Albert Einstein, pacifist

Abstract

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists in history, was a pacifist. During the World War I he wrote the “Manifesto to the Europeans” to ask for peace in Europe by means of the political union of all the states of the continent. He then became an icon of international pacifist movement. However, when Hitler came to power, Einstein recognised that against a force like Nazism the tools of pacifism are not effective. In 1939 Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt to warn him about the possibility that a nuclear bomb could be built. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein was committed to the movement for nuclear disarmament. In 1955 Einstein and Bertrand Russell wrote a plea that became the “manifesto” of the international pacifist movement.