By 1917, World War I was the most brutal conflict that had ever been seen on the world stage. It was no longer a war that only involved the European powers, but also countries from all over the world including the United States. During the war, the total number of casualties reached over 37 million and over eight million lives were lost (“WWI Casualty and Death Tables” 1). The extremely high number of casualties was mostly caused by new developments in warfare technology. One of the most well remembered weapons of World War I was mustard gas. Mustard gas caused the soldiers’ skin and internal organs to blister and could be fatal, but could take anywhere from a week to an entire month to claim the lives of its victims from the inside out. Mustard gas has gone down in history as one of the most dreaded elements of the war. This horrific example of chemical weaponry is just one of the numerous amounts of new warfare technology used during the First World War, including other types of chemical weapons, machine guns, bombing techniques, airplanes, submarines and radio.
Mustard gas was not the only example of chemical weaponry used during World War I. The first example of this was the Germans use of a gas called phosgene in mid-1915, which caused drastic damage to the lungs (Mack 2). The Germans began using mustard gas in 1916 and soon both sides began to use poison gas as a weapon. At a lab at American University, which at its peak employed over 1,200 scientists specifically to create chemical weapons for the war, a new gas called Lewisite was developed. Lewisite poisoned its victims through the skin and rendered gas masks useless against it. During the war as many as 50 different gases were used by both sides (Mack 2). When the war e...
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In the book All Quiet on the Western Front the Author Erich Maria Remarque portrays the use of Poisonous Gas and also describes the gas and the effects it produces. He portrays it as a deadly weapon of war. During World war 1 both the Germans and the allies go through three stages of poisonous gas 1414, Mustard Gas, then they used tear gas.
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Poisonous gas was an invention that was used by the Germans during the Battle of Second Ypres in 1915. Although poisonous gas only accounted for a small number of the war’s deaths in total, the effects were devastating. Gas was a largely ineffective as a traditional weapon. The success of the weapon depended on the type of gas and the delivery method; the weather condition was also a factor of the effectiveness of the weapon. Poisonous gas was the most important psychological weapon of the war, being feared by both soldiers and engineers. Because of this, it was used 20 years later in World War II.
Mustard gas is a poison gas best known for being used in World War I against rival countries. The poison gas was given its name because of the rotten mustard and onion odor it had. In the article “The Five Most Deadly Chemical Weapons of war” by Dina Esfandiary the author discusses some of the most dangerous gases used in wars. The author talked about the horrible effects of mustard gas in the First World War. Mustard gas targets mostly the eyes, skin and respiratory system. The side effects of the gas might start out slow but worsen as time go on. When the skin of the body comes in contact with the gas it will get red and hurt for a couple hours. As results of skin contact large blisters might start to appear. Exposed of the gas to the eyes
Poison gas, one of the most deadly of all the weapons used in this war. This weapon did not kill as many as some of the other weapons but it caused terrible suffering and did cause death sooner or later. The first gas to come about was chlorine, created by the Germans in the Battle of Ypres. Chlorine would destroy victims respiratory organs and cause breathing attacks, sometimes death. The allies were shocked at this new weapon and retaliated by creating Phosgene, even more deadly than mustard gas. Phosgene took down victims in less than 48 hours with excruciating pain. Gas sometimes backfired on the people controlling it so they would wear gas masks to cover their face from the deadly gas. The next gas created was the most deadly of them all, Mustard gas.
Thesis statement: World War I introduced many new technologies one of them being poison gases which Germans created as a mustard gas, phosgene, and chlorine
O’Neill, William L. World War II A Student Companion. 1 ed. William H. Chafe. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
In The Great War (WW1) mustard gas was one of many technologies that changed the nature of the war. The Germans introduced the chemical mustard gas in 1917. Fritz Haber, a German chemist, was thought to be the ‘father of chemical warfare’ for his years of developing the poisonous gas weapons during the era of World War 1. Haber did not only develop the deadly gasses but he also helped develop gas masks to help protect people against these poisons. Haber was not the only person responsible for developing mustard gas, there were other inventors credible for the establishment as well. Different people tweaked the creation with their own methods throughout the whole process, such as Depretz, Levinstein, Clarke and Meyer. Normally, in its gaseous
Chemical Warfare in WW1: The American Experience, 1917-1918, 10. Retrieved May 18, 2014 from http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/pdf/chemwarfare.pdf Namazi, S., Niknahad, H., & Razmkhah, H. (2009). Long-term complications of sulphur mustard poisoning in intoxicated Iranian veterans. Journal of Medical Toxicology, 5(4), 191–192. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA231350837&v=2.1&u=40mwrlib&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w.
The First World War caused a major shift in military stratagem. The last major conflict involving world powers was the Crimean War, which occurred nearly sixty years previously. Many of America’s high brass were trained on the battlefields of Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish American War; a conflict where the United States was renowned for its elite cavalry unit the “Rough Riders”. New technologies, such as tanks and machine guns, were used on such a massive scale that the tried and true tactics such as infantry and cavalry charges sought nothing but setbacks and major casualties. The battlefield went from being a duel between honorable opponents to a brutal hell for millions of foot-soldiers in the trenches. Paranoia of the enemy and scenes of the bloated bodies of comrades killed by the enemy created a dim horror scape. However, the most feared enemy was something that could not be seen, merely known for its distinctive sweet, spicy scent: mustard gas.
The Geneva Convention drastically changed how war was fought. “The Geneva Conventions is a body of Public International Law, whose purpose is to provide minimum protections, standards of humane treatment, and fundamental guarantees of respect to individuals who become victims of armed conflicts.” The Geneva Convention banned gases like mustard, phosphine, nerve gas. Mustard gas gets its name from its yellow-brown color it also smells faintly of horseradish. Mustard gas is more dense than air, therefore it proved very efficient in clearing trenches. Mustard Gas causes the lungs to fill with fluid and causes soldiers to drown in their own fluids.