Editing Otto Hahn (section)

===Impact of National Socialism===
[[Fritz Strassmann]] had come to the KWIC to study under Hahn to improve his employment prospects. After the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP) came to power in Germany in 1933, Strassmann declined a lucrative offer of employment because it required political training and Nazi Party membership. Later, rather than become a member of a Nazi-controlled organisation, Strassmann resigned from the [[Society of German Chemists]] when it became part of the Nazi [[German Labour Front]]. As a result, he could neither work in the chemical industry nor receive his habilitation, the prerequisite for an academic position. Meitner persuaded Hahn to hire Strassmann as an assistant. Soon he would be credited as a third collaborator on the papers they produced, and would sometimes even be listed first.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=156–157, 169}}{{sfn|Walker|2006|p=122}}

Hahn spent February to June 1933 in the United States and Canada as a visiting professor at Cornell University.{{sfn|Hahn|1966|p=283}} He gave an interview to the [[Toronto]] ''[[Star Weekly]]'' in which he painted a flattering portrait of [[Adolf Hitler]]: {{blockquote|I am not a Nazi. But Hitler is the hope, the powerful hope, of German youth... At least 20 million people revere him. He began as a nobody, and you see what he has become in ten years.… In any case for the youth, for the nation of the future, Hitler is a hero, a Führer, a saint... In his daily life he is almost a saint. No alcohol, not even tobacco, no meat, no women. In a word: Hitler is an unequivocal Christ.{{sfn|Sime|2006|p=6}} }}

The April 1933 [[Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service]] banned Jews and communists from academia. Meitner was exempt from its impact because she was an Austrian rather than a German citizen.{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=138–139}} Haber was likewise exempt as a veteran of World War I, but chose to resign his directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in protest on 30 April 1933. The directors of the other Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, even the Jewish ones, complied with the new law,{{sfn|Sime|1996|pp=8–9}} which applied to the KWS as a whole and those Kaiser Wilhelm institutes with more than 50% state support, which exempted the KWI for Chemistry.{{sfn|Sime|2006|p=7}} Hahn therefore did not have to fire any of his own full-time staff, but as the interim director of Haber's institute, he dismissed a quarter of its staff, including three department heads. [[Gerhart Jander]] was appointed the new director of Haber's old institute, and reoriented it towards chemical warfare research.{{sfn|Sime|2006|p=10}}
[[File:München-2025-Deutsches_Museum-Hahn.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Otto Hahn's marble bust at the [[Deutsches Museum]] in Munich]]
Like most KWS institute directors, Haber had accrued a large discretionary fund. It was his wish that it be distributed to the dismissed staff to facilitate their emigration. Hahn brokered a deal whereby 10 per cent of the funds would be allocated to Haber's people and the rest to KWS, but the [[Rockefeller Foundation]] insisted that the funds be used for their original scientific research or else be returned. In August 1933 the administrators of the KWS were alerted that several boxes of Rockefeller Foundation-funded equipment were about to be shipped to [[Herbert Freundlich]], one of the department heads that Hahn had dismissed, who was now working in England. {{ill|Ernst Telschow|de}}, a Nazi Party member, was in charge while Planck, the president of the KWS since 1930, was on vacation, and he ordered the shipment halted. Hahn complied, but he disagreed with the decision on the grounds that funds from abroad should not be diverted to military research, which the KWS was increasingly undertaking. When Planck returned from vacation, he ordered Hahn to expedite the shipment.{{sfn|Sime|2006|pp=10–12}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Max Planck Becomes President of the KWS |publisher=Max-Planck Gesellschaft |url=https://www.mpg.de/947146/28_person6-1930 |access-date=23 June 2020}}</ref>

Haber died on 29 January 1934. A memorial service was held on the first anniversary of his death. University professors were forbidden to attend, so they sent their wives in their place. Hahn, Planck and [[Joseph Koeth]] attended, and gave speeches.{{sfn|Sime|2006|p=10}}{{sfn|Walker|2006|pp=122–123}} The aging Planck did not seek re-election, and was succeeded in 1937 as president by [[Carl Bosch]], a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the chairman of the board of [[IG Farben]], a company which had bankrolled the Nazi Party since 1932. Telschow became Secretary of the KWS. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis, but was also loyal to Hahn, being one of his former students, and Hahn welcomed his appointment.<ref>{{cite web |title=The KWS Introduces the 'Führerprinzip' |publisher=Max-Planck Gesellschaft |url=https://www.mpg.de/946951/35_event24-1937 |access-date=23 June 2020}}</ref>{{sfn|Sime|2006|p=10}} Hahn's chief assistant, Otto Erbacher, became the KWI for Chemistry's party steward (''Vertrauensmann'').{{sfn|Sime|1996|p=143}}