The German military catastrophe in Stalingrad began the period of “Total War.” The research into heavy water production, isotope separation, and model nuclear reactors became progressively more difficult as the war economy became more strained and the Allies began bombing Germany. Problems with heavy water production in Norway, including sabotage at the Norsk Hydro, caused the Germans to search for alternative ways to make heavy water in Germany and Italy. Although hampered by the war, progress was made with centrifuges, which had begun to slightly enrich the amount of isotope 235 in small samples of uranium. Whereas nuclear reactor experiments under the direction of Werner Heisenberg had used layers of uranium and moderator, a competing group led by Kurt Diebner began experimenting with three-dimensional lattices with better results. Because research in Berlin and Hamburg had become very difficult, if not impossible, several institutes were evacuated to towns in southwest Germany.

In 1938 nuclear fission was discovered in Germany. Like their counterparts in other countries, German scientists brought the military potential of fission to the attention of officials and began researching isotope separation and nuclear reactors, the two paths to atomic bombs. During the Blitzkrieg phase of the war, powerful new weapons were not needed, so that the research had low priority and made modest progress. When the war slowed down in the winter of 1942-1942, the uranium research was evaluated with the result that it became clear that atomic bombs could not be made in Germany in time to influence the outcome of the war. Because the Americans, who had much greater resources, were apparently working on this, the Germans continued to as well. The steadily deteriorating state of the war made research more difficult, then impossible, as the scientists were focussed on their survival. After the war, the revelations of the Holocaust, and the atomic bombing of Japan, these scientists were criticized for collaborating with the Nazis and had to justify their work. The result was the legend of Copenhagen, a claim that they had in fact been trying to forestall all nuclear weapons.

The American Alsos Mission, a scientific intelligence-gathering task force, followed behind the advancing Allied armies in the west, looking for evidence of a German atomic bomb. Its scientific leader, the physicist Samuel Goudmit, quickly determined that the Germans were far removed from building nuclear weapons but also was misled by some documents and his own prejudices, convincing himself that the Germans, including his colleague Werner Heisenberg, had not understood how an atomic bomb would work. When Goudsmit returned to the United States, he began publishing books and articles using the German uranium work as an example of how the Nazis had ruined science through political and ideological control, mistakes that America must not repeat. Heisenberg responded by defending both his scientific work and conduct under Hitler. Goudsmit criticized both Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker for compromising with the Nazis. While Goudsmit eventually reconciled with Heisenberg, he never forgave Weizsäcker. Goudsmit had lost his parents in Auschwitz, and Weizsäcker’s father, a high-ranking official in the Foreign Ministry, had been convicted of war crimes.

In 1938 nuclear fission was discovered in Germany. Like their counterparts in other countries, German scientists brought the military potential of fission to the attention of officials and began researching isotope separation and nuclear reactors, the two paths to atomic bombs. During the Blitzkrieg phase of the war, powerful new weapons were not needed, so that the research had low priority and made modest progress. When the war slowed down in the winter of 1942-1942, the uranium research was evaluated with the result that it became clear that atomic bombs could not be made in Germany in time to influence the outcome of the war. Because the Americans, who had much greater resources, were apparently working on this, the Germans continued to as well. The steadily deteriorating state of the war made research more difficult, then impossible, as the scientists were focussed on their survival. After the war, the revelations of the Holocaust, and the atomic bombing of Japan, these scientists were criticized for collaborating with the Nazis and had to justify their work. The result was the legend of Copenhagen, a claim that they had in fact been trying to forestall all nuclear weapons.

In order to determine what really happened when Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker met with Niels Bohr in occupied Copenhagen in September 1941, this visit has to be placed in several contexts. By this time the German uranium research had demonstrated that atomic bombs were probably feasible, even if not for Germany during the war. The summer 1942 German offensive against the Soviet Union had not yet begun to falter, although Heisenberg was nevertheless privately very anxious about the war. The Germans alienated Bohr and his colleagues by their participation in cultural propaganda and nationalistic and militaristic comments about the war. A comparison with Heisenberg’s other lecture trips abroad shows that he acted the same way in other places. Heisenberg’s subsequent efforts in 1942 to gain support from Nazi officials by both describing the power of atomic bombs and the threat that the Americans might get them first also do not fit with an attempt at Copenhagen to forestall all nuclear weapons. Instead the best explanation for the visit is Heisenberg and Weizsäcker’s fear of American atomic bombs falling on Germany.

When the war slowed down in the winter of 1942-1942, the uranium research was evaluated with the result that it became clear that atomic bombs could not be made in Germany in time to influence the outcome of the war. The project was transferred from Army Ordnance to the Reich Research Council, the institution responsible for mobilizing civilian research for the war effort. The scientists, who were now threatened with the loss of their exemptions from frontline service, began to “sell” their research. Although they did not promise to deliver atomic bombs, they did emphasize the tremendous power of such weapons and warned that the Americans, who had much greater resources, were apparently working on this. In the meantime a model nuclear reactor experiment had produced a neutron increase, which was interpreted as proof in principle that a nuclear reactor could be built. Several influential figures responsible for armament production now took a keen interest in uranium research and the powerful Minister of Armaments Albert Speer decided to generously support the project.

Who Is Jakub?

