The U.S. commemorated its entry into WW I this week, and our neighbor, Canada will commemorate the deaths and casualties incurred by its Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge, France on Sunday. World War One was the “war to end all wars, according to the BBC, with up to 10 million lives lost and another 20 million wounded.
WW I is also commemorated as the world’s first “total war,” because nations used all their resources, including human, industrial and military capabilities in fighting their adversaries. However, the Great War also saw the first time that chemical weapons were used on a large scale, igniting a chemical weapons arms race that continues today.
Over the course of the war, from July 28, 1914, to Nov. 11, 1918, over 3,000 chemicals were investigated as possible military weapons and 50 different toxic agents were used on battlefields across Europe, killing an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 people and leaving 1.3 million people injured, reported Chemical & Engineering News (CEN).
Live Science points out that while chemical weapons only accounted for about one percent of the deaths in WW I, they unleashed a new form of weapon of mass destruction (WMD) – Opening a new and ugly chapter on modern warfare and the world was changed forever.
A brief history of chemical warfare – Ancient times
Chemical weapons like spears and arrows with poisoned tips have been used for thousands of years. From using individual weapons, we soon turned to more elaborate ways of killing and maiming our enemies. Historical records indicate the ancient Chinese used bellows to blow smoke from burning balls of toxic plants into tunnels and caves.
Other historical records describe how Athenian soldiers poisoned a city’s water supply in 600 BC by dumping poisonous plants into the water, while Peloponnesian warriors subduing their enemies with sulfur clouds in 479 BC. There is also evidence the Sassanians used chemical weapons against the Roman army in the Siege of Dura Europos in the third century AD.
Early modern warfare and the use of chemical weapons
Moving up in time, during the reign of Henry III, (1216 – 1272) the English navy used “quicklime,” an old name for calcium oxide, to blind the enemy French fleet. By the 17th century, armies had become more imaginative in their use of weapons, especially during sieges. They would launch incendiary shells filled with sulfur, tallow, rosin, turpentine, saltpeter, and/or antimony. Even if the weapons didn’t burst into flames, the resulting smoke was a huge distraction.
By 1672, warring armies were figuring out how to use more deadly and toxic agents, including deadly nightshade, belladonna, the deadliest plant in the Eastern Hemisphere as a chemical warfare agent. In probably the first international ban on the use of chemical weapons, on August 27, 1675, the French and the Holy Roman Empire concluded the Strasbourg Agreement, which included an article banning the use of “perfidious and odious” toxic devices.
Chemical weapons and the Industrial Age
The industrial era saw the birth of modern chemistry as well as its associated industries. And we can’t leave out warfare because humankind continued to do battle with each other. During the Crimean War, in 1854, Lyon Playfair, Secretary of the Science and Art Department proposed a cacodyl cyanide artillery shell for use against enemy ships.
Then later, during America’s Civil War, a New York school teacher proposed filling a 10-inch (254 millimeter) artillery shell with two or three quarts of liquid chlorine. When fired, the artillery shell would burst, producing quite a large area filled with chlorine gas. Luckily the idea was turned down.
Later, in 1899, during the Hague Conference, the subject of chemicals used in warfare took center stage. A proposal was passed, prohibiting the use of artillery shells filled with asphyxiating gas. Guess who had the only dissenting vote? If you said the U.S. you get the prize.
The American representative, Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, justified voting against the measure on the grounds that “the inventiveness of Americans should not be restricted in the development of new weapons.” Mahan died in Washington, D.C., of heart failure on December 1, 1914, a few months after the outbreak of World War I, so he didn’t get to see how much damage chemical weapons can do.
World War I and the dawn of weapons of mass destruction
As we have seen, the use of somewhat primitive chemicals on the battlefield usually resulted in limited casualties and very little destruction. That all changed on April 22, 1915, when the German army released close to 170 metric tons of chlorine gas from nearly 5,780 cylinders buried in a four-mile stretch of road close to trenches outside the Belgian town of Ypres.
Fritz Haber, a German scientist who advocated for the use of chlorine gas was there, close to the front-line. He waited patiently for nearly four weeks. Finally, the wind began blowing to the northeast, across the no-mans land separating the German lines and the Allies trenches.
German High Command was skeptical and saw the chlorine gas canister placement as an experiment, not believing poison gas capable of use as a weapon. “They saw the first chlorine attack as an experiment at best, and at worst, a kind of stunt,” says Andrew Ede, a science historian at the University of Alberta.
At 17:30, (5:30 pm, the gas was released, forming a gray-green cloud that drifted across positions held by French Colonial troops from Martinique. In all, the Germans used gas on three more occasions; on April 24 against the 1st Canadian Division, on May 2 near Mouse Trap Farm and on May 5 against the British at Hill 60. This first major use of a chemical resulted in over 1,100 deaths and nearly 4,000 injuries.
By the end of the war, close to 50,965 tons of pulmonary, lachrymatory, and vesicant agents were deployed by both sides of the conflict, including chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas. Official records show that 1.3 million casualties are directly linked to chemical weapons deployed during the war, along with another 100,000-260,000 civilian casualties.
From a Postcard, sent Jule 1916; Herman Rex: Der Weltkrieg in seiner rauhen Wirklichkeit. Das Frontkämpferwerk. Oberammergau 1926. S. 85.
Preserved in the United Kingdom’s National Archives, a British soldier in the Royal Army Medical Corps described survivors of a poison gas attack:
“Complexion here was an ashed blueish grey, the expression most anxious and distressed with the eye-balls staring, and the lids half closed. Respiration was extremely laboured and noisy with frequent efforts to expel copious amounts of tenacious yellowish green frothy fluid which threatened to drown them, and through which they inhaled and exhaled air into and out of their lungs with a gurgling noise,” Capt. Edward L. Reid recounted in a written report.
And today, as we hear about and see the horrific images showing the ugly results of poison gas attacks on Syrian civilians, does anyone wonder why in the name of God are we still using chemical weapons?
