Courtesy of Harris & Ewing Collection/LOC

Albert Einstein on Politics

From pacifism to pragmatism

Albert Einstein is remembered as one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century, but he was also a persistent political voice. Living through two world wars, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust, and the start of the nuclear age, he did not keep his opinions private. He openly criticized nationalism, describing it as “an infantile disease, the measles of mankind,” (a statement he gave to Viereck when asked if he considered himself to be a German or a Jew) and he saw himself first as a human being rather than as the citizen of any single country. For him, allegiance to humanity mattered more than flags, borders, or slogans. That perspective was forged by his own experience as a refugee from Nazi Germany, when his warnings about fascism proved prophetic.

Yet even as a self-proclaimed pacifist, he fought, quite blatantly, with harsh choices. He signed the famous 1939 letter to Roosevelt urging attention to nuclear research out of fear the Nazis might build the bomb first. Later, when the Manhattan Project bore fruit in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was haunted by the role he had played in opening that door. “I am a dedicated but not an absolute pacifist,” he said.

… All these motives have made me a passionate pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism…