From Berlin-Dahlem to the Fronts of World War I: The Role of Fritz Haber and His Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in German Chemical Warfare (2017)
Friedrich, Bretislav (Author)
James, Jeremiah (Author)
Springer International
Pages: 25-44
Publication date: 2017
Language: English
There is little doubt that Fritz Haber (1868–1934) was the driving force behind the centrally directed development of chemical warfare in Germany, whose use during World War I violated international law and elicited both immediate and enduring moral criticism. The chlorine cloud attack at Ypres on 22 April 1915 amounted to the first use of a weapon of mass destruction and as such marks a turning point in world history. Following the “success” at Ypres, Haber, eager to employ science in resolving the greatest strategic challenge of the war—the stalemate of trench warfare—promptly transformed his Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem into a center for the development of chemical weapons and of protective measures against them. This article traces in some detail the path from Berlin-Dahlem to the fronts of World War I, lays out the indispensible role of Fritz Haber in German chemical warfare and provides a summary of his views on chemical weapons, which he never renounced.
...MoreBook Bretislav Friedrich; Dieter Hoffmann; Jürgen Renn; Florian Schmaltz; Martin Wolf (2017) One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences.
Similar Citations
Chapter
Johannes Preuss;
(2017)
The Reconstruction of Production and Storage Sites for Chemical Warfare Agents and Weapons from Both World Wars in the Context of Assessing Former Munitions Sites
Article
Ivan Martines;
(2021)
Ciência e Ética: Fritz Haber e a Guerra Química
Chapter
Wolfgang U. Eckart;
(2017)
The Soldier’s Body in Gas Warfare: Trauma, Illness, Rentennot, 1915–1933
Chapter
Gerhard Ertl;
(2017)
Fritz Haber and His Institute
Chapter
Margit Szöllösi-Janze;
(2017)
The Scientist as Expert: Fritz Haber and German Chemical Warfare During the First World War and Beyond
Chapter
Steffen Bruendel;
(2020)
Chemistry as a Weapon, Biology as an Argument: Professional Expertise and Intellectual Interventions of Fritz Haber and Georg Friedrich Nicolai in World War I
Book
Freemantle, Michael;
(2012)
Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!: How Chemistry Changed the First World War
Article
Wisniak, Jaime;
(2002)
Fritz Haber---A Conflicting Chemist
Chapter
Miloš Vec;
(2017)
Challenging the Laws of War by Technology, Blazing Nationalism and Militarism: Debating Chemical Warfare Before and After Ypres, 1899–1925
Article
Peter Thompson;
(2017)
The chemical subject: phenomenology and German encounters with the gas mask in the World War I
Article
Reed, Peter;
(2015)
Making War Work for Industry: The United Alkali Company's Central Laboratory During World War One
Essay Review
Johnson, Jeffrey Allan;
(2002)
Chemical Warfare in the Great War
Book
Johnson, Jeffrey Allan;
MacLeod, Roy M.;
(2006)
Frontline and Factory: Comparative Perspectives on the Chemical Industry at War, 1914--1924
Article
Ede, Andrew;
(2002)
The Natural Defense of a Scientific People: The Public Debate over Chemical Warfare in Post-WWI America
Chapter
Edward M. Spiers;
(2017)
The Gas War, 1915–1918: If not a War Winner, Hardly a Failure
Article
Vilensky, Joel A.;
Sinish, Pandy R.;
(2006)
Blisters as Weapons of War: The Vesicants of World War I
Book
Russell, Edmund;
(2001)
War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring
Article
Sheffy, Yigal;
(2009)
Chemical Warfare and the Palestine Campaign, 1916--1918
Article
Van der Kloot, William;
(2004)
April 1915: Five Future Nobel Prize-Winners Inaugurate Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Academic-Industrial-Military Complex
Chapter
Jeffrey Allan Johnson;
(2017)
Military-Industrial Interactions in the Development of Chemical Warfare, 1914–1918: Comparing National Cases Within the Technological System of the Great War
Be the first to comment!