Germany. A 150mm projectile filled with Xylene Bromide, a highly caustic tear gas, is ready. It is named Weisskreuz (white cross). In this test (as with the first on the British), the French are spared: 18,000 Weisskreuz are dropped on the Russians, but the temperatures are so low that the toxic compound instantly freezes. After these disastrous results, Haber abandons the bromine and focuses on chlorine. Enemy soldiers will soon learn to fear Grunkreuz (green cross), Blaukreuz (blue cross), and especially the dreaded Gelbkreuz (yellow cross), also known as mustard gas. Fritz Haber will himself command the first attack with these weapons against French troops at Ypres, causing horrific burns and wounds. Haber’s wife, disagreeing with her husband over these decisions, shoots herself in the heart in their garden. Haber doesn’t even stay to arrange the funeral, and the next morning he leaves for the front, as planned. In 1919, while the guns are still hot, he will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (for the industrial production of ammonia). After the war, he will spend years trying to extract gold from the sea, to solve Germany’s financial problems, and will invent Zyklon A, which will be modified by IG Farben into Zyklon B, with which the Nazis will exterminate millions of Jews, including Haber’s relatives.
