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Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud the 20th century's best-known scientists, had a common interest in the causes of war and the promotion of peace. Einstein was a consummate pacifist. As a boy he was repelled by militarism, bigotry, authoritarianism, and nationalism, and as a man he struggled to comprehend how people who are thoroughly decent in personal conduct with associates can show such utterly antithetical behavior with others (Nathan & Norden, 1980).
Yet even this gentle man could not advocate pacifism vis-à-vis Nazism in Germany. Although apprehensive about the potential for abuse of any concentration of power, he recommended to President Roosevelt in 1939 that the United States support work to develop an atomic bomb. He did this, not with the idea that the United States would use it, but so that the United States, having it, could deter a Germany he feared soon would have it.
In 1931 Einstein invited Freud to join an association of intellectuals to exercise moral and political influence and to provide moral support for international agencies like the League of Nations. On July 30, 1932, in response to a proposal by the League of Nations