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- Herausgeber: Uniform
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
This collaborative work investigates the unfolding catastrophe that the unleashing of chlorine against the Allied positions meant for individual soldiers and civilians. It describes the hesitation on the German side about the effectiveness, and hence impact on combat operations of the weapon whilst reflecting on the lack of Allied response to the many intelligence pointers that something significant was afoot.It goes on to describe the massive transformation that societies were undergoing as a consequence of industrialisation, science and technology, and the impact these trends were to have on the emergence of what we know today as 'total war'. Chemical warfare pitted the brightest minds from the various belligerents against each other and in some ways this competition revealed early thinking about intellectual superiority that was to define the decades after the Armistice. The ability to survive in a chemically contaminated environment was proof of a higher level of achievement. In simple terms, chemical defence equalled survival of the fittest.
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INNOCENCESLAUGHTERED
Gas and the transformation of warfare and society
edited byJean Pascal Zanders
The Monument to the first victims of a gas attack at Steenstraete. This telling monument by sculptor M. Real del Sarte and architect P. Bourin was inaugurated in May 1929 near the northernmost end of the line of the German gas offensive of 22 April 1915. Only 12 years after its inauguration, on 8 May 1941, it was dynamited by German occupation forces, only to be replaced by a high cross many years after the Second World War. (In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres)
CONTENTS
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Dr Maartje Abbenhuis is assistant professor in Modern European History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She researches the history of neutrality and internationalism, particularly in Europe in the period 1815–1919. Her main publications on this are An Age of Neutrals. Great Power Politics 1815–1914 (2014) and The Art of Staying Neutral. The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914–1918 (2006), a book on the maintenance of neutrality by the Netherlands in the First World War.
Dominiek Dendooven (Brugge, 1971) is a researcher at In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres. Among his publications on the First World War are Menin Gate & Last Post. Ypres as Holy Ground (Klaproos, 2001), World War One. Five Continents in Flanders (Lannoo, 2008).
Bert Heyvaert studied history and archaeology at universities of Leuven and Sheffield. From 2005 until 2007 he was a staff member at the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres and the memorial museum Passchendaele 1917. Since 2008 he has worked as an archaeologist in Flanders, specialising in conflict archaeology. He is a member of the organising committee of the annual ‘Conflict in Contact’ conference for conflict archaeology in Belgium.
Olivier Lepick holds a PhD degree in International History and International Politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies of Geneva (Geneva University). His PhD dissertation was dedicated to strategical, tactical, scientific and industrial aspects of chemical warfare during the First World War. He is a Research Associate at the Foundation for Strategic Studies in Paris and his research has centred around chemical and biological weapons. He is the author of numerous articles and books on these issues: The Great Chemical War 1914–1918 (1998, Presses Universitaires de France), Chemical Weapons (1999, PUF), Biological Weapons (2001, PUF), Non-conventional terrorism: chemical, biological and nuclear (2003, PUF).
Dr David Omissi is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Hull, where he teaches British imperial, Indian and military history. Before moving to Hull, he was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He is the author of The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (1994), and editor of Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914–1918 (1999). His article ‘Europe Through Indian Eyes: Indian Soldiers Encounter England and France, 1914–1918’, English Historical Review, 122 (2007) was recently nominated as one of the 35 ‘most respected’ articles published in the EHR since the periodical’s foundation in 1886.
Dr Gerard Oram is a tutor in the war and society programme at Swansea University. His research interests include the relationship between conflict and legal structures and his approach often combines historical inquiry with criminology. He has published widely on morale and discipline in both military and civilian contexts. Recently he has been acting as an advisor to the BBC for the World War One at Home project.
Julian Putkowski is a 68-year-old university lecturer and broadcaster with a long-established interest in British military discipline and dissent during the First World War. Since 2009 he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, but lives and works in London. His contributions to the study of mutinies and military ‘collective bargaining’ is recorded in https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol8/no2/part4-intro.html. With Julian Sykes, he wrote Shot at Dawn (1989) and supported the ensuing campaign that in 2006 secured posthumous conditional pardons for soldiers executed by the British Army during the First World War. His views about the campaign feature in Murderous Tommies (2011), co-authored with Mark Dunning, and independently in a commemorative pamphlet, entitled Three Uneasy Pieces (2014).
Dr Leo van Bergen (Venlo, the Netherlands, 1959) is a medical historian specialised in tropical medicine and ‘war and medicine’. He has written numerous articles on medicine in the First World War in peer-reviewed journals and has written the articles on medical care in the Cambridge History of the First World War and the Online Encyclopaedia of the First World War. His monograph on the subject, Before my Helpless Sight. Suffering, dying and military medicine on the Western Front (2009), is generally regarded a must read.
Peter van den Dungen has been at the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford since 1976 and is now an honorary visiting fellow.
A peace historian, he is general coordinator of the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP). On the occasion of the centenary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF, founded in The Hague in April 1915), he organised a small exhibition on WILPF’s campaign against chemical warfare in the 1920s and 1930s at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Luc Vandeweyer is Doctor in History. He studied at the University of Leuven and has specialised in history of the Flemish movement and peace movement. In recent years he has published a lot of books and articles about the history of Belgium and the Belgian Army during the wars in the first half of the 20th century. He was asked many times by press, radio and television to comment on the commemoration of the First World War.
Dr Wolfgang Wietzker was born in former East Prussia in 1941, from where his family was forced to emigrate in 1944, and grew up in Northern Germany. He spent his professional life as an officer in the German Army. After retirement he studied new history and political sciences at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. He received his PhD degree in 2006. He has published several books on how political circumstances in Germany affected people’s personal lives.
Dr Jean Pascal Zanders is an independent researcher/consultant on disarmament and security questions. He heads The Trench, a research initiative dedicated to the future of disarmament. He holds Masters degrees in Germanic Philology-Linguistics (1980) and Political Sciences (1992) and a PhD degree in Political Sciences (1996) from the Free University of Brussels. He was Project Leader of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (1996–2003); Director of the Geneva-based BioWeapons Prevention Project (2003–08) and Senior Research Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (2008–13). He has participated as an expert to the EU Delegations in the BTWC and CWC meetings since 2010.
