By Daniel G. Graetzer, Ph.D.
Faculty Member, School of Health Sciences, American Military University
Military and emergency management training often includes some info on chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. However, many remain unaware of the history behind their development and deployment.
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German scientist Fritz Jakob Haber (1869-1934) and his wife Clara Helene (Immerwahr) Haber (1870-1915) strongly disagreed on the deployment of poison gases developed by Fritz during World War I. As a result, they have left contrasting and ironic legacies.
Fritz Haber and Poison Gas in WWI
Both Fritz and Clara were born and raised in Jewish communities in the Silesia area of Germany. Fritz converted to Protestant Christianity in 1897, but the sincerity of his conversion is questionable because Jews could not advance in academics or the military at the time.
Fritz’s conversion is questionable because he probably followed others in renouncing Judaism to advance his career during this very racist era. For example, if admitted to law school, a Jew might one day become a judge in a trial involving a Protestant. This type of racism had strong roots in the theology of Martin Luther (who showed his hatred of Judaism in the publication “The Jews and Their Lies” when European Jews did not flock en masse to his message); Luther made Protestantism the national religion of Germany. As a result, German clergy received their paychecks from the state – something the U.S. founding fathers very specifically warned against.
Fritz discovered several poison gases — such as chlorine, phosgene, mustard, Zyklon and nerve gas — during his Nobel Prize-winning fertilizer synthesis research, which saved the world from mass starvation. He turned over those poison gases to his German fatherland, thinking chemical weapons would bring rapid victory to Germany and save German lives. Fritz convinced the German military that releasing poison gas from canisters did not break earlier treaties that only banned poison gas deployed from artillery shells.
Ironically, most military historians believe Fritz Haber almost single-handedly prolonged WWI as Germany would not have been able to sustain the war effort for four years without Haber’s gases. Germany’s supply of nitrates from Chile (extracted from seabird dung) had been cut off by the British Navy.
Hitler and Haber’s Poison Gas in WWII
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) stated in his book Mein Kampf (“My Struggle” in German) that his paranoia from being gassed by Fritz’s gases during WWI drove him out of the military and into politics. In fact, after a gas mask leak caused him to inhale Fritz’s gases in Ypres, Belgium, in October 1918, Hitler maintained his infamous small mustache for rest of his life. He believed it helped him maintain a tighter seal around the top of his mouth and nose.
Despite his paranoia, Hitler obtained later versions of Fritz Haber’s chemicals. He used them to gas Fritz and Clara’s German-Jewish relatives in WWII Nazi concentration camps.
‘Haber’s Rule’ and the Use of Poison Gas in Trenches and Concentration Camps
The killing efficiency of various poison gases, meticulously detailed by Fritz, showed that exposure to lower concentrations of given gas for a longer time brought death similarly to exposure to higher gas concentrations for a shorter time. “Haber’s rule” thereafter influenced killing efficiency calculations during gas warfare in trenches and Nazi concentration camps.
Zyklon-A was initially created for pest control with an odorant added for safety; DDT later became the insecticide of choice. Hydrogen cyanide-based Zyklon-B, used for gas chamber executions in concentration camps, did not contain an odorant and was much safer to handle by workers in labs and factories than liquid cyanide.
Many refused to shake the hand of Haber when he was given the 1919 Nobel Prize for his peacetime research. It was undoubtedly the most controversial award ever.
Clara Haber and Her Protest against Using Poison Gas
Clara Haber, Germany’s first female Ph.D., committed suicide in May 1915 in protest of Fritz’s plan to release poison gas on the Allies on the Western front within the Ypres sector of Belgium. Clara shot herself with Fritz’s military revolver and died in the arms of their teenage son Hermann, whom Clara reasoned would have been tortured by the German high command if Clara had killed Fritz instead of herself.
It is interesting to speculate on the historical implications if Fritz had listened to his wife. Would more lives have been saved during this critical “hinge of history” time? Would those poison gas victims have made scientific or technological advancements for the benefit of humanity or might they have also used technology to society’s detriment in retaliation?
Fritz died five years before WWII broke out in 1939, but without his gases, many Nazi war crimes likely would not have happened. There are many relatively unknown stories of heroism during WWI and WWII, and Clara’s final act of protest is only now becoming well known.
Fritz Haber and Chaim Azriel Weizmann
Near the end of his life, Fritz had some interesting dealings with Chaim Azriel Weizmann (1874-1952), another chemist and major architect of Zionism who helped the Allies during WWII via turning over his formula to more efficiently produce synthetic acetone as a key ingredient for the production of smokeless gunpowder (cordite explosive propellants) and TNT (2,4,6-trinitrotoluene), which were critical to the British munitions industry.
Dr. Weizmann is known to scientists as the “father of industrial fermentation” and to the rest of the world as the President of the World Zionist Organization. He later became the first president of Israel.
Fritz died in 1934 on his way to Palestine to secretly collaborate with Weizmann. Fritz’s dying wish to be buried next to Clara in the Hörnli graveyard in Basel, Switzerland, was arranged by Fritz and Clara’s son Hermann Haber, who was at the side of both his mother and his father when they died. Hermann Haber later immigrated to the U.S. before committing suicide himself in 1946.
Weizmann convinced President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) to recognize Israel as an independent Jewish state in Palestine and was elected the first president of Israel in 1949. The decisions to bomb Japan to end WWII in August 1945 and recognize Israel in May 1948 were both made by Truman and are probably the most debated political decisions in U.S. history.
Fritz’s Mentality about His Scientific Inventions
Fritz was not bothered by his science lab inventions being used in war. He was also not concerned about the future consequences for which he knew he was initiating and setting precedent.
The same could be said about J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), who is considered “father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bombs dropped on Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. At the time, scientists (of whom very few were diplomats) may have viewed their inventions as “necessary evils” at critical “hinge of history” moments.
But Clara was able to see into the future. Her maiden name, Immerwahr, means “ever true” in German.
Personal Connections to Fritz and Clara Haber
To me, however, Fritz and Clara Haber are more than just historical figures from a documentary. I am a first cousin (three generations removed) to Clara Immerwahr Haber. That makes Fritz Haber, a non-blood relative by marriage, my first cousin as well.
To keep Clara’s memory alive, my wife Shonah and I named our daughter Hannah Louise Clara Graetzer. My family and I are among a few people surnamed Graetzer who are still alive today; most of our ancestors died during WWII from Zyklon-B gases initially developed by Fritz.
My father, Hans Gunther Graetzer (1930-2019), was an author and an outspoken critic of chemical, biological and atomic weapons after he served in the U.S. Navy and earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Yale University. After being forced to say “Heil Hitler” in school at age nine, my father escaped his hometown of Breslau in the Silesia region of Germany (annexed into Poland after WWII) and traveled to the U.S. in 1939.
My grandfather, Gunther Graetzer, was amazingly able to escape the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp. The situation was similar to the liberation effort depicted in the 1993 movie “Schindler’s List.”
Movies about Fritz and Clara Haber
Within the next few years, there will hopefully be a full-feature Hollywood docudrama, “Haber,” available to the public. I am one of many consultants for this film. There is also a 30-minute “teaser” movie entitled “Haber,” which promotes the conflicting legacies of Fritz and Clara. Funds to produce a full-scale movie are also being raised.
Feature films are important to enhance the public knowledge of history. “Lawrence of Arabia,” for example, highlights the life of British military officer and writer T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935). It also depicts the victories by British General Allenby over German Turk General Otto Liman von Sanders in Palestine during World War I, a battle where many feared Fritz’s poison gases might again be used.
Fritz Huber’s Enduring Legacies
Historians today remain divided on Fritz Haber’s legacy. Many historians believe Fritz’s nitrogen fixation process was the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century. Without the related increase in world food production, the Earth would probably not be able to support increased population growth and billions of innocent people would have starved to death.
But without his poison gases, WWI would have ended years earlier and millions of innocent lives would have been saved. He also started the biochemical warfare arms race, which will undoubtedly continue to kill more.
Large-scale deployment of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) began with the April 1915 release of chlorine gas by Fritz Haber, the “father of chemical weapons.” Otto Hahn, the “father of nuclear chemistry,” whose 1938 discovery of uranium fission led directly to development of the atomic bomb, assisted Haber on several gas attacks.
Considered a “war of chemistry,” the Great War saw deployments of additional poison gases, with potential threats of chemical and biological agents escalating immediately. World War II, considered a “war of physics” following the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Japan, stimulated Cold War espionage and greatly increased fears about future WMD attacks against military and civilian targets.
Missile technology and ballistic delivery systems now dominate international politics, as several nations become increasingly determined to not allow modern warfare be influenced in similar manner as the previous U.S. atomic bomb monopoly.
The destructive vs. productive uses of modern science compared via the legacies of Fritz vs. Clara Haber initiated development of modern WMDs and left contemporary scientists in all realms of biomedical and military research faced with the dilemma of “if they could” followed by “if they should.” President Franklin Roosevelt learned about nuclear fission (atomic) bomb capacity via a 1939 letter from Albert Einstein, a German colleague and friend of Haber, who is considered the “father of relativity.”
Harry Truman first learned about atomic bomb development via the top-secret Manhattan Project only after becoming president following the April 1945 death of Roosevelt. Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin not only knew about U.S. atomic bomb development years before Truman via Russian spies but was building his own while contemplating communist expansion into Eastern Europe.
The ongoing threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction continues today. The debate of ethics of using WMDs continues as well.
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