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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. We have an episode coming up on

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Speaker 1: the show that references back to chemical warfare in World

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Speaker 1: War One, so we thought we would share our previous

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Speaker 1: episode on Fritz Haber, who was the mastermind of Germany's

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Speaker 1: chemical weapons program. That was from previous hosts of the show,

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Speaker 1: Sarah and Deblina, and just as a note. In addition

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Speaker 1: to the discussions of chemical weapons and their effects, this

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Speaker 1: episode also includes some discussion of the suicides of people

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Speaker 1: connected to Harbor, including his wife Clara, who took her

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Speaker 1: own life in nine This episode originally came out on

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Speaker 1: December twelve, eleven. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Checkerboarding and Deblina.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you've noticed, but we talk a lot about

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Speaker 1: these father of subjects, So like Alan Turing, the father

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Speaker 1: of computer science, I think, also the father of artificial intelligence.

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Speaker 1: Recently Alphonse Bertillon, who is the father of the mug shot.

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Speaker 1: That's a pretty good one. And then Harvey Wiley too, yes,

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Speaker 1: the pure food father. Yeah, exactly. So today's subject German

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Speaker 1: chemist Fritz Haber might have one of the more dubious

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Speaker 1: father of titles. He's commonly considered the father of chemical

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Speaker 1: warfare for his work during World War One. That sounds

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Speaker 1: pretty bad already, but it's worth getting it out there

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Speaker 1: right now that that's not a passively earned title either.

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Speaker 1: He's not a scientist who made a discovery and then

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Speaker 1: watched as it was applied by other workers, other scientists

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Speaker 1: to something horrible. He actively promoted the development and use

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Speaker 1: of gas and warfare, even witnessing its deployment from the front.

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Speaker 1: But Hobber's chemical work also led to the development of

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Speaker 1: synthetic fertilizers, another fraud subject due to environmental concerns, of course,

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Speaker 1: but undoubtedly significant to The BBC estimates that two out

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Speaker 1: of five people would not be alive today if global

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Speaker 1: crop yields hadn't shot through the roof in the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: allowing way more food to be grown for population now

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Speaker 1: rounding seven billions. So, I mean, that's an amazing statistic

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Speaker 1: to me. It really stops and makes you stop and think.

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Speaker 1: It does It makes you wonder if you might be

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Speaker 1: two out of five there. But we have two sides

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Speaker 1: of a story set up already. So there's Fritz Haber,

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Speaker 1: the brilliant chemist creating instruments of war, and Fritz Haber

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Speaker 1: the brilliant chemist saving millions of people from famine. We

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Speaker 1: can also add to the mix a tragic family life,

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Speaker 1: a complicated existence as a patriotic German Jew, and a

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Speaker 1: Nobel prize which does have been popping up a lot

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Speaker 1: in podcast to But we're going to start in Breslow, Prussia,

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Speaker 1: which is now part of poll End, where Fritz Haber

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Speaker 1: was born December nine, eighteen sixty eight, and his father

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Speaker 1: worked in the pigment and die industry, importing pigments and dies,

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Speaker 1: and his mother died within a month of giving birth

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Speaker 1: to him, which was the fact that might have caused

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Speaker 1: a little bit of family tension between the father and

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Speaker 1: the son. And Habber's Father's business being chemically based, may

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Speaker 1: have actually helped stoke and interest in chemistry for him,

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Speaker 1: because by the time he enrolled at the University of

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Speaker 1: Berlin in eighteen eighty six, it was to study science,

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Speaker 1: and he continued to schooling at Heidelberg, where he studied

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Speaker 1: with Robert Willem Bunsen, a very famous name, Mons and

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Speaker 1: Bunsen Burners and the Charlottenburg Technicia Hokshula in Berlin. Taking

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Speaker 1: a year off for military service. After a stint working

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Speaker 1: for his father and dabbling an industry, Hauber turned to

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Speaker 1: scientific research in Zurich and at the University of Vienna.

