December 12, 2011 • 23 mins
Fritz Haber has a mixed legacy. The Nobel-Prize-winning Father of Chemical Warfare was responsible for fertilizers that fed billions, as well as poisonous gasses used during World War I. Tune in to learn more about Fritz's complicated life and work.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina, Chuck Rewarding and de Bilina.
I'm sure you've noticed, but we talk a lot about
these father of subjects. So like Elan Turing, the father
(00:23):
of computer science, I think, also the father of artificial intelligence.
Recently Alphonse Bertillon, who is the father of the mug shot.
That's a pretty good one. And then Harvey Wiley too, Yes,
the pure food father. Yeah, exactly. So today's subject, German
chemist Fritz Haber might have one of the more dubious
(00:46):
father of titles. He's commonly considered the father of chemical
warfare for his work during World War One. That sounds
pretty bad already, but it's worth getting it out there
right now that that's not a passively earned title either.
He's not a scientist who made a discovery and then
watched as it was applied by other workers, other scientists
(01:08):
to something horrible. He actively promoted the development and use
of gas and warfare, even witnessing its deployment from the front.
But Harbor's chemical work also led to the development of
synthetic fertilizers, another fraud subject due to environmental concerns, of course,
but undoubtedly significant to the BBC estimates that two out
(01:29):
of five people would not be alive today if global
crop yields hadn't shot through the roof in the twentieth century,
allowing way more food to be grown for population now
rounding seven billions. So, I mean, that's an amazing statistic
to me. It really stops and makes you stop and think.
It does It makes you wonder if you might be
two out of five there. But we have two sides
(01:50):
of a story set up already. So there's Fritz Harbor,
the brilliant chemist creating instruments of war, and Fritz Haber,
the brilliant chemist saving millions of people from famine. We
can also add to the mix a tragic family life,
a complicated existence as a patriotic German Jew, and a
(02:11):
Nobel prize which does have been popping up the Ladin
podcast to But we're gonna start in Breslow, Prussia, which
is now part of Poland, where Fritz Haber was born
December nine, eighteen sixty eight and his father worked in
the pigment and die industry importing pigments and dies, and
his mother died within a month of giving birth to him,
(02:33):
which was the fact that might have caused a little
bit of family tension between the father and the son,
and Hauber's father's business being chemically based may have actually
helped stoke and interest in chemistry for him, because by
the time he enrolled at the University of Berlin in
eighteen eighty six, it was to study science, and he
continued to schooling at Heidelberg, where he studied with Robert
(02:53):
Willem Bunsen, a very famous name uns and Bunsen burners
and the Charlottenburg Technicia KSHU in Berlin. Taking a year
off for military service. After a stint working for his
father and dabbling an industry, Hawb returned to scientific research
in Zurich and at the University of Vienna. His first
academic job came in eighteen nine four with the Department
(03:13):
of Chemical and Fuel Technology in Karl's Rue, where he
switched his focus from organic chemistry to physical chemistry. By
eight seven he branched out into electro chemistry, and by
nineteen o four he was studying thermo dynamics yeah and
it's during this phase that he began his life changing work.
Back in eight the British chemist William Crooks had issued
(03:35):
this very dire pronouncement, and of course pronouncements like this
had been issued throughout history, but this is the one
we're focusing on. He predicted that during the upcoming century,
the world's food supply would no longer be able to
support its booming population. Population with outstrip how much food
we could grow. So the question was how could we
(03:56):
boost crop field so we wouldn't have all these people starving. Well,
nitrogen fertilizer certainly helps make more productive crops. And just
a very quick, very brief science lesson here. Nitrogen is
of course all around us. It's the largest component of
the air we breathe, but it's obviously of no use
to plants unless it's fixed in something water soluble, like
(04:18):
ammonia or nitrates for instance. So um, I thought of
the three sisters method that Native Americans used. That was
my first sort of bell that rung for nitrogen fixed. Interesting, yeah,
you might remember it too. It's just this simple natural
version of fixing nitrogen where the bean plants, I think,
would fix it in the soil. For the maze and
(04:40):
the squash plants, but we're talking a much larger scale
production by this point than that. And by the turn
of the century, the largest natural sodium nitrate source for
commercial farming was guana, which is bird or bat poop,
and that's still sometimes used as fertilizer um. But in
the least pro partical scenario imaginable. The best source for
(05:02):
guana worldwide at the time was this two mile five
ft thick deposit of bird droppings in Chile. It's pretty
cross and it's a little gross, and just like I said,
really not practical at all. I mean, you imagine being
in Germany and you're having to import this guano from
(05:23):
across the world. It seems like there'd be a better solution. Okay,
So that's why Harber starts working on this problem. He
starts tinkering, and truly tinkering. There's no stroke of luck here,
said in Discovery. And by eight he figured out the
right conditions to make ammonia out of air. Specifically, he
used an iron catalyst to force hydrogen and nitrogen to
(05:46):
combine into ammonia under very high temperatures and a very
high pressure. His lab techniques were then refined and adapted
for industrial purposes by another German chemist, Carl Bosch, and
the resulting process, appropriately named to the haber Bosch process,
made large scale production of ammonia feasible and economical enough
to make huge batches of commercial fertilizer. The first ammonia
(06:09):
plant was built in nineteen eleven and more quickly followed up.
