Poisonous Gas
The earliest military uses of chemicals were tear inducing irritants rather than fatal or disabling poisons. During WW1, The debut of the first poison gas however - in this instance, chlorine - came on 22 April 1915, at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres. Mustard gas is a chemical warfare agent developed during World War I. it was used to throw at close combat soldiers and to throw in the trenches. During the war Haber threw his energies and those of his institute into further support for the German side. He developed a new weapon poison gas, the first example of which was chlorine gas and supervised its initial deployment on the Western Front at Ypres, Belgium, in 1915. Haber invented it because he wanted to help the Germans in World War 1 with trench warfare.
Impact and Consequences
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The overall impact on the Poison Gas was a deadly weapon and made the war more stalemate, people feared being poisoned especially since they knew their might be invisible gas. It was a major impact because it made people fear getting close to enemy lines. It mainly affected the soldiers that were close enough to the enemy that they could throw gas at, it was a close range weapon that was very deadly and could kill you in a matter of seconds. It wouldn't affect the Leaders but it would affect how close they would put their soldiers in combat and it required people to wear gas masks to protect themselves from it. It could possibly affect the civilians in the nearby towns depending on how close it was thrown to it. The positive affects was that it saved a lot of lives because it made less people actaully have close combat instead using more longer range weapons to play it safe. The Central started using it first, and once the allied powers caught onto it, they demanded the product because they felt like it was a need for war. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. By 1918 the use of use of poison gases had become widespread, particularly on the Western Front. If the war had continued into 1919 both sides had planned on inserting poison gases into 30%-50% of manufactured shells.
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Connects To Today
Poisonous gas is used in a select few middle eastern countries today. It has improved because the explosion radius on the gas today and the supplies they have know is much greater than it was back then. The reason it improved was because technology has increased over time. Poisonous gas was used in the Iran - Iraq war and Iraq used poisonous gas on their own civilians. That war happened from 1980 - 1988, in Iraq . Poisonous gas hasn't been used as much because as technology increased, it involved new war strategies. A few middle eastern countries use it still tho, one being Syria.