24.11 Books MH 17/11/05 5:01 PM Page 427

24.11 books MH 17/11/05 5:01 PM Page 427 NATURE|Vol 438|24 November 2005 BOOKS & ARTS died. Bickenbach was later condemned by a French court to 20 years in jail. During the A poisonous present lawsuit, Kuhn wrote to Bickenbach’s lawyer, saying that the experiments were “scientifically Kampfstoff-Forschung im in 1938, Kuhn took over some of his lab space. perfect” and “a blessing for future generations”. Nationalsozialismus: Zur Kooperation This gave him access to the nerve poisons Bickenbach was released in 1955 after a Ger- von Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten, Militär tabun and sarin, synthesized in secret in 1936 man medical court found nothing wrong with und Industrie. [Weapons Research in and 1939 by chemists of the IG Farben compa- his experiments and allowed him to practice National Socialism] nies. The Allies only learned of their existence medicine again. by Florian Schmaltz shortly before the end of the war. Kuhn’s Schmaltz, a historian, presents all this and Wallstein: 2005. 676 pp. €39 colleagues showed that the poisons worked much more in great detail. The flow of money by inhibiting acetylcholine esterase, and his between industry, the army and science, in Benno Müller-Hill laboratory synthesized an even more effective particular, is well documented, but the chem- Germany started developing chemical weapons acetylcholine esterase inhibitor, soman, in istry is flawed in places. The structures of sarin nearly a century ago, during the First World 1944. These poisons were synthesized in large and soman are given, but that of tabun is miss- War. Fritz Haber, then director of the Kaiser quantities for use in grenades, but they were ing, and the structure of pinacoline alcohol, a Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry in never used. One reason is that it was impossi- precursor of soman, lacks an OH group. In Berlin, collaborated with the chemical indus- ble to protect German soldiers and civilians addition, not everything presented in the book try and the army to set up Germany’s powerful from the poisons. According to Schmaltz, is new. And the author also acknowledges that industrial–military complex (see Nature 438, “these poisons were a present for the future”. some documents may have been destroyed or 158–159; 2005). After the war, research on Kuhn was also a great science administrator. lost in Russia, so the story is not complete. chemical weapons in the Weimar Republic As a member of the Reichsforschungsrat, he The book should appeal to all those inter- was forbidden by the Allies, but it was still chose to finance the mustard-gas experiments ested in chemical warfare or in the history of done secretly on a small scale. In Kampfstoff- of his colleague Otto Bickenbach, who pro- the Kaiser Wilhelm institutes — but it may be ■ Forschung im Nationalsozialismus, Florian posed to test vitamin B6 as a possible protective too detailed for the general reader. Schmaltz tells how this research re-emerged agent against the gas. For his experiment, he Benno Müller-Hill is professor emeritus at the under the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. mainly used gypsies from the concentration Genetics Institute, University of Cologne, When Hitler came to power in January camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, four of whom Cologne 50674, Germany. 1933, Germany no longer had a centre for research on chemical warfare. Haber was still director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute but he was told that his group leaders must be fired because they were Jewish. Haber, who was also The latest on latex Jewish, decided to go too, leaving the institute in ruins. Three young chemists from Göttin- century. The social context of primary rubber Tears of the Tree: The Story of Rubber — gen, all members of the Nazi party, were sent production was uniformly depressing until A Modern Marvel to Berlin to take over. 1877 when, after numerous abortive attempts, by John Loadman Gerhart Jander, an inorganic chemist, had Oxford University Press: 2005. 336 pp. seeds of the wild rubber tree were at last suc- friends in the SA (the stormtroopers) and was £19.99, $37.50 cessfully (if unofficially) transferred from forced to leave after the Röhm putsch, when Brazil to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Hitler purged the SA. Rudolf Mentzel, an inex- Robert W. Cahn near London. They were then germinated and perienced chemist, had no interest in doing In 1770, an artists’ supply shop in London transferred to the Far East, Malaya in particu- research himself and became a science admin- offered for sale half-inch cubes of a mysterious lar, establishing a major primary industry. istrator in the Reichsforschungsrat, a German material that was called ‘rubber’ because it The exploitation of rubber provided exten- funding agency. In 1935, Peter Adolf Thiessen, could be used to rub out pencil marks. The sive benefits for developing industrial soci- a physical chemist, became the institute’s price was 3 shillings per cube, a large sum eties. The story — especially the slow, faltering director. The research focused on an explosive at the time — but then, nothing else was as steps to find the best way to harden raw rubber known as N-Stoff (chlorine trifluoride), which effective in correcting artists’ mistakes. by vulcanization — is told in interesting detail. Thiessen hoped would prove more destructive This is one of many pieces of information Patents play a major role in this tale, than nitroglycerol. Despite being produced offered in John Loadman’s miscellany of a and the biographies of the principal players are in large amounts, it was never successfully book, Tears of the Tree. The book’s purpose, he excellently presented. The cycle is completed used. After the war, Thiessen made a career announces at the outset, is “to examine the with a critical survey of attempts to recycle as a research administrator in East Germany, story of natural rubber in its social context”. waste rubber. although Schmaltz does not discuss that here. In fact, about half the book is devoted to the The book then changes gear and focuses on He does, however, discuss five other Kaiser social context, and this is its main merit. the production technology of vulcanized vari- Wilhelm institutes that worked on gas warfare. The story of rubber begins with its discov- ants of rubber, both natural and synthetic. The Most were occupied with perfecting gas masks, ery and use by Meso-American civilizations in treatment becomes extremely technical in clothing and shoes as protection against what are now Guatemala and Mexico. In par- terms of the organic chemistry of different weapons such as mustard gas. ticular, rubber balls were used for formal com- kinds of polymeric molecules, and even more The most disquieting part of the book is petitive games; the losers were usually killed, so when the minutiae of the chemical deterio- the story of Richard Kuhn, who won a Nobel their heads cut off and coated with latex from ration of rubber are set out. At this point, in prize in 1938 for his work on carotenoids and the rubber tree to make the next (properly my view, the book begins to stutter. vitamins. One-third of his lab at the Kaiser weighted) balls. But the most horrendous stor- The science and technology of polymers in Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research in ies in the book are about the ‘rubber barons’ in general, and of elastomers in particular, has Heidelberg was occupied with research on the western extremes of Amazonia, and the three essential constituents: physics, chemistry poisons that could be used as weapons. When exploitation by Belgian King Leopold II of the and production technology. With a back- his colleague Otto Meyerhof left the institute natives of the Congo in the late nineteenth ground in chemistry and long experience in a 427 © 2005 Nature Publishing Group © 2005 Nature Publishing Group .

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