But there is of course a flip side to all
of this. There's another big draw to beefing up Germany's
ammonia producing facilities. Ammonia oxidized under the Ostworld process becomes
nitric acid, which is a key component in munitions and
other explosives manufacturing. So after transferring to lead the newly
(06:33):
established Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in nineteen eleven, Hauber supervised the
establishments dedication to the war effort, and he was a
really enthusiastic German patriot, and his institute made a lot
of important contributions to the war effort, not just in weaponry,
but in supplies and developments to keep machinery running, things
(06:55):
like anti freeze replacement stuff on that level, something pretty
crucial nevertheless, to blockaded Germany. You know, keeping your supply
lines running. But Harbor is not best remembered for anti
freeze replacement contributions. Of course, He's best remembered for his
work in gas warfare. He thoroughly believed in gas as
(07:16):
a humane weapon. I know that's really hard to comprehend
because gas seems like one of the most terrible weapons
there is. But he saw it as a way to
end the war quickly and um, to end this war
that was going to drag on in the trenches and
all of that, but ended quickly and decisively in favor
of Germany, with fewer German deaths and less debt. And
(07:38):
he was okay with this, even though gas warfare was
in violation of international treaties. Although we should point out
now that at the point he started working on it,
um other countries were okay with tear gas at least,
and that was what Germany was originally developing. But Harber's
first experiments were with chlorine gas instead, yeah of Cording
(08:00):
to a Smithsonian article on Major Wartime Inventions, chlorine gas
had two big things going for it. It remains gaseous
even when temperatures drop below zero degrease fahrenheit, and it's
heavier than air, so it settles into trenches, forcing troops
out and into enemy fire. It's also just really terrible.
It can react with water to produce acid, burning the
(08:21):
eyes and causing the lungs to fill up with fluid.
At its worst, you literally drown in air. It's pretty terrible.
So the Germans first deployed it under Hover's direct supervision
at the Second Battle of Epral April nineteen fifteen, under
the code name Disinfection. And I saw all sorts of
(08:42):
reports for the number of people affected, um totaling the Allies,
Germans and civilians too, because you can't really exactly control
where gas goes, so numbers vary. Numbers vary a lot,
but British records showed three fifty killed and seven thousand casualties,
and that of course means men who were out of
commission due to the severity of their injuries. You know,
(09:05):
they were blinded or had terrible respiratory uh effects from it,
and were sometimes out of commission for the rest of
the war. And the attack was a success for the Germans,
though so much so that they were completely unprepared to
follow up with reinforcements. It was also a success for
Hauber and a validation of his work. After Apra, Hauber
(09:27):
was promoted to captain in the army, which was the
highest position that he obtained the night of his celebratory party,
though his wife, Clara Immervar, committed suicide with his service weapon.
The reasons behind her death are really unknown. She was
a fellow chemist, the first German woman to get a
doctorate in chemistry actually from a German university, but the
hoped for scientific partnership of her marriage. You know, maybe
(09:50):
she was hoping for something like the Curies. It proved
to be a disappointment to her. There really weren't many
professional opportunities for married women scientists with children at the time.
But many see her suicide, especially considering the timing, as
more than the depression of a frustrated chemist, but rather
a protest against her husband's involvement in gas warfare. I
(10:11):
read an article in the Jewish Women's Encyclopedia that stated
that Clara had urged her husband repeatedly to stop work
on gas warfare. She was just sort of horrified by
it and thought that his work was a quote perversion
of the ideals of science, and he had reacted to it.
They had a tense marriage anyway, but he had reacted
(10:33):
to it by publicly accusing her of treason to the
fatherland for her statements or treason as statements. Um so yeah. Consequently,
a lot of people do see her suicide as a
as a protest, as a statement against what he was doing.
But Harbard's reaction to her death certainly didn't improve the situation.
The day after her death, he returned to the front,
(10:56):
left their son to deal with the aftermath of the
family drama, and um he did right to a friend
that was sort of suggesting that this was maybe more
serious than it appears in a lot of his biographies.
He wrote, I hear in my heart the words that
the poor woman once said. I see our head emerging
from between orders and telegrams, and I suffer. So yes,
(11:19):
this is our If we haven't already painted a scary
enough picture or sad enough picture, this certainly what's it.
There By nine, Hobor was in charge of Germany's Chemical
Warfare Service, where he continued his work in gas research
and development. Chlorine was countered with effective masks pretty quickly
and was supplanted by fos Gene which was responsible for
(11:41):
most of the gas deaths, and mustard gas, which could
burn the skin and cause these horrible blisters in addition
to suffocation. That's probably the gas that you think of
the most when you're thinking of gas warfare in World
War One. Mustard gas was particularly awful because it had
practically no smell, no color, and wouldn't always cause immediate damage.
(12:03):
Troops really needed unwieldy full body coverage to stay safe
from it, or gas proof shelters that they could retreat to,
and gas was eventually used on all sides, creating an
arms race of sorts between each country's chemists, each trying
to create more effective gases and masks. So that's why
World War One is sometimes called the chemist's War, which
(12:23):
I hadn't ever heard that term before researching this podcast
some but it really it does make sense. But despite
gas being responsible for only one point three million of
the twenty nine point five million World War One death
it was a really potent psychological weapon. I thought of
the poem Deltha Decorum st which is an old really
(12:46):
like ninth grade English class staple where you if you
haven't read it, you could find it online easily, but
it's a good it's a good way to get into
the I don't know, to better understand it as a
ecological weapon and see what somebody dying of gas would
really due to a soldier. Besides just getting into people's
(13:08):
heads the gas, it required a lot of logistical adaptations
as well. It required medical tents to be set up
near the front, where soldiers could quickly hose off and
get their nose, eyes, and mouth sprayed with baking soda.
According to a military history article by Clyde Ward, ropes
would connect these field tents to ambulances so soldiers blinded
(13:28):
by gas could follow along. One of the most famous
paintings from the war, John Singer Sergeant's Gassed, depicts blinded
men walking in a column. It also required gas officers
who would remove their masks and attempt to idy the
gas in question with quick sniffs with mustard. For instance,
the trained men were supposed to be able to detect
(13:49):
a faint smell of garlic and would order a chlorinated
lime to mitigate the gases effects. That sounds like one
of the worst jobs in the war, probably, but moving
on to Harber again, well, his innovations could prolong the
war for Germany. They obviously couldn't win it, and after
Germany's defeat, Harper was really on the verge of nervous collapse.
(14:11):
He felt partly responsible for the country's failure, and there
was also the very real possibility, since he was on
the losing side, that he'd be accused of war crimes instead.
Though things really looked up for him. He remarried and
he won the nineteen eighteen Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which
was awarded in nineteen nineteen for his work on the
(14:33):
haber Bosch process, and of course, considering his recent wartime
history at this point, that award was a pretty controversial choice.
I mean, he wasn't getting congratulated by the international scientific community,
will just put it that way, especially since he remained
a fiercely patriotic German. He went right back to work
(14:54):
for the fatherland. In this effort to help his country
repay hefty wartime operations, he began to conceive of this
plan to extract gold from international sea waters, operating under
the incorrect assumption, unfortunately for him, that there were up
to sixty eight milligrams of gold per metric ton in
(15:15):
sea water. Once it was revealed that there was nowhere
near that much golden seawater. The plan was scrapped, another
sort of depressing side to his life. He was very
upset at the downfall of that plan. He also became
something of a pop scientist, though, writing articles, giving lectures
and continuing his tinkering and and leading tremendous output from
(15:37):
the Kaiser Willem Institute. But by the early thirties, Germany
was no longer a place for a Jewish Man, even
one who had converted to Lutheranism decades earlier and served
as country during the First War. The story usually has
Hobber leaving the country after Hitler ordered all Jews out
of government positions, while his own job was safe due
to a status Habber is supposed to have resigned over
(15:57):
the firing of his Jewish staffing to his daughter Eva,
though he simply reported for work one day at the
institute and was barred by the porter, who told him
the jew hopper is not allowed in here. Either way, though,
he did leave Germany and took up an invitation to
go to Cambridge and work in exile, and wrote to
a friend once he was there, quote, I was German
(16:19):
to an extent that I feel fully only now and
I am filled with incredible disgust. Uh I mean I
would assume over being abandoned by his country. But he
only ended up staying in England for a few months
before moving on to Switzerland and dying there of a
heart attack in nineteen thirty four at the age of
sixty five. While he was in Switzerland, he had been
(16:42):
en route to meet with Hiam Weizmann, who was the
future first President of Israel, and he was planning to
meet with him about a new position at an institute,
so he was actively looking to continue his work when
when he passed away, the legacy of hoppers were took
an even darker turn during the Second World War. While
(17:03):
Hitler's own experience with gas left him with sometimes hoarse
voice and revulsion to its combat use, he found it
an effective means of mass civilian killings. In the nineteen twenties,
Habber had helped to develop pesticide gases at the Kaiser
Willem Institute, and that research ultimately developed into Ziclon B,
the gas that was used during the Holocaust at Nazi
(17:24):
extermination camps. Some of Habber's own relatives died in those camps.
