ABSTRACT
In 1932, Ernst Krieck, a devout member of the National Socialist party in Germany and one of its most influential pedagogues, claimed that science was never, in the end, neutral: “In the future, one will no more adopt the fiction of an enfeebled neutrality in science than in law, economy, the State or public life generally. The method of science is indeed only a reflection of the method of government,” he explained. Krieck held views which were exactly the contrary of those of the majority of scientists and intellectuals around him. Most scientists working after the First World War believed instead that science was not and should never be political and—for that very reason—that it should be neutral and international.
