The first gas attack in World War I, in short, was carried out by the French. But the German military was the first to use toxic substances.
For various reasons, in particular the use of new types of weapons, the First World War, which was planned to end in a few months, quickly escalated into a trench conflict. Such hostilities could continue for as long as desired. In order to somehow change the situation and lure the enemy out of the trenches and break through the front, all kinds of chemical weapons began to be used.
It was the gases that became one of the reasons for the huge number of casualties in the First World War.
First experience
Already in August 1914, almost in the first days of the war, the French in one of the battles used grenades filled with ethyl bromoacetate (tear gas). They did not cause poisoning, but were capable of disorienting the enemy for some time. In fact, this was the first military gas attack.
After supplies of this gas were depleted, French troops began using chloroacetate.
The Germans, who very quickly adopted advanced experience and what could contribute to the implementation of their plans, adopted this method of fighting the enemy. In October of the same year, they tried to use shells with a chemical irritant against the British military near the village of Neuve Chapelle. But the low concentration of the substance in the shells did not give the expected effect.
From irritating to poisonous
April 22, 1915. This day, in short, went down in history as one of the darkest days of the First World War. It was then that German troops carried out the first massive gas attack using not an irritant, but a poisonous substance. Now their goal was not to disorient and immobilize the enemy, but to destroy him.
It happened on the banks of the Ypres River. 168 tons of chlorine were released by the German military into the air towards the location of the French troops. The poisonous greenish cloud, followed by German soldiers in special gauze bandages, terrified the French-English army. Many rushed to run, giving up their positions without a fight. Others, inhaling the poisoned air, fell dead. As a result, more than 15 thousand people were injured that day, 5 thousand of whom died, and a gap more than 3 km wide was formed in the front. True, the Germans were never able to take advantage of their advantage. Afraid to attack, having no reserves, they allowed the British and French to fill the gap again.
After this, the Germans repeatedly tried to repeat their such a successful first experience. However, none of the subsequent gas attacks brought such an effect and so many casualties, since now all troops were supplied with individual means of protection against gases.
In response to Germany's actions at Ypres, the entire world community immediately expressed its protest, but it was no longer possible to stop the use of gases.
On the Eastern Front, against the Russian army, the Germans also did not fail to use their new weapons. This happened on the Ravka River. As a result of the gas attack, about 8 thousand soldiers of the Russian imperial army were poisoned here, more than a quarter of them died from poisoning in the next 24 hours after the attack.
It is noteworthy that, having first sharply condemned Germany, after some time almost all Entente countries began to use chemical agents.
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 - poisonous gases. Despite this, and despite the expressed intention of many governments to humanize warfare, chemical weapons were not banned before the First World War. In 1899, at the First Hague Conference, a declaration was adopted that stated the non-use of projectiles containing toxic 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 countries that signed 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 the same in subsequent similar cases. The Germans first used chlorine against the Russian army on August 6, 1915 at the Osovets fortress.
Subsequently, no one paid attention to the Hague Declaration and used shells and mines with toxic substances, and asphyxiating gases were invented more and more efficiently and deadly. The Entente considered itself free from compliance with international norms of war, in response to their violation by Germany.
Upon receiving information about the use of toxic substances by the Germans on the Western Front, Russia also began producing chemical weapons in the summer of 1915. Chemical shells for three-inch guns were first filled with chlorine, later with chloropicrin and phosgene (the method for synthesizing the latter was learned from the French).
The first large-scale use of shells with toxic substances by Russian troops took place on June 4, 1916 during artillery preparation before the Brusilov breakthrough on the Southwestern Front. Spraying gases from cylinders was also used. The use of chemical weapons also became possible thanks to the supply of sufficient gas masks to Russian troops. The Russian command highly appreciated the effectiveness of the chemical attack.
Between world wars
However, the First World War as a whole showed the limitations of chemical weapons if the enemy had means of defense. The use of toxic 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 in 1930-1932) to suppress peasant uprisings against Soviet power, as well as by the army of fascist Italy during the aggression in Ethiopia in 1935-1936.
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. The situation with chemical warfare agents is 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 reserves of chemical munitions would be enough to poison the entire population of the planet several times over. Same thing since the 1960s. they began to assert about the nuclear weapons that were available at that time. 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 regard is paid 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 active enemy forces, nor in aerial bombing of targets behind enemy lines.