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Speaker 1: His first academic job came in eighteen ninety four with

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Speaker 1: the Department of Chemical and Fuel Technology in Karl's Rouge,

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Speaker 1: where he switched his focus from organic chemistry to physical industry.

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Speaker 1: By even he branched out into electro chemistry, and by

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Speaker 1: nineteen o four he was studying thermo dynamics. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it's during this phase that he began his life changing work.

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Speaker 1: Back in the British chemist William Crooks had issued this

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Speaker 1: very dire pronouncement and of Chris, pronouncements like this had

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Speaker 1: been issued throughout history, but this is the one we're

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Speaker 1: focusing on. He predicted that during the upcoming century, the

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Speaker 1: world's food supply would no longer be able to support

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Speaker 1: its booming population. Population with outstrip how much food we

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Speaker 1: could grow. So the question was how could we boost

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Speaker 1: crop yield so we wouldn't have all these people starving? Well.

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Speaker 1: Nitrogen fertilizer certainly helps make more productive crops. And just

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Speaker 1: a very quick, very brief science lesson here. Nitrogen is

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Speaker 1: of course all around us. It's the largest component of

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Speaker 1: the air we breathe, but it's obviously of no use

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Speaker 1: to plants unless it's fixed in something water soluble, like

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Speaker 1: ammonia or traits for instance. So um, I thought of

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Speaker 1: the three sisters method that Native Americans used. That was

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Speaker 1: my first sort of bell that rung for nitrogen fixed. Interesting, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you might remember it too. It's just this simple natural

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Speaker 1: version of fixing nitrogen where the bean plants, I think,

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Speaker 1: would fix it in the soil for the maze and

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Speaker 1: the squash plants. But we're talking a much larger scale

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Speaker 1: production by this point than that. And by the turn

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Speaker 1: of the century, the largest natural sodium nitrate source for

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Speaker 1: commercial farming was guano, which is bird or bat poop,

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Speaker 1: and that's still sometimes used as fertilizer um but in

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Speaker 1: the least practical scenario imaginable, the best source for guano

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Speaker 1: worldwide at the time was this two mile five ft

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Speaker 1: thick deposit of bird droppings in Chile. It's a little

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Speaker 1: gross and just like I said, really not practical at all.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you imagine being in Germany and you're having

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Speaker 1: to import this juana from across the world. It seems

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Speaker 1: like there'd be a better solution. Okay, So that's why

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Speaker 1: Hauber starts working on this problem. He starts tinkering, and

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Speaker 1: truly tinkering. There's no stroke of luck here, sudden discovery,

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Speaker 1: and by nineteen o eight he figured out the right

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Speaker 1: conditions to make ammonia out of air. Specifically, he used

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Speaker 1: an iron catalyst to force hydrogen and nitrogen to combine

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Speaker 1: into ammonia under very high temperatures and a very high pressure.

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Speaker 1: His lab techniques were then refined and adapted for industrial

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Speaker 1: purposes by another German chemist, Carl Bosch, and the resulting process,

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Speaker 1: appropriately named the haber Bosch process, made large scale production

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Speaker 1: of ammonia feasible and economical enough to make huge batches

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Speaker 1: of commercial fertilizer. The first ammonia plant was built in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eleven and more quickly followed up. But there is,

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Speaker 1: of course a flip side to all of this. There's

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Speaker 1: another big draw to beefing up Germany's ammonia producing facilities.

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Speaker 1: Ammonia oxidized under the ost world process becomes nitric acid,

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Speaker 1: which is a key component in munitions and other explosives manufacturing.

