When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Planck held positions
of power in several state supported scientific institutions and–though it
had been many years since he'd produced any scientific work of note–was
one of the leaders of the German scientific community. As Adolf
Hitler began to turn the country upside down, Planck had a choice:
to leave or to stay. He decided, without hesitation, to stay for
this was his country, and he would fight for its survival. But
this left Planck with another choice: to go along with the new
government's policies or protest what he believed to be wrong.
For Planck, this was a trickier decision. He didn't have
the temperament for political agitation, and he felt that he could
best serve his colleagues by keeping his good standing with the
government. Planck originally considered resigning from his posts
in protest, but he felt that he would be shirking his duty. He
believed that his peers looked up to him for both practical and
emotional support, no matter how much he might have liked to leave
public life. So Planck decided to go with the flow, doing what
he could, as quietly as he could, from behind the scenes. He advised
his colleagues to do the same: stay quiet, wait things out, not
speak their consciences, and hope things would soon improve.
This led Planck into many a difficult situation, as he
tried to hold a balance between what he knew was right and what
he thought was smart. The bolder the Nazis became, the more Planck
was forced to go along with policies he disliked. One of the scientific academies
that Planck headed, the Kasier-Wilhelm- Gesellschaft, was eventually
forced to officially align itself with the Nazis. Its building
flew a swastika, and its leaders were required to give the Hitler
salute at official meetings. A witness to one of these meetings remembered
Planck's reluctance to participate, and his eventual acquiescence:
"Planck stood on the rostrum and lifted his hand half high, and
let it sink again. He did it a second time. Then finally the hand
came up, and he said 'Heil Hitler.'"
One of the more famous moments in which Planck was forced
to confront his conscience and decide whether or not to go along
with the ruling party was in the early 1930s, as Germany attempted
to deal with its brightest star: Albert Einstein. Einstein and
Planck weren't merely colleagues in a close-knit community. Planck
had been one of the first reputable physicists to support Einstein's
theory of relativity, and it was due in large part to this support
that Einstein's work was accepted by his fellow scientists.
In the decades since then, Einstein had become the biggest
star of German physics, an international figure who made it nearly
impossible for the rest of the world to completely shun the German
physics community. Planck knew that it was of supreme importance
to keep Einstein in Germany and to keep him happy, and he did all
he could to make that happen. But by 1933, Einstein, who was Jewish,
had had enough of Germany's anti-Semitic policies, of those who claimed
his work was nothing but Jewish pseudoscience, and of those who
derided his work and threatened his life. That year, Einstein resigned
his post and left Germany forever.
When this happened, the government insisted that the Berlin Academy
of Sciences expel Einstein publicly to punish him for his traitorous
behavior. The secretary of the Academy, Ernst Heymann complied,
issuing a scathing statement about Einstein's supposed "work of
agitation abroad" and expressing no sorrow that Einstein had chosen
to leave. The members of the Academy voted in overwhelming majority
to support the statement. Einstein responded harshly, by claiming
that no good German would support Germany at such a time and that
by staying in the country, he would have indirectly contributed
to "the brutalization of morals and the destruction of all contemporary
civilization."
Into this battlefield stepped Planck, hopeful that he
could find a peaceful middle ground that would embarrass neither
Einstein nor his government. In the minutes of the May 11, 1933
meeting of the Academy, he reaffirmed Einstein's tremendous scientific
contributions and offering regret that Einstein had found it necessary
to leave.
Planck may have felt that he had accomplished some tangible goal
in moderating the situation, but the end result was the same. Germany
had lost Einstein, and then the country had made itself look even
worse in the eyes of the world by acting pleased that Einstein
was gone. Did Planck accomplish anything with his subtle acts of
resistance? Many of his colleagues agreed that he did. Thanks to
his gentle interventions, the Academy was allowed to retain a much higher
degree of independence than it might have otherwise. It did manage
to retain its Jewish members and employees for many more years
than other German organizations did. This certainly had at least
something to do with Planck's efforts. But Planck could not stand
in the way of history–at least, not history as determined by Hitler.
In 1938, the Academy was finally forced to expel its Jewish members,
and it was Planck's responsibility to request their resignation.
