Einstein on the Run Read online

  What were Locker-Lampson’s real motives in making his undoubtedly generous offer? With someone of his dissembling contradictions it is difficult to be sure, as we shall constantly discover while his intriguing and crucial relationship with Einstein unfolds during the second half of 1933.

  There is an unintentional clue in the letter’s opening paragraph. Locker-Lampson claims vaguely to have met Einstein in person in Oxford ‘when Lord Haldane was still with us’. That is, during Einstein’s flying visit to Oxford in 1921 (not in 1931), given that Haldane died in 1928. But this supposed memory is extremely unlikely to be true, since Einstein met virtually no one in Oxford (not even the vice-chancellor), other than his host Lindemann, during the few hours he spent in Oxford on 14 June 1921. Perhaps Locker-Lampson misremembered and actually met Einstein in London in June 1921, maybe at Haldane’s private reception or the official dinner after Einstein’s speech at King’s College? But if so, there is no record of his presence in the detailed contemporary newspaper and magazine reports listing distinguished guests and visitors at these events, despite the fact that Commander Locker-Lampson was by 1921 a fairly well-known political figure: a long-time friend of Winston Churchill, and the parliamentary private secretary of the chancellor of the exchequer, Austen Chamberlain, in 1919–21, with whom he had attended the 1919 Versailles peace conference. So it seems most probable that Locker-Lampson’s claimed encounter with Einstein in England was simply a convenient fantasy.

  Much stronger evidence of his tendency to embroider historical facts comes from Locker-Lampson’s bizarre article, ‘Adolf Hitler as I know him’, published in late September 1930, shortly after the Nazi Party made its first major electoral gains in Germany, in the Daily Mirror, which was then a right-wing national newspaper. So bizarre, in fact, that the article is worth discussing at considerable length – given the importance of Locker-Lampson’s coming role in Einstein’s life in England during September 1933.

  It began with a tantalising tale about Hitler, the war of 1914–18 and cricket. ‘My first recollection of Herr Hitler is remote and casual.’ Locker-Lampson was then supposedly in south Germany, talking to some British officers who had been prisoners of war in Germany. Hitler was much on their minds because of the latest news of his failure to grab power in the 1923 Munich Putsch. They recalled that he had been in hospital while they were in a prisoner-of-war camp on parole. One day Hitler had come to them and asked if he might watch a cricket eleven at play, so as to initiate himself into the mysteries of the British national game. They welcomed him, and wrote out the rules ‘in the best British sport-loving spirit’. With these, Hitler vanished. However, he returned a few days later and announced that he was already training a German team and was looking for an early opportunity to challenge his British instructors. ‘I believe they even played a friendly match.’

  Even more significantly, Hitler returned again with the astonishing information that he had reflected over the rules of cricket, and wished to alter them radically to suit serious-minded Teutons rather than hedonistic British people. Among his essential improvements were the discontinuance of pads, which he dismissed as ‘unmanly and un-German’, and the introduction of a bigger and harder ball. In other words, Hitler saw cricket not as his ‘innocent’ British instructors did, but instead as ‘a possible medium for the training of troops off duty and in times of peace’.

  Then Locker-Lampson gave a laudatory analysis of Hitler the up-and-coming politician (though without lending any support to anti-Semitism), apparently based on personal knowledge. Before his current fame, ‘he seemed just an ordinary German officer with . . . tooth-brush moustache in the latest military style, a soft collar always united with a pin shaped like a swastika, and eyes hidden behind loaded lids – suggestive of hidden fire and fury. Even when he spoke in his deep guttural voice, we were not necessarily thrilled.’ However, ‘after a few hours in his company any honest observer must admit that folk become electrified. The temperature of the room rises in his presence. He enhances the value of life. He makes his humblest follower feel twice the man.’

  That said, the political difficulties in Hitler’s way were still formidable, Locker-Lampson conceded, in a country with fifteen parties, in which his own party – the Nazi Party – comprised more than the usual ragbag of competing views and ambitions. How to unite these when his party got into power might prove even trickier for Hitler than how to reconcile them out of office. ‘But he means to ride off on the patriotic ticket, and play for a tear-up of the treaties and a rip-up of reparations. That is his soul’s consecration – that is what makes him a legendary hero already.’

  Finally, the article reverted to cricket. Hitler’s ‘motto’, suggested Locker-Lampson, might be the German motto he had suggested during the world war to his British cricketing friends when he was rewriting the old game’s rules: ‘Ohne Hast, ohne Rest’ (without haste, without rest). ‘Only I doubt his ability to wait – or his country’s wish that he should.’

  No reliable evidence exists for the accuracy of Locker-Lampson’s cricket story. Notwithstanding a claim made in The Times in 2010 that the story is ‘true’, it is very unlikely to be factual, according to current historians of early Nazism (such as Thomas Weber, author of Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi), given the authoritative details of Hitler’s war record and his probable lack of knowledge of conversational English in 1914–18. Nor is there any evidence, including the draft for Locker-Lampson’s unwritten memoirs, that he ever met Hitler in person in Germany during the 1920s, although such a meeting is certainly conceivable, given his open sympathy at this time for both Germany and Fascism – in Italy, as well as Germany – if not for anti-Semitism. In 1931, Locker-Lampson founded a short-lived patriotic movement with semi-Fascist leanings, the Sentinels of Empire, also known as the Blue Shirts. It held mass rallies in London’s Albert Hall, led by Locker-Lampson, who composed its anthem, ‘March on!’ (set to music from the British Gaumont film, High Treason), which he sent to Benito Mussolini on a 78-rpm phonographic record along with Blue Shirts silver and blue-enamelled cufflinks and a badge. And he himself received a gold cigarette case, a gift from an influential Nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, as a ‘token of his esteem’ (an item that Locker-Lampson, to his credit, did not accept). Yet, Time magazine joked, after attending a Blue Shirts Albert Hall rally, that few people expected Locker-Lampson to become ‘in more than nickname “Britain’s Hitler”, much less “Britain’s Mussolini”’. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that he worshipped, and wanted for himself, some of the glamour of famous people. In 1930, his icon was apparently Hitler; by mid-1933, it had certainly become Einstein.

  Had Einstein been aware of Locker-Lampson’s Daily Mirror article, he would presumably have avoided any kind of association with him. Even the public letter Locker-Lampson now addressed to Hitler, printed in The Times on 1 April 1933 as a postscript to the newspaper’s long report on the ‘Nazi boycott of Jews’, could hardly have appealed to Einstein. While sounding a new note of warning about Nazi anti-Semitism, Locker-Lampson’s letter retained some of the commander’s earlier praise for the German leader in its opening phrase: ‘As a member of Parliament and former officer who has always and openly stood for Germany’s claims to military equality and territorial revision and who has been for years your sincere admirer . . .’. But it continued less positively: ‘I take the liberty of calling your attention to the fact that the decision to discriminate against the German Jews has had a most damaging effect upon the good feeling for Germany which was growing stronger and which culminated on your accession to power.’ Then it reverted to praise: ‘We hoped to see Germany strengthened under your leadership . . .’. But it concluded: ‘This action against the Jews is making the work of myself and other friends of Germany almost impossible. Forgive me, Chancellor, for these frank words of an Englishman who has often cheered you in your meetings in Germany.’ (When Locker-Lampson stepped up his public campaign in the mid-1930s, and became
a noted sponsor of desperate German-Jewish refugees, Hitler eventually retorted by calling Locker-Lampson ‘a Jew and a Communist’!)

  Einstein in Tom Quad, the main quadrangle of Christ Church, Oxford, the college where he lived in June 1933. By now, Einstein was a refugee from Germany, his houses and bank account having recently been confiscated by the Nazi regime.

  However, it seems that Einstein was ignorant of Locker-Lampson’s politics at the time of the commander’s invitation. At any rate, he had no wish to abandon his independent life by the sea in Belgium and move to metropolitan London. While thanking Locker-Lampson for his offer, he declined it. Yet, he and his wife would keep the possibility of such an English refuge in mind.

  Instead, Einstein began to plan a further month in Oxford, as well as a visit to Glasgow in Scotland, where he had agreed to give a lecture on the history of general relativity at the University of Glasgow on 20 June. During early May, there was a revealing exchange of letters between Einstein in Le Coq and Lindemann in Oxford, mixing science with politics.

  RETURN TO OXFORD

  It started with a brief letter from Einstein on 1 May about returning to England. He began: ‘I am sitting here in my very pleasant exile with Professor Mayer.’ He would be in Glasgow on 20 June. Could he visit Oxford again that month? Might Christ Church be able to offer him a small room? It need not be so ‘grand’ as his previous lodgings in 1931 and 1932. Then Einstein abruptly switched subjects and alluded to politics: ‘You have probably heard of my little duel with the Prussian Academy. I shall never see the land of my birth again.’ Finally he mentioned physics: he had worked out with Professor Mayer ‘a couple of wonderful new results of a mathematical-physical kind’.

  Lindemann replied immediately on 4 May, saying that he would have written earlier but had had no address for Einstein, and that he gathered from the newspapers that ‘there was not much prospect of a letter to Berlin being forwarded’. He naturally welcomed Einstein’s visit, but suggested that, since Oxford’s Trinity term would end on 16 June, Einstein should arrive at the end of May, so that his visit to Glasgow would fall ‘at the end of your stay instead of in the middle of it’. A set of rooms would be available, but ‘as we did not know your plans I am afraid they will be somewhat smaller than last year’.

  Then he discussed his own recent visit to Berlin, for four or five days in mid-April over Easter, when he had seen many of Einstein’s German colleagues. About the Prussian Academy’s condemnation of Einstein and the wider political situation he commented:

  The general feeling was much against the action taken by the Academy, which was the responsibility of one of the secretaries without consultation with the members. I can tell you more about it when you come. Everybody sent you their kind regards, more especially Schrödinger, but it was felt that it would be damaging to all concerned to write to you, especially as the letter would almost certainly not be forwarded. Conditions there were extremely curious. It seems, however, that the Nazis have got their hands on the machine and they will probably be there for a long time.

  Lindemann went on to consider what could be done to help some of the German-Jewish physicists, by trying to find them positions at Oxford. ‘I need scarcely say that very little money is available and that it would cause a lot of feeling, even if it were possible to place them in positions normally occupied by Englishmen.’ He specified two promising individuals, Hans Bethe and Fritz London (the first of whom would win a Nobel prize), recommended to him by Einstein’s non-Jewish colleague, the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld. Lindemann asked whether Einstein would be willing to recommend Bethe and London too, while adding characteristically: ‘Perhaps there are others whom you might consider better, but I have the impression that anyone trained by Sommerfeld is the sort of man who can work out a problem and get an answer, which is what we really need in Oxford rather than the more abstract type who would spend his time disputing with the philosophers.’ This was the launch of Lindemann’s historic campaign to obtain funding for notable refugee experimental physicists to come to Oxford in 1933–34. He would help a group of distinguished Jews, including the low-temperature physicist Franz (later Sir Francis) Simon, who became a professor at Oxford, worked on the atomic bomb project and eventually took over from Lindemann as head of the Clarendon Laboratory.

  Einstein responded on 7 May, advising that he would try to reach England on 21 May. Lindemann should not go to any bother about his accommodation because he would need only ‘one room’ in order to be comfortable. About politics, he added ominously, ‘I think that the Nazis have got the whip hand in Berlin.’ He had been told on good authority that the Nazis were hurriedly collecting war materiel, notably aeroplanes. ‘If they are given another year or two the world will have another fine experience at the hands of the Germans.’ As for the two physicists mentioned by Lindemann, he recommended London as ‘a great source of strength’ but said he knew too little about Bethe to express an opinion. Regardless of which individuals might be chosen, he was very grateful to Lindemann for his efforts to relieve refugee physicists. He offered to give a third of his salary that year to help his threatened German-Jewish colleagues.

