Biologists Under Hitler
by: Ute Deichmann / Thomas Dunlap (Translator)

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st US, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with minor edgewear, 468 pages. Biologists under Hitler combines exhaustive research with capsule biographies of key scientists to overturn certain assumptions about science under the Nazi regime. Biological research, for instance, was neither neglected nor underfunded during World War II; funding by the German Research Association (DFG) in fact increased tenfold between 1933 and 1938, and genetic research in particular flourished. Deichmann shows that the forced emigration of Jews had a less significant impact in biology than in other fields. Furthermore, she reveals that the widely observed decline in German biology after 1945 was not caused primarily by the Third Reich's science policy or by the expulsion of biologists but was due to the international isolation of German scientists as part of the legacy of National Socialism. Her book also provides overwhelming evidence of German scientists' conscious misrepresentation after the war of their wartime activities. In this regard, Deichmann's capsule biography of Konrad Lorenz is particularly telling. Clean copy.