FOREWORD
The year 1915 saw a turning point in the history of modern warfare. It was then, on 22 April, in the fields near Ypres in Belgium that chlorine gas was first deployed on a large scale as a weapon. Chemical warfare was born that day, and before the First World War drew to a close, it had claimed, by some estimates, more than a million casualties.
Chemical weapons did not have the decisive impact that military planners in the First World War might have hoped for. But the horrific and indiscriminate suffering they caused, transformed how we think war can and should be waged. No-one was left in any doubt about the inhumane nature of chemical warfare in the aftermath of the First World War. Hence, the Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use of chemical weapons, was concluded in 1925. It took, however, seven more decades to establish a global ban on the production and use of these brutal weapons.
Since the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force in 1997, significant progress has been achieved in the elimination of existing stockpiles of these weapons. Ninety per cent of them have so far been destroyed under international verification. The verification regime set up by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also played an important role in preventing the re-emergence of chemical weapons. I am confident that the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention will continue to stand against the use of chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as a weapon by anyone under any circumstances. The historic Ieper Declaration, which they issued in April 2015 at a meeting to commemorate this first large-scale chemical attack, firmly expresses their resolve to that effect.
I am grateful to Dr Jean Pascal Zanders for his contributions over many years, as a historian and expert, to our shared goals. This volume offers a remarkable compilation of materials, rich in detail and edited in the finest traditions of highly readable scholarship. Its appearance is a timely reminder – in the centenary year of the Ypres chemical attacks – of the terrible legacy of chemical warfare, and of the extraordinary effort by which we seek to overcome it.
Ahmet Üzümcü
Director-General
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
Louis Raemaekers: Slow Asphyxiation, 1916.
INTRODUCTION
In November 2005 In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres organised and hosted an international conference in Ypres, entitled 1915: Innocence Slaughtered. The first major attack with chemical weapons, launched by Imperial German forces from their positions near Langemarck on the northern flank of the Ypres Salient on 22 April 1915, featured prominently among the presentations. I was also one of the speakers, but my address focused on how to prevent a similar event with biological weapons. Indeed, it was one of the strengths of the conference not to remain stuck in a past of – at that time – nine decades earlier, but also to invite reflection on future challenges in other areas of disarmament and arms control. Notwithstanding, the academic gathering had a secondary goal from the outset, namely to collect the papers with historical focus for academic publication.
The eminent Dutch professor and historian Koen Koch chaired the conference. He was also to edit the book with the historical analyses. Born just after the end of the Second World War in Europe, he sadly passed away in January 2012. He had earned the greatest respect from his colleagues, so much so that the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, set up the Koen Koch Foundation to support students and trainees who wish to investigate the dramatic events in the Ypres Salient during the four years of the First World War. The homage was very apt: Professor Koch had built for himself a considerable reputation as an author of studies on the First World War. Most remarkable: The Netherlands had remained neutral during the conflagration, which adds to the value of his insights.
Death, unfortunately, also ends projects. In the summer of 2014, while doing some preliminary research on the history of chemical warfare, I came across the manuscripts of the chapters that make up the bulk of this book. They were in different editorial stages, the clearest indication of how abruptly the publication project had screeched to an end. Reading them I was struck by the quality of the contents, rough as the texts still were. Together, the contributions also displayed a high degree of coherence.
One group of papers reflected on the minutiae of the unfolding catastrophe that the unleashing of chlorine against the Allied positions meant for individual soldiers and civilians. They also vividly described German doubts about the effectiveness of the new weapon, and hence its potential impact on combat operations. These contributions also reflected on the lack of Allied response to the many intelligence pointers that something significant was afoot. In hindsight, we may ponder how the Allied military leaders could have missed so many indicators. Yet, matter-of-fact assessments of gas use by Allied combatants recur in several chapters, suggesting either widespread anticipation of the introduction of toxic chemicals as a method of warfare or some degree of specific forewarning of the German assault. Gaps in the historical record, however, do not allow a more precise determination of Allied anticipation of chemical warfare. Still, a general foreboding may differ significantly from its concrete manifestation. From the perspective of a contemporary, the question was more likely one of how to imagine the unimaginable. Throughout the Second Battle of Ypres senior Allied commanders proved particularly unimaginative. In the end, the fact that German military leaders had only defined tactical goals for the combat operations following up on the release of chlorine, meant that they had forfeited any strategic ambition – such as restoring movement to a stalemated front, seizing the Channel ports, or capturing the vital communications node that Ypres was – during the Second Battle of Ypres, or ever after. The surprise element was never to be repeated again. Not during the First World War, not in any more recent armed conflict.
The second group of papers captured the massive transformation societies were undergoing as a consequence of industrialisation, science and technology, and the impact these trends were to have on the emergence of what we know today as ‘total war’. Chemical warfare pitted the brightest minds from the various belligerents against each other. The competition became possible because the interrelationship between scientists, industry, politicians and the military establishment was already changing fast. But chemical warfare also helped to effectuate and institutionalise those changes. In many respects, it presaged the Manhattan Project in which the various constituencies were brought together with the sole purpose of developing a new type of weapon. In other ways the competition revealed early thinking about racial superiority that was to define the decades after the Armistice. The ability to survive in a chemically contaminated environment was proof of a higher level of achievement. In other words, chemical defence equalled survival of the fittest. Or how Darwin’s evolutionary theory was deliberately misused in the efforts to justify violation of then existing norms against the used of poison weapons or asphyxiating gases.