I mean, I think that's the saddest twist to the story.
And I guess he wasn't alive to see it, but
it it's certainly um, I don't know it affected me
more than some of the other sad facts in his life.
But just to pile it on. His son by his
first marriage committed suicide in the nineteen forties, and then
(17:48):
his other son, his son from his second marriage, went
on to become a historian of gas warfare. He wrote
a book called The Poisonous Cloud, and um, it's one
of the best known books I think gas warfare during
World War One. After his death, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
was eventually renamed the Fritz Hauber Institute, and Habber's prize
(18:09):
winning collaborator Bosch also saw mixed fortunes leading up to
the Second War. He had become president of a German
chemical manufacturing company and had won the nineteen thirty one
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his half of the Horber
Bosch process, but he also saw one of his plants
blow up, killing hundreds instead of the approaching war quote,
my entire life's work will be destroyed, and I cannot
(18:31):
survive that, So, um, it's really gotten to be it's
a really depressing episode. But how how are we going
to attempt to reconcile the two sides of Fritz Haber?
I mean, I think it's the question that anybody who
looks at his life tries to answer. He's a Nobel
Prize winner. He's responsible for some some pretty impressive discoveries,
(18:57):
but also for some really disturbing stuff. Is Noble Biography
describes him like this, Haubert live for science, both for
its own sake and also for the influence it has
in molding human life and human culture and civilization. And
that's of course referring to his work developing fertilizers, but
I think it also speaks pretty poignantly to his work
(19:20):
in weaponry and gas. And I know during the Blood
Work interview, we've talked a little bit about ambiguity and science.
You know, you don't really know exactly how it's going
to play out, and how some of those experiments with
animals are really disturbing to us now. And I think
that Harbor and that quote in particular, kind of some
up that idea of the ambiguity of science when doing
(19:43):
research that led to the Haber Bosch process. Hauber didn't
have a purpose in mind, just a goal force hydrogen
and nitrogen to combine in a chemical reaction. So I mean,
I guess that's something to think about and desting the
results the scientists doing the work, and I mean, what
is the signed his responsibility to think about what could
happen with that work eventually. But Bosh did wonder a
(20:06):
lot about the consequences of the work he had done
with Harbor. He wrote, quote, I've often asked myself whether
it would have been better if we had not succeeded.
But these questions are useless. Progress in science and technology
cannot be stopped. And just to throw one final quote
in the mix here, I think that it's really interesting
(20:27):
to compare that quote that Bosch left later in life
with one that Harbor wrote as a young man, before
seeing the benefits in the terror caused by his discoveries.
He wrote, we only want one limit, the limit of
our own ability. Um, so yeah, I think on that
a little bit. Guys, I'm down. We have some fun
(20:50):
listener meal, I think we might hope. So it's time
for a listener meal. So since we don't want to
leave you on such a sad note, even though it
is an interesting story to learn about. We thought we'd
include some fun listener mail from Rose and Peka, Kansas.
She wrote this email maybe a little behind the times,
(21:12):
but something funny happened over Halloween related to your podcast Halloween.
We love Halloween, don't we to be? We do? Okay?
She said. The Saturday before Halloween, my friends and I
went out to a bar for a costume celebration. We
were sitting upstairs next to the lafft railing and had
an excellent view of everyone entering into the bar. A
guy walks in with shades on, black slacks, a white
(21:35):
dress shirt, black tie dress shoes, and a backpack with
a parachute hanging out. At first, I thought maybe he
was a Mormon missionary, but that didn't explain the parachute
that I thought maybe he was James Bond. I forgot
about it for a while, but he kept catching my
eye and I was really trying to figure out exactly
what he was dressed as. Then it dawned on me
(21:57):
he was dB Cooper. I aired my excitement with my buddies,
but no one seemed to know exactly who dB Cooper was.
I told them about your episode I listened to Not
Long for Halloween. Later on, I persuaded my friend to
go ask him if he was indeed dB Cooper, and
he was. I gave him the thumbs up from the table,
And thinking back on that particular action, I feel like
(22:20):
I negated my coolness of knowing who he was with that.
So um, we are proud that the podcast allowed you
to identify what sounds like a pretty awesome Halloween costume
and you can say you know who dB Cooper is
now too. He's hanging out at this bar Halloween. So
thank you for writing Rose and for hopefully cheering everybody
(22:43):
up a little bit after this bad podcast episode. Uh,
if you want to write us about fun Halloween costumes
or important scientific discoveries, we're happy to hear both. You
can find us that history podcast at how stuff works
dot com. We're also in Twitter at mist in History,
and we're on Facebook. And if you would like to
(23:04):
learn a little bit more about some of the motivations
behind Hobber's fertilizer development, we have some articles regarding our
current food supply and people's theories on that in particular,
we have one called will we run out of Food?