However, this did not exclude individual cases of the use of toxic substances against an irregular enemy, as well as the use of non-combat chemicals for military purposes. According to some reports, the Germans used poisonous gases to destroy the partisans who resisted in the Adzhimushkay quarries in Kerch. During some anti-partisan operations in Belarus, the Germans sprayed substances over the forests that served as partisan strongholds that caused leaves and pine needles to fall, so that partisan bases could be easier to detect 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 “secret” stamp on many documents related to the war multiplies monstrous rumors and “revelations.”
Among the “searchers” for artifacts of the Second World War, there have been legends for decades about huge mutant insects living in fields where mustard gas was supposedly generously sprayed in the fall of 1941, during the retreat of the Red Army. It is alleged that many hectares of land in the Smolensk and Kalinin (now Tver) regions, especially in the Vyazma and Nelidovo region, were contaminated with mustard gas.
Theoretically, the use of a toxic 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 skin comes into contact. Poisoning does not occur immediately, but only after several hours, or even days. A military unit, having passed through the place where mustard gas was sprayed, will not be able to immediately give an alarm signal to its other troops, but will inevitably be cut off from the battle after some time.
However, there are no clear 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 occurred, and German troops had actually encountered the poisoning of the area, then Nazi propaganda would not have failed to inflate this event as evidence of the use of prohibited means of warfare by the Bolsheviks. Most likely, the legend about “fields flooded with mustard gas” was born from such a real fact as the careless disposal of spent chemical ammunition, which constantly took place in the USSR throughout the 1920-1930s. Bombs, shells and cylinders with toxic substances buried then are still found in many places.
By mid-spring 1915, each of the countries participating in the First World War sought to pull the advantage to its side. So Germany, which terrorized its enemies from the sky, from under water and on land, tried to find an optimal, but not entirely original solution, planning to use chemical weapons - chlorine - against the adversaries. The Germans borrowed this idea from the French, who at the beginning of 1914 tried to use tear gas as a weapon. At the beginning of 1915, the Germans also tried to do this, who quickly realized that irritating gases on the field were a very ineffective thing.
Therefore, the German army resorted to the help of the future Nobel laureate in chemistry Fritz Haber, who developed methods for using protection against such gases and methods for using them in combat.
Haber was a great patriot of Germany and even converted from Judaism to Christianity to show his love for the country.
The German army decided to use poisonous gas - chlorine - for the first time on April 22, 1915 during the battle near the Ypres River. Then the military sprayed about 168 tons of chlorine from 5,730 cylinders, each of which weighed about 40 kg. At the same time, Germany violated the Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed in 1907 in The Hague, one of the clauses of which stated that “it is prohibited to use poison or poisoned weapons against the enemy.” It is worth noting that Germany at that time tended to violate various international agreements and agreements: in 1915, it waged “unrestricted submarine warfare” - German submarines sank civilian ships contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
“We couldn't believe our eyes. The greenish-gray cloud, descending on them, turned yellow as it spread and scorched everything in its path that it touched, causing the plants to die. French soldiers staggered among us, blinded, coughing, breathing heavily, with faces dark purple, silent from suffering, and behind them in the gas-poisoned trenches remained, as we learned, hundreds of their dying comrades,” one recalled the incident. of the British soldiers who observed the mustard gas attack from the side.
As a result of the gas attack, about 6 thousand people were killed by the French and British. At the same time, the Germans also suffered, on whom, due to the changed wind, part of the gas they sprayed was blown away.
However, it was not possible to achieve the main goal and break through the German front line.
Among those who took part in the battle was the young corporal Adolf Hitler. True, he was located 10 km from the place where the gas was sprayed. On this day he saved his wounded comrade, for which he was subsequently awarded the Iron Cross. Moreover, he was only recently transferred from one regiment to another, which saved him from possible death.
Subsequently, Germany began using artillery shells containing phosgene, a gas for which there is no antidote and which, in sufficient concentration, causes death. Fritz Haber, whose wife committed suicide after receiving news from Ypres, continued to actively participate in the development: she could not bear the fact that her husband became the architect of so many deaths. Being a chemist by training, she appreciated the nightmare that her husband helped create.
The German scientist did not stop there: under his leadership, the toxic substance “Zyklon B” was created, which was subsequently used for the massacres of concentration camp prisoners during the Second World War.
In 1918, the researcher even received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, although he had a rather controversial reputation. However, he never hid the fact that he was absolutely confident in what he was doing. But Haber’s patriotism and his Jewish origin played a cruel joke on the scientist: in 1933, he was forced to flee Nazi Germany to Great Britain. A year later he died of a heart attack.
