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Chemistry, Responsibility, and Modern Warfare

Stephen M. Contakes* Department of Chemistry

Westmont College 955 La Paz Road

Santa Barbara, CA 93108 Telephone: 626-676-5084 scontakes@westmont.edu

Taylor Jashinsky Student in Social Science

Westmont College 955 La Paz Road

Santa Barbara, CA 93108 Telephone: 916-749-6996 tjashinsky@westmont.edu

“…and that [the members of the Royal Society] and their successors (whose studies are to be applied by further promoting through the authority of experiments the sciences of natural things and of useful arts, to the glory of God the creator, and the advantage of the human race)…”

2nd Charter of the Royal Society of London, 16631

“Chemical professionals have a responsibility to serve the public interest and safety and to further advance the knowledge of science. They should actively be concerned with the health and safety of co-workers, consumers and the community...” Chemical Professionals Code of Conduct, American Chemical Society, 20072 There seems to be a vast gulf between the sentiments of most contemporary scientists and those of the men who shaped English early modern science. This is apparent from even a cursory comparison of the aims and sentiments expressed in the Royal Society of London’s second 1663 Charter and those in the 2007 Chemical Professionals Code of Conduct, both important guiding documents of what are arguably the premier scientific societies of their times. The charter is necessarily much more concerned with legal matters than the code but its outlook is a great deal broader. One gets the sense that the men who wrote it and formed its first members (unfortunately in that age there were no women) had a deep sense they were engaged in the positive activity of building an enterprise that would shape our world, not just in their time but for ages to come. Indeed, among them Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, and Robert Hooke did much to lay the groundwork for the growth of science in 16th Century England. Yet these men lived centuries before the development of antibiotics, plastics, and other chemical technologies that are widely regarded as benefits. It sometimes seems that despite a massive growth in chemistry’s social impacts and success, the moral outlook of its practitioners has grown narrower over the intervening gulf of years. This is only partly true, however. Most chemists are ready to point out chemistry’s positive social impacts, even if they tend to be less willing to consider its real or potential adverse effects – at least aside from issues of human safety or environmental impact. Such narrowness of vision is perhaps understandable. Human safety and environmental stewardship are tremendously important and the chemical disasters of the 1960s and 70s – Thalidomide, DDT, Seveso, etc… tended to focus attention on safety and environmental issues in popular thinking. Chemists’ myopia and decreased awareness of chemistry’s social impacts is also unfortunate, however, since any technological enterprise which exerts even a fraction of chemistry’s historical and global impact has the potential to cause great social harms as well as benefits, depending on how it is employed.

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In part, much of the narrowing of chemists’ moral outlook occurred over the last 150 years as science became increasingly professionalized. Most of the founders of the Royal Society were gentleman of means or had the support of a wealthy patron; today, the vast majority of scientists are part of the middle class. Furthermore, the late 19th Century saw the development of specialized science education tracks that emphasized laboratory work and professional knowledge at the expense of traditional liberal arts subjects.3 Today, University-level chemistry education in America largely follows a prescribed set of courses, the content of which has become relatively standardized through widely used textbooks and the American Chemical Society’s standardized exam and accreditation system. This system of education has many benefits, most notably in that it helps ensure that prospective chemists receive a uniformly high-quality technical education. However, by privileging professional training to the exclusion of broader more interdisciplinary liberal arts experiences, contemporary chemical education can leave students inadequately prepared to navigate the complex ethical issues that arise in real world scientific practice. In part because of their narrow training, Chemists’ tend to only consider the potential social impacts of their work when justifying its expense and limit their consideration of ethics to conventionally professional issues such as research integrity, safety, and occasionally legal responsibilities. Otherwise chemists largely avoid broader ethical considerations, usually by deflecting ethical responsibilities onto other parties.4 Several common excuses are typically offered. Some scientists argue that they lack the necessary ethical training.4 Others hold that the industrial producers or end-users of scientific knowledge or technology are the ones who should be held to be responsible for its adverse impacts. This isn’t to say that there is an element of truth to these excuses. Scientific knowledge isn’t inherently beneficial or harmful in itself – it’s how it’s used that matters. However, excuses based on the neutrality of science don’t quite seem to agree with the well-accepted legal principle that individuals are responsible to take reasonable precaution to identify and avoid foreseeable harms associated with their actions. Consider, for example, the extreme (and hopefully hypothetical) case of a chemist who provides consultant services to a known terrorist organization, enabling them to release poison gas in a crowded shopping mall. Would that chemist be held morally blameless for the attack on the grounds that only the terrorists themselves are responsible? To be fair, few scientists choose projects solely based on narrow interests at the expense of the common good. Most undertake projects they feel has at least some potential to “promote the progress of science and human welfare” – a criterion that funding agencies like the US National Science Foundation use when deciding which projects to support.5 However, even when a scientific discovery or technology seems to be entirely beneficial, it is important to consider the details of how those benefits will come about. Few, if any, chemical professionals have the capacity to truly bring about social changes on their own. Instead, they work together with engineers, business managers, regulators, marketing professionals, lawyers, public officials, investors, and members of the public in what is often a costly and risky enterprise. These individuals often possess a diverse range of outlooks and aspirations that may be incompatible with the disinterested scientific ideal and have great potential for generating ethical dilemmas, particularly given the high-stakes nature of the chemical enterprise. Given this, programs of scientific training which narrowly focus on the professional ethics of chemical research do little to prepare chemists to navigate the complex dilemmas that arise in the real world. In effect, chemical education would do well to re-implement the liberal arts ideal of responsible citizenship with its aim of preparing individuals to function as responsible citizens in human society.

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The history of modern chemistry provides a wealth of examples of the importance of moral decision making in chemistry. However, few episodes present as diverse and sophisticated a range of issues as 20th Century chemistry’s involvement with warfare. Chemistry was arguably the workhorse science of 20th century warfare, both in terms of the amount of munitions used and deaths caused. While the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were together responsible for the deaths of 210,000 persons,6 high explosives and incendiary bombs were responsible for over 300,000 deaths and the complete destruction of 180 square miles of city in the Pacific theatre alone.7 Furthermore, chemists were often intimately involved in war-related work, and even took a leading role. As we’ll see the German chemist Fritz Haber personally helped see that Germany’s armies had the nitrates they needed to remain armed and in the field beyond the first year of World War I and was almost single-handedly responsible for Germany’s first use of poison gas. Furthermore, large numbers of chemists participated in military research during the two world wars and afterward with approximately ten percent of US chemists were engaged in chemical weapons research during the First World War alone.8 However, in this paper we’ll limit our considerations to four historical episodes which we feel illustrate the most relevant moral issues. These include Fritz Haber’s active support of Germany’s war effort during World War I, the German “devil’s chemists” involvement in slave labor and gassings at Auschwitz, Louis Fieser’s involvement in the development and testing of napalm and related incendiaries, and Dow’s response to napalm protests during the Vietnam War. As we’ll demonstrate, these chemists and chemist-industrialists involved in these episodes engaged in moral reasoning over a variety of dilemmas, many of which are analogous to those faced by political and military commanders. Indeed, each of these cases required chemists or chemical engineers to make decisions about whether to pursue and continue war-related work.

Aside from Fritz Haber and his collaborators, few chemists and engineers were directly involved in the military application of chemical technologies. Instead, their role was one of providing technologies and materials that could be used to expand the range of choices available to military and civilian decision makers. Nevertheless, chemists often had a reasonably good idea of how their work would be used. In fact, one of the central questions chemists faced was the level of their responsibility for any dubious implications of their war-related work. Their moral deliberations, while rarely couched in the language of professional philosophy, often involved readily-identifiable moral concepts. Thus, in order to lay the groundwork for subsequent discussion, it will be helpful to first consider the nature of responsibility as it applies to the chemical enterprise. Responsibility and Ethical Judgment in War-Related Chemical Enterprises “Every scientist should feel a sense of personal responsibility, not necessarily for the mess in which the world is in now, but a responsibility to think out his fundamental axioms and the system of ethics that he builds up on those axioms, and then a responsibility for attempting, through personal decisions and personal actions, to make the world the kind of place he knows it ought to be.” Kathleen Lonsdale, British Crystallographer9

Scientists10 and professional ethicists11 have written widely on the social responsibilities of scientists, especially since the development of the atomic bomb. The accounts we have found most helpful include a special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences12 devoted to ethical issues associated with military research, the philosopher of chemistry Joachim Schummer’s consideration of the ethics of synthesis,13 and Claus Jacob and Adam Walter’s ethical analysis of the use of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange in Vietnam.14