You can look that at by visiting our homepage at
www dot house stuff works dot com. Be sure to
(23:27):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how stuf Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House to Works
iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina, Chuck Rewarding and de Bilina.
I'm sure you've noticed, but we talk a lot about
these father of subjects. So like Elan Turing, the father
(00:23):
of computer science, I think, also the father of artificial intelligence.
Recently Alphonse Bertillon, who is the father of the mug shot.
That's a pretty good one. And then Harvey Wiley too, Yes,
the pure food father. Yeah, exactly. So today's subject, German
chemist Fritz Haber might have one of the more dubious
(00:46):
father of titles. He's commonly considered the father of chemical
warfare for his work during World War One. That sounds
pretty bad already, but it's worth getting it out there
right now that that's not a passively earned title either.
He's not a scientist who made a discovery and then
watched as it was applied by other workers, other scientists
(01:08):
to something horrible. He actively promoted the development and use
of gas and warfare, even witnessing its deployment from the front.
But Harbor's chemical work also led to the development of
synthetic fertilizers, another fraud subject due to environmental concerns, of course,
but undoubtedly significant to the BBC estimates that two out
(01:29):
of five people would not be alive today if global
crop yields hadn't shot through the roof in the twentieth century,
allowing way more food to be grown for population now
rounding seven billions. So, I mean, that's an amazing statistic
to me. It really stops and makes you stop and think.
It does It makes you wonder if you might be
two out of five there. But we have two sides
(01:50):
of a story set up already. So there's Fritz Harbor,
the brilliant chemist creating instruments of war, and Fritz Haber,
the brilliant chemist saving millions of people from famine. We
can also add to the mix a tragic family life,
a complicated existence as a patriotic German Jew, and a
(02:11):
Nobel prize which does have been popping up the Ladin
podcast to But we're gonna start in Breslow, Prussia, which
is now part of Poland, where Fritz Haber was born
December nine, eighteen sixty eight and his father worked in
the pigment and die industry importing pigments and dies, and
his mother died within a month of giving birth to him,
(02:33):
which was the fact that might have caused a little
bit of family tension between the father and the son,
and Hauber's father's business being chemically based may have actually
helped stoke and interest in chemistry for him, because by
the time he enrolled at the University of Berlin in
eighteen eighty six, it was to study science, and he
continued to schooling at Heidelberg, where he studied with Robert
(02:53):
Willem Bunsen, a very famous name uns and Bunsen burners
and the Charlottenburg Technicia KSHU in Berlin. Taking a year
off for military service. After a stint working for his
father and dabbling an industry, Hawb returned to scientific research
in Zurich and at the University of Vienna. His first
academic job came in eighteen nine four with the Department
(03:13):
of Chemical and Fuel Technology in Karl's Rue, where he
switched his focus from organic chemistry to physical chemistry. By
eight seven he branched out into electro chemistry, and by
nineteen o four he was studying thermo dynamics yeah and
it's during this phase that he began his life changing work.
Back in eight the British chemist William Crooks had issued
(03:35):
this very dire pronouncement, and of course pronouncements like this
had been issued throughout history, but this is the one
we're focusing on. He predicted that during the upcoming century,
the world's food supply would no longer be able to
support its booming population. Population with outstrip how much food
we could grow. So the question was how could we
(03:56):
boost crop field so we wouldn't have all these people starving. Well,
nitrogen fertilizer certainly helps make more productive crops. And just
a very quick, very brief science lesson here. Nitrogen is
of course all around us. It's the largest component of
the air we breathe, but it's obviously of no use
to plants unless it's fixed in something water soluble, like
(04:18):
ammonia or nitrates for instance. So um, I thought of
the three sisters method that Native Americans used. That was
my first sort of bell that rung for nitrogen fixed. Interesting, yeah,
you might remember it too. It's just this simple natural
version of fixing nitrogen where the bean plants, I think,
would fix it in the soil. For the maze and
(04:40):
the squash plants, but we're talking a much larger scale
production by this point than that. And by the turn
of the century, the largest natural sodium nitrate source for
commercial farming was guana, which is bird or bat poop,
and that's still sometimes used as fertilizer um. But in
the least pro partical scenario imaginable. The best source for
(05:02):
guana worldwide at the time was this two mile five
ft thick deposit of bird droppings in Chile. It's pretty
cross and it's a little gross, and just like I said,
really not practical at all. I mean, you imagine being
in Germany and you're having to import this guano from
(05:23):
across the world. It seems like there'd be a better solution. Okay,
So that's why Harber starts working on this problem. He
starts tinkering, and truly tinkering. There's no stroke of luck here,
said in Discovery. And by eight he figured out the
right conditions to make ammonia out of air. Specifically, he
used an iron catalyst to force hydrogen and nitrogen to
(05:46):
combine into ammonia under very high temperatures and a very
high pressure. His lab techniques were then refined and adapted
for industrial purposes by another German chemist, Carl Bosch, and
the resulting process, appropriately named to the haber Bosch process,
made large scale production of ammonia feasible and economical enough
to make huge batches of commercial fertilizer. The first ammonia
(06:09):
plant was built in nineteen eleven and more quickly followed up.
