Approx 1916. Victims of WW1 Chlorine Gas attack [640×233]

A snippet of my blog post I made at r/SAR_Med_Chem:

Before we can dive into the medicine we have to set the scene a bit. One of the important things to things to know about the world at the turn of the 20th century is that WW1 was seen as inevitable. Europe was divided into powerful and entangled alliances which meant that regional conflicts, like that in the Balkans, could quickly escalate into a continental war. Coupled with the Victorian into Georgian feelings of honor above all and defending allies to the death meant that secret treaties and unclear terms of those alliances meant leaders didn’t fully understand how far others were willing to go and how it would drag their nation into war. To balance the personal honor of the aristocratic elite was the rise of national pride, often through militarism. The problem is that Europe was pretty…quiet in terms of war—sure, there was plenty of battles in oversees territories in Asia or Africa, but nothing on the home continent. So to channel their bursting population’s energy away from internal struggles and towards real or imaginary opponents, many countries embraced the idea of pride through national strength. 

• So we draw open the curtain in Germany in 1871, chiefly with the most legendary man of mid to late 19th century European politics: Otto von Bismark. Appointed in 1862 as Chancellor of Prussia, he developed the idea of Realpolitik or balancing politics with wars. Through the next decade he waged Wars of Unification that brought traditionally German states under the control Prussia: the Danish War of 1864 defeating Denmark brining major ports in Schleswig and Holstein, the Austro-Prussian Seven Weeks War of 1866 which kicked Austria out of German affairs for good, and finally the the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 which crushed France and brought in previously neutral southern German states. Delivering these major wins, Bismarck enabled King Wilhelm I of Prussia to become Emperor (Kaiser) Wilhelm of the German Empire (which was declared in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles just to rub the French’s noses in it). Thus, the 25+ German states were now a single united German empire—one nation, one people, one purpose. 
  • Now don’t underestimate the change that this caused in Europe. Right smack dab in the middle of the continent you have an economic powerhouse and militarily juggernaut suddenly appear. For centuries, the other European powers could always depend on the internal bickering and backstabbing of the German states but now? A single unified state? Awful, although the other powers didn’t initially care. To be honest they all had enough going on with their colonies to really deal with the German question. 
  • So this brings back the year 1871 with a unified Germany and militarism. From its Prussian leaders, Germany inherited a deeply ingrained belief in the military as the highest expression of the state, with a powerful, professional officer corps that often operated independently of civilian control. The German General Staff, led by men like Helmuth von Moltke the Elder and later Moltke the Younger, perfected war planning down to the minute. This system created a culture where military logic overruled diplomacy. The Schlieffen Plan, crafted to defeat France quickly before turning east to face Russia, locked Germany into a war strategy that required preemptive action and left no room for political flexibility once mobilization began. Thus, military spending was hugely popular among the public and political elites, seen as both patriotic and necessary. Despite its big shoes, Germany still felt that it had a lot to prove, and its new Kaiser Wilhelm II (crowned in 1888) raised the idea of Weltpolitik, or World Policy, an aggressive, global nationalism that sought to match Britain and France in empire, navy, and prestige. And so nationalism was tied to status anxiety meaning Germany was a giant in Europe but still felt like an outsider on the global imperial stage. 
• To enable a great country you must have great entrepreneurs and inventors to do their thing and let their genius flow. One such genius was Jewish born Fritz Haber, born in Breslau, Prussia in what is now Poland in 1868. The only son of a wealthy Jewish chemical merchant named Siegfried Haber. from an early age, Haber was immersed in the world of dyes and reagents, as his father ran a prosperous business dealing in chemical goods for textile production. While his father hoped he would take over the business, Haber found ledgers and accounting totally snoresville and found mixing chemicals together to be totes cool (to use some phrasing from the time). He studied under the great Robert Bunsen (of the burner fame) and honed his chemical precision in the lab which allowed him to do short stings at the University of Berlin and the Technical College at Charlottenberg. By 1891 he was finishing his doctoral dissertation on synthetic dyes and returning to his father’s business to learn how chemistry mixed with industry. From 1894 to 1911 he and his assistant Robert Le Rossingnol developed the Haber-Bosch process which would be one of world history altering discoveries that seemed to be packed into the later 19th and early 20th century. 
  • The Haber-Bosch process solved one of the biggest problems in agriculture: how do you put more nitrogen into the soil to promote plant growth? Since plants do not, yknow, eat anything they are unable to access nitrogen in the ecosystem and instead have to rely on easily accessible nitrogen sources like NItrates or Ammonia. Nitrogen is needed to make proteins and DNA which are the very fundamentals of life. Some plants, like legumes, are able to affix the nitrogen from the air into the soil by having a beneficial relationship with nitrogen-loving bacteria near their roots. But other plants? Well they normally had to wait for some sort of nitrogen waste plop near them—like animal dung—which is why humans scooped cow shit onto their tasty vegetables for millenia. 

