To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  The battles which these disputes generated may have been a factor in spurring Rathenau’s resignation on 1 April 1915. The accusations of profiteering, the feeling that large firms were benefiting at the expense of small, the backbiting over the links with AEG—all soured his enthusiasm for the task. Equally, however, Rathenau might reasonably have concluded that he had completed his mission, that the KRA was fully operational, and that he wished to be available in case he were offered the secretaryship of state at the Treasury (he was not).132 His departure did not set back the advance of the KRA. His successor, groomed by Rathenau himself, was Major Joseph Koeth, who had headed a section in the Prussian War Ministry before 1914. Koeth confirmed the military, rather than entrepreneurial, ethos of the KRA. He appreciated the distinctive qualities and characteristics of a war economy. He enthused his colleagues, shaping the KRA according to his principles, and enthroning system and method in its workings.133

  Four imported raw materials were particularly vital to Germany’s war industry in 1914. These were cotton from the United States, camphor from Japan, pyrites from Spain, and saltpetre from Chile. All were ingredients in the manufacture of gunpowder. Powder production was the bottleneck in the German munitions industry.134 It determined the pace in the expansion of German armaments as a whole: there was little point in having more guns if there was nothing for them to fire.

  Furthermore, gunpowder’s requirements for raw materials interacted with the needs of Germany’s food supply. Saltpetre was not only employed in the production of nitric acid for explosives but also of nitrates for fertilizers: before the war Germany used a maximum of 40,000 tonnes of fixed nitrogen a year for industrial purposes (including many non-military ones), while 200,000 tonnes were consumed by the needs of agriculture.135 The trade-off between powder production and food production was further highlighted when domestically produced raw materials were taken into account. Glycerine was derived from fats and oils; alcohol was distilled from potatoes. During the war sugar was fermented to produce both. Thus, agricultural yields would fall for lack of fertilizers, and an increasing proportion of those yields would themselves not be used as foodstuffs. Germany, it seemed, could not have guns and butter (or at least their equivalents), and would probably have neither.

  In the long-war scenario the production of fixed nitrogen appeared to be Germany’s most obvious and most significant vulnerability. But it was rarely alluded to in the discussions before 1914. Perhaps this was lack of foresight. However, in August 1914 Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, of the armaments firm, was confident that Germany would be producing synthetic nitrates within a year.136 The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of the Sciences, established in 1911, had spawned a series of research institutes designed not least to develop applied research for the purposes of international competition. As a result Germany’s chemical industry was the most advanced in the world. It had already experimented with two processes for the production of fixed nitrogen. Germany generated nitrogen gas as an automatic byproduct of its gasworks and coking plants. Adolph Frank and Nikodem Caro distilled the gas into liquid, and introduced it into electrically heated cylinders containing a mixture of calcium carbide and lime. The result—calcium cyanamide or lime nitrogen (Kalkstickstoff in German)—was therefore dependent on a combination of readily available raw materials and massive quantities of electricity. From it could be derived ammonal and ammonium nitrate. In 1914 two German factories produced 25,000 tonnes of calcium cyanamide. The second process, developed by Fritz Haber while professor of physical chemistry at Karlsruhe College of Technology, established that a mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen gases, when cleared of carbon dioxide and heated to between 500° and 550° centigrade, synthesized ammonia. Haber was well aware of the uses of chemistry in war, the army less so. In 1912, after his appointment to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, Haber, a Jew, was rebuffed in his efforts to establish contact with the Prussian War Ministry. However, Carl Bosch at the Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (BASF) transferred Haber’s laboratory findings to industrial production. In July 1914 BASF reckoned its annual output was 30,000 tonnes of sulphate of ammonia, equivalent to 6,000 tonnes of nitrogen.

  On 1 October Emil Fischer, the presiding genius of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and Germany’s leading organic chemist, called at the War Ministry. His explanation of the infant processes for the production of nitrates laid the basis for links between science, industry, and army. The War Ministry established the ‘Bureau Haber’ as the basis for its own chemical section, and Moellendorff took the ammonia programme as a model for the new corporatist economy.137 The impediments to the maximization of the synthetic fixation of nitrogen proved to be financial rather than scientific. Investment in new plant was held back for lack of agreement on its funding and on the fixing of prices. The deadlock was broken by Helfferich who, with his customary unconcern about fiscal rectitude, was prepared to put enhanced productivity ahead of any controls on profits. Most of the army’s needs for ammonia were covered by the Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik, which increased its annual output of nitrogen to 200,000 tonnes a year. The manufacture of calcium cyanamide was largely assumed by a state factory, the Bayerische Stickstoffwerke, taken over on the initiative of Helfferich after prodding by Gwinner of the Deutsche Bank, and able to produce 175,000 tonnes a year. Between February and December 1915 Germany’s total output of calcium cyanamide was 380,000 tonnes, which corresponded to 76,000 tonnes of nitrogen. By the year’s end industry was meeting 90 per cent of its needs, and agriculture 70 per cent. Over the war as a whole, Germany’s production of nitrogen was two-and-a-half times greater than its total pre-war consumption over a comparable period.138

  The fixing of nitrogen was only the most important of the chemical industry’s contributions to the production of explosives. Spirits of turpentine were found to do just as well as Japanese camphor in the powder for all arms except infantry rifles. A substitute for nitrocellulose or gun cotton was developed through soaking paper in cellulose derived from wood. Wood was also the primary material in the production of acetone, which was used in the manufacture of the nitroglycerine powder needed for heavy artillery. Picric acid and trinitrotoluene were substituted for up to two-thirds of the nitroglycerine used in powder production, so freeing glycerine for explosives.139

  Before the war German shells were filled with trinitrotoluene (TNT), prepared by acting upon toluene with a combination of sulphuric and nitric acid. Toluene itself was produced from coal, but efforts to improve the process in order to increase output and to economize on sulphuric acid were not particularly successful. Experiments with other coal-tar derivatives—benzol and phenol—produced explosives with only limited applications: trinitroanisol was suitable for mines and large-calibre guns, picric acid was manufactured in small quantities and used in fuses, and dinitrobenzol was poisonous and required great care when being loaded into shells. But the mixture of nitrocompounds (either TNT or dinitrobenzol) with the increasingly abundant ammonium nitrate in a ratio of 60 : 40 gave an explosive viable in most shells, known as ammonal. The loss of explosive power was compensated for by the economy in the use of TNT. The Germans found that a greater proportion of ammonium nitrate in the mixture made the ammonal harder to pour.140

  This emphasis on powder and explosives was the reverse of what the War Ministry had anticipated before the war. It thought that the major block to increased munitions output would be the production of fuses and of the shells themselves.

  Part of its concern was generated by Germany’s dependence on imported copper. Germany continued to get some copper during the war from Norway, and later from Sweden and Bulgaria; it also produced its own, not least by telling the civilian population to disgorge its pots and pans in the winter of 1915–16.141 Brass was used in fuses and bullet cases, and the copper content of the second was 72 per cent. For the former, pressed zinc or zinc alloy was substituted; for the latter, iron stood duty. The driving rings for shells were also made o
f copper: therefore the shape of the ring was changed and the ring itself was made of soft iron. The number of driving rings on the 120 mm shrapnel shell was cut from five to two, and on the 150 mm shell from four to one. By the last year of the war only the 210 mm still used copper.142 Copper consumption in munitions production was cut by seven-eighths.