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Speaker 1: So after transferring to lead the newly established Kaiser Wilhelm

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Speaker 1: Institute in nineteen eleven, Hauber supervised the establishment's dedication to

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Speaker 1: the war effort, and he was a really enthusiastic German patriot,

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Speaker 1: and his institute made a lot of important contributions to

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Speaker 1: the war effort, not just in weaponry, but in supplies

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Speaker 1: and developments to keep machinery running, things like anti freeze

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Speaker 1: replacement stuff on that level, something pretty crucial nevertheless, to

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Speaker 1: blockaded Germany, you know, keeping your supply lines running. But

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Speaker 1: Habber is not best remembered for anti freeze replacement contributions,

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Speaker 1: of course, He's best remembered for his work in gas warfare.

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Speaker 1: He thoroughly believed in gas as a humane weapon. I

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Speaker 1: know that's really hard to comprehend because gas seems like

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Speaker 1: one of the most terrible weapons there is. But he

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Speaker 1: saw it as a way to end the war quickly

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Speaker 1: and um to end this word that was going to

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Speaker 1: drag on in the trenches and all of that, but

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Speaker 1: ended quickly and decisively in favor of Germany, with fewer

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Speaker 1: German deaths and less debt, and he was okay with this,

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Speaker 1: even though gas warfare was in violation of international treaties.

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Speaker 1: Although we should point out now that at the point

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Speaker 1: he started working on it um other countries were okay

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Speaker 1: with tear gas at least, and that was what Germany

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Speaker 1: was originally developing, but Horbr's first experiments were with chlorine

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Speaker 1: gas instead. Yeah. According to a Smithsonian article on major

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Speaker 1: wartime inventions, chlorine gas had two big things going for it.

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Speaker 1: It remains gas even when temperatures dropped below zero degrease fahrenheit,

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Speaker 1: and it's vier than air, so it settles into trenches,

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Speaker 1: forcing troops out and into enemy fire. It's also just

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Speaker 1: really terrible. It can react with water to produce acid,

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Speaker 1: burning the eyes and causing the lungs to fill up

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Speaker 1: with fluid. At its worst, you literally drown in air.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty terrible. So the Germans first deployed it under

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Speaker 1: Hover's direct supervision at the Second Battle of Epral April

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, under the code name Disinfection. And I saw

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Speaker 1: all sorts of reports for the number of people affected UM,

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Speaker 1: totaling the Allies, Germans and civilians. Too, because you can't

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Speaker 1: really exactly control where gas goes, so numbers vary, numbers

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Speaker 1: vary a lot, But British records showed three killed and

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Speaker 1: seven thousand casualties, and that of course means men who

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Speaker 1: were out of commission due to the severity of their injuries.

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Speaker 1: You know, they were blinded or had terrible respiratory uh

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Speaker 1: effects from it, were sometimes out of commission for the

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Speaker 1: rest of the war. And the attack was a success

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Speaker 1: for the Germans, though so much so that they were

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Speaker 1: completely unprepared to follow up with reinforcements. It was also

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Speaker 1: a success for Hauber and a validation of his work.

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Speaker 1: After Apra, Hauber was promoted to captain in the army,

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Speaker 1: which was the highest position that he obtained the night

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Speaker 1: of his celebratory party, though his wife, Clara Imovar, committed

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Speaker 1: suicide with his service weapon. The reasons behind her death

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Speaker 1: are really unknown. She was a fellow chemist, the first

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Speaker 1: German woman to get a doctorate in chemistry actually from

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Speaker 1: a German university. But the hoped for scientific partnership of

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Speaker 1: her marriage. You know, maybe she was hoping for something

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Speaker 1: like the Curies. It proved to be a disappointment. To her.

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Speaker 1: There really weren't many professional opportunities for married women scientists

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Speaker 1: with children at the time. But many see her suicide,

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Speaker 1: especially considering the timing, as more than the depression of

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Speaker 1: a frustrated chemist, but rather a protest against her husband's

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Speaker 1: involvement in gas warfare. I read an article in the

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Speaker 1: Jewish Women's Encyclopedia that stated that Clara had urged her

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Speaker 1: husband repeatedly to stop work on gas warfare. She was

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Speaker 1: just sort of horrified by it and thought that his

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Speaker 1: work was a quote, perversion of the ideals of science,