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The moral dilemmas faced by scientist are in some respects no different from those facing other participants in modern warfare. As we will see, chemists engaged in morally-suspect war-related research could excuse themselves on the grounds of supreme emergency or employ the principle of proportionality as well as any politician or military commander. However, there are two important differences. First, scientific work rarely requires time-sensitive, let alone split-second, decision making. Because scientific projects often take months or even years to complete scientists typically have time to think about the moral implications of their work. Second, despite their intimate involvement in the development and production of military technology, chemists and engineers rarely make the final decisions about how their technologies are employed. In a typical chemical enterprise research chemists hand off their discoveries to engineers or product development chemists who develop them into economically-viable products or industrial processes. The decision to produce, market, and sell the resulting technologies is typically made by managers subject to the approval by government regulators. However, ultimately the government, industrial, or individual end user is responsible for the final decision to employ the technology in any particular situation. Because of this division of labor, many chemists feel that any responsibility for the moral implications of their work lies with others. This can even be true of chemists and engineers at the highest decision making levels. As Jacob and Walters noted in their analysis of Dow’s response to the adverse effects of Agent Orange, even corporate leaders can deflect responsibility onto the end users,14 particularly if there is some uncertainty about a technology’s potential impacts. Despite many chemists disclaimers to the contrary, all participants in a chemical enterprise share responsibility for the benefits and harms of the technologies they produce, although each participant’s level of responsibility and susceptibility to legal and moral judgment will depend on their expected level of knowledge of potential harms and the types of decisions for which they can be held responsible. Thus, before we look at particular chemist’s response to the moral problems posed by the use of chemical technology in war, it will be helpful to consider the concept of responsibility more generally. At a basic level it can be helpful to distinguish between causal, legal, and moral responsibility. Individuals are said to be causally responsible for an outcome if (a) they are competent – i.e. mentally sound – actors that can (b) freely choose to undertake or not undertake the action which results in the outcome. This is true even if the action isn’t strictly necessary for bringing about the outcome or when the outcome is unintended. Thus, for example, the chemists Walter Kreeft and Bruno Tesch who helped develop Zykon B are causally responsible for its subsequent use in the murder of Jews, prisoners of war, gypsies and other victims of the holocaust - even though they had no inkling that Zyklon B would be used to murder innocent civilians when they first developed it for use as a delousing agent 20 years earlier.15 Note that this assignment of causal responsibility does not mean that Kreeft and Tesch are morally or legally culpable for the Nazi’s use of Zyklon B for mass murder. Causal responsibility simply recognizes that it is impossible to use or misuse a chemical without a chemist to synthesize or isolate it, a manufacturer to produce it, and - in most cases – sales and marketing team to distribute it and encourage its use. In fact, the attribution of causal responsibility is merely a prerequisite for making ethical or legal judgments about whether an individual or organization’s actions, non-actions, motivations, or goals are obligatory (duties), wrong, or permissible (with or without reservations). Legal judgments rest on legal responsibilities determined with reference to common, national, or international laws. For military research, the most important of these are the international laws of war embodied in

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treaties such as the various Hague and Geneva conventions. Judgments of moral praise or blameworthiness depend on how an agent acts with respect to their moral responsibilities determined with respect to a particular ethical framework. Since virtually all aspects of the chemical enterprise involve some degree of risk and uncertainty, it is often helpful to distinguish between prospective and retrospective responsibilities when making legal or moral judgments.13 Prospective responsibilities largely involve readily foreseeable outcomes and are to some extent associated with duties and liabilities while retrospective responsibilities involve unintended consequences, although given the difficulty of determining what is foreseeable this distinction should not be pressed too far. Thus one might say that Kreeft and Tesch were liable (prospectively responsible) for the safety of sanitation workers who employed Zyklon B as a disinfectant since there was a reasonable prospect it could cause harm if used improperly. They recognized this by adding a warning malodorant to prevent accidental poisonings. However, Kreeft and Tesch weren’t automatically liable for its use as an agent of mass murder.16 Instead, their responsibility as inventors was retrospective since the real possibility that it would be used as a killing agent in state-sponsored genocide was not apparent at the time it was first developed.17 Situations like the Zyklon B case are common in military research, where it can be extremely difficult to foresee exactly how a given research result or technological product will be employed under wartime conditions. Thus great care should be taken when assigning prospective responsibilities to scientists engaged in war-related work. Nevertheless, in many cases scientists will have a reasonable idea of how their work might be employed and may want to either excuse themselves from war-related work or raise ethical questions about its potential use. The decision to engage in, refrain from, or raise ethical questions about military research is often far from simple, however. Ethical responsibility dilemmas are quite commonplace in war-related scientific work. These occur when individual chemists’ legal and moral duties to individuals, groups, or all mankind (general responsibilities) conflict with one another.13 For instance, scientists involved in military research may sense a dilemma between their commitments to science’s ideal of open sharing of knowledge and science’s ideal of helping mankind.18 Examples include the cyberneticist Norbert Weiner’s refusal to publish research he thought could be militarily useful19 and more recent debates over the ethics of publishing aerosol-transmissible variants of the avian flu virus.20 Some scientists may experience tensions between their duties as a wartime national citizen, industrial employee, or government grantee and the more general obligation of scientists to do justly in the service of all mankind.21 Historically, scientists resolved this tension in different ways. While the English chemist Michael Faraday refused to perform work on poisoned weapons during the Crimean war,22 the biochemist Harold Urey rejected pacifist objections to weapons research on the grounds that it is the government’s job to direct science policy and the scientists’ to obey the government.23 The ethical frameworks scientists employ when thinking about the implications of military research include a complex mix of ethical principles, theories, norms, and values. Ethical principles largely consist of commonly agreed upon concepts and ideas that can be used to evaluate the merits of an action. Examples might be utility, intrinsic virtue, or reasonableness, criteria that also play various roles in utilitarian, virtue, and deontological ethical theories. Norms are rules for navigating particular social situations and include such things as duties, taboos, and legal rules. Examples include prohibitions against the killing of noncombatants and taboos against the use of chemical weapons,24 both of which are

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reflected in international war conventions. Norms often reflect the things that a society accords importance (or at least accorded importance in the past), which are known as values. For example, recent attempts to develop a principle of noncombatant immunity place a high value on human life. Historically, the most important ethical frameworks for evaluating the morality of war are just war thinking, realism, and pacifism. Just-war theory first arose from Augustine of Hippo’s attempt to apply the Christian law of neighbor love to the political and military situation of the late Roman Empire, although it was later modified by medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Saurez, and Hugo Grotius. It is based on the idea that particular situations exist when it is permissible – or even obligatory – to conduct a war to prevent harm to others, protect the social order, or appropriately chastise an aggressor. Thus it has been largely concerned with Jus ad Bellum (Justice towards war) and Jus in Bellum (Justice in war) evaluations, which involve evaluating when wars may be or should be fought and how they should be fought, respectively. Some writers have also called for its expansion to include separate Jus Post Bellum (Justice after war) principles.25 The traditional Jus ad Bellum provisions of Just War Theory hold that conflict is justified when undertaken by sovereign authority acting in a just cause with right intent. However, some recent thinkers add additional prudential criteria based on the likelihood of success and the calculus of risks, benefits, rights, and wrongs while others hold that wars are only justified in situations of last resort.26,27 While it may seem that Jus ad Bellum mainly applies to political leaders, the criteria have at least two substantive implications for scientists. First, under the traditional Jus ad Bello criteria, military research can be justified based on its potential to enhance states’ ability to protect oppressed peoples and advance global security.27 Second, the Jus ad Bellum concept of sovereignty has sometimes led individual scientists to wrongly assume they cannot be held morally (or even legally) responsible for their personal violation of Just War criteria. Instead, the sovereign authority is believed to bear ultimate responsibility for all war-related decisions. This is particularly true for those chemists engaged in war related work during the first and second world wars for whom the moral and legal inadequacy of the “Nuremberg defense” was not as breathtakingly obvious as it is to us. Finally, the willingness of scientists and other citizens to engage in military research that seems to violate commonly accepted ethical or legal standards is often conditioned on the degree to which a nation meets the Jus ad Bellum criteria. This is one reason why America’s relatively discriminate use of napalm in Vietnam became the focus of campus protests while the deliberate use of napalm incendiaries to firebomb the residential areas of Axis cities during the later stages of the Second World War enjoyed a large measure of popular approval. The Jus in Bello criteria used to determine whether a war is fought well are proportionality and discrimination. The principle of proportionality holds that one’s conduct in war should not create greater evils than would be caused by the injustice the war is designed to avert while the principle of discrimination holds that reasonable care should be taken to avoid harming noncombatants. These provisions in effect preserve the notions of justice and social order which are necessary for concluding a just and lasting peace.25 Nevertheless they are not merely applicable at the level of political leaders. It has long been recognized that military commanders can be held responsible for violating Jus in Bello criteria, especially when these are codified by treaties or in generally accepted Laws of War. The moral status of scientists engaged in weapons research is less clear but has been a subject for debate. For example, some scientists’ horror at the first use of chemical weapons in World War I was due partly to the feeling that they were disproportionately cruel. Others felt that the involvement of scientists, who were supposed to contribute to human knowledge and progress, in the

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carnage of trench warfare violated the principle of proportionality since their degradation of science could not be outweighed by any battlefield advantages that resulted from their work.28 Since the development of the atom bomb, a few religious and secular thinkers have attempted to argue that chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons research is inherently wrong because the harms caused by weapons of mass destruction (particularly nuclear weapons) is greater than any which could be avoided by their use.29 Finally, it should be recognized that the practical application of the Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello criteria involve a host of meta-judgments – e.g. about who is a noncombatant and what constitutes just cause, right intent, proportional response, and military necessity. This is reflected in past debates about the legitimacy of civilian bombing in the Second World War and more current debates over the application of the Jus in Bello criteria in guerrilla warfare situations like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.25,30,31,32 For scientists engaged in military research these difficulties are further exacerbated by the difficulty of determining whether a given weapon or technology might be incompatible with Just War criteria.29 Regardless, the Just War criteria can serve as a helpful starting point when deciding on the legitimacy of a certain course of action or when evaluating the actions of others. Realist perspectives have become increasingly important throughout much of the 20th Century. Realists hold that states and actors shouldn’t worry about an objective code of right or wrong but instead always do what is most likely to advance their own interests. The Athenian perspective in the Melian Dialogue that “right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,”33 exemplifies the realist position. Although realism is opposed to the deontological approach inherent in just war principles, Just War theory’s Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello criteria are not necessarily incompatible with realism. Realists might still want to uphold since they might promote practical aims like security, stabilize a favorable status quo, or prevent the unnecessary escalation of hostilities. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 realist perspectives were in the ascendant. The days when it was common for eminent scientists like Michael Faraday to refuse to perform work on poisoned weapons on moral grounds were largely past.22 Although chemical weapons had been banned by the 1907 Hague IV convention, at the outbreak of World War I number of prominent scientists came forward with suggestions about how particular chemicals might be used in combat. However, it was the German physical chemist Fritz Haber whose prodigious efforts paid off first.34 Indeed, Haber’s life and work arguably exerted the greatest impact on the conduct of World War I - and perhaps Warfare in the 20th Century more generally. Fritz Haber and the Shaping of the First World War

