 2 July 1952, AEA 60-491.
  5. Einstein to Michele Besso, 21 April 1946, AEA 7-381.
  6. Gimbel, Einstein, 10.
  7. Maja Winteler-Einstein, ʻAlbert Einstein—Beitrag fűr sein Lebensbild,ʼ in Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (hereafter CPAE), i, p. lxiii.
  8. See Winteler-Einstein, ʻAlbert Einsteinʼ, in CPAE i, pp. lxiii–lxiv.
  9. CPAE i. 12, doc. 7, editorial introduction.
  10. CPAE i. 239 n. 1, editorial note on Swiss citizenship.
  11. Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 67.
  12. Cfr. Peter L. Galison, ʻThe Assassin of Relativityʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 187.
  13. Cfr. Galison, ʻThe Assassin of Relativityʼ, 185–204.
  14. Quoted in Galison, ʻThe Assassin of Relativityʼ, 189.
  15. One example is the compilation of Einsteinʼs speeches and writings, The World As I See It (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949; repr. New York: Citadel Press, 1995).
  16. Dewey to Einstein, Western Union Telegram, 6 December 1937, AEA 52‐810.
  17. Einstein to Dewey, 7 December 1937, AEA 75-468.
  18. Stefan Collini in Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Introduction & Part I.
  19. R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (2 vols; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, 1964).
  20. Paul Kennedy in The Parliament of Man (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), cap. 1.
  21. Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2003).
  22. Daniel Gorman, The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 2.
  23. Cfr. David James Fisher, Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 61.
  24. Fisher, Romain Rolland, ch. 4.
  25. H. G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy and Other Writings (London: Waterlow and Sons, 1933), 14–15.
  26. Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, ii. 1914–1944 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968), 180.
  27. George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), John Dewey (1859–1952), Romain Rolland (1866–1944), H. G. Wells (1866–1946), Gandhi (1869–1948), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), Thomas Mann (1875–1955), Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), and Einstein himself (1879–1955).
  28. Bertrand Russell, in Albert Einstein et al, Living Philosophies: A Series of Intimate Credos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931), 13–14; John Dewey, ibid. , p. 34. Cfr. anche John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt, 1920).
  29. Albert Schweitzer, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, pt I di The Philosophy of Civilization, trans. C. T. Campion (1923; London: A & C Black, 1932), 3. Cfr. anche Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, pt II di The Philosophy of Civilization (1923; 3rd edn; London: A & C Black, 1946), capp. XXI e XXII. Cfr. anche James Brabazon, Schweitzer: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1975), chs 15–16.
  30. Russell, Autobiography, ii. 38.
  31. Fisher, Romain Rolland, 200.
  32. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, ii. 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power (London: Chatto and Windus, 1989), 43.
  33. Russell, Autobiography, ii. 102, 107; the retrospective essay is ʻWhy I am not a Communistʼ in Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956), 212.
  34. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, iii. 1918–1950: The Lure of Fantasy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1991), 254.
  35. Su Russell, cfr. Bolshevism, Theory and Practice (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1920) e Russell, Autobiography, ii, cap. 2. Su Shaw, cfr. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, iii, ch. 4, pt (1); su Rolland, cfr. Fisher, Romain Rolland, 53–6, 244–50; su Wells, cfr. Russia in the Shadows and H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (since 1866) (2 vols; London: Victor Gollancz, 1934); on Dewey, see Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World: Mexico—China—Turkey (New York: New Republic, 1929) and Richard Crockatt, ʻJohn Dewey and Modern Revolutionsʼ, REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, 7 (1990), 208–13.
  36. Einstein to Coudenhove-Kalergi, 6 July 1932 in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 204.
  37. Einstein to Gandhi, n.d., AEA 32-588; Gandhi to Einstein, 18 October 1931, AEA 32-587.
  38. Contribution to a seventieth-birthday volume for Gandhi, AEA 32-599.1.
  39. Statement on Schweitzer for a new edition of Mein Weltbild (not used) dated 1953, AEA 33-223.
  40. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 53; Schweitzer, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, p. vi.
  41. Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 381.
  42. Schweitzer to Einstein, 30 April 1948, AEA 33-218; Einstein to Schweitzer, 25 September 1948, AEA 33-220. Einstein claimed that he had met Schweitzer twice, but there is evidence for only one meeting.
  43. The text of Schweitzerʼs lecture is online at the Nobel Prize website.
  44. Einstein to Russell, 4 March 1955, AEA 33-205. Schweitzer was initially reluctant to make a public statement about the bomb, but in 1954 a letter by Schweitzer was published by the London Daily Herald urging scientists to speak out against the bomb. Cfr. Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 419.
  45. George Marshall & David Poling, Schweitzer: A Biography (New York: Pillar Books, 1975), 240–2; Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 429–35.
  46. Philipp Frank, Einstein, his Life and Times (1947; Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), 158.
  47. Einstein to Rolland, 22 March 1915, in CPAE viii. 103, pt A, doc. 65.
  48. Russell, Autobiography, ii. 38.
  49. In 1921, while on a tour of Japan, Russell was asked to recommend another lecturer for the following year and named Einstein and Lenin as the most significant minds in the world. Einstein did indeed go to Japan the following year. Lenin, Einsteinʼs biographer notes, was ʻotherwise engagedʼ (Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 524–5).
  50. Vorwort zu Russell, Politische Ideale, in AEA 33-152; statement about Russellʼs History of Western Philosophy, AEA 33-186.
  51. Cfr. Einstein to Russell, October 1931, AEA 33-156; Russell to Einstein, 7 January 1935, AEA 33-160; Einstein to Russell, March 14, 1940, AEA 33-166, published in abbreviated form in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 310.
  52. Einstein to Mann, 29 April 1933, AEA 32-663; Einsteinʼs statement on presentation of the Einstein Medal to Mann, 28 January 1939, AEA 32-673; Einsteinʼs tribute to Mann, 9 June 1945, AEA 32-686; Mann obituary notice of Einstein, April 1955, AEA 32-706.
  53. Thomas Mann, ʻWarum ich nicht nach Deutschland zurűckgeheʼ, Aufbau, 39 (28 September 1945), in AEA 32-691.
  54. For Wellsʼs anticipation of Einstein and a well-grounded discussion of the relations between science and science fiction, see R. J. Lambourne, M. J. Shallis, and M. Shortland, Close Encounters?: Science and Science Fiction (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1990), especially 56. Among the many conspiracy theories, which go far beyond the question of Wells and Einstein, see Christopher Jon Bjerknes, Albert Einstein: Unmaking the Myth, i. The Special Theory of Relativity, 2000–2001.
  55. H. G. Wells with H Wickam Steed, Viscount Grey, Gilbert Murray, Lionel Curtis, J. A. Spender, William Archer (secretary), A. E. Zimmern, Viscount Bryce, The Idea of a League of Nations (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1919).
  56. Einstein to Wells, 20 April 1932, AEA34-294.
  57. H. G. Wells, in Einstein et al., Living Philosophies, 91.
  58. Quoted in John S. Partington, Building Cosmopolis: The Political Thought of H. G. Wells (London: Ashgate, 2003), 106–7.
  59. Einstein address at a conference on ʻEducators and World Peaceʼ, 23 November 1934, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 253.
  60. Henderson, ʻHenderson Recalls Shawʼ, Einstein Association, Durham Morning Herald, 21 August 1955, in AEA 33-257.
  61. Einstein to Hedwig Fischer, n.d., 1928, AEA 33-246; Einstein to Besso, 5 January 1929, AEA 33-247.
  62. George Bernard Shaw, Savoy Hotel Fund-Raising Dinner, 28 October 1930, in Albert Einstein: Historical Recordings 1930–1947, British Library Sound Archive, 2005.
  63. Einstein to Shaw, 20 September 1950, AEA 33-256.
  64. Cfr. Einstein to Michele Besso, 21 July 1916, ʻLieber Onkel Toby…ʼ, in Albert Einstein–Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903–1955 (in German with French translation), ed. Pierre Speziali (Paris: Hermann, 1972), 75.
  65. Cfr. Einstein to Stone, 12 May 1952, AEA 61-489, and Stoneʼs reply, 16 May 1952, AEA 61-490.
  66. In Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 3–4.
  67. ʻManifesto to the Europeansʼ, mid-October 1914, in CPAE vi. 69, 70, doc. 8.
  68. See Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 8.
  69. Theo F. Lentz to Einstein, 15 August 1949, AEA 57-626.
  70. Einstein to Lentz, 20 August 1949, AEA 57-627.
  71. Silvan S. Schweber, ʻEinstein and Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 95–6.
  72. Einstein to Leo Huberman, 19 May 1952, AEA 61-492.
  73. On Einsteinʼs visit to America in 1921, see Marshall Missner, ʻWhy Einstein Became Famous in Americaʼ, Social Studies of Science, 15 (1985), 267–91. Cfr. anche Jamie Sayen, Einstein in America: The Scientistʼs Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima (New York: Crown Publishers, 1985).
  74. Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, cap. 3.
  75. Einsteinʼs critical comments about America were first published in the Niewe Rotterdamsche Courant, 4 July 1921, and reported at length in the New York Times. A full English translation is to be found in CPAE vii. 623–5, app. D; the quoted section is on p. 624. A partial German translation appeared in the Berlin Tageblatt, 7 July 1921, repr. in English translation in CPAE vii. 626–7, app. D. Einsteinʼs clarification and partial retraction appeared in the Vossische Zeitung, 10 July 1921, repr. in English translation in CPAE vii. 628–30, app. E.
  76. In July 1922 Gilbert Murray, a British member of the committee, wrote to Einstein that ʻthe Committee, as I understand it, is not intended to represent national points of view. It consists of individuals chosen for their own qualifications from various nationsʼ (Murray to Einstein, 17 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 418–19, doc. 296).
  77. Einstein to Pierre Comert, between 12 and 19 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 405, doc. 281.
  78. Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, iii. 1944–1967 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), 99.
  79. Einstein to Sigmund Freud, 10 May 1931, AEA 32-559. Einsteinʼs exchange of views with Freud about war is discussed in Chapter 2 and again, in a different light, in Chapter 3.
  80. ʻAntworten auf Fragen z. 60 Geburtstageʼ, 14 March 1939, AEA 28-473.
  81. Albert Einstein, ʻA Message to Intellectualsʼ, in Out of my Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 152.
  82. Einstein to O. John Rogge, 19 June 1951, AEA 61-133.
  83. The letter to Roosevelt, dated 2 August 1939, is available in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 359–61. The original typescript is in AEA 33-088. This letter and the consequences that flowed from it are discussed in Chapter 5.

Capitolo 2[modifica]

  1. There is a curious background to the award of the Nobel Prize to Einstein. He had been nominated a number of times since 1910 and pressure was rising to recognize his obvious achievement. While he was awarded the prize for 1921, it was not announced until 1922 because of disagreements among influential members of the Nobel Committee about whetherthe theory of relativity really satisfied Nobelʼs criteria, which included the requirement that the prize be given for a ʻdiscovery or inventionʼ. Despite the experimental proof of the General Theory in 1919, some committee members refused to accept its validity. It was decided initially not to award the prize for 1921, but a change of mind ensued when it was suggested that Einstein be awarded the prize for the ʻdiscoveryʼ of the law of the photoelectric effect rather than for the theory of relativity. So Einstein received the 1921 prize. The following year it was awarded to Niels Bohr. Da Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 535–42.
  2. Frank, Einstein, p. xv.
  3. Albert Einstein, Űber die spezielle und allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (Braunschweig: Verlag Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1916; (EN) in 1920 da Methuen, Londra & Henry Holt a New York).
  4. Katy Price, Loving Faster than Light: Romance and Readers in Einsteinʼs Universe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 8.
