Sold – As War Clouds Overhang Europe, Einstein Places His Hope On the US

On October 17, 1933, Albert Einstein moved to America, just months after Adolf Hitler took power in his native Germany. The great scientist wasn’t just fleeing persecution as a Jew but also seeking true freedom in which to express his scientific and political views. He explained that he had come to America “because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country,” a freedom he hoped to embrace both in science and in politics. But he was by no means meerly a cheerleader, and could be critical of the United States when its performance failed to meet its ideals or promise.

When one thinks of Europe, one appreciates America!

In 1936, Germany moved its soldiers into the demilitarized Rhineland, thus breaking the Versailles Treaty. The other European nations stood by and did nothing. In Britain and France, many leaders even seemed to welcome the aggression. Then civil war broke out in Spain, and while the Republicans were pressed on all sides and received no aid from the democracies, the Fascists under Franco were heavily supported by Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Then, on April 26, 1937, planes of the German Luftwaffe “Condor Legion” and the Italian Fascist Aviazione Legionaria bombed the Basque town of Guernica, causing widespread death and destruction, with many left homeless. The Basque government reported 1,654 people killed in what was just the first example of pure terror bombing; in coming years it would be a commonplace. This act caused widespread revulsion around the world, and organizations sprung up to help Spanish refugees, especially children. Britain and France were aroused to sympathy and many refugees were in fact brought there. The hope arose that maybe now the democracies would help the Spanish Republican government to survive, but those that entertained that hope were destined to be disappointed. Einstein watched this with a little hope perhaps, but he was mainly sceptical. In the United States, Einstein saw a somewhat different story. Although officially neutral, many Americans overtly supported the Republicans, including Mrs. Roosevelt. Her husband, the President, started by fearing the war would spread and just wanting it to end quickly, but he came to see the threat the Fascists posed to American security. He took no steps to halt the very public activities of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a mostly-American volunteer unit that sent thousands of men to Spain to join in the actual fighting. The Spanish Republican cause was popular in America.

Einstein saw the world descending into chaos and began to think that the United States was the best hope for the future. Autograph Letter Signed, in German, written at his cottage overlooking Long Island Sound, c. June 1937, to Ruth Norden, who was responsible for translating a number of Einstein’s writings into English. One of these was his 1938 article “Why do they hate the Jews?”, which was his only public discussion of Hitler’s campaign against the Jews. “I want to thank you very much for the two translations. They were so good that they were able to be used without the least bit of change. The intervention because of the doctor for the Stuttgart consular, by the way, did not help in the least, so that now I do not know at all what I could do in this scandalous matter that has little prospect of success. It would please me very much if you could visit us, especially since I now have a small sailboat, which we call Tinef [meaning, amusingly, ‘junk’] because of its impressive characteristics. It is unfortunately difficult to get to our house, because it is rather far from the Huntington train station. In the Spanish matter, the English and the French are acting energetically, but one can hardly take them seriously anymore. When one thinks of Europe, one appreciates America!”

Einstein applied for U.S. citizenship and received it in 1940. He stated then, “America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice.”