Oppenheimer Helped Jewish German Scientists Relocate to America
The German atomic bomb program struggled. They lacked the money and materials to maintain an accelerated program. But even worse, Hitler’s policies sent Jewish German scientists fleeing the country. Oppenheimer and the United States scientific community saw the writing on the wall; German Jewish scientists would not fare well under Hitler. They were fired from their jobs; they could not be hired to atomic projects. Their exodus was a great blow to the German scientific community. But with Nobel laureates like Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and Niels Bohr now practicing in the United States, it was a great gain for US physicists. 192 of these displaced German scientists came to the United States by 1939. Oppenheimer, who had earned his PhD from the University of Göttingen in Germany, contributed three percent of his salary to support these scientists as they fled their homeland and set up new lives.