{"product_id":"a-higher-form-of-killing-isbn-9780812966534","title":"A Higher Form of Killing","description":"\u003cb\u003eA Higher Form of Killing\u003c\/b\u003e opens with the first devastating battlefield use of lethal gas in World War I, and then investigates the stockpiling of biological weapons during World War II and in the decades afterward as well as the inhuman experiments con-ducted to test their effectiveness. This updated edition includes a new Introduction and a new final chapter exposing frightening developments in recent years, including the black market that emerged in chemical and biological weapons following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the acquisition of these weapons by various Third World states, the attempts of countries such as Iraq to build up arsenals, and--particularly and most recently--the use of these weapons in terrorist attacks.\"The best account of gas and germ warfare available.\" \u003cbr\u003e--\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An absorbing and unsettling history, an exhaustive exploration of a little-known but potentially apocalyptic aspect of warfare, the whole thing carrying the punch of Armageddon. It reminds us that the world could end not with a nuclear bang but in whimpers of fevered agony.\"\u003cbr\u003e--\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Compelling . . . The authors make clear why governments have shrouded such weapon programs in even more secrecy than their nuclear work.\"\u003cbr\u003e--\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Harris\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the bestselling novels \u003cb\u003eFatherland\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003eEnigma\u003c\/b\u003e, and \u003cb\u003eArchangel\u003c\/b\u003e, as well as a number of nonfiction books.  He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJeremy Paxman\u003c\/b\u003e reporter for Britain in mid-1970s Northern Ireland before joining \u003ci\u003ePanorama\u003c\/i\u003e.  Assignments have taken him from Beirut to Uganda to Zimbabwe. \u003cb\u003eA Higher Form of Killing\u003c\/b\u003e is his first book.\"Frightfulness\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The twenty-second of April 1915 had been a warm and sunny day, but  toward the end of the afternoon a breeze sprang up. It came from the north, from  behind the German lines, blew across no-man's-land, and gently fanned the faces of  the Allied soldiers in position around the village of Langemarck, near Ypres.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They  were new to the trenches-French reservists and Algerians from France's north African  colony. To them the fresh wind must have seemed a good omen, for a few seconds later,  as if on cue, the German guns that had been bombarding them all day suddenly stopped  firing. An abrupt silence descended over the front.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A few hundred yards away, four  divisions-of the Twenty-third and Twenty-sixth German Army Corps-crouched in their  trenches. They had waited there since dawn, unable to move for fear of giving away  their presence. Now, just as it had begun to seem too late, the moment had come.  The wind had changed. An attack.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At five o'clock, three red rockets streaked into  the sky, signaling the start of a deafening artillery barrage. High-explosive shells  pounded into the deserted town of Ypres and the villages around it. At the same time  the troops sheltering near Langemarck saw two greenish-yellow clouds rise from the  enemy's lines, catch the wind, and billow forward, gradually merging to form a single  bank of blue-white mist: out of sight, in special emplacements protected by sandbags  and concrete, German chemical warfare pioneers were opening the valves of 6,000 cylinders  spread out along a four-mile front. The cylinders contained liquid chlorine-the instant  the pressure was released and it came into contact with the air it vaporized and  hissed out to form a dense cloud. At thirty parts per million of air chlorine gas  produces a rasping cough. At concentrations of one part per thousand it is fatal.  The breeze stirred again, and one hundred and sixty tons of it, five feet high and  hugging the ground, began to roll toward the Allied trenches.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chemical warfare had  begun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The wave broke over the first line within a minute, enveloping tens of thousands  of troops in an acrid green cloud so thick they could no longer see their neighbors  in the trench. Seconds later they were clutching at the air and at their throats,  fighting for breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chlorine does not suffocate: it poisons, stripping the lining  of the bronchial tubes and lungs. The inflammation produces a massive amount of fluid  that blocks the windpipe, froths from the mouth, and fills the lungs. In an attempt  to escape the effects, some men tried to bury their mouths and nostrils in the earth;  others panicked and ran. But any exertion or effort to outdistance the cloud only  resulted in deeper breaths and more acute poisoning. As the tide of gas washed over  the struggling men their faces turned blue from the strain of trying to breathe;  some coughed so violently they ruptured their lungs. Each man, as the British casualty  report was later to put it, was \"being drowned in his own exudation.\"1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Advancing  cautiously behind the chlorine cloud came the German infantry, all wearing crude  respirators of moist gauze and cotton tied round their faces. They passed through  an unprecedented scene of horror. The dead lay where they had fallen, arms outstretched  trying to escape the gas. Interspersed with the corpses, the wounded and dying sprawled  gasping and choking as their agonized lungs coughed up mouthful after mouthful of  yellow fluid. Any metal object the chlorine had come into contact with was tarnished.  