Dolores L. Augustine, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990
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Book Reviews damage bred by the Kennedy liberals and their successors, though under resolute lead- ership it is finally starting to assert its autonomy and to experience greater equity of income. ✣✣✣ Dolores L. Augustine, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 381 pp. $40.00. Reviewed by Benita Blessing, Oregon State University Dolores Augustine’s study of the scientific community in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ, 1945–1949) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is a significant and much-needed contribution to the historical literature about the role of science in a socialist country. To say that Augustine has left no stone unturned in this tour de force is no exaggeration. Red Prometheus is more than an exhaustive history based on several years of research using multiple methodologies; it is and will remain an authoritative work on a complex tale of political intrigue, human ethical dilemmas, and romantic fantasies of a utopian, modern world. Augustine’s point of departure is the question of how dictatorship and science interacted in East Germany (p. xi). The journey this investigation takes her on uncovers a socialist world, incredible in its attempts to use science as the vehicle to trump the West in creating the better modern society. It is easy to forget that one is reading history and not a page-turning, nail-biting genre of novel about outlandish Cold War schemes. Therein lies the strength of this book: Augustine balances her rich narrative with a sharp analysis that is as accessible for a general public as it is revealing for a highly specialized, scholarly audience—whether students, scientists, or historians. Augustine begins the study with the immediate post–World War II period of the SBZ, the four years before the official founding of the GDR that historians are realizing as more than an unimportant preview of what was to come. In the case of scientists who had been employed during the Nazi regime, the end of the war marked a scramble to turn themselves in to the occupying powers—hoping, correctly, that this voluntary surrender would allow for a more lenient treatment by the military administrations. These former Nazi scientists, whether employed in the United States, the Soviet zone/GDR, or in the Soviet Union, became a cohort of Cold War intellectual soldiers racing against time and one another to develop military technology and to complete research on the Nazi nuclear program. Less well-known is that a site parallel to the secret Anglo-American “Alsos” program existed in the Soviet Union. Whether part of a voluntary group of German scientists who emigrated to the USSR as part of the labor-as-reparations policy or part of the 1946 “Osoaviakhim” program of enforced deportation of German scientists to the USSR, thousands of scientists and their families (along with factories, laboratories, pets, and house plants) became part of 247 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_r_00703 by guest on 26 September 2021 Book Reviews a secret community whose tasks ranged from beating the West at nuclear technology to improving the lives of Soviet citizens through scientific progress. These scientists eventually returned to the GDR. There the Soviets and the Socialist Unity Party (SED) leaders ensured privileges in the professional and private realms that allowed former employees in the Nazi system to erase their pasts. By offering them a new status as heroes who had helped the Soviet Union, rather than ex-Nazis who had once been enemies of their new protectors, the SED easily convinced these scientists that their knowledge could help foster “socialist modernity” (p. 39). The idea of a society that could be literally engineered to attain state goals held much promise in theory for a unique cooperation between intellectuals and politicians. But such a utopia, as Augustine demonstrates, depends on individuals and groups who are not always ready to abandon previous attitudes. To cite one example of the persistence of tradition, engineers and scientists were unwilling to abandon their professional habitus of a close alliance with the bourgeoisie instead of seeing themselves as linked to the proletariat. Thus, even after the construction of the Berlin Wall and the suddenly restricted movement of scientists, the SED never succeeded in entirely eliminating a strong professional sensibility and structure among scientists and engineers. Still, in a conscious program of gaining the loyalty of the intelligentsia to socialist ideals, a compromise type of “socialist professionalism” emerged, with elements of professional independence that could exist within a larger system of state influence over scientific research and approaches (pp. 39, 68). In a creative use of cultural sources, from cinema to television to novels to interviews, Augustine accesses the many competing currents of public discourse about the future of an engineered socialist society—including divisive questions about the role of women in science and an ambivalent state commitment to youth as the harbingers of a socialist utopia (if only they would abandon youthful ideals that criticized the system). Of particular interest here is Augustine’s investigation into the role of the Stasi (the state secret police) in the evolution of science in the GDR—a more important aspect of bureaucratic decision-making and professional tendencies than she had anticipated. In one telling example, Augustine describes the rise and fall of a senior manager in industrial science, Werner Hartmann. An effective scientist and leader, his popularity worried the State Security Ministry, even more so when he revealed himself as seemingly impervious to their normal forms of intimidation. Ultimately, they found the major weakness to exploit: the same professional pride that had made him and his personnel successful. A series of trumped-up charges that would take away the public respect Hartmann assumed as an inalienable right caused him to fold, confessing to numerous crimes. Here the intent of the State Security becomes clear, inasmuch as they did not sentence him to imprisonment or other severe penalties. Instead, by allowing his own sense of pride to trap him, they isolated him from public and personal acquaintances, allowing this example to deter unapproved innovation from other scientists. Augustine adds nuance to her thesis that a half-century of struggle between scientific autonomy and state control resulted in a draw for both sides rather than a clear win by pointing to the areas in which each side found independence and 248 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_r_00703 by guest on 26 September 2021 Book Reviews influence. In this sense her work is part of an important body of scholarship on the GDR that (despite her title) calls into question the dictatorship model to describe power relations in East Germany. Her final words on the subject are a rather personal answer to the anguished 2004 question of one of her interview partners looking back at the GDR—had all their work been in vain, had they all been mere pawns of the government to the detriment of their own ideals? Augustine, allowing us to accompany her on her strolls through Jena and Dresden, points out the engineering successes that are still visible, and answers—with an even more personal reflection that more freedom might have brought about even more success—no, it was not in vain. It is precisely this answer that reinforces the value of the book in furthering our understanding of the complexities of life, including professional passions, in the GDR. ✣✣✣ Jeffrey G. Barlow, From Hot War to Cold: The U.S. Navy and National Security Affairs, 1945–1955. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. 710 pp. $65.00. Reviewed by Donald C. F. Daniel, Georgetown University AttheendoftheSecondWorldWartheU.S.Navy’s“power...surpassedthatofany navy the world had yet seen” (p. 10), and the major concern of its commanders was how it was going to adjust to the postwar world of cutbacks and, more significant, of the national defense reorganization. The latter would entail a review of the roles and missions of the services (including that of a newly independent and highly regarded Air Force) against the backdrop of U.S. global leadership responsibilities, Soviet and Chinese Communist challenges, and the revolutionary significance of nuclear weapons. This volume addresses how the Navy adapted to its changing environment from 1945 to 1955 and specifically how it maneuvered to promote and defend its preferences, how it fared, and, in a very general sense, what the consequences were for U.S. national security. The perspective is that of the Navy’s uniformed leadership as embodied by the Chiefs of Naval Operations (CNO) and their immediate staffs (OPNAV). Barlow is an award-winning naval specialist employed by the Contemporary History Branch of the Naval Historical Center. Fully one third of his 700-page volume is set aside for endnotes and bibliography, and his historian colleagues will be impressed by the thoroughness of the documentation, including extensive reliance on primary written sources and interviews with key individuals. Naval aficionados will be impressed by the book’s level of detail, particularly as concerns the broader context of international events and bureaucratic politics within which the Navy’s leadership operated. Finally, general readers will be impressed that a professional historian can write such a readable volume—no small feat. Many authors have already addressed the post–World War Two reorganization of the U.S. defense establishment. Much has also been written about the bureau- cratic political battles between a self-confident U.S. Air Force—touting the benefits of 249 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_r_00703 by guest on 26 September 2021.