Heisenberg the Nazi

When Heisenberg put forth his model of different types of ways that one can resist a regime like the Nazis, I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little. It seemed to me like this was a feeble attempt to exculpate himself after years of service to one of the most despicable political parties ever known. By making vague claims about the differences between active and passive resistance, Heisenberg had hoped to downplay his involvement after the collapse of the Nazi party, but such an attempt would be in vain. While I do agree with him that passive resistance in many situations accomplishes about as much as no resistance at all, he fails to recognize other methods of active resistance which would not have required him to assist the Nazis in their quest for world domination.

The truth of the matter is that German scientists, including Heisenberg, all had the option of leaving Germany to assist the Allied powers in stopping the Nazis, as many highly respected scientists eventually did. These scientists all made great contributions to the Allied efforts, which in turn directly hampered the Nazi party. This is an example of true active resistance. Heisenberg on the other hand, chose not only to continue working with the Nazis, but also to assist them in their efforts to acquire the most devastating weapon mankind is capable of producing. Despite his blatantly "ex post facto" claims to Bohr that all along he had been subversivly trying to derail the Nazi atomic bomb project, Heisenberg was constantly making large strides in the area of nuclear physics in hopes of initiating a large nuclear reaction. This research went directly into the hands of the Nazi party. While he may have claimed that his true interests were in harnessing nuclear energy for non-weapon uses, it is now known that Heisenberg had met several times with high-ranking Nazi officials to discuss the progress on atomic weapons. The onle reason that his work eventually fell short was because the tides of the war changed and resources for the project ran out. Otherwise Heisenberg showed no signs of stopping his work on manipulating a nuclear reaction. The most essential fact of the matter is that Heisenberg contributed many years of work to a regime responsible for the deaths of millions, and had his work continued, perhaps there would have been millions more.