Albert Einstein’s WW2 letter headlines auction

A 1942 letter from Albert Einstein to a friend on the subject of US involvement in WW2 has made $40,000 at Early American History Auctions.

Einstein was working in America when Hitler took control of Germany in January, 1933.

Einstein WW2 letter

Einstein explains he often thought of petitioning the US government directly to get involved in the war, but felt his calls would not be heeded

Einstein travelled to Belgium in March of that year to renounce his German citizenship. While there, he learned his home had been ransacked and he was on the new regime’s hit list.

This letter, dated September 1942, attacks US isolationism and suggests that the rise of the far right was warmly received by some powerful Americans.   

It reads in part: “Why did Washington help to strangulate Loyalist Spain? Why has it an official representative in fascist France?

“Why does it not recognize a French Government in Exile?

“Why does it flirt with Franco-Spain? Why is there no really serious effort to assist Russia in her dire need? Why is Finland treated with kid-gloves? (I know their explanations but do not believe them.)

“Because it is a government controlled to a large degree by financiers the mentality of whom is near to the fascist frame of mind.

“If Hitler were not a lunatic he could easily have avoided the hostility of the Western powers.”

The letter last sold for $36,000 at Profiles in History last year, illustrating the growing demand for Einstein’s correspondence.

Interested in acquiring an Einstein letter of your own? Click here.

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