Bill Cameron
Banned
I'm at a loss, I have no idea how to find how much electrical energy Germany produced during these years, or how much nitrate they consumed, in peace time or in a hypothetic war.
Maxwell,
There's no need to research how many megawatts Germany produced or how many kilotons of nitrates it required in peace or war. You can look at the question on a "ratio" or "black box" level.
Take a hypothetical item, i.e widgets, that our nation requires. Next examine two processes which can create widgets for us. Process A a certain amount of inputs in the form of resources and energy to produce a given amount of widgets. Process B requires a larger amount of inputs in the form of resources and energy to produce the same amount of widgets.
Everything else being equal, which process is better for us to employ?
The Birkeland-Eyde process requires large amounts of electricity, something that was not trivial for industrial nations to produce in the time period. The Birkeland-Eyde process was being used on an industrial scale by 1903, but only in a few locales where large amounts of cheap electricity was available. Given the great demand for nitrates in industry and agriculture, widespread research in nitrogen fixing continued because the Birkeland-Eyde process wasn't good enough.
In 1909 Haber demonstrated his process in the lab, it was industrialized within four years, and the technology exported worldwide five years after that. By the 1920s, Haber's process meant nitrates were no longer mined on the huge scale seen only a decade before. The Birkeland-Eyde process never accomplished what the Haber process did, namely making an entire industry obsolete by providing the classic cheaper/faster/better way of providing what the now obsolete industry provided.
There's another problem with Germany adopting the Birkeland-Eyde process wholesale before 1914; it means Germany would somehow be prescient.
Before the Great War, no one ever imagined the vast amounts of ammunition "modern" warfare would require. Before the Great War, Germany didn't really face up to the fact that she may find herself blockaded and thus failed to stockpile strategic resources in substantial amounts. No one knew nitrogen fixing would be so critical.
Putting it another way, the 1909 Haber Process solved a critical problem in 1915 that no one in 1914 even knew existed. Haber developed his process for peacetime economic reasons and not to solve a wartime problem critical to national survival.
Bill