  5. Quoted in Clark, Einstein, 267. Katy Price notes ʻmoralsʼ as an alternative to ʻmoraleʼ in Loving Faster than Light, 35.
  6. A most intriguing effort is in Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), ch. 3. Jammer notes in introducing the topic that ʻthe idea of drawing theological consequences from physics has a long historyʼ (p. 157).
  7. In the English-speaking world, the most famous critic was Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell, 1931).
  8. Einstein to Lentz, 20 August 1949, AEA 57-627.
  9. Interview with Hannah Loewy in the Public Broadcasting System programme ʻAlbert Einstein: How I See the Worldʼ.
  10. Quoted in Gerald Holton, ʻEinstein and the Shaping of our Imaginationʼ, in Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, Historical and Cultural Perspectives: The Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. xii.
  11. Albert Einstein, ʻThe World As I See Itʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 8. This article has a complicated publishing history. The original was written in German in 1929/30, a handwritten copy of which is in the Albert Einstein Archive in file 29-028. The first English version appeared in the magazine Forum and Century (October 1930), 193–4, under the title ʻWhat I Believeʼ, and was reprinted in Einstein et al., Living Philosophies, 3–7. This English version, which is the text reprinted by Rowe and Schulmann (eds) in their Einstein on Politics, 226–30, differed in certain respects from the German original, notably in the paragraphing and the placing of certain sentences. The published German version in the collection of Einsteinʼs writings called Mein Weltbild (1934) follows the original handwritten text, as does the later English translation in Ideas and Opinions (1954). Throughout this book I use the text as published in Ideas and Opinions, on the grounds that it reflects most closely Einsteinʼs original German draft. I must thank Barbara Wolff of the Albert Einstein Archive and Professor Robert Schulmann for alerting me to important details regarding this question.
  12. Frederic Golden, ʻAlbert Einstein: Person of the Centuryʼ, Time Magazine, 31 December 1999, 34.
  13. A good example is Yehuda Elkana, ʻThe Myth of Simplicityʼ, in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, 221–4.
  14. Einstein, ʻPrinciples of Researchʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 226.
  15. See the interesting discussion of ʻEinstein and Languageʼ by Roman Jakobson in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein,142.
  16. Ernst G. Straus, ʻReminiscencesʼ, in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, 418.
  17. Cfr. Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 29–35.
  18. Albert Einstein, ʻOn the Theory of Relativityʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 246.
  19. Quoted in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 337.
  20. Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 338.
  21. Einstein to A. J. Muste, 31 October 1949, AEA 58-574.
  22. Einsteinʼs doggedness has been vindicated in the eyes of many physicists who now see Einsteinʼs questioning of quantum mechanics as insightful and prescient. A gripping account of the Einstein–Bohr debate is contained in Manjit Kumar, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality (2008; London: Icon Books, 2014). The letter is Einstein to Max Born, 4 December 1926, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 1916–1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times (1971; Houndmills: Macmillan, 2005), 88.
  23. Kahol to Einstein, 13 December 1949, AEA 32-611.
  24. Einstein to Kahol, 22 December 1949, AEA 32-612.
  25. Kahol to Einstein, 1 January 1950, AEA 32-613; and 3 March 1950, AEA 32-614.
  26. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 188–90; Freudʼs reply is on pp. 188–202. The typescript of Einsteinʼs letter to Freud is in AEA 32-543 (six pages). Freudʼs reply, headed ʻWien [Vienna] in September 1932ʼ, is in AEA 32-548 (seventeen pages). Quotations are from the English version in Nathan and Norden. For an important but rather different take on Why War? that emphasizes a personal element in the exchange, see Forrester, ʻA Tale of Two Icons,ʼ, 217–20, especially 219.
  27. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 196, 198, 200–1, 202.
  28. Yaron Ezrahi, ʻEinsteinʼs Unintended Legacy: The Critique of Common-Sense Realism and Post-Modern Politicsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 50.
  29. Ezrahi, ʻEinsteinʼs Unintended Legacyʼ, 52. Ezrahi links these observations with a larger thesis about the erosion of transparency in democratic communities, a development that he says is due not only to the advances of the physical sciences but also to the complex effects of new communications media.
  30. Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr Einstein, with a foreword by Albert Einstein (1948; New York: Signet Books, 1964), 58.
  31. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 261.
  32. Barnett, The Universe and Dr Einstein, 23, 18.
  33. Walter Lippmann to Newton D. Baker, 15 May 1929, in Lipmann, Public Philosopher: Selected Letters of Walter Lippmann, ed. John Morton Blum (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1985), 241.
  34. Susan Neiman, ʻSubversive Einsteinʼ, 70.
  35. Einstein, ʻThe Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethicsʼ, in Out of my Later Years, 114.
  36. Einstein, ʻThe Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethicsʼ, in Out of my Later Years, 115.
  37. Einstein, ʻThe Common Language of Scienceʼ, in Out of my Later Years, 113.
  38. Einstein, ʻThe Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethicsʼ, in Out of my Later Years, 115.
  39. Stern, Einsteinʼs German World, 120. See also Thomas Levenson, Einstein in Berlin (New York: Bantam Books, 2004), 121–4.
  40. Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 347–8.
  41. Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 402, 413. It may be that in the scientific mind there is a disjunction between appreciation of the beauty of a solution to a complex problem—an appreciation of ʻscience for scienceʼs sakeʼ—and any possible practical uses to which an innovation might be put. It is reported that, when Edward Teller described the principle of the ʻsuperʼ or H-bomb to J. Robert Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer (who became a firm opponent of its production) said ʻitʼs technically sweetʼ.
  42. Einstein, ʻThe World As I See Itʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 9.
  43. See, e.g., Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 394–5; and Isaacson, Einstein, 185–6.
  44. On Einsteinʼs affairs, see Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 548, 616–17. In 2006 the Albert Einstein Archive at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, released over 1,000 private letters showing that Einstein had had affairs with six women after his marriage to Elsa.
  45. Einstein to Born, 12 April 1949, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 182.
  46. Einstein, ʻThe World As I See Itʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 11; the German text is in Einstein, Mein Weltbild, ed. Carl Seelig (Amsterdam, 1934; enlarged edn, Zurich, 1953; repr. Berlin: Ullstein, 2005), 12.
  47. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 12.
  48. Einstein, ʻPrinciples of Researchʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 225.
  49. Einstein, ʻAutobiographical Notesʼ, in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher–Scientist (The Library of Living Philosophers; 2nd edn; New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1951), 5.
  50. Einstein, ʻAutobiographical Notesʼ, 17. Einstein was aware that in describing the process of his embrace of science and reason over religion he might be imposing an artificial simplicity on his past, but he concluded (p. 7) that, given the need for brevity, it was as close to the truth as he could get.
  51. Einstein, ʻReligion and Scienceʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 39.
  52. Einstein, ʻThe Religious Spirit of Scienceʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 40.
  53. Einstein, ʻThe World As I See Itʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 11.
  54. In 2011 a Tennessee legislator invoked Einstein (employing an evidently apocryphal or manufactured quote) in support of a bill to require teachers to present controversial scientific ideas—including evolution, global warming, human cloning, and others—in a critical fashion. The bill was regarded by its opponents as a means devised by the religious lobby of ensuring that creationism and intelligent design would be taught as scientific theory. The statement attributed to Einstein was: ʻA little knowledge would turn your head towards atheism, while a broader knowledge would turn your head toward Christianity.ʼ
  55. Einstein, ʻScience and Religionʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 47, 48.
  56. The reaction to this address in newspapers and private letters is described in detail in Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 92.
  57. Einstein to Erich Gutkind, 3 January 1954, AEA 59-897. He also said in this letter that the Jewish religion, like all other religions, was ʻan incarnation of primitive superstitionʼ. The publication of this letter was generally held to resolve the question of whether Einstein was a believer in God, but, as the Tennessee example above shows, this story continues to run and run.
  58. Einstein to Guy Raner, 25 September 1949, AEA 58-702.
  59. Quoted in Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 49.
  60. Einstein, ʻScience and Religionʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 44–5.
  61. Einstein, ʻReligion and Scienceʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 39; ʻScience and Religionʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 42.
  62. Einsteinʼs correspondence with Besso has been collected in Albert Einstein–Michele Besso, Correspondance; for Born, see The Born–Einstein Letters; Einsteinʼs exchange of letters with Heinrich Zangger has been collected in Seelenverwandte: Der Briefwechsel zwischen Albert Einstein und Heinrich Zangger, 1910–1947, ed. Robert Schumann (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zűrcher Zeitung, 2012); the correspondence with Műhsam can be followed in AEA 38-338–38-451; for accounts of Einsteinʼs memorable first meeting with Ehrenfest, see Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 294–5 and Isaacson, Einstein, 167–8. The correspondence in the Einstein Archive between Einstein and Ehrenfest is extensive. It ends in 1933 with Ehrenfestʼs suicide.
  63. For a brief account of Einsteinʼs relations with Queen Elisabeth, see Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 631–2; for the letters to David Rothman, see AEA 56-048, 56-041, 56-055, and 56-061. See also the fascinating article by Spencer Rumsey, ʻEinsteinʼs Long Island Summer of ʼ39ʼ, in Long Island Press, 1 February 2013, for a touching account of Einsteinʼs relationship with Rothman.
  64. Isaiah Berlin, ʻEinstein and Israelʼ, in Berlin, Personal Impressions, ed. Henry Hardy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 154. It should be said that this comment comes towards the end of a warm and admiring portrait of Einstein.
  65. Born, Born–Einstein Letters, 125.
  66. Einstein, ʻThe World As I See Itʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 9.
  67. Frank, Einstein, 49.
  68. Albert Einstein, Travel Diaries, 30 November 1930, AEA 29-134.10.
  69. Albert Einstein, Historic Recordings 1930–1947, British Library Sound Archive (London: British Library Board, 2005).
  70. Besides his journalism, which included articles about the solar eclipse on which the proof of the General Theory of Relativity was based, Moszkowski was the author of books on humour and the occult. He had befriended Einstein in Berlin during the war. See Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 469–71; and Isaacson, Einstein, 269–71. Moszkowskiʼs book was published in Germany under the title Einstein, Einblicke in Seine Gedankenwelt: Gemeinverständliche Betrachtungen űber die Relativitätstheorie und ein neues Weltsystem, entwickelt aus Gespräche mit Einstein (Berlin: Fontane, 1920), and in English as Einstein, the Searcher: His Work Explained from Dialogues with Einstein (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1921).
  71. Hedwig Born to Einstein, 7 October 1920, and Max Born to Einstein, 13 October 1920, in Born, The Born–Einstein Letters, 37, 39.
  72. Born, The Born–Einstein Letters, 41. See also Főlsing, Albert Einstein, 468–71, and Isaacson, Einstein, 269–71.
  73. Cfr. Born, The Born–Einstein Letters, 41.

Capitolo 3[modifica]

  1. Einstein describes himself as a ʻmilitant pacifistʼ in an interview held in the United States in 1931. See Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 125.
  2. Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, p. xxiv.
  3. Isaacson, Einstein, 378–9.
  4. Otto Nathan, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, pp. vii, xi, xii.
  5. Ofer Ashkenazi, ʻReframing the Interwar Peace Movement: The Curious Case of Albert Einsteinʼ, Journal of Contemporary History, 46/4 (October 2011), 755.
  6. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 98.
  7. Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 17.
  8. For Einsteinʼs schooling, see Fölsing, Albert Einstein, ch. 2. Specifically on anti-Semitism, see Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, ch. 1, pp. 9–10 and passim.
  9. Fritz Stern provides a clear and brief outline of the Germany into which Einstein was born in ʻEinsteinʼs Germanyʼ, in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, 321–5.
