Various types of chemical weapons of the First World War. The use of gases in World War I
The First World War was on. On the evening of April 22, 1915, German and French troops opposing each other were near the Belgian city of Ypres. They fought for the city for a long time and to no avail. But this evening the Germans wanted to test a new weapon - poison gas. They brought thousands of cylinders with them, and when the wind blew towards the enemy, they opened the taps, releasing 180 tons of chlorine into the air. A yellowish gas cloud was carried by the wind towards the enemy line.
The panic began. Immersed in a gas cloud, the French soldiers went blind, coughed and suffocated. Three thousand of them died of asphyxiation, another seven thousand were burned.
"At this point, science lost its innocence," says science historian Ernst Peter Fischer. According to him, if before that the purpose of scientific research was to alleviate the conditions of people's lives, now science has created conditions that make it easier to kill a person.
"In the war - for the fatherland"
A way to use chlorine for military purposes was developed by the German chemist Fritz Haber. He is considered the first scientist who subordinated scientific knowledge to military needs. Fritz Haber discovered that chlorine is an extremely poisonous gas, which, due to its high density, is concentrated low above the ground. He knew that this gas causes severe swelling of the mucous membranes, coughing, suffocation, and ultimately leads to death. In addition, the poison was cheap: chlorine is found in the waste of the chemical industry.
"Haber's motto was "In the world - for humanity, in the war - for the fatherland," Ernst Peter Fischer quotes the then head of the chemical department of the Prussian War Ministry. - Then there were other times. Everyone was trying to find poison gas that they could use in war And only the Germans succeeded."
The Ypres attack was a war crime - as early as 1915. After all, the Hague Convention of 1907 prohibited the use of poison and poisoned weapons for military purposes.
Arms race
The "success" of Fritz Haber's military innovation became contagious, and not only for the Germans. Simultaneously with the war of states, the "war of chemists" also began. Scientists were tasked with creating chemical weapons that would be ready for use as soon as possible. "Abroad, they looked with envy at Haber," says Ernst Peter Fischer, "Many people wanted to have such a scientist in their country." Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918. True, not for the discovery of poisonous gas, but for his contribution to the implementation of the synthesis of ammonia.
The French and British also experimented with poisonous gases. The use of phosgene and mustard gas, often in combination with each other, became widespread in the war. And yet, poison gases did not play a decisive role in the outcome of the war: these weapons could only be used in favorable weather.
scary mechanism
Nevertheless, a terrible mechanism was launched in the First World War, and Germany became its engine.
The chemist Fritz Haber not only laid the foundation for the use of chlorine for military purposes, but also, thanks to his good industrial connections, helped to mass-produce this chemical weapon. For example, the German chemical concern BASF produced poisonous substances in large quantities during the First World War.
Already after the war with the creation of the IG Farben concern in 1925, Haber joined its supervisory board. Later, during National Socialism, a subsidiary of IG Farben was engaged in the production of "cyclone B", used in the gas chambers of concentration camps.
Context
Fritz Haber himself could not have foreseen this. "He's a tragic figure," Fischer says. In 1933, Haber, a Jew by origin, emigrated to England, expelled from his country, in the service of which he placed his scientific knowledge.
Red line
In total, more than 90 thousand soldiers died on the fronts of the First World War from the use of poison gases. Many died of complications a few years after the end of the war. In 1905, the members of the League of Nations, which included Germany, under the Geneva Protocol pledged not to use chemical weapons. Meanwhile, scientific research on the use of poisonous gases was continued, mainly under the guise of developing means to combat harmful insects.
"Cyclone B" - hydrocyanic acid - an insecticidal agent. "Agent orange" - a substance for deleafing plants. The Americans used defoliant during the Vietnam War to thin out local dense vegetation. As a consequence - poisoned soil, numerous diseases and genetic mutations in the population. The latest example of the use of chemical weapons is Syria.
"You can do whatever you want with poisonous gases, but they can't be used as a target weapon," science historian Fischer emphasizes. “Everyone who is nearby becomes a victim.” The fact that the use of poisonous gas is still “a red line that cannot be crossed”, he considers correct: “Otherwise, the war becomes even more inhuman than it already is.”
The use of poisonous gases in World War I was a major military innovation. Poisons ranged from the merely harmful (such as tear gas) to the deadly poisonous, such as chlorine and phosgene. Chemical weapons are one of the main ones in the First World War and in total throughout the 20th century. The lethal potential of the gas was limited - only 4% of deaths from the total number of those affected. However, the proportion of non-fatal cases was high, and the gas remained one of the main hazards to soldiers. Since it became possible to develop effective countermeasures against gas attacks, unlike most other weapons of this period, in the later stages of the war its effectiveness began to decline, and it almost fell out of circulation. But due to the fact that toxic substances were first used in the First World War, it was also sometimes called the "war of chemists."
