Hitler shot himself in the foot. OK, not literally. Figuratively.
He could have beaten the United States in the race to build an atomic bomb, but he didn’t. Why? In the 1930s Hitler fired some of his best scientists. Many of these realized that Germany was going to make life very difficult for them—difficult to find jobs and maybe even imprison them. So they left the country and went to England and the United States.
Why did Hitler systematically cleanse his country of these valuable citizens (and many others) who could have helped him win World War II? Because of their race, their ethnicity. They were Jewish.
Einstein was one of the first. He left Germany in 1932 and never returned due to Nazi persecution. The most famous scientist in the world quickly settled in at Princeton University in New Jersey. Many other top nuclear physicists soon left Germany for the same reason, including Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe—who all helped the Manhattan Project successfully develop the atomic bomb for the U.S.
Enrico Fermi fled Italy because new racial laws affected his Jewish wife. He led the team at the University of Chicago that created the world’s first sustained nuclear reaction in 1942.
Hitler made many mistakes that contributed to his defeat. Certainly a key error was forcing out many of Germany’s smartest, most talented, most creative people. Without them his atomic project faltered and failed. And Germany lost the war.
History tells us, if we care to listen, that countries succeed when they allow everyone in the arts, science, commerce, agriculture, construction, finance, and every other enterprise to contribute an honest day’s work. When they artificially exclude people on criteria that have nothing to do with their skill, expertise, and potential, they are simply shooting themselves in the foot.
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You can read more about this fascinating story in Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Hitler’s Gift: The True Story of the Scientist Expelled by the Nazi Regime by Jean Medawar and David Pyke.
