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.
On April 24, 1915, on a front line near the city of Ypres, French and British soldiers noticed a strange yellow-green cloud that was rapidly moving towards them. It seemed that nothing foreshadowed trouble, but when this fog reached the first line of trenches, the people in it began to fall, cough, suffocate and die.
This day became the official date of the first massive use of chemical weapons. The German army, on a six-kilometer-wide front, released 168 tons of chlorine towards enemy trenches. The poison affected 15 thousand people, of which 5 thousand died almost instantly, and the survivors died later in hospitals or remained disabled for life. After using the gas, the German troops went on the attack and occupied enemy positions without losses, because there was no one left to defend them.
The first use of chemical weapons was considered successful, so it soon became a real nightmare for soldiers on the opposing sides. All countries participating in the conflict used chemical warfare agents: chemical weapons became a real “calling card” of the First World War. By the way, the city of Ypres was “lucky” in this regard: two years later, the Germans in the same area used dichlorodiethyl sulfide against the French, a blister chemical weapon called “mustard gas.”
This small town, like Hiroshima, has become a symbol of one of the worst crimes against humanity.
On May 31, 1915, chemical weapons were used against the Russian army for the first time - the Germans used phosgene. The gas cloud was mistaken for camouflage and even more soldiers were transferred to the front line. The consequences of the gas attack were terrible: 9 thousand people died a painful death, even the grass died due to the effects of the poison.
History of chemical weapons
The history of chemical warfare agents (CWA) goes back hundreds of years. Various chemical compounds were used to poison enemy soldiers or temporarily incapacitate them. Most often, such methods were used during the siege of fortresses, since using toxic substances during a war of maneuver is not very convenient.
For example, in the West (including Russia) they used artillery “stinking” cannonballs, which emitted suffocating and poisonous smoke, and the Persians used an ignited mixture of sulfur and crude oil when storming cities.
However, of course, there was no need to talk about the massive use of toxic substances in the old days. Chemical weapons began to be considered by generals as one of the means of warfare only after toxic substances began to be obtained in industrial quantities and they learned how to store them safely.
Certain changes were also required in the psychology of the military: back in the 19th century, poisoning one’s opponents like rats was considered an ignoble and unworthy thing. The British military elite reacted with indignation to the use of sulfur dioxide as a chemical warfare agent by British Admiral Thomas Gokhran.
Already during the First World War, the first methods of protection against toxic substances appeared. At first these were various bandages or capes impregnated with various substances, but they usually did not give the desired effect. Then gas masks were invented, similar in appearance to modern ones. However, gas masks at first were far from perfect and did not provide the required level of protection. Special gas masks have been developed for horses and even dogs.
The means of delivering toxic substances did not stand still either. If at the beginning of the war gas was easily sprayed from cylinders towards the enemy, then artillery shells and mines began to be used to deliver chemical agents. New, more deadly types of chemical weapons have emerged.
After the end of the First World War, work in the field of creating toxic substances did not stop: methods of delivering chemical agents and methods of protection against them were improved, and new types of chemical weapons appeared. Tests of combat gases were carried out regularly, special shelters were built for the population, soldiers and civilians were trained to use personal protective equipment.
In 1925, another convention was adopted (the Geneva Pact) prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, but this in no way stopped the generals: they had no doubt that the next big war would be a chemical one, and were intensively preparing for it. In the mid-thirties, German chemists developed nerve gases, the effects of which are the most lethal.
Despite their lethality and significant psychological effect, today we can confidently say that chemical weapons are a passed stage for humanity. And the point here is not in the conventions prohibiting the poisoning of one’s own kind, or even in public opinion (although it also played a significant role).
The military has practically abandoned toxic substances, because chemical weapons have more disadvantages than advantages. Let's look at the main ones:
- Strong dependence on weather conditions. At first, poisonous gases were released from cylinders downwind in the direction of the enemy. However, the wind is changeable, so during the First World War there were frequent cases of defeat of own troops. The use of artillery ammunition as a delivery method solves this problem only partially. Rain and simply high air humidity dissolve and decompose many toxic substances, and air updrafts carry them high into the sky. For example, the British lit numerous fires in front of their defense line so that the hot air would carry enemy gas upward.
