War of Nerves

by Jonathan Tucker

  Meanwhile, the development of Substance 146 continued in the basement of Spandau Citadel, where the Army Gas Protection Laboratory had constructed an apparatus to synthesize small amounts for testing purposes. Army officials named the new agent “Sarin,” an acronym derived from letters in the names of the four key individuals involved in its development: Schrader and Ambros of IG Farben and Rüdiger and Linde of the Army Ordnance Office.

  Although Schrader worked intermittently on a manufacturing process for Sarin, the Army expanded its technical staff and asserted full control over the development effort, limiting his involvement. Schrader resented being excluded and complained that the engineers at Spandau were mismanaging the process development effort and causing lengthy delays. He was also suspicious of the secrecy surrounding the physiological laboratory where Dr. Wirth and his colleagues were conducting experiments with Tabun and Sarin. When Schrader traveled to Spandau periodically to advise on technical issues, he was never allowed near the medical clinic and physiological laboratory in Building 15. Mystified, he suspected that some type of illicit activity was going on there, possibly experimentation on humans.

  MEANWHILE, HITLER’S WAR was going well. The Wehrmacht’s new blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) tactic, involving rapid thrusts by mechanized tank columns supported by withering attacks from the air by Stuka close-support aircraft, had proved to be a dramatic success. The German Army had conquered Poland in a few weeks and achieved similar victories on the western front, rapidly overrunning Belgium and the Netherlands. Hitler’s generals saw no reason to employ chemical weapons, which would only slow down the fast-moving campaign. But they worried that the Allies might resort to defensive chemical warfare tactics, such as using phosgene shells against armored columns or spraying mustard agent on the ground to contaminate the battlefield. The German generals were relieved when the feared attacks did not materialize.

  On May 14, 1940, the Wehrmacht routed the French Ninth and Second Armies. The French government evacuated Paris on June 10, and four days later the German Eighteenth Army marched triumphantly down the Champs-Elysées and hoisted the swastika flag atop the Eiffel Tower. Britain was the next target in Hitler’s sights. In a speech on June 18 to the House of Commons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned his countrymen of the severe trials that lay ahead. “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over,” he intoned. “I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. . . . The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war.”

  If Britain did not prevail in the coming conflict, Churchill warned, “then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” Despite these vague premonitions, Churchill had no inkling that Germany had achieved a revolutionary advance in chemical weaponry— one for which the Allies were totally unprepared.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PERVERTED SCIENCE

  ON JANUARY 29, 1940, the IG Farben board of directors founded a new subsidiary called Luranil (an abbreviation of Ludwigshafen Rhein Anilin) to build the nerve agent plant at Dyhernfurth and the mustard plant at Gendorf. Meanwhile, construction of the Tabun pilot plant at Raubkammer was delayed by shortages of materials and skilled labor, and corrosion problems forced a redesign of the apparatus. As a result, the pilot plant did not begin regular operation until July 1940. From then on, it manufactured a total of about fifty tons of Tabun for field trials, while providing valuable operating experience for the full-scale production facility at Dyhernfurth.

  Because of harsh weather in Silesia during the winter months, the start of construction at Dyhernfurth was delayed until early spring 1941, when crews began to clear a dense tract of forest about one kilometer from the Oder River. Ninety technicians from Luranil and 120 prisoners of war worked to build the vast factory. Code-named “Hochwerk,” it would eventually cover an area 1.5 kilometers long by 700 meters wide.

  In August 1941, Otto Ambros summoned about a dozen young chemists and engineers from several IG Farben plants to a meeting in Ludwigshafen. He explained that they had been selected for a secret wartime assignment for the Reich and would be exempted from military service for the duration of the project. One of the chosen chemists, Dr. Wilhelm Kleinhans of the IG Farben laboratory in Mainkur, traveled to Elberfeld to work in Schrader’s lab for several weeks. There he familiarized himself with the manufacturing process for Tabun before continuing on to Dyhernfurth.