A few weeks into fieldwork in Nitra, I met up with Jakub in a local park to discuss my impressions from my research up to that point. I had known Jakub longer than other interlocutors since we had met at a three-day workshop on “Fighting radicalization with art,” an event organized by a Bratislava NGO, aimed at activists and pedagogues right at the beginning of my fieldwork. Now, a few weeks after I started doing participant observation at Pomoc a Nádej, I felt it was the right time, and Jakub was the right person, to go beyond discussion of everyday matters and the little crises of refugee work and address some of the questions I had been brooding over: about refugee supporters’ biographies, their negotiation of values and political pressures, their attitudes toward their clients—and how their actions and decisions emerged from the messy situation surrounding them. It was a warm day in mid-April, enticing dozens of families to recover bikes and roller skates from their garages and take them outside to the sunlight for the first time this year. Amid this jolly and noisy crowd, sitting on an ale bench, with a fragrant beer in front of him, Jakub looked like a man quite content with his life. Jakub was my gatekeeper at the organization in Nitra. Less than two years earlier, he had assumed the project manager's position for a refugee help organization, leading a small team of three social workers, an administrative worker, and a standby interpreter. Jakub was known for getting along with anyone and his extrovert approach and tireless effort to liven up every situation with his witty, mocking, but never harmful jokes.

On the sunny bench near the Nitra park kiosk, Jakub reflected on the recent changes in his life. They were quite substantial. Jakub had abandoned his job as a researcher and pedagogue at the University of Prešov's Faculty of Engineering. It was the kind of work he loved and considered himself to be good at, but the quickly eroding state of the Slovak education system and the meager financial prospects pushed him out of university.

Is It Enough?

“You know, it is a strange feeling when refugees leave the Slovak reception facilities and travel on to Austria or Germany. I mean, we are trying our best here, is it not enough?” Peter, a social worker from the Slovak Migration Office, told me with a mixture of disappointment and irritation. He had just shown me a housing facility for refugees awaiting their asylum trial, about 35 kilometers northeast of Bratislava. A significant amount of asylum seekers leaves Slovakia before their trial, trying to apply for asylum somewhere else—even though they know they might get transferred back, Slovakia being the first country in the EU they registered in. Slovaks who support refugees in their country as social workers, translators, language teachers, lawyers, or volunteers often feel outright heartbroken about these premature departures. They are the dramatic conclusions of encounters with high emotional and moral stakes. The tensions that complicate these encounters are manifold: they encompass disagreements between state and non-state actors in refugee care and reach into the intimate realms of interpersonal relationships.

Slovakia is not a typical destination for refugees or migrants. They are more likely to join kinship networks or diaspora groups which have already established themselves abroad, usually in Western Europe. The Central and East European countries that are EU member states now, but used to lie behind the Iron Curtain, do not belong to the most desired target countries—due to their reputation of being less accommodating toward strangers, and due to being less affluent. Indeed, Western Europe is an attractive destination for Slovak and other Central and Eastern European emigrants, as well, and refugees’ allegedly easy access to the German or Austrian labor markets increases reservations against them (Hann 2015). At the same time, the continually small numbers of people arriving in Slovakia from abroad serve as an excuse for political stakeholders not to develop a more comprehensive integration program or a more welcoming attitude. Hence, refugees avoiding Slovakia and politicians delaying overdue reforms are forming a vicious circle. In public discourse, refugees are arguably the least desired migrants, and their ‘premature departures’ (to wealthier EU member states) are believed to demonstrate the illegitimacy of their asylum pleas, not the inefficacy of the Slovak asylum system.

Riešiť Despite the Mess

“We stand in between the different parties, but in the end, we are the ones who have to riešiť despite all the nice slogans and catchphrases.” This statement is key to my understanding of refugee supporters’ positionality. Sofia said this when she came out of the meeting Marginal had organized with Abed and the Migration Office, which led to the decision to let Abed have his will and go to India for a diploma. The social worker from the Migration Office had concluded the meeting by saying that refugees “can achieve anything” and should be encouraged to “fulfill their potential.” In Sofia's view, these were just romantic platitudes, making everyone feel righteous and comfortable while obfuscating the fact that this ‘achievement’ was really a kind of scam.

At the same time, refugee supporters still face other (more disturbing) slogans, the rallying cries of extremists and xenophobes who claim that refugees are “parasites” or “terrorists” who “threaten our culture” and “cannot be integrated.” ‘Slogans’ refer here to the grand proclamations of principles and normative judgments—which may be naïvely simplistic and dangerously ignorant of the messiness of real life. The practice of refugee care in Slovakia is diametrically opposed to the logic of slogans: it lacks the clarity and unambiguity, the claims to truth and comprehensiveness encompassed in snappy catchphrases. Their work also eschews the reductionist, essentialist, manipulative quality of populist slogans. By distancing herself from other people's moral statements and fearmongering, encapsulated in pointed catchphrases, Sofia downplays the role of principles, making it secondary to the short-term, inescapable logic of riešiť. She suggests a realm beyond moral commitments, where the goal is not to find the best but just good enough solutions.

This realm consists of expectations, experiences, norms, lessons, and emotions. They all have the potential to direct action. They are methodically, meticulously, or spontaneously weighed, negotiated, appropriated, prioritized, neglected, or forgotten. Refugee supporters find themselves in a moral laboratory, for instance, when testing and shifting the boundaries between tolerance and accommodation. They go through moral breakdowns that trigger, among other things, leaps to trust or distrust. All these operations belong to a fundamentally ephemeral and unstable situation in which moral sentiments and emotional judgments constantly mix.