  10. Einstein, ʻMy Opinion on the Warʼ, in CPAE vi. 212, doc. 20. This essay was written in response to an invitation from the Goethebund to contribute to a volume dedicated to defending the culture of Germany, but he excised this particular passage following a request from the Goethebund, who doubtless considered Einsteinʼs comparison of citizenship with life insurance offensive. See CPAE viii, pt A, p. 194, doc. 138, n. 3.
  11. There are many accounts of Einsteinʼs difficulties with authority. Among the most suggestive is Erik H. Erikson, ʻPsychoanalytic Reflections on Einsteinʼs Centenaryʼ, in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, 151–73.
  12. Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 303–4.
  13. Quoted in Fisher, Romain Rolland, 105.
  14. Russell, Autobiography, ii. 17.
  15. These reflections resulted in the two volumes on The Philosophy of Civilization referred to in Chapter 1: The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, and Civilization and Ethics, both published in 1923. See Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, chs 15–17, for Schweitzerʼs experiences in the First World War.
  16. Schweitzer, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, 48.
  17. Donald Prater, Thomas Mann: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 71, 192.
  18. A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 1, 2.
  19. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (London: Cassell and Company, 1943), 308.
  20. Einstein to the board of the République Supranationale, 19 August 1929, AEA 45-502; New York Times article, 22 November 1931, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 99, 150.
  21. Einstein to a Texas correspondent, 15 April 1948, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 475.
  22. Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 413–14.
  23. In Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 14–15, 16.
  24. Einstein to Zangger, 21 August 1917, and Einstein to Hilbert, 27 April 1918, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 77–8, 80.
  25. A group of British liberal internationalists, under the leadership of James (Viscount) Bryce, began formulating plans for a league of nations as early as 1914 and further developed their ideas during the war. The case for the League of Nations was highlighted by H. G. Wells in an article published in the Atlantic Monthly in January 1919, to be followed later in the year by a book containing contributions from advocates of the plan chaired by H. G. Wells. See Wells et al., The Idea of a League of Nations.
  26. Einstein to Hedwig Born, 1 September 1919, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 12.
  27. See, e.g., interview in the New York Times, 26 March 1921, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 44; and message to an anti-war committee at New York University, 22 March 1934, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 248.
  28. Einstein to Hedwig Born, 1 September 1919, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 12.
  29. Einstein to Gilbert Murray, 25 May 1923, in CPAE xiv. 75, doc. 42.
  30. Einstein to Hedwig Born, 1 September 1919, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 12.
  31. Einstein to Pierre Comert, between 12 and 19 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 405, doc. 281.
  32. The correspondence with Marie Curie, in which he lays particular emphasis on the prevalence of anti-Semitism, can be followed in Einstein to Curie, 4 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 388–9, doc. 262; Curie to Einstein, 7 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 394, doc. 265; Einstein to Curie, 11 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 400, doc. 275. The quoted exchanges between Murray and Einstein are contained in Murray to Einstein, 17 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 418–19, doc. 296; Einstein to Murray, 25 July 1922, in CPAE xiii. 433–4, doc. 309.
  33. Einsteinʼs admission came in a letter to Gilbert Murray, 30 May 1924, in CPAE xiv. 3ed in Pierre Comert to Einstein, 10 April 1923; Einstein to Comert,51–2, doc. 258. Reactions to the resignation by colleagues on the CIC and Einsteinʼs responses can be follow 11 April 1924; Murray to Einstein, 20 April 1923; and Einstein to Murray, 25 April 1923, in, respectively, CPAE xiv. 26–9, doc. 9; xiv. 29–30, doc. 10; xiv. 39–40, doc. 17; and xiv. 75, doc. 42.
  34. In Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 194–5.
  35. Einsteinʼs dispute with Bergson and its impact on their relationship on the committee is well described in Jimena Canales, ʻEinstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed: Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nationsʼ, MLN 120 (2005), 1168–91.
  36. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 54. For Einsteinʼs vulnerability to anti-Semitism at this point and the impact of the Rathenau assassination on his security, see Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 270.
  37. See Ashkenazi, ʻReframing the Interwar Peace Movementʼ, especially 748–9.
  38. John Dewey, ʻOutlawry of Warʼ, in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1933), quoted in George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), 220.
  39. Kellog–Briand Pact (1928). Text available at Yale Law School Avalon Project.
  40. On the background to the Kellog–Briand Pact and its effects, see Gorman, The Emergence of International Society, 308.
  41. Einstein message to the Womenʼs International League, 4 January 1928, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 90.
  42. Wells et al., The Idea of a League of Nations, 25.
  43. Einstein, ʻThe Road to Peaceʼ, New York Times, 22 November 1931, in Rowe and Schulman (eds), Einstein on Politics, 253.
  44. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 91.
  45. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 13.
  46. Speech to the New York History Society, 14 December 1930, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 117.
  47. See Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 635.
  48. Russell, Autobiography, ii. 202.
  49. Rolland to Zweig, 15 September 1933, in Romain Rolland and Stefan Zweig, Briefwechsel, 1910–1940, ii (Berlin: Rűtten & Loening, 1987), 535.
  50. See George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 453–6.
  51. Speech to Americans on the Disarmament Conference of 1932, 16 June 1931, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 249.
  52. ʻThe Road to Peaceʼ, New York Times, 22 November 1931, in Rowe and Schulman (eds), Einstein on Politics, 254.
  53. Article by Konrad Bercovici quoted in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 172.
  54. Einstein to Freud, 30 July 1932, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 188–91. Freudʼs reply is on pp. 191–202. The typescript of Einsteinʼs letter to Freud is in AEA 32-543 (six pages). Freudʼs reply, headed ʻWien [Vienna] in September 1932ʼ, is in AEA 32-548 (seventeen pages).
  55. Einstein to Freud, 30 July 1932, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 188–9.
  56. Einstein to Freud, 30 July 1932, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 189.
  57. Freud to G. S. Viereck, 6 December 1929, AEA 32-535; Freudʼs negative comment on the exchange is quoted in Forrester, ʻA Tale of Two Iconsʼ, 220.
  58. Isaiah Berlin, ʻTwo Concepts of Libertyʼ, in Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 216.
  59. Lord Ponsonby to H. Runham Brown, 6 February 1933, AEA 54-471.
  60. Einstein to Rabbi Stephen Wise, 6 June 1933, AEA 35-133.
  61. Einstein to Alfred Nahon, 20 July 1933, AEA 51-232, and in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 229.
  62. Ponsonby to Einstein, 21 August 1933, AEA 51-399, and in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 231.
  63. Einstein to Ponsonby, 28 August 1933, AEA 51-401, and in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 231.
  64. See Isaacson, Einstein, 414–17.
  65. In Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 232–3.
  66. Einstein to C. G. Heringa, 11 September 1933, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 235.
  67. Nahon to Einstein, 5 August 1933, AEA 51-228.
  68. Nahon to Einstein, 2 May 1934, AEA 51-230. Nathan and Norden do refer to this letter but relegate it to a footnote rather than reprinting it. See Einstein on Peace, 661.
  69. Ronald W. Clark, an early biographer of Einstein, is among those who regard Einstein as having abandoned pacifism.
  70. Rolland to Zweig, 15 September 1933, Briefwechsel, 1910–1940, ii. 536.
  71. See Einstein to Brűning, 30 September 1931, AEA 34-606. Erwin Planck, the Chancellorʼs personal assistant, replied on 2 October 1931, AEA 34-607. Einsteinʼs draft statement on Franco-German relations was sent to the Chancellor on 2 or 3 October and is in AEA 34-609 (and later published in Ideas and Opinions, 112). Planckʼs acknowledgement of 22 October 1931 is in AEA 34-608. It is not without significance that Erwin Planck was the son of the great physicist and friend of Einstein, Max Planck, and that Erwin should join the wartime plot against Hitler and be executed in January 1945.
  72. Einstein to Born, 30 May 1933, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 111.
  73. Ponsonby as quoted and discussed in the Spectator, 15 March 1940, p. 6.

Capitolo 4[modifica]

  1. A compendious and highly readable overview is Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism (3rd edn; London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks in Association with the European Jewish Publication Society, 2003). The key founding text is Theodore Herzl, The Jewish State [Der Judenstaat (1896)] (London: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2011, reprint of English translation published by the American Zionist Emergency Council, New York, 1946). For a first-hand account of the development of Zionism, see Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949).
  2. Herzl, The Jewish State, 56.
  3. On Uganda, see Weizmann, Trial and Error, 110–18, and Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 122–3, 126–9. Einstein became involved in discussions about Jewish settlement in Peru during the 1930s. See his correspondence with the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, a friend and colleague at Berlin University. Oppenheimer to Einstein, 10 June 1930, AEA 47-837. This note contained the draft of a letter regarding a plan to investigate Peru as a possibility, which Einstein and Oppenheimer were invited to endorse. In subsequent correspondence involving Jewish colonization societies it became clear that the idea went far beyond what Einstein and Oppenheimer felt able to support and they withdrew. See Einstein to Oppenheimer, 3 July 1930, AEA 47-846.
  4. Weizmann, Trial and Error, 156–7.
  5. Weizmann, Trial and Error, 217.
  6. For a brief account of Jabotinskyʼs path to Zionist revisionism, see Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 11–16. For a more extensive account see Laqueur, The History of Zionism, ch. 7.
  7. In a speech of December 1946, as recorded by Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 574.
  8. Quoted in Daphna Baram, Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel (London: Guardian Books, 2004), 42.
  9. The three-act sketch is reproduced in Fenner Brockwayʼs memoir Outside the Right: Including Lost Play and Unpublished Letters by George Bernard Shaw (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), 97–9.
  10. H. G. Wells, The Outlook for Homo Sapiens (London: Secker and Warburg, 1942), 76.
  11. Michael Foot, The History of Mr Wells (London: Doubleday, 1995), 52. Michael Sherborne makes a similar defense of Wells in H. G. Wells, Another Kind of Life (London: Peter Owen, 2012), 150–1.
  12. See Sherborne, H. G. Wells, 341–2.
  13. George Bernard Shaw, Literary Digest, 12 October 1932.
  14. JTA transcript of report of George Bernard Shaw Interview in Bombay, 26 January 1933, AEA 33-255, two pages.
  15. Einstein to Brodetsky, 21 February 1933, AEA 33-254.
  16. George Bernard Shaw, ʻPreface for Politiciansʼ, in Shaw, John Bullʼs Other Island, Major Barbara, and How He Lied to her Husband (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1914), p. xxxiv.
  17. Russell to Ottoline Morrell, 30 August 1918, in Russell, Autobiography, ii. 92, 112.
  18. See Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (London: Macmillan, 1996), 509 n., and Prater, Thomas Mann, 182.
  19. Quoted in Colin Shindler, What Do Zionists Believe? (London: Granta Books, 2007), 72.
  20. See letter to André Spire, 1931, made public in 1945 and reproduced at JTA: The Global Jewish News Source.
  21. Fisher, Romain Rolland, 180–1, 251.
  22. Gandhi, in Harijan, 74, 26 November 1938, 239.
  23. See Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 207.
  24. Einstein to the Zionist Federation, Great Russell St, London, n.d., 1930, AEA 45-464.
  25. Fred Jeromeʼs useful collection of Einsteinʼs writings on Israel and Zionism announces the intention of deconstructing the myth that Einstein championed the state of Israel. See Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East (New York: St Martinʼs Press, 2009), epilogue, 225–32. The truth is, as Jerome says in his introduction, that Einstein was ʻambivalentʼ about both Zionism and Israeli statehood, but Jeromeʼs cautionary note has not prevented many readers and reviewers from embracing the counter-myth that Einstein was an out-and-out opponent of the state of Israel. Out of many examples, see Jaisal Noor, ʻReclaiming Einstein: New Book Reveals Famed Scientist as an Opponent of Israelʼ, Indypendent, 135, 14 May 2009. To be fair to Jeromeʼs readers, Jerome has given some cause for their embrace of the counter-myth in his underestimation of evidence of positive comments about the state of Israel after 1948. This evidence is discussed in the section on ʻThe Arrival of Statehoodʼ.