As the world geared up for a war, albeit bigger than any of them really thought, Haber was caught up in the nationalistic pride brewing in Germany. By 1914 Germany was itching to prove itself as a true power. The Moroccan Crises of 1905 and 1911 planted the idea of a German bully of Europe after Germany challenged French control over Morocco. Britain viewed Germany’s rapid naval expansion under Admiral Tirpitz as a direct threat to the island nation's security and domination as a maritime empire. Thus the establishment of the Triple Ententre between France, Britain, and Russia was to encircle and snub Germany’s ability to flex imperial muscle. So it was natural for geniuses like Haber to be brought in and to lend their talents to the military establishment to outpace the national pride that was gradually increasing year by year. 

• One of the important things to understand about WW1 is that unlike its much bloodier sister war, battles were often slogs of bodies being thrown at fortified positions and trenches. Over the course of the war over 35,000 miles of trenches were dug meaning that the mobile battle tactics of the Napoleonic Wars or the Franco-Prussian War gave way to static defenses. Defense dominated offense—before a war could be won on a heroic flanking maneuver and concentrated assault but the development of new weapons like machine guns mowing down charging men, barbed wire snaking across the countryside, and artillery obliterating defensive positions meant that going above the trench was a sure-fire way to be shot. Don’t underestimate this change: this was one of the first wars to truly employ guns that could fire hundreds of bullets a second; up until then you were lucky to fire 1-5 shots before needing to reload. The result is that hundreds of thousands of men died for just a few miles of ground, if any.
• When war broke out in August 1914, Haber approached the Ministry of War, give the rank of captain, and became the principal architect of Germany’s chemical weapons program. Haber directed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, which became a hub for military-related chemical research during the war. He led a team of chemists and engineers in testing chlorine gas delivery methods which involved gas cylinders and pressure release mechanisms. By March 1915, German High Command demanded a live test of his weapons else they would pull the plug on the expensive investment for other potentially better methods of killing people. So April 22, 1915 at the Second Battle of Ypres Haber arrived to the battlefield and at 5pm German soldiers released Chlorine gas across a 6km front targeting the French colonial (largely Moroccan and Algerian) troops. Slowly the greenish-yellow cloud drfted over the field and, being denser than air, flowed downwards into the trenches. 
• Chlorine Gas is devastating to the body. If it enters the lungs it instantly reacts with water to become Hydrochloric Acid, yknow, the stuff in your stomach and one of the most corrosive acids outthere, except its in your LUNGS. In addition to corrosive acid it produces Hypochlorous Acid, a major oxidizer which rips apart any organic thing it touches—like lung tissue. A minor exposure would be irritating, for the soldiers at Ypres they would instantly drown from the blood forming from the blisters in their lungs. Casualties exceeded 5000 the first day, thousands more were injured. And despite the success of this first test, the Germans didn’t exploit their victory and lacked reserves to follow up.
  • Haber for his part returned to Berlin and was hailed a hero by the German military. He received the Iron Cross, First Class for his contributions, one of the highest honors for German soldiers. However, 7 days later on May 1st, Haber’s wife Clara Immerwahr, a renowned chemist and pacifist, committed suicide reportedly due to his work. Their 12 year old son discovered his mother after hearing the gunshot from Haber’s service pistol being used to pierce her heart—worst she didn’t die immediately. Despite the personal tragedy, the next day on May 2nd Haber left Berlin for the Russian front to further develop Germany’s chemical warfare program. By the day Haber’s train departed Berlin, the death toll from Ypres reached 6,000.