One of the scientists who Haber persuaded to join him was Albert Einstein. He had the opposite mind-set to that of Haber though they always remained good friends. Einstein was all critique, disdainful of conventional wisdom and established institutions, scornful of ties to community or nation. As a teenager, he had taken the remarkable step of formally renouncing his German nationality. In a letter to his cousin, Einstein composed this devastating portrait of his new friend:
Haber’s picture unfortunately is to be seen everywhere. It pains me every time I think of it. Unfortunately, I have to accept that this otherwise so splendid man has succumbed to personal vanity and not even of the most tasteful kind. This defect is in fact generally and unfortunately a Berlin kind.
The full story of Haber’s activities during World War I will never be told, for the records have disappeared. But the outlines can be pieced together. Haber persuaded military officers to adopt new technology, cajoled industrial executives into meeting the government’s demands, and assigned scientists the task of solving military problems. No process existed that would convert large amounts of ammonia (NH3) into nitric acid (HNO3). There are hints in fragments of surviving correspondence that he began proposing producing nitrate from ammonia by a previously unproven method.
Factories were built for making nitrate for making munitions and bombs. Haber’s ammonia-making process was now feeding the machines of war. A manifesto signed by many German intellectuals was published which absolved Germany from any responsibility for the war (Germany had entered WWI as an aggressor), asserted that Germany was victim, not aggressor. It repudiated those who argued that German society had been hijacked by a military cult. One of the signatories was Fritz Haber.
Albert Einstein was among the very few who did not sign it, rejecting allegiance to his nation and its young men in battle. He called the war “madness” and blamed Germany’s “religious faith in power” for provoking it. He signed a counter-manifesto calling for European unity and an end to the war. He watched with horror as fellow German scientists, Haber in the lead, laid their skills at the altar of Germany’s war efforts. “Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally,” Einstein wrote in 1917, “could be compared to an ax in the hand of a pathological criminal.”
His friend Fritz Haber, meanwhile was working on producing poison gas. The challenge of chemical warfare, in its marriage of the scientific and practical worlds, was the sort at which Haber excelled. Other scientists like Albert Einstein had produced more profound intellectual insights. None, however, possessed Haber’s talent for human organization, and these were the skills that war demanded. When dealing with military matters, Haber learned to “think like a general”
He suggested releasing clouds of chlorine gas, carried to the front lines in pressurized tanks and released when the wind was favorable. He felt that this could asphyxiate soldiers in enemy trenches. Use of poison gas shocked each of Europe’s armed camps and led to imitation by everyone. On the German side, there was celebration and long-sought military honors for Fritz Haber who was promoted to officer grade.
Sometime between April 24 and April 29, 1915, Fritz Haber returned to Berlin. It was a quick visit, lasting only until May 2. Nobody knows what happened but on the night of May 1–2, Clara Haber found her husband’s army-issued pistol, shot herself with it, and died. Fritz Haber, obeying his orders, returned the next day to the front lines of combat. Hermann, just twelve years old, was left behind without mother or father. Clara’s final choice became in many minds a condemnation of her husband’s hand in killing.
By mid-1915, Fritz Haber was Germany’s czar of gas warfare. Haber commandeered all the empty laboratories he could find, surrounding them with barbed wire and military guards and filling them with a swirl of research on new poisons and gas masks. By 1917, Haber’s empire encompassed 1,500 people, including 150 scientists, with a budget fifty times larger than the institute’s peacetime level. He experimented with phosgene and mustard gas. Haber's conception of himself at this time is revealed by a quote:
I was one of the mightiest men in Germany. I was more than a great army commander, more than a captain of industry. I was the founder of industries; my work was essential for the economic and military expansion of Germany. All doors were open to me
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