But there is of course a flip side to all
of this. There's another big draw to beefing up Germany's
ammonia producing facilities. Ammonia oxidized under the Ostworld process becomes
nitric acid, which is a key component in munitions and
other explosives manufacturing. So after transferring to lead the newly
(06:33):
established Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in nineteen eleven, Hauber supervised the
establishments dedication to the war effort, and he was a
really enthusiastic German patriot, and his institute made a lot
of important contributions to the war effort, not just in weaponry,
but in supplies and developments to keep machinery running, things
(06:55):
like anti freeze replacement stuff on that level, something pretty
crucial nevertheless, to blockaded Germany. You know, keeping your supply
lines running. But Harbor is not best remembered for anti
freeze replacement contributions. Of course, He's best remembered for his
work in gas warfare. He thoroughly believed in gas as
(07:16):
a humane weapon. I know that's really hard to comprehend
because gas seems like one of the most terrible weapons
there is. But he saw it as a way to
end the war quickly and um, to end this war
that was going to drag on in the trenches and
all of that, but ended quickly and decisively in favor
of Germany, with fewer German deaths and less debt. And
(07:38):
he was okay with this, even though gas warfare was
in violation of international treaties. Although we should point out
now that at the point he started working on it,
um other countries were okay with tear gas at least,
and that was what Germany was originally developing. But Harber's
first experiments were with chlorine gas instead, yeah of Cording
(08:00):
to a Smithsonian article on Major Wartime Inventions, chlorine gas
had two big things going for it. It remains gaseous
even when temperatures drop below zero degrease fahrenheit, and it's
heavier than air, so it settles into trenches, forcing troops
out and into enemy fire. It's also just really terrible.
It can react with water to produce acid, burning the
(08:21):
eyes and causing the lungs to fill up with fluid.
At its worst, you literally drown in air. It's pretty terrible.
So the Germans first deployed it under Hover's direct supervision
at the Second Battle of Epral April nineteen fifteen, under
the code name Disinfection. And I saw all sorts of
(08:42):
reports for the number of people affected, um totaling the Allies,
Germans and civilians too, because you can't really exactly control
where gas goes, so numbers vary. Numbers vary a lot,
but British records showed three fifty killed and seven thousand casualties,
and that of course means men who were out of
commission due to the severity of their injuries. You know,
(09:05):
they were blinded or had terrible respiratory uh effects from it,
and were sometimes out of commission for the rest of
the war. And the attack was a success for the Germans,
though so much so that they were completely unprepared to
follow up with reinforcements. It was also a success for
Hauber and a validation of his work. After Apra, Hauber
(09:27):
was promoted to captain in the army, which was the
highest position that he obtained the night of his celebratory party,
though his wife, Clara Immervar, committed suicide with his service weapon.
The reasons behind her death are really unknown. She was
a fellow chemist, the first German woman to get a
doctorate in chemistry actually from a German university, but the
hoped for scientific partnership of her marriage. You know, maybe
(09:50):
she was hoping for something like the Curies. It proved
to be a disappointment to her. There really weren't many
professional opportunities for married women scientists with children at the time.
But many see her suicide, especially considering the timing, as
more than the depression of a frustrated chemist, but rather
a protest against her husband's involvement in gas warfare. I
(10:11):
read an article in the Jewish Women's Encyclopedia that stated
that Clara had urged her husband repeatedly to stop work
on gas warfare. She was just sort of horrified by
it and thought that his work was a quote perversion
of the ideals of science, and he had reacted to it.
They had a tense marriage anyway, but he had reacted
(10:33):
to it by publicly accusing her of treason to the
fatherland for her statements or treason as statements. Um so yeah. Consequently,
a lot of people do see her suicide as a
as a protest, as a statement against what he was doing.
But Harbard's reaction to her death certainly didn't improve the situation.
The day after her death, he returned to the front,
(10:56):
left their son to deal with the aftermath of the
family drama, and um he did right to a friend
that was sort of suggesting that this was maybe more
serious than it appears in a lot of his biographies.
He wrote, I hear in my heart the words that
the poor woman once said. I see our head emerging
from between orders and telegrams, and I suffer. So yes,
(11:19):
this is our If we haven't already painted a scary
enough picture or sad enough picture, this certainly what's it.
