Einstein S Pacifism And World War I

To understand how Albert Einstein’s pacifist and internationalist thought matured from a youthful inclination to pragmatic initiatives and savvy insights, Holmes gives readers access to Einstein in his own words. Through his private writings, she shows how Einstein’s thoughts and feelings in response to the war evolved from horrified disbelief, to ironic alienation from both the war’s violence and patriotic support for it by the German people, to a kind of bleak endurance. Meanwhile, his outward responses progressed, from supporting initiatives of other pacifists, to developing his own philosophy of a postwar order, to being the impetus behind initiatives. In the beginning of the postwar period, Einstein’s writing reflected an optimism about Germany’s new Weimar Republic and trust in the laudatory effects of military defeat and economic hardship on the German people. He clearly supported the principles in US President Woodrow Wilson’s "Fourteen Points" speech. Yet Einstein’s enthusiasm diminished as he became disappointed in the early Weimar Republic’s leaders and as his aversion to the culture of violence developing in Germany grew. He also felt offended at the betrayal of Wilson’s principles in the Treaty of Versailles. Drawing upon personal correspondence and public proclamations, Holmes offers an intimate and nuanced exploration of the pacifist thought of one of our greatest intellectuals.

A collection of his writings on war, peace, and the atom bomb.

This book explores Albert Einstein's theory of war and peace in a multidisciplinary perspective. The research focuses on the cause of war, the means to prevent it, the distinction between antimilitarism, pacifism, internationalism and federalism, the dividing line between intergovernmental and supranational organizations.

The most famous scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein was also one of the century's most outspoken political activists. Deeply engaged with the events of his tumultuous times, from the two world wars and the Holocaust, to the atomic bomb and the Cold War, to the effort to establish a Jewish homeland, Einstein was a remarkably prolific political writer, someone who took courageous and often unpopular stands against nationalism, militarism, anti-Semitism, racism, and McCarthyism. In Einstein on Politics, leading Einstein scholars David Rowe and Robert Schulmann gather Einstein's most important public and private political writings and put them into historical context. The book reveals a little-known Einstein--not the ineffectual and naïve idealist of popular imagination, but a principled, shrewd pragmatist whose stands on political issues reflected the depth of his humanity. Nothing encapsulates Einstein's profound involvement in twentieth-century politics like the atomic bomb. Here we read the former militant pacifist's 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany might try to develop an atomic bomb. But the book also documents how Einstein tried to explain this action to Japanese pacifists after the United States used atomic weapons to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events that spurred Einstein to call for international control of nuclear technology. A vivid firsthand view of how one of the twentieth century's greatest minds responded to the greatest political challenges of his day, Einstein on Politics will forever change our picture of Einstein's public activism and private motivations.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is universally known as the father of the theory of relativity; however, he was also one of the most eminent pacifists of the first half of the twentieth century. Through his active, pragmatic and nuanced breed of pacifism, he sought to confront the dilemmas and problems stemming from the unstable political conditions of his time: the beginning of the Great War, the creation and failure of the League of Nations, the emergence of totalitarian regimes, the outbreak of the Second World War, the dawn of the Atomic Age, the escalation of the Cold War, the establishment of the United Nations with its apparent institutional weakness and the need for a world government. His reflections on the subject of peace led him into dialogue with the most prestigious figures of the political and cultural world: from Romain Rolland to Bertrand Russell via Georg Friedrich Nicolai, Sigmund Freud, King Albert I of Belgium, Léo Szilárd, Emery Reves and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (amongst others). This dialogue is further emphasized by the book's final section, an anthology of Einstein's writings and speeches, which significantly enriches this study.

Often called he most advanced and celebrated mind of the 20th Century, this book allows us to meet Albert Einstein as a person. Explores his beliefs, philosophical ideas, and opinions on many subjects.