George Rebane
Over the holidays we watched a documentary on the life of Einstein in which his writings, interviews, and speeches were extensively quoted. One of the social attributes that came out about the famed physicist was that he was a pacifist, more accurately an “active pacifist”. In his pacifism he publicly rejected imperialism, colonialism, racism, and gratuitous violence in general (e.g. brushfire wars, military actions to overthrow governments or capture territory, etc).
However, he did not reject all wars and was adamant in maintaining that organized (evil) force can be successfully countered only by organized force. He therefore believed in the good guys always being adequately armed to present a deterrence to the bad guys, but never attacking them first. His most famous expression of this was the letter regarding the development of the atom bomb that he sent to FDR prior to the outbreak of WW2. In this he strongly urged the US to start development of the bomb to counter Hitler’s efforts to do so (which turned out to be unsuccessful).
To shed more light on his attitude and role in promoting the advent of nuclear weapons and their use in Japan, he deeply regretted sending the letter after hearing of Hitler’s failure to develop the bomb. He stated unequivocally that had he known that Germany was going to fail in their enterprise, he never would have communicated with FDR. The documentary did not delve into his attitude about the millions of lives that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs saved by eliminating the need to invade the Japanese home islands.
Having said all this, I had the mild epiphany that I too am and have been an Einsteinian pacifist all my life. I suspect that many of you may also hold this belief. It’s good to get such things clarified before it’s too late.
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