Chapter ID: CBB271803335

Preparing for Poison Warfare: The Ethics and Politics of Britain’s Chemical Weapons Program, 1915–1945 (2017)

unapi

Schmidt, Ulf (Author)


Springer International
Pages: 77-104
Publication date: 2017
Language: English


Allied political and military leaders have frequently been credited both with considerable foresight and with strategic and moral leadership for avoiding chemical warfare during the Second World War. Scholars have not, however, fully acknowledged how close Allied forces came to launching a full-scale chemical onslaught in various theatres of war. The paper offers a thorough reconstruction of Allied chemical warfare planning which takes a close look at the development of Britain’s chemical weapons program since the First World War. The findings suggest that no “lack of preparedness,” as it existed in the initial stages of the conflict in 1939/1940, would have deterred the Allies from launching chemical warfare if the military situation had required it. Allied forces were planning to launch retaliatory chemical warfare ever since they had been attacked with chlorine gas in 1915. Just War theorists at first opposed the use of this new weapon and campaigned for an internationally enforced legal ban. The paper argues, however, that post-war military and political exigencies forced the advocates of the Just War tradition to construct new arguments and principles which would make this type of war morally and militarily acceptable. The paper explores the ways in which military strategists, scientists, and government officials attempted to justify the development, possession, and use of chemical weapons, and contextualizes Britain’s delicate balancing act between deterrence and disarmament in the interwar period.

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Book Bretislav Friedrich; Dieter Hoffmann; Jürgen Renn; Florian Schmaltz; Martin Wolf (2017) One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences. unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Johnson, Jeffrey Allan
Ede, Andrew G.
Epting, Susan
Freemantle, Michael
Gorski, P.
Jones, Edgar
Journals
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Circumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science
化学史研究 [Kagakushi kenkyū; Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry]
Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki
Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy
Publishers
Springer International
Cambridge University Press
University of Pennsylvania
History Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Rutgers University Press
Concepts
World War I
Chemical warfare
Science and war; science and the military
World War II
Technology and war; technology and the military
Public health
People
Haber, Fritz
Znaniecki, Florian
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
Places
Great Britain
Germany
United States
Europe
France
Japan
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für physikalische Chemie und Electrochemie
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