A letter titled Why War? Reading Albert Einstein's letter amid Russia-Ukraine crisis

The catastrophic consequences of the first and second World Wars had led the world to introspect on the futility of violence. How could mankind be saved from violence? Physicist Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds in history, was among those who asked this question.

As the world marks the scientist's birth anniversary on March 14, we take look back on his 1932 letter, titled "Why War?", to pioneering Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud.

"Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?" Einstein asked in the letter, written amid the spread of Fascist and Nazi violence in Europe, according to a version published by UNESCO. "It is common knowledge that, with the advance of modern science, this issue has come to mean a matter of life and death for civilization as we know it."

Einstein sought from Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, some insights into the "dark places" of the human will.

The physicist suggested that establishing a judicial body to settle conflicts between countries could be a solution but sought to know if it was possible to control mental evolution itself to make humans immune to the "psychoses of hate and destructiveness".

In his response, Freud, also a pacifist like Einstein, said hope lay in the strengthening of human intellect and an introversion of the aggressive impulse.

"A well-founded dread of the form that future wars will take may serve to put an end to war in the near, future, is not chimerical," Freud said. "But by what ways or by-ways this will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war."