Heroes, monsters and people: When it comes to moral choices, outstanding physicists are very ordinary

Did German physicists have a plan in the 1930s? And if so, was their physics any help?

Last week, on the plane back from Chicago, I finished Philip Ball's book about physics in Germany in the nineteen-thirties and -forties. I'm still thinking about it, and I'm trying to work out why it has left such a strong impression. I think it is because the compromises, recriminations and judgements formed have echoes, weak but clear, in so many other arguments going on today.

It is difficult to be nuanced about Nazis. There are obvious reasons for this, but it is nevertheless sometimes important to try. That genocidal ideology came from somewhere, and looking back on the period through a lens which colours everyone as hero or monster is not necessarily helpful for gaining understanding, and therefore not necessarily a good approach to the prevention of such abominations in future.