Doctor Steuss wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:05 pm
Keeping with the topic of being off topic...
Fritz Haber (one of the co-creators of the process) is actually a really interesting person when it comes to the duality of our natures. He's both responsible for saving countless lives through boosting agricultural potential, and for taking millions of lives (directly in WWI via chlorine gas, and indirectly after his death via Zyklon B).
You are so right! He was also a Jew; one of the very few Jews Hitler allowed to remain in civil service to the German State when Hitler rose to power in 1933, due to Haber's over the top patriotic role during WWI in producing both explosives and poison gases for the war effort.
The Tragedy of Fritz Haber: The Monster Who Fed The World
Though he was permitted by Hitler to remain in Germany's civil service, he resigned when he was forced to dismiss the 75% of his employees who were also Jewish.
Life became worse for Haber and the rest of the world as Hitler became chancellor in 1933. The Nazis soon issued an order that no Jews would be allowed in civil service. Haber was exempt from this due to his civil service during The Great War. However, his employees were not. 75% of them were Jewish, and would have to be dismissed. Haber took a stand and resigned. He’d grown up in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, where he’d only wanted one limit; the limit of his ability. He believed the same for his employees. It didn’t matter who their parents and grandparents were.
Haber left, believing that he’d lost his homeland. He roamed around Europe, eventually taking a professorship at Cambridge in England. There he was shunned by the British, who along with the French considered him a repulsive war criminal. A pariah, he wandered through Europe aimlessly, his health worsening. On his way to Switzerland to recuperate in a sanitarium his heart failed. Fritz Haber died alone in a hotel in 1934. At the end of his life, he repented for using his mind and his talents for waging war.
Haber was long dead by the time the next world war began. But many of his creations were still in use, including a hydrogen-cyanide pesticide called Zyklon. When the Nazis rediscovered this invention, they realized it would fit their needs perfectly. All that was required was a small change in the formula. They had their chemists remove the noxious smell that warned the user not to inhale it.
This was to stop Fritz Haber’s nieces, grandnephews, friends, and millions of other Jewish people from panicking as they fell to their knees, drowning in the air as Zyklon-B poured into Auschwitz’s gas chambers.
The fate of his once devoted wife (who was also Jewish), was particularly tragic and heartbreaking.
On the evening of April 22, 1915, Haber was ecstatic at the 6,000 men laying dead across the battlefield. The Allied line was broken. However, the Germans did not exploit the opportunity. This had just been a test run. No one had prepared for an advance and the Allies quickly regained their front. Still, Operation: Disinfectant earned Haber a promotion to Captain. A newly crowned hero in the eyes of his countrymen, he went home to spend a few days with his family in Berlin. On May 1st a dinner party was thrown at his villa in honor of his newfound success and rank.
Clara was not in a mood to celebrate.
During the party she confronted him and an intense argument erupted. Clara told her husband that he was morally bankrupt. That what he was doing was monstrous. Haber ignored her. Surrounded by friends praising his patriotic deeds, he saw nothing vile about serving his country. Haber accused her of being an enemy of Germany and something snapped in Clara. She could no longer live by her principles married to such an evil man. That night, while Fritz Haber was asleep, Clara took his army revolver, walked outside to the garden, and shot herself in the chest. She was found by her 13 year old son, with the life about to run out of her.
The next morning, Haber went back to the Eastern Front to direct more gas attacks. His son Hermann was left alone to deal with his dead mother. In the late 1930’s Hermann would immigrate to America, where he would later kill himself.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