  26. Quoted in Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 16. See also Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 9ff.
  27. See Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 29. For an example of Einsteinʼs Jewishness being considered as a factor in his application to an academic position in Zürich, see Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 249–50. The case shows that, while the appointments board considered Einsteinʼs Jewish origins, this did not prevent him from being appointed.
  28. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961). For anti-Semitism in Bismarckʼs time, see Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 388–402.
  29. ʻA Letter to Professor Dr Hellpach, Minister of Stateʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 171.
  30. See Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 489.
  31. See Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 41.
  32. Zionist Association of Germany to Einstein, 23 May 1918, in CPAE viii, pt B, pp. 772–3, doc. 547.
  33. Zionist Association of Germany to Einstein, 9 December 1918, in CPAE viii, pt B, p. 963, doc. 666.
  34. Quotation from Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 492. The most detailed reconstruction of Einsteinʼs early links with Zionism is to be found in Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, ch. 2. See also Fölsing, Albert Einstein, ch. 25.
  35. Einstein to Blumenfeld, 25 March 1955, quoted in footnote 2 of Zionist Association of Germany to Einstein, 9 December 1918, in CPAE viii, pt B, p. 964, doc. 666.
  36. It is necessary to put the term ʻconcentration campsʼ in inverted commas since these, though harsh, were not the extermination and forced labour camps associated with the Nazi period but internment camps designed to isolate dangerous or suspect elements. Such camps were employed by the Spanish in the Spanish–American War and the British in the Boer War.
  37. Einstein, ʻDie Zuwanderung aus dem Ostenʼ, Berliner Tageblatt, 30 December 1919, in CPAE vii. 238–9, doc. 29.
  38. Einstein to Besso, 12 December 1919, in CPAE xi. 203, doc. 207.
  39. Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 67–9.
  40. Einstein, ʻAntisemitismus. Abwehr durch Erkenntnisʼ, [after 3 April 1920], in CPAE vii. 294, doc. 35.
  41. Einstein, ʻAssimilation und Antisemitismusʼ, 3 April 1920, in CPAE vii. 289, 290, doc. 34.
  42. Einstein, ʻAssimilation und Antisemitismusʼ, 3 April 1920, in CPAE vii. 291, doc. 34.
  43. Einstein, ʻHow I Became a Zionistʼ, Jüdische Rundschau, 21 June 1921, in CPAE vii. 428, doc. 57.
  44. Einstein, ʻHow I Became a Zionistʼ, Jüdische Rundschau, 21 June 1921, in CPAE vii. 430, doc. 57, n. 19.
  45. Einstein, ʻHow I Became a Zionistʼ, Jüdische Rundschau, 21 June 1921, in CPAE vii. 428, doc. 57.
  46. Einstein, ʻOn a Jewish Palestine: First Versionʼ, [before 27 June 1921], in CPAE vi. 431, doc. 59.
  47. See editorial note to ʻHow I Became a Zionistʼ, Jüdische Rundschau, 21 June 1921, in CPAE vii. 429, doc. 579, and Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 127.
  48. Einstein to Charlotte Weigert, 8 March 1920, cited in Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 70.
  49. Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, 22 March 1919, in CPAE ix. 16, doc. 10.
  50. The most vivid account of these events is Richard M. Watt, The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany, Versailles and the German Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968). Detailed and well documented, this history stands up well and is compellingly readable. See also the letter to Ehrenfest in note 49.
  51. See Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, 247–50, for attacks on the theory of relativity and 263–71 for his relationship with Rathenau and events following his assassination.
  52. Einstein to Besso, 5 June 1925, and Einstein to Besso, 9 June 1937, in Albert Einstein–Michele Besso, Correspondance, 204, 313.
  53. Einstein, ʻHow I Became a Zionistʼ, Jüdische Rundschau, 21 June 1921, in CPAE vii. 427, doc. 57.
  54. Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 54.
  55. See Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 57–8. In a letter to Michele Besso of 12 December 1919, Einstein mentions his invitation to the Basel Conference. See CPAE ix. 293, doc. 207.
  56. Weizmann, Trial and Error, 331.
  57. Einstein to Hibben, 14 November 1920, in CPAE x. 490–1, doc. 203; and Hibben to Einstein, 24 December 1920, in CPAE x. 539–40, doc. 243. At this time a typical professorial salary at Princeton was $4,000 per annum, with the Professor of Physics and Dean of the Faculty receiving $5,000. See Hibbenʼs letter, 540 n. 2.
  58. Einstein to Hibben, 21 February 1921, in CPAE xii. 89, doc. 53.
  59. Ray Monk vividly conveys the attraction of Germany, especially Göttingen, for American physicists during the 1920s in Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012), ch. 6.
  60. Haber to Einstein, 9 March 1921, in CPAE xii. 125, doc. 87.
  61. Einstein to Haber, 9 March 1921, in CPAE xii. 127–8, doc. 88.
  62. Einstein to Haber, 9 March 1921, in CPAE xii. 128, doc. 88.
  63. Boston Globe, 15 May 1921, AEA 85-215.
  64. New York Times, 13 April 1921, p. 13, AEA 85-435.
  65. Einstein, ʻOn the Founding of the Hebrew University in Jerusalemʼ, Jüdische Presszentrale Zürich, 26 August 1921, p. 1, in CPAE vii. 446, doc. 62.
  66. The most detailed account of Einsteinʼs relationship with the Hebrew University for the period up to 1933 is Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, chs 5 and 7.
  67. Einstein to Weizmann, 7 May 1933, AEA 33-426.
  68. Weizmann to Einstein, 11 May 1933, AEA 33-429.
  69. Weizmann to Einstein, 8 June 1933, AEA 33-433; and Einstein to Weizmann, 9 June 1933, AEA 33-436.
  70. See Clark, Einstein, 452–4.
  71. See the sequence of letters between 12 July 1934 and 24 March 1937, AEA 33-438, 439, 441, and 442. In the last of these (Einstein to Weizmann, 24 March 1937) Einstein writes that he is pleased to hear about positive developments in various departments in the university, adding that ʻit flatters my ego to think that I made a contribution towards this outcome through my stubborn defianceʼ.
  72. Einstein to Weizmann, 12 May 1938, AEA 33-444.
  73. Einstein, Travel Diary, Japan, Palestine, Spain, 22 October 1922–23 March 1923, in CPAE xiii. 108, 109, 110, 111, doc. 379.
  74. Weizmann, Trial and Error, 159–69.
  75. Einstein, ʻMy Impressions of Palestineʼ, New Palestine, 4/18 (11 May 1923), 341, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 163, 161.
  76. For coverage of Zionism and the Arab problem in the interwar years, see Laqueur, History of Zionism, ch. 5 ʻThe Unseen Questionʼ. For the riots of 1929 and the Arab revolt of 1936–9, see especially pp. 255–69.
  77. Einstein to Levisohn, 12 January 1930, AEA 35-112.
  78. Einstein to Bergmann, 27 September 1929, AEA 45-553.
  79. Bergmann to Einstein, 8 October 1929, AEA 45-555.
  80. The first revised form of the 8 October letter is in AEA 45-558. Einsteinʼs concern about alienating Jews in Palestine is expressed in Einstein to Bergmann, 6 November 1929, AEA 45-559.
  81. See Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 217–18.
  82. Einstein to Bergmann, 25 November 1929, AEA 45-561. The enclosed article is Herbert Sidebotham, ʻWhat Did Balfour Promise?ʼ, AEA 45-564. Sidebotham, who worked for the Guardian and later The Times, was a powerful non-Jewish advocate of Zionism whose efforts were much appreciated by the British Zionist leadership. See Weizmann, Trial and Error, 207, 233.
  83. Einstein to Bergmann, 19 June 1930, AEA 45-571.
  84. Einstein, ʻOur Debt to Zionismʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 190.
  85. Weizmann to Einstein, 28 April 1938, AEA 33-443. The commission referred to in this letter was a follow-up to the Peel Commission of 1937 in which the idea of partition was first mooted. The plan put forward by the Peel Commission was rejected by the World Zionist Organization (WZO), but the WZO was nevertheless interested in further discussions about partition and Jewish statehood. The new commission, headed by Sir Charles Woodhead, was charged with recommending new boundaries. See Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 516–22.
  86. Einstein to Weizmann, 12 May 1938, AEA 33-444.
  87. See Laqueur, The History of Zionism, 545–9.
  88. Wolsey to Einstein, 30 October 1945, AEA 35-074.
  89. This quotation is embedded in the letter from Wolsey to Einstein, 30 October 1945, AEA 35-074.
  90. Wolsey to Einstein, 30 October 1945, AEA 35-074.
  91. Einstein to Wolsey, 20 November 1945, AEA 35-075. The enclosed letter, from which the quotation is taken, is Einstein to Frank, 19 November 1945, AEA 35-076.
  92. In Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism, 173. The full text of Einsteinʼs testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine on 11 January 1946 is reprinted in Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism, 161–75.
  93. The questionnaire, dated February–March 1947, is in AEA 58-092 and Einsteinʼs answers, dated 3 March 1947, in AEA 28-744. It is no surprise to find Einstein among the signatories of a letter to the New York Times the following year protesting against the upcoming visit to New York of former Irgun leader Menachem Begin, now heading the newly established ʻFreedom Partyʼ. The letter detailed Irgunʼs massacre of villagers in Deir Yassin during the war of independence and associated Begin and his new political party with ʻfascismʼ. Among Einsteinʼs fellow signatories were philosophers Hannah Arendt and Sidney Hook. See ʻNew Palestine Party: Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussedʼ, New York Times, 4 December 1948.
  94. Maurice Dunay to Einstein, 13 January 1946, AEA 56-634; Einstein to Dunay, 19 January 1946, AEA 56-635.
  95. In Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism, 163.
  96. Einstein to Mühsam, 19 September 1949, AEA 38-395; Born to Einstein, 22 May 1948, and Einstein to Born, 1 June 1948, in The Born–Einstein Letters, 174–5.
  97. Einstein to Mühsam, 24 September 1948, AEA 38-380.
  98. Einstein, ʻThe Jews of Israelʼ, Broadcast for the United Jewish Appeal on NBC, 27 November 1949, in Out of my Later Years, 274.
  99. Einstein to Shepard Rifkin, 19 April 1948, AEA 58-858.
  100. Einstein, ʻThe Jews of Israelʼ, Broadcast for the United Jewish Appeal on NBC, 27 November 1949, in Out of my Later Years,274. The comments about British policy are on p. 275.
  101. Einstein to Mühsam, 26 February 1949, AEA 38-387.
  102. Einstein to Mühsam, 24 September 1948, AEA 38-380.
  103. Einstein to Mühsam, 9 July 1951, AEA 38-409.
  104. Barbara Wolff, quoted in Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism, 231.
  105. In AEA 61-395, p. 2.
  106. See, e.g., Monty Jacobs to Einstein, 28 March 1955, AEA 61-404, and B. Kirschenbaum to Einstein, 19 March 1955, AEA 61-405.
  107. Einstein to Kirschenbaum, 21 March 1955, AEA 61-406.
  108. See Einstein to Zvi Lurie, 4 January 1955, for his view of Israeli attitude towards the Arab minority, and Einstein to ʻArab Friendʼ, 8 March 1955, for his criticism of American imperialism in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 637.
  109. Einstein to Dafni, 4 April 1955, AEA 28-1101.
  110. In Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 639.

Capitolo 5[modifica]

  1. Einstein to A. J. Muste, 23 January 1950, AEA 60-631-1, repr. in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 519–20.
