Einstein was a remarkable man, but I believe his greatest strength lay not in discovering the theory of relativity, but in his keen political acumen.
On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler officially took office as Chancellor of Germany, marking the beginning of the Nazi era. On that very same day, Einstein, accompanied by his wife Elsa, successfully fled Germany and set off on a visit to the United States.
The Nazis’ discrimination and persecution of Jews had begun long before Hitler seized supreme power, though the severity was nowhere near what it would later become. Nevertheless, Einstein recognized the danger in the Nazis’ everyday behavior.
In 1931, in a letter to a friend, Einstein expressed his desire to renounce his German citizenship. “The dissolution of the parliament, the economic collapse, the street fights by the Nazis, and the weakness of the Republican Party, all of these foreshadow the impending disaster.” Even before Hitler had seized power, Einstein was already considering leaving Germany permanently.
In early 1933, a U.S.-funded delegation aimed at “promoting German-American friendship” extended an invitation to Einstein. Einstein quickly seized upon this hint from abroad and successfully fled Germany on the very day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor.
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As soon as Hitler came to power, he immediately began a systematic and organized campaign to eradicate Jewish cultural influence. On March 2, 1933, Einstein, along with a group of artists and writers, was fiercely attacked by the Nazi party newspaper *Der Volksbeobachter*.
On March 10, 1933, Einstein delivered a speech in the United States: “As long as I still have a choice, I wish to live only in a country that is politically free, tolerant, and where all are equal before the law. Freedom of speech and the freedom to publish political opinions in writing are also part of political freedom, and respect for individual beliefs is part of tolerance. None of these conditions currently exist in Germany. There, especially those who have made it their mission to promote mutual understanding among nations, are being brutally persecuted.”
In May 1933, Propaganda Minister Goebbels instigated the “book burnings” (the burning of politically incorrect books) within Germany. The poet Heinrich Heine had once prophetically observed that it was but a short step from burning books to burning people.
Einstein, who was in the United States at the time, refused the German ambassador’s order to return to Germany. Instead, he sailed back to Europe, arriving at the German legation in Brussels on May 26, where he surrendered his passport and renounced his German citizenship. From that moment on, Einstein severed all ties with Germany forever.
The German philosopher Cassirer
Another figure who, like Einstein, had a clear understanding of the Nazis was the German philosopher Cassirer.
Cassirer was a leading representative of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, the author of “The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms” and “The Philosophy of Man,” and also a Jew.
In the spring of 1933, shortly after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Cassirer had already discerned the true nature of the Nazis and he had no doubt that they would resort to any act of madness.
“The extermination of the Jews” was the goal of the Nazi Party, and this goal never changed. However, when Hitler first came to power, he felt his hold on power was not yet secure and had to be mindful of his international image. Consequently, his policies toward the Jews were often erratic, alternating between brutal persecution and apparent periods of leniency. This intermittent leniency lulled a significant number of Jews into a false sense of security, as they believed that conditions would soon improve or stabilize at a tolerable level.
But Cassirer saw through the essence of Nazism in the party’s program and its day-to-day conduct. Nazism was, by its very nature, irrational and destructive; its ultimate goal was by no means the persecution of Jews in the general sense, but rather their extermination.
Cassirer confided to his wife, “People like us have nothing left to strive for or hope for in Germany.” He added, “I suspect this regime will last ten years, but the evil it has unleashed may persist for a hundred and fifty years.”
On May 2, 1933, four months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Cassirer resigned as president of the University of Hamburg and fled Germany in time. He first lectured at the University of Oxford in England, then went on to teach in Sweden and the United States, where he died in New York in 1945.
The thinker Freud
When news of Goebbels’ book burnings reached another thinker, Freud, whose books were also among those being burned. Freud, living in Vienna at the time, remarked rather naively: “They’ve made great progress! In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me, now they’re content to burn only my books.”
At that time, Freud believed the Nazis would only burn books and at the very least, as an Austrian citizen, he believed he was safe.
But Freud’s naivety was soon shattered. On March 11, 1938, German troops invaded Austria.
Friends urged and pressed Freud to leave as soon as possible, but he was extremely reluctant, replying that emigrating abroad was like a soldier abandoning his post.
His friends finally persuaded Freud by recounting the story of the second mate on the *Titanic*. When the “Titanic” began to sink and the boilers exploded, Second Mate Lethauer was thrown to the surface by the shock wave and survived. Later, during an interrogation, when asked why he had abandoned ship, Lethauer replied, “I never left the ship, the ship left me.”
The obstacles to escape also stemmed from internal perceptions: “I never left Austria, it was Austria that left me.” This provided Freud with some comfort.
Freud finally resolved to emigrate to England with his entire family, but by this point, the journey was fraught with difficulties. “German military aircraft had seized control of the airports, and the streets of Vienna were crawling with Nazi tanks. Austrian Nazis who had long been in hiding poured into the streets, wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands.” Overnight, the Nazis had become ubiquitous in Austria.
Fortunately, the international community expressed strong concern for Freud’s personal safety. Following President Roosevelt’s instructions, a car from the U.S. Embassy was stationed day and night near Freud’s residence. Should Freud’s life be threatened, the car would intervene and rescue him in the name of the United States.
Under international pressure, Nazi Germany agreed to allow Freud to leave the country, but only after he paid an “Imperial Escape Tax” of over 30,000 marks. He could not come up with that much money immediately and had no choice but to borrow from friends and relatives.
But the Nazis were not satisfied. They wanted to extort as much money as possible from him. On March 15, 1938, three Nazi SA members stormed into his home and looted the household funds intended for daily expenses. A week later, the SA members stormed into Freud’s home again, conducting an even more thorough search, and took away his beloved daughter.
Thanks to strong intervention from the United States, Freud’s daughter was finally allowed to return home safely after several hours of interrogation.
After enduring repeated exploitation, humiliation, and intimidation, the Freud family was granted permission to leave Austria. But there was one final formality to complete: Freud had to sign a statement.
The statement read: “I, Professor Freud, hereby certify that following Austria’s annexation by the German Empire, the German authorities, particularly the Gestapo, have shown me respect and courtesy commensurate with my reputation in the scientific community. I have been able to move about freely according to my own will and have no cause for complaint.”
Freud signed the statement but added a line: “I would like to wholeheartedly recommend the Gestapo to everyone!” The Gestapo took this as a compliment.
On June 4, Freud and his family left Vienna by train and settled in London, England.
Jews who did not flee
Jews like Einstein, Cassirer, and Freud, who fled early on, were relatively few in number. A vast number of Jews who did not flee perished in the Nazi Holocaust.
Among them, many could have easily fled during the early stages of Nazi rule. The primary reasons they did not flee and ultimately perished in the Holocaust were, first, their love for Germany, and second, their misguided perception of the Nazis.
Many Jews had lived in Germany for many generations; they identified strongly with the country, which they considered their homeland. Numerous Jews had fought on the front lines for Germany during World War I, sacrificing their lives and shedding their blood, and had been awarded medals of honor. They were unwilling to believe that Germany would ultimately have no place for them.
For example, Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate Fritz Haber was a Jewish scientist who had devoted himself entirely to Germany and believed his work to be noble. After the Nazis came to power, Haber was expelled from the country. This dealt him a severe psychological blow, and he died the following year (1934).
Out of their trust in human nature, most German Jews did not anticipate that they would be hunted down and exterminated. In her memoir *My Life*, Golda Meir, who played a key role in the founding of Israel and served as Israel’s Minister of Labor, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Prime Minister, wrote:
“At the time, no one, including myself, could have imagined in their wildest dreams that Hitler’s vow to exterminate the Jews would actually be carried out. In a sense, I believe this can be attributed to the basic trust that good people have. We did not believe that such extreme evil could actually happen, or that the world would allow such evil to occur. This is not to say we were gullible, but simply that we could not imagine what was unimaginable at the time. Yet today, for me, there is nothing left that is unimaginable.”
Not everyone possesses “humanity”. Human evil is sometimes truly unimaginable.
At first, they were reluctant to leave Germany and by the time they wanted to leave, it was too late. They could only submit to the Nazis’ mercy and ultimately met a tragic and humiliating death at the barrel of a gun or in a gas chamber.
Those who see the essence in a second versus those who spend half a lifetime and still fail to see it
There’s a proverb: “The early bird catches the worm.” How can this be explained? Perhaps the stories of Einstein and others can illustrate it.
Einstein and Cassirer fled early, taking their entire families with them, leaving behind a carefree life. Freud fled late, abandoning a vast fortune and enduring all sorts of harassment, but he managed to escape in the end. As for those who only thought to flee after the Holocaust had begun, they were completely unable to escape.
History teaches us that in any era, the fate of those who see the essence of a situation in a single second is naturally very different from that of those who spend half their lives unable to see it clearly.
No change in tyranny can be hoped for through the self-awakening of its architects. When one refuses to collude with the Nazis but lacks the courage or means to resist them head-on, there are only two choices: death or flight.
In “Forrest Gump,” Forrest says, “If you get into trouble, don’t try to be a hero, just run, run far away.” “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
After Einstein, many other outstanding scientists also fled Germany one after another, including Lise Meitner, hailed as the “Mother of the Atomic Bomb.” If this large group of world-class scientists had remained in Germany to serve Hitler, Germany might have been the first to build an atomic bomb, it’s hard to imagine what the world would be like today!
After Einstein fled Germany, he faced unanimous condemnation from all sectors of German society and was even hunted down across borders by the Gestapo. Throughout his life, Einstein harbored a deep hatred for his native Germany. As Jagen Naffi, author of *The Life of Einstein*, put it: “Einstein hated the Nazis, and therefore he hated the German people; naturally, he also hated Germany.”
But in today’s Germany, would anyone still deny that Einstein was a patriot?
In Germany, there are at least 30 schools named after Einstein. There is an Einstein tourist route where visitors can tour the places where he worked and lived. Television programs and books about Einstein continue to appear in abundance.
In 2003, Germany held a poll to select “Germany’s Greatest Figures”; millions of television viewers participated in the voting, and Einstein ranked among the top 10 on the list.
The year 2005 marked the 50th anniversary of Einstein’s death (he passed away on April 18, 1955), and the German government designated it as “Einstein Year,” organizing a wide variety of large-scale commemorative events. Giant letters spelling out “E=mc²” were even painted in red on the exterior walls of the Chancellery and other government buildings.
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