- Unsafe storage. Conventional ammunition without a fuse detonates extremely rarely, which cannot be said about shells or containers with explosive agents. They can cause massive casualties, even from deep behind the lines in a warehouse. In addition, the cost of their storage and disposal is extremely high.
- Protection. The most important reason for abandoning chemical weapons. The first gas masks and bandages were not very effective, but soon they provided quite effective protection against chemical agents. In response, chemists came up with blister gases, after which a special chemical protection suit was invented. Armored vehicles now have reliable protection against any weapon of mass destruction, including chemical weapons. In short, the use of chemical warfare agents against a modern army is not very effective. That is why in the last fifty years, explosive agents have been used more often against civilians or partisan detachments. In this case, the results of its use were truly terrifying.
- Inefficiency. Despite the horror that gases caused soldiers during the Great War, analysis of casualties showed that conventional artillery fire was more effective than firing chemical weapons ammunition. A projectile filled with gas was less powerful, and therefore did a worse job of destroying enemy engineering structures and barriers. The surviving fighters quite successfully used them in defense.
Today, the greatest danger is that chemical weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists and be used against civilians. The toll in this case can be horrific. A chemical warfare agent is relatively easy to produce (unlike a nuclear agent), and it is cheap. Therefore, threats from terrorist groups regarding possible gas attacks should be taken very carefully.
The biggest disadvantage of chemical weapons is their unpredictability: where the wind will blow, whether the air humidity will change, in which direction the poison will flow along with the groundwater. In whose DNA the mutagen from the combat gas will be embedded, and whose child will be born crippled. And these are not theoretical questions at all. American soldiers crippled after using their own Agent Orange gas in Vietnam are clear evidence of the unpredictability of chemical weapons.
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Early on an April morning in 1915, a light breeze blew from the German positions opposing the Entente defense line twenty kilometers from the city of Ypres (Belgium). Together with him, a dense yellowish-green cloud that suddenly appeared began to move in the direction of the Allied trenches. At that moment, few people knew that this was the breath of death, and, in the terse language of front-line reports, the first use of chemical weapons on the Western Front.
Tears Before Death
To be absolutely precise, the use of chemical weapons began back in 1914, and the French came up with this disastrous initiative. But then ethyl bromoacetate was used, which belongs to the group of chemicals that are irritating and not lethal. It was filled with 26-mm grenades, which were used to fire at German trenches. When the supply of this gas came to an end, it was replaced with chloroacetone, which has a similar effect.
In response to this, the Germans, who also did not consider themselves obliged to comply with generally accepted legal norms enshrined in the Hague Convention, fired at the British with shells filled with a chemical irritant at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, which took place in October of the same year. However, then they failed to achieve its dangerous concentration.
Thus, April 1915 was not the first case of the use of chemical weapons, but, unlike previous ones, deadly chlorine gas was used to destroy enemy personnel. The result of the attack was stunning. One hundred and eighty tons of spray killed five thousand Allied soldiers and another ten thousand became disabled as a result of the resulting poisoning. By the way, the Germans themselves suffered. The cloud carrying death touched their positions with its edge, the defenders of which were not fully equipped with gas masks. In the history of the war, this episode was designated the “black day at Ypres.”
Further use of chemical weapons in World War I
Wanting to build on their success, a week later the Germans repeated a chemical attack in the Warsaw area, this time against the Russian army. And here death received a bountiful harvest - more than one thousand two hundred killed and several thousand left crippled. Naturally, the Entente countries tried to protest against such a gross violation of the principles of international law, but Berlin cynically stated that the Hague Convention of 1896 only mentioned poisonous shells, and not gases themselves. Admittedly, they didn’t even try to object - war always undoes the work of diplomats.
The specifics of that terrible war
As military historians have repeatedly emphasized, in the First World War the tactics of positional actions were widely used, in which continuous front lines were clearly defined, characterized by stability, density of concentration of troops and high engineering and technical support.
This greatly reduced the effectiveness of offensive actions, since both sides encountered resistance from the enemy’s powerful defense. The only way out of the impasse could be an unconventional tactical solution, which was the first use of chemical weapons.