  The most pressing worry was the production of high-quality compressed steel, itself dependent on manganese. During the war Germany’s only sources of manganese were Hungary and, after the end of 1915, Serbia.143 In anticipation of this problem the War Ministry planned before the war to use shells made of cast iron, bored out of whole ingots. Thus, factories with simple turning-lathes and milling machines could be brought into service with immediate effect. Ultimately about 230 firms were involved in their manufacture. But the Germans lacked sufficient inspectors to ensure the maintenance of standards across so many establishments. Prussia struck a middle course between late delivery and high prices, whereas Bavaria opted for high prices and delivery within three months. The casting was not easy: inspectors reported holes right through the wall of the shell, slag and fragments in the casting, poor finishes at the mouth of the shell, and improperly fitted driving rings, all of which carried the risk of premature explosions. The shell itself was heavy, because weight of iron had to compensate for the robustness of compressed steel, and so it increased barrel wear. The thickness of the casing also reduced the space available for high explosive. Much of the pre-war effort had been devoted to finding acceptable explosives, and those types that were used, produced from derivatives of coal, attracted and retained excessive moisture. The shells could only take a simple contact fuse. The lower quantity of high explosive generated less smoke and so made observation hard and the correction of fire difficult, and the cast iron broke into fewer splinters. The gunners regarded the shells as fit only for training. Quality was therefore deliberately sacrificed to the interests of speed and scale of production. The first deliveries of the auxiliary ammunition were received in the third week of September, and they were issued to the front in mid-October. The original intention was to produce cast-iron shells for the field artillery only, but on 14 September the scheme was extended to shells for heavy guns. The production of cast-iron shells ceased after July 1915 when cast steel, rolled in the Thomas process, began to become available. The production of cast-steel shells continued—albeit with intermissions—alongside that of compressed steel for the rest of the war.144

  The steel production problem also had its impact on the manufacture of the guns themselves. Before the war the steel for gun barrels was cast in crucibles to make it impermeable. But the expansion of production meant that steel produced in open hearths and furnaces, principally by the Siemens-Martin and Thomas processes, had to be used. The Siemens-Martin process was heavily dependent on aluminium, and most of Germany’s bauxite came from France. The best steel before the war used 30 per cent tungsten, much of it imported from Spain. And nickel, which was employed to strengthen the barrels and gun shields, came from French New Caledonia. No shortages in any of these areas delayed munitions production during the war. Partly, this was achieved through a reduction in their use: the quantity of tungsten in high-quality steel was halved, and the proportion of nickel employed was cut from between 4 and 8 per cent to between 1 and 3 per cent. Partly, overseas supplies were maintained in spite of the blockade: nickel was received via France until 1915, was shipped from the United States in the cargo submarine Deutschland in 1916, and—together with aluminium—was exported from Scandinavia throughout the war. But the chief source was the expansion of domestic production—tungsten from Saxony, nickel from Silesia, and aluminium from bauxite deposits in Austria-Hungary.145

  The primary responsibility for the administration of all orders for warlike material was vested in the ordnance depot (Feldzeugmeisterei) created in 1898 as a section subordinate to the Allgemeine Kriegsdepartement of the Prussian War Ministry. Comparable arrangements applied in Bavaria, and Saxony— although not in Württemberg, which had no state-run ordnance factories. Six workshops—four in Prussia, one in Bavaria, and one in Saxony—were responsible for the production of artillery of calibres up to 210 mm. Others manufactured rifles and ammunition. But, as elsewhere in Europe, the state did not sustain an arms industry large enough to equip its forces in the event of war. The primary functions of the government workshops were to regulate prices and to set standards to which private industry could conform. They kept in play some elasticity in productive capacity: in producing a single item of equipment they might give contracts to over 100 small firms which would otherwise have been driven out of the arms industries by the big cartels. They also provided technical training for the army’s own supply and repair services. But in general their key characteristic was that they were adapted to the limited peace of peacetime replacement: the ordnance depots in combination employed only 16,000 workers. They were not even big enough to cope with the rate of expansion between 1911 and 1914: in the last full year of peace 60 per cent of the funds spent on war materials went to private industry, and only 40 per cent to cover procurement from the state’s own factories.146

