The Last Gasp

by Scott Christianson

  “The spider was slowly beginning to suck the blood out of the people’s pores,” Hitler said. “The Jewish doctrine of Marxism” rejects the “aristocratic principle of Nature…. It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union…. [O]nly a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence.” In another key passage, Hitler said, “If at the beginning of the War and during the War, twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” Decades later, a historian of the Holocaust, Lucy S. Dawidowicz, would wonder about this statement: “Did the idea of the Final Solution originate in this passage, germinating in Hitler’s subconscious for some fifteen years before it was to sprout into practical reality?” she asked.96

  Another biographer would write, “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the Wild West, and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”97 Hitler learned about the American enslavement of blacks and Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation, about the shipment of Native Americans to faraway prisons via boxcars, and recent court rulings upholding the involuntary sterilization of the unfit. Mein Kampf also displayed Hitler’s “keen familiarity with the recently passed U.S. National Origins Act, which called for eugenic quotas,” another historian has noted.98

  Historians have not yet turned up any evidence that Hitler’s thinking was influenced by the first gas execution, which would have been in the news during his life-changing trial, imprisonment, and writing of Mein Kampf. But it was then, during the crucial period of 1924 and 1925, that the seeds of some of Hitler’s most genocidal ideas took root.

  During the same period, in the years immediately following the Nevada gassing, several delegations of German officials, criminologists, and legal scholars toured the American penal system, closely inspecting its prison conditions and methods of punishment and exchanging information with their American counterparts. Those results, too, were widely circulated in Germany. So it is likely that some Germans may have brought back news about the Nevada gassing. Executives of certain German chemical companies must have also noted the news from Nevada. After all, cyanide was their business.

  CHAPTER 5

  “LIKE WATERING FLOWERS”

  In the few years following Gee’s and Jukich’s executions, Nevada officials were in no hurry to gas another prisoner. Doing it right would require extensive improvements.

  In 1929 prison officials tore down the original death house and built a more elaborate structure using convict labor. The new stone and cement death house contained two cells, each facing a nine-foot corridor and meant to hold a condemned prisoner who was awaiting execution. Each cell was equipped with a toilet, washstand, and steel bed. The building also had a space for guards. The building was steam-heated and equipped with a shower and hot- and cold-water faucets. A separate room housed the execution equipment.

  In response to the safety concerns posed by the first lethal gassing, the designers had devised a sealed compartment to fit inside the building, as Dr. Huffaker had recommended. It measured seven by eight by nine feet and had a double-paned window looking into the chamber on the east that measured ninety inches; a window on the south extended for forty-nine inches. Movement to and from the chamber was through a great wooden door that resembled a refrigerator door and was made to be airtight, like all of the chamber’s apertures. Inside the chamber, two large wooden chairs resembling electric chairs without the wires were bolted to the floor, with space for a third chair if necessary, indicating that Nevada was prepared to carry out multiple executions.1

  The double-paned windows of the sealed gas chamber represented a radical departure from an open-air public gallows or hanging tree. It also meant the witnesses would occupy a closer vantage point than they did in their pewlike benches at Sing Sing and other electrocution sites. The glass would serve several important functions. First, it would encapsulate the condemned prisoner and seal in the poison gas so that it could better work its lethal magic. Second, it would keep the deadly gas safely away from the staff and witnesses. Third, it would permit the witnesses and staff to observe the condemned as he or she succumbed to death. Fourth, it would eliminate or reduce the witnesses’ experience of any unpleasant smells or sounds associated with the killing—no sizzling, excremental stench, gasps, gurgles, or sighs. The glass established distance between the doomed and the audience while at the same time providing the illusion of transparency that would satisfy the demands of democracy and the standards of modern civilization, decency, and humane killing. It served to contain the pain of dying and block the pain of execution. All that was left was the visual impression.

  Given all of the problems with employing liquid cyanide and the crude gas-delivery system used in the first execution, Nevada authorities tried to be more careful in selecting the type of lethal gas they would employ in future executions. In this respect the federal government proved helpful. Under Surgeon General Cumming, the United States Public Health Service—a branch of the U.S. uniformed services, organized on a military model and closely tied to the armed forces—conducted extensive field tests to investigate different types of cyanide gas. There were several options.

  The newest and most potent form of cyanide gas in the United States came from Germany. In 1922 the German firm Deutsche Gold und Silber Scheideanstalt (DEGUSSA) had perfected a process for packing volatile hydrogen cyanide into tins filled with absorbent pellets, for use as a fumigant. An ingredient such as sulfuric acid or oxalic acid could be added to the hydrocyanic acid in order to prevent the latter from decomposing. This agent stabilized the chemical until the airtight tins were opened, at which point the contents vaporized upon exposure to the atmosphere and in a short time blocked the transfer of oxygen to any organism in the vicinity. The empty tin could later be thrown away without further precautions. The product was called Zyklon. It amounted to a major breakthrough in insecticides and enjoyed immediate success as a fumigant, though DEGUSSA earned more through licensing the technology than through direct sales revenue, given the limited demand for it within Germany at the time.2 Walter Heerdt of Frankfurt am Main, who before the war had worked for Roessler & Hasslacher in the California fumigation tents, had applied for a patent with the U.S. Patent Office on June 9, 1923, and the patent was received on July 22, 1924, shortly after Gee’s execution.3

  A version of this product known as Zyklon-B, consisting of a carrier of kieselguhr impregnated with liquid hydrocyanic acid and a volatile irritant, was sold through Deutsche Gesselschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung, or the German Pest Control Company (DEGESCH), the firm that had emerged in 1919 out of an earlier unit in the War Ministry and which Haber had used to conduct insecticide research. DEGESCH, which was part of DEGUSSA and a subsidiary of IG Farben, licensed two German companies for the manufacture and distribution of Zyklon. Prior to 1931, Zyklon was sold in the United States by Roessler & Hasslacher, but the company may have been reluctant to make it available for U.S. executions.4

  In 1931 American Cyanamid would reach an agreement with DEGESCH to divide the world market for Zyklon-B.5 Americans would use a lot of it—so much so that during the 1920s and ’30s the Germans derived most of their profits from Zyklon-B’s licensing fees in the United States.6 The Americans found all sorts of uses for Zyklon. Under Surgeon General Cumming’s leadership, the federal Public Health Service (PHS) had spearheaded the use of potent pesticides to “delouse” ships and prisons. (A few years later the PHS would commence its infamous forty-year-long Tuskegee syphilis experiment on black sharecroppers under Cumming’s successor, Surgeon
General Taliaferro Clark.) Starting in the late 1920s, American public health officials initiated one of their most shocking uses of Zyklon insecticide. A PHS officer in El Paso, Texas, J. R. Hurley, ordered Zyklon to be administered to cleanse tens of thousands of Mexicans who were arriving in the United States from Juárez.7 Officials and the news media seemed oblivious to the attendant public health consequences of spraying the clothes of incoming Mexicans with the deadly gas at the Santa Fe Bridge. At the time, the El Paso Herald noted approvingly, “Hydrocyanic acid gas, the most poisonous known, more deadly even than that used on the battlefields of Europe, is employed in the fumigation process.”8

  Chemical company executives in Germany followed these developments very closely, since it had obvious commercial ramifications. Dr. Gerhard Peters of DEGESCH of Dessau, considered the world authority on Zyklon and its biggest promoter, authored numerous articles in scientific and trade journals about the virtues of Zyklon for preventing disease, especially typhus. Peters happily cited the Americans’ use of the poison on immigrants and circulated photographs showing what the Americans were doing with his pet product.9 (After World War II, Peters would be convicted in war crimes trials; in 1949 he was sentenced to five years for complicity in the extermination of the Jews.)

  From August 1929 to February 1930, officers of the Public Health Service carried out experiments at the San Francisco Quarantine Station, Angel Island, California, a facility that processed many Asian immigrants. These experiments were conducted in a tightly sealed and unheated room measuring approximately five hundred cubic feet. The room adjoined a laboratory, and apertures were arranged so that live subjects or chemicals could be placed in the room without opening the door. Through a window in the door the researchers could observe the effect of the gas upon the subjects, which in these experiments were roaches. The roaches were kept in tiny wooden cages with screened sides, measuring six by four by four inches, with anywhere from two to two hundred roaches in each cage.

  Different chemicals used for fumigation were administered to the imprisoned creatures. One combination consisted of straight hydrocyanic acid gas, generated from sodium cyanide, sulfuric acid, and water; another was hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride gas generated from a mixture of sodium cyanide, sodium chlorate, hydrochloric acid, and water; a third involved liquid hydrocyanic acid with 10 percent chloropicrin; another was liquid hydrocyanic acid with 20 percent cyanogen chloride, or liquid hydrocyanic acid with 5 percent chloropicrin as a warning agent; and the last was Zyklon-B, which consisted of “an earthy substance impregnated with liquid hydrocyanic acid and marketed at present with five per cent chloropicrin as a warning gas.” In thirteen tests Zyklon-B in the proportion of sixty grams per one thousand cubic feet for one hour of exposure was found to be the most effective in killing all of the subjects. The researchers also reported that Zyklon was effective at both warmer temperatures and temperatures close to freezing.10

  Federal officials went to some lengths to extol the virtues of Zyklon. “The past 20 years has seen both a tremendous increase in the use of fumigation for the destruction of vermin on ships and great improvements in fumigation methods,” a publicly released Public Health Service report of July 24, 1931, announced. “In both cases the advances are due to the introduction of hydrocyanic acid as a fumigant. Leaving the cumbersome, laborious, and time-consuming sulphur fumigation, we have passed through the method of generating HCN, with its still cumbersome apparatus and paraphernalia, through the period of liquid HCN, complicated by the difficulty of transporting so dangerous a material, and have arrived at the exceedingly simple procedure of knocking a hole in a can of Zyklon, pouring the contents down the hold, and throwing the can overboard.”11 Zyklon could simply be dumped through an opening into an enclosed space to effectively kill the vermin inside.

  Another PHS report of the period noted:

  For some time the American Cyanamid Co., of New York, has been endeavoring to develop a practical means of measuring small doses of “solid type” cyanide products for use in fumigating super-structure compartments on ships. The New York Quarantine Station has cooperated with representatives of this company by suggesting possible lines of development and by testing containers and material. The selection of a porous material seems undoubtedly influenced by the growing popularity of Zyklon, and with the HCN discoids the difficulty of measuring small doses required for use in fumigating small compartments has apparently been overcome. This has been done by developing a product, representing HCN in a solid form, in units, each unit carrying a definite and relatively small amount of fumigant.12

  Although the PHS reports referred only to bugs, researchers realized that the findings had other implications—particularly ramifications for human beings who might be exposed to the poison. Scientists had become increasingly aware that cyanide was actually more effective on warm-blooded animals such as human beings than on insects, because vertebrates carry oxygen in their blood via hemoglobin, whereas insects do not. In humans, cyanide was also absorbed through the lungs, gastrointestinal tract, skin, and especially the mucous membranes and the eyes. Unprotected exposure and breathing of the hydrogen cyanide gas in an enclosed space therefore appeared especially deadly to people. However, gathering proof of that fact would have to be left to prison authorities.

  The government reports about the killing power of Zyklon and other forms of hydrocyanic acid were widely distributed, with some copies going to its officers who were posted in Germany and other foreign countries, and others going to foreign and domestic company executives. PHS officials and their foreign counterparts also traveled back and forth between Europe and the United States, and the military and commercial implications of the tests guaranteed that there was no doubt that German chemical executives knew about the American tests involving Zyklon and other poisons. Every public health official in charge of American prison operations also received a copy of the reports.

  Zyklon contained a lacrimatory warning agent of chloropicrin or cyanogen chloride, which acted as an irritant to cause tears and other discomfort to prevent unwanted death from the lethal gas. This use of chloropicrin as a warning agent was invented by Hans Lehrecke of Frankfurt am Main in 1925 and assigned to Roessler & Hasslacher of New York by U.S. Patent 1,786,623 on December 30, 1930. But such warning agents would be considered counterproductive for executions, both because the irritants caused unwanted discomfort and suffering and because they did not lend themselves as neatly to the execution ritual. One of the chief selling points of cyanide gas as an execution tool was that it was supposed to kill quickly, without warning or pain. Its planners did not want witnesses to report otherwise. Hence Zyklon did not appear well suited as an execution gas. (In Nazi Germany, DEGESCH would later manufacture Zyklon without the troublesome warning agent, thereby overcoming this obstacle and making the deadly agent less detectible to humans.)

  Fritz Haber had established a rule in inhalation toxicology that stated: C ÷ T = constant, meaning that identical products of concentration of an agent in air (C) and duration of exposure (T)—the C ÷ T product—will yield an identical biological response. Based on his research under Haber during World War I, his assistant Ferdinand Flury determined that the value of C ÷ T for hydrogen cyanide depended upon its concentration. As an outgrowth of Haber’s law, Flury in 1921 had published the equation:

  g/G = Z

  with g denoting the amount of poison taken up, G the body weight of the experimental animal, and Z the number where a certain effect (for example, death) occurred. As far as the inhaled poison was concerned, wrote Flury, “It is possible to define g as a product of three factors: the number of milligrams of the poison present in one cubic meter of inspired air (C), the number of minutes (T) during which air with the concentration C of the poison is inhaled, and finally A, expressed in cubic meters, the volume inhaled by the animal per minute.”

  According to Flury’s experiments, it was possible to use the equations he and Haber had developed to compare
with reasonable accuracy the effects of different toxic inhalants. Based on their varying concentrations and breathing times, not all toxic war gases had constant effects, with the exception of hydrocyanic acid. But HCN did, and this made it particularly suitable for executions as far as the American prison authorities were concerned.

  Flury described an experiment he conducted involving hydrocyanic acid. As explained by a scientist writing in 1999:

  Originally, paper bags filled with sodium or potassium cyanide were placed beside vats filled with dilute sulfuric acid. A technician then emptied the contents of the bags into the sulfuric acid while working his way towards the exit of the room. The procedure was obviously hazardous, and so better methods had to be developed. In such an improved process, hydrocyanic acid and a strong irritant, for example xylilbromide, were bound to an inert carrier (infusorian earth) and kept within tin cans. When the cans were opened and the material dispersed onto the floor of a room, both the cyanide and the irritant evaporated, the irritant serving as a warning sign for the presence of the lethal gas. The process was called the “Zyklon system.” It was later commercialized and several companies were licensed to manufacture it.13

  Thus it was evident in the chemical field that although Zyklon may not have been ideal for use as an execution gas in American prisons due to its irritating warning agent, other forms of hydrocyanic acid could be better suited. Dipped by string into a mixture of sulfuric acid and water, as part of the established “bucket” or “pot” method, a gauze-wrapped pouch of sodium cyanide or potassium cyanide could produce the lethal agent with manageable and predictable results.