During and in the immediate aftermath of the war, opposition to chemical warfare was slow to emerge. In part, this was the consequence of the appreciation by soldiers in the trenches and non-combatants living and working near the frontlines that gas was one among many nuisances and dangers they daily faced as its use became more regular. Defences, advanced training and strict gas discipline gave soldiers more than a fair chance of surviving a gas attack. The violence of total war swept away the humanitarian sentiments that had given rise to the first international treaties banning the use of poison and asphyxiating gases in the final year of the 19th century. Those documents became obsolete because people viewed modern gas warfare as quite distinct from primitive use of poison and poisoned weapons or the scope of the prohibition had been too narrowly defined. By February 1918 chemical warfare had become so regular that a most unusual public appeal on humanitarian grounds by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) badly backfired on the organisation. Throughout the 1920s the choice between an outright ban on chemical weapons and preparing populations for the consequences of future chemical warfare would prove divisive for the ICRC. In contrast, peace and anti-war movements in Europe campaigned against war in all its aspects and consequently refused to resist one particular mode of warfare before the Armistice. It is instructive to learn that opposition to chemical warfare specifically first arose far away from the battlefields – northern America and neutral Netherlands – and among a group of citizens not directly involved in combat operations: women. And perhaps more precisely, women of science who protested the misapplication of their research and endeavours to destroy humans. Just like the chlorine cloud of 22 April 1915 foreshadowed the Manhattan project, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom presaged the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, who would bring together scientists, academics and political leaders to counter the growing menace of nuclear war and find solutions to other threats to peace and security.
It was clear to me that I should not remain a privileged reader of the manuscripts. They contained too much material and insights that the broader public should have access to. Piet Chielens, curator of the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, and Dominiek Dendooven, researcher at the Museum, could not agree more, and so a new publication project was born. However, since the centenary of the chlorine attack was only a few months away, reviving the academic product Koen Koch had been working on was initially not an option. So, the decision was to exploit modern communication technologies and produce the volume as a PDF file in the first instance. However, by the time the electronic edition was ready for online publication, In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, had found a publisher willing and able to produce a formal edited volume before the end of the centenary year of the first modern gas attack. My gratitude goes to Ryan Gearing of Uniform Press for his guidance and concrete assistance in making this book a reality.
Time for preparing this publication was very short. To my pleasant surprise, every author in this volume responded favourably and collaboration over several intense weeks – both in the preparation of the original PDF version and the subsequent book project – proved remarkably gratifying and productive. Some contributors even took the time to introduce me to certain concepts widely accepted among historians, which I, with my background in linguistics and political science, had interpreted rather differently. For the experience in preparing this volume, I indeed wish to thank every single contributor.
22 April 1915 was not just the day when the chlorine cloud rolled over the battlefield in Flanders. It also symbolises the confluence of often decade-old trends in science, technology, industry, military art and the way of war, and social organisation. That day augured our modern societies with their many social, scientific and technological achievements. However, it was also a starting point for new trends that eventually led nations down the path of the atomic bomb and industrialised genocide in concentration camps. It also highlighted the perennial struggle of international law and institutions to match rapid scientific and technological advances that could lead to new weapons or modes of warfare. This volume captures the tree dimensions: the immediate impact of poison warfare on the battlefield, the ways in which the events in the spring of 1915 and afterwards shaped social attitudes to the scientification and industrialisation of warfare, and the difficulties of capturing chemical and industrial advances in internationally binding legal instruments. Indeed, there can be no more poignant reminder that our insights into the trends that brought the chlorine release 100 years ago are crucial to our understanding of trends shaping our societies today and tomorrow.
Yes, the world has moved on since the First World War, even if the use of chlorine in the Syrian civil war one century later may seem to challenge the thought. Yet, one institution may unwittingly have come to symbolise the progression. Fritz Haber, the scientific and organisational genius who led Imperial Germany’s chemical warfare effort in 1915, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918. Typical for the day, the Nobel Committee detached scientific achievement from moral considerations. His contribution to the development of a synthetic fertiliser for agricultural use, for which he got the prize, equally enabled Germany to continue munition production in the face of an Allied blockade denying it access to foreign raw materials. Haber’s part in chemical warfare too fell entirely outside the Nobel Committee’s considerations. Ninety-five years later, in 2013, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons received the Nobel Peace Prize for its progress in eliminating the scourge of chemical warfare. The decision represented a strong moral statement, for it reflected the (Norwegian) Nobel Committee’s views that today chemistry, and science in general, should serve peaceful purposes. Therefore it is indeed painfully paradoxical that the successful elimination of the most toxic substances developed and produced for warfare has resulted in the return of chlorine, today a common industrial chemical, as a weapon of choice in the Syrian civil war that started in 2011.
We indeed still experience the consequences of 22 April 1915: this dichotomy between the application of science and technology for life and their mobilisation for war continue to characterise our societal development today. This realisation explains why I thought that the papers, initially prepared under the guidance of Professor Koen Koch, should see the light of day. Particularly now.
Jean Pascal Zanders
Ferney-Voltaire,
October 2015
THE ROAD TO THE HAGUE
JEAN PASCAL ZANDERS
Before the First World War the prohibition on the use of poison or poisoned weapons was one of the least controversial regulations in the laws of war. Between 18 May and 29 July 1899 the world’s foremost powers convened in The Hague for the first Peace Conference. The 26 participating states concluded their deliberations with three conventions and three declarations. Convention (II) with respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land captured much of the then existing customs and laws of war. Article 23 listed poison and poisoned weapons as the first of seven outlawed modes of combat.1 This document the participants adopted unanimously. At the second Hague Peace Conference in 1907 the 44 participating powers reaffirmed this ban when adopting the Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land.2
The First International Peace Conference, The Hague, May–June 1899. (HU67224)
The three declarations of the 1899 meeting touched upon novel weapon developments: discharge of projectiles and explosives from balloons, asphyxiating gases, and expanding (dum dum) bullets. Under Hague Declaration (IV, 2) the Contracting Powers agreed to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.3 The United States refused to sign it, and so did the United Kingdom on the principle that the document lacked consensus.
