A LETTER FROM EINSTEIN AFFIRMING A PACIFIST'S RIGHT TO SELF-DEFE🍷NSE

Einstein accepted a position at the newly opened Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. in August, 1932. Living in Berlin at the time and having firsthand experience of the rise of German nationalism and the Nazi Party, Einstein arrived in the United States in 1933, living and workin🎃g in Princeton until his death on Apr𓆏il 18, 1955.

Einstein was a pr🍃ominent and well-known pacifist, but as he makes clear in this letter to Ann Morrisett on March 21, 1952, his pacifism had its limits. Although he says in this letter that, "I can identify my views nearly completely with those of Gandhi," he also says that he would, "resist🌺 with violence any attempt to kill me or to take away from me or my people the basic means of subsistence."

Living in Germany during World War I and repulsed by the gruesomeness of "The Chemists' War," Einstein had to balance his aversion to violent conf🐠lict with his beliefꦰ that the Holocaust and similar atrocities demanded an offensive response. Therefore, he says that, "it was justified and necessary to fight Hitler" as this was "an extreme attempt to destroy other people."

Written three years before his death, and against the more recent backdrop of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the creation of the Unite🧸d Nations later that year, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust, Einstein's letter is a considered defense of violence as a sometimes necessary intervention in the pursuit of a more lasting international peace.