“…Nevertheless, within a few weeks of the outbreak of war several proposals were made in different countries to introduce unconventional weapons. These projects were vigorously promoted by individuals who badgered and bullied the professionals until the new materials were tested. …Sir William Ramsay recommended acrolein to the members of the Royal Society sub-committee. …The Germans (probably at Nernst’s suggestion) also experimented with trench mortar bombs filled with phosgene or with a mixture of phosgene and chlorine. Nevertheless if the stalemate of trench warfare was to be broken in 1915, a novel solution was required. It was found by [Fritz] Haber, and to the extent that he originated and developed the concept of the gas cloud, [it is] right to call him the father of chemical warfare.” Ludwig “Lutz” Haber (son of Fritz Haber), The Poisionous Cloud, pgs. 22-2734

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“Although his motto advocated that one should work for humanity in times of peace and for one’s fatherland in times of war, I see no evidence that Haber ever deliberately worked for anything other than his fatherland.” Henry Harris, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford35 Fritz Haber was at the pinnacle of German science when the First World War broke out in 1914. A few years earlier, he had developed a process for making ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen – a discovery that would later win him the Nobel Prize. In the meantime, the enterprising Haber licensed his process to BASF, whose chief chemist Carl Bosch developed it into a large scale industrial process. Because the large quantities of ammonia produced via this Haber-Bosch process could be used to make nitrate fertilizer, Haber and Bosch had solved one of the great technological problems facing society in the early 20th century – that of world food production. Europe faced the possibility of famine because the supply of Chilean nitrates on which it depended for fertilizer was running out.36 Now Haber’s process would not only hold off starvation but allow for population growth. As the German physicist Max von Laue would later note, Haber had literally made it possible to “win bread from air.”37 Nearly one hundred years later Haber’s process still undergirds world food production. Haber-Bosch plants operate in nearly every country on Earth and collectively consume between 1 and 2% of the world’s energy.38 Haber’s great achievement would eventually earn him a place among the great figures of the 20th century. Of more immediate interest, however, it had provided Haber with excellent industrial connections and led to his 1911 appointment as head of the newly inaugurated Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, which was located on the grounds of the Kaiser’s farm at Dahlem near Berlin.39 When the First World War erupted in August 1914, Haber was not only technologically well placed to contribute to Germany’s war effort, but socially and geographically as well. Haber’s unique position would be fateful for both Germany and the world. Although Haber was not the rabid nationalist he is sometimes portrayed to be, he felt a deep sense of duty to his country and was quite eager to help the German war effort.40 He was among the intellectuals who signed the manifesto of the ninety-three defending Germany’s participation in the war41 and, although 45 years old, had even volunteered for military service at the front. However, Haber’s most important contribution to Germany’s war effort would be through his skills as an organizer, industrial contacts, technical expertise, and perhaps above all his industry and sheer doggedness. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, Germany’s military and political leaders were unaware of the crucial importance of the Haber process for the war effort. Nitrate was needed to make explosives as well as fertilizer and Germany was going to need large quantities if it hoped to keep its armies adequately supplied with munitions beyond the six months of the war.42 Since the route to Chilean saltpeter was now blocked by the allied navies, this meant that Haber’s process would have to take up the slack. Haber was among the first to recognize this and personally sought to address Germany’s need for nitrates as part of his work with a select group of scientists and industrialists headed by the German economist Walter Rathenau of the German War ministry. Within a few weeks of the start of hostilities, Haber tried unsuccessfully to convince the German chemical giant BASF to develop an industrial scale process for converting ammonia to nitrates. BASF’s leaders, worried over the practical difficulties of getting a laboratory process to work on an industrial scale, initially rejected Haber’s proposal. They changed their minds once gravity of the situation became clear. The modern weapons used by Germany’s armies were consuming massive quantities of ammunition even as Germany’s defeat at the First Battle of the Marne ended its hope of a

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quick end to the war. After further spurring from Rathenau, Bosch and BASF decided to produce nitrates after all.40 The delighted Haber, now head of a department that would deal with the issue of limited natural raw materials,43 helped negotiate the details between BASF and the German government. By the end of the war, Germany’s ammonia production alone had increased tenfold – enabling the production of enough explosives for Germany’s armies but tragically not enough to adequately feed its people as well.40 Haber also directly supervised a host of military research projects intended to advance German war aims. Early in life Haber had hoped to become a Prussian officer. Now his status as director of the Kaiser Wilhem Institute would help him realize that dream. His institute sprawled into a vast military research complex with guards and barbed wire fences. At its peak, Haber employed over 1,500 scientists and other technical specialists organized into eight separate departments spread throughout various locations in Berlin.39,40 In effect, Haber had become director of the world’s first national weapons lab. The most notorious of Haber’s research projects – and perhaps the work closest to his heart – was his work on poison gas. Sixty years later his son, the British economic historian Lutz Haber, wrote the authoritative account of his and other World War I chemical weapons work.34 We largely follow it in the following account. In 1914 the world was ready for chemical warfare. The growth of modern chemical industries in Britain, France, the United States, and above all Germany meant that it was possible to produce large quantities of inorganic and petroleum derived chemicals that could be used in warfare. Thus, although the 1907 Hague IV convention specifically outlawed the use of poisoned projectiles, Britain, France, and Germany all attempted to develop chemical weapons prior to the First World War and the French had even acquired stocks of tear gas.34 After hostilities commenced, these efforts accelerated as a number of eminent chemists, including Haber, Walter Nernst, Carl Duisberg,44 and William Ramsay, were either consulted or came forward with suggestions for employing chemicals in war. Some even began to develop chemical munitions. Helped by Duisberg and Nernst, the German army was ready to use artillery shells filled with tear gas only a few months after the war started, in October 1914. Militarily, these weapons were a dismal failure. The o–dianisidine chlorosulphonate they contained dispersed without effect and the French did not even realize they had been attacked with chemical weapons. In fact, the only significant impact of the attack was on Fritz Haber. He became convinced that any effective chemical attack would need to involve the coordinated delivery of large quantities of toxic gas and turned his intellect and energies to the development effective delivery methods. His first suggestion involving coordinated batteries of trench mortars was rejected by the German High command. Thus Haber began investigating the use of chlorine gas delivered from cylinders, which German military leaders considered more practical due to the ready availability of chlorine from the chlor-alkali industry. Although German military commanders had a significant impact on the direction of Haber’s war gas research efforts, it was Haber who convinced Germany’s military leaders to employ large quantities of lethal gas in the first place. The German commander, General Eric von Falkenhayn, and other officers tended to regard chemical weapons as unchivalrous. Nevertheless, having invaded neutral Belgium, Germany’s High Command knew how to choose expediency over chivalry. In the hope it might lead to a quick victory, Falkenhayn approved Haber’s use of gas – but only after legal experts assured him that since the chlorine came from cylinders, the attack would not violate the letter of the Hague convention, which applied only to projectiles.45

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Even after receiving approval from Falkenhayn, Haber had difficulty persuading the leaders of individual German units to employ gas on their sector of the front. After four refusals, Haber finally secured permission to attempt the first gas attack at Ypres in Belgium. Haber’s unit of special gas troops moved into position, accompanied by “observers” that included the future Nobel laureates Gustav Hertz, Otto Hahn, and James Frank.46 Together they took meteorological readings, taught the troops how to handle gas, and supervised the emplacement of over 6,000 chlorine cylinders along a seven kilometer section of the German front near Ypres, Belgium. After a series of delays these cylinders were finally opened in the late afternoon on April 22, 1915. Over 150 tons of chlorine advanced toward the opposing French-Algerian troops in the form of a slow moving (~1 mph) yellow-greenish cloud that towered 10-30 meters above the ground. Within minutes French troops began choking and experiencing spasms. The remainder broke and ran. The Germans would soon capture over 2,000 French and a hundred guns as the French line collapsed. Nevertheless, their victory was both modest and short lived. A number of problems prevented a decisive breakthrough - the late afternoon start, problems moving through the gas-laden battlefield, and (since German commanders had not anticipated the extent of Haber’s success) a lack of adequate resources to support the breakthrough. The allies would soon retake the area. The moral effects of the first gas attack were more substantial. The French claimed a horrifying 7,000 casualties, including 350 dead, as the Allies portrayed the attack as yet another example of German barbarity.43 In response, the German’s alternately argued that Hague IV did not forbid cylinder-released gas and charged the French with having violated the convention first by using tear gas the preceding year. There is some evidence that these claims were not merely propaganda. The Germans wrongly suspected the French of employing tear gas in the fall of 1914 and had reliable evidence the French were planning a large-scale gas attack for the spring of 1915.34 Indeed, despite the British and French official protests at the use of gas, they were only too happy to retaliate in kind. As the war dragged on, both sides brought additional chemical warfare innovations to the battlefield – phosgene, the Livens projector, and mustard gas – and devoted increasing energy to chemical warfare. By the end of the war 10-50% of artillery shells (depending on the nation) were filled with gas.47 However, as advances in chemical weapons were accompanied by the introduction of effective gas masks and other countermeasures, chemical weapons largely served to increase the horror of trench warfare without affecting its outcome. All this was contrary to Haber’s intent. His friend and fellow gas soldier Otto Hahn recalled that Haber justified the gas attack at Ypres by arguing that “in war, methods have to be used that lead to its rapid conclusion.”43 Indeed, as a cultured member of the German intelligentsia, Haber was sensitive to the moral issues associated with chemical warfare. It’s not that he agonized much - Haber was almost certainly a relatively unscrupulous realist. Instead, he had to confront the objections of more skeptical colleagues and subordinates. To convince men like Franck, Hahn, and Hertz to participate in poison gas operations, for example, Haber used a variety of arguments. These included the argument from necessity in that Haber claimed Germany – surrounded on all sides - was facing its “hour of greatest need and helplessness.”48 When Hahn’s objected that chemical weapons violated the Hague convention, Haber used France’s supposed first use of poison bullets to justify Germany’s use of the more poisonous chlorine in retaliation.49 Coupled with Haber’s argument that poison gas would save lives by ending the war quickly, this put Hahn’s mind at rest.49 What is more, Haber asserted that the morality of war was a matter for the state, not individual scientists.48 In his view the political and military leaders who decided whether poison gas

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could be used were morally responsible, not the chemists who developed them in the first place. Of course Haber was hardly an innocent pawn of the German High command. After the war the Allies decided that the use of poison gas was a violation of the Hague provisions. Haber’s name appeared on a list of potential war criminals50 and his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1918 evoked widespread protest in Britain and France. In a move that Haber’s own son would consider an evasion of responsibility, Haber blamed Falkenhayn for informing him that cylinder-released gas was not a violation of the Hague IV statutes.34 Perhaps more importantly, Haber’s chemical weapons work had earlier elicited disapproval from other scientists, including his friend Albert Einstein and, more importantly, Haber’s first wife Clara, herself one of the first female Ph.D. chemists in Germany. According to some accounts Clara even called Haber’s involvement in gas warfare a “perversion of science” and her suicide shortly after the attack is sometimes attributed to Haber’s war work.51 Other German and Allied scientists disapproved of weapons related work. The British radiochemist Frederick Soddy had even publicly refused to engage in poison gas research52 while after the war the German pacifist-chemist Hermann Staudinger argued for an international ban on poison gas.53 After the war the American Chemical Society54 and a few scientists advocated for chemical weapons on the basis of its military utility or the potential of chemical weapons research for advancing the chemical sciences more generally.55

Although Haber used the argument from necessity with his subordinates and privately believed that all was fair in war,48 in public he defended the moral legitimacy of chemical weapons using of the principle of proportionality. In his words, chemical weapons caused “more fright and less destruction.”40 Haber himself noted that when he surveyed the battlefield an hour after the first chemical attack he noticed relatively few gas casualties34 and, indeed, post-war gas casualty estimates seem to support Haber’s contention that gas was more likely to wound or incapacitate than kill.56 Furthermore, a number of thinkers agreed with Haber. The British military historian Basil Liddell Hart even concluded that gas was the most humane weapon used in the war based on his study of the casualty statistics and own experiences as a gas casualty35,57 while Henry Harris, Oxford’s Regius Professor of Medicine, noted that most gassing victims were able to recover in a matter of days.33 Of course the concept of proportionality could also be invoked to argue that chemical weapons should be outlawed because they caused unnecessary suffering. Indeed, moral outrage over the horror of chemical weapons was keenly felt in the interwar years, when many veterans had vivid memories of the “guttering,” “choking,” “drowning”, and ‘gargling” of blood described in poems like Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est.58 Against this Haber replied that the suffering from chemical weapons was only different in kind from that inflicted by conventional weapons, which can also lead to a slow and terrible death.40 Haber’s post-war apologetics was in all likelihood not merely rhetoric. There is no indication Haber felt remorse over his chemical weapons work. In fact, he continued supporting German chemical warfare programs in word and deed throughout the 1920s - in defiance of the Versailles treaty provision which specifically banned Germany from possessing chemical weapons. Many of Haber’s interwar efforts to advance chemical warfare were unsuccessful. The post war German army did not maintain its chemical weapons capabilities and his call for the creation of a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemical Warfare and Pest Control ultimately did not pan out. However, Haber was able to assist in the successful construction of German chemical weapons production facilities in the Soviet Union and Spain39 and continued to direct chemical weapons research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

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After the war, Haber also pursued a variety of other technological schemes to advance German interests, the most notable of which was a failed effort to pay Germany’s war reparations debt by extracting Gold from seawater.40,43 Other projects were more successful, including Haber’s efforts to develop pesticides for the use against lice and vermin, work that tied in well with his poison gas expertise. During the war he had even created a division in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute to investigate whether poison gas could be used to delouse clothing and granaries. By the early 1920s, this division’s work paid off in the form of a highly effective hydrogen cyanide-based process for pest control.59 Haber even helped create a public company, Degesh, to help commercialize the results.15 Later, after Degesh was acquired by a larger firm, Degassa, two of Haber’s enterprising assistants, Walter Kreedt and Bruno Tesch, developed an easily transportable solid-stable form of cyanide by mixing liquid HCN with solid adsorbents.15 Under its trade name, Zyklon B (cyclone B),60 the Nazis would use it to murder Jews and others they considered undesirable in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Bruno Tesch, Otto Ambros, and the “Devil’s Chemists” of the Holocaust “…as so often in the history of the Holocast, cooperating with its perpetrators was not the royal road to riches for Bruno Tesch…when the SS began [experimenting with the use of hydrogen cyanide] to kill people at Auschwitz, Tesch’s commercial relationship with the organization promised to yield him rather small future profits. Yet, preserving these ties seemed vital to the survival of his company for other reasons in 1941-1942, and understanding them is essential to comprehending the decisions he made then, which contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings and ultimately proved fatal to him as well.” Peter Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich15 In early 1942, Bruno Tesch was the director of Tesch and Stabenow (Testa) in Hamburg, a supplier of Zyklon B that essentially functioned as a subsidiary of Degesh, which in turn functioned as an independent subsidiary of Degassa. Due to agreements Testa had with its larger parents, Tesch agreed to only sell or use Zyklon B in certain areas of the German Reich. Since these included the German capitol, Berlin, Testa in effect became the main wartime supplier of Zyklon B to the German government, military, and later the SS.15 Although the SS would never dominate Degussa’s sales, it became an increasingly important customer as its system of concentration camps ballooned in size from 21,000 to over 700,000 inmates throughout the war.15 As early as 1940 Testa technicians were involved in delousing work at Auschwitz and over the following two years Tesch personally conducted training seminars for the SS personnel involved in fumigation work at the camp.15 By April 1941 the SS had found Zyklon B so useful that they obtained authorization to use it on their own. From then on, Tesch would function primarily as a Zyklon B supplier, although he would also provide SS technicians and concentration camp inmates with occasional training in its proper use. There is good evidence that Tesch learned Zykon B was being used to gas Jews sometime in June 1942 and anecdotal evidence that he provided technical advice as to how it could best be used to kill humans in enclosed spaces.15 Not only did Tesch continue selling Zyklon B to the SS after learning how it was being used, he showed “indifference to reports from returning subordinates about the dreadful conditions of concentration camp inmates” and “made sure that his closest aides squelched any suspicions [about Zyklon B’s use in gassings] that arose in-house.”15 Because of his remarkable indifference, Tesch was tried by the British after the war for his part in the murder of Allied nationals who were killed with Zyklon B in Auschwitz and other camps. He was ultimately convicted and hanged.61

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Despite the weight of the evidence against him, Tesch never publicly admitted he knew about the use of Zyklon B for killing concentration camp inmates. Consequently, it is difficult to determine for certain why he acted with such seeming callousness. His coworkers noted his petty and often unkind personality, as well as his mistreatment of a half-Jewish secretary. However, as Peter Hayes notes in his study of Degaussa’s complicity with the Third Reich, it is much more likely that Tesch’s continued faithful support of the SS was due to the precariousness of his position at the helm of Testa. For two years preceding his knowledge of Zyklon B’s use as an agent of murder, Tesch had been embroiled in a fight to retain managerial control of Testa, and had only succeeded through his good graces with the local Nazi government.15 Under these conditions, Tesch may have been unwilling to risk his position and income over whatever moral qualms he may have felt about the gassing of Jews. Tesch was not alone in his moral complicity for the use of Zyklon B in the Holocaust. Gerhard Peters, head of Degassa’s pest control department and Tesh’s rival, also apparently knew about the killings and even agreed to supply Zyklon B without the warning odorant.15 A similar lack of compunction seems evident in the wartime behavior of some managers and chemists at the German Chemical giant, I.G. Farben, twenty four of whom were brought to trial at Nuremberg. Dubbed the “Devils’ Chemists” by the American prosecutor Josiah DuBois,62 most stood accused of crimes of aggression related to the rearming of Germany. Motivated more by economic self-interest than genuine nationalism, I.G. Farben, the largest chemical concern in the world, worked closely with Hitler’s government to prepare Germany for war through the development of synthetic fuels, artificial rubber, and other substances that obviated or reduced its need to import materials from abroad.62,63 The most serious charges, however, related to Farben’s role in slavery and mass murder. In late 1940, Otto Ambros, a former student of Fritz Haber’s friend and colleague Richard Wilstaetter, was I.G. Farben’s expert in the manufacture of synthetic rubber.63 Under his tutelage and with the support and subsidy of the German government, Farben had developed its synthetic rubber production capabilities in the years leading up to war.64 Now, as Germany prepared to attack the Soviets, Ambros had been asked to expand Farben’s synthetic rubber production capacity further by adding additional plants.64 Farben’s process for producing Buna rubber65 required significant quantities of coal, running water, and inexpensive labor and Ambros scoured the Reich for suitable sites with good rail access. He finally found one in Silesia, a recently conquered region of southwestern Poland. It wasn’t perfect - the housing available for Farben’s engineers and technicians was of poor quality - but his old school friend, the SS leader Heinrich Himmler, promised him access to a nearby source of cheap labor.63,64,66 The partnership would ultimately lead to an expansion of both men’s operations. Farben’s Buna rubber plant would be at Auschwitz. Although Farben would ultimately sink 900 million Reich marks into the Auschwitz Buna project, things did not go exactly as planned. Between labor and equipment shortages the Buna rubber project rapidly fell behind schedule. In response, Farben’s management spurred the SS to increase the laborers’ productivity, a measure that added to the inmates’ suffering. After the war one of the few survivors, Rudolf Vrba, described a typical scene:

“…Wild-eyed kapos drove their bloodstained path through rucks of prisoners, while SS men shot from the hip, like television cowboys who had strayed into a grotesque, endless horror film, and adding a ghastly note of incongruity to the bedlam were groups of quiet men in impeccable civilian clothes, picking their way through corpses they did not want to see, measuring timbers with bright yellow folding rules, making neat little notes in black leather books, oblivious to the blood bath. They never spoke to the workers, these men in the quiet grey suits. They never spoke to the kapos, the gangsters. Only occasionally they murmured a few words to a senior SS [non-

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commissioned officer], words that sparked off another explosion. The SS man would kick viciously to the kapo and roar, “Get those men moving you lazy oaf. Don’t you know the wall’s to be finished by eleven o’clock?” The kapo would scramble to his feet, pound into the prisoners, lashing them on, faster and faster.”67

While it is likely that few, if any, of the men in the grey suits described by Vrba were Farben chemists, Farben’s management heard about the maltreatment of prisoners through weekly reports from their men on the spot, Walter Dürrefeld and Max Faust, although a number of Farben’s directors also visited the plant on one or more occasions.64 More concerned with the slow pace of the project, they were apparently unmoved. Their next attempt to intervene occurred when Ambros suggested that productivity could be improved by eliminating the time consuming and exhausting four mile trek between the Buna works and main Auschwitz camp. The solution hit upon by Ambros and other Farben managers was for Farben to construct and run its own camp at the Buna works. The camp, which became known as I.G. Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Monowitz, was completed in 1942 and featured “watchtowers, armed guards, electric fences, sirens, gallows, punishment cells, mortuary, and searchlights” just like every other camp.64 The inmates who worked there were driven at what was literally a murderous pace. For the chemist-managers of Farben68 people could be reduced to the status of a commodity:

“… I.G. Auschwitz has assured I.G. a unique place in business history. By adopting the theory and practice of Nazi morality, it was able to part from the conventional economics of slavery in which slaves are traditionally treated as capital equipment and depreciated over a normal life span. Instead, I.G. reduced slave labor to a consumable raw material, a human ore from which the mineral of life was systematically extracted. When no usable energy remained, the living dross was shipped to the gas chambers and crematoria.… Even the moans of the doomed became a work incentive, exhorting the inmates to greater effort.”63

In the postwar I.G. Farben trial at Nuremburg, Farben’s managers variously disclaimed any knowledge of or responsibility for the death of inmates in the Buna works at I.G. Auschwitz. Ambros in particular repeatedly claimed he was just a “plain chemist.” Nevertheless, it is clear that they knew what was going on and – whether they had any moral qualms or not – decided to advance the interests of their firm at the expense of the most basic standards of human decency and welfare. Indeed, Farben’s actions not only illustrate the dangers of a compartmentalized morality which dutifully fulfils professional obligations at the expense of the greater good, they provide a striking example of the importance of individual moral responsibility in a time of politically and socially-accepted evil. In other contexts Ambros and other Farben leaders were regarded as good men - in some cases even pillars of their communities. DuBois notes that the French prisoners of war who worked in a dye plant Ambros managed even affectionately referred to him as “Director Bon” in recognition of the humane treatment they received.62 Indeed, the reason for the Farben’s slide into such severe moral indifference isn’t easy to understand. Perhaps the oppression and corruption of the Third Reich contributed to its directors’ unscrupulous focus on narrow-minded business goals. The historian of Soviet science, Loren Graham, noted that scientists adopted similar tactics when confronted with similar conditions in Soviet Russia.

“…researchers sought to escape the politically and morally corrupt atmosphere around them by submerging themselves in their work…Science was the one activity that made sense in their lives, the one area where they could serve truth without automatically coming into conflict with the system.”69

Of course it is difficult to tell whether this was the case for Farben’s leader’s, some of whom were quite adept at gaming the Nazi system.63,64 Regardless of whether Farbens’ indifference to moral concerns was the result of a reckless indifference or narrow self-

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interest, one lesson the can be drawn from its use of slave labor at Auschwitz is that chemists would do well to beware of finding solace in the narrow pursuit of “technically-sweet” goals.70 Indeed, as Farben’s directors ignored the moral implications of their involvement in the Holocaust, across the Atlantic another morally unaware chemist was engaged in the development of one of the most powerful and dreadful weapons of the 20th Century. Louis Fieser, Napalm, and the Firebombing of Cities in the Second World War

“During the summer of 1941…I had been instructed to terminate work on explosives and to work instead on poison gases, vesicants. This reallocation did not please me. Use of poison gases seemed to me inhumane.” Louis Fieser, The Scientific Method71 “We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” General Curtis Le May as quoted in Grayling 200672 Today, chemists largely remember Louis Fieser as the author, with his wife Mary, of the Fiesier and Fieser series on Reagents for Organic Synthesis, although older chemists might also remember him as the author of many popular Organic Chemistry textbooks.73 It might surprise them to know that Fieser began writing these textbooks during lull periods in his work for the American military during the Second World War.71 Fieser undertook a variety of war-related research projects, which he later recounted in his The Scientific Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and Peace.71 These included the synthesis of cortisone and the antimalarial drug quinine - projects that made good use of his expertise as a synthetic organic chemist. However, the bulk of Fieser’s efforts were devoted to the development of incendiary devices for use in espionage, pilot survival kits, and a variety of munitions ranging from antitank grenades to 1,000-lb aerial bombs. For a time Fieser even attempted to use incendiary-bearing bats as a weapon.74 Most of these projects used a sticky gelatinous material Fieser’s group had developed – a material known as napalm. In July 1940, after Germany had overrun Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries, American military, political, and scientific leaders began to recognize that America would need to prepare for war against a determined and capable foe. As part of their efforts, a National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was created in July under the chairmanship of Vannevar Bush.71 By October Fieser was assigned to work on TNT explosives71 on behalf of its chemical division.75 His indendiary research came out of a NDRC conference on explosives in early 1941. After learning about a series of industrial explosions involving divinylacetylene he volunteered to test oxidized divinylacetylene’s usefulness as an explosive or incendiary.71 According to his memoirs, Fieser mainly sought to pursue the divinylacetylene project because he considered his postdoctoral researcher, E.B. Hershberg, “ideally qualified” for the task.”71 Hershberg was a chemist with an unusually practical bent. According to Fieser, he was skilled in engineering, mechanical drawing, carpentry, machining, glassblowing, photography, and the construction of mechanical devices. Moreover, Hershberg was a reserve officer in the Army’s Chemical Warfare service and had extensive experience with “military explosives, fuses, poison gases, smoke pots, and grenades.”71 Fieser and Hershberg soon learned that the sticky gels of peroxidized divinylacetylene they prepared were not terribly shock sensitive explosives. However, on burning their failures at the end of the day they noticed that the gels “burned with an impressive sputter and sparkle” and did “not become fluid but [retained] its viscous, sticky, consistency” – an observation which soon gave them the idea that divinylacetylene gels might be useful for producing “a bomb that would scatter large burning globs of sticky gel.”71 With the help of the British Air

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ministry, they began work on incendiary bombs. Unfortunately, their early success was followed by a potential setback. In the summer of 1941, the NDRC asked Fieser to focus of his work on potential vesicants (tear gases) instead of explosives. Fieser initially agreed. However, after his research on vesicants stalled due to safety considerations, Fieser obtained permission to switch from vesicants to incendiary research. Newly flush with NDRC money, Fieser formed a six-man team of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to investigate potential new incendiaries. They tried a variety of substances include a rubber-benzene gel initially looked at by the British and rubber-gasoline gels, both of which proved highly effective. By November, Fieser and his team had even developed effective bombs which they tested at Harvard’s stadium and demonstrated to military officials at Edgewood arsenal in Maryland. For the time being, however, Fieser’s rubber-benzene bombs were not to be. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and soon were in control of the Malaysian rubber plantations. Fieser and his team would have to use more readily available alternatives. The search for alternatives to natural rubber eventually led Fieser and his team to look at metal salts of fatty acids that were used to thicken lubricating oil into greases. Fieser soon discovered that the NDRC incendiary group at Arthur D. Little Corporation found Aluminum Napthenate produced suitable gels, but only after a heating step that could not be used as part of a field-filling process. To rectify this problem Fieser suggested that his group investigate the use of multi-component soap gels containing more than one fatty acid component. Eventually they found that mixtures of Aluminum napthenate and “Aluminum palmitate” mixtures gave sticky gels when mixted with gasoline at low temperatures. Fieser named the substance napalm after the napthenate and palmitate components, although it would soon be discovered that the properties of the gels could be improved by adding chemically unsaturated acids like oleic and linolenic acid and that the “palmitate” he obtained from Metsap Corporation really consisted primarily of the shorter chain Lauric acid. Petroleum-based incendiaries like napalm produce the most heat per unit weight of all incendiaries,76 and both Fieser and the military discovered the effectiveness of napalm bombs, particularly after Hershberg developed a white phosphorous burster that produced an even scatter of “large, burning, globs” over a 50 yard radius.71 In experiments at various military proving grounds napalm won out over the industrial competition, having proven itself extremely effective against wooden building and stable during rough transport. As Fieser would later note, “Japan’s early acquisition of the major supplies of raw rubber turned out to have been a blessing to the allied nations.”71 Napalm was going to war. During the Second World War, the allies used napalm effectively in a variety of munitions. These included the 100-lb M-47 bombs Fieser developed as well as 500-lb “goop” bombs, napalm-filled aircraft belly tanks, and flamethrowers where it helped to burn the Japanese out of caves and other emplacements during the Allies island hopping campaign.71 The most fateful use of napalm however was in the M-69 cluster bomb, which consisted of an “aimable cluster” of 38 bomblets each of which was filled with several pounds of napalm.72,77 This bomb was designed to burst over the target where each of the bomblets, held vertical by a tail streamer, were designed to ignite after they had penetrated the top floor of German and Japanese houses. There a flaming stream of napalm up to 100 meters in length would be ejected from the bomb, rapidly turning the structure into a raging inferno. Indeed, the M-47 and M-69 incendiary bombs were used with great effect in the bombing of German and later Japanese cities, particularly when used with a mixture of high explosives that would destroy water mains, fire breaks, and firefighters and rescue crews that tried to combat the blaze. By the end of the Second World War, Fieser’s napalm mixture had been used to devastate

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dozens of German and Japanese cities. Its effects were particularly devastating in the firebombing of Hamburg in 1943 and Dresden and Tokyo in 1945, where it helped fuel massive firestorms each of which produced tens of thousands of civilian casualties.7,72 Despite the civilian deaths caused by British and American area bombing of German and Japanese cities, respectively, most Americans were in favor of the bombing campaigns, largely due to feelings that these deaths were justified by the necessity of defeating the immoral Nazi regime and the seemingly barbarous Japanese.78 Indeed, Fieser’s reports of his napalm work show no indication that he experienced moral qualms at the time.71,79 Fieser only publicly engaged the moral questions associated with napalm much later, during the anti-war protests of the 1960s. In 1966, after reading a report of napalm being used against civilians, Fieser wrote to his friend the biochemist J.B Neilands explaining that he and his coworkers on the napalm project “certainly had no thought about the use of napalm against non-military personnel.”80 Relatively late in the Vietnam War, he even wrote to President Nixon encouraging him to “promote an international agreement to outlaw further use of naplam or naplam-type munitions.”81 Despite his apparent concern for the principle of discrimination, it seems hard to believe that Fieser had not considered the possibility that napalm might be used against civilians. Fieser’s bat bombs were designed to incinerate Japanese houses and at least some of the tests on napalm were conducted on the model German and Japanese Villages at Dugway proving ground in Utah.82 In order to determine the ideal conditions for burning out Axis cities, these villages were made up of model German and Japanese homes designed to closely replicate the construction and furnishing of German and Japanese “working-class housing.”83 Perhaps Fieser, who was aware of these tests, didn’t know of their true character or else thought that German and Japanese civilians would be in bomb shelters as his incendiaries burned their homes to the ground. However, on the face of it his claim that he thought napalm would only be used against military targets seems difficult to believe. Regardless of what he truly believed about napalm’s intended use, Fieser remained adamant that he should not be held responsible for how napalm was used:

“I discovered that a jelled fuel burns more efficiently than a free fuel," he says. "I don't think I have to be ashamed of having made that discovery. And I would be the first to suggest that antipersonnel use be outlawed. But how in the world do you make the distinction? Why should the investigator be called on to rule on the uses?"81

While Fieser may be right in claiming that investigators have limited responsibility for the way in which their inventions are employed, his argument bears further scrutiny. Taken at face value, Fieser wasn’t merely causally responsible but morally as well, particularly since he had ample opportunities to read reports of Allied bombing campaigns and, more importantly, observe his bombs being tested against civilian structures.71 This is not to say, however, that Fieser knew that incendiaries would be used to burn the residential areas of Axis cities from the start. When Fieser began work on napalm incendiaries in 1940 America had entered the war and the Allied firebombing of Axis cities had not yet begun and throughout much of the war the U.S. publicly advocated the precision bombing of military and war-related industrial targets.7 Moreover, Fieser’s memoirs, written before the Vietnam-era napalm protests began, bear out his claim that his group was largely concerned with finding improved incendiaries for the destruction of enemy structures. In fact, despite the shortcomings of Fieser’s moral reasoning, there is no indication that he was unscrupulous. He had an “unabashed tendency for self-promotion”73 that sometimes led to his being considered intolerably arrogant,74 although even a cursory read of his war

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research memoirs show that he was very willing to give ample credit to his colleagues and students when it was due.71 In the chemical community Fieser and his wife were well known for their deep commitment to chemical education and efforts to advance organic chemistry through their textbooks and series on Organic reagents. Before beginning work on incendiaries he even expressed qualms about work on war gases, although these probably represented his recoil at a social taboo rather than a considered judgment. In fact, we suspect that Fieser was simply not a deep moral thinker and that – uncomfortably like his counterparts in Germany - he simply went along with the prevailing social norms. Throughout the period of Fieser’s involvement with the NDRC Americans overwhelmingly favored the bombing of Axis cities.78 Whatever the merits or demerits of Fieser’s moral reasoning, it would not be his lot to bear the burden of anti-napalm sentiments. That burden would fall on Dow Chemical, which produced an improved version of napalm made from polystyrene, benzene, and gasoline for use by the U.S. military in Vietnam.

Dow Chemical’s Moral Stand in Producing Napalm for use in the Vietnam War

“Hell comes in the form of large egg-shaped containers, dropping from the first plane, followed by other eggs from the second and third plane. Immense sheets of flames, extending over hundreds of meters, it seems, strike terror into the hearts of my soldiers. This is napalm, the fire which falls from the skies. … There is no way of holding out under this torrent of fire which flows in all directions and burns everything in its passage. On all sides flames now surround us. In addition, French artillery and mortars now have our range and transform into a fiery tomb what had been ten minutes ago, a quiet part of the forest.”

Viet Minh officer’s diary, from Fall 196184 as quoted in SIPRI 197585 “…Our “Skyraider” was loaded with 750-pound napalm bombs and 300 pound napalm bombs, plus our four 20-millimeter cannon. Our wing plane carried 7,500 pounds of high explosive antipersonnel bombs, plus our four cannon…As we flew over the village it looked very much as any normal village would look … It was a peaceful scene. The napalm was supposed to force the people – fearing the heat and burning – out into the open. Then the second plane was to move in with heavy fragmentation bombs to hit whatever – or whomever – had rushed out into the open ...” Air Raid on a Fishing Village, from Fall 196586 as quoted in Petrowski196930 The quotes above illustrate the Janus-faced nature of napalm. Militarily, it was highly useful. It could consume a horde of enemy infantry in a flaming inferno, suck the air out of a bunker, or transform a previously safe jungle into horror of death and destruction. During the island hopping campaigns of the Second World War, marines using napalm-equipped flamethrowers and tanks found it incredibly effective at burning Japanese soldiers out of pillboxes and tunnels.87 Later, American soldiers in Korea and Vietnam learned to rely on napalm to disrupt attacks by enemy troops. However, when it didn’t kill napalm often stuck to the skin, melting flesh and causing horrible burns and disfigurement. Furthermore, it could be difficult to avoid harming noncombatants when napalm was dropped from planes. Thus, napalm could provoke a sense of moral outrage not unlike that evoked by poison gas. In the closing stages of World War II when the allied leaders were discussing how best to end the war against Japan, the American chief of staff George Marshall suggested that the allies should try poison gas – at least it was not as terrible as napalm-based incendiary weapons, he argued.7 If napalm caused some degree of unease in the midst of the most paradigmatic of just causes - the American and British war effort of the Second World War – things would only get worse when it was later employed in Korea and Vietnam. In these conflicts the American war aims were less clear and the battle zones more civilian-rich. There were no great widespread protests during the Korean conflict, although English churchmen protested the United

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Nations’ use of napalm and Korean Christians asked President Eisenhower to reconsider its use for aerial bombardment.88 Despite their reservations, British and Korean public largely felt the U.N. effort in Korea to be a worthwhile effort in the fight against communist aggression. Furthermore, the use of napalm was largely discriminate as it was still relatively easy to tell friend from foe. This would change in the jungles and villages of Vietnam where the Northern strategy of guerrilla warfare made it difficult to tell friend from foe. In response, American commanders sometimes adopted or tolerated morally odious policies and rule of engagement. Thus, while napalm was primarily employed in close support of US troops against enemy soldiers (a role in which it was invaluable), aerial attacks against villages occasionally occurred.85,86 Although there is some dispute over the geographic distribution and extent of civilian casualties, graphic and sometimes exaggerated89 accounts describing the U.S. use of napalm against civilians were widely reported in the Western press.85 When coupled with many American’s unease over America’s Vietnam War aims, these accounts helped provoke a storm of protest over America’s use of napalm and against companies which since 1966 supplied the napalm America used in Vietnam. These included the United Aircraft Corporation, Witco Chemical, and Dow Chemical.90 Of these three, only Dow would attempt to defend the morality of supplying napalm to the U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam. The protests against Dow took the form of a nationwide boycott of Saran Wrap,91 occasional vandalism, picketing of offices and industrial facilities, and over two hundred campus protests.91 Invariably, protesters featuring slogans like “Napalm Burns Babies, Dow Makes Money” and “Nazi Ovens in 44, Napalm in 66” elicited the most publicity.90,92 At the start of the protests the Midland Michigan-based Dow Chemical was primarily known as the producer of Saran Wrap and other consumer products, although only 38 percent of Americans had even heard of Dow.90 Dow’s napalm production facilities were only a tiny part of its operation, accounting for only 0.25% of its annual revenue and employing only ten employees.90 Ned. Brandt, who served as Dow’s public relations director at the time, later reported that not one member of Dow’s governing troika even knew of Dow’s napalm operations when the protests started.90 A few months after the anti-napalm protests began, Dow’s chairman, Carl Gerstacker, drew up a position statement which summarized the argument Dow would employ in the following years:

“…Our position on napalm is that we are a supplier of goods to the defense department and not a policy maker. We do not and should not try to decide military strategy or policy.

Simple good citizenship requires that we supply our government and our military with those goods which they feel they need whenever we have the technology and capability and have been chosen by the government as a supplier.

We will do our best, as we always have, to try to produce what our defense department and our soldiers need in any war situation. Purely aside from our duty to do this, we will feel deeply gratified if what we are able to provide helps to protect our fighting men or to speed the day when fighting will end.”90,92,93

Taken at face value, it seemed that Dow was simply deflecting moral responsibility for the use of napalm to the U.S. government. Thus, Dow’s President Ted Doan, later clarified that Dow was not simply adopting the “Nuremberg defense:”

“…All of the debate in the world about how we got [into the war in Vietnam] or how we get out is proper and right in its place, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are there nor the fact that our men are there and need weapons to defend themselves.

…We reject the validity of comparing our present form of government with Hitler’s Germany. In our mind our government is still representative of and responsive to the will of the people.

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Further, we as a company have made a moral judgment on the long-range goals of our government and we support these. We may not agree as individuals with every decision of every military or government leader but we regard these leaders as men trying honestly and relentlessly to find the best possible solution to very, very complex international problems. As long as we so regard them, we would find it impossible not to support them. This is not saying as the critics imply that we will follow blindly and without fail no matter where our government leads. ..Should despotic leaders attempt to lead our nation away from its historic national purposes, we would cease to support the government.

Our critics ask if we are willing to stand judgment for our choice to support our government if history should prove us wrong. Our answer is yes.”90,92,94

Thus, Dow’s public stance was that (a) the war in Vietnam was a just cause undertaken by a sovereign authority with right intent and thus (b) Dow had a duty to provide the U.S. military with the goods it needed to achieve its war aims and (c) the means for soldiers to defend themselves against the enemy. Privately, however, Gerstacker, Doan, and other Dow leaders were deeply concerned that the napalm they produced was being used indiscriminately against civilians. They spent over two days of the March 1967 board of directors meeting discussing the “moral and ethical considerations involved” in Dow’s supplying napalm and deliberating over whether to continue to supply napalm to the government. A number of board members consulted with clergy. Gerstacker, who was privately a very devout Presbyterian,93 consulted his pastor during these deliberations. Ultimately, they decided to continue supplying napalm to the government, having received assurances that the Government was taking reasonable precaution to avoid hurting civilians and apparently convinced that the rightness of the American cause justified any civilian casualties that inadvertently occurred.95 The strength of Dow’s argument from the doctrine of double effect, which holds that civilian deaths are excusable when they occur in the course of attempts to destroy a sufficiently important military objective, depended to some extent on the U.S. military’s discriminate use of napalm. Dow’s leaders largely believed this was the case as there was little indication that civilians were being directly targeted in napalm attacks from 1967 onward. They made much of the reports of American doctors who found relatively few cases of “war-related burn injuries” in Vietnamese hospitals.85 Later in 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara assured Ted Doan that napalm was “a military necessity” that was used with precautions “as painstaking as we can make them without hamstringing our military operations”96 and Doan would later claim in a television interview that “napalm is a good discriminate, strategic weapon.”95 Later evaluation would largely bear this out. The use of napalm against civilians was inconsistent with the degree to with the American bombing campaign in North Vietnam carefully distinguished between military and civilian targets. The capitol of Hanoi was largely spared, as was the irrigation system on which so much of the North’s agriculture depended, factors which Roman Catholic ethicist Paul Ramsey to conclude that these bombings “abided by the [just war] principle of discrimination.”97 Nevertheless, Dow President Ted Doan remained open to the possibility that napalm was being used indiscriminately. In April 1969, while meeting with a group of protesters that included Richard Fernandez of Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, Doan indicated that “if we could prove to him that napalm was being used, intentionally or not, primarily on a civilian population, he would do all he could to get the company out of the contract.”98 Doan’s comments did not satisfy Fernandez, however, who silently wondered what type of evidence might convince Doan that napalm was being used primarily against civilians.93 In fact, Fernandez’s unease reveal’s an unavoidable weakness in Dow’s position. As napalm’s

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supplier, Dow had to rely on the assurances of government officials and the testimony of eyewitnesses on the ground to back up its claim that napalm was being used discriminately. As Michael Walzer pointed out in his Just and Unjust Wars, the American rules of engagement in Vietnam in many cases effectively served to minimize US military casualties and merely had “the appearance of attending to the combatant/noncombatant distinction.”31 Furthermore, while it is far from clear that Dow would have supported the more indiscriminate use of napalm under actual battlefield conditions, these more indiscriminate uses fit in well with its emphasis on supporting American troops on the ground. Despite the aforementioned weaknesses in Dow’s moral analysis, not to mention its public relations campaign,99 it should at least be noted that Dow was the only individual or organization of those we considered which genuinely tried to address the potential moral implications of its activities. Its failure to consider that napalm was being used in ways that it did not intend does not obviate the nobility of its intentions of seeking to support what it saw as a just cause or the rightness of its attempts to take due care to prevent unnecessary harm to civilians. Indeed, Dow was willing to buck public opinion in the pursuit of what it thought was right. Thus Dow’s basic stance may be worthy of emulation even though the defects in its analysis point to the need for chemists and chemical corporations to apply a healthy dose of logical rigor and skepticism to the analysis of moral issues. Concluding Reflections

The case studies we’ve selected fall readily into two categories. Fritz Haber and Louis Fieser represent individual academic scientists involved in war work. Haber, though apparently more cultured, was also much more unscrupulous and aggressive in pushing war-related projects. He also differed from Fieser in two other significant ways. First, Haber was one of the prime movers in the battlefield use of the weapons he developed. Second, Haber directly engaged the moral implications of his work from the start by using rhetoric and a variety of Just War arguments to convince morally sensitive subordinates to participate in poison gas research or confronting the objections of his wife at home. In contrast, Loius Fieser seems to exemplify the narrow technical specialist who gives little consideration to the potential implications of his work. Indeed, Fieser seems to have been an otherwise inoffensive and enjoyable person who went along with his prevailing culture and could have benefited from closer consideration of the moral implications of his work. The German “Devil’s chemists” and the leaders of Dow represent chemical firms engaged in supplying goods in support of their nations war aims who became aware that their efforts might be contributing to the harm of civilians. The Zyklon B supplier Bruno Tesch and his assistants continued in knowing complicity, motivated by self-interest and likely fear. In continuing their shipments, they betrayed a terrible but still somewhat understandable level of moral indifference. In contrast, the chemist-managers in charge of I.G. Farben’s Buna Rubber factory at Auschwitz represented the depths of depravity to which an overemphasis on narrow technical specialization and avoidance of moral issues can lead. There is no evidence they deliberately sought to advance Hitler’s Final Solution. Instead, the I.G. Farben managers merely intensified and partly funded the process as they continued to search for ever more efficient ways to squeeze the maximum amount of work from slave laborers before their consumption in the crematoria at Birkenau. In Farben, one sees human beings reduced to the status of reagents, something to be consumed so that a desired product can be made – an act of breathtaking moral horror that represents perhaps the ultimate indictment of the “just a chemist” defense. In contrast, America’s Dow Chemical directly confronted the moral