From a toxicological or physiological viewpoint no difference between poisons or asphyxiating gases exists: both harm living organisms through their direct toxic action. The adoption of two documents, one of which proved controversial, by the same group of diplomats points to different conceptions the negotiators had of poisons and asphyxiating gases. The former were naturally occurring substances; the latter the product of scientific and technological advancement. Concern arose towards the end of the 19th century the chemical revolution was not only fundamentally altering the nature of warfare, but also placing more agrarian societies at a distinct disadvantage.
After opening the valves of chlorine-filled cylinders near Ypres on 22 April 1915, questions sprang up as to whether the German Imperial forces had violated international law. Given the rather narrow focus on projectiles in Declaration (IV, 2), many officials and commentators on both sides of the conflict expressed the opinion that at a minimum Germany had not violated the letter of the agreement. More intriguingly, few people viewed the German chemical attack as falling foul of the Hague Conventions, whose ban on the use of poisons and poisoned weapons in combat was wholly uncontroversial. It seems that science, technology and industrialisation not just stimulated codification of the laws of war, but also reframed the ways in which the international community was to interpret the newly codified rules. International law on the eve of the First World War had not yet matured sufficiently to fully capture the impact of new weapon developments on it. Furthermore, it left sufficient ambiguity to effectively constrain the application of novel modes of warfare on the battlefield, particularly in circumstances when military objectives demanded ingenuity to overcome setbacks on the frontline.
Constraining poison warfare
If on the eve of the First World War people generally viewed poison weapons with abhorrence, it was because the constraints on their use as a method of warfare were already multifaceted and long-standing.4 On the one hand, the physical properties of the warfare agents and their dependence on environmental mediation in order to reach the target have always limited their military utility. For instance, the introduction of firearms, such as muskets and canon, moved enemy formations beyond the reach of the (poisoned) arrow. On the other hand, poisons upset the social order. Any person who had the knowledge and skills to prepare and apply them also had the power to kill even the most trained and best equipped fighter. Particularly in medieval Europe a poisoned arrow or crossbow bolt could kill a knight irrespective of his investment in armour or lifelong training. The victim’s death was a virtual certainty. Consequently, psychological and moral objections meant that a user always faced harsh punishments.
The first statements against the use of poisons and poisoned weapons in combat expressed a particular society’s moral values. Compiled in the second or first century BCE, the Manu Smrti (the Tradition of Manu), which forms one of the foundations of Hindu code, contained the earliest recorded prohibition. It exhorted a king not to use poisoned weapons.5 Religions have had a restraining influence on the conduct of war and on the use of poisons in particular. Fundamental writings such as the Bible or the Qur’an do not discuss poisoning, and consequently do not contain formal prohibitions, but the Jewish, Christian and Islamic inspired constraints were derived from other sources.6 The origins of contemporary laws of wars can be traced to the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century and the influence of Christianity and chivalry on the conduct of war in the Middle Ages.7
The Renaissance in Europe stimulated the articulation of constraints on warfare, which, in some cases reached back to Roman law. The Spanish theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1480–1546) condemned the barbaric practices, including the mutilation or massacre of prisoners, the total destruction of villages, perfidy, and the poisoning of weapons.8 Albericus Gentilis (1552–1608), an Italian who fled to England, likewise enumerated the employment of poison, veneniferous substances and magic as acts prohibited in war. ‘Magic’, a term also used in the Manu Smrti, refers in older writings to hallucinating substances. He also condemned the use of serpents.9 According to the Dutchman Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) a belligerent may kill all enemy subjects, but his means to do so are not unlimited. He deemed the use of poison and poisoned weapons prohibited because it augmented the perils of wars too much.10 These writers and later authors testified to certain practices in war that either were or ought to be banned.
Certain military formations adopted such prohibitions as part of their code of conduct. A pledge taken by German gunners in the late Middle Ages included an explicit prohibition against the construction or use of poisoned balls, ‘because the first inventors of our art thought such actions as unjust among themselves as unworthy of a man at heart and a real soldier’.11 Article 70 of the first US Army Field Manual (1863), also known as the Lieber code, similarly stated that ‘the use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare. He that uses it puts himself out of the pale of the law and usages of war’.12
However, such unilateral expressions of behaviour on the battlefield did not bind other civilisations or political entities. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia gave rise to the sovereign state, and shortly thereafter the first international accord constraining the use of poisoned weapons in war was concluded. According to Article 57 of Strasbourg Agreement of 27 August 1675, the French and German forces, and their respective allies, agreed to prohibit the firing of poisoned bullets and to severely punish any soldier using such munition.13 The Strasbourg Agreement was valid for the duration of the war, during which Louis XIV tried to establish French control over Lorraine. In general, however, no tacit or expressed comprehensive agreement on the conduct of war existed between states until the 19th century. Each then existing political unit – a feudal lord, a city state or hanseatic city, a religious empire, a nation, etc. – or military formation had the discretion of issuing unilateral rules to govern its conduct or to seek an understanding with an adversary.14
Major transformations took place during the second half of the 19th century. The sovereign state established itself as the dominant form of social organisation. As each state became recognised as an equivalent unit in the international system, the opportunities for entering in bi- or multilateral contracts increased. Furthermore, industrialisation and technological innovation rapidly changed the nature of warfare, as a consequence of which the leading powers began codifying the customs of war. They reached a milestone with the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868 prohibiting the use of explosive, fulminating or incendiary projectiles weighing less than 400 grammes. The agreement soon became obsolete, but it was the first time a multilateral treaty referred to the custom that the ‘employment of arms which uselessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevitable’ is ‘contrary to the laws of humanity’.15 This fundamental principle would be repeated in all future international agreements limiting the use of weapons in armed conflict.
Over the next three decades, the codification process accelerated. The Brussels Declaration of 27 August 1874 stated that belligerents do not have unlimited power in the adoption of means to injure an enemy. Among other instruments of war, poison or poisoned weapons are especially forbidden.16 However, not all 15 participating European governments were yet prepared to accept it as a binding convention. Lack of ratification meant it never became binding upon them. Nevertheless, together with the Oxford Manual (which proposed to outlaw the use of poison in any form whatever),17 it laid the foundation for the agreements to be achieved at the Hague Peace Conferences in 1899 and 1907. Furthermore, towards the end of the 19th century the outcomes of the many meetings striving to codify the laws of war (even when they did not produce a treaty) increasingly began to be reflected in national instructions guiding the conduct of armed forces in combat.
