{"product_id":"war-of-nerves-isbn-9781400032334","title":"War of Nerves","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this important and revelatory book, Jonathan Tucker, a leading expert on chemical  and biological weapons, chronicles the lethal history of chemical warfare from World  War I to the present.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of synthetic  chemistry made the large-scale use of toxic chemicals on the battlefield both feasible  and cheap. Tucker explores the long debate over the military utility and morality  of chemical warfare, from the first chlorine gas attack at Ypres in 1915 to Hitler’s  reluctance to use nerve agents (he believed, incorrectly, that the U.S. could retaliate  in kind) to Saddam Hussein’s gassing of his own people, and concludes with the emergent  threat of chemical terrorism. Moving beyond history to the twenty-first century, \u003ci\u003eWar of Nerves\u003c\/i\u003e makes clear that we are at a crossroads that could lead either to the  further spread of these weapons or to their ultimate abolition.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eList of Illustrations \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePrologue: Live-Agent Training \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter One: The Chemistry of War \u003cbr\u003eChapter Two: IG Farben \u003cbr\u003eChapter Three: Perverted Science \u003cbr\u003eChapter Four: Twilight of the Gods \u003cbr\u003eChapter Five: Fight for the Spoils\u003cbr\u003eChapter Six: Research and Development \u003cbr\u003eChapter Seven: Building the Stockpile \u003cbr\u003eChapter Eight: Chemical Arms Race \u003cbr\u003eChapter Nine: Agent Venomous \u003cbr\u003eChapter Ten: Yemen and After \u003cbr\u003eChapter Eleven: Incident at Skull Valley \u003cbr\u003eChapter Twelve: New Fears \u003cbr\u003eChapter Thirteen: Binary Debate \u003cbr\u003eChapter Fourteen: Silent Spread \u003cbr\u003eChapter Fifteen: Peace and War \u003cbr\u003eChapter Sixteen: Whistle-Blower \u003cbr\u003eChapter Seventeen: The Tokyo Subway \u003cbr\u003eChapter Eighteen: The Emerging Threat \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEpilogue: Toward Abolition \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eGlossary \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNotes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBibliography\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndex\u003c\/i\u003e“ChillingÉ a history of the race between the advance of this taboo technology and the political efforts to abolish it. TuckerÉhas a gift for making military science readable”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e“[Tucker] writes clearly and forcefully, making his case not through argument but through the patient accumulation of appalling detailÉAn immensely useful book, presenting a vast trove of vital information in highly readable form.”—\u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e“Compelling Éoffers a comprehensive history of chemical weapons, the most widely used WMD in modern history.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e“Outstanding. . .fascinating. . . Everyone who believes weapons of mass destruction exist only in fantasy need but read this book. They are closer than you think.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Decatur Daily \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJonathan B. Tucker\u003c\/b\u003e received a B.S. in biology from Yale University and a Ph.D. in political science, specializing in defense and arms control studies, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the past ten years, he has been a chemical and biological weapons specialist at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dr. Tucker previously worked as an arms control specialist for Congress and the State Department and as an editor at \u003ci\u003eScientific American\u003c\/i\u003e and at \u003ci\u003eHigh Technology\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, where he wrote about biomedical research, biotechnology, and military technologies. He lives in Washington, D.C.The Chemistry of War\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      In the fall of 1914, the opposing armies on the western front huddled   in their trenches near the Belgian town of Ypres, lobbing artillery   shells at each other across a barren no-man’s-land strewn with thickets   of rusty barbed wire, craters, and splintered trees. Germany had   launched the war in August by carrying out the Schlieffen Plan, a   massive surprise attack through neutral Belgium that sought to achieve   the rapid conquest of France in the west, followed by a knockout blow   to Russia in the east before the United States decided to enter the   war. The initial operations had gone according to plan, but when the   kaiser’s armies were thirty miles from Paris, a last-ditch   counterattack by the French and British forces at the Battle of the   Marne had halted the German offensive. Seeking cover from the lethal   hail of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, both sides had dug in, building   labyrinthine trenches that would ultimately extend some four hundred   miles from the North Sea coast of Belgium to the Swiss border.