February 14th, 2015
German gas attack. Aerial view. Photo: Imperial War Museums
According to rough estimates by historians, at least 1.3 million people suffered from chemical weapons during the First World War. All the main theaters of the Great War became, in fact, the largest testing ground for weapons of mass destruction in real conditions in the history of mankind. The international community began to think about the danger of such a development of events at the end of the 19th century, trying to introduce restrictions on the use of poison gases through a convention. But as soon as one of the countries, namely Germany, broke this taboo, all the others, including Russia, joined the chemical arms race with no less zeal.
In the material “Russian Planet” I suggest you read about how it began and why the first gas attacks were never noticed by humanity.
The first gas is lumpy
On October 27, 1914, at the very beginning of the First World War, the Germans fired improved shrapnel shells at the French near the village of Neuve Chapelle in the outskirts of Lille. In the glass of such a projectile, the space between the shrapnel bullets was filled with dianisidine sulfate, which irritates the mucous membranes of the eyes and nose. 3 thousand of these shells allowed the Germans to capture a small village on the northern border of France, but the damaging effect of what would now be called “tear gas” turned out to be small. As a result, disappointed German generals decided to abandon the production of “innovative” shells with insufficient lethal effect, since even Germany’s developed industry did not have time to cope with the monstrous needs of the fronts for conventional ammunition.
In fact, humanity then did not notice this first fact of the new “chemical war”. Against the backdrop of unexpectedly high losses from conventional weapons, tears from the soldiers’ eyes did not seem dangerous.
German troops release gas from cylinders during a gas attack. Photo: Imperial War Museums
However, the leaders of the Second Reich did not stop experiments with combat chemicals. Just three months later, on January 31, 1915, already on the Eastern Front, German troops, trying to break through to Warsaw, near the village of Bolimov, fired at Russian positions with improved gas ammunition. That day, 18 thousand 150-mm shells containing 63 tons of xylylbromide fell on the positions of the 6th Corps of the 2nd Russian Army. But this substance was more of a tear-producing agent than a poisonous one. Moreover, the severe frosts that prevailed in those days negated its effectiveness - the liquid sprayed by exploding shells in the cold did not evaporate or turn into gas, its irritating effect turned out to be insufficient. The first chemical attack on Russian troops was also unsuccessful.
The Russian command, however, paid attention to it. On March 4, 1915, from the Main Artillery Directorate of the General Staff, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, then the commander-in-chief of the Russian Imperial Army, received a proposal to begin experiments with shells filled with toxic substances. A few days later, the Grand Duke’s secretaries replied that “the Supreme Commander-in-Chief has a negative attitude towards the use of chemical shells.”
Formally, the uncle of the last tsar was right in this case - the Russian army was sorely lacking conventional shells in order to divert the already insufficient industrial forces to the production of a new type of ammunition of dubious effectiveness. But military technology developed rapidly during the Great Years. And by the spring of 1915, the “gloomy Teutonic genius” showed the world truly deadly chemistry, which horrified everyone.
Nobel laureates killed near Ypres
The first effective gas attack was launched in April 1915 near the Belgian town of Ypres, where the Germans used chlorine released from cylinders against the British and French. At the attack front of 6 kilometers, 6 thousand gas cylinders filled with 180 tons of gas were installed. It is curious that half of these cylinders were of civilian origin - the German army collected them throughout Germany and occupied Belgium.
The cylinders were placed in specially equipped trenches, combined into “gas batteries” of 20 pieces each. Burying them and equipping all positions for a gas attack was completed on April 11, but the Germans had to wait for more than a week for favorable winds. It blew in the right direction only at 5 pm on April 22, 1915.
Within 5 minutes, the “gas batteries” released 168 tons of chlorine. A yellow-green cloud covered the French trenches, and the gas affected mainly the soldiers of the “colored division” that had just arrived at the front from the French colonies in Africa.
Chlorine caused laryngeal spasms and pulmonary edema. The troops did not yet have any means of protection against gas; no one even knew how to defend themselves and escape from such an attack. Therefore, the soldiers who remained in their positions suffered less than those who fled, since every movement increased the effect of the gas. Because chlorine is heavier than air and accumulates near the ground, those soldiers who stood under fire suffered less than those who lay or sat at the bottom of the trench. The worst victims were the wounded lying on the ground or on stretchers, and people moving to the rear along with the cloud of gas. In total, almost 15 thousand soldiers were poisoned, of which about 5 thousand died.
