The reason for the appointment of Professor Karl Brandt was the assumption that the initiation of chemical warfare by the enemy was shortly to be expected. This assumption was based on the fact that intelligence was accumulating, according to which gas was being prepared in large quantities by the enemy. Thus confidential agents reported that poison gas ammunition was being stored at Tunis and Dakar, and these reports were constantly being confirmed.
The greatest alarm was caused by the examination of captured Russian gas masks, which showed that they afforded protection against far stronger concentrations of poison gas than it had so far been believed possible to achieve at the front. Their protective capacity far surpassed that of the German Army and civilian gas masks. From this fact, it could be concluded that the scientists and technicians of the Red Army had succeeded in developing new and particularly effective methods of attack in chemical warfare for known or new chemical warfare agents.
The German measures for gas defense were totally inadequate in number, too. The civilian population in particular was exposed almost without defense to gas attacks because the issue of civilian and infants’ gas masks in many town and country districts was seriously behind schedule. The relevant figures for civilian gas masks in the different supply areas were between 10 and 70 percent of the population to be equipped, the average figure being about 32 percent, and for infants’ gas masks, about 7 percent. This estimate is based on the total number of civilian and infants’ gas masks manufactured up to that date, in relation to the total number of persons entitled to supply. This estimate did not take into consideration the fact that, without doubt a large part of the equipment which, in some cases had been in the hands of the population for years, was no longer completely fit for use on account of faulty unsuitable storage, or had been rendered useless by air raid damage, evacuation of the owners, and other reasons, or lost completely. The losses in civilian gas masks were estimated at about 15,000,000 (almost 50 percent of the total output up to that date) so that for the completion of the initial equipment (without reserves) the manufacture of 45,000,000 gas masks had to be planned.
In view of these facts, Professor Dr. Karl Brandt was assigned the task of providing with the utmost speed for the improvement of gas defense to avert the danger which threatened.
Through the initiative of Professor Brandt, the gas defense program was finally given the highest priority and had an equal standing with the program for the construction of fighter planes and tanks.
I know that Professor Dr. Brandt was most strongly opposed to the propaganda demand spread by extreme Party circles for the initiation of chemical warfare by Germany.
I regularly had to work with Professor Karl Brandt on gas defense and I know that in view of their importance and urgency, he dispatched all matters himself. The Department of Science and Research and its chief, Professor Rostock, were not concerned with these matters.
The N-agent was not one of the chemical warfare agents. It is an incendiary agent composed of chlorine and fluorine (ClF3); this N-agent has never been mentioned in connection with gas defense.
I know that there existed in the Armament Ministry a special commission for the decontamination of drinking water; this had neither been established by Professor Brandt nor was it under his command. The task of this commission was the production of decontamination equipment but not the development of such equipment, and especially not the development of new processes for the decontamination of water. The repeated suggestions made by Professor Haase in this context were therefore beyond the field of activity of the commission. They were discussed, however, at a meeting in December 1944, at which I was present.
At this meeting the representatives of the army and the air raid protection service stated that for their sphere, i. e., for the gas defense of the troops and the civilian population, there was no need to continue this work. Professor Brandt who was present at the meeting had already agreed in advance with the general opinion that the efforts of Haase did not admit of the expectation of any improvement on the experiences presented for consideration, and that they should therefore be rejected. He therefore asked me to work towards this end.