Science and the Swastika

"Evil is the only known result."

Four-part series on science in the Third Reich and its role in Nazi ideology and crimes. Series examining science and morality during the Third Reich; the practice of eugenics and euthanasia in Nazi occupied Europe.

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Created By

Status

Ended

Original Name

Science and the Swastika

First Air Date

March 19, 2001

Last Air Date

April 9, 2001

Seasons

Episodes

Language

English

Production Companies

Channel 4 Television

Networks

Channel 4

S01E04

The Good German

Why did the Germans, the most advanced scientific nation, fail to build a nuclear bomb during the War? In late 1938 a Berlin scientist, Otto Hahn, discovered nuclear fission. Werner Heisenberg, the chief scientist of Germany's wartime nuclear project, pioneered quantum mechanics and won the Nobel Prize. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 Heisenberg friends begged him to leave Germany, knowing he would be asked to work on nuclear research for Hitler but he refused. The focus of the story is a famous meeting in Copenhagen in 1941 between Niels Bohr and Heisenberg where Heisenberg appealed to world physicists, via Bohr, to desist from or slow down nuclear research. But Hans Bethe, a contemporary of Heisenberg has another version of events.

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