Chemical weapons
Armas químicas (cloro, fosgeno, gas mostaza)
- Date
- 1915 · confidence high
- Place
- Ypres, Belgium
- Credited to
- Fritz Haber (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin); first chlorine attack, 22-4-1915; mustard gas (1917)
- People
- 👤 Fritz Haber1868–1934
- Field
- Conflict
What it is
Industrial use of toxic gases as a weapon of war, directed by the same chemist who synthesised ammonia. It brought laboratory science into mass killing.
What it led to
- Gas mask and scientific total war
- Geneva Protocol (1925)
- Organophosphate insecticides and nerve agents (tabun, 1936)
Built on
- Haber-Bosch process1909–1913
- German chemical industry (IG Farben, BASF)
Made possible
- Gas mask
- Nerve gases
- Organophosphate insecticides