But amid all these developments, we must single out the momentous innovation that allowed a blockaded Germany to endure its two-front war for four years: the synthesis of ammonia. When the war began, the British navy cut Germany off from imports of Chilean nitrates needed to produce explosives. But thanks to a remarkable coincidence, Germany could instead supply itself with homemade nitrates. In 1909, Fritz Haber, a professor at the University of Karlsruhe, had ended the long-running quest for synthesizing ammonia from its elements.