  Construction of the Tabun plant was slowed, however, by bureaucratic and logistical problems. In November 1941, for example, government officials ordered the entire workforce at Dyhernfurth transferred to the IG Farben plant in Heydebreck for the urgent production of fuel. Although Ambros managed to get the transfer order canceled, valuable time had been lost, making it impossible to complete the Tabun factory before the onset of winter.

  Otto Ambros, chemist and industrialist, played a key role in the German nerve agent program. Ambros was a member of the Vorstand (managing board of directors) of IG Farben, chief of the Chemical Warfare Committee of Albert Speer’s Ministry of Armaments and War Production, and manager of the Tabun and Sarin production plants at Dyhernfurth and Falkenhagen.

  IN FEBRUARY 1942, the Nazi regime undertook a sweeping reorganization of the weapons procurement bureaucracy previously headed by Fritz Todt, who had died in a plane crash. To replace the Todt organization, Hitler created a new Ministry for Armaments and War Production under the direction of his young protégé Albert Speer, who had previously served as his personal architect. An urbane man of high intelligence, ambition, and personal charm, Speer stood out among the group of crude, thuggish men who dominated the Nazi inner circle. Over the years, Speer had gained the confidence and affection of Hitler, who also fancied himself an architect and was fascinated with grandiose building projects.

  Although the Army Ordnance Office survived the reorganization of the armaments bureaucracy, it increasingly came under the control of advisory committees created by Speer to oversee various aspects of weapons research, development, and production. One of these new bodies was Special Committee C, chaired by Otto Ambros of IG Farben, which managed the development and production of chemical weapons. To camouflage the true nature of its subject matter, the committee was denoted by the letter “C,” for Chemikalien (chemicals), rather than by “K,” for Kampfsto fe (chemical warfare agents).

  On February 14, 1942, Colonel Schmidt of the Army Ordnance Office issued a top-secret report for senior government officials titled “Memorandum on a New War Gas, Trilon 83.” In addition to describing the discovery and testing of Tabun, this memo discussed the possibility that Germany’s enemies had developed similar agents. “[W]e have no evidence whatever that Trilon 83 or a similar compound is being made in foreign countries,” the document concluded. “One must, however, . . . reckon with the fact that scientific research in other countries is sure to start sometime on the study of such compounds, for other great powers, especially England, America, and Russia, have been conducting an intensive search for new war gases for years.”

  ALTHOUGH HITLER had no plans to use chemical weapons against the Allied armies except in retaliation for an attack, the SS began to employ a different poison gas to murder millions of Jews and other defenseless civilians in the extermination camps. The compound selected for this purpose was hydrogen cyanide, also known as prussic acid. A potent, fast-acting poison, cyanide blocks the ability of cells to utilize oxygen, starving the brain and other vital organs and resulting in dizziness, vomiting, unconsciousness, and death. Before the war, a formulation of hydrogen cyanide known as Zyklon B had been developed to exterminate vermin in ships, buildings, and factories. This product was manufactured by the Frankfurt firm Dagesch (an abbreviation of Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Schädlingsbekämpfung, or German Society for Insecticide Research) under license from IG Farben, which held the patent. Zyklon B consisted of pea-sized, gray-blue pellets of diatomaceous earth that had been impregnated with a mixture of hydrogen cyanide, a stabilizer, and a warning chemical with an unpleasant odor. Once the pellets were removed from their sealed metal container and exposed to air, they began to give off the lethal gas.

  Zyklon B was brought to the main Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz I) in the summer of 1941 for the delousing of prisoners. In September, however, the SS conducted experiments to test the suitability of the poison for the mass killing of inmates in gas chambers. When Zyklon B proved effective for this purpose, the Nazis ordered Dagesch to manufacture the pellets without the warning chemical, a violation of German law. The Hamburg firm of Tesch & Stabenow supplied the modified product to the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Maidanek, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Stutthof, and Neuengamme. In 1942 and 1943, nineteen metric tons of Zyklon B were delivered to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, three kilometers northwest of Auschwitz I, where most of the mass gassings took place. During the single night of March 13, 1943, for example, the SS used six kilograms of Zyklon B to murder 1,492 Jewish women, children, and old people from the Kraków ghetto in the gas chambers.

