Victory Must be Ours: Germany in the Great War 1914-1918 by Keegan Laurence V

Author:Keegan, Laurence V [Keegan, Laurence V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Leo Cooper
Published: 1995-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Commemoration of the confiscation of a village church bell .

For many shortages arising from the blockade, however, German scientists managed to find adequate substitutes. If they not been able to do so, the war could have been over long before 1917. Early on, when Chilean nitrates, a gunpowder ingredient, were cut off, Fritz Haber and BASF scientists in Ludwigshafen devised methods of developing a substitute. In addition, they developed an effective substitute for the high-quality sulphur that had come from Louisiana and Sicily by using domestic supplies of calcium sulfate. German scientists produced an alternative for glycerin which had been derived from American cotton, replacing it with a distillation from the barks of evergreens mixed with derivatives from hard coal and the sugar beet. To replace foreign bauxite which had been used in producing aluminum, researchers devised a process using German clay that contained the necessary elements. Germany possessed a rich store of many essential ores, vast quantities of coal and easy access to iron ores from neutral Sweden. All these helped to lay the foundations for turning Germany into one vast “arms factory.” There would be a price to pay for this, however: Many essential war chemicals derived from the same materials as went into the making of fertilizer. Inevitably, farmers contended with declining crop yields, intensifying the nation’s food shortages. 11

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