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By fall, the adversaries found themselves trapped in a bloody stalemate   in which neither side was able to advance. Infantry offensives   inevitably bogged down after taking negligible amounts of territory, at   a heavy cost in lives. Seeking to break the deadlock and regain the   offensive, the Germans began to consider the use of toxic chemicals   delivered by artillery shells to force the enemy out of his trenches.   This idea was not entirely new: in 1862, during the American Civil War,   a New York City schoolteacher named John W. Doughty had written to the   Secretary of War suggesting the use of poison gas shells against the   Confederate forces. He had designed a 10-inch projectile in which one   compartment was filled with a few quarts of liquid chlorine and the   second with explosives; when the shell burst, the explosion would   convert the chlorine into an asphyxiating gas. But the Union’s chief of   ordnance, Brigadier General James Ripley, had been resistant to new   ideas and had rejected Doughty’s invention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Because Germany possessed the world’s most advanced chemical industry,   it enjoyed an inherent advantage in this type of warfare. The main   obstacles were the existence of an international treaty specifically   banning the use of shells to deliver asphyxiating gases and the deeply   held belief that toxic weapons were illegitimate. This “chemical   weapons taboo” appears to have originated in the innate human aversion   to poisonous substances, as well as revulsion at the duplicitous use of   poison by the weak (including women) to defeat the strong without a   fair physical fight. Efforts to outlaw the use of poisons in war dated   back to the classical Greek and Roman period. During the Middle Ages,   German artillery gunners pledged not to use poisoned weapons, which   were judged “unworthy of a man of heart and a real soldier.” The first   known international agreement banning chemical warfare, a Franco-German   treaty prohibiting the use of poisoned bullets, was drawn up in   Strasbourg in 1675.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Before the second half of the nineteenth century, numerous poisonous   chemicals had been discovered but could not be produced on a large   scale. The emergence of the European chemical industry, which was   capable of manufacturing vast quantities of dyestuffs and other   synthetic chemicals, gave rise to new concerns over the potential use   of lethal gases on the battlefield. In 1863, the U.S. War Department   issued the Lieber Code of Conduct, which prohibited “the use of poison   in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms.” Similarly, the   1874 Brussels Declaration on the laws and customs of war, signed by   fourteen European countries but never ratified, banned the use of   poison, poisonous gases, and weapons that caused unnecessary suffering.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At the 1899 International Peace Conference in The Hague,   representatives of twenty-six countries, including Germany, signed the   first Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land.   Article 23(a) of this treaty prohibited “poison or poisoned weapons,”   including the deliberate tainting of arms, bullets, food, or wells. The   contracting states also signed a separate document, the Hague   Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases, which specifically outlawed   “the use of projectiles, the sole object of which is the diffusion of   asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” This treaty effectively banned the   use of chemical shells even before they had been developed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In late 1914, however, amid the futile slaughter of trench warfare, the   traditional legal and moral restraints on the use of poison gas began   to erode under the pressure of military necessity. From the outset, the   German High Command had interpreted the Hague gas projectile   declaration as banning only the release of lethal gases from shells   specifically designed for that purpose. The German military also   considered tear gases and other nonlethal irritants to be equivalent to   smoke and hence not covered by the legal ban. Indeed, the French had   begun using tear gas grenades in August 1914, the first month of the   war, albeit to little effect. Exploiting these loopholes, the Germans   proceeded to develop a 105 mm artillery shell that was loaded with an   irritant chemical (dianisidine chlorosulfate) and was also designed to   generate shrapnel, so that its “sole” purpose was not the delivery of a   toxic gas. In October 1914, the Germans fired three thousand irritant   shells at the British forces near Neuve-Chapelle, but because the   high-explosive charge burned the chemical agent and neutralized its   effects, the British remained unaware that they had been subjected to   chemical attack.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Germans then developed a 150 mm howitzer shell containing seven   pounds of another chemical irritant (xylyl bromide), once again   combined with an explosive charge to disperse shrapnel. In January   1915, German troops fired more than 18,000 of these shells at the   Russian positions near Bolimow, but the subfreezing temperatures   prevented the liquid agent from vaporizing and rendered it harmless.   The failure of these attacks with irritant gases, combined with a   shortage of high explosives, led the German High Command to consider   the use of shells containing lethal agents.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The individual responsible for developing chemical weapons for the   German War Office was Professor Fritz Haber, a brilliant young chemist   and ardent Prussian nationalist who directed the Kaiser Wilhelm   Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin. Although born Jewish, Haber   had converted to Christianity at the age of eighteen. In 1905, together   with his colleague Carl Bosch, he had invented a revolutionary process   for the large-scale synthesis of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen.   Because ammonia was used to manufacture nitric acid, a key ingredient   of both fertilizers and explosives, the Haber-Bosch process freed   Germany from its previous dependence on imports by sea of Chilean   nitrates, which were cut off shortly after the world war began. Without   a synthetic source of ammonia, Germany would have quickly run out of   food and ammunition, and Haber’s essential invention made him a   national hero.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In late 1914, Haber had the idea of loading artillery shells with   chlorine, which the German chemical industry produced in large   quantities for the production of dyestuffs. When a shortage of   artillery shells ruled out this method of delivery, he proposed instead   that chlorine be released directly from pressurized gas cylinders,   allowing the wind to carry the poisonous cloud over the enemy’s   trenches. This tactic offered a number of potential advantages:   chlorine released directly from cylinders would blanket a far larger   area than could be achieved with projectiles, and the gas would   dissipate rapidly, allowing the affected areas to be occupied by   friendly troops. Haber also noted that the release of chlorine from   pressurized cylinders would not technically violate the Hague   declaration, which banned only the use of specialized chemical shells.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In early January 1915, these arguments won over General Erich von   Falkenhayn, the chief of the German General Staff, who considered   poison gas “unchivalrous” but hoped that its use would result in a   decisive military victory. As the site of the first chlorine attack,   von Falkenhayn selected the Allied-held town of Ypres in Flanders,   Belgium. Just west of the town, the line of Allied trenches extended   about four miles into German-controlled territory, forming a bulge   called the Ypres Salient that was nine miles across at its widest   point. Holding the line on the left side of the Salient, near the   village of Langemarck, were the French 87th Territorial Division and   the 45th Algerian Division, made up of French-Algerian soldiers known   as Zouaves. British and Canadian units defended the center and right   portions of the bulge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In mid-January, Haber ordered the chemist Otto Hahn and several other   colleagues to help prepare the chlorine attack. When Hahn objected that   chemical warfare would violate the Hague Convention, Haber replied that   the French had already made use of gas-filled munitions and that   countless human lives would be saved if the effective use of chemical   weapons brought the war to a rapid end. The German chemists helped to   organize a special unit for gas warfare called Pioneer Regiment 36.   These troops received training and equipment for handling chlorine,   including the so-called Dräger self-preserver (Drägersche   Selbstretter), which they would don for their protection when releasing   the lethal gas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On January 25, 1915, General von Falkenhayn ordered Infantry General   Berthold von Deimling, who commanded the German XV Army Corps at Ypres,   to report to the field headquarters at Mezières. According to von   Deimling’s memoirs:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Falkenhayn revealed to us that a new weapon, poison gas, was to be used   and that my corps area had been selected for the first attempt. The   poison gas would be delivered in steel cylinders, which would be built   into the trenches and opened when the winds were favorable. I must   confess that the commission for poisoning the enemy, just as one   poisons rats, struck me as it must any straightforward soldier: it was   repulsive to me. If, however, the poison gas were to result in the fall   of Ypres, we would win a victory that might decide the entire campaign.   In view of this worthy goal, all personal reservations had to be   silent. So onward, do what must be done! War is necessity and knows no   exception.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Haber was dispatched to Flanders to organize and prepare the chemical   attack. Under his direction, the German War Office shipped to the front   1,600 large and 4,130 small steel cylinders filled with pressurized   liquid chlorine. On March 10, 1915, German troops from Pioneer Regiment   36 emplaced the cylinders along a four-mile line opposing the French   trenches, burying them vertically in slit trenches to prevent them from   being ruptured or destroyed by enemy artillery fire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After emplacing the cylinders, the Germans waited for the wind   direction to change. For more than three weeks, the prevailing winds at   Ypres blew from west to east, which would have carried the poisonous   cloud back over the German lines. Finally, in the late afternoon of   Thursday, April 22, the wind shifted and began to blow from the   northeast. The velocity was sufficient to carry the chlorine gas away   from the point of release, yet slow enough for the cloud to linger over   the opposing trenches before dispersing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As the lowering sun bathed the Ypres Salient in a warm, golden light,   the French and Algerian troops rested in their trenches, preparing the   evening meal and enjoying the cool breeze that had sprung up. Around   5:00 p.m., the Germans began an artillery bombardment. The thump of   heavy shell fire from 17-inch howitzers echoed from the northwest   across no-man’s-land, increasing rapidly in volume. Shell bursts   flashed in the distance, spewing lethal fountains of dirt and shrapnel.   Finally the bombardment stopped and it was dead still. Then over the   German trenches rose a balloon on which three flares sputtered   brightly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At this signal, the German troops along the four-mile front   simultaneously opened the cocks on the 5,730 buried cylinders.   Pressurized streams of chlorine gas hissed from rubber hoses extending   out of the German trenches and immediately turned white with the   condensation of water vapor. A total of 168 metric tons of chlorine   billowed out of the cylinders and merged into a vast, elongated cloud   about five feet high. Heavier than air, the cloud drifted across   no-man’s-land toward the Allied trenches at a leisurely pace of about   one mile per hour. Gradually the warmth of the ground caused the cloud   to expand to a height of about thirty feet and assume a yellow-green   color.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sentries posted among the French and Algerian troops saw the strange   cloud rising from the enemy trenches. Believing that the Germans were   using smoke to mask an infantry assault, the French commanders ordered   their men to mount the fire steps of their trenches and prepare to   repel the enemy advance. But instead of the expected waves of German   troops, the defenders saw only the roiling bank of yellow-green fog,   moving inexorably forward. The usual explosions and cries of battle had   been replaced with an eerie silence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As the wall of yellow-green mist approached their lines, the French and   Algerian troops smelled a pungent, acrid odor that tickled their   throats, burned their eyes, and filled their mouths with a metallic   taste. Moments later, the full density of the toxic cloud swept over   them, veiling the world in greenish murk as if they had suddenly been   plunged several feet underwater. Inside the cloud, the men could see no   more than a few feet in front of them. The chlorine seared their eyes   and burned the lining of their bronchial tubes, causing blindness,   coughing, violent nausea, splitting headache, and a stabbing pain in   the chest. Hundreds of soldiers collapsed in agony, their silver badges   and buckles instantly tarnished greenish black by the corrosive gas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On seeing the effects of the poisonous cloud on the forward trenches,   the other French and Algerian units broke and ran in terror, dropping   their weapons and equipment. Within an hour, two divisions numbering   some ten thousand men had collapsed in disarray, tearing a gap four   miles wide in the Allied line. Six miles away, the British troops of   the Queen Victoria Rifles saw the yellow-green cloud in the distance   and began to murmur in confused speculation. A soldier named Anthony   Hossack later wrote in his diary:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Suddenly down the road from the Yser Canal came a galloping team of   horses, the riders goading on their mounts in a frenzied way; then   another and another, till the road became a seething mass with a pall   of dust over all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Plainly something terrible was happening. What was it? Officers, and   Staff officers too, stood gazing at the scene, awestruck and   dumbfounded; for in the northerly breeze there came a pungent   nauseating smell that tickled the throat and made our eyes smart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The horses and men were still pouring down the road, two or three men   on a horse, I saw, while over the fields streamed mobs of infantry, the   dusky warriors of French Africa; away went their rifles, equipment,   even their tunics that they might run the faster.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    One man came stumbling through our lines. An officer of ours held him   up with leveled revolver, “What’s the matter, you bloody lot of   cowards?” says he. The Zouave was frothing at the mouth, his eyes   started from their sockets, and he fell writhing at the officer’s feet.","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303242223845,"sku":"NP9781400032334","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400032334.jpg?v=1767743598","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/war-of-nerves-isbn-9781400032334","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}