Aerodynamic Research in France under German Occupation in the Second World War

Dr. Florian Schmaltz,
Research Director of the Research Program History of the Max Planck Society,
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

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Aerodynamic Research in France under German Occupation in the Second World War

dans le cadre du séminaire Histoire des sciences, histoire de l’innovation
(Université Paris Sorbonne, UPMC, LabEx EHNE)

le jeudi 18 février à 17h00

dans la salle de conférence de l’Institut des sciences de la communication (ISCC)
20 rue Berbier-du-Mets, Paris 13°, M° Gobelins.

Abstract:

A few weeks after the German Wehrmacht had invaded and occupied Western Europe in May 1940 the aeronautical production and research facilities were systematically evaluated by German experts to integrate them as new resources to support the German war efforts. The Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) Göttingen was put in charge of the important aeronautical research establishments in France, the Netherlands, the Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslowakia and Norway that formed a network of satellite institutes adding new resources to the German military research. In the western occupied territories the Laboratoire St. Cyr and the Laboratoire Eiffel and the laboratory of Hispania Suiza (Paris) in France and the NLL (Amsterdam) in the Netherlands were integrated in this network. The talk will focus on the development of aerodynamic research in France under German control during WW II. How was the distribution of labour among the institutes organized? What specific role played the French establishments in the network of satellite institutes of the AVA? To which fields of war relevant research did the experimental systems and scientists in France contribute under German occupation? How did the occupation policy affect the scientific research itself? How did the German scientists secure that war relevant knowledge was kept secret? What strategies were used to make the French scientists collaborate? Did those strategies change during the occupation period and how did Germans scientists deal with the repression of resistance?

Prochaines séances:

10 mars
Olivier Darrigol, (SPHERE/CNRS/Université Denis Diderot)
Nécessité et contingence des théories physiques.

17 mars
Roberto Cantoni, (IFRIS/LATTS)
De l’Iran à l’Algérie : l’industrie pétrolière française face aux nouveaux équilibres de la Guerre froide.

24 mars
Simone Fari, (Universidad de Granada)
History of telegraphy: actors, institutions, landscapes.

31 mars
Anthony Heywood, (University of Aberdeen)
Climate, Technology, War and Revolution: Winter Weather, Inter-Urban Transport and Tsarist Russia’s War Effort, 1914-1917.

7 avril
Gabriel Galvez-Behar, (IRHiS/Université Lille 3/IUF)
L’innovation, but de guerre : de l’usage stratégique de la propriété industrielle en situation de conflit au XXe siècle.

14 avril
Jon Agar, (University College London)
The politics of Star Wars: Thatcher and the UK and European contexts of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

3 mai (attention séance exceptionnellement le mardi)
Thomas Thwaites, designer
Making a toaster, becoming a goat, policing with bees… Doing design projects about science and technology.

12 mai
Catherine Radtka, (CNES/ISCC)
Mettre en pratique un engouement pour l’espace : les constructions de fusées en amateur dans la France des années 1950-60.

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