Weaponry: Use of Chlorine Gas Cylinders in World War I

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Poison gases share with nuclear weapons various unhappy distinctions. They not only occupy a significant place in the defensive and offensive planning of nations, but for many years they have also threatened mankind’s future on an apocalyptic scale. Once unleashed, they are uncontrollable–indiscriminately killing both soldier and civilian.

Contrary to general belief, the combat use of asphyxiating, or at least irritating, gases did not begin with World War I. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, described the use of sulphur and arsenic dust as a fill for shells fired at naval targets. Going back quite a bit earlier in history, the Athenians and the Spartans used sulphur fumes in the 5th century bc when attacking fortified cities. The Germans, moreover, as early as 1762 used bombs that emitted asphyxiating fumes during the siege of the Austrian-held Silesian fortress of Schweidnitz.

Closer to our own time, however, Germany, along with Britain, France and Russia, entered the Hague Convention of 1899, which specifically prohibited ‘the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases. Between the time Britain entered this convention in 1907 and the outbreak of war in August of 1914, the British government decided that although a dual-purpose projectile containing an explosive charge and a tear gas would not violate the literal terms of the convention, it nevertheless was contrary to the convention’s spirit and thus would not be used by the British army or navy.

In contrast to the fair play attitude of the British, the Germans–and to a lesser extent the French–began to douse each other with tear gases almost as soon as the misery of trench warfare took hold on the Western Front late in 1914.

When the war began, the French had held a small supply of tear-gas cartridges and possibly some tear-gas hand grenades. That stockpile was depleted by the fall of 1914, and in November of that year a resupply order was placed. The resupply order came about despite the apparent fact that the tear gas had gone completely unnoticed by the Germans!

The Germans, in turn, first used an irritant on October 27, 1914, in the capture of Neuve Chappelle. That day, the Germans fired 3,000 rounds of 105mm howitzer projectiles filled with sneezing powder against some Indian troops and French cavalry. The shells contained shrapnel embedded in the sneezing powder. It was thought that the explosion would grind and disperse the irritant. In practice, the barrage was so ineffective that the French and British failed to realize that chemical munitions had been used until the fact was uncovered in a postwar investigation.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the Germans collected a stock of 18,000 T-Stoff tear-gas shells for use against the czar’s army at Bolymov as both an experiment in gas ammunition and to support an attack designed to improve the German position in that particular sector.

The result was another relatively harmless fiasco. The attack began on January 31, 1915, in extremely cold weather. Because of the cold, the T-Stoff fill for the shells failed to volatilize and disperse. Consequently, the anticipated results did not materialize, and the attack produced only a local improvement in the German tactical position.

The Germans, like the French, continued using tear gas in spite of unsatisfactory results. There is evidence, for instance, that in March 1915 tear gas was used to bombard the French at Verdun and at Nieuport. Again, the effects were so trivial that the gas went unnoticed.

At that point, one of the great chemists of the 20th century, Fritz Haber, a German reserve sergeant major of cavalry and artillery–and soon to be given an unheard-of direct promotion to captain–enters the narrative. Haber’s greatest scientific contribution, for which he won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, was the invention of a process for nitrogen fixation.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Weaponry

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