WWI Chemical Weapons History

While chemical weapons were nothing new to war, World War I was the first time that they figured prominently in battle strategy. They were used by both sides, to varying degrees.

• In late 1914, German scientist Fritz Haber came up with the idea of creating a cloud of poison gas by using thousands of cylinders filled with chlorine. Deployed in April 1915 during the battle for Ypres, France, the attack might have broken the Allied lines if German troops understood how to follow up the gas attack.
• By late 1915, Allied troops made their own chorine gas attacks. It led to a race for more and more toxic chemicals. Germany came up with diphosgene gas; the French tried cyanide gas.
• In July 1917, Germany introduced mustard gas, which burned the skin as well as the lungs.
• Biological warfare was generally less successful. Most of these efforts focused on infecting enemy livestock with anthrax or glanders.

The New York Tribune described one of the first gas attacks in 1915:

“[The] vapor settled to the ground like a swamp mist and drifted toward the French trenches on a brisk wind. Its effect on the French was a violent nausea and faintness, followed by an utter collapse. It is believed that the Germans, who charged in behind the vapor, met no resistance at all, the French at their front being virtually paralyzed.”

The crippling effects of gas warfare on individual soldiers in WWI inspired unprecedented artistic expression of the harsher side of war, from poetry to painting. John Singer Sargent portrays the aftermath of a gas attack in his painting Gassed. Many lie dead from the gas attack, but even the survivors are terribly wounded—bandages cover their eyes; mucous membranes were particularly vulnerable to poison gas.

Gassed by John Singer Sargent

Source: http://www.worldwar1.com/arm006.htm

Sources:

http://www.worldwar1.com/arm006.htm

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/61/67268.htm