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implications of their role as a supplier of the napalm used in Vietnam. While Dow’s stance arguably rested on questionable assumptions and publicly provoked more protest than agreement, its leaders showed a salutary willingness to confront ethical issues and take unpopular stands in support of what they felt was right. As such, they demonstrated that it is both possible and fruitful for chemists to engage in moral reasoning when confronted with issues of justice and injustice related to the chemical enterprise. References

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deportation of Belgian workers for use in German industry. See P. Liberman. Does conquest pay? : the exploitation of occupied industrial societies, Princeton studies in international history and politics. (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1996). 45Possibly the German legal experts based their conclusion on the Hague IV convention's overall focus on projectile but it isn’t exactly clear to us how the German legal experts arrived at this conclusion. The English version of the Hague IV provisions refers to poisoned “weapons” as well as “arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.” See "Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV) [International Convention]." The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy October 18, 1907 [cited December 3, 2013 2013]. Available from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp. 46Interestingly, both Hahn and Franck would later become known for their opposition ot atomic weapons. After the Nazi’s came to power in Germany Franck emigrated to America. Interestingly, he would eventually chair the committee of scientists who drafted the “Franck report”, which recommended against the use of the atomic bomb on humanitarian grounds. See J. Lemmerich; A. Hentschel. Science and conscience : the life of James Franck, Stanford nuclear age series. (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2011). His comrade in arms Otto Hahn also became well known in Germany for his opposition to atomic weapons. 47E. M. Spiers. Chemical warfare. (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986). 48J. Cornwell. Hitler's scientists : science, war, and the devil's pact. (New York, Viking, 2003). 49O. Hahn. My Life Translated by Co., M. Edited by. (New York, Herder and Herder, 1970). 50Although he was never charged, Haber was very concenred and briefly fled to Switzerland while wearing a false beard. 51The true cause of Clara's suicide is not known. She (and several of Haber’s children) suffered from depression and according to some reports she may have caught Haber with his mistress (and soon to be second wife) on the evening before her death. See Daniel Charles' Master mind : the rise and fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel laureate who launched the age of chemical warfare (New York, Ecco, 2005), for a discussion of the details of Clara's death. 52"Christian Conscience and Poison Gas." The Literary Digest no. 38 (1921), 38. 53In doing so, Staudinger provoked Haber's ire. See M. Weber. 2013. Courageous questioning of established thinking: The life and work of Hermann Staudinger Part 1. K. International Trade fair for Plastics and Rubber 2012 [cited January 29 2013]. Available from http://www.k-tradefair.com/cgi-bin/md_k/custom/pub/content.cgi?oid=35205&lang=2&ticket=g_u_e_s_t&page_number=1. 54D. P. Jones, "American Chemists and the Geneva Protocol," Isis no. 71 (1980), 426-440. 55The English biochemist J. B. S. Haldane, himself a verteran of the fighting and son of the physiologist who confirmed the German's use of gas at Ypres, was particularly enthusiastic about the military utility of chemical weapons in his Callinicus; a defence of chemical warfare. (New York,, E. P. Dutton & company, 1925). Other scientists thought that chemical weapons research had the potential to advance the science of chemistry more generally. See H. R. Slotten, "Humane Chemistry or Scientific Barbarism? American Responses to World War I Poison Gas, 1915-1930," The Journal of American History no. 77 (1990), 476-498. 56In Lutz Haber’s comprehensive survey of chemical warfare in the First World War (The Poisonous Cloud, 1986) he estimated that of the approximately half million gas casualties inflicted on the Western front throughout the war, only ~7% eventually died of their wounds. 57B. H. Liddell Hart. History of the First World War Enlarged ed. (London,, Cassell, 1970). 58W. Owen. 2012. Dulce et Decorum Est. First World War Poetry Digital Archive 1917 [cited January 3, 2013 2012]. Available from http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/3303. 59M. Szöllösi-Janze, "Pesticides and war: the case of Fritz Haber," European Review no. 9 (2001), 97-108. doi: doi:10.1017/S1062798701000096. 60Zykon B was in part developed to supersede an earlier formulation of methyl cyanoformate that had been given the trade name Zyklon A. Zyklon A was discontinued because of allied restrictions on the German use of methyl cyanoformate, which was a war gas precursor. See P. Hayes. From cooperation to complicity : Degussa in the Third Reich. (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005). 61U. N. W. C. Commission. 1997. "The Zyklon B Case: Trial of Bruno Tesch and Two Othersw, British Millitary Court, Hamburg, 1-8th March 1946." In Law Reports of the Trials of War Criminals. Buffalo, NY: William S Hein & Co. 62J. E. Du Bois. The Devil's chemists; 24 conspirators of the international Farben cartel who manufacture wars. (Boston,, Beacon Press, 1952). 63J. Borkin. The crime and punishment of I. G. Farben. (New York, Free Press, 1978). 64D. Jeffreys. Hell's cartel : IG Farben and the making of Hitler's war machine 1st. ed. (New York, NY, Metropolitan Books, 2008). 65Named for the butadiene and Sodium (Na) used in its production. 66D. Dwork; R. J. v. Pelt; D. Dwork. Auschwitz. (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2008). 67Quoted in D. Jeffreys, 2008, pp. 292-293.

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68Farben prided itself on being a chemist-run company and almost all of its managers began thier careers as chemists. 69L. R. Graham. What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1998). 70J. Robert Oppenhiemer described his work on the atomic bomb as "technically sweet." 71L. F. Fieser. The scientific method; a personal account of unusual projects in war and in peace. (New York,, Distributed by Reinhold Pub. Corp., 1964). 72A. C. Grayling. Among the dead cities : the history and moral legacy of the WWII bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan 1st U.S. ed. (New York, Walker & Co. : Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2006). 73D. Lenoir; T. T. Tidwell, "Louis Fieser: An Organic Chemist in Peace and War," European Journal of Organic Chemistry 2009), 481-491. 74J. Couffer. Bat bomb : World War II's other secret weapon 1st ed. (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1992). 75W. A. Noyes; R. Connor. Chemistry, a history of the chemistry components of the National Defense Research Committee, 1940-1946 1st ed. (Boston,, Little, Brown, 1948). 76Weapons that May Cause Unnecessary Suffering or have Indiscriminate Effects, International Committee of the Red Cross, 1973. 77M. Bess. Choices under fire : moral dimensions of World War II 1st ed. (New York, A.A. Knopf, 2006). 78G. E. Hopkins, "Bombing and the American Conscience During World War II," Historian no. 28 (1966), 451-473. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1966.tb01752.x. 79L. F. Fieser; G. C. Harris; E. B. Hershberg; M. Morgana; F. C. Novello; S. T. Putnam, "Napalm," Industrial and Engineering Chemsitry no. 38 (1947), 768-773. 80J. B. Neilands. 1971. "Chemical Warfare." In The Social Responsibility of the Scientist, edited by Brown, M. New York: Free Press. 81N. Lemann, "Napalm's Daddy - 31 Years Later." The Harvard Crimson October 12, 1973 82Fieser at least knew of these tests but it isn't clear that he directly participated. 83M. Davis, "Berlin's Skeleton in Utah's Closet," Grand Street no. 69 (1999), 92-100; M. Davis, "Assault on "German Village"," Der Spiegel no. 41 (1999). 84B. B. Fall. Street without joy; Indochina at war, 1946-54. (Harrisburg, Pa.,, Stackpole Co., 1961). 85Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.; M. Lumsden. Incendiary weapons, A SIPRI monograph. (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1975). 86B. Fall, "This Isn't Munich, It's Spain." Ramparts 23-24. 87J. W. Mountcastle. Flame on! : U.S. incendiary weapons, 1918-1945. (Shippensburg, PA, White Mane, 1999). 88 "Korean Christians are Troubled in Spirit," The Christian Century no. 69 (1952), 1515. 89The most notable examples were found in Ramparts magazine although mainstream newspapers also provided some coverage. Most notably, Ramparts ran a highly graphic article on "The Children of Vietnam" in its January 1967 issue after it had earlier claimed that 3-400,000 civilians were likely killed by US bombs. See W. F. Pepper, "The Children of Vietnam." Ramparts Magazine January 1967 45-68; J. F. Colaianni, "Napalm: A Small Town Diary." Ramparts Magazine August 1966 46-50. 90E. N. Brandt. Growth company : Dow Chemical's first century. (East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 1997). 91T. Wells. The war within : America's battle over Vietnam 1st Owl Book ed. (New York, Henry Holt, 1996). 92D. Whitehead. The Dow story; the history of the Dow Chemical Company 1st ed. (New York,, McGraw-Hill, 1968). 93E. N. Brandt; C. A. Gerstacker. Chairman of the board : a biography of Carl A. Gerstacker. (East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 2003). 94H. H. Doan, "Why Does Dow Chemical Make Napalm?" Wall Street Journal December 8, 1967 95S. Friedman. 1973. ""This Napalm Business"." In In the Name of Profit, edited by Obst, D., 115-136. New York: Doubleday and Company. 96Quoted in Whitehead, 1968, pg. 268. 97P. Ramsey. The just war : force and political responsibility. (Lanham, MD, University Press of America, 1983). 98Richard Fernandez, quoted in Wells, 1996, pg. 295. 99S. S. Huxman; D. B. Bruce, "Toward a Dynamic Generic Framework of Apologie: A Case Study of Dow Chemical, Vietnam, and the Napalm Controversy," Communication Studies no. 65 (1995), 57-72.