What did Einstein think of Hitler? Did he realize Hitler’s destructiveness from the start and Hitler’s Holocaust?
Einstein emigrated from Germany in 1933 and relinquished his citizenship in direct response to the new Nazi government. I haven’t read any of Einstein’s writings about Hitler specifically, but I have a collection that includes some of his correspondences with the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and Einstein made it clear the Nazi ideology conflicted with his values.
Here’s the great man in his own words:
As long as I have any choice, I will only stay in a country where political liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule. Political liberty implies liberty to express one’s political views orally and in writing, tolerance, and respect for any and every individual opinion.
These conditions do not exist in Germany at present. Those who have done most for the cause of international understanding, among them some of the leading artists, are being persecuted there.
Any social organism can become psychically distempered just as any individual can, especially in times of difficulty. Nations usually survive these distempers. I hope that healthy conditions will soon be preserved in Germany, and that in the future her great men like Kant and Goethe will not merely be commemorated from time to time, but that the principles that they inculcated will also prevail in public life and general consciousness.