Using Science for the Greater Evil.(Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the Devil's Pact)(Book Review)

German scientists led the world at the turn of the 20th century, transforming lives with advances like Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen's X-rays and Fritz Haber's nitrogen fertilizer created from thin air. Einstein's theory of relativity and Max Planck's work on quantum theory altered the entire field of physics. But was it all for the global good? In a new book, "Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the Devil's Pact" (564 pages. Viking), John Cornwell explores the fraught process by which the Nazi regime co-opted this scientific powerhouse in the 1930s--and how scientists dealt with the deep ethical dilemmas their work raised.

The extent to which researchers acquiesced in Nazi theories of racial purity and eugenics is disturbing: more than 300 qualified doctors and university professors participated in concentration-camp experiments. They included some of the country's most eminent, like Prof. Heinrich Berning of Hamburg University, who carefully noted the symptoms of Soviet prisoners of war as they starved to death. A very few, like ...