New war crimes page
The use of chemical weapons in the First World War was a major innovation. The range of its impact on humans was very wide. As can be seen from the above episodes of the First World War, it ranged from harmful, which was caused by chloroacetone, ethyl bromoacetate and a number of others that had an irritating effect, to fatal - phosgene, chlorine and mustard gas.
Despite the fact that statistics show the relative limitation of the gas’s deadly potential (only 5% of deaths out of the total number of those affected), the number of dead and maimed was enormous. This gives us the right to claim that the first use of chemical weapons opened a new page of war crimes in the history of mankind.
In the later stages of the war, both sides were able to develop and introduce fairly effective means of defense against enemy chemical attacks. This made the use of toxic substances less effective, and gradually led to the abandonment of their use. However, it was the period from 1914 to 1918 that went down in history as the “war of the chemists,” since the first use of chemical weapons in the world occurred on its battlefields.
The tragedy of the defenders of the Osowiec fortress
However, let us return to the chronicle of military operations of that period. At the beginning of May 1915, the Germans carried out an attack against Russian units defending the Osowiec fortress, located fifty kilometers from Bialystok (present-day territory of Poland). According to eyewitnesses, after a long period of shelling with shells filled with deadly substances, among which several types were used at once, all living things at a considerable distance were poisoned.
Not only did people and animals caught in the shelling zone die, but all vegetation was destroyed. Before our eyes, the leaves of the trees turned yellow and fell off, and the grass turned black and lay on the ground. The picture was truly apocalyptic and did not fit into the consciousness of a normal person.
But, of course, the defenders of the citadel suffered the most. Even those who escaped death, for the most part, received severe chemical burns and were terribly disfigured. It is no coincidence that their appearance inspired such horror on the enemy that the Russian counterattack, which eventually drove the enemy away from the fortress, entered the history of the war under the name “attack of the dead.”
Development and beginning of use of phosgene
The first use of chemical weapons revealed a significant number of its technical shortcomings, which were eliminated in 1915 by a group of French chemists led by Victor Grignard. The result of their research was a new generation of deadly gas - phosgene.
Absolutely colorless, in contrast to the greenish-yellow chlorine, it betrayed its presence only by the barely perceptible smell of moldy hay, which made it difficult to detect. Compared to its predecessor, the new product was more toxic, but at the same time had certain disadvantages.
Symptoms of poisoning, and even the death of the victims themselves, did not occur immediately, but a day after the gas entered the respiratory tract. This allowed poisoned and often doomed soldiers to participate in hostilities for a long time. In addition, phosgene was very heavy, and to increase mobility it had to be mixed with the same chlorine. This hellish mixture was given the name “White Star” by the Allies, since the cylinders containing it were marked with this sign.
Devilish novelty
On the night of July 13, 1917, in the area of the Belgian city of Ypres, which had already gained notorious fame, the Germans made the first use of chemical weapons with blister effects. At the place of its debut, it became known as mustard gas. Its carriers were mines that sprayed a yellow oily liquid upon explosion.
The use of mustard gas, like the use of chemical weapons in general in the First World War, was another diabolical innovation. This “achievement of civilization” was created to damage the skin, as well as the respiratory and digestive organs. Neither a soldier's uniform nor any type of civilian clothing could protect him from its effects. It penetrated through any fabric.
In those years, no reliable means of protection against getting it on the body had yet been produced, which made the use of mustard gas quite effective until the end of the war. The very first use of this substance disabled two and a half thousand enemy soldiers and officers, of whom a significant number died.
Gas that does not spread along the ground
It was not by chance that German chemists started developing mustard gas. The first use of chemical weapons on the Western Front showed that the substances used - chlorine and phosgene - had a common and very significant drawback. They were heavier than air, and therefore, in a sprayed form, they fell down, filling trenches and all kinds of depressions. The people in them were poisoned, but those who were on higher ground at the time of the attack often remained unharmed.