History of Poison Gases 1914
At the beginning of the use of chemicals as a weapon, there were tear irritant drugs, not fatal ones. During the First World War, the French became the first to use gas using 26 mm grenades filled with tear gas (ethyl bromoacetate) in August 1914. However, the Allied stocks of ethyl bromoacetate quickly ran out, and the French administration replaced it with another agent, chloroacetone. In October 1914, German troops opened fire with shells partially filled with a chemical irritant against British positions on the Neuve Chapelle, despite the concentration achieved being so low as to be barely noticeable.
1915: widespread deadly gases
Germany was the first to use gas as a weapon of mass destruction on a large scale during World War I against Russia.
The first poison gas used by the German military was chlorine. The German chemical companies BASF, Hoechst and Bayer (which formed the IG Farben conglomerate in 1925) produced chlorine as a by-product of dye production. In collaboration with Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, they began developing methods for applying chlorine against enemy trenches.
By April 22, 1915, the German army had sprayed 168 tons of chlorine near the Ypres River. At 17:00 a weak east wind blew and the gas began to spray, it moved towards the French positions, forming yellowish-green clouds. It should be noted that the German infantry also suffered from the gas and, lacking sufficient reinforcements, could not use the advantage gained until the arrival of British-Canadian reinforcements. The Entente immediately declared that Germany had violated the principles of international law, but Berlin countered this statement by saying that the Hague Convention prohibits only the use of poisonous projectiles, but not gases.
After the Battle of Ypres, poison gases were used by Germany several more times: on April 24 against the 1st Canadian Division, on May 2 near the Mousetrap Farm, on May 5 against the British and on August 6 against the defenders of the Russian fortress of Osovets. On May 5, 90 people immediately died in the trenches; of the 207 admitted to field hospitals, 46 died on the same day, and 12 after prolonged torment. Against the Russian army, the action of gases, however, was not effective enough: despite serious losses, the Russian army threw the Germans back from Osovets. The counterattack of the Russian troops was called in European historiography as an "attack of the dead": according to many historians and witnesses of those battles, Russian soldiers by their appearance alone (many were disfigured after shelling with chemical shells) plunged the German soldiers into shock and total panic:
“Every living thing in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress was poisoned to death,” recalled a member of the defense. - All the greenery in the fortress and in the nearest area along the path of the gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground, the flower petals flew around. All copper objects on the bridgehead of the fortress - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide; food items stored without hermetic sealing - meat, butter, lard, vegetables, turned out to be poisoned and unfit for consumption.
“The half-poisoned wandered back,” this is another author, “and, tormented by thirst, bent down to the sources of water, but here the gases lingered in low places, and secondary poisoning led to death.”
The rapid development of the science of chemistry at the end of the 19th century made it possible to create and use the first weapon of mass destruction in history - poison gases. Despite this, and the expressed intention of many governments to humanize warfare, chemical weapons were not banned before World War I. In 1899, at the First Hague Conference, a declaration was adopted, which spoke of the non-use of projectiles with poisonous and harmful substances. But the declaration is not a convention, everything that is written in it is advisory in nature.
World War I
Formally, at first the signatory countries of this declaration did not violate it. Tear gases were delivered to the battlefield not in shells, but in throwing grenades, or sprayed from cylinders. The first use of a deadly asphyxiating gas - chlorine - by the Germans near Ypres on April 22, 1915 was also made from cylinders. Germany did exactly the same in subsequent similar cases. The Germans first used chlorine against the Russian army on August 6, 1915 near the Osovets fortress.
In the future, no one paid any attention to the Hague Declaration and used shells and mines with toxic substances, and asphyxiating gases were invented more and more effectively and deadly. The Entente considered itself free from compliance with international norms of war, in response to their violation by Germany.
Upon receipt of information about the use of poisonous substances by the Germans on the Western Front, in Russia in the summer of 1915 they also began the production of chemical weapons. Chemical shells for three-inch guns were first filled with chlorine, later with chloropicrin and phosgene (the method of synthesis of the latter was learned from the French).
The first large-scale use of shells with toxic substances by the Russian troops took place on June 4, 1916, during artillery preparation before the start of the Brusilovsky breakthrough on the Southwestern Front. Spraying gases from cylinders was also used. The use of chemical weapons also became possible due to the fact that the Russian troops received a sufficient number of gas masks. The Russian command highly appreciated the effectiveness of the chemical attack.
Between World Wars
However, the First World War as a whole showed the limited capabilities of chemical weapons in the presence of the enemy's means of protection. The use of poisonous substances was also restrained by the danger of their retaliatory use by the enemy. Therefore, between the two world wars, they were used only where the enemy had neither protective equipment nor chemical weapons. Thus, chemical warfare agents were used by the Red Army in 1921 (there is evidence that it was in 1930-1932) in the suppression of peasant uprisings against the Soviet regime, as well as by the army of fascist Italy during the aggression in Ethiopia in 1935-1936.
