For Albert Einstein, Hitler’s sudden rush to prominence confirmed his historic distrust of the German body politic. On January 30, 1933, as Hitler took the oath as Chancellor of a republic about to become a Reich, Albert Einstein was safely out of reach in Pasadena. For the moment, there was little overt danger.

The culmination of Einstein’s commitment to defeat Hitler by whatever means necessary came in 1939 and 1940, when he sent his two letters to President Roosevelt about the possibility of the United States building an atomic bomb.

In the end, the use of America’s bombs deeply saddened him. On hearing of the attack on Hiroshima he is reported to have said “Oj Weg”—“Woe is me.”

After the war ended, Einstein became one of the founding forces in the scientists’ anti-nuclear movement. The last public act of his life was to add his name to a manifesto drafted by Bertrand Russell that called for global nuclear disarmament. But he never wavered in the basic argument he had made in the summer of 1933: Hitler was a deadly poison. He had to be neutralized. No greater goals could be contemplated until Hitler and Germany had been utterly defeated. Once he reached that conclusion, he followed it through to its ultimate destination: the bomb itself.

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