It was necessary to invent a poisonous gas with a lower specific gravity and capable of hitting its victims at any level. This was the mustard gas that appeared in July 1917. It should be noted that British chemists quickly established its formula, and in 1918 they put the deadly weapon into production, but large-scale use was prevented by the truce that followed two months later. Europe breathed a sigh of relief - the First World War, which lasted four years, was over. The use of chemical weapons became irrelevant, and their development was temporarily stopped.
The beginning of the use of toxic substances by the Russian army
The first case of the use of chemical weapons by the Russian army dates back to 1915, when, under the leadership of Lieutenant General V.N. Ipatiev, a program for the production of this type of weapon in Russia was successfully implemented. However, its use at that time was in the nature of technical tests and did not pursue tactical purposes. Only a year later, as a result of work on introducing developments created in this area into production, it became possible to use them on the fronts.
The full-scale use of military developments coming out of domestic laboratories began in the summer of 1916 during the famous It is this event that makes it possible to determine the year of the first use of chemical weapons by the Russian army. It is known that during the military operation, artillery shells filled with the asphyxiating gas chloropicrin and the poisonous gases vencinite and phosgene were used. As is clear from the report sent to the Main Artillery Directorate, the use of chemical weapons provided “a great service to the army.”
Grim statistics of war
The first use of the chemical set a disastrous precedent. In subsequent years, its use not only expanded, but also underwent qualitative changes. Summing up the sad statistics of the four war years, historians state that during this period the warring parties produced at least 180 thousand tons of chemical weapons, of which at least 125 thousand tons found their use. On the battlefields, 40 types of various toxic substances were tested, causing death and injury to 1,300,000 military personnel and civilians who found themselves in the zone of their use.
A lesson left unlearned
Did humanity learn a worthy lesson from the events of those years and did the date of the first use of chemical weapons become a dark day in its history? Hardly. And today, despite international legal acts prohibiting the use of toxic substances, the arsenals of most countries in the world are full of their modern developments, and more and more often reports appear in the press about its use in various parts of the world. Humanity is stubbornly moving along the path of self-destruction, ignoring the bitter experience of previous generations.
The use of poisonous gases in World War I was a major military innovation. The effects of toxic substances ranged from simply harmful (such as tear gas) to deadly poisonous ones, such as chlorine and phosgene. Chemical weapons were one of the main weapons in the First World War and throughout the 20th century. The lethal potential of the gas was limited - only 4% of deaths from the total number of victims. However, the proportion of non-fatal incidents was high, and gas remained one of the main dangers for soldiers. Because it became possible to develop effective countermeasures against gas attacks, unlike most other weapons of the period, its effectiveness began to decline in the later stages of the war and it almost fell out of use. But because chemical agents were first used in World War I, it was also sometimes called the “Chemists’ War.”
History of Poison Gases 1914
In the early days of the use of chemicals as weapons, the drugs were tear irritants and not lethal. During World War I, the French pioneered the use of gas using 26mm grenades filled with tear gas (ethyl bromoacetate) in August 1914. However, the Allies' supplies of ethyl bromoacetate quickly ran out, and the French administration replaced it with another agent, chloroacetone. In October 1914, German troops fired shells partially filled with a chemical irritant against British positions at Neuve Chapelle, even though the concentration achieved was so small that it was barely noticeable.
1915: widespread use of deadly gases
Germany was the first to use gas as a weapon of mass destruction on a large scale during the First World War 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 using 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 clouds of a yellowish-green color. It should be noted that the German infantry also suffered from the gas and, lacking sufficient reinforcements, were unable to take advantage of their advantage 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 with the fact that the Hague Convention prohibits only the use of poisonous shells, but not gases.
After the Battle of Ypres, poison gas was 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 Osowiec. On May 5, 90 people immediately died in the trenches; of the 207 who were taken to field hospitals, 46 died on the same day, and 12 died after prolonged suffering. The effect of the gases against the Russian army, however, did not prove to be effective enough: despite serious losses, the Russian army drove 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, the Russian soldiers with 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 participant in the defense. - 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, the flower petals flew off. 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 hermetically sealed meat, butter, lard, vegetables turned out to be poisoned and unsuitable for consumption.”
“The half-poisoned wandered back,” this is another author, “and, tormented by thirst, bent down to sources of water, but here the gases lingered in low places, and secondary poisoning led to death.”