The possession of chemical weapons after the First World War was considered the main guarantee that they would be afraid to use such weapons against this country. With chemical warfare agents, the situation was the same as with nuclear weapons after World War II - they served as a means of intimidation and deterrence.
Back in the 1920s, scientists calculated that the accumulated stocks of chemical munitions would be enough to poison the entire population of the planet several times. Same thing since the 1960s. began to assert about the then available nuclear weapons. Both, however, were not untrue. Therefore, back in 1925 in Geneva, many states, including the USSR, signed a protocol banning the use of chemical weapons. But since the experience of the First World War showed that in such cases little consideration was given to conventions and prohibitions, the great powers continued to build up their chemical arsenals.
Fear of retaliation
However, in World War II, for fear of a similar response, chemical munitions were not used directly at the front against the enemy army in the field, as well as in aerial bombardment of targets behind enemy lines.
However, this did not rule out individual cases of the use of poisonous substances against an irregular enemy, as well as the use of non-combat chemicals for military purposes. According to some reports, the Germans used poison gases, destroying the partisans who resisted in the Adzhimushkay quarries in Kerch. When carrying out some anti-partisan operations in Belarus, the Germans sprayed over the forests that served as a stronghold of the partisans, substances that caused the leaves and needles to fall off, so that the partisan bases could be more easily detected from the air.
The legend of the poisoned fields of the Smolensk region
The possible use of chemical weapons by the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War is the subject of sensational speculation. Officially, the Russian authorities deny such use. The presence of the stamp "secret" on many documents related to the war multiplies monstrous rumors and "revelations".
Among the "search engines" of artifacts of the Second World War, for more than a decade there have been legends about huge mutant insects living in the fields, where in the fall of 1941, during the retreat of the Red Army, mustard gas was allegedly plentifully sprayed. It is alleged that many hectares of land in the Smolensk and Kalinin (now Tver) regions, especially in the area of Vyazma and Nelidovo, were contaminated with mustard gas.
Theoretically, the use of a poisonous substance is possible. Mustard gas can create a dangerous concentration when evaporating from an open area, as well as in a condensed state (at temperatures below plus 14 degrees) when applied to an object with which an unprotected area of \u200b\u200bthe skin comes into contact. Poisoning does not occur immediately, but only after a few hours, or even days. The military unit, having passed through the place where the mustard gas was sprayed, will not be able to immediately give an alarm signal to its other troops, but will inevitably turn off from the battle after a while.
However, there are no intelligible publications on the topic of deliberate contamination of the area with mustard gas during the retreat of Soviet troops near Moscow. It can be assumed that if such cases had taken place, and the German troops really faced the poisoning of the area, then Nazi propaganda would not fail to inflate this event as evidence of the use of prohibited means of warfare by the Bolsheviks. Most likely, the legend about the "fields flooded with mustard gas" was born from such a real fact as the careless disposal of spent chemical munitions, which constantly took place in the USSR during the 1920-1930s. Buried then bombs, shells and cylinders with toxic substances are still found in many places.
The first known case of the use of chemical weapons is the battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915, in which chlorine was used very effectively by German troops, but this battle was not the only one and far from the first.
Turning to a positional war, during which, due to the large number of troops opposing each other on both sides, it was impossible to organize an effective breakthrough, the opponents began to look for other ways out of their current situation, one of them was the use of chemical weapons.
For the first time, chemical weapons were used by the French, it was the French who, back in August 1914, used tear gas, the so-called ethyl bromoacenate. By itself, this gas could not lead to a fatal outcome, but caused a strong burning sensation in the enemy soldiers in the eyes and mucous membranes of the mouth and nose, due to which they lost their orientation in space and did not provide effective resistance to the enemy. Before the offensive, French soldiers threw grenades filled with this poisonous substance at the enemy. The only drawback of the ethyl bromoacenate used was its limited amount, so it was soon replaced by chloroacetone.
Application of chlorine
After analyzing the success of the French, which followed from their use of chemical weapons, the German command already in October of the same year fired at the positions of the British in the battle of Neuve Chapelle, but missed the gas concentration and did not get the expected effect. There was too little gas, and it did not have the proper effect on the enemy soldiers. Nevertheless, the experiment was repeated already in January in the battle of Bolimov against the Russian army, this attack was practically successful for the Germans, and therefore the use of poisonous substances, despite the statement that Germany had violated the norms of international law, received from the UK, it was decided to continue.
Basically, the Germans used chlorine against enemy units - a gas with an almost instantaneous lethal effect. The only disadvantage of using chlorine was its rich green color, due to which it was possible to make an unexpected attack only in the already mentioned Battle of Ypres, later on, the Entente armies stocked up with enough means of protection against the effects of chlorine and could no longer be afraid of it. Fritz Haber personally supervised the production of chlorine - a man who later became well known in Germany as the father of chemical weapons.
