The Horrific
As the first poison gas attack struck, soldiers were brought to their knees by agony. Phlegm and pus filled their lungs, yellow mucus came burbling out of their mouths, followed by blood as they coughed up chunks of their lungs, while tearing at their throats in a desperate bid to draw in some air. Seeing what befell those touched by the deadly cloud, soldiers fled by the thousands, leaving a four-mile gap in the front. It was not exploited by the Germans, who had made no provision for exploiting the deadly gas with a follow-up attack. When the French eventually returned after the chlorine had dissipated, they found over 5000 corpses.
In the meantime, Clara Immerwahr, a pacifist, had grown increasingly disgusted with her husband’s endeavors. She saw it as an immoral perversion of science, but Haber turned a deaf ear to her remonstrances and accused her of treason. As he put it: “During peacetime, a scientist belongs to the world, but during wartime, he belongs to his country“. After overseeing the first poison gas attack, Haber returned home from the front, and on May 1st, 1915, threw a party to celebrate his success. That night, while Haber slept, Clara took his revolver, went to the garden, and shot herself in the chest. She was discovered by her 13-year-old son, as she bled to death. The very next day, Haber returned to the front lines, to resume his oversight of Germany’s chemical warfare program. By war’s end, over 100,000 had been killed by chemical warfare, and a million had been injured.
After the war, Haber’s reputation took a hit, when the full extent of his pioneering role in deploying poison gas became known. When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Haber quickly went from German national treasure to despised Jew. He left his beloved homeland to take up a professorship at Cambridge University in England, but was shunned by the British, who viewed him as a despicable war criminal. He soon left England, to roam Europe as a Pariah, while his health worsened. He died alone in a Swiss hotel, in 1934, having repented late in life of his role in chemical warfare.
However, even death did not stop a seemingly vindictive fate from piling more horrors to further mar Haber’s legacy. After he fled Germany, the Nazis wasted little time in seizing Haber’s laboratory and research records: he had many valuable innovations and inventions, which the Third Reich sought to “Aryanize”. One such invention was a Hydrogen cyanide pesticide named Zyklon. Readers who already know what Zyklon is probably just got a sinking feeling in their stomachs, anticipating where this is headed. In 1919, Haber’s wartime research into Hydrogen cyanide led to the foundation of a state consortium to investigate further military use of the compound.
It led to a commercial formula known as Zyklon A – a nerve agent for killing bugs. The Nazis tinkered with the formula, removing the noxious smell that warned humans not to inhale it. The result was Zyklon B, which became the gas of choice used during the Holocaust in gas chambers. Having deliberately pursued deadly chemicals with which to kill his fellow humans, Haber’s worst legacy turned out to be excessively cruel karma that he could never have foreseen. The victims of that particular Haber invention numbered in the millions, comprised mostly of fellow Jews, including Haber’s friends, and blood relatives such as his own nieces and grandnephews.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
BBC Magazine, January 30th, 2015 – How Deadly Was the Poison Gas of WW1?
Chemical & Engineering News – Who Was the Father of Chemical Weapons?
Encyclopedia Britannica – Fritz Haber
Medium – The Tragedy of Fritz Haber: The Monster Who Fed The World
Nobel Prize Organization – Fritz Haber, Biographical
Smithsonian Magazine, June 6th, 2012 – Fritz Haber’s Experiments in Life and Death