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On April 22, 1915, the German military released 150 tons of chlorine gas at Ypres, Belgium. Carried by a long-awaited wind, the chlorine cloud passed within a few minutes through the British and French trenches, leaving behind at least 1,000 dead and 4,000 injured. This chemical attack, which amounted to the first use of a weapon of mass destruction, marks a turning point in world history. The preparation as well as the execution of the gas attack was orchestrated by Fritz Haber, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. During World War I, Haber transformed his research institute into a center for the development of chemical weapons (and of the means of protection against them).
Bretislav Friedrich and Martin Wolf (Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, the successor institution of Haber’s institute) together with Dieter Hoffmann, Jürgen Renn, and Florian Schmaltz (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) organized an international symposium to commemorate the centenary of the infamous chemical attack. The symposium examined crucial facets of chemical warfare from the first research on and deployment of chemical weapons in WWI to the development and use of chemical warfare during the century hence. The focus was on scientific, ethical, legal, and political issues of chemical weapons research and deployment — including the issue of dual use — as well as the ongoing effort to control the possession of chemical weapons and to ultimately achieve their elimination.
The volume consists of papers presented at the symposium and supplemented by additional articles that together cover key aspects of chemical warfare from 22 April 1915 until the summer of 2015.
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Keywords
- Fritz Haber
- Military-Industrial Complex
- 1925 Geneva Protocol
- Ethics of Chemical Warfare
- Dual-use Problem
- Anti-plant Chemical Warfare
- Chemical Weapons During World War I
- Chemical Weapons During World War II
- Chemical Weapons in the Middle East
- Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Lethal Unitary Chemical Agents and Munitions
- Open Access
- research ethics
Table of contents (22 papers)
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Front Matter
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Research on and Deployment of Chemical Weapons in World War I
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Front Matter
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Contexts and Consequences of Chemical Weapons
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Front Matter
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Dual Use, Storage and Disposal of Chemical Weapons Today
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Front Matter
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Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences
Editors: Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann, Jürgen Renn, Florian Schmaltz, Martin Wolf
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-51663-9Published: 28 November 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-84712-2Published: 30 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-51664-6Published: 26 November 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 408
Number of Illustrations: 32 b/w illustrations, 11 illustrations in colour
Topics: History of Military, Military and Defence Studies, History of Chemistry, Research Ethics, International Humanitarian Law, Law of Armed Conflict, Security Science and Technology