Connections1978

[explaining the circumstances stimulating chemistry research in Germany]

James Burke:
This is one of those stories that doesn't make sense even when you've heard it twice. Let me try it on you.

[indicating the machine he's sitting on]

James Burke:
Combine harvester, invented by an American - McCormick - a few years before that German color business. Because of it, by the 1870's, America has got wheat coming out of its ears, so the price drops. They're practically giving bread away. Good idea, no? No. See, in Germany, they eat this - black rye bread - grown in Prussia by a bunch of aristocrats called the Junkers. Very big-deal people, the Junkers. They've got the government in their pocket. So, none of that cheap American wheat gets into Germany where the population is rocketing and they need food. Okay, everybody can eat rye. Uh-uh; the Junkers are exporting it all to make money.

[stands holding two loaves of bread]

James Burke:
Now, let me see if that confuses you as much as it confuses me: You've got lots of rye, but you...

[throws away black rye loaf]

James Burke:
...Export it, so you're short of food. Never mind, foreign wheat is cheap. So you...

[throws away wheat loaf]

James Burke:
...*Don't* import it. That's what I thought I said. But that's what they did! So, in desperation, somebody started trying to boost wheat growing in Germany, and when they did they ran slap-bang into a brick wall: No fertilizer. They had to bring it in from Chile at colossal expense, and they just didn't have that kind of bread. What am I saying? They didn't have *any* kind of bread!