The Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism

Suzanne Heim is project coordinator of the documentation project 'The Persecution and Extermination of the European Jews by Nazi Germany 1933-1945' at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich and Berlin, and she has previously been the Charles Revson Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, and Research Director of the Max Planck Society's Research Program on the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist Era. She is the author of Plant Breeding and Agrarian Research in Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institutes 1933-1945: Calories, Caoutchouc, Careers (2008) and (with Gotz Aly) Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction (2003) and editor of Autarkie und Ostexpansion: Pflanzenzucht und Agrarforschung im Nationalsozialismus (2002). Carola Sachse is full professor of contemporary history at the University of Vienna and, from 2000 to 2003, served as Research Director of the Max Planck Society's Research Program on the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist era. She is the editor (with Mark Walker) of Politics and Science in Wartime: Comparative Perspectives on the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (2005) and Die Verbindung nach Auschwitz: Biowissenschaften und Menschenversuche an Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten (2003) and author of Der Hausarbeitstag: Gerechtigkeit und Gleichberechtigung in Ost und West 1939-1994 (2002), Siemens, der Nationalsozialismus und die moderne Familie: Eine Untersuchung zur sozialen Rationalisierung in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert (1990), and Industrial Housewives: Women's Social Work in the Factories in Nazi Germany (1987). Mark Walker is John Bigelow Professor of History, Department of History, Union College, Schenectady, in New York and has received grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Social Science Research Council, and the Humboldt Foundation. He is the author of German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949 (1989) and Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atom Bomb (1995), and he has edited (with Monika Renneberg) Science, Technology, and National Socialism (1993), Science and Ideology: A Comparative History (2003), and (with Dieter Hoffmann) Physiker zwischen Autonomie und Anpassung - Die DPG im Dritten Reich (2007).

• 1. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society during National Socialism Susanne Heim, Carola Sachse, and Mark Walker; Part I. Research and Personnel Policies: 2. A success story? Highlighting the history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society's general administration in the Third Reich Rudiger Hachtmann; 3. No time to debate and ask questions - forced labor for science in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, 1939–1945 Berhard Strebel and Jens-Christian Wagner; 4. Adolf Butenandt between science and politics: from the Weimar Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany Wolfgang Scheider; Part II. Racial Research: 5. Brain research and the murder of the sick: the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, 1937–1945 Hans-Walter Schmuhl; 6. Two hundred blood samples from Auschwitz: a Nobel Laureate and the link to Auschwitz Achim Trunk; 7. Racial purity, stable genes, and sex difference: gender in the making of genetic concepts Richard Goldschmidt and Fritz Lenz, 1916–1936 Helga Satzinger; Part III. 'Eastern Research,' 'Living Space,' Breeding Research: 8. Kog-Sagyz - a vital war reserve Susanne Heim; 9. Raw and advanced materials for an autarkic Germany: textile research in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society Gunther Luxbacher; 10. Political networking and scientific modernization: botanical research at the KWI for Biology and its place in national social science policy Bernd Gausemeier; Part IV. Military Research: 11. Ideology, armaments and resources: the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Metal Research and the 'German metals' 1933–1945 Helmut Maier; 12. Calculation, measurement, and leadership: war research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Fluid Dynamics, 1937–1945 Moritz Epple; 13. Chemical weapons research in National Socialism: the collaboration of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes with the military and industry Florian Schmaltz; 14. Nuclear weapons and reactor research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics Mark Walker; 15. Whitewash culture: how the Kaiser Wilhelm/Max Planck Society dealt with the Nazi past Carola Sachse; 16. The predecessor: the uneasy rapprochement between Carl Neuberg and Adolf Butenandt after 1945 Michael Schuring.

'The volume thus gives an excellent overview of the complex entanglement of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and their leading scientists with the National Socialist regime.' The Journal of the BJHS