  The War Ministry was therefore well aware that in the event of hostilities it would be dependent on the productive capacities of independent firms. The sector comprised about twenty-four businesses before 1914, with between 156,000 and 212,000 workers, or a maximum of 1.9 per cent of the industrial labour force.147 Only three of these manufactured artillery, and the most important was Friedrich Krupp. The link between the rise of Krupp and the forging of the German nation, symbolized by the performance of the firm’s steel breech-loaders in 1870, was sustained by the close links between the Kaiser and the Krupp family.148 But both sides saw the dangers in an excessively monopolistic relationship. Orders for artillery were not sufficient to sustain Krupp in peace, and the company could not afford to hold idle plant against the contingency of a possible spurt in demand in wartime. Between 1910 and 1914 only 12.8 per cent of the firm’s artillery and munition orders were for delivery to the German army.149 In the financial year 1913/14 war material accounted for only 54 per cent of the turnover of Krupp’s Essen works (and therefore an even smaller percentage of the whole), and armour plate a further 11 per cent.150 Krupp diversified into railways, shipbuilding, and iron and steel production. It also built up its export markets. The Ministry of War actively supported the latter policy, recognizing that foreign purchases could enable Krupp to carry an additional capacity for armaments production in peace which would become available for the German army’s use in war.151 Thus, foreign powers—including Belgium, which bought Krupp quick-firers as well as heavy artillery for the defences of Antwerp—were indirectly covering many of Germany’s research and development costs. Nor was it only through the encouragement of exports that the Ministry of War applied the discipline of the market to Krupp. It also promoted competition within the German arms business. The Rheinischen Metallwaren- und Maschinenfabrik was founded in 1889. Although far behind Krupp in scale of output (its workforce in 1914, at 8,000, was only just over a tenth of that of the Essen giant), its technical competence was highly rated. Under its director Heinrich Erhardt, Rheinmetall developed a quick-firing field gun which won it orders from Britain, Russia, Norway, and Austria-Hungary. Persuaded by its success in overseas markets, the German army bought artillery from the firm after 1905. The Prussian War Ministry, like the Imperial Naval Office, used the competition for its orders to force down prices. By 1905 the price which had been quoted by Krupp in 1897 for steel for 15 cm artillery shells was cut through competitive tendering by 50 per cent, and that for ready-use ammunition for the same gun by up to 40 per cent. Contracts won from the army by Krupp stagnated, and constituted only about 40 per cent of the firm’s turnover after 1900.152 In 1912 it was revealed that Krupp had been bribing members of the artillery testing commission, and that secret documents had been passed from the ministry to the firm. But, although outwardly this suggested a dependen
ce that would prefigure the notion of a ‘military-industrial complex’, in reality it confirmed the highly competitive nature of the business. The main thrust of the Reichstag committee of inquiry into the scandal was not to impugn the need for the close relationship between Krupp and the services, but to ensure that the state was getting value for money.153

  The astuteness of the War Ministry’s management of Krupp was testified to by the company’s state of readiness for industrial mobilization in 1914. Between 1903 and 1908 it added 2.1 hectares per annum to its workshop area; between 1906 and 1914 it expanded at a rate of 2.6 hectares. In the summer of 1914 it increased its share capital from 180 million marks to 250 million, so providing it with the finance to enable a further addition to its plant. In the first year of the war it added thirty-five new workshops in Essen alone, and in the first half of 1915 it built a new shell factory from scratch. Krupp’s plant grew at the rate of 18.7 hectares a year between 1915 and 1918, resulting in a doubling of its overall size.

  The army’s problem in 1914 was not its relationship with the existing producers, but its failure to anticipate the need to draw in new ones. Krupp itself, aware that a long war and increased munitions consumption could break its monopoly, had no interest in promoting a rethink.154 By the summer of 1914 the firm’s monthly peacetime output was 280 light and medium guns and four heavy guns. The targets set by the mobilization plan generated by the War Ministry were little different: 200 field guns and 144 torpedo-boat guns. The ministry aimed to reach a monthly production figure of 200,000 field artillery shells within twelve to sixteen weeks of mobilization. Krupp alone already manufactured 150,000 shells of all calibres every month, and Germany’s output for August, in other words within four weeks of mobilization, was 170,000.155