Innocence Slaughtered – Contents

The introduction of chemical warfare to the battlefield on 22 April 1915 changed the face of total warfare. Not only did it bring science to combat, it was both the product of societal transformation and a shaper of the 20th century societies.

This collaborative work investigates the unfolding catastrophe that the unleashing of chlorine against the Allied positions meant for individual soldiers and civilians. It describes the hesitation on the German side about the effectiveness, and hence impact on combat operations of the weapon whilst reflecting on the lack of Allied response to the many intelligence pointers that something significant was afoot.

It goes on to describe the massive transformation that societies were undergoing as a consequence of industrialisation, science and technology, and the impact these trends were to have on the emergence of what we know today as ‘total war’. Chemical warfare pitted the brightest minds from the various belligerents against each other and in some ways this competition revealed early thinking about intellectual superiority that was to define the decades after the Armistice. The ability to survive in a chemically contaminated environment was proof of a higher level of achