{"id":304743,"date":"2025-10-13T12:01:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T11:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=304743"},"modified":"2025-10-10T08:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:59:15","slug":"albert-einstein-and-the-problem-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/10\/albert-einstein-and-the-problem-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Albert Einstein and the Problem of War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A lifelong pacifist, Einstein never visited the State of Israel, ‘formed from the barrel of a gun, dynamite and the blood of the Palestinians.’
Image: Lucien Aigner \/ Stringer \/ Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Oct 2025 – <\/em>Although Albert Einstein is best-known as a theoretical physicist, he also spent much of his life grappling with the problem of war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1914, shortly after he moved to Berlin to serve as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, Einstein was horrified by the onset of World War I.\u00a0 \u201cEurope, in her insanity, has started something unbelievable,\u201d he told a friend.\u00a0 \u201cIn such times one realizes to what a sad species of animal one belongs.\u201d\u00a0 Writing to the French author Romain Rolland, he wondered whether \u201ccenturies of painstaking cultural effort\u201d have \u201ccarried us no further than . . . the insanity of nationalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

As militarist propaganda swept through Germany, accompanied that fall by a heated patriotic \u201cManifesto\u201d from 93 prominent German intellectuals, Einstein teamed up with the German pacifist Georg Friedrich Nicolai to draft an antiwar response, the \u201cManifesto to Europeans.\u201d\u00a0 Condemning \u201cthis barbarous war\u201d and the \u201chostile spirit\u201d of its intellectual apologists, the Einstein-Nicolai statement maintained that \u201cnationalist passions cannot excuse this attitude which is unworthy of what the world has heretofore called culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the context of the war\u2019s growing destructiveness, Einstein also helped launch and promote a new German antiwar organization, the New Fatherland League, which called for a prompt peace without annexations and the formation of a world government to make future wars impossible.\u00a0 It engaged in petitioning the Reichstag, challenging proposals for territorial gain, and distributing statements by British pacifists.\u00a0 In response, the German government harassed the League and, in 1916, formally suppressed it.<\/p>\n

After the World War came to an end, Einstein became one of the Weimar Republic\u2019s most influential pacifists and internationalists.\u00a0 Despite venomous attacks by Germany\u2019s rightwing nationalists, he grew increasingly outspoken.\u00a0 \u201cI believe the world has had enough of war,\u201d he told an American journalist.\u00a0 \u201cSome sort of international agreement must be reached among nations.\u201d\u00a0 Meanwhile, he promoted organized war resistance, denounced military conscription, and, in 1932, drew Sigmund Freud into a famous exchange of letters<\/a>, later published as Why War<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although technically a Zionist, Einstein had a rather relaxed view of that term, contending that it meant a respect for Jewish rights around the world.\u00a0 Appalled by Palestinian-Jewish violence in British-ruled Palestine, he pleaded for cooperation between the two constituencies.\u00a0 In 1938, he declared<\/a> that he would \u201cmuch rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state.\u201d\u00a0 He disliked \u201cthe idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power,\u201d plus \u201cthe development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most serious challenge to Einstein\u2019s pacifism came with the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933 and the advent of that nation\u2019s imperialist juggernaut.\u00a0 \u201cMy views have not changed,\u201d he told a French pacifist<\/a>, \u201cbut the European situation has.\u201d\u00a0 As long as \u201cGermany persists in rearming and systematically indoctrinating its citizens in preparation for a war of revenge, the nations of Western Europe depend, unfortunately, on military defense.\u201d\u00a0 In his heart, he said, he continued to \u201cloathe violence and militarism as much as ever; but I cannot shut my eyes to realities.\u201d\u00a0 Consequently, Einstein became a proponent of collective security against fascism.<\/p>\n

Fleeing from Nazi Germany, Einstein took refuge in the United States, which became his new home.\u00a0 Thanks to his renown, he was approached in 1939<\/a> by one of his former physics students, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee who brought ominous news about advances in nuclear fission research in Nazi Germany.\u00a0 At Szilard\u2019s urging, Einstein sent a warning letter to President Franklin Roosevelt about German nuclear progress.\u00a0 In response, the U.S. government launched the Manhattan Project, a secret program to build an atomic bomb.<\/p>\n

Einstein, like Szilard, considered the Manhattan Project necessary solely to prevent Nazi Germany\u2019s employment of nuclear weapons to conquer the world.\u00a0 Therefore, when Germany\u2019s war effort neared collapse and the U.S. bomb project neared completion, Einstein helped facilitate a mission by Szilard to Roosevelt with the goal of preventing the use of atomic bombs by the United States.\u00a0 He also fired off an impassioned appeal to the prominent Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, urging scientists to take the lead in heading off a dangerous postwar nuclear arms race.<\/p>\n

Neither venture proved successful, and the U.S. government, under the direction of the new president, Harry Truman, launched the nuclear age with the atomic bombing of Japan.\u00a0 Einstein later remarked<\/a> that his 1939 letter to Roosevelt had been the worst mistake of his life.<\/p>\n

Convinced that humanity now faced the prospect of utter annihilation, Einstein resurrected one of his earlier ideas and organized a new campaign<\/a> against war.\u00a0 \u201cThe only salvation for civilization and the human race,\u201d he told an interviewer in September 1945, \u201clies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law.\u201d \u00a0Again and again, he reiterated this message.\u00a0 In January 1946, he declared:\u00a0 \u201cAs long as there exist sovereign states, each with its own, independent armaments, the prevention of war becomes a virtual impossibility.\u201d\u00a0 Consequently, humanity\u2019s \u201cdesire for peace can be realized only by the creation of a world government.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1946, he and other prominent scientists, fearful of the world\u2019s future, established the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists.\u00a0 As chair of the new venture, Einstein repeatedly assailed militarism, nuclear weapons, and runaway nationalism.\u00a0 \u201cWe shall require a substantially new manner of thinking,\u201d he said<\/a>, \u201cif mankind is to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until his death in 1955, Einstein continued his quest for peace, criticizing the Cold War and the nuclear arms race and calling for<\/a> strengthened global governance as the only \u201cway out of the impasse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, as we face a violent, nuclear-armed world, Einstein\u2019s warnings about unrestrained nationalism and his proposals to control it are increasingly relevant.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/em><\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Einstein was horrified by the onset of World War I and wondered whether \u201ccenturies of painstaking cultural effort\u201d have \u201ccarried us no further than . . . the insanity of nationalism.\u201d Today, as we face a violent, nuclear-armed world, his warnings about unrestrained nationalism and his proposals to control it are increasingly relevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":266085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304744,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304743\/revisions\/304744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}