Emerging science and technology and their impact on warfare
As already noted, the introduction of firearms reduced the utility of poisoned kinetic weapons. That, however, did not prevent ideas for using of chemicals to force defenders from fortifications from emerging. The same technological developments also reduced the military utility of incendiary weapons: units began engaging each other at distances outside the traditional range of flaming projectiles. The incorporation of more non-combustible materials in armour and defensive constructions, too, decreased their usefulness. Not until the First World War would scientific progress be able to overcome these obstacles.18
Before 1914 armies used smoke only sporadically. In one rare instance, King Charles XII of Sweden crossed the Dvina River in the face of Polish-Saxon foes under the protection of a smoke screen generated by burning large quantities of damp straw.19 However, in the 19th century smoke generated by the increased use of black powder reduced visibility over the battlefield, thus hampering military operations. Although smokeless powder remedied the problem by the time of the American Civil War, the earlier experiences nonetheless retarded development of artificial smoke as a tactical instrument of land warfare. Only in the summer of 1915 did the belligerents commence to utilise smoke on any regular basis. Naval tactics, in contrast, had recognised the importance of concealment before the outbreak of the First World War.20
During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the evolution of weapon technology and fortification design rekindled interest in asphyxiating clouds in Europe. The idea of using of toxic chemicals to dislodge defenders from fortified positions was in and of itself not new. Archeological field investigations and contemporary literature have documented several incidents in Antiquity. Around 1600, Italian doctor and physicist Leonardo Fioravanti proposed an oil distilled from turpentine, sulphur, asafetida, human faeces and blood, etc., whose stench would have driven anybody from his position in a fortification so attacked.21 A Yugoslav writer on chemical warfare claimed that a poisonous cloud saved Belgrade from the Turks in 1456.22 During the French North African campaign in 1845, Lieutenant-Colonel Aimable Pélissier ordered the burning of green wood to suffocate the tribe of Kabyls, whose members had sought refuge in caves at Ouled Ria (south-east of Algiers).23 In response to the outrage in Europe, the French Minister of War had to issue a public apology and recalled Pélissier to Paris (which did not prevent him from being appointed Governor-General of Algeria in May 1951 and promoted to Marshal following victory at Sebastopol during the Crimean War in September 1855).
Thomas Cochrane 10th Earl of Dundonald.
The growing application of the scientific method to chemistry and the nascent industrialisation in the first half of the 19th century called forth more sophisticated proposals. The British naval officer Thomas Cochrane (later Admiral Cochrane, Lord Dundonald) suggested in 1812 to drive the Napoleonic forces from the coastal fortifications at Toulon by burning ships filled with sulphur.24 The resulting sulphur dioxide had been known since Antiquity to be unbreathable as Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews and Romans used it for fumigating buildings. Poisonous fumes were also part of tunnelling and counter-tunnelling operations under the walls of besieged cities. Recent archeological investigation, for example, discovered the skeletons of 19 Roman and one Sassanid (pre-Persian) soldiers under the walls of the ancient city of Dura-Europos, whose ruins lie on the banks of the Eufrates on the Syrian–Iraqi border. In the 3rd century, the Sassanids, who were trying to collapse the city walls, ignited sulphur and naphtha to frustrate a Roman counter-mining operation.25 Yet, armies had apparently never employed the gas in pure form in siege operations or manoeuvres before Cochrane’s proposal.26
Described as ‘a man of wide observation and no mean chemist,’ Cochrane observed during a visit to the Sulphur Kilns on Sicily in July 1811 how the fumes produced during the sulphur extraction process destroyed all surrounding vegetation and endangered animal life to a great distance. People were forbidden to sleep within three miles of the kilns during the melting season. He immediately sought to apply the observed phenomenon to military and naval purposes.27 A committee appointed by the British government to study the proposal expressed doubts about its feasibility because of the variable, uncontrollable factors of wind, weather, currents and tides. In 1846 he resubmitted his plan with the added feature of using a smoke screen to obscure the sulphur ships. A new government-appointed committee again rejected the idea, this time on grounds that the use of sulphur dioxide would be against the rules of warfare and because of the fear that after initial British use other armed forces would swiftly adopt the method against them. The admiral revived his ideas during the Crimean War, but they were refused once more inter alia for the added reason advanced by the scientist Michael Faraday that it would not be difficult for the defenders to provide respirators.28 Another attempt the next year also failed. Early in September 1914, one month into the war, Lt. Gen. Lord Dundonald submitted his grandfather’s plans to drive the enemy from his position by noxious fumes to Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener. After being rebuffed on grounds that the plans were of no use in land warfare since they had been invented by an admiral, he turned to Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. After several months of consideration, consultations, and even experiments, Churchill decided that while a technical committee would further investigate the matter, especially as regards smoke, Britain could not depart from the accepted laws of war.29 The date was 21 March 1915, almost to the day one month before the Germans launched their first major gas attack.
