What was Chemical Warfare?
Loading a battery of Livens gas projectors
Chemical warfare has been a huge threat dating back to 4000 BC. During the Peloponnesian War in 5th century BC, Spartans used bombs made of sulphur and pitch to overcome the enemy.
In Medieval times, people sometimes threw bodies of plague victims over the walls of besieged cities, or into water wells. In the French and Indian Wars, blankets used by smallpox victims were given to American Indians in hope of giving off the disease. Though these were early uses of chemical weapons, the real start of this phenomenon came in 1914.
Fritz Haber
This history traces back to one man, Fritz Haber, who developed poison gases for Germany during the First World War.
At the time, Haber was a famous chemist for extracting nitrates from the atmosphere.
He believed that poison gas was the key to penetrating the trenches and breaking down Allied defenses. Initially, Haber focused on chlorine gas and the diamotic chlorine molecule, which is a highly reactive chemical in the dye industry.
Haber’s home was on the grounds of the institute. Home life and work life clashed. This led to a war at home with his wife Clara, who was also a chemist. She had opposite views of how to use science. She did not believe in weaponry and destruction. Haber took initiative towards making his chemical weapons. He even approached the German military himself. He demonstrated how the gas would work by producing a test in Cologne at a military ground.
With a stalemate in the midst of the war, the German military needed certainty about their position in the war. In 1915, the German military purchased amounts of the poison gas from Haber and promoted him to officer. On April 22, 1915, the Germans performed there first gas attack on the French and Algerian troops at Ypres, Belgium. The Germans set up 5,730 cylinders of Chlorine gas and opened their valves.
After two days of gas attacks, many allied troops were either dead, disabled, or wounded. The attacks were so effective that the Germans did not expect the success of them. They lacked a follow up attack after the gas did its job. One reason for this was that there was not enough equipment which would protect Germany’s troops to safely go into the gas infested areas. More attacks happened in May of 1915, and the Germans in fact made the Great War more miserable. They could of solidified a position where its was their war to lose, but they did not because of the lack of large scale attacks with the gas.
All throughout Germany, people were impressed with this new weapon and strategy that the Germans were employing. Some people claimed that this gas was more humane than bullets and shells.
Haber’s personal success continued and he was promoted to captain. Haber’s wife Clara was not fond of this success and called her husband a traitor to Germany. She did not believe that his scientific talent should have been hand and hand with making weapons of any kind. With one argument after another, Clara committed suicide. This whole process of creating such a horrific weapon transformed a scholar into a monster, and was to stubborn to see how he was negatively affecting the world. This was only the beginning to this dreadful phenomenon.