The Germans have a saying, “Brot aus Luft” or in English, “Bread from air”. To understand this amusing phrase, we have to rewind to the 1900’s. During this prosperous time period, there was excess demand for food. In order to supply this demand a farmer needed to acquire more land. However, there was not much land left.
Concerned by this issue, in 1909, German Scientist Fritz Haber invented something that was dubbed as the greatest invention of the 20th century; “Fertilizers”.
Not only did Fertilisers make the process of growing plants quicker, it also yielded 10x more plants per acre of land. This meant that farmers did not have to buy more land in order to grow more crops. Alongside a lot of fame, Haber also received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This was probably the highest point in Haber’s career.
World War I is often considered as one of the deadliest wars in human history and the majority of the credits should go to Mr. Haber. For there is only one rule in warfare; do not use chemicals.
Yet, in the onset of the war, the founder of fertilisers created phosgene gas, commonly known as “mustard gas”. This gas would cause blindness and violent nausea upon contact. In less than 3 seconds, the person exposed to the gas would be dead. The mustard gas caused the deaths of at least 100,000 soldiers.
Upon hearing the news, Haber’s wife, who was also a renowned chemist, confronted her husband about the immoral use of chemistry in warfare. Haber’s reply; “Death is death, however it is inflicted.”
Clara killed herself the same night.
Mr.Haber continued developing his chemical weapons.
Unfortunately, our story does not finish there. In the year 1934, the rise of semantics in Germany resulted in an unfavorable situation for our chemist. Mr. Haber, who was of Jewish descendent, ironically got exiled from Germany. He then settled in Switzerland and continued working on chemical warfare. He died the same year.
In the final twist of the tale, when the Nazis raided his lab in Switzerland, they found Zyklon A. They converted this Zyklon A to Zyklon B, This was the infamous “colourless gas” used to kill millions of Jews (many of whom were relatives of Harber) and other races.
After the war people looked back at Harber’s life with great interest. For it showed how susceptible humans are in turning to the dark side and becoming “evil”.
Personally, I am still confused on whether Fritz Haber a hero or a villain. On the forefront he definitely is a villian for taking away the lives of so many innocents. Yet, without fertilizers, billions would starve as growing plants manually has very little yield.
I think at the end of the day this brings us to a question to which all have their own answers; Is saving billions through the creation of fertilisers worth the death of millions?