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Environment, Culture, and German Chemical Warfare on the Western Front

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Environment, Culture, and German Chemical Warfare on the Western Front A SUFFOCATING NATURE: ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE, AND GERMAN CHEMICAL WARFARE ON THE WESTERN FRONT A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Ryan Mark Johnson January 2013 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Jay Lockenour, Advisory Chair, History Department Dr. Andrew C. Isenberg, History Department Dr. William I. Hitchcock, History Department Dr. Jeffrey Allan Johnson, History Department, Villanova University i ABSTRACT Ryan Mark Johnson. A Suffocating Nature: Environment, Culture, and German Chemical Warfare on the Western Front . (Under the direction of DR. JAY LOCKENOUR) The story of chemical warfare is that of a relationship between nature, the military, industry, and culture. By the turn of the twentieth century, German industry, especially its chemical companies, came to dominate Europe. Their success brought both considerable economic development and considerable environmental damage from chemical pollution, especially to rivers such as the Rhine and the Emscher. These economic changes made in exchange for landscape degradation conflicted with long-held cultural beliefs in Germany that promoted the beauty of nature and the importance of conserving its aesthetics. The First World War’s effect of the environment, including the effects of chemical weaponry, highlighted this paradox on a nationwide scale. In an effort to win the Great War, German military leaders turned to their chemical industry for answers. Using the flat terrain of Western Europe, winds strong enough to push massive toxic clouds, and their extensive knowledge of chemistry, the Germans chose chemical warfare agents based on meteorological conditions and their ability to overcome the obstacles of trench warfare. Millions of acres were doused in chemical clouds and shells, killing every form of life at the front and all but permanently altering the landscape and soils. This created an atmosphere of total environmental war, where chemicals were intentionally used to contaminate land and kill all life for the sake of military gains. The home front also suffered, as in Germany where the levels of chemical contaminants in their rivers were directly linked to the course of the chemical war. Germans wrote numerous diaries, journals, and memoirs that documented the ecological damage caused by these poisonous agents. ii These visceral descriptions of gas warfare and chemical disasters relating to clean up operations helped to solidify a national picture of what the gas war experience was like, and how many Germans came to see warfare and humanity as a destroyer of nature. Simultaneously, Europeans faced the daunting task of cleaning and repairing their landscapes. Millions of acres of land were contaminated, and tons of chemical ordnance was to be disposed. Yet an antagonistic political climate, steep financial costs, and the German leadership’s desire to continue chemical weapons research limited Europeans’ ability to restore their land. Their actions resulted in horrific environmental and human consequences, including everything from the contamination of land with buried ordnance to the phosgene cloud catastrophe at Hamburg in 1928. Not only did the damage caused by chemical weaponry force German military officials to rethink military operations and tactics, chemical weapons also compelled the German people to solidify new cultural relationships between war and nature, specifically those which took environmental damage into account when thinking about the war experience. German artistic and written culture at that time reflected the environmental damage through pacifistic and anti-technological lenses, creating a framework where modern environmentalism could take shape. Ultimately, the use of chemical weapons for military gain shaped German cultural attitudes and changed European landscapes. It ushered in a new form of total war, and demonstrated how the environment directly influenced both the outcome of the chemical war in the field but also German cultural beliefs regarding the relationship between nature and warfare. iii For Kate, with all my love iv In memory of Uncle G. Gerald Giblin and My Great-Grandfather, Corporal George C. Giblin Company I, 314 th Infantry, American Expeditionary Forces, 1917-1918 Gas victim and recipient of the Purple Heart for wounds sustained from shell fire in the Argonne Forest, November 2, 1918 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While composing this dissertation over the past three years, I benefited from the assistance of a number of people. I first want to thank my advisor, Dr. Jay Lockenour, whose guidance and support made this dissertation possible. I will forever feel honored and grateful to have been one of your apprentices. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee, each of whom made a unique contribution to this project. Dr. William I. Hitchcock constantly reminded me in seminars and during the preparation phase to look beyond the individual books and see how sources speak to one another. My outside reader, Dr. Jeffrey Allan Johnson, provided invaluable insights into German archival sources during my research time in Europe. Last but not least, I want to thank Dr. Andrew C. Isenberg for introducing me to environmental history, an introduction which initiated a profound change in the way I fundamentally view the world and its past. I was also fortunate to meet numerous archivists and researchers from around the world who helped me track down materials. I want to provide special thanks to a number of my new colleagues in Europe, notably Dr. Wolfgang Mährle at the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Frau Block at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde, Frau Barbara Kolschig with the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Hans-Hermann Pogarell from the Bayer Corporate History and Archives AG in Leverkusen, Dr. Susan Becker from the BASF Corporate Archives in Ludwigshafen, as well as Herr Dirk Ullmann and Herr Japp at the Max-Plank Gesellschaft in Berlin-Dahlem. In the United Kingdom, I wish to thank the staffs at the Imperial War Museum in London, The National Archives in London-Kew, and the vi Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. I would especially like to thank the Imperial War Museum staff member Karen, whose name I can remember only from her name tag. As I crossed the street on my way to the archive on the first day of my visit, I was struck by a bicycle rider who blew through a red light while I crossed the intersection. Karen expertly checked me for a concussion and patched up my cuts and scrapes in the IWM’s medical bay afterwards. Indeed, I can say that I have literally bled for this project. In the United States, I would like to thank Montgomery County Community College and John Votow for their generous financial assistance through stipends and graduate awards.I also want to thank the staff at Temple University’s Paley Library, notably David Murray and Justin Hill, as well as the library staff at Montgomery County Community College, especially Kevin Strunk and Glen Davis, for their help in tracking down materials both in the library and via Inter-Library Loan. In addition to those who provided the financial, historical and technical help, I also want to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues and friends at Montgomery County Community College for their equally important emotional support, notably Professors Robert Novelli, Rob Kuhlman, and Dr. Arthur Jarvis, as well as Professors Elsa Rapp, Rhoda McFadden, Dr. Aaron Shatzman, and everyone else in the History Department who provided support and encouragement over the past six years. I feel truly lucky and blessed to work with such wonderful people. I also want to express my gratitude to a number of my friends and graduate school colleagues at Temple and beyond for their support over the years. From Temple, I wish to thank all of my classmates, with special thanks to Earl Catagnus, Christopher Golding, Eric Klinek, Michael Dolski, Joshua Wolf, Jean-Pierre Beugoms, Stephen Nepa, Jason vii Smith, and Holger Löwendorf for their support over the years. I also wish to thank my longtime friend and historical brother Dr. Matthew McDonough of Coastal Carolina University, who was always there as a person to talk, cheer, vent, or consult with as we wrote our dissertations concurrently. We did it! I also wish to express my sincerest gratitude to several friends in Germany, notably Shora and Alexander Gottwik, Sabine and Eberhard Wunderlich, and Crisna and Jürgen Kreuzer for their help and hospitality during my research trips. Lastly, my family continues to provide the backbone for any success I have in my life. I want to tell my parents, Mark and Margaret Johnson, my sisters Laura (and her family) and Caroline, and my brother Drew that I love them all very much. Lastly, I want to thank my wife Kate, without whom this would not have been possible. I will never stop loving you. This book is for you. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATIONS ............................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. vi LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... x LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................
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