Читать книгу Over Here and Over There - Harry Bobonich - Страница 25

To every man is given the keys to the gates of heaven; The same key opens the gates of hell.

--Buddhist proverb

Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for developing the Haber-Bosch process, which combined nitrogen and hydrogen to make ammonia. His invention enabled industry to produce large quantities of fertilizer, which increased crop fields significantly that helped to feed people in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, this process was also used by the military to make explosives.

Haber experimented with various poisonous gases during the war and convinced the German High Command that the use of chlorine would shorten the conflict. As a result, he was given the responsibility of overseeing the use of poisonous chlorine against the Allies at the Second Battle of Ypres.

His first wife, Clara, who also was a scientist tried to discourage him from pursuing his line of research and to end his experiments in chemical warfare. Haber, who was Jewish, was eager to prove his patriotism to Germany during the war and continued with his work.

After his success at Ypres, he was promoted to Captain in the German army. Clara now condemned his weapons work as a “perversion of the ideals of science.” She soon recognized that it was hopeless to change her husband’s mind. Shortly after the first gas attack at Ypres, in 1915, she took his service revolver and committed suicide.

After the war ended, Haber was named as a war criminal, but when the Allies sought his extradition in 1919, he fled to Switzerland. When the Allies removed his name from the criminal list, he was welcomed back to Berlin. Later, the Allies learned that he had secretly continued to carry on his research on poisonous gases.

In the 1920s, Haber also experimented with pesticide gases. Ironically, that research by others led to the development of Zyklon B, the main component used by the Nazis to murder millions in their death camps in World War II, including members of Haber’s own extended family.

In the early 1930s, with the rise of Adolph Hitler, anti-Semitism was beginning to spread like wildfire throughout Germany. Despite his conversion to Christianity, Haber decided to leave Germany and go to England in 1933. He stayed in England for only a short while and left for Palestine. On his way to the Middle East, he stopped in Basel, Switzerland where he died of a heart attack in January 1934 at age 65.

Hermann, who was his son with his first wife Clara, lived in France until 1941. He then immigrated with his family to the United States. When Hermann’s wife died shortly after the war was over in 1945, he committed suicide the following year.

The enigmatic scientist, Fritz Haber, was beyond controversial. While millions have benefited from his discoveries, they have also maimed millions: accordingly, his Noble Prize was disputable. Was he a bad man who did a good thing; or was he a good man who did a horrendous thing? (Everts n.d.)

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the center of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn