Serving the Reich

The story is intriguing for it reveals the lack of insight of many of the world’s greatest physicists

Robin McKie, Observer

Ball's book shows what can happen to morality when cleverness and discovery are valued above all else

Philip Maughan, New Statesman

Ball does an outstanding service by reminding us how powerful and sometimes confusing the pressures were… Packed with dramatic, moving and even comical moments

Robert P Crease, Nature

A new book from Philip Ball is always an eagerly anticipated event, but this one exceeds expectations

John Gribbin, Literary Review

Ball examines sensitively the careers of three eminent physicists who continued to work in Nazi Germany, emphasising the very different ways in which each dealt (or failed to deal) with the moral dilemmas of working in an increasingly oppressive state

Sir Michael Berry, Times Higher Education

A fascinating account of the moral dilemmas faced by German physicists working within Nazism. Impeccably researched

Ian Thomson, Tablet

An engrossing and disturbing book

Andrew Robinson, History Today

[A] fine book

Christopher Coker, Times Literary Supplement

Asks important questions, not just about 20th-century German science but about the nature of science and the response of scientists to the political world we perforce inhabit. All scientists should read and ponder its contents

Richard Joyner, Times Higher Education

Ball’s judgements are well reasoned, nuanced and, in my view, fair

Graham Farmelo, Guardian

This is an exploration of morality and human dilemmas under a totalitarian regime

Daily Express

It is a reminder that science, however detached it wants to seem, can never be separated from society or ideology

Good Book Guide

Ball’s real interests lie elsewhere, in what he calls the ‘grey zone between complicity and resistance’. It is one of the strengths of Serving the Reich that in surveying this territory the analysis is not unduly flattering to the moral and political certainties of the present

Jonathan Derbyshire

Helps us to appreciate better the contribution of other physicists during the war

Guardian