  BECAUSE OF SHORTAGES of key equipment and manpower, it took two years and an expenditure of 120 million reichsmarks to complete the Hochwerk plant at Dyhernfurth, which the Anorgana company headed by Ambros began to operate in the spring of 1942. The sprawling production complex included buildings for manufacturing basic chemical ingredients, intermediates, and final products; numerous warehouses and storage tanks; a bombproof bunker that could hold 1,000 tons of bulk agent; filling lines for loading Tabun into artillery shells and aerial bombs; a well-equipped medical clinic with a staff of trained physicians; and barracks for the plant workers. To reduce exposure to air raids, the main production facility was built partially underground and camouflaged with trees planted on the roof.

  Although the Dyhernfurth plant had managed to manufacture a few hundred tons of chemical intermediates, in April the large-scale production of Tabun finally got under way. At that time, the Hochwerk complex employed about ninety scientists, technicians, and other white-collar staff, along with 560 German workers. It was a major challenge to obtain sufficient quantities of the basic ingredients needed for Tabun production, such as elemental phosphorus. Because no reserves of phosphate ore existed in the German Reich or the newly occupied territories, the mineral had to be imported from mines in North Africa. A single factory at Piesteritz in central Germany processed raw phosphate ore into elemental phosphorus, with an output of 1,300 tons per month. In addition to being used for the production of incendiary grenades and smoke bombs, phosphorus was combined with chlorine to yield phosphorus oxychloride (POCl3), the starting material for Tabun production.

  The Tabun factory contained twelve separate but parallel production units, each of which was theoretically capable of producing a metric ton of agent every twenty-four hours. A production unit consisted of a large iron reaction kettle with a volume of 1,500 gallons, lined with a special corrosion-resistant iron alloy called Remanit. Chemical ingredients were introduced into the kettle through a long pipe that penetrated the vapor-tight lid, and the reaction products were removed through the long pipe by injecting pressurized air into a short pipe that ended above the surface of the mixture. The rate of the chemical reaction could be increased by heating the vessel with hot water that circulated through an external steel jacket, and slowed by cooling the solution inside the kettle with a set of immersion coils containing a chilled solution of calcium chloride.

  The process for manufacturing Tabun was essentially the same as that developed by Schrader, but scaled up to industrial volume. First the kettle was filled with the two starting materials, which took about thirty minutes. Then hot water was allowed to circulate through the metal jacket, heating the mixture inside the kettle and causing the two chemicals to react. After an hour and forty minutes, the reaction reached completion, yielding an intermediate called Product 39 that was highly irritating to the eyes. In the second step, Product 39 was mixed with two additional chemicals for a period of two hours. Because this reaction generated heat, the cooling coils were used to keep the mixture at a constant temperature. Finally, the end product was drawn from the kettle into a holding tank. The raw Tabun that emerged from the kettle was an oily liquid with a dark reddish brown hue that, when filtered to remove solid precipitates, became clear and colorless. Whereas small amounts of pure Tabun gave off a faint aroma of ripe fruit, large quantities had a fishy odor.

  Initially the end product was prepared in a form called Tabun A, containing 5 percent chlorobenzene, the solvent used in its preparation. Due to the presence of impurities left over from the production process, however, Tabun A was unstable and had a limited shelf life: its toxicity declined by 5 percent after six months and 20 percent after three years. Beginning in mid-1944, Dyhernfurth began to produce a new formulation called Tabun B that contained 80 percent Tabun and 20 percent chlorobenzene. This mixture was more stable, had a longer shelf life, and evaporated more readily.

  Because of Tabun’s extreme toxicity, the design of the Hochwerk facility included special features to protect the plant workers against exposure. Each kettle was housed in an enclosed operating chamber formed of two spaced glass walls. Between the glass walls, a ventilation system produced greater than atmospheric pressure, so that the flow of air was always toward the reaction kettle. Inside the operating chamber, the air above the kettle was continuously changed by means of a separate ventilating duct, creating negative pressure. This pressure differential meant that the air contaminated with Tabun fumes was retained inside the operating chamber. All pipes used to transfer solutions containing Tabun were double-walled, and their outer surfaces were sprayed frequently with a weak solution of ammonia and water to neutralize minor leaks. After each production run, the kettles were decontaminated with steam and ammonia.

  No technicians were allowed to enter the operating chambers while the production of Tabun was under way. Instead, the operators opened and closed valves with long-handled mechanical levers that penetrated the double glass walls through rubber-sealed gaskets. This system enabled them to control the flow of chemical ingredients to and from the reaction kettles without being exposed to the deadly fumes. Because the rubber seals were not perfectly airtight, however, trace amounts of Tabun managed to leak out. As a result, the plant workers at Dyhernfurth were never free of the symptoms of low-level Tabun poisoning.

  Since the harmful effects of the nerve agent were cumulative, repeated low-level exposures over a period of several days could be fatal. Accordingly, every few weeks, scientists and technicians at Dyhernfurth were ordered to remain outside the production area for two or three days to allow their bodies to recover. IG Farben workers also received extra rations of high-fat foods, such as milk and cheese. This apparent act of generosity had a utilitarian purpose: consuming a high-fat diet was known to increase resistance to Tabun poisoning.

  Although the standard German Army gas mask protected against breathing contaminated air, Tabun could also be absorbed through the skin. For this reason, all mechanics who entered the sealed production chambers to perform repairs and maintenance wore not only a respirator but a protective suit, cap, boots, and gloves, encapsulating the entire body. The suit consisted of two layers of rubber separated by a layer of cloth, making it cumbersome and unbearably hot in summer. Despite these precautions, about a dozen fatal accidents occurred during the two and a half years of Tabun production, most of them affecting mechanics performing overhauls of the plant. In one incident, seven pipe fitters were struck in the face by a pressurized stream of liquid Tabun that forced itself between their respirators and rubberized suits. The victims became giddy, vomited, and removed their masks, causing them to inhale more of the deadly fumes. They then collapsed and went into
convulsions. According to a report by the chief medical officer at Dyhernfurth, “On examination they were all unconscious . . . , had a feeble pulse, marked nasal discharge, contracted pupils, asthmatic type of breathing, and smelled strongly of flowers. Involuntary [urination] and diarrhea occurred.”

  All seven victims were given intramuscular injections of atropine and a new drug called Sympotal, but five did not respond to the antidotes and died. When the two survivors regained consciousness in the clinic, they were overexcited and continued to have minor convulsions. To counteract these symptoms, the doctors injected them with a sedative called sodium evipan that put them to sleep for eight to ten hours, after which they awoke fully recovered. A pathologist from the Military Medical Academy in Berlin autopsied the five deceased. The only abnormality he could observe with the naked eye was congestion of the lungs and brain, but he removed the major organs for detailed examination.

  ALL ASPECTS OF life at Dyhernfurth were overshadowed by elaborate security measures. Access to the site was strictly controlled and required passing through a series of heavily guarded perimeters and checkpoints. In addition, the technical details of the Tabun manufacturing process were classified and the “need to know” principle was strictly enforced: factory personnel were informed only about those operations in which they were directly involved. Although IG Farben chemists and engineers were naturally curious about other aspects of the production process, they did not ask their colleagues too many questions for fear of being informed on or suspected of espionage, which could result in interrogation and torture by agents of the Geheimstaatspolizei (abbreviated Gestapo), or secret state police. Accordingly, the scientists and technicians at Dyhernfurth wore psychological “blinders” and kept their attention tightly focused on their narrow roles in the production process.