  2. So called because the administrative headquarters of the project was the Manhattan Engineering District of the US Army. An excellent comprehensive account of the history of the bomb and of the physics behind it is Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), but Robert Jungkʼs Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1965) remains compelling reading. General accounts of Einstein and the atomic bomb are to be found in all the major biographies and in two articles in the centennial symposium on Einstein. Paul Doty, ʻEinstein and International Securityʼ, and Bernard T. Field, ʻEinstein and the Politics of Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, 347–67 and 369–93 respectively. More probing and more detailed, based as it is on extensive archival research, is Schweber, ʻEinstein and Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 72–97.
  3. Einstein to A. J. Muste, 23 January 1950 AEA 60-631-1, repr. in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 519–20.
  4. The letters cited between Katsu Hara and Einstein and between Shinohara and Einstein are contained in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 583–90, extending from Katsu Haraʼs original letter containing the questionnaire of 15 September 1952 to Einsteinʼs final letter to Shinohara of 7 July 1954. The German original of Einsteinʼs use of the term ʻconvincedʼ (überzeugter) pacifist in his letter to Katsu Hara is not given by Nathan and Norden, but is to be found in Einstein to Katsu Hara, 20 September 1952, AEA 60-040.
  5. See Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 584.
  6. The account in this and the previous paragraph is drawn from Leo Szilard, ʻReminiscencesʼ, in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (eds), The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), especially 99–113. The quotation is on p. 112. There were many detailed steps in the move towards finalizing a letter to Roosevelt that are not germane to the present enquiry but that are covered in Szilardʼs reminiscences. See also Schweber, ʻEinstein and Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 74–84. Dr Sachsʼs version of events is contained in a lengthy memo in manuscript form entitled ʻEarly History Atomic Project in Relation to President Roosevelt, 1939–40: From Inception and Presentation of Idea to the Pres by Albert Einstein and Alexander Sachsʼ, 8–9 August 1945, AEA 39-488-1. The US government view is contained in the Smyth Report on ʻAtomic Energy for Military Purposesʼ (July 1945). The relevant section is Chapter III ʻAdministrative History Up to December 1941ʼ. The only mention of Einstein is with reference to his first letter to Roosevelt. The most comprehensive historical account of this phase of the bomb project is Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, chs 10–11.
  7. Einstein to Roosevelt, 2 August 1939, AEA 33-088. It is reprinted in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 294–6. Szilardʼs longer technical memo is reproduced as an appendix to Szilard, ʻReminiscencesʼ, 143–5.
  8. Alexander Sachs, ʻEarly History Atomic Project in Relation to President Roosevelt, 1939–40ʼ, 8–9 August 1945, AEA 39-488, p. 15.
  9. In his memo on the first phase of the uranium project, Dr Sachs spells out the connections between historical events and the pace of the programme. See Sachs, ʻEarly History Atomic Project in Relation to President Roosevelt, 1939–40,ʼ 8–9 August 1945, AEA 39-488-1, pp. 4, 10, 26.
  10. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 368, 369.
  11. Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 713.
  12. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 635.
  13. After an exhaustive discussion of the various factors involved, Einstein biographer Ronald Clark concludes that ʻAmerica would have built the bomb without Einstein. But they might not have had it ready for the war against Japan. Instead the bomb would have been ready for Korea; by which time, without much doubt, the Russians would have had one too.ʼ Clark, Einstein, 529. Nathan and Norden, editors of Einstein on Peace, conclude that ʻit would appear that the decision to use Einsteinʼs unique authority in the attempt to obtain the governmentʼs direct participation and financial assistance in atomic research may well have been decisive, since his intervention succeeded in securing the attention of President Rooseveltʼ, though they concede that the bomb could conceivably have been produced without Einsteinʼs intervention (Einstein on Peace, 301–2).
  14. Szilard, ʻReminiscencesʼ, 113–14. A much less colourful and very brief account is contained in the Smyth Report, ch. III, 3.4, but it remains important because it set the mould for much of the later discussion of Einsteinʼs role.
  15. Vannevar Bush to Frank Aydelotte, 30 December 1941, quoted in Clark, Einstein, 530.
  16. FBI Biographical Sketch of Einstein, quoted in Richard A. Schwartz, ʻEinstein and the War Departmentʼ, Isis, 80 (1989), 282, 283. Comment about Hoover on p. 281. The most detailed account of the FBIʼs investigations of Einstein is Jerome, The Einstein File. See especially pt I, ch. 4, for a discussion on why Einstein was ʻbanned from the bombʼ.
  17. See Jerome, The Einstein File, 5–13.
  18. Quoted in Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 715.
  19. The third letter took the form of a letter of introduction on behalf of Szilard requesting a meeting with Roosevelt to discuss his concern about the lack of adequate contact between the scientists and ʻthose members of your cabinet who are responsible for formulating policyʼ. Einstein to Roosevelt, 25 March 1945, AEA 33-105. In the event the letter was not read by Roosevelt before he died in April, though the issue was taken up in a meeting with a member of the Truman administration at the end of May, with, so far as Szilard was concerned, inconclusive and unsatisfactory results. The relationship between scientists and policymakers became more complex and more fraught as work on the bomb neared completion and the question of its use became urgent. These di􀁸iculties continued into the post-war period as the question of control of international atomic weapons surfaced. See Szilard, ʻReminiscencesʼ, 123–37; and Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 305–8.
  20. The scientific story is compellingly told in Kumar, Quantum.
  21. See Schweber, ʻEinstein and Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 79.
  22. Sachs, ʻEarly History Atomic Project in Relation to President Roosevelt, 1939–40ʼ, 8–9 August 1945, AEA 39-488-1, p. 6.
  23. Sachs, ʻEarly History Atomic Project in Relation to President Roosevelt, 1939–40ʼ, 8–9 August 1945, AEA 39-488-1, p. 18.
  24. The first biographer is Isaacson, Einstein, 476–7, and the second Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 713. In support of Fölsingʼs conclusion it can be pointed out that, at the time he was offered work on isotope separation, it is clear he was happy to undertake further work. See Dr Frank Aydelotte to Vannevar Bush, 19 December 1941, quoted in Clark, Einstein, 529–30.
  25. Clark, Einstein, 538.
  26. Quoted in Isaacson, Einstein, 485.
  27. Linus Pauling diary entry for 16 November 1954 recording a conversation with Einstein at his home in Princeton.
  28. Einstein to Bohr, 12 December 1944, AEA 08-094. This is Einsteinʼs report to Bohr of his conversations with Stern.
  29. A clear account of these events that is especially good on Soviet aspects, including Bohrʼs connections with Soviet physicists, is David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 118–19. In fact, the Soviets already knew through espionage about the Manhattan Project, initially through the British spy John Cairncross (the ʻfifth manʼ of the Philby group at Cambridge) and later through the émigré German physicist Klaus Fuchs, who was part of the British team at the Los Alamos laboratory of the Manhattan Project. See Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 82–3, 106–8. The Hyde Park aide-mémoire is reproduced as an appendix in Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies (3rd edn; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), app. C, p. 284.
  30. See Einstein to Stern, 26 December 1944, AEA 22-240.
  31. Clark, Einstein, 539–43, and Schweber, ʻEinstein and Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 74, 79–82, are especially keen to play up Einsteinʼs knowledge and involvement.
  32. On Oppenheimer, see Ray Monk, Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012), which covers the science as well as the politics and the character of Oppenheimer. On Szilard, see William Lanouette, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013).
  33. George Orwell, ʻYou and the Atom Bombʼ, Tribune, 19 October, 1945, in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, iv. In Front of your Nose, 1945–1950 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 23.
  34. Newspaper headlines of 7 August 1945. ʻModern Man is Obsoleteʼ was authored by editor of the Saturday Review of Literature Norman Cousins. See issue of 18 August 1945, p. 5. Cousins published a book of that title later the same year (New York: Viking Press).
  35. George Orwell, ʻYou and the Atom Bombʼ, in The Collected Essays, iv. 25.
  36. Emmanuel Mounier, ʻReflections on an Apocalyptic Ageʼ, in Mounier, Reflections on our Age: Lectures Delivered at the Opening Session of UNESCO at the Sorbonne University of Paris (London: Allan Wingate, 1948), 19.
  37. Einstein, ʻOn the Atomic Bomb, as Told to Raymond Swingʼ, Atlantic Monthly, 176/5 (November 1945), repr, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 373, and in Ideas and Opinions, 150–1. In the event, the message was not delivered at the Congress but was released to the press after it had taken place.
  38. Franck Report, repr. in Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 311–20.
  39. This story is told in great detail by Monk, Inside the Centre, ch. 14.
  40. See Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945–1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 98–100. This proved to be an accurate estimate. The political shock of the first Soviet test, which was detected by American scientists in September 1949, was compounded by the knowledge that Soviet espionage had penetrated to the heart of the Manhattan Project. It was easy for American policymakers to put the Soviet success all down to espionage. Someone surely must have let the secret out. The truth is more complicated. Espionage undoubtedly played a part. Information supplied by Klaus Fuchs probably saved between one and two years, according to the best estimates of recent historians. However, in the view of a leading historian of the Soviet bomb, the pace of Soviet atom bomb development was determined ʻmore by the availability of uranium than by any other factorʼ (see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 223).
  41. The charge that the United States had sought to exploit its atomic monopoly in political relations with the Soviet Union—indeed that this was the real reason for using the bomb against Japan—was mounted at length by Gar Alperovitz in Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, the Use of the Atomic Bomb and the Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965; rev. edn, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985). Alperovitzʼs revisionism provoked sharp debate, which can be followed in Barton J. Bernstein (ed.), The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976). Alperovitz followed up at even greater length with The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Harper Collins, 1995). An update on the debate can be found in Samuel J. Walker, ʻRecent Literature on Trumanʼs Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Groundʼ, Diplomatic History, 29/2 (2005), 311–34.
  42. Herken, The Winning Weapon, 153–65.
  43. Russell, Autobiography, iii. 17; Einstein to The Nation, 11 May 1946, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 374.
  44. See Einstein to Usborne, 9 January, 1948, AEA 58-922.
  45. Einstein to A. J. Muste, 31 October 1949, AEA 58-574, repr. in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 517.
  46. In actuality the fate of the plan was sealed by the end of 1946 in a Security Council vote in which only the Soviet Union and Poland voted against, though pro forma negotiations continued in the UN for another two years. See Herken, The Winning Weapon, ch. 9, especially p. 190, and Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 161–6.
  47. Telegram, 23 May 1946, and text of newsreel appeal, 4 June 1946, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 376–7.
  48. There is an unforgettable portrait of Gauss as a teacher by his former student, Edmund Wilson, who became probably Americaʼs leading man of letters in the twentieth century. See Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the 1920s and 1930s (1952; New York: Noonday Press, 1972), ʻPrologue: Christian Gauss as a Teacher of Literatureʼ, 3–26.
  49. Christian Gauss, ʻIs Einstein Right?ʼ, American Scholar, 15 (Autumn 1946).
  50. Gauss, ʻIs Einstein Right?ʼ, 129.
  51. See Joseph Halle Schaffner (Executive Director of ECAS), memo to the Trustees and Officers of ECAS, 24 January 1947, AEA 40-518. A detailed outline of the kind of campaign planned by the Advertising Council is contained in The Advertising Council Report to the Public Advisory Committee on the Atomic Energy Campaign, 8 January 1947, AEA 40-517, six pages. The letter to Einstein is from W. A. Higinbotham (of the FAS), 17 January 1947, AEA 40-520. The enclosed fact sheet is dated 6 January 1947, AEA 40-521, three pages.
  52. ECAS Charter, 2 August 1946, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 391.
  53. Einstein remarks at an ECAS luncheon meeting, also broadcast, 17 November 1946, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 393.
  54. Einstein Memo to Harold Urey, 14 June 1947, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 409.
  55. Harold Oram to Einstein, 27 May 1947, AEA 40-552. For criticism of ECAS, see Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 395, editorial note.