There By nine, Hobor was in charge of Germany's Chemical
Warfare Service, where he continued his work in gas research
and development. Chlorine was countered with effective masks pretty quickly
and was supplanted by fos Gene which was responsible for
(11:41):
most of the gas deaths, and mustard gas, which could
burn the skin and cause these horrible blisters in addition
to suffocation. That's probably the gas that you think of
the most when you're thinking of gas warfare in World
War One. Mustard gas was particularly awful because it had
practically no smell, no color, and wouldn't always cause immediate damage.
(12:03):
Troops really needed unwieldy full body coverage to stay safe
from it, or gas proof shelters that they could retreat to,
and gas was eventually used on all sides, creating an
arms race of sorts between each country's chemists, each trying
to create more effective gases and masks. So that's why
World War One is sometimes called the chemist's War, which
(12:23):
I hadn't ever heard that term before researching this podcast
some but it really it does make sense. But despite
gas being responsible for only one point three million of
the twenty nine point five million World War One death
it was a really potent psychological weapon. I thought of
the poem Deltha Decorum st which is an old really
(12:46):
like ninth grade English class staple where you if you
haven't read it, you could find it online easily, but
it's a good it's a good way to get into
the I don't know, to better understand it as a
ecological weapon and see what somebody dying of gas would
really due to a soldier. Besides just getting into people's
(13:08):
heads the gas, it required a lot of logistical adaptations
as well. It required medical tents to be set up
near the front, where soldiers could quickly hose off and
get their nose, eyes, and mouth sprayed with baking soda.
According to a military history article by Clyde Ward, ropes
would connect these field tents to ambulances so soldiers blinded
(13:28):
by gas could follow along. One of the most famous
paintings from the war, John Singer Sergeant's Gassed, depicts blinded
men walking in a column. It also required gas officers
who would remove their masks and attempt to idy the
gas in question with quick sniffs with mustard. For instance,
the trained men were supposed to be able to detect
(13:49):
a faint smell of garlic and would order a chlorinated
lime to mitigate the gases effects. That sounds like one
of the worst jobs in the war, probably, but moving
on to Harber again, well, his innovations could prolong the
war for Germany. They obviously couldn't win it, and after
Germany's defeat, Harper was really on the verge of nervous collapse.
(14:11):
He felt partly responsible for the country's failure, and there
was also the very real possibility, since he was on
the losing side, that he'd be accused of war crimes instead.
Though things really looked up for him. He remarried and
he won the nineteen eighteen Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which
was awarded in nineteen nineteen for his work on the
(14:33):
haber Bosch process, and of course, considering his recent wartime
history at this point, that award was a pretty controversial choice.
I mean, he wasn't getting congratulated by the international scientific community,
will just put it that way, especially since he remained
a fiercely patriotic German. He went right back to work
(14:54):
for the fatherland. In this effort to help his country
repay hefty wartime operations, he began to conceive of this
plan to extract gold from international sea waters, operating under
the incorrect assumption, unfortunately for him, that there were up
to sixty eight milligrams of gold per metric ton in
(15:15):
sea water. Once it was revealed that there was nowhere
near that much golden seawater. The plan was scrapped, another
sort of depressing side to his life. He was very
upset at the downfall of that plan. He also became
something of a pop scientist, though, writing articles, giving lectures
and continuing his tinkering and and leading tremendous output from
(15:37):
the Kaiser Willem Institute. But by the early thirties, Germany
was no longer a place for a Jewish Man, even
one who had converted to Lutheranism decades earlier and served
as country during the First War. The story usually has
Hobber leaving the country after Hitler ordered all Jews out
of government positions, while his own job was safe due
to a status Habber is supposed to have resigned over
(15:57):
the firing of his Jewish staffing to his daughter Eva,
though he simply reported for work one day at the
institute and was barred by the porter, who told him
the jew hopper is not allowed in here. Either way, though,
he did leave Germany and took up an invitation to
go to Cambridge and work in exile, and wrote to
a friend once he was there, quote, I was German
(16:19):
to an extent that I feel fully only now and
I am filled with incredible disgust. Uh I mean I
would assume over being abandoned by his country. But he
only ended up staying in England for a few months
before moving on to Switzerland and dying there of a
heart attack in nineteen thirty four at the age of
sixty five. While he was in Switzerland, he had been
(16:42):
en route to meet with Hiam Weizmann, who was the
future first President of Israel, and he was planning to
meet with him about a new position at an institute,
so he was actively looking to continue his work when
when he passed away, the legacy of hoppers were took
an even darker turn during the Second World War. While
(17:03):
Hitler's own experience with gas left him with sometimes hoarse
voice and revulsion to its combat use, he found it
an effective means of mass civilian killings. In the nineteen twenties,
Habber had helped to develop pesticide gases at the Kaiser
Willem Institute, and that research ultimately developed into Ziclon B,
the gas that was used during the Holocaust at Nazi
(17:24):
extermination camps. Some of Habber's own relatives died in those camps.
I mean, I think that's the saddest twist to the story.