Buttons, watches, coins; all had turned a dull green. Rifles were rusted and looked  as if they had been left out in the mud for months. Most of the breechblocks on the  sixty guns the Germans captured that day were unusable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Any of the French still  capable of movement fled. The British suddenly found the roads and bridges of their  sector clogged with retreating soldiers, many of whom could only point at their throats  in explanation. By six o'clock, even as far back as ten miles, the chlorine cloud  was still making men cough and their eyes smart. By seven o'clock, the few French  guns that had been left in action were ominously silent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The first large-scale gas  attack had taken the Allied commanders so completely by surprise that it was not  until the early hours of the morning that they began to appreciate the scale of the  disaster that had overtaken them. The Germans had torn a hole four miles wide in  the western front, smashing in an afternoon defenses that had held for months. The  German commander, Falkenhayn, was as startled as his opponents by the overwhelming  effect of chemical warfare. He had seen gas merely as an experimental aid to his  attack and had insufficient reserves ready to exploit his advantage. But for that  he might have been able to drive right through the Allied line to the Channel ports:  the gas attack could have won the war for the Germans. Instead, as night fell over  Ypres, the German soldiers dug in. Falkenhayn's \"experiment,\" the Germans reckoned,  had cost the Allies 5,000 men dead and 10,000 wounded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Thirty-six hours later, while  the British and the French were still struggling to fill the breach in their defenses,  the Germans struck again. At 2:45 a.m., shortly before dawn on April 24, Captain  Bertram of the Canadian Eighth Battalion noticed some greenish-white smoke rising  from the German front line about 600 yards away. Traveling at eight miles an hour,  the cloud \"drifted along the ground toward our trenches, not rising to more than  seven feet from the ground when it reached our front line.\"2 The bank of high-density  chlorine rolled over the Canadians, whose only protection was handkerchiefs, socks,  and towels that they urinated on and then stuffed into their mouths. Over the next  few hours they were subjected to successive waves of gas so thick they blotted out  the sun. Once or twice through the clouds the Canadians caught glimpses of German  troops apparently dressed as divers, wearing large hoods with a single glass eyepiece  set in the front.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was the same panic-stricken scramble for the rear. On a  small stretch of ground leading from the advanced trenches to the supports Bertram  counted twenty-seven bodies of men killed trying to outrun the gas; he himself collapsed  with vomiting and diarrhea, unable to breathe, with a feeling \"of great heaviness  in the bottom of the chest.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The German gas and artillery attack killed 5,000 men.  Sergeant Grindley of the Canadian Fifteenth Battalion was one of hundreds carried  off the battlefield into the primitive medical posts. The doctors had no idea how  to treat gas casualties and two days later Grindley died, gasping for breath. The  surgeon who treated him called it \"air hunger.\" In blue pencil he scrawled a postmortem  report:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Body showed definite discoloration of the face and neck and hands. On  opening the chest the two lungs bulged forward. On removing the lungs there exuded  a considerable amount of frothy light yellow fluid, evidently highly albuminous,  as slight beating was sufficient to solidify it like white of egg. The veins on the  surface of the brain were found greatly congested, all the small vessels standing  out prominently.3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Of those who survived the gas attack, 60 percent had to be sent  home; half were still fully disabled at the end of the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neither for the first  time nor the last, men like Grindley-\"lions led by donkeys\"-suffered for the blunders  of their commanders who for weeks beforehand had been warned of what the Germans  were planning. Although the facts were suppressed at the time, we now know that on  April 13, over a week before the first attack, a French patrol had captured a German  soldier actually carrying a respirator. The soldier, a twenty-four-year-old private  named August Jäger of Germany's Twenty-sixth Army Corps, revealed the German plan  to use gas and described the position of the cylinders (the existence of which had  already been confirmed by aerial reconnaissance). Jäger's information was passed  to the French divisional commander, General Ferry, who in turn passed it on to the  British and French high commands with the advice either that the men threatened be  withdrawn or the gas emplacements bombarded. Both his warning and his advice were  ignored. As the official British report on the affair-classed \"secret\" until almost  sixty years after the attack-put it:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We were aware of the fact that the Germans  were making preparations for the discharge of gas for several days previously. .  . . Nobody seems to have realized the great danger that was threatening, it being  considered that the enemy's attempt would certainly fail and that whatever gas reached  our line could be easily fanned away. No one felt in the slightest degree uneasy.  . . .4\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neither Ferry nor Jäger profited when their predictions were proved correct.  Ferry was dismissed from his post by the French high command, furious at having their  incompetence revealed. Jäger's fate was grimmer. In a memoir published in 1930, Ferry  imprudently named him as the source of his information. Jäger, now a civilian, was  promptly arrested, and at Leipzig in 1932 he was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude,  the court deciding that his betrayal of German plans had helped cost them the war-the  last and perhaps saddest casualty of the first gas attack.Author of Fatherland and Enigma With a new final chapter; [quote]--The Washington Post","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304699056357,"sku":"NP9780812966534","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812966534.jpg?v=1767720521","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-higher-form-of-killing-isbn-9780812966534","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}