  56. Editorial ʻFor Survivalʼs Sakeʼ, Arizona Times, 7 May 1947, AEA 40-553.
  57. Oram to Einstein, 27 May, 1947, AEA 40-552.
  58. ECAS public statement, 29 June, 1947, Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 412.
  59. ECAS (over Einsteinʼs signature), 22 July 1947, AEA 40-576.
  60. Brown to Nathan and Norden, n.d., in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 430.
  61. Einstein, ʻOpen Letter to the General Assembly of the United Nationsʼ, United Nations World (October 1947), in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 440–3.
  62. ʻOpen Letter on Dr Einsteinʼs Mistaken Notionsʼ, by Sergei Vavilov, A. N. Frumkin, A. F. Joffe, and A. N. Semyonov, New Times (Moscow), 26 November 1947, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 443–9.
  63. Einstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (February 1948), in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 451–2.
  64. Weisskopf to Einstein, 12 May 1947, AEA 40-615; Einstein to Weisskopf, 27 May 1948, AEA 40-617.
  65. See Nathan and Norden, editorial note, and Harrison Brown memo, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 504–5, and for winding-up of ECAS, 557–8.
  66. Interestingly, Einstein himself and also Leo Szilard wanted ECASʼs funds to go the Quaker pacifist organization, the American Friends Service Committee, but their view was not accepted. See Einstein to Brown, 12 June 1951, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 557–8.
  67. See Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (paperback edn; New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 246–8.
  68. Monk, Inside the Centre, ch. 17, gives a detailed account, going far beyond Oppenheimerʼs role.
  69. Einstein to Muste, 23 January 1950, and Einstein to Muste, 30 January 1950, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 519–20.
  70. Transcript of TV discussion, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 520.
  71. Letters reaching Einstein in response to the TV broadcast on 12 February 1950 are contained in AEA 41-001 to 41-083. Rankinʼs rant appeared in the Congressional Record and is in AEA 41-006. Many of the letters in these files refer specifically to Congressman Rankinʼs statement.
  72. See Richard Crockatt, The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991 (London: Routledge, 1995), 125–9.
  73. Russell to Einstein, 5 April 1955, AEA 33-208.
  74. Manifesto issued on 9 July 1955, AEA 33-211, repr. in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 635. For a full account, see Sandra Ionno Butcher, The Origins of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, Pugwash History Series, No. 1 (May 2005).
  75. The correspondence between Russell and Einstein on the manifesto is reproduced in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 623–31. Einsteinʼs remarks about Bohr are in Einstein to Russell, 16 February 1955, p. 626. The only letter on this matter available in the Einstein Archive that is not reprinted by Nathan and Norden is Einstein to Russell, 4 March 1955, AEA 33-205. It contains Einsteinʼs suggestion that Albert Schweitzer should be invited to sign the manifesto on the grounds that ʻhis moral influence is very great and world-wideʼ. Russell evidently felt the same about this as he did about the proposal that Arnold Toynbee should be included—that it would be better to restrict the list to scientists. ʻScientists have, and feel they have, a special responsibility since their work has unintentionally caused our present dangers. Moreover, widening this field would make it very much more difficult to steer clear of politicsʼ (Russell to Einstein, 5 April 1955, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 631.
  76. Einstein to Muste, 23 January 1950, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 519.
  77. Butcher, Origins of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, 19, 20, 21.
  78. Butcher, Origins of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, 5, 22–3.

Capitolo 6[modifica]

  1. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, iii. 484–5.
  2. Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (London: C. A. Watt, 1964), though published many years ago, remains a stimulating history of this transformation, which, he argued, marked the transition from modern to contemporary history. For a more detailed picture there are few who can match Hobsbawmʼs four-volume history of the modern world, the relevant volumes here being The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), and Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994).
  3. See Richard Crockatt, ʻChallenge and Response: Arnold Toynbee and the United States during the Cold Warʼ, in Dale Carter and Robin Clifton (eds), Global Horizons: US Foreign Policy a􀁹er World War II (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), 108–33.
  4. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, i (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 9, 14, 15.
  5. Arnold J. Toynbee, ʻThe International Outlookʼ, a lecture delivered at Chatham House, London, in May 1947 and published in Civilization on Trial (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 127.
  6. Thomas Mann, ʻThe War and the Futureʼ, in Thomas Mannʼs Lectures Delivered in the Library of Congress 1942–1949 (Washington: Library of Congress, 1963), 41–2. This lecture was delivered on 13 October 1943.
  7. John Dewey, ʻWorld Anarchy or World Order?ʼ, in The Later Works, xv. 1942–1948, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 204, 206; and ʻThe Crisis in Human Historyʼ, in The Later Works, xv. 219.
  8. Wells, The Outlook for Homo Sapiens, 32, 34.
  9. Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1951), 69.
  10. Margaret Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942; New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1965), 248, 261.
  11. Crane Brinton, The United States and Britain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945), 262.
  12. Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace (1945; London: Penguin Books, 1947), 105.
  13. George Orwell, ʻAs I Pleaseʼ, Tribune, 12 May 1944, in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, iii. As I Please, 1943–1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 173–6.
  14. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1980), 411–12.
  15. Henry Wallace, The Price of Peace, in Henry Wallace et al., Prefaces to Peace (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), 415.
  16. See the interesting analysis of American columnistsʼ coverage of the impact of the A-bomb published only five years after the events. Janet Besse and Harold D. Lasswell, ʻOur Columnists on the A-Bombʼ, World Politics, 3/1 (October 1950), 72–87, esp. 80–1 for discussion of Thompson.
  17. Quoted in Lawrence Wittner, The Struggle against the Bomb, i. One World or None (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 61. See especially pp. 66–71 for the early history of the world government movement in the wake of Hiroshima. See also Paul Boyer, By the Bombʼs Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), ch. 2; Joseph Preston Baratta, The Politics of World Federation, i. The United Nations, UN Reform, Atomic Control (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2004). The book opens with a useful listing and description of the main organizations and figures associated with the world government movement (see pp. 1–20). Specifically on Einstein, see also Joseph Preston Baratta, The Politics of World Federation, ii. From World Federalism to Global Governance (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2004), ch. 14, ʻAlbert Einstein on World Governmentʼ.
  18. See Einstein to Womenʼs International League for Peace and Freedom, 3 July 1930, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 106–7. Schwimmer wrote to Einstein on 9 October 1930, thanking him for supporting her citizenship case, AEA 48-476; see Einstein to Schwimmer, 2 January 1931, AEA 48-480, for Einsteinʼs thanks for her translation of his ʻtwo per centʼ speech. In the Archives there are over fifty letters between Schwimmer and the Einsteins extending into the late 1930s.
  19. On the question of direct election, see Einstein, ʻOpen Letter to the General Assembly of the United Nationsʼ (1947), in Out of my Later Years, 158. See also a report of an interview with an o􀁸icial of the Atomic Energy Commission, in which he is reported to have said: ʻdelegates to the World Government should be elected directly by the citizens of the nations, not appointed by the Governmentsʼ. Memorandum by Mr William T. Golden to the Secretary of State, Washington, 9 June 1947, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, i (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1973), 488. Schwimmerʼs Western Union telegram to Einstein is on 27 October 1945, AEA 82-693. There is some mystery about the Schwimmer connection, which ended with silence on Einsteinʼs part. Schwimmer died in 1948. The following year her sister sent a letter to Einstein on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, which expressed deep bitterness at his failure to respond to Rosikaʼs 1945 telegram. Franciska Schwimmer to Einstein, 17 March 1949, AEA 82-694.
  20. Cousins, ʻModern Man is Obsoleteʼ, 5.
  21. See Wittner, One World or None, 67.
  22. Einstein to Hutchins, 10 September 1945, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 336–7.
  23. ʻLeague Invokes the Kellog Pact: Asks Nationsʼ Aidʼ, New York Times, 17 October 1945, p. 1.
  24. On the Montreux convention and Einsteinʼs message to it, see Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 420–1. Einsteinʼs contribution to One World Or None is in Out of my Later Years, 141–5.
  25. Usborne to Einstein, 12 December 1947, AEA 58-919. Einsteinʼs positive reply is on 17 December 1947, AEA 58-920.
  26. Einstein was sceptical of the proposal for a demonstration on behalf of world peace to be held at Cahors in France in June 1950. Barr wrote that he had heard nothing from Einstein in response to a telegram sent several months before on the subject of the proposed demonstration. Could he now have a reply? See Barr to Einstein, 16 June 1950, AEA 59-147. Einstein replied on 20 June that he regarded the demonstration as a ʻsoap-bubbleʼ and a ʻromantic enterpriseʼ. See AEA 59-145. The text of the telegram (in French) is in AEA 59-143. Einsteinʼs endorsement of Barrʼs book is in AEA 59-151.
  27. Culbertson to Einstein, 3 May 1948, AEA 57-072. Culbertson enclosed with this letter the full text of his ABC plan for world government, AEA 58-074.
  28. Culbertson to the Editor, Washington Star, 2 May 1948, AEA 58-073.
  29. Usborne to Einstein, 5 January 1948, AEA 58-923.
  30. In Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 592.
  31. ʻThe Way Outʼ, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 360.
  32. In 1955 the American Foreign Legion attacked the UWF, specifically naming Einstein. See Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 622–3, including Einsteinʼs response.
  33. Einstein to Swing, 27 August 1945, AEA 57-443. Einstein and Swing had corresponded earlier on a number of occasions and in fact had met in Berlin in 1922, when Swing was a newspaper correspondent there and had conducted his first interview with Einstein. See Swing to Einstein, 4 March 1940, AEA 56-187. In 1940 they exchanged letters on the subject of the reelection of Franklin Roosevelt, and in 1942 Einstein wrote to Swing recommending Emery Reves, A Democratic Manifesto (New York: Random House, 1942). See Einstein to Swing, 9 November 1940, AEA 56-189, Swing to Einstein, 12 November 1940, AEA 56-190, and Einstein to Swing, 19 November 1942, AEA 56-191.
  34. Einstein, ʻOn the Atomic Bomb, as Told to Raymond Swingʼ, Atlantic Monthly, 176 (November 1945), in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 374.
  35. The text of the Oak Ridge statement is summarized in a letter from Emery Reves to Einstein, 27 September 1945, AEA 57-293. In the letter the scientists speak of a ʻworld security councilʼ under whose control atomic weapons should be placed. Their statement pre-dates the formal establishment of the UN Security Council (24 October 1945), but one assumes they mean the same sort of institution.
  36. John L. Balderston et al. to Einstein, 28 November 1945, AEA 56-491.
  37. Einstein to Balderston et al., 3 December 1945, AEA 72-785, and in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 354. I have given Nathan and Nordenʼs translation except for the opening sentence, which they omitted.
  38. This applies to the two most detailed accounts of Einsteinʼs relationship with Reves, on which I have drawn in the following paragraph. See Schweber, ʻEinstein and Nuclear Weaponsʼ, in Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, 84–7; Rowe and Schulmann, ʻHistorical Introductionʼ, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 23–4, 42–4.
  39. Reves to Einstein, 24 August 1945, AEA 57-290.
  40. Einstein to Reves, 28 August 1945, AEA 57-292.
  41. In Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 341.
  42. Reves, Anatomy of Peace, 114.
  43. See Reves, Anatomy of Peace, ch. 11 ʻFallacy of Internationalismʼ; ch. 12 ʻFallacy of Self-Determination of Nationsʼ; and ch. 13 ʻFallacy of Collective Securityʼ.
  44. Reves, Anatomy of Peace, 233–4.
  45. Reves to Einstein, 24 August 1945, AEA 57-290.
  46. Einstein to Reves, 29 November 1945, AEA 57-301.
  47. See Reves, Anatomy of Peace, ch. 10. A useful contrast to Revesʼs position is that of John Dewey, who, in an unpublished essay of 1945, argued that any move towards world government must make use of the positive side of the history of nations that express ʻthose intangible bonds that constitute the distinctive moral and intellectual traditions and outlook of a given social groupʼ. If a world government is to deserve the support of peoples, ʻit must actively enlist the energies of the national states as dependable organs for the execution of its policiesʼ (ʻWorld Anarchy and World Orderʼ, in The Later Works, xv. 208, 209). Einstein is closer to Dewey than to Reves on this question.
  48. Reves to Einstein, 3 December 1945, AEA 57-302.
  49. Reves, Anatomy of Peace, 79.
  50. Einstein to Hirsch, 13 December 1945, AEA 57-303.
  51. Hirsch to Reves, 18 December 1945, AEA 57-304.
  52. Reves to Hirsch, 26 December 1945 AEA 57-306. The cover letter to Einstein has the same date, AEA 57-305.
  53. See Einstein to Reves, 2 January 1946, AEA 57-307; and Reves to Einstein, 4 January 1946, AEA 57-309.
  54. Statement for India News (November 1942), AEA 55-354.
  55. Reves, Anatomy of Peace, 174, 179.
  56. Emery Reves, ʻShould the British Empire Be Broken Up?ʼ, American Mercury (May 1943), 558.
  57. Golden, Memorandum to the Secretary of State, 9 June 1947, in Foreign Relations of the United States, i (1947), 487, 489.
  58. Clark, Einstein, 557.
  59. See Jon A. Yoder, ʻThe United World Federalists: Liberals for Law and Orderʼ, American Studies, 13/1 (1972), 121.
  60. Sumner Welles, ʻThe Atom Bomb and World Governmentʼ, Atlantic Monthly, 177/1 (January 1946), 39–42.
  61. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 352–3.
  62. Reves, Anatomy of Peace, 248.
  63. Reinhold Niebuhr, ʻThe Illusion of World Governmentʼ, Foreign Affairs, 27/3 (April 1949), 380–1. Despite his strictures on world government, in which Einstein was presumably included, Niebuhr had written to Einstein in late 1946 praising ʻthe magnificent work you are doing to inform the American people about the nature of the atomic world in which we now liveʼ and inviting him to endorse a proposal for a conference of Democratic Progressives the following year. See Niebuhr to Einstein, 29 July 1946, AEA 57-202. There is no evidence of a response from Einstein.
  64. Einstein to a correspondent, 18 May 1936, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 271.
  65. Oppenheimer to Einstein, 10 October 1945, AEA 57-215. Einsteinʼs letter to Oppenheimer is 29 September 1945, AEA 57-213, and the Reves enclosure, 24 August 1945, AEA 57-290.
  66. Yoder, ʻThe United World Federalistsʼ, 116.
  67. Einstein used the term ʻsophisticatedʼ with a measure of sarcasm in his reply to Welles, which, however, remained unpublished until Nathan and Norden included it in Einstein on Peace, 353.

Capitolo 7[modifica]

  1. These words were said in a speech given on 4 May 1953 in which Einstein accepted an award from a department store in New York City for ʻindependent thinkingʼ. The speech is in Ideas and Opinions, 33.
  2. Einstein to Signor Rocco, 16 November 1931 in Ideas and Opinions, 30. An edited version of this letter is in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 154, along with some useful editorial material. Einstein had crossed swords with Rocco in 1926, when they were both members of the League of Nations CIC. When Rocco had been proposed for membership of the committee and also for board of the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation in Paris, Einstein along with others had opposed the appointments. The Italian government threatened to withdraw from the League of Nations over this move, the result of which was that Rocco took his seat on the committee and the board. See Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 78–9.
  3. Pais, ʻSubtle is the Lordʼ, 7.
  4. This trait in Einstein is well described by his most recent biographer, Gimbel, Einstein, ch. 1.
  5. Snow, Variety of Men, 79.
  6. In Ideas and Opinions, 9.
  7. Janos Plesch and Peter H. Plesch, ʻSome Reminiscences of Albert Einsteinʼ, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 49/2 (1995), 309–10.
  8. ʻOn Freedomʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 32. This essay was first published in 1940 in Ruth Nanda Anshen (ed.), Freedom, its Meaning (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942).
  9. ʻThe World As I See Itʼ, in Ideas and Opinions, 8.
  10. Frank, Einstein, 9.
  11. See especially Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 43–7, 146–9.
  12. Einstein, ʻWhy Socialism?ʼ, Monthly Review, An Independent Socialist Magazine, 1 (May 1949), in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 439.
  13. Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943) is not to be confused with Franz Oppenheim, the chemist and founder of Agfa who provided funding anonymously for Einsteinʼs work in his early years, or Peter Oppenheim, physicist and friend of Einsteinʼs, or indeed J. Robert Oppenheimer, who became Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton during Einsteinʼs last years. Franz Oppenheimerʼs book had particular influence on the young American radical Randolph Bourne, who had a brief and shining career between 1911 and 1918, when he died in the flu epidemic that swept the world at the end of the war. He left behind an unfinished manuscript called ʻThe Stateʼ, which shows clear signs of his reading of Oppenheimer. See The Radical Will: Randolph Bourne, Selected Writings, 1911–1918, ed. Olaf Hansen (New York: Urizen Books, 1977), 355–95.
  14. See Oppenheimer to Einstein, 19 January 1935, AEA 51-313; Einstein to Oppenheimer, 20 February 1935, AEA 51-314; Oppenheimer to Einstein, 20 March 1935, AEA 51-316. There follows some correspondence regarding Oppenheimerʼs applications for positions in America, with which Einstein had been helping.
  15. Franz Oppenheimer, The State (New York: Free Life Editions, 1975), 8–10, 96. The first American translation was in 1914.
  16. See Josef Eisinger, Einstein on the Road (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011), 119, 154. To illustrate the affection between Oppenheimer and Einstein one can point to an entry by Oppenheimer in the form of a poem in Einsteinʼs guest book at his summer house in Caputh near Berlin in November 1932. See AEA 67-6.
  17. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; London: Unwin Books, 1970), 35.
  18. Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 170, 165; Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 162.
  19. Einstein to Culbertson, 8 August 1942, AEA 54-953, repr. Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 322; ʻWhy Socialism?ʼ, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 439–40.
  20. Landau to Einstein, 27 June 1945, AEA 28-663.
  21. In early August 1945 the British Embassy in Washington reported to the Foreign Office in its weekly political summary that ʻthe election result squarely restored us to the centre of the stage of public interestʼ and that ʻMr Churchillʼs very large American following, amongst whom are to be found many of the staunchest Interventionists drawn from middle-class America, are still shocked by their heroʼs defeatʼ; furthermore that ʻProfessor Laski is being singled out as the bogy-man by the conservatives [in America]ʼ (Weekly Political Summary, Washington, 4 August 1945, in Richard Crockatt (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part III From 1940 through 1945, Series C, North America, The United States, January 1945–December 1945 (Washington: University Publications of America, 1999), 265, 266.)
  22. This was a feature most notably of his first Inaugural Address on 4 March 1933, where, after outlining a series of radical measures, he declared that ʻaction in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government we have inherited from our ancestors. Our constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential formʼ (speech available at the American Presidency Project).
  23. This visit occurred in January 1934 but would have happened earlier had it not been for the extraordinary action of Abraham Flexner, the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, who declined on Einsteinʼs behalf an invitation (sent via Flexner) to the White House on the grounds that ʻProf Einstein had come to Princeton for the purpose of carrying on his scientific work in seclusion and that it was absolutely impossible to make any exception which would inevitably bring him to public noticeʼ (Flexner to Roosevelt, 3 November 1933, AEA 33-071). Einstein learned through a third party that an invitation had been issued, and he wrote to Mrs Roosevelt, who replied with a new invitation. The visit was a great success. Einstein wrote a poem in celebration of the occasion, which he sent to the Roosevelts. See Einstein to Mrs Roosevelt, 21 November 1933 AEA 30-077; Mrs Roosevelt to Einstein, 4 December 1933, AEA 33-078. The poem is in AEA 33-086.
  24. Einstein, ʻIs There Room for Individual Freedom in a Socialist State?ʼ, AEA 28-664, three pages (in English; text in German). A good example of the argument for ʻplanningʼ is Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 1940); and see the critique by Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, chs IV, V, and VI.
  25. Quoted in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 438.
  26. ʻWhy Socialism?ʼ, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 439–40.
  27. ʻWhy Socialism?ʼ, in Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 441–6. This last sentence was omitted from the reprint of the article in Einsteinʼs Out of my Later Years (1950), 131, and also Ideas and Opinions (1954), 158, possibly because the publishers felt that the statement was provocative in the midst of McCarthyite America. Or it may simply have been because this last sentence referred specifically to the Monthly Review and the occasion for which the article was written. Interestingly, as Rowe and Schulmann point out (p. 438), Einsteinʼs socialist convictions were not mentioned in the Time magazine story on Einstein as person of the twentieth century (for Time article, see Frederic Golden, ʻAlbert Einstein: The Person of the Centuryʼ, Time, 31 December 1999, p. 34). But note the comment of Walter Isaacson, who was Timeʼs managing editor when this story was published, that, while the omission was indeed a lapse on the magazineʼs part, it was not the result of a policy decision. See Isaacson, Einstein, 633 n. 38.
  28. In America, David Riesmanʼs The Lonely Crowd (1950) was the most famous and influential study, but, unlike Einstein, Riesman and others in the liberal tradition laid the blame on ʻmass societyʼ rather than capitalism. See also Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), especially ch. 1; Eric Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (1942). George Orwellʼs Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) are generally taken as critiques of the Soviet form of totalitarianism, which they undoubtedly were, but Orwell believed the dangers he explored were inherent in mass society generally. It is not clear whether Einstein read Orwell.
  29. John F. Kennedy invoked Lincolnʼs words and applied them to the global situation in his opening statement to the election debate with Richard Nixon held on 26 September 1960, but they reflected a common dichotomous mindset in America in the post-war years of high tension with the Soviet Union. A recording of the debate is available at the website of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
  30. In the United States by this stage the word liberal had long lost its associations with the ʻManchester liberalismʼ of nineteenth-century Britain and had developed in the direction of social or welfare liberalism.
  31. In Oppenheimerʼs case there was a delay between the advent of the cold-war climate and public investigation of his radical past and its possible implications. This came in the form of a hearing held in 1954 by a panel of the Atomic Energy Commission, after which his security clearance was revoked. He had been investigated several times before this by the FBI and other agencies—indeed there had been serious doubts in 1942 about his suitability as Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project—but it had been deemed he was too important to atomic energy to be dismissed. His opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s explains much about the timing of the hearing. See Monk, Inside the Centre, ch. 18.
  32. Niebuhr to Einstein, 29 July 1946, AEA 57-202. An enclosure with a discussion document for the conference is in AEA 57-203.
  33. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949; New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1998), 37. For a full-length examination of American liberals in the cold war, see Mary McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left: The Cold War and American Liberals, 1947–1957 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978). For a focus on intellectual developments, see Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Harper and Row, 1985).
  34. Quoted in Prater, Thomas Mann, 406.
  35. John Dewey, ʻAmerican Youth, Beware of Wallace Bearing Giftsʼ, in The Later Works, xv. 15, 243–4. See also ʻHenry Wallace and the 1948 Electionsʼ, xv. 239–41.
