On the subject of science in Nazi Germany, we are apt to hear about the collaboration of some scientists, the forced emigration of talented Jewish scientists, the general science phobia of leaders of the Third Reich--but little detail about what actually transpired. Biologists under Hitler is the first book to examine the impact of Nazism on the lives and research of a generation of German biologists. Drawing on previously unutilized archival material, Ute Deichmann, herself a biologist, explores not only what happened to the biologists forced to emigrate but also the careers, science, and crimes of those who stayed in Germany.

Biologists under Hitler combines exhaustive research with capsule biographies of key scientists to overturn certain assumptions about science under the Nazi regime. Biological research, for instance, was neither neglected nor underfunded during World War II; funding by the German Research Association (DFG) in fact increased tenfold between 1933 and 1938, and genetic research in particular flourished. Deichmann shows that the forced emigration of Jews had a less significant impact in biology than in other fields. Furthermore, she reveals that the widely observed decline in German biology after 1945 was not caused primarily by the Third Reich's science policy or by the expulsion of biologists but was due to the international isolation of German scientists as part of the legacy of National Socialism. Her book also provides overwhelming evidence of German scientists' conscious misrepresentation after the war of their wartime activities. In this regard, Deichmann's capsule biography of Konrad Lorenz is particularly telling.

Certain to be regarded as the most thorough and comprehensive account of biological science in Nazi Germany, Biologists under Hitler will interest historians of science, historians of the Nazi era, and biologists, as well as those who wish to learn about the relationship between scientific truth and political realities.

One of the most powerful nationalist ideas in modern Europe is the assertion that there is a link between people and their landscape. Focusing on the heart of German romanticism, the Rhineland, Thomas Lekan examines nature protection activities from Wilhelmine Germany through the end of the Nazi era to illuminate the relationship between environmental reform and the cultural construction of national identity.

In the late nineteenth century, anxieties about national character infused ecological concerns about industrialization, spurring landscape preservationists to protect the natural environment. In the Rhineland’s scenic rivers, forests, and natural landmarks, they saw Germany as a timeless and organic nation rather than a recently patchworked political construct. Landscape preservation also served conservative social ends during a period of rapid modernization, as outdoor pursuits were promoted to redirect class-conscious factory workers and unruly youth from “crass materialism” to the German homeland. Lekan’s examination of Nazi environmental policy challenges recent work on the “green” Nazis by showing that the Third Reich systematically subordinated environmental concerns to war mobilization and racial hygiene.

This book is an original contribution not only to studies of national identity in modern Germany but also to the growing field of European environmental history.

The Faustian bargain—in which an individual or group collaborates with an evil entity in order to obtain knowledge, power, or material gain—is perhaps best exemplified by the alliance between world-renowned human geneticists and the Nazi state. Under the swastika, German scientists descended into the moral abyss, perpetrating heinous medical crimes at Auschwitz and at euthanasia hospitals. But why did biomedical researchers accept such a bargain?

The Nazi Symbiosis offers a nuanced account of the myriad ways human heredity and Nazi politics reinforced each other before and during the Third Reich. Exploring the ethical and professional consequences for the scientists involved as well as the political ramifications for Nazi racial policies, Sheila Faith Weiss places genetics and eugenics in their larger international context. In questioning whether the motives that propelled German geneticists were different from the compromises that researchers from other countries and eras face, Weiss extends her argument into our modern moment, as we confront the promises and perils of genomic medicine today.

Taking advantage of documents never before available from the archives of the East German Communist Party and the Ministry for State Security, and drawing on interviews with, among others, the legendary spy chief Markus Wolf and members of the East German Politburo, Science under Socialism is the first book to examine the role of science and technology in the former German Democratic Republic. The result is a multi-layered analysis of the scientific enterprise that provides a fascinating glimpse into what it took to construct a new socialist state and the role science and technology played in it.

The book is organized around general policy issues, institutions, disciplines, and biographies. An international cast of contributors (Americans, former East Germans, and former West Germans) take the reader on a journey from the view of science policymakers, to the construction of "socialist" institutions for science, to the role of espionage in technology transfer, to the social and political context of the chemical industry, engineers, nuclear power, biology, computers, and finally the career trajectories of scientists through the vicissitudes of twentieth-century German history.

By providing a historical understanding of the scientific enterprise in East Germany, Science under Socialism also offers the fullest account we have of the effect of state socialism on the development of science.