The German Physical Society (DPG), founded in 1845, was at the forefront of physics research in 1933 when the National Socialists came to power. But the society and its members had already begun to feel the impact from Germany’s political and racial tensions.
The most famous émigré physicist from National Socialist Germany was certainly Albert Einstein, who had clashed with anti-Semites and conservative physicists in Germany even before 1933. When Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists came to power in January of that year, Einstein was out of the country and never returned. Einstein’s subsequent outspoken criticism of National Socialist policies—such as the racist and political purge of the universities and state research centers in April 1933—provoked the National Socialists in charge of science policy and education to put pressure on his former colleagues and on the organizations in which he was a member. Einstein graciously responded in a letter...
