AS I read it, the gases developed in WWI (chlorine, phosphine, arsine, mustard.etc.) were neither safe (for the users) or particularly effective. Chlorine tended to blow back to the German trenches, and most of these gases were too expensive to produce in large enough volume to make them really effective.
My question is: given the horrific slaughter that characterized WWI battles, would a truly effective poison gas have saved lives? Take the battles around Verdun-over 600,000 men died there. Suppose the Germans invented “Gas X”-that wold stay around long enough to kill 99% of the enemy. With such deadly efficiency, would this have been enough for the warring parties to call a halt to the whole terrible mess?
It is sort of like the Atomic Bomb controversy-a weapon sol deadly that the target (Japan) eventually decided was too much for them (and thus gave up).
Not really a GQ subject I think…anyway.
I have my doubts. One likely possibility that comes to my mind given that they didn’t have the aversion to chemical warfare that would later develop. Given such an effective gas, they’d start using it on cities as well as armies and you’d see the body count increase enormously. It would be much like handing them a nuclear arsenal without the modern reluctance to use nukes. They’d no doubt be horrified at the results - after they turned Europe into a giant graveyard.
Since this requires speculation, let’s move it over to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Only if meteorology also was vastly improved as well. The OP noted that plenty of casualties were caused by gas blowing back over the German lines, then a deadlier gas would also result in vastly higher casualties among the attackers whenever this happened.
Also, the nature of this improved gas would matter a lot. Perhaps it would settle on ground and foliage and kill anyone who came in contact with it for a long time. So, it’s possible it would have created a sterile zone between trench lines that nobody could cross, and they could have spent years longer exchanging artillery barrages.
There would still have to be some means of “ingestion,” even if just by skin contact like an anticholinesterase nerve agent. So unless it’s something that can also penetrate any type of biohazard garment that could have been devised, I don’t think any such gas would have been possible.
Aside from that, there is also the issue of antidotes. Even potent nerve agents have effective antidotes. From what I understand, you probably never want to be in the position of having to use them, but the point is that there are often defenses even to something that is so incredibly lethal.
Actually, it’s an interesting question, and one I hadn’t thought of before, as to why the German’s didn’t try chemical weapons when they bombed England with Zeppelins. OTOH, I have no how the gas was delivered, so maybe it was impossible or impractical to do it from the air.
I expect large portions of Northern Europe would still be an agricultural wasteland.
I think it actually would have been a lot easier to do from the air. Just pump the gas at fairly high pressure into some light copper tanks fitted with a small explosive charge. Drop them on London. Instant wide-spread carnage. They’d be a lot lighter than conventional bombs, and much more deadly.
The premise is unlikely. Weapons don’t arrive on the battlefield at full efficiency. Even the first atomic bombs were still relatively weak prototypes. So in reality, the Germans would have used some variant of Gas X that wasn’t fully developed along a stretch of the front line. A lot of French soldiers would have died but this would have given France time to work on their own gas as a counter-weapon as the Germans improved Gas X.
But lets accept the premise in full. The Germans have Gas X in sufficient quantity to use it at will. It’s 99% lethal, it can be delivered on target, and the Germans have a means to protect themselves from its effect.
The result obviously would be an overwhelming German victory. They would literally just walk across the front line after killing the French, British, and Belgian defenders. They could advance through France at will, using Gas X to mop up any pockets of resistance. The war would be over within a couple of weeks and the Germans could set their terms.
But then what? France and Britain would be devastated by the loss of all their countrymen in the initial attack but they would eventually repopulate and develop gas weapons of their own. And they would be looking for revenge. Germany would have to become a garrison state to protect itself from attack.
Or Germany could try to forestall this by placing all of western Europe under its rule after its Gas X attack. If that happened, you have Germany facing a long occupation and trying to hold down a large resistance movement for decades.
But on the plus side, you wouldn’t have had a Hitler, a Lenin, or a Stalin in this scenario.
With some gasses, like chlorine, they waited for favourable winds, then the front line troops simply let the gas out so it drifted over the enemy lines. Of course it was diffuse by then, and you were still liable to shifts of weather. Other gasses (tear, mustard) were delivered by artillery shells.
By the time gas warfare got into gear the Zeppelin raids were in decline, costing too many losses and causing hardly any real damage. In fact the Zeps cost the Germans more than their damage did the Allies, by 5 to 1.
The first gas attacks were seen as uncivilsed and cowardly, I guess the thought of dropping it on non-combatants was simply beyond the pale.
Why do people insist on waxing regretful about alternate routes wars could’ve taken when they went as well as could be hoped for for the right side? I mean a thought experiment, fine, but OP’s tone seems to suggest they would have actually preferred for Germany to develop their gas and take Europe with it rather than what actually happened.
After some thought, I am dubious about the premise. What made WWI drag on was the willingness of the respective parties to endure casualties and keep trying. I don’t think the proximate cause of any particular death mattered much. I don’t think people thought “Ten million dead, but only 150,000 of those were from bayonets. Bayonet deaths are the worst kind, thank God so many were killed by machine guns!”
Therefore this hypothetical Gas-X producing a lot of casualties would essentially just shift the proximate cause of each death from “bullet” to “gas,” or “shrapnel” to “gas.” That alone isn’t going to cause a people willing to accept millions of casualties to quit fighting.
Now, if I understand the OP, the point is, it might have killed off entire military units quite quickly (assuming ideal weather and dispersal conditions)? Well, the WWI combatants excelled at finding new cannon fodder and swiftly delivering it to the front via railroads; they might have been able to replace even Gas-X loss rates. But even if not, what’s next? Using Gas-X on civilian populations will not meet the OP’s criterion of “saving lives.”
IMHO the willingness of all parties to soldier on despite appalling losses was born of general ignorance of how the new technologies would industrialize slaughter. They would have been similarly ignorant of mysterious new Gas-X, at least until the damage was done, so its use wouldn’t have spared us much slaughter, if any.
People have since learned differently, and while we have not eliminated warfare, no modern nation seems willing to endure 20th-Century-style industrial total war.