Political views of Albert Einstein

This is an accepted version of this page German-born scientist Albert Einstein was best known during his lifetime for his development of the theory of relativity, his contributions to quantum mechanics, and many other notable achievements in modern physics.

His visible position in society allowed him to speak and write frankly, even provocatively, at a time when many people were being silenced across the European continent due to the swift rise of Nazism in Germany.

Einstein, an Ashkenazi Jew, was staunchly opposed to the policies of the Nazi government, and after his family was repeatedly harassed by the Gestapo, he renounced his German citizenship and permanently relocated to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1940.

Though he held a generally positive view of the country's culture and values, he frequently objected to the systematic mistreatment of African Americans and became active in their civil rights movement.

During the 1930s and into World War II, Einstein wrote affidavits recommending United States visas for European Jews who were trying to flee persecution and lobbied for looser immigration rules.

[12] In 1944 Einstein stated "Behind the Nazi party stands the German people, who elected Hitler after he had in his book and in his speeches made his shameful intentions clear beyond the possibility of misunderstanding".

[17] When African American singer and civil rights supporter Marian Anderson was denied rooms at hotels and forbidden to eat at public restaurants, Einstein invited her to his home.

In 1946, he travelled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to black students.

[18] When two black couples were murdered in Monroe, Georgia, and justice was not served, Einstein was so outraged that he lent his prominence to actor and activist Paul Robeson's American Crusade to End Lynching and wrote a letter to President Truman calling for prosecution of lynchers and passage of a federal anti-lynching law.

In 1931, Einstein joined Theodore Dreiser's committee to protest the injustice experienced by the Scottsboro Boys, a group of African American teenagers convicted of rape by an all-white jury.

[19] In 1946, Einstein also came out in support of Willie McGee, a black Mississippi sharecropper who was sentenced to death after being accused of raping a white woman.

Millions of Jews perished... because there was no spot on the globe where they could find sanctuary...The Jewish survivors demand the right to dwell amid brothers, on the ancient soil of their fathers."

My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest.

On the spring of 1948, during the war, Einstein was asked to write a letter that would be auctioned in an event to raise money for the Haganah Zionist paramilitary organization.

[42] In 1949 Einstein wrote in a letter to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem that this period is "the fulfillment of our dreams", but that he regrets that "we were compelled by the adversities of our situation to assert our rights through force of arms; it was the only way to avert complete annihilation".

[45] Einstein supported vice president Henry Wallace's Progressive Party during the 1948 Presidential election which advocated a pro-Soviet and pro-Israel foreign policy.

To make things worse, during the first days of McCarthyism, Einstein was writing about a single world government believing "There can never be complete agreement on international control and the administration of atomic energy or on general disarmament until there is a modification of the traditional concept of national sovereignty.

"[52] J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, promoted a letter from the Woman Patriot Corporation accusing Einstein of left-wing radicalism and imploring the government to bar him from entry to the United States.

Du Bois was accused of being a Communist spy, Einstein volunteered as a character witness, and the case was dismissed shortly afterward.

[56] In 1953, in a letter to Rose Russell, a member of the Teachers Union of the City of New York, Einstein described the McCarthy hearings as "using people as tools for the prosecution of others that one wants to label as 'unorthodox.

In 1953, William Frauenglass, a New York City school teacher who, having been called to testify, refused, and facing dismissal from his position, wrote to Einstein for support.

In his reply, Einstein stated: "The reactionary politicians have managed to instill suspicion of all intellectual efforts into the public by dangling before their eyes a danger from without.

", he wrote:I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.Einstein's opinions on the Bolsheviks changed with time.

[63] In 1949 Einstein stated "The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening?

[64] Einstein held Georgism (named after the political economist Henry George) in high regard, writing in 1934: "One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice.

[68][69] In his "Open Letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations" of October 1947, Einstein emphasized the urgent need for international cooperation and the establishment of a world government.

[87] Despite these views, following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, Einstein became a vocal advocate for preparedness, recognizing the dangers of Nazi Germany gaining an advantage over the Western Allies.

I am a dedicated but not an absolute pacifist; this means that I am opposed to the use of force under any circumstances except when confronted by an enemy who pursues the destruction of life as an end in itself.

Einstein himself did not play a role in the development of the atomic bomb other than signing the letter, although he did help the United States Navy with some unrelated theoretical questions it was working on during the war.