Inside Albert Einstein’s life in Norfolk after escaping Nazi Germany and why he was excluded from building atom bomb
WITH a bounty on his head and Adolf Hitler’s assassins on his trail, Albert Einstein knew he was no longer safe in mainland Europe.
All of the brilliant German scientist’s possessions were confiscated by the Nazis in 1933 and one of his fellow Jews had been killed in Belgium, where Einstein was taking refuge.
There seemed to be no hiding place — until an English MP suggested a safe haven where few were likely to look for him.
Einstein was smuggled by boat to Dover and driven to a remote wooden cabin near Cromer, in Norfolk.
There the man considered to be the greatest scientist of all time was protected by two armed assistants.
That little-known moment in the physicist’s life is recounted in Netflix documentary Einstein And The Bomb.
It looks at how one of history’s most famous pacifists ended up encouraging the United States to build an atomic bomb.
The programme comes in the wake of director Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-nominated film Oppenheimer, which delves into the moral questions around creating a nuclear weapon.
‘Not yet hanged’
With Hitler amassing a military machine and killing Jews prior to invading Poland in 1939, Einstein concluded: “I loathe all armies but I am firmly convinced in the present state a well-organised force can only be opposed by a well-organised force.”
Right from his early days as a young intellectual student, Einstein opposed militarism.
Born in Ulm, in south-west Germany, in 1879, he gave up his citizenship 17 years later to avoid national service.
Einstein moved to Switzerland, where, while working at a patent office, he developed key theories which would change the way we would look at the universe for ever.
In just one year, 1905, Einstein put forward four scientific theories.
One, on Brownian motion, established the existence of atoms.
Another, his theory of special relativity, introduced the famous equation E=mc².
This latter idea proposed that just a small amount of mass could be transformed into a huge amount of energy — creating the possibility of a nuclear bomb.
At the time, though, neither Einstein nor any other scientists saw that outcome.
As his ideas started to take hold, universities across the world competed to hire Einstein.
He decided to return to Germany in 1913, accepting a place at Humboldt University in Berlin partly because his new girlfriend Elsa, who became his second wife six years later, lived there.
A year later he spoke out against Germany’s militarism in World War One.
Bring about peace
Einstein believed science could bring peace through discoveries which aided all.
Twenty years later this view would put him at odds with Hitler’s desire to conquer Germany’s neighbours.
On landing in Belgium in March 1933 following a visit to the US, Einstein quickly realised he could not return to Berlin.
Hitler had become Germany’s leader that January and, by April, all Jews were banned from holding official positions, including teaching at university.
The following month Einstein’s books were among those burned by the Nazis, and a pro-Hitler magazine placed a bounty on his head alongside the words “not yet hanged”.
Conservative MP Oliver Locker-Lampson, who had got to know Einstein when he gave talks at Oxford University, hatched a plan to save the physicist.
Though he was not a practising Jew, Einstein would have been executed by the Nazis had he stayed.
Previously a fascist sympathiser, Locker-Lampson had come to realise that Hitler was a threat to Europe and, in July 1933, tried to introduce a law which would offer British citizenship to Jews fleeing persecution in Germany.
That failed, but two months later he managed to bring Einstein to Roughton Heath, near Cromer.
The scientist — awarded a Nobel Prize for physics in 1921 and now something of a celebrity — found himself sleeping in a wooden hut.
Yet there were a few luxuries.
Stuart McLaren, who wrote the book Saving Einstein: How Norfolk Hid A Genius, said: “He had a piano installed in one of the huts and they got him a violin.
They got him a cook and a butler to serve him food, a wind-up gramophone and there was even a flock of goats to provide him with goat’s milk, which Einstein preferred to cow’s milk
Stuart McLaren
“They got him a cook and a butler to serve him food, a wind-up gramophone and there was even a flock of goats to provide him with goat’s milk, which Einstein preferred.”
The Nazis had a list of people to be rounded up in the event of Germany invading Britain — and Einstein’s name was on it.
Locker-Lampson asked his two secretaries, Barbara Goodall, who would become the MP’s second wife two years later, and Marjory Howard, to stand guard.
They were nicknamed his “attendant angels”.
By this time Einstein’s pacifist beliefs had evolved. He said: “I’m not just a pacifist, I am a militant pacifist, I am willing to fight for peace.”
During his stay, Einstein met Winston Churchill, who did not become PM until 1940, and convinced him to give refuge to other Jewish scientists.
‘One great mistake’
This influx of talent proved to be very helpful in Britain winning World War Two.
But Einstein decided that an offer from Princeton University in the US was his best option and later, in 1940, he became an American citizen.
Hearing of the persecution of Jews in Europe he said: “I am almost ashamed to be living in such a place while others struggle and suffer.”
Many scientists were worried that Hitler was developing a nuclear weapon and the Allies were lagging far behind in the race to develop such superior technology.
In August 1939, along with physicist Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to US President Franklin D Roosevelt urging him to set up a nuclear programme.
They warned that Germany was stockpiling uranium, the element most likely to be used in an atom bomb.
I’m not just a pacifist, I am a militant pacifist, I am willing to fight for peace
Albert Einstein
The pair wrote: “Extremely powerful bombs of a new type may be constructed.”
Less than two years later the US government launched the top-secret Manhattan Project to develop and build a nuclear weapon.
Einstein has often been called the “father of the atom bomb”, but he was excluded from the team due to his left-leaning political views.
When in Switzerland, Einstein had socialised with communists including Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Hitler’s blind hatred for the Jews put him at a disadvantage in the race to build a bomb, as many of the top scientists were of that faith.
Nolan’s movie shows Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, meeting Tom Conti’s Einstein to check calculations, when, in fact, he consulted Nobel prize-winning US physicist Arthur Compton.
The director admitted: “I shifted it to Einstein. Einstein is the personality people know in the audience.”
Germany surrendered in May 1945 before it had developed a nuclear weapon, but the Americans continued with their experiments in order to defeat Japan.
The atomic bombs they dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 killed an estimated 220,000.
Even though he did not design the weapons, Einstein felt guilty for the deaths of so many innocent civilians.
He told a Japanese journalist his “one great mistake” had been signing the letter to Roosevelt.
Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb I would not have taken part in opening that Pandora’s box
Albert Einstein
Einstein said: “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb I would not have taken part in opening that Pandora’s box.”
There was, though, no putting the genie back in the bottle and, by 1949, the Russians had also detonated a nuclear weapon.
In April 1955, Einstein signed a manifesto calling for peace.
A few days later, the great physicist died from internal bleeding at the age of 76.
The manifesto had asked: “We appeal as human beings to human beings — remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
“If you can do so, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”
- Einstein And The Bomb is available on Netflix now.