This concise brief describes how the demands of World War I often referred to as the Chemists'
War led to the rapid emergence of a new key industry based on fixation of atmospheric
nitrogen. Then as now nitrogen products including nitric acid and nitrates were essential
for both fertilizers and in the manufacture of modern explosives. During the first decade of
the twentieth century this stimulated research into and application of novel processes. This
book illustrates how from late 1914 the relations and developments in the first modern
military-industrial complex enabled the great capital expenditures and technological advances
that accelerated massive expansion particularly of the BASF Haber-Bosch high-pressure process
that determined the direction of the post-war chemical industry.