  36. The Wroclaw Conference had been attended by an impressive array of artists, intellectuals, and scientists from Europe, East and West, including Picasso, Brecht, Győrgy Lukacs, Aldous and Julian Huxley, Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokov, Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik, Nobel Prize-winning scientists Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie, the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, and many others. Einstein had been asked to attend and replied with a short note praising the goals of the conference. He also prepared a statement that was handed to the conference organizers by Otto Nathan, a close friend and later editor of the volume Einstein on Peace. However, instead of reading out this statement to the conference, the organizers presented only the brief note he had sent earlier, which contained only generalities and crucially also left out his argument for world government, which featured centrally in his longer prepared statement. World government was evidently not on the organizersʼ agenda, a stance that was in line with the opinion of the four Soviet scientists with whom Einstein had already engaged in debate about world government. It confirmed Einsteinʼs view (and that of others) that the Congress was under the influence of the Eastern bloc. Einstein was left with the conclusion that ʻunder prevailing conditions, it is impossible for the intellectuals of East and West to co-operate for peace and intellectual freedomʼ. When Einstein received notice that his full message had not been delivered, he released it to the New York Times. The relevant correspondence and documents are presented in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 491–6. The quoted passage is from a letter from Einstein to Julian Huxley, who was Director-General of UNESCO and chair of the conference.
  37. Einstein to Jacques Hadamard, 7 April 1949, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 512.
  38. Among the other participants at the Berlin Conference were Karl Jaspers, Ignazio Silone, Benedetto Croce, A. J. Ayer, and Raymond Aron, to name only some of the most celebrated. For a discussion of the ʻcrusade for cultural freedomʼ, see Pells, The Liberal Mind, 121–30.
  39. Christopher Lasch, The Agony of the American Left: One Hundred Years of Radicalism (1969; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 78 ff.
  40. Russell, Autobiography, iii. 82–3.
  41. Hook to Einstein, 2 April 1948, AEA 58-299, p. 2; and Einstein to Hook, 3 April 1948, AEA 58-300.
  42. Some of the later letters involve charges brought by the French physicist Joliot-Curie that the United States used germ warfare in the Korean war. The ACCF sought the endorsement of science Nobel Prize-winners for a request to Joliot-Curie that he agree to an independent investigation of the accusation. See Hook to Einstein, 22 April 1952, AEA 59-1020, plus enclosure of the letter to Joliot-Curie, AEA 59-1021; and Einsteinʼs reply, in which he agrees that Joliot-Curie has shown an ʻinsincere attitudeʼ but declines to sign the letter, AEA 59-1022.
  43. Einstein to Hook, 3 April 1948, AEA 58-300; Einstein to Hook, 16 May 1950, AEA 59-1018.
  44. Stein to Einstein, 8 March 1954, AEA 28-1021; Einstein to Stein, 10 March 1954, AEA 28-1024.
  45. A notable exception was negotiation about the restoration of Austrian sovereignty, which continued until the successful conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty in May 1955.
  46. H. S. Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1963), 178–9.
  47. Out of the vast literature on the early cold war it is hard to pluck a single work that does justice to the Soviet as well as the Western side, but a combination of the following will serve to cover the ground: Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992); Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlinʼs Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
  48. In Joseph Siracusa (ed.), The American Diplomatic Revolution: A Documentary History of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1978), 210.
  49. Available on You-tube under the title ʻHenry Wallace Resigns from US Government (1946)ʼ.
  50. Einstein to Wallace, 18 September 1946, AEA 34-482.
  51. Wallace to Einstein, 7 October 1946, AEA 34-483.
  52. Einstein to S. Gilbert, 21 April 1948, AEA 58-954.
  53. Einstein to Imbrie, 20 January 1948, AEA 58-941.
  54. Issued on 29 March 1948, AEA 58-943 ,and in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 469.
  55. In the pro camp among the correspondents were Brennan to Einstein, 7 April 1948, AEA 58-946; Kass to Einstein, 10 April 1948, AEA 58-947; Libert to Einstein, 6 April 1948, 58-952; Halpers to Einstein, 19 April 1948, AEA 58-955. Among the negative responses were an undated and unsigned abusive note in AEA 58-949; a lengthy letter from Gilbert to Einstein, 19 April 1948, AEA 58-953, to which Einstein replied on 21 April 1948, AEA 58-954; plus cuttings from the Palm Beach Post and the Houston Post, which had been sent to Einstein. See AEA 58-948 and 58-951.
  56. It is worth pointing out that American isolationists, not least the prominent Republican Senator Robert Taft, were just as unhappy as the left with NATO on the grounds that NATO was an instance of the type of ʻentangling allianceʼ that George Washington had warned against in his Farewell Address (1796).
  57. Wallace to Einstein, 22 January 1949, AEA 34-487.
  58. Einstein to Wallace, 26 January 1949, AEA 34-488.
  59. Wallace to Einstein, 30 January 1950, AEA 34-489.
  60. Einstein to Wallace, 4 February 1950, AEA 34-490.
  61. See Jerome, The Einstein File, and Schwartz, ʻEinstein and the War Departmentʼ, 281. Significantly, as Jerome points out, Hoover kept his investigations of Einstein a close secret, even from FBI personnel not directly involved, conscious as he was that Einsteinʼs fame gave him considerable protection. To have gone public prematurely with his accusations would be sure to rebound against Hoover and the FBI. In the event, the files remained closed until Jerome made a Freedom of Information request in 1999, which resulted in The Einstein File (see pp. xix–xxii). The result is an extraordinary story of dogged but amateurish attempts by the FBI to find evidence of subversion and espionage on Einstein, until Hoover was forced to concede after five years of searching that no such evidence could be found.
  62. For a long perspective on anti-Communism in America, see Michael Heale, American Anti-Communism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). For a detailed analysis of the phenomenon of McCarthyism in America drawing on documents released since the end of the cold war, see Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).
  63. See ʻA Short History of Americanismʼ, in Richard Crockatt, A􀁹er 9/11: Cultural Dimensions of American Global Power (London: Routledge, 2007), 94–126.
  64. Stoneʼs reaction to his isolation was to set up a political newsletter, I. F. Stoneʼs Weekly, which he wrote single-handed until for health reasons he was forced to cease publication in 1971. It established itself as a highly influential alternative source of information and opinion on the issues of the day and at its height had a circulation of 70,000. His views on the Korean war were and have remained highly controversial, as has the question of whether during the late 1930s he was an agent for the KGB. Following the release of thousands of documents from the KGB archives in the 1990s, Stoneʼs name, among many others long known or suspected as having been spies, came to light in the documents. See John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassiliev, and Harvey Klehr, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). The conclusions of this book have been fiercely contested by, among many others, Eric Alterman in ʻThe Smearing of I. F. Stone, Continuedʼ, Nation, 22 June 2009.
  65. Einstein to Stone, 12 May 1952, AEA 61-489.
  66. Stone to Einstein, 16 May 1952, AEA 61-490.
  67. Huberman to Einstein, 16 May 1952, AEA 61-491.
  68. Einstein to Huberman, May 1952, AEA 61-492.
  69. Frauenglass to Einstein, 9 May 1953, AEA 34-635.
  70. Einstein to Frauenglass, 16 May 1953, AEA 34-639.
  71. Frauenglass to Einstein, 23 May 1953, AEA 34-640.
  72. See Isaacson, Einstein, 528–9. The Einstein Archive has two large files with favourable responses to the Frauenglass letter, 41–112 to 41–243 and 41–244 to 41–380, and a file of unfavourable responses, 41–381 to 41–514. A further file contains anonymous letter on the subject: 41–515 to 41–546.
  73. Einstein to Thomas, 10 March 1954, AEA 61-549. Einsteinʼs letter was a response to Thomasʼs explanation of why he was not attending a conference organized by the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) in honour of Einstein. Thomas believed the ECLC was pro-Communist and therefore not devoted to liberty. He set out his arguments for qualified support for the investigations of communist ʻconspiraciesʼ in the United States. See Rowe and Schulmann (eds), Einstein on Politics, 498–9.
  74. Russell to the editor of the New York Times, 26 June 1953 in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 550.
  75. This and the previous paragraph draw on the researches of Jamie Sayen in Einstein in America, 273–6, which is in part based on an interview with Shadowitz. Shadowitzʼs description of the first hearing is contained in a long letter, Shadowitz to Einstein, 14 December 1953, AEA 41-659. The quoted passages are on pp. 2, 3, and 4.
  76. Einstein to Shadowitz, 14 January 1954, AEA 41-666. Shadowitz was later cited for contempt, along with two others who took a similar line. The cases dragged on, but McCarthyʼs fall from grace in the summer of 1954 placed question marks over the validity of many such cases, and a year later the indictments against Shadowitz and the others were dismissed. See Sayen, Einstein in America, 276–7.
  77. See Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), pp. ix–x. This book contains a selection of documents by Einstein on this topic. A briefer version of the book, which contains much of the essential material, is Jeromeʼs article ʻEinstein, Race, and the Myth of the Cultural Iconʼ, Isis, 95 (2004), 627–39.
  78. See Einstein, ʻThe Negro Questionʼ (1946), in Out of my Later Years, 132.
  79. Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism, 137.
  80. Einstein, ʻThe Negro Questionʼ (1946), in Out of my Later Years, 132–4.
  81. Einstein, ʻThe Negro Questionʼ (1946), in Out of my Later Years, 133. Einstein to Lester B. Granger, Secretary of the National Urban league, 16 September 1946, AEA 57-543, p. 3.
  82. As quoted in Chapter 2, Ernst G. Straus, ʻReminiscencesʼ, in Holton and Elkana (eds), Albert Einstein, 418.
  83. On the racial history of Princeton, NJ, up to and including the time Einstein spent there, see Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism, chs 2–4.
  84. Dewey, ʻThe Implications of S.2499ʼ, in The Later Works, xv. 282.
  85. Dewey, ʻThe Case of Odell Wallerʼ, letter to the editor of the New York Times, 15 May 1942, in The Later Works, xv. 356.
  86. Einstein to Lester B. Granger, Secretary of the National Urban League, 16 September 1946, AEA 57-543, p. 1.
  87. See Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism, 119–21, including Du Boisʼs letter of thanks to Einstein for offering to appear in court.
  88. Eisinger, Einstein on the Road, 45.
  89. For many additional details about these and other connections with African American groups and individuals, see Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism; for the Lincoln University visit, see pp. 88–92, and for the Robeson friendship, see chs 5 and 10; see also Jerome, The Einstein File, ch. 10. For Einsteinʼs relations with the African American community of Princeton, see Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism, ch. 4.
  90. Gitlin to Einstein, 12 June 1942, AEA 55-133. Enclosed was a prospectus for the group. See AEA 55-134.
  91. Einstein to Gitlin, 24 June 1942, AEA 55-135.

Conclusione[modifica]

  1. A. C. Grayling, ʻDo Public Intellectuals Matter?ʼ, Prospect (May 2013).
  2. The terms ʻparadigmʼ and ʻnormal scienceʼ are key terms in Thomas S. Kuhnʼs pathbreaking study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (50th Anniversary edn; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). See especially ch. V for a discussion of paradigms and chs II–IV for ʻnormal scienceʼ.
  3. Edward Friedman, ʻEinstein and Mao: Metaphors of Revolutionʼ, China Quarterly, 93 (March 1983), 51–2, 53, 56, and passim.
  4. See his remark to the Archbishop of Canterbury cited in ch. 2, n. 5.
  5. On relativity in popular culture, see Price, Loving Faster than Light; on visual art and music, see Galison, Holton, and Schweber (eds), Einstein for the Twenty-First Century, pt 2; on Proust, see George Painter, Marcel Proust (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), 653; on Rilke, see Donald Prater, A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 355; on Thomas Mann, see Diaries, 1918–1939 (London: André Deutsch, 1983), entry for 3 March 1920, pp. 87–8.
  6. Einstein to Harold C. Urey, 16 August 1940, in Nathan and Norden (eds), Einstein on Peace, 316.
  7. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1936), 4, 3, 7. ʻUnmaskingʼ is discussed on pp. 35–6.
  8. In Ideas and Opinions, 9, 10.
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