  Then, on 9 May, Einstein wrote again very briefly, announcing that he would not be able to arrive in Oxford until about the 26th because his younger son had been taken seriously ill. If he were to have any mental peace in England, he could not wait six weeks before seeing him in Zurich. ‘You are not a father yourself, but I know you will certainly understand.’ Not long before heading for Oxford in late May, he would see his son, Eduard, a long-term psychiatric patient suffering from schizophrenia, who was being looked after by his ex-wife, Mileva, and by professional clinics, in Zurich. Einstein chose to stay with Mileva. ‘There is no written evidence about Einstein’s feelings when he visited his son,’ noted Einstein’s German biographer Albrecht Fölsing. ‘No doubt he was profoundly shaken, and he certainly determined to make sure his son’s future was financially secure.’ Although Einstein would remain in touch with Eduard by letter, he would never see his son, or his ex-wife, again. (Eduard Einstein survived his father, dying in a Swiss psychiatric hospital in 1965.)

  The landing card completed by Einstein on arrival in Britain at Dover, 26 May 1933. It notes his nationality at birth as German, but his current nationality as Swiss; and that his British residence will be in Oxford.

  One decidedly puzzling omission from this May correspondence with Lindemann was the Herbert Spencer lecture in Oxford, which Einstein had agreed to give in Trinity term 1933, during his Oxford visit in May 1932. Neither Einstein nor Lindemann refers to the lecture at all. (Nor was it mentioned in a substantial report on ‘Einstein as an Oxford don’ published in the Manchester Guardian on 17 April 1933, which noted that Einstein was expected in Oxford during the summer term.) Although the lecture actually took place at Rhodes House on 10 June 1933, it would appear that this date must have been settled by Einstein at the very last minute, relatively speaking – either shortly before he left Le Coq in mid-May or perhaps soon after he arrived in Oxford on 26 May. Whichever was the case, the lecture must surely have been prepared under conditions of much personal and professional stress for Einstein, exacerbated by the Nazi announcement in mid-May of the seizure of his and his wife’s German financial assets.

  As he informed Max Born – who had just escaped from Germany to the Italian Alps and would soon settle in Britain – on 30 May, in a letter sent from the cloistered calm of Christ Church: ‘You know, I think, that I have never had a particularly favourable opinion of the Germans (morally and politically speaking). But I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise to me.’ He concluded: ‘I’ve been promoted to an “evil monster” in Germany, and all my money has been taken away from me. But I console myself with the thought that the latter would soon be gone anyway.’

  Moreover, at a public event in Oxford’s University Museum on 2 June Einstein appeared sorely in need of pub
lic reassurance. He had been invited to offer a vote of thanks for a lecture by Rutherford to the Junior Scientific Society on ‘The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements’. Not only was Rutherford a Nobel laureate, like Einstein, he was also a peer of the realm, the 1st Baron Rutherford, and, in addition to his honours, a big booming extrovert with a voice loud enough to disturb sensitive scientific experimental apparatus – according to a standing joke among his Cavendish Laboratory co-workers in Cambridge. Lord Rutherford made quite a contrast with the smaller figure of Einstein, a theoretician who typically worked alone at home or in an office, never in a laboratory, and was naturally unconfident at public speaking in English. According to one of the Oxford undergraduates at the lecture, C. H. Arnold, Einstein seemed ‘a poor forlorn little figure’ beside Rutherford. While Einstein was delivering his speech of thanks, somehow coping with English, ‘it seemed to me that he was more than a little doubtful about the way in which he would be received in a British university’. However, the moment he sat down, he was greeted by a thunderous outburst of applause. As Arnold vividly recalled more than three decades later: