In view of the rapidly evolving demands of modern warfare, only scientifically trained experts were able to maintain an overview over the extant knowledge in their fields.
They were in a position to assess how science could contribute to the war effort by having the insights needed in industrial product design and manufacture. Through their advice, they placed themselves at the intersection between the military, the administration, and the industry. In this way, scientific experts started playing a highly significant intermediary role in society. They were anything but passive, but on the contrary actively helped to define possible solutions to all war-related military and social problems.
Expert cultures mediating but also actively influencing government decision-making arose in all warring parties. This was particularly true for Germany. During the war, the traditional system of scientific research underwent rapid institutional change and functional differentiation. With state support, a whole system of highly centralized, closely linked research institutes, university seminars, and industrial laboratories had emerged.
In support of modern warfare, he first had to establish the basic cooperation between the state, the military, the economy, and the scientific establishment. In April , Haber quite consciously reflected on his role: Before the war, this relationship was incomplete. Later known as big science, it refers to a different way of organizing the research process. It grew out of the long-term cooperation among the state, the military, the economy, and the scientific establishment.
However, politically networked, large-scale research had an immediate bearing on both the substance and the way of doing research. Finally, Haber knew how to sell the potential contribution of science to warfare even to the mostly hesitant or dismissive military leaders. In doing so, he helped to permanently integrate science into warfare—even though its impact never reached the amplitude or acquired the strategic importance he had been hoping for.
With warfare becoming more industrialized and technological, the officer corps underwent professionalization that resulted in growing numbers of officers with a technical education or scientific interest. Moreover, specialized military units began to emerge. Haber easily persuaded his military interlocutors that well-trained, specialized troops were needed to handle poison gas safely and reduce risk of its employment to their own troops.
To this end, he enlisted physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, and meteorologists who readily exchanged the boredom of the trenches for the excitement of becoming experts in a novel mode of warfare.
Only future Nobel Prize winner Max Born refused all offers to take part in chemical warfare, instead preferring the less brilliant field of developing radio equipment for air planes Born , , For it was within this far-reaching network of institutions, engaged covertly or overtly in research on toxic gases, that scientists developed processes to handle cyanides for pest control without the risk of harm to the technical staff.
Cyclon B was a result of the conversion of military into civil poison gas research. Only some twenty years later, it was used against human beings as a means of mass extermination in the extermination camps.
Haber was convinced that he could keep the interconversion of poison gas research under control, but in the Age of Extremes Eric Hobsbawm , this was not possible. In my view, his sense of power played a larger role for Haber than his patriotism. He was well aware of the power that the expert-scientist wielded as an intermediary between the ruling and the ruled.
Especially during the first half of the war, the role of experts was informal—they connected with individuals rather than with institutions and stood outside formal bureaucratic structures.
It was precisely this informality that they were able to use to their advantage. Scientific experts were flexible enough to take on tasks that cut across fields, including the early stages of policy advice see Fisch and Rudloff Haber typified this transformation.
He thus offered his scientific expertise and network of connections in an act of patriotic self-mobilization for the German war effort. Only later during the war, he became gradually integrated into the military-governmental apparatus. At the same time, he was perfectly aware of the fact that he was not only influential but also in control of a sector relevant to modern technological warfare.
In hindsight, in August , he reflected on his earlier power: I was one of the mightiest men in Germany. So, is the scientific expert ultimately a mere technocrat fascinated by gambling at the large board of modern mass warfare?
Fritz Haber was highly conscious of the strong psychological dimension of chemical warfare. Like others, he used a specific gas warfare discourse. This is, of course, a first-strike rhetoric. History did not bear out this argument, because weapon innovation set in motion an endless dynamics of increasingly lethal weapon technologies. It is well known that less than twenty-four hours after the German chlorine cloud attack at Ypres, the British commander in France and Belgium, Sir John French, sent a telegram to London: Urge that immediate steps be taken to supply similar means of most effective kind for use by our troops.
It was common knowledge—also among the Allied Forces—that poison gas war could unsettle the morale of the troops as well as on the home front Schmidt , But Haber reflected on the impact of gas on the frontline soldier in a specific way.
To him, the toxicity of chemical warfare agents was less relevant than the fact that the chemicals forced troops to wear respirators and use other protective devices. Born, Max. Mein Leben. Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagsanstalt.
Google Scholar. Dokumente und Kommentare. Berlin: Verlag Arno Spitz. Charles, Daniel. Master mind: The rise and fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel laureate who launched the age of chemical warfare. London: Jonathan Cape. Coates, J. The Haber Memorial Lecture. Delivered before the Chemical Society on April 29th, IV, ed. Donnan, — London: The Chemical Society.
Die Ordnung der Moderne. Social Engineering im Bielefeld: Transcript. Fisch, Stefan, and Wilfried Rudloff eds. Experten und Politik: Wissenschaftliche Politikberatung in geschichtlicher Perspektive. Geuter, Ulfried. Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Geyer, Michael. Haber, Fritz. Die chemische Industrie und der Krieg. Die chemische Industrie — Die Chemie im Kriege November 11, Fritz Haber, 25— Berlin: Julius Springer. CrossRef Google Scholar. Haber, Ludwig F. The chemical industry — International growth and technological change. Oxford: Clarendon Press. The poisonous cloud. Chemical Warfare in the First World War.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harwood, Jonathan. Styles of scientific thought. The German genetics community — Johnson, Jeffrey A. The academic-industrial symbiosis in German chemical research, — In The German chemical industry in the twentieth century , ed. John E. Lesch, 15— The scientist, who had earlier converted from Judaism to Christianity to improve his prospects, was rewarded with an army captaincy and made head of the Chemistry Section at the Ministry of War in Berlin.
Chlorine gas, which reacts with water in the airways to produce tissue-corroding hydrochloric acid, was the rough and ready option. It was easy to produce and handle so could be quickly shipped to the front. After consulting with experts about the best methods of dispersal, they hit upon the use of canisters, and together formulated a plan to release the gas against an entrenched enemy. After its first use in Ypres, the gloves were off.
The ensuing arms race led to the development of the even more hideous phosgene and mustard gases, both of which Haber worked on. Colorless, suffocating phosgene was responsible for more than 85 percent of the , gas deaths during World War I. Around a million soldiers were injured, with millions more facing the daily psychological torture of a possible attack.
The first German woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry and a women's rights activist, she shot herself in the heart at home in Berlin two weeks after the Ypres attack. It is thought she was disgusted at her husband for weaponizing their science. Haber had no regrets. That work was not limited to gas. Before the war, Haber had solved a major chemical conundrum: how to produce ammonia, the mainstay of fertilizer and chemical feed, without having to mine nitrates. Ammonia is a relatively simple compound of nitrogen — essential to plant growth — and hydrogen, but had proved tricky to synthesize.
Haber came up with a method that captured the abundant nitrogen in air by reacting it with readily available hydrogen, in effect producing food out of thin air. But there was a twist. In the early 20th century, nitrates had to be imported at great cost from the huge natural deposits in Chile, and Germany understandably wanted to secure its own supply. She went on to work as a laboratory assistant, which was the most senior position a woman was allowed to hold at that time.
She apparently pleaded with him to stop but he would not — he regarded her protests as treasonous to her country. Just 10 days later, Clara Immerwahr committed suicide. Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in , but this was controversial.
Not everyone agreed with the decision. Science and technology are not separate from society. When deciding how scientific knowledge is used, we have to consider ethical questions related to social and environmental issues. Are all applications of science ethically acceptable?
Ethical questions involve making decisions about what is right and wrong, and science alone cannot provide the answers. This blog post was adapted from case study C7. We are grateful to Helen Harden and Lynda Dunlop for their work on the original case study.
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