And I guess he wasn't alive to see it, but
it it's certainly um, I don't know it affected me
more than some of the other sad facts in his life.
But just to pile it on. His son by his
first marriage committed suicide in the nineteen forties, and then
(17:48):
his other son, his son from his second marriage, went
on to become a historian of gas warfare. He wrote
a book called The Poisonous Cloud, and um, it's one
of the best known books I think gas warfare during
World War One. After his death, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
was eventually renamed the Fritz Hauber Institute, and Habber's prize
(18:09):
winning collaborator Bosch also saw mixed fortunes leading up to
the Second War. He had become president of a German
chemical manufacturing company and had won the nineteen thirty one
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his half of the Horber
Bosch process, but he also saw one of his plants
blow up, killing hundreds instead of the approaching war quote,
my entire life's work will be destroyed, and I cannot
(18:31):
survive that, So, um, it's really gotten to be it's
a really depressing episode. But how how are we going
to attempt to reconcile the two sides of Fritz Haber?
I mean, I think it's the question that anybody who
looks at his life tries to answer. He's a Nobel
Prize winner. He's responsible for some some pretty impressive discoveries,
(18:57):
but also for some really disturbing stuff. Is Noble Biography
describes him like this, Haubert live for science, both for
its own sake and also for the influence it has
in molding human life and human culture and civilization. And
that's of course referring to his work developing fertilizers, but
I think it also speaks pretty poignantly to his work
(19:20):
in weaponry and gas. And I know during the Blood
Work interview, we've talked a little bit about ambiguity and science.
You know, you don't really know exactly how it's going
to play out, and how some of those experiments with
animals are really disturbing to us now. And I think
that Harbor and that quote in particular, kind of some
up that idea of the ambiguity of science when doing
(19:43):
research that led to the Haber Bosch process. Hauber didn't
have a purpose in mind, just a goal force hydrogen
and nitrogen to combine in a chemical reaction. So I mean,
I guess that's something to think about and desting the
results the scientists doing the work, and I mean, what
is the signed his responsibility to think about what could
happen with that work eventually. But Bosh did wonder a
(20:06):
lot about the consequences of the work he had done
with Harbor. He wrote, quote, I've often asked myself whether
it would have been better if we had not succeeded.
But these questions are useless. Progress in science and technology
cannot be stopped. And just to throw one final quote
in the mix here, I think that it's really interesting
(20:27):
to compare that quote that Bosch left later in life
with one that Harbor wrote as a young man, before
seeing the benefits in the terror caused by his discoveries.
He wrote, we only want one limit, the limit of
our own ability. Um, so yeah, I think on that
a little bit. Guys, I'm down. We have some fun
(20:50):
listener meal, I think we might hope. So it's time
for a listener meal. So since we don't want to
leave you on such a sad note, even though it
is an interesting story to learn about. We thought we'd
include some fun listener mail from Rose and Peka, Kansas.
She wrote this email maybe a little behind the times,
(21:12):
but something funny happened over Halloween related to your podcast Halloween.
We love Halloween, don't we to be? We do? Okay?
She said. The Saturday before Halloween, my friends and I
went out to a bar for a costume celebration. We
were sitting upstairs next to the lafft railing and had
an excellent view of everyone entering into the bar. A
guy walks in with shades on, black slacks, a white
(21:35):
dress shirt, black tie dress shoes, and a backpack with
a parachute hanging out. At first, I thought maybe he
was a Mormon missionary, but that didn't explain the parachute
that I thought maybe he was James Bond. I forgot
about it for a while, but he kept catching my
eye and I was really trying to figure out exactly
what he was dressed as. Then it dawned on me
(21:57):
he was dB Cooper. I aired my excitement with my buddies,
but no one seemed to know exactly who dB Cooper was.
I told them about your episode I listened to Not
Long for Halloween. Later on, I persuaded my friend to
go ask him if he was indeed dB Cooper, and
he was. I gave him the thumbs up from the table,
And thinking back on that particular action, I feel like
(22:20):
I negated my coolness of knowing who he was with that.
So um, we are proud that the podcast allowed you
to identify what sounds like a pretty awesome Halloween costume
and you can say you know who dB Cooper is
now too. He's hanging out at this bar Halloween. So
thank you for writing Rose and for hopefully cheering everybody
(22:43):
up a little bit after this bad podcast episode. Uh,
if you want to write us about fun Halloween costumes
or important scientific discoveries, we're happy to hear both. You
can find us that history podcast at how stuff works
dot com. We're also in Twitter at mist in History,
and we're on Facebook. And if you would like to
(23:04):
learn a little bit more about some of the motivations
behind Hobber's fertilizer development, we have some articles regarding our
current food supply and people's theories on that in particular,
we have one called will we run out of Food?
You can look that at by visiting our homepage at
www dot house stuff works dot com. Be sure to
(23:27):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how stuf Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House to Works
iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.
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