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Speaker 1: and he had reacted to it. They had a tense

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Speaker 1: marriage anyway, but he had reacted to it by publicly

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Speaker 1: accusing her of treason to the fatherland for her statements

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Speaker 1: or treason as statements. Um so yeah. Consequently, a lot

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Speaker 1: of people do see her suicide as a as a protest,

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Speaker 1: as a statement against what he was doing. But Harbard's

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Speaker 1: reaction to her death certainly didn't improve the situation. The

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Speaker 1: day after her death, he returned to the front, left

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Speaker 1: their son to deal with the aftermath of the family drama.

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Speaker 1: And um he did write to a friend that was

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Speaker 1: sort of suggesting that this was maybe more serious than

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Speaker 1: it appears in a lot of his biographies. He wrote,

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Speaker 1: I hear in my heart the words that the poor

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Speaker 1: woman once said, I see her head emerging from between

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Speaker 1: orders and telegrams, and I suffer. So yes, this is our.

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Speaker 1: If we haven't already painted a scary enough picture or

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Speaker 1: sad enough picture, this certainly puts it there. By nineteen

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Speaker 1: Hobbor was in charge of Germany's Chemical Warfare Service, where

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Speaker 1: he continued his work in gas research and development. Chlorine

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Speaker 1: was countered with effective masks pretty quickly and was supplanted

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Speaker 1: by fos gene, which was responsible for most of the

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Speaker 1: gas deaths, and mustard gas, which could burn the skin

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Speaker 1: and cause these horrible blisters in addition to suffocation. That's

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Speaker 1: probably the gas that you think of the most when

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Speaker 1: you're thinking of gas warfare in World War One, right

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Speaker 1: Mustard gas was particularly awful because it had practically no smell,

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Speaker 1: no color, and wouldn't always cause immediate damage. Troops really

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Speaker 1: needed unwieldy full body coverage to stay safe from it,

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Speaker 1: or gas proof shelters that they could retreat to, and

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Speaker 1: gas was eventually used on all sides, creating an arms

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Speaker 1: race of sorts between each country's chemists, each trying to

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Speaker 1: create more effective gases and masks. So that's why World

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Speaker 1: War One is sometimes called the chemist's War, which I

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Speaker 1: hadn't ever heard that term before researching this podcast some

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Speaker 1: but it really it does make sense. But despite gas

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Speaker 1: being responsible for only one point three million of the

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Speaker 1: twenty nine point five million World War One death it

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Speaker 1: was a really potent psychological weapon. I thought of the

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Speaker 1: poem Dels Decorum st which is an old really like

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Speaker 1: ninth grade English class staple where you if you haven't

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Speaker 1: read it, you could find it online easily. But it's

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Speaker 1: a good it's a good way to get into the

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Speaker 1: I don't know, to better understand it as a psychological

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Speaker 1: weapon and see what somebody dying of gas would really

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Speaker 1: due to a soldier. Besides just getting into people's heads

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Speaker 1: the gas, it required a lot of logistical adaptations as well.

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Speaker 1: It required medical tests to be set up near the

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Speaker 1: front where soldiers could quickly hose off and get their nose, eyes,

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Speaker 1: and mouth sprayed with baking soda. According to a military

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Speaker 1: history article by Clyde Ward, ropes would connect these field

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Speaker 1: tents too ambulances, so soldiers blinded by gas could follow along.

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Speaker 1: One of the most famous paintings from the war, John

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Speaker 1: Singer Sergeant's Gassed depicts blinded men walking in a column.

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Speaker 1: It also required gas officers who would remove their masks

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Speaker 1: and attempt to i dy the gas in question with

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Speaker 1: quick sniffs with mustard. For instance. The trained men were

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Speaker 1: supposed to be able to detect a faint smell of

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Speaker 1: garlic and would order a chlorinated lime to mitigate the

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Speaker 1: gases effects. That sounds like one of the worst jobs

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Speaker 1: in the war, probably, but moving on to Hopper again, well,

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Speaker 1: his innovations could prolong the war for Germany. They obviously

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Speaker 1: couldn't win it, and after Germany's defeat, Haberd was really

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Speaker 1: on the verge of nervous collapse. He felt partly responsible

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Speaker 1: for the country's failure, and there was also the very

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Speaker 1: real possibility, since he was on the losing side, that

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Speaker 1: he'd be accused of war crimes instead. Though things really

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Speaker 1: looked up for him. He remarried and he won the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was awarded in

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen for his work on the haber Bosch process, and,

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Speaker 1: of course, considering his recent wartime history, at this point

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Speaker 1: that award was a pretty controversial choice. I mean, he

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Speaker 1: wasn't getting congratulated by the international scientific community, will just

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Speaker 1: put it that way, especially since he remained a fiercely

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Speaker 1: patriotic German. He went right back to work for the fatherland.

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Speaker 1: In this effort to help his country repay hefty wartime reparations,

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Speaker 1: he began to conceive of this planned extract gold from

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Speaker 1: international seawaters operating under the incorrect assumption, unfortunately for him,

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Speaker 1: that they were up to sixty eight milligrams of gold

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Speaker 1: per metric ton in sea water. Once it was revealed

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Speaker 1: that there was nowhere near that much golden seawater, the

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Speaker 1: plan was scrapped, another sort of depressing side to his life.

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Speaker 1: He was very upset at the downfall of that plan.

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Speaker 1: He also became something of a pop scientist, though, writing articles,

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Speaker 1: giving lectures and continuing his tinkering and and leading tremendous

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Speaker 1: output from the Kaiser Willem Institute. But by the early

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Speaker 1: thirties Germany was no longer a place for a Jewish Man,

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Speaker 1: even one who had converted to Lutheranism decades earlier and

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Speaker 1: served as country during the First War. The story usually

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Speaker 1: has Hobber leaving the country after Hitler ordered all Jews

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Speaker 1: out of government positions, while his own job was safe

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Speaker 1: due to his status. Habber is supposed to have resigned

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Speaker 1: over the firing of his Jewish staff, according to his

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Speaker 1: daughter Eva, though he simply reported for work day at

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Speaker 1: the institute and was barred by the porter who told

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Speaker 1: him the jew hopper is not allowed in here. Either way, though,

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Speaker 1: he did leave Germany and took up an invitation to

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Speaker 1: go to Cambridge and work in exile, and wrote to

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Speaker 1: a friend once he was there, quote, I was German

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Speaker 1: to an extent that I feel fully only now and

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Speaker 1: I am filled with incredible disgust u I mean I

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Speaker 1: would assume over being abandoned by his country. But he

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Speaker 1: only ended up staying in England for a few months

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Speaker 1: before moving on to Switzerland and dying there of a

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Speaker 1: heart attack in nineteen thirty four at the age of

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Speaker 1: sixty five. While he was in Switzerland, he had been

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Speaker 1: en route to meet with Hiam Weizmann, who was the

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Speaker 1: future first President of Israel, and he was planning to

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Speaker 1: meet with him about a new position at an institute,

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Speaker 1: so he was actively looking to continue his work when

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Speaker 1: when he passed away. The legacy of Habber's work took

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Speaker 1: an even darker turn during the Second World War. While

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Speaker 1: Hitler's own experience with gas left him with some sometimes

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Speaker 1: hoarse voice and revulsion to its combat use, he found

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Speaker 1: it an effective means of mass civilian killings. In the

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, Hauber had helped to develop pesticide gases at

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Speaker 1: the Kaiser Willem Institute, and that research ultimately developed into

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Speaker 1: Ziclon B, the gas that was used during the Holocaust

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Speaker 1: at Nazi extermination camps. Some of Habber's own relatives died

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Speaker 1: in those camps. I mean, I think that's the saddest

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Speaker 1: twist to this story. And I guess he wasn't alive

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Speaker 1: to see it, but it it's certainly um, I don't

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Speaker 1: know it affected me more than some of the other

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Speaker 1: sad facts in his life. But just to pile it on.

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Speaker 1: His son by his first marriage committed suicide in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties, and then his other son, his son from

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Speaker 1: his second marriage, went on to become a historian of

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Speaker 1: gas warfare. He wrote a book called The Poisonous Cloud,

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Speaker 1: and um it's one of the best known books I

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Speaker 1: think on gas warfare during World War One. Af or

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Speaker 1: his death, the Kaiser Willhelm Institute was eventually renamed the

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Speaker 1: Fritz Hauber Institute, and Habber's prize winning collaborator Bosch also

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Speaker 1: saw mixed fortunes leading up to the Second War. He

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Speaker 1: had become president of a German chemical manufacturing company and

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Speaker 1: had won the nineteen thirty one Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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Speaker 1: for his half of the Hobber Bosch process, but he

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Speaker 1: also saw one of his plants blow up, killing hundreds

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Speaker 1: instead of the approaching war. Quote, my entire life's work

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Speaker 1: will be destroyed and I cannot survive that. So, um,

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Speaker 1: it's really gotten to be a really depressing episode. But

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Speaker 1: how do how are we going to attempt to reconcile

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Speaker 1: the two sides of Fritz Haber? I mean, I think

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Speaker 1: it's a question that anybody who looks at his life

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Speaker 1: tries to answer. He's a Nobel Prize winner. He's responsible

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Speaker 1: for some some pretty impressive discoveries, but also for some

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Speaker 1: really disturbing stuff. His Nobel biography describes him like this,

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Speaker 1: Hubert live for science, both for its own sake and

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Speaker 1: also for the influence it has in molding human life

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Speaker 1: and human culture and civilization. And that's of course referring

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Speaker 1: to his work developing fertilizers, but I think it also

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Speaker 1: speaks pretty poignantly to his work in weaponry and gas.

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Speaker 1: And I know during the Blood Work interview, we've talked

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Speaker 1: a little bit about ambiguity and science. You know, you

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Speaker 1: don't really know exactly how it's going to play out,

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Speaker 1: and how some of those experiments with animals are really

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Speaker 1: disturbing to us now. And I think that Haber and

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Speaker 1: that quote in particular, kind of some up that idea

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Speaker 1: of the ambiguity of science. When doing research that led

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Speaker 1: to the haber Bosch process. Hauber didn't have a purpose

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Speaker 1: in mind, just a goal force hydrogen and nitrogen to

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Speaker 1: combine in a chemical reaction. So I mean, I guess

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Speaker 1: that's something to think about and sting the results the

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Speaker 1: scientists doing the work, and I mean, what is the

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Speaker 1: scientists responsibility to think about what could happen with work eventually?

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Speaker 1: But Bosh did wonder a lot about the consequences of

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Speaker 1: the work he had done with Harbor. He wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: I've often asked myself whether it would have been better

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Speaker 1: if we had not succeeded, but these questions are useless.

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Speaker 1: Progress in science and technology cannot be stopped. And just

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Speaker 1: to throw one final quote in the mix here, I

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Speaker 1: think that it's really interesting to compare that quote that

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Speaker 1: Bosch left later in life with one that Harbor wrote

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Speaker 1: as a young man, before seeing the benefits in the

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Speaker 1: terror caused by his discoveries. He wrote, we only want

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Speaker 1: one limit of the limit of our own ability. Um

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Speaker 1: so yeah, I think on that a little bit. Guys,

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Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since

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Speaker 1: this episode is out of the archive, if you heard

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Speaker 1: an email address or a Facebook U r L or

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Speaker 1: something similar over the course of the show, that could

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Speaker 1: be obsolete. Now. Our current ail address is History Podcast

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Speaker 1: at I heart radio dot com. Our old how stuff

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Speaker 1: us all over social media at missed in History and

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