The FBI has a huge secret file on Albert Einstein that people are only now learning about.
The great physicist who won the Nobel Prize and developed the theory of relativity is Albert Einstein, as most people know him. However, many may not know that the FBI secretly monitored his every move for over 20 years.
Einstein and his wife, Elsa, left Germany for the United States in December 1932. In addition to his commitment to science, Einstein was a staunch advocate for the social causes of his time, frequently denouncing racism, nationalism, and war.
Consequently, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who believed Einstein might be a communist and was what he called "an extreme radical," targeted him because of his activism.
The FBI file contained 1,427 pages when the scientist died on April 18, 1955.
What exactly did Einstein do then that required this type of monitoring?
To begin with, he questioned capitalism.
“I consider class differences to be contrary to justice and, ultimately, based on force,” he wrote in 1931. “Let every man be respected as an individual and let no one be idolized.”
Naturally, anyone who criticized the capitalist system was immediately viewed with suspicion during the Great Depression and the rise of communism elsewhere.
Furthermore, he denounced racism. In a 1946 speech at the historically African American Liberty University of Pennsylvania, he referred to segregation as a “white disease.”
Einstein initially refused Marian Anderson, an African American singer, a place to stay in a New Jersey hotel room in 1937, but he and his wife immediately offered her a place to stay. This incident demonstrated Einstein's commitment to civil rights and marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Einstein also had a complex relationship with nuclear weapons.
He was once a pacifist, but when Hitler came to power, he was forced to change his mind. Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, warning him that uranium "might become a new and important source of energy in the immediate future" because of his concern about the development of atomic bombs by German scientists.
For the rest of his life, Einstein firmly believed that war had become "a form of madness" and that nuclear weapons should be regulated worldwide.
Having personally witnessed the rise of fascism in Europe, Einstein remained f
I believe that the United States should not follow their example.
What Einstein most appreciated about the United States, according to his biographer Walter Isaacson, was "the country's tolerance of free thought, freedom of speech, and nonconformist beliefs ," qualities that enabled his scientific discoveries.
Einstein was not willing to stand idly by while, in the words of the great physicist, "the German calamity of years past is being repeated."
Meanwhile, Reddit users are surprised to learn that Einstein's FBI file was recently made public.
“Damn! There are still more things I was never taught as a kid,” one Reddit user wrote.
“I didn’t know this existed,” another added.
“Anyone who can ‘change the world with ideas’ is a threat to those in power,” another person summarized the reasoning behind Einstein’s FBI file.
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