Thinking about John Waynard Keynes: A man of vision

In “My Dear Li” (correspondence between Werner Heisenberg and his wife, Elizabeth), Werner Heisenberg wrote to his wife on 9/1939,

“. . . Your mother revealed a very deep-seated hatred of England, beyond of all rational thinking, which probably stems from the time of the Great War and has since been barely forgotten. . . . Nothing certain is known yet about my use in the war. Two departments want to have me, but none has definitely claimed me.”

John Maynard Keynes (a man of vision) tried in vain to prevent the chance of Hitler becoming Chancellor in 1932

Reading this, I can not but help thinking about John Maynard Keynes, who tried hard in vain to prevent the chance of Hitler becoming Chancellor in 1932, as predicted in Keynes' writing of Economic Consequence of the Peace, published in 1919, in which he wrote,

In his The Economic Consequence of the Peace (published in 1919), he wrote,

The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, –abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe. . . If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp.”

Keynes on Time cover

Writing in Dec. 1921, Keynes wrote about the Versailles Treaty. “The reparations settlement was not wise, nor in every respect practical. In some respects it was clearly dangerous.”

Keynes resigned from his position as the economic counselor while negotiating Versailles Treaty as his vehement opposition of harsh economic punishment against Germany fell to dead ears. Frances's Clemenceau and America's Wilson didn't understand him. Britain's Lloyd George was sympathetic to his view, but ignored, facing the pressure from re-election as the public wanted the Germans to be punished as much as possible.

There is no argument that the mass of German people turned to Hitler Nazism because of economic hardship, which was partly caused by the burden of the high compensation. The bitter feeling of Elizabeth Heisenberg's mother was not isolated in the pre-war (WWII) Germany. Elizabeth's family are educated intellectuals, very decent people.

The collect guilt of German people is always the topic of interest in my readings. Sometimes I felt their guilt can be forgiven or at least mitigated because of the economic circumstance under which they embraced Hitler, hoping he could bring them out of the economic calamity.

I know little about Keynesian economics; but I know after WWII most of the western world governments set up their economic policy following his mind and views. I got an impression that Keynesian economics is more liberal generally embraced by Democrats. The government bail out for the 2007-2008 financial crisis is Keynesian economics at work.

The conservative right wing (often Republican) economists attack Keynesian economics unfairly

Bloomsbury Group: Russell sitting in the center

A 5/7/2013 NY Times article (Keynes' biggest mistake) criticizes Keynes' lack of long term view. The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson blamed this to Keynes' homosexuality. Ferguson claimed that, those without children, as is the case with most gay men and women, would have less of a long-term view of the world.

Ferguson has since apologized for his off-the-cuff derogatory comment, but his opinion of Keynes having a short term view stood. By the way many conservative Republican economists often attack Keynesian economics by attacking his homosexuality, this is misguided and uncalled for.

Nobody (not George Lloyd, not Clemenceau, not Wilson, or their economic advisers) had a better long term view than Keynes when he alone saw the inevitable consequence of the high compensation of Germany.

John Keynes (right)

Rarely do I read about economists, John Maynard Keynes is the exception as he is one of the Bloomsbury Group, about which I read extensively for a while many years ago. T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, W.B. Yeats and Lytton Strachey are all the frequent visitors to Lady Ottoline Morrell's houses, where the Bloomsbury Group met.

A 1968 biography of Lytton Strachey revealed that Strachey was one of Keynes' partners/lovers.

On our London visit a few years ago, we came across one of the two houses of Lady Ottoline Morrell where John Maynard Keynes frequented.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2014/11/lady-ottoline-morrell-literary-hostess.html

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.

Max Planck: The father of quantum mechanics/physics and the suffering in his old age

The exact date of birth of quantum mechanics/physics is December 14, 1900 when Max Planck announced his revolutionary idea that energy emitted by a resonator could only take a discrete value (quanta, hence quantum mechanics; E = hf; E=energy, f=frequency, h=Planck constant).  Based on Planck’s concept, Einstein proposed in 1915 that light is also quantized—his photoelectric effect (E = hv) that earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and Planck was so honored in 1918.

Max Planck and Albert Einstein

Max Planck fired what could be called the first shot in physics’ quantum revolution in 1900.