The Crimean War (1854–56) presaged the impact technology, industrial power and military organisation was to have on the conduct of warfare. In addition, the frustrations of a stalemated battlefield stimulated military inventiveness. A significant aspect of the British chemical warfare ideas throughout the 19th century – few as they still were – was their continuity in development rather than being discrete proposals as had been the case previously. Their submission to scientific or technical committees before the government made its policy decision undoubtedly furthered this progression. When Cochrane initially suggested the sulphur dioxide screens, the British forces had been employing smoke balls, composed of a mixture of saltpetre, coal, pitch, tar, resin, sawdust, crude antimony and sulphur for quite a long time. These weapons were declared obsolete only in August 1883. Their purpose was threefold: concealment, signals, and for suffocating or expelling the enemy from casemates, mines, or between decks of naval vessels. At the time apparently nobody commented on the similarity between the smoke balls and Cochrane’s proposals.30
However, one committee member to whom Lord Dundonald’s proposals had been sent and who had rejected them was the chemist Lyon Playfair. In two respects he played an important role. First, he preserved all of Lord Dundonald’s papers and in 1886 transferred them to the admiral’s grandson, who later submitted them to Churchill in the first months of the First World War.31 Second, he also became interested in the subject of chemistry in war and suggested, in contrast to Lord Dundonald’s smoke proposals, two types of chemical shell for application in the Crimean War. The first one was to contain – in a significant move away from the simple burning of sulphur – the highly poisonous organo-arsenic compound cacodyl chloride to make the operation of guns on enemy ships impossible.
Lyon Playfair.
The second shell was to be filled with an incendiary agent based on white phosphorous for use against land targets. The War Department rejected the propositions because it equated the mode of warfare to poisoning the enemy’s water. His ideas were far ahead of his time and, because the chemical industry had not yet reached the stage of large-scale production of either compound, it is doubtful that the British forces would have been able to utilise the shells widely if the government had responded favourably.32
Around the same time Scottish chemist John Stenhouse designed two types of gas mask based on a filter of powdered wood charcoal, which was known to remove unpleasant odours from decaying meat if strewn over it, and furnished with a velvet lining for a tight facial fit. He also devised filters to purify air entering rooms.33 As with Faraday’s comments about protective masks on Dundonald’s proposals, the military significance of defence against gas was grasped only decades later. In other countries too, gas mask development, especially for work in mines and the chemical industry, progressed considerably before any large-scale offensive use of the latest industrial toxic substances was contemplated.34
In the United States, individuals were also experimenting with noxious chemicals. In 1825, James Cutbush, professor of chemistry and mineralogy at West Point, published a book entitled System of Pyrotechny, Comprehending the Theory and Practice, with the Application of Chemistry; Designed for Exhibition and War. He thought of a whole range chemical, incendiary and smoke devices, most notably stink balls for harassing enemy troops. The idea turned up again during the Civil War to drive the enemy from trenches. Although the Confederates were apparently able to produce the devices if ordered to do so, suggesting that it was not a novel contraption, no evidence of actual use is on record.35 As this war, like the Crimean War, stimulated innovation, many other proposals emerged. Interestingly, all but one of these ideas originated with the Northerners, an indication of the growing disparities regarding the application of science and technology to warfare between industrialised and essentially agrarian societies.36 In a letter to President Lincoln, Forrest Sheppard proposed the mixing of acids, the heat of which would produce a mist of hydrochloric acid that then rolled towards the enemy entrenchments. While not possessing the lethality of later warfare agents, it would have nonetheless forced the soldiers to abandon their positions. John Doughty sent in August 1862 sketches and a detailed description for a chlorine shell. The characteristics of the chemical in the field, combined with the slow rate and inaccuracy of artillery fire, would have prevented the achievement of sufficient density over the target to be effective. Chlorine – but then liquefied in cylinders – was the agent the Germans were to release during their initial cloud attacks in April 1915. The sole known Southern idea on chemical warfare was to chloroform the ironclad Monitor. It arose after a naval battle with the Southern Merrimac had ended in a draw. Whether the suggestion was made in seriousness or jest is unknown.37
Even though very much on an individual basis, some military thinkers were considering delivery of toxic chemicals as a means of overcoming evolving defensive technologies. Most of the historical research concerns the British Empire and the United States, but evidence of similar interest in other industrialising countries would not surprise. An interesting feature of the trend is that officials, particularly in Great Britain, did not reject the proposals outright on grounds of violation of the laws and customs of war, but started to submit them to committees for consideration. It signified the scientification of policy-making. Moral or legal considerations entered the deliberations when science or technology offered marginal benefits at best or long-term advantages were in doubt. This trend was the clearest in Great Britain because of the continuity of thinking, one of its characteristics being repeated submissions of ideas and their consideration by successive committees. Ultimately the ideas failed to gain any traction, partly because the science or technology was still immature, or because of age-old bureaucratic prejudices. The rejection in 1914 of a proposal for the use of noxious fumes in land warfare because the idea came from a naval officer was a case in point. No other designs are known to have been proposed before the First World War, except for some irritant substances the French filled into bullets for riot control and similar British developments.38
A different trend was rising independently from military considerations. Many of the toxicants introduced to the battlefields during the First World War derived from developments in chemistry and chemical industry for more than a century. Chemical warfare as understood today was a distinctive outgrowth of the second industrial revolution, which originated from an increasingly utilitarian application of scientific principles driven by an economic rationale during the second half of the 19th century. This transformation, long in the making, ultimately took place in a relatively short span of time: ‘About 1880 physical chemistry was not yet a formally established academic discipline; a generation later it was transforming the industry […].’39 The foundations for this revolution were laid more or less simultaneously in several countries, including Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States, all already belonging to the industrial centre.
Greek fire – from the The Madrid Skylitzes, a richly illustrated manuscript.
Some chemicals that were to become notorious during the First World War had been discovered many decades earlier. Chlorine, the agent used near Ypres in April 1915, was first prepared by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1774 (even though only recognised as a distinctive element by the British chemist Humphry Davy in 1810).40 Davy also first synthesised phosgene in 1811.41 Another British investigator, Frederick Guthrie first described mustard agent and several of its toxic effects in two contributions published in 1860–61.42 Later laboratory research in Germany yielded more information on its deleterious actions, as well as alternative production methods. Initially both the Germans and Allies ignored its effects and failed to consider the compound as a potent warfare agent.43
The real challenge was their production on an industrial scale once their utility in other processes had been established, a capability only achieved towards the end of the 19th century. Chlorine, for example, found widespread use in the manufacture of bleaching powder for the paper and textile industries, but liquefaction for industrial purposes only became possible in 1888.44 Only seven decades after the discovery of phosgene did Germany, then the sole country to have realised its importance as an intermediate in the dyestuff manufacture, begin its production on an industrial scale. On the eve of the First World War, France and Britain too possessed the equipment for phosgene production. For diverse reasons, including access to overseas raw materials and the search for alternatives, the chemical industry developed at markedly different rates in those countries.
