My reservation to proclaim Werner Heisenberg as a true hero in denying Hitler an atomic bomb

When I said almost all the German physicists that I know were respectable and honorable intellectuals under Nazi, I was talking about the world renowned giants in quantum physics.  Of course, the frenzied Nazi fanatics came from all walks of life, including scientists, even two Nobel laureates (Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, who attacked Einstein’s “Jewish physics”, and attacked Werner Heisenberg as “White Jew”).

Otto Hahn (who discovered the nuclear fission that makes making atomic bomb possible) asked Max Planck (then the director of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, an institute now bears his name) to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, Planck replied, “If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it.”  Pessimistic and passive though Planck might be, he knew he couldn’t make a difference.  Planck basically avoided direct confrontation with the Nazi regime.

I believe Heisenberg was truly against Nazism, but it is the same when I said Robert Lee was against slavery. This is not enough to exonerate them or claim their innocence.  I still have reservation in proclaiming Heisenberg as a true hero in denying Hitler an atomic bomb.

Family connection of Werner Heisenberg and Heinrich Himmler                                        Heisenberg’s maternal grandfather was a rector of the Max Gymnasium [a school preparing students for college] in Munich, and was a close friend of headmaster Himmler, whose second son, Heinrich Himmler, the notorious head of the feared SS of the Reich.  If the degree of evil can be measured, I would rank Himmler as No. 2, only after Hitler.

I have no knowledge that Heisenberg knew Himmler personally, but when Heisenberg was attacked by Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark as “White Jew” since he supported Einstein’s theoretic physics and relativity theory, Heisenberg sent Himmler a letter, asking for help (the letter was delivered by Heisenberg’s mother to Himmler's mother.)  Himmler did intervene and the attacks stopped.

This family connection is through no fault of his own.  Heisenberg’s wife described this event in great detail in her “Inner Exile”, but she conveniently failed to mention another fact that Himmler advised Heisenberg that if he must discuss relativity in physics classes he must keep Einstein’s name out of it.  Heisenberg accepted this restriction.

Heisenberg’s naïve political view that a Hitler Europe was no threat to America                     FDR had a far-sight that America couldn’t coexist with a Hitler Europe (i.e. when the Great Britain was also under Hitler’s yoke) and even if America were able to survive or beat the Nazi, many more million Americans would have to perish.

Heisenberg was taken to England as a “prisoner” at the end of war and was sent back to Germany in January 1946.  In a letter to his wife (1/25/1946, still not released yet), in which he wrote,

“. . . The war, from an American point of view, could actually have been totally senseless if we did not succeed in connecting central Europe again with the intellectual tradition of the last two thousand years; had it only been about destruction, one could easily have left that to Hitler.  At any rate, no American could seriously claimed that Germany had been a threat to America or that a Hitler Europe was more dangerous, in terms of power, than Eurasian continent under the political leadership of Russia. …”

One cannot blame Heisenberg for being a patriot to his country and his people, but as of January 1946 Heisenberg was still ignorant or oblivious to the true nature of Hitler evil regime.