When Max Planck died on October 4, 1947, Einstein wrote to his wife,

“Your husband has come to the end of his days after doing great things and suffering bitterly.  It was a beautiful and fruitful period that I was allowed to live through with him. . . . The hours which I was allowed to spend in your house, and the many close conversations, which I had with your dear husband, will remain among my happiest memories for the rest of my life; nothing can alter the fact that a tragedy event has affected us both.  May you draw comfort in your days of loneliness from the thought that you brought happiness and contentment into the life of your respected husband.  From the distant place I share your grief and greet you with all the former affections.”

I couldn’t have written it better for a message of sympathy and reminiscence.  I am glad to know that my view is in line with Einstein that the behavior of most, if not all, German physicists was decent, respectable and honorable under Nazi, whereas their conduct as a group left a lot to be desired.

Einstein mentioned the “tragedy event” that they both shared he was referring to the execution of Planck’s son by Hitler thugs in early 1945 when his son, Erwin, was implicated in the ill-fated July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.

Erwin Rommel was also implicated in the failed plot to kill Hitler.  Hitler delegated Keitel to tell Rommel that if he took his own life, he would be given a state funeral and his families would be spared.  The German public was told that Rommel was killed by enemy airplane.  I seem to recall seeing a photo in which Hitler was comforting Rommel’s wife in the state funeral.

This photo of Einstein was taken by Roy Glauber who, in his 2005 Nobel Lecture, said Einstein posed for him when he was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1951.  Glauber said this was his “unpublished work”.

Einstein posed for Roy Glauber in 1951

Werner Heisenberg and “collective guilt” of Germans under Nazi

I’ll write a series of articles using “Heisenberg” as the category.  One of the topics of my reading WWII is the “collective guilt” of the German people.  How could such a highly educated, civilized and hard-working people be led by a monstrous evil into an unprecedented tragedy?

As Churchill said, “Even in Germany itself there are millions who stand aloof from the seething mass of criminality and corruption constituted by the Nazi party machine” that was responsible for the power of its fuhrer, who was a “a haunted, morbid being, who, to their eternal shame, the German people in their bewilderment have worshiped as a god.”

Sommerfeld & Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1930 Nobel laureate)

In telling the tale of Werner Heisenberg’s role in Nazi’s effort in making atomic bomb, I’ll also survey the attitude and mood of the German general population in war time and the periods leading to the war.

Arnold Sommerfeld (a giant in developing quantum physics, the mentor for Werner Heisenberg), who, in October 1946 invited Einstein to rejoin the Bavarian Academy, to which Einstein replied,

Planck & Einstein

“It was a real joy for me to receive your letter after all these dark years.  None of us would have dreamed of all the horror we have been through.  The Germans slaughtered my Jewish brethren; I’ll have nothing further to do with them, not even with a relatively harmless academy.  I feel differently about the few people who, insofar as it was possible remained steadfast against Nazism.  I am happy to learn that you were one of them.”

Otto Hahn (who discovered the nuclear fission; you may read the post of “Nuclear fission—a woman slighted by Nobel Prize committee” for further details) also asked Einstein to become a foreign member of Planck Institute (former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics), Einstein emphatically said “No”; in the response Einstein said, “the conduct of the German intellectuals—seen as a group—was no better than that of a mob.”

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2013/12/nuclear-fissiona-woman-slighted-by.html

Einstein obviously had an unforgiving heart, I wouldn’t blame him.  Almost all the prominent German physicists in that era were all very decent intellectuals and, with very few exceptions, never joined Nazi Party.  But, “as a group”, as Einstein said, their conducts were tantamount to the accomplices to an evil regime. This may be unavoidable in a tightly controlled, brutal and oppressive political apparatus.  I would touch these issues as I go along.

After reading two books about Heisenberg the past week or two, I still cannot draw a conclusion whether he was a true hero who skillfully deprived Hitler of an atomic bomb or an accomplice.  His wife, Elizabeth Heisenberg, wrote a book in 1980 (English translation in 1984), after Heisenberg passed away in 1976.  “Inner Exile: Recollection of a Life with Werner Heisenberg” is a genuine attempt to defend her husband’s reputation.

The second book, “My Dear Li” was published by their daughter in 2016 after Elizabeth passed away in 1998.  These are their correspondence between 1937 and 1946.  These letters shed no further light in search of the truth about atomic bomb, but one can have a better grasp about the life under Hitler Germany.