Having used chlorine in the Battle of Ypres, the Germans did not stop there, but used it at least three more times, including against the Russian fortress of Osovets, where in May 1915 about 90 soldiers died instantly, more than 40 died in hospital wards . But despite the frightening effect that followed from the use of gas, the Germans did not succeed in taking the fortress. The gas practically destroyed all life in the district, plants and many animals died, most of the food supply was destroyed, while Russian soldiers received a frightening type of injury, those who were lucky enough to survive had to remain disabled for life.
Phosgene
Such large-scale actions led to the fact that the German army soon began to feel an acute shortage of chlorine, so it was replaced by phosgene, a gas without color and pungent odor. Due to the fact that phosgene exuded the smell of moldy hay, it was not at all easy to detect it, since the symptoms of poisoning did not appear immediately, but only a day after application. The poisoned enemy soldiers successfully fought for some time, but without receiving timely treatment, due to elementary ignorance of their condition, they died the next day in tens and hundreds. Phosgene was a more toxic substance, so it was much more profitable to use it than chlorine.
Mustard gas
In 1917, all near the same town of Ypres, German soldiers used another poisonous substance - mustard gas, also called mustard gas. In the composition of mustard gas, in addition to chlorine, substances were used that, when they got on the skin of a person, not only caused poisoning in him, but also served to form numerous abscesses. Outwardly, mustard gas looked like an oily liquid without color. It was possible to determine the presence of mustard gas only by its characteristic smell of garlic, or mustard, hence the name - mustard gas. Contact with mustard gas in the eyes led to instant blindness, concentration of mustard gas in the stomach led to immediate nausea, bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. When the mustard gas affected the mucous membrane of the throat, the victims experienced an immediate development of edema, which subsequently developed into a purulent formation. A strong concentration of mustard gas in the lungs led to the development of their inflammation and death from suffocation on the 3rd day after poisoning.
The practice of using mustard gas showed that of all the chemicals used in the First World War, it was this liquid, synthesized by the French scientist Cesar Despres and the Englishman Frederic Guthrie in 1822 and 1860 independently of each other, that was the most dangerous, since there were no measures to combat poisoning she didn't exist. The only thing the doctor could do was to advise the patient to wash the mucous membranes affected by the substance and wipe the skin areas that were in contact with mustard gas with napkins abundantly moistened with water.
In the fight against mustard gas, which, when it comes into contact with the surface of the skin or clothes, can be converted into other equally dangerous substances, even a gas mask could not provide significant assistance, be in the mustard zone, the soldiers were recommended no more than 40 minutes, after which the poison began to penetrate through the means of protection.
Despite the obvious fact that the use of any of the poisonous substances, whether it be the practically harmless ethyl bromoacenate, or such a dangerous substance as mustard gas, is a violation not only of the laws of warfare, but also of civil rights and freedoms, following the Germans, the British and French began to use chemical weapons. and even Russians. Convinced of the high efficiency of mustard gas, the British and French quickly set up its production, and soon it was several times larger than the German one in scale.
In Russia, the production and use of chemical weapons first began before the planned Brusilov breakthrough in 1916. Ahead of the advancing Russian army, shells with chloropicrin and vensinite were scattered, which had a suffocating and poisoning effect. The use of chemicals gave the Russian army a noticeable advantage, the enemy left the trenches in droves and became easy prey for artillery.
Interestingly, after the First World War, the use of any of the means of chemical action on the human body was not only prohibited, but also imputed to Germany as the main crime against human rights, despite the fact that almost all poisonous elements entered mass production and were very effectively used by both opposing sides.
- Burns, Robert - short biography
- The concept of common vocabulary and vocabulary of limited use
- Nancy Drew: The Captive Curse Walkthrough Nancy Drew Curse of Blackmoore Manor Walkthrough
- Deadpool - Troubleshooting
- Won't start How to Survive?
- What to do if bioshock infinite won't start
- Walkthrough Nancy Drew: Alibi in Ashes
- Spec Ops: The Line - game review, review Spec ops the line crashes on missions
- Room escape level 1 walkthrough
- Processing tomatoes with boric acid How much will 2 grams of boric acid
- Cucumber Grass (Borago)
- Bioinsecticide Lepidocid: purpose, properties and application procedure Lepidocide waiting period
- How to change the language to Russian in steam
- Dendrobium noble: room care
- Morphology of plants general concepts - document
- Planting, propagation and care of bamboo at home, photo Growing bamboo from seeds
- How to strengthen the cellular signal for the Internet in the country
- Sanskrit reveals the forgotten meaning of Russian words (2 photos)
- The oldest language Sanskrit programming language of the future Dead language Sanskrit
- Who has dominion over all the earth?