It is significant that the German infantry, advancing after the chlorine cloud, also suffered losses. And if the gas attack itself was a success, causing panic and even the flight of French colonial units, then the German attack itself was almost a failure, and progress was minimal. The front breakthrough that the German generals were counting on did not happen. The German infantrymen themselves were openly afraid to move forward through the contaminated area. Later, German soldiers captured in this area told the British that the gas caused sharp pain to their eyes when they occupied the trenches left behind by the fleeing French.
The impression of the tragedy at Ypres was aggravated by the fact that the Allied command was warned at the beginning of April 1915 about the use of new weapons - a defector said that the Germans were going to poison the enemy with a cloud of gas, and that “cylinders with gas” were already installed in the trenches. But the French and English generals then only shrugged it off - the information was included in the intelligence reports of the headquarters, but was classified as “untrustworthy information.”
The psychological impact of the first effective chemical attack was even greater. The troops, who then had no protection from the new type of weapon, were struck by a real “gas fear”, and the slightest rumor of the start of such an attack caused general panic.
Representatives of the Entente immediately accused the Germans of violating the Hague Convention, since Germany in 1899 in The Hague at the 1st Disarmament Conference, among other countries, signed the declaration “On the non-use of projectiles whose sole purpose is to distribute asphyxiating or harmful gases.” However, using the same wording, Berlin responded that the convention prohibits only gas shells, and not any use of gases for military purposes. After that, in fact, no one remembered the convention anymore.
Otto Hahn (right) in the laboratory. 1913 Photo: Library of Congress
It is worth noting that chlorine was chosen as the first chemical weapon for completely practical reasons. In peaceful life, it was then widely used to produce bleach, hydrochloric acid, paints, medicines and a host of other products. The technology for its production was well studied, so obtaining this gas in large quantities was not difficult.
The organization of the gas attack near Ypres was led by German chemists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin - Fritz Haber, James Frank, Gustav Hertz and Otto Hahn. European civilization of the 20th century is best characterized by the fact that all of them subsequently received Nobel Prizes for various scientific achievements of an exclusively peaceful nature. It is noteworthy that the creators of chemical weapons themselves did not believe that they were doing anything terrible or even simply wrong. Fritz Haber, for example, claimed that he had always been an ideological opponent of the war, but when it began, he was forced to work for the good of his homeland. Haber categorically denied accusations of creating inhumane weapons of mass destruction, considering such reasoning to be demagoguery - in response, he usually stated that death in any case is death, regardless of what exactly caused it.
“They showed more curiosity than anxiety”
Immediately after the “success” at Ypres, the Germans carried out several more gas attacks on the Western Front in April-May 1915. For the Eastern Front, the time for the first “gas attack” came at the end of May. The operation was again carried out near Warsaw near the village of Bolimov, where the first unsuccessful experiment with chemical shells on the Russian front took place in January. This time, 12 thousand chlorine cylinders were prepared over a 12-kilometer area.
On the night of May 31, 1915, at 3:20 a.m., the Germans released chlorine. Units of two Russian divisions - the 55th and 14th Siberian divisions - came under the gas attack. Reconnaissance on this section of the front was then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander DeLazari; he later described that fateful morning as follows: “Complete surprise and unpreparedness led to the fact that the soldiers showed more surprise and curiosity at the appearance of a gas cloud than alarm. Mistaking the gas cloud to camouflage the attack, Russian troops strengthened the forward trenches and brought up reserves. Soon the trenches were filled with corpses and dying people.”
In two Russian divisions, almost 9,038 people were poisoned, of whom 1,183 died. The gas concentration was such that, as an eyewitness wrote, chlorine “formed gas swamps in the lowlands, destroying spring and clover seedlings along the way” - the grass and leaves changed color from the gas, turned yellow and died along with the people.
As at Ypres, despite the tactical success of the attack, the Germans were unable to develop it into a breakthrough of the front. It is significant that the German soldiers near Bolimov were also very afraid of chlorine and even tried to object to its use. But the high command from Berlin was inexorable.
No less significant is the fact that, just like the British and French at Ypres, the Russians were also aware of the impending gas attack. The Germans, with balloon batteries already placed in the forward trenches, waited 10 days for a favorable wind, and during this time the Russians took several “tongues”. Moreover, the command already knew the results of using chlorine near Ypres, but they still did not warn the soldiers and officers in the trenches about anything. True, due to the threat of the use of chemicals, “gas masks” were ordered from Moscow itself - the first, not yet perfect gas masks. But by an evil irony of fate, they were delivered to the divisions attacked by chlorine on the evening of May 31, after the attack.
A month later, on the night of July 7, 1915, the Germans repeated the gas attack in the same area, not far from Bolimov near the village of Volya Shidlovskaya. “This time the attack was no longer as unexpected as on May 31,” wrote a participant in those battles. “However, the chemical discipline of the Russians was still very low, and the passage of the gas wave caused the abandonment of the first line of defense and significant losses.”
Despite the fact that the troops had already begun to be supplied with primitive “gas masks,” they did not yet know how to properly respond to gas attacks. Instead of wearing masks and waiting for the cloud of chlorine to blow through the trenches, the soldiers began to run in panic. It is impossible to outrun the wind by running, and they, in fact, ran in a gas cloud, which increased the time they spent in chlorine vapor, and fast running only aggravated the damage to the respiratory system.
As a result, parts of the Russian army suffered heavy losses. The 218th Infantry suffered 2,608 casualties. In the 21st Siberian Regiment, after retreating in a cloud of chlorine, less than a company remained combat-ready; 97% of the soldiers and officers were poisoned. The troops also did not yet know how to conduct chemical reconnaissance, that is, identify heavily contaminated areas of the area. Therefore, the Russian 220th Infantry Regiment launched a counterattack through terrain contaminated with chlorine, and lost 6 officers and 1,346 privates from gas poisoning.
“Due to the enemy’s complete indiscriminateness in means of combat”
Just two days after the first gas attack against Russian troops, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich changed his mind about chemical weapons. On June 2, 1915, a telegram was sent from him to Petrograd: “The Supreme Commander-in-Chief admits that, due to the complete indiscriminateness of our enemy in the means of struggle, the only measure of influence on him is the use on our part of all the means used by the enemy. The Commander-in-Chief asks for orders to carry out the necessary tests and supply the armies with appropriate devices with a supply of poisonous gases.”
But the formal decision to create chemical weapons in Russia was made a little earlier - on May 30, 1915, Order No. 4053 of the War Ministry appeared, which stated that “the organization of the procurement of gases and asphyxiants and the conduct of the active use of gases is entrusted to the Commission for the Procurement of Explosives " This commission was headed by two guard colonels, both Andrei Andreevich - artillery chemistry specialists A.A. Solonin and A.A. Dzerzhkovich. The first was assigned to be in charge of “gases, their preparation and use,” the second was “to manage the matter of equipping projectiles” with poisonous chemistry.
So, since the summer of 1915, the Russian Empire became concerned with the creation and production of its own chemical weapons. And in this matter, the dependence of military affairs on the level of development of science and industry was especially clearly demonstrated.
On the one hand, by the end of the 19th century in Russia there was a powerful scientific school in the field of chemistry; it is enough to recall the epoch-making name of Dmitry Mendeleev. But, on the other hand, the Russian chemical industry in terms of production level and volumes was seriously inferior to the leading powers of Western Europe, primarily Germany, which at that time was the leader in the world chemical market. For example, in 1913, all chemical production in the Russian Empire - from the production of acids to the production of matches - employed 75 thousand people, while in Germany over a quarter of a million workers were employed in this industry. In 1913, the value of the products of all chemical production in Russia amounted to 375 million rubles, while Germany that year alone sold 428 million rubles (924 million marks) worth of chemical products abroad.
By 1914, there were less than 600 people in Russia with a higher chemical education. There was not a single special chemical-technological university in the country; only eight institutes and seven universities in the country trained a small number of chemist specialists.
It should be noted here that the chemical industry in wartime is needed not only for the production of chemical weapons - first of all, its capacity is required for the production of gunpowder and other explosives, which are needed in gigantic quantities. Therefore, there were no longer state-owned “state-owned” factories in Russia that had spare capacity for the production of military chemicals.
Attack of German infantry in gas masks in clouds of poisonous gas. Photo: Deutsches Bundesarchiv
Under these conditions, the first producer of “asphyxiating gases” was the private manufacturer Gondurin, who proposed to produce phosgene gas at his plant in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, an extremely toxic volatile substance with the smell of hay that affects the lungs. Since the 18th century, Hondurin merchants have been producing chintz, so by the beginning of the 20th century, their factories, thanks to the work on dyeing fabrics, had some experience in chemical production. The Russian Empire entered into a contract with the merchant Hondurin for the supply of phosgene in an amount of at least 10 poods (160 kg) per day.
Meanwhile, on August 6, 1915, the Germans attempted to carry out a large gas attack against the garrison of the Russian fortress of Osovets, which had been successfully holding the defense for several months. At 4 o'clock in the morning they released a huge cloud of chlorine. The gas wave, released along a front 3 kilometers wide, penetrated to a depth of 12 kilometers and spread outward to 8 kilometers. The height of the gas wave rose to 15 meters, the gas clouds this time were green in color - it was chlorine mixed with bromine.
Three Russian companies that found themselves at the epicenter of the attack were completely killed. According to surviving eyewitnesses, the consequences of that gas attack looked like this: “All the greenery in the fortress and in the immediate 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, flower petals flew off. All copper objects in the fortress - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide.”
However, this time the Germans were unable to build on the success of the gas attack. Their infantry rose to attack too early and suffered losses from the gas. Then two Russian companies counterattacked the enemy through a cloud of gases, losing up to half of the soldiers poisoned - the survivors, with swollen veins on their gas-stricken faces, launched a bayonet attack, which lively journalists in the world press would immediately call the “attack of the dead.”
Therefore, the warring armies began to use gases in increasing quantities - if in April near Ypres the Germans released almost 180 tons of chlorine, then by the fall in one of the gas attacks in Champagne - already 500 tons. And in December 1915, a new, more toxic gas, phosgene, was used for the first time. Its “advantage” over chlorine was that the gas attack was difficult to determine - phosgene is transparent and invisible, has a faint smell of hay, and does not begin to act immediately after inhalation.
Germany's widespread use of poisonous gases on the fronts of the Great War forced the Russian command to also enter the chemical arms race. At the same time, two problems had to be urgently solved: firstly, to find a way to protect against new weapons, and secondly, “not to remain in debt to the Germans,” and to answer them in kind. The Russian army and industry coped with both more than successfully. Thanks to the outstanding Russian chemist Nikolai Zelinsky, already in 1915 the world's first universal effective gas mask was created. And in the spring of 1916, the Russian army carried out its first successful gas attack.
The Empire needs poison
Before responding to German gas attacks with the same weapon, the Russian army had to establish its production almost from scratch. Initially, the production of liquid chlorine was created, which before the war was completely imported from abroad.
This gas began to be supplied by pre-war and converted production facilities - four plants in Samara, several enterprises in Saratov, one plant each near Vyatka and in the Donbass in Slavyansk. In August 1915, the army received the first 2 tons of chlorine; a year later, by the fall of 1916, the production of this gas reached 9 tons per day.
An illustrative story happened with the plant in Slavyansk. It was created at the very beginning of the 20th century to produce bleach electrolytically from rock salt mined in local salt mines. That is why the plant was called “Russian Electron”, although 90% of its shares belonged to French citizens.
In 1915, it was the only plant located relatively close to the front and theoretically capable of quickly producing chlorine on an industrial scale. Having received subsidies from the Russian government, the plant did not provide the front with a ton of chlorine during the summer of 1915, and at the end of August, management of the plant was transferred to the hands of the military authorities.
Diplomats and newspapers, seemingly allied with France, immediately made noise about the violation of the interests of French owners in Russia. The tsarist authorities were afraid of quarreling with their Entente allies, and in January 1916, management of the plant was returned to the previous administration and even new loans were provided. But until the end of the war, the plant in Slavyansk did not begin to produce chlorine in the quantities stipulated by military contracts.
An attempt to obtain phosgene from private industry in Russia also failed - Russian capitalists, despite all their patriotism, inflated prices and, due to the lack of sufficient industrial capacity, could not guarantee timely fulfillment of orders. For these needs, new state-owned production facilities had to be created from scratch.
Already in July 1915, construction began on a “military chemical plant” in the village of Globino in what is now the Poltava region of Ukraine. Initially, they planned to establish chlorine production there, but in the fall it was reoriented to new, more deadly gases - phosgene and chloropicrin. For the combat chemicals plant, the ready-made infrastructure of a local sugar factory, one of the largest in the Russian Empire, was used. Technical backwardness led to the fact that the enterprise took more than a year to build, and the Globinsky Military Chemical Plant began producing phosgene and chloropicrin only on the eve of the February revolution of 1917.
The situation was similar with the construction of the second large state enterprise for the production of chemical weapons, which began to be built in March 1916 in Kazan. The Kazan Military Chemical Plant produced the first phosgene in 1917.
Initially, the War Ministry hoped to organize large chemical plants in Finland, where there was an industrial base for such production. But bureaucratic correspondence on this issue with the Finnish Senate dragged on for many months, and by 1917 the “military chemical plants” in Varkaus and Kajaan were still not ready.
While state-owned factories were just being built, the War Ministry had to buy gases wherever possible. For example, on November 21, 1915, 60 thousand pounds of liquid chlorine were ordered from the Saratov city government.
"Chemical Committee"
Since October 1915, the first “special chemical teams” began to be formed in the Russian army to carry out gas balloon attacks. But due to the initial weakness of Russian industry, it was not possible to attack the Germans with new “poisonous” weapons in 1915.
To better coordinate all efforts to develop and produce combat gases, in the spring of 1916, the Chemical Committee was created under the Main Artillery Directorate of the General Staff, often simply called the “Chemical Committee”. All existing and newly created chemical weapons factories and all other work in this area were subordinated to him.
The Chairman of the Chemical Committee was 48-year-old Major General Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatiev. A major scientist, he had not only military, but also professorial rank, and before the war he taught a course in chemistry at St. Petersburg University.
Gas mask with ducal monograms
The first gas attacks immediately required not only the creation of chemical weapons, but also means of protection against them. In April 1915, in preparation for the first use of chlorine at Ypres, the German command provided its soldiers with cotton pads soaked in a sodium hyposulfite solution. They had to cover the nose and mouth during the release of gases.
By the summer of that year, all soldiers of the German, French and English armies were equipped with cotton-gauze bandages soaked in various chlorine neutralizers. However, such primitive “gas masks” turned out to be inconvenient and unreliable; moreover, while mitigating the damage from chlorine, they did not provide protection against the more toxic phosgene.
In Russia, in the summer of 1915, such bandages were called “stigma masks.” They were made for the front by various organizations and individuals. But as the German gas attacks showed, they hardly saved anyone from the massive and prolonged use of toxic substances, and were extremely inconvenient to use - they quickly dried out, completely losing their protective properties.
In August 1915, Moscow University professor Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky proposed using activated charcoal as a means of absorbing toxic gases. Already in November, Zelinsky’s first carbon gas mask was tested for the first time complete with a rubber helmet with glass “eyes”, which was made by an engineer from St. Petersburg, Mikhail Kummant.
Unlike previous designs, this one turned out to be reliable, easy to use and ready for immediate use for many months. The resulting protective device successfully passed all tests and was called the “Zelinsky-Kummant gas mask.” However, here the obstacles to the successful arming of the Russian army with them were not even the shortcomings of Russian industry, but the departmental interests and ambitions of officials. At that time, all work on protection against chemical weapons was entrusted to the Russian general and the German Prince Friedrich (Alexander Petrovich) of Oldenburg, a relative of the ruling Romanov dynasty, who held the position of Supreme Chief of the sanitary and evacuation unit of the imperial army. The prince by that time was almost 70 years old and Russian society remembered him as the founder of the resort in Gagra and a fighter against homosexuality in the guard. The prince actively lobbied for the adoption and production of a gas mask, which was designed by teachers of the Petrograd Mining Institute using experience in the mines. This gas mask, called the “gas mask of the Mining Institute,” as tests showed, provided worse protection from asphyxiating gases and was more difficult to breathe in than the Zelinsky-Kummant gas mask.
Despite this, the Prince of Oldenburg ordered the production of 6 million “Mining Institute gas masks”, decorated with his personal monogram, to begin. As a result, Russian industry spent several months producing a less advanced design. On March 19, 1916, at a meeting of the Special Conference on Defense - the main body of the Russian Empire for managing the military industry - an alarming report was made about the situation at the front with “masks” (as gas masks were then called): “Masks of the simplest type weakly protect against chlorine, but not at all protect against other gases. Mining Institute masks are not suitable. The production of Zelinsky’s masks, long recognized as the best, has not been established, which should be considered criminal negligence.”
As a result, only the unanimous opinion of the military allowed the mass production of Zelinsky’s gas masks to begin. On March 25, the first government order appeared for 3 million and the next day for another 800 thousand gas masks of this type. By April 5, the first batch of 17 thousand had already been produced. However, until the summer of 1916, the production of gas masks remained extremely insufficient - in June no more than 10 thousand pieces per day arrived at the front, while millions of them were required to reliably protect the army. Only the efforts of the “Chemical Commission” of the General Staff made it possible to radically improve the situation by the fall - by the beginning of October 1916, over 4 million different gas masks were sent to the front, including 2.7 million “Zelinsky-Kummant gas masks.” In addition to gas masks for people, during the First World War it was necessary to attend to special gas masks for horses, which then remained the main draft force of the army, not to mention the numerous cavalry. By the end of 1916, 410 thousand horse gas masks of various designs arrived at the front.
In total, during the First World War, the Russian army received over 28 million gas masks of various types, of which over 11 million were the Zelinsky-Kummant system. Since the spring of 1917, only they were used in combat units of the active army, thanks to which the Germans abandoned “gas balloon” attacks with chlorine on the Russian front due to their complete ineffectiveness against troops wearing such gas masks.
“The war has crossed the last line»
According to historians, about 1.3 million people suffered from chemical weapons during the First World War. The most famous of them, perhaps, was Adolf Hitler - on October 15, 1918, he was poisoned and temporarily lost his sight as a result of a nearby explosion of a chemical shell. It is known that in 1918, from January until the end of the fighting in November, the British lost 115,764 soldiers from chemical weapons. Of these, less than one tenth of one percent died - 993. Such a small percentage of fatal losses from gases is associated with the full equipment of the troops with advanced types of gas masks. However, a large number of wounded, or rather poisoned and lost combat capability, left chemical weapons a formidable force on the fields of the First World War.
The US Army entered the war only in 1918, when the Germans brought the use of a variety of chemical shells to maximum and perfection. Therefore, of all the losses of the American army, more than a quarter were due to chemical weapons. These weapons not only killed and wounded, but when used massively and for a long time, they rendered entire divisions temporarily incapable of combat. Thus, during the last offensive of the German army in March 1918, during artillery preparation against the 3rd British Army alone, 250 thousand shells with mustard gas were fired. British soldiers on the front line had to continuously wear gas masks for a week, which made them almost unfit for combat. The losses of the Russian army from chemical weapons in the First World War are estimated with a wide range. During the war, these figures were not made public for obvious reasons, and two revolutions and the collapse of the front by the end of 1917 led to significant gaps in the statistics.
The first official figures were published already in Soviet Russia in 1920 - 58,890 non-fatally poisoned and 6,268 died from gases. Research in the West, which came out hot on the heels of the 20-30s of the 20th century, cited much higher numbers - over 56 thousand killed and about 420 thousand poisoned. Although the use of chemical weapons did not lead to strategic consequences, its impact on the psyche of soldiers was significant. Sociologist and philosopher Fyodor Stepun (by the way, himself of German origin, real name Friedrich Steppuhn) served as a junior officer in the Russian artillery. Even during the war, in 1917, his book “From the Letters of an Ensign Artillery Officer” was published, where he described the horror of people who survived a gas attack: “Night, darkness, a howl overhead, the splash of shells and the whistling of heavy fragments. It's so difficult to breathe that you feel like you're about to suffocate. The voices in the masks are almost inaudible, and in order for the battery to accept the command, the officer needs to shout it directly into the ear of each gunner. At the same time, the terrible unrecognizability of the people around you, the loneliness of the damned tragic masquerade: white rubber skulls, square glass eyes, long green trunks. And all in the fantastic red sparkle of explosions and shots. And above everything there was an insane fear of heavy, disgusting death: the Germans shot for five hours, but the masks were designed for six.
You can't hide, you have to work. With every step, it stings your lungs, knocks you over backwards, and the feeling of suffocation intensifies. And you need to not only walk, you need to run. Perhaps the horror of the gases is not characterized more clearly by anything than by the fact that in the gas cloud no one paid any attention to the shelling, but the shelling was terrible - more than a thousand shells fell on one of our batteries...
In the morning, after the shelling stopped, the appearance of the battery was terrible. In the dawn fog, people are like shadows: pale, with bloodshot eyes, and with the coal of gas masks settling on their eyelids and around their mouths; many are sick, many are fainting, the horses are all lying on the hitching post with dull eyes, with bloody foam at the mouth and nostrils, some are in convulsions, some have already died.”
Fyodor Stepun summed up these experiences and impressions of chemical weapons as follows: “After the gas attack in the battery, everyone felt that the war had crossed the last line, that from now on everything was allowed to it and nothing was sacred.”
The total losses from chemical weapons in WWI are estimated at 1.3 million people, of which up to 100 thousand were fatal:
British Empire - 188,706 people were affected, of whom 8,109 died (according to other sources, on the Western Front - 5,981 or 5,899 out of 185,706 or 6,062 out of 180,983 British soldiers);
France - 190,000, 9,000 died;
Russia - 475,340, 56,000 died (according to other sources, out of 65,000 victims, 6,340 died);
USA - 72,807, 1,462 died;
Italy - 60,000, 4,627 died;
Germany - 200,000, 9,000 died;
Austria–Hungary - 100,000, 3,000 died.