ABSTRACT
In 1935, the International Congress on Population Science took place in Berlin. Many scientists regarded it as a matter of course to increase their country’s glory and resource base and to put their skills at its service. Plans for economic restructuring were just one part of the German policy in South-eastern Europe. For an adequately nuanced examination of the structural conditions for scientific amorality, it is not sufficient to distinguish between guilt, involvement and innocence. Most scientists active during the 1930s and 1940s got their formative experience as students at the universities of inter-war Europe. Nazi German scientists were neither abused nor misused; they placed their skills willingly at the disposal of the regime, whose offers they saw as an opportunity to advance both science and their own career. Far from being structurally unable to accommodate scientific innovation, the Nazi regime released enormous dynamic potential through its expansion of the war economy.