During the final years of the 19th century the various trends in chemistry, chemical industry and the application of technology in military art were clearly converging. Investment in science by the industry promoted applied research and preferred integrated work by one or more research teams over individuals at academic institutes. Still, remaining largely absent was systematic cross-fertilisation between civilian scientists and the new industries, on the one hand, and the military establishment, on the other hand. With the growing impact of technological innovation on military affairs, the latter group tended to rely more on its own ability to anticipate and solve technical problems. The new explosives appearing towards the end of the 19th century, however, required advanced knowledge of chemistry, which the civilian sector could provide.45 It would nonetheless take the continuance of the First World War for the military establishment to prioritise scientific innovation. Indeed, that war provided the real stimulus for focused military-oriented research into chemical compounds with the prime purpose of exploiting their poisonous characteristics against humans or their habitat. A British and a German source denied any concerted offensive chemical warfare preparations before 1914.46
If military officers steeped in tradition lacked technological imagination, science fiction presaged the future battlefield. The presentation of deadly gases as high-technology weaponry in many military science-fiction novels in different countries around the turn of the century – for instance, H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (serialised in 1897) – reflected the chemical industry’s growing impact on societies. Scientific, technological and industrial developments occurred relatively independently, but at different pace in different countries. The Crimean, American Civil and Franco–Prussian Wars each demonstrated the impact of those trends on the battlefield. Novel weapon designs and the degree to which a state was able to mobilise its technological and industrial base in support of warfare increasingly segregated agrarian societies from the rising industrial powerhouses. The then theoretical possibility of employing novel toxic substances as a potentially decisive weapon of war, as well as recent war experiences, caused sufficient concern for the powers to consider legal constraints on emerging military technologies. The 1899 Hague Peace Conference was to be the first one in a long line of efforts.
Going beyond poison: the prohibition on asphyxiating gases
Vocabulary tends to reflect the rapid changes in a society. Multiple words get coined to delineate specific phenomena. To a large degree they will be synonymous, yet also display semantic differentiation. Certain groups with a political interest in maintaining a sharp characterization of their field of activities will come to challenge some emerging referent meanings. In contrast, some terms, while fully synonymous, will claim an exclusive space, because groups want to isolate their field of activities from broader debates to avoid political interference.
Biotechnology is today in the middle of such a process as, for example, various stakeholders debate the implications of certain types of genetic modification of pathogens for future biological warfare or terrorism with biological weapons. ‘Gain-of-function’ research investigates how infectivity of a given pathogen may be augmented in order to understand future disease threats. In several respects the work mimics natural genetic evolution in a laboratory. However, in the process it creates artificial disease variants with no natural equivalent. Their escape out of a laboratory could cause an epidemiological disaster. Their potential development for military use or falling in the hands of terrorists rank among some of the worst human-made nightmares. Researchers began objecting to the utilisation of ‘gain-of-function’ in a security framework because it carried negative connotations for many analogous routine investigations. Government officials and security analysts consequently adopted the term ‘dual-use research of concern’, which connects easily with the broader threat framework of proliferation of dual-use technologies to unsavoury governments or terrorist entities. Yet they do not wish the term applied to exactly the same type of investigation in genetic modification carried out in government and private contractor laboratories as part of mostly secret biodefence programmes, which has been labelled ‘science-based threat analysis’.47
Just like biology and biotechnology today, chemistry and chemical industry at the end of the 19th century brought forth a strong sense of scientific and technological achievement and power as well as of existential dread. Captains of industry strongly resisted any governmental regulation of their activities, but at the same time sought governmental contracts and support to maintain their international market share. As noted earlier, a large chemical industrial base contributed to the projection of military might. Concerns about this shifting balance of power led agrarian states, Russia in particular, to call for an international meeting to curb this qualitative armament dynamic, the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. In international forums the type of semantic skirmishing described above plays out on even more levels, as a diplomats interpret a given concept in function of their nation’s value system, commercial, geopolitical and security interests, and threat perceptions too. Its impact is visible in the degree of consensus on any issue that delegates can achieve. Uncontroversial proposals will engender little debate; matters whose impact are still little understood or affect a country’s primary interests negatively are less likely to be adopted unanimously or at all.
The Hague Peace Conference ended with the world’s leading powers concluding the first multilateral agreements on the conduct of war. The core conventions it produced gained absolute unanimity. However, it was not successful on every count. In particular, the conference failed in its primary objective to curb the armaments build-up and the technological competition between nations. It barely managed three Declarations that touched on novel weapon developments. Only a majority of the twenty-six participating powers adopted the Declarations. The count thus reflected the highest possible level of consensus at that specific point in time. As will be discussed below, in the German perception of the role in international law in warfare, absence of unanimity testified to the immaturity of a particular rule. Consequently, it could be discarded if it conflicted with military necessity on the battlefield. The reasons why consensus proved illusive in the deliberations of proposal to ban the use of asphyxiating gases also clarify how delegates came to view this emerging category of weaponry as distinct from poison.
In diplomacy coercing negotiating parties into accepting positions contrary to their perceived national interests is impossible. The US First Delegate, Joseph F. Choate, recalled the absolute importance of consensus during the deliberations in a lecture given in 1912:
It is always necessary, in considering the work of this Conference, to remember the absolute necessity controlling it at every moment, in order to attain the end of absolute unanimity, to weigh every word in every article proposed, in order to meet any objection that might be interposed from any quarter […]48
In his instructions to the American delegation to the 1907 Hague Conference Secretary of State Elihu Root wrote:
In the discussions upon every question it is important to remember that the object of the conference is agreement, and not compulsion. If such conferences are to be made occasions for trying to force nations into positions which they consider against their interests, the powers cannot be expected to send representatives to them. It is important also that the agreements reached shall be genuine and not reluctant. Otherwise they will inevitably fail to receive approval when submitted for the ratification of the powers represented. Comparison of views and frank and considerate explanation and discussion may frequently resolve doubts, obviate difficulties, and lead to real agreement upon matters which at the outset have appeared insurmountable. It is not wise, however, to carry this process to the point of irritation. After reasonable discussion, if no agreement is reached, it is better to lay the subject aside, or refer it to some future conference in the hope that intermediate consideration may dispose of the objections. Upon some questions where an agreement by only a part of the powers represented would in itself be useful, such an agreement may be made, but it should always be with the most unreserved recognition that the other powers withhold their concurrence with equal propriety and right.49
Reporting on the work of the preparatory committee of the Final Act, French delegate Louis Renault explained that the various documents accomplished at the first International Peace Conference might bear a different number of signatures because of varying national interests.50 The level of consensus among the participating states may therefore be taken as an indicator of the strength of a particular interdiction in prevailing international law. At the same time, it underscores the degree to which those states share a common understanding of the nature of new types of weaponry or their potential humanitarian impact on the battlefield.
However, in an especially harsh appraisal of procedures at both Hague conferences, a leading French jurist, Antoine Pillet, wrote in 1918 that the authority of the rules adopted unanimously had more appearance than reality. Disillusioned as he was by the negligible impact of international law on the First World War, he attacked the system of commissions, sub-commissions and special commissions of inquiry, in which small groups composed of the same men negotiated, but rarely achieved consensus. As the proposals moved upward through the commission system, fundamental questions and issues were being ignored. By the time they had reached the plenary session, such questions and issues could no longer be raised since they would have threatened the entire enterprise of the Conference. Meanwhile, where divergencies existed, the required unanimity was obtained by changes in the phraseology, which entailed a broadening of the provision’s scope or weakening of its content.51
This criticism adds even more weight to the semantic shift that was taking place in the 1890s. Whether one describes a toxicant as a poison or an asphyxiant, from a chemical or physiological perspective no distinction exists. Yet, the progressing semantic bifurcation between poison and asphyxiating gases led to two separate documents. Moreover, one agreement failed to reach consensus. The substance of Pillet’s criticism does not appear to have affected the conventional ban on the use of poison. Indeed, the delegates adopted the relevant clause from the 1874 Brussels Declaration without any discussion at all.52 The declaration on poisonous or deleterious gases, by contrast, failed to obtain unanimity at all levels of deliberations as a consequence of US dissent. Yet, in a paradoxical implementation of Secretary of State Root’s instructions to the US delegation, sufficient states thought it worthwhile to agree to and sign the Declaration (IV, 2). While the survival of the proposal through the various negotiation stages weakens Pillet’s charge, the lack of unanimous consent nonetheless testifies to the degree of controversy the proposal generated and the subsequent relative weakness of the constraint.
While the consensus factor confirms the existence of the semantic shift, procedural and substantive debates both attested to the nature of the bifurcation. In conformity with the agenda in Count Mikhail Muravieff’s letter of 11 January 1899,53 the Second Commission of the International Peace Conference dealing with the laws and customs of war on land set to review the 1874 Brussels Declaration. Art. 12 of the latter document wanted to deny belligerents unlimited power in the adoption of means of injuring an enemy. Art. 13 applied the principle to poison or poisoned weapons as well as some other modes of warfare. Apart from some phraseological modifications, the Commission maintained the prohibitions in respectively articles 22 and 23 of the regulations annexed to the Hague Convention (II). The Second Commission furthermore united the provisions on the means to injure an enemy and on sieges and bombardments in a single chapter to state unequivocally that the articles regarding the means to injure an enemy are also applicable to sieges and to bombardments.54 It thus expanded the circumstances applicable to the use of poison.
At the 1907 International Peace Conference in The Hague no amendments to these provisions were submitted to the Second Commission.55 The Fourth Commission dealing with issues relating to naval warfare, on the other hand, investigated to what extent the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land annexed to the 1899 Hague Convention (II) might apply to maritime war. A committee of inquiry concluded that the adaptation of these regulations to the war at sea would necessitate fundamental modifications. This required critical examination, a task for which the committee was unprepared.56 It nonetheless carried out a tentative translation, which was annexed to the Fourth Commission’s General Report as the Laws and Customs of Maritime War. Noteworthy is that the committee declared articles 22 and 23 of the 1899 regulations applicable without any comment.57 The conference, having failed to produce regulations regarding maritime warfare, still expressed the desire that pending such regulations the Powers may apply, as far as possible, to war by sea the principles of the Convention relative to the laws and customs of war on land.58 In view of the committee’s recorded opinion, little doubt exists that the use of poison or poisoned weapons were also considered outlawed in naval engagements.
The ease with which the ban on the use of poison could be extended to other domains of international law testified to the lack of controversy. Far less agreement existed regarding limitations on the use of asphyxiating gases. One aspect was purely procedural. Count Muravieff’s letter of 11 January 1899 limited the agenda for the First International Peace Conference to eight topics. In view of geopolitical realities in Europe, he thus accepted, among other things, that items not contained in the programme were to remain entirely excluded from the talks.59 In the First Subcommission of the First Commission dealing with inter alia the implements of war on land, the issue of prohibiting new means of destruction depending on the application of chemistry and electricity surfaced. The absence of any formal reference in the programme led to it not being discussed. As the second point on the proposed agenda mentioned new firearms, new explosives and more powerful powders, it can be surmised that ‘the application of chemistry’ did not refer to the production of traditional munitions. Moreover, when the subject came up in the First Commission itself, the German representative, Colonel Gross von Schwarzhoff, accepted Russia’s point ‘that the existing methods of war are sufficient’, but countered successfully that ‘we should not tie our hands in advance so that we should have to ignore more humane methods which may be invented in future’.60
