Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
was motivated by the fact that ammonium compounds are added to many fabrics
to make them flame retardant (this is sometimes called “fireproofing”, but that
cannot be done literally with ordinary fabrics). Thus, Morikawa’s experiments
used, as the source of nitrogen, diammonium phosphate, a common flame retardant
for fabrics.
During World War II, diammonium phosphate was commonly used in Germany
to make fabrics, particularly rayon, flame retardant. Two such products
were marketed by I.G. Farben under the trade names Akaustan N and Akaustan N
1139. Another product, Akaustan K, used other ammonium compounds as the
flame retardant. 666 A disadvantage of such flame retardants is that they are water
soluble and gradually “leach” out when the fabrics are washed. Thus, such soluble
flame retardants “are applied with the idea of periodic reprocessing in order to
maintain the desired properties [by] simple immersion in aqueous solutions” of
the retardant. 667 That is, washing is followed by immersion in a solution of the
flame retardant substance, then drying out. Another defense against leaching, employed
by the Germans, used sulfamide (strictly speaking sulfuryl amide,
SO 2 (NH 2 ) 2 ) in conjunction with a standard waterproofing agent, thus making reprocessing
unnecessary. 668 Sulfamide is obtained by treating sulfuryl chloride
with ammonia, and one gets the impression from Morikawa that one could also
expect evolution of HCN in burning of cellulose impregnated with it.
While I do not have a document that says so, I consider it very plausible that
many concentration camp fabrics were treated with flame retardants for security
reasons, i.e. to limit the effects of fires started by inmates. This would have been
particularly the case with bed linens and mattress fillings. Thus, I am proposing
the possibility that fabrics used in the camps, destined to be disposed of by incineration,
were known to present a danger of evolution of HCN in such incineration.
The favored German process for rayon manufacture was the viscose, which is
also the favored process today. However, two German factories used the older and
simpler cuprammonium process. That the cuprammonium process involved a solution
of ammonia does not appear relevant to the present problem. What may be
relevant is that a price of its simplicity was that the cuprammonium process required
celluloses of a high degree of purity. Thus, cotton linters were considered
the standard cellulose source for cuprammonium rayon, but on account of wartime
shortages, the two German cuprammonium factories used wood pulp instead.
This resulted in an inferior quality rayon. Much of the cuprammonium rayon was
used for army uniforms, but there were other uses, for example military upholstery,
mattress fillings, and parachutes. I have no source saying that it was used in
concentration camp fabrics, but in view of its inferior quality, this is a very admissible
conjecture. One version of the cuprammonium rayon used for mattress fillings
was impregnated with urea and formaldehyde, with ammonium nitrate as a
catalyst, in order to impart springiness to it. 669 It is known that urea can cause
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Urquhart (1952), p. 272.
Robert W. Little, Flameproofing Textile Fabrics, Reinhold, NY, 1947, pp. 167-170.
Urquhart (1952), p. 272.
Urquhart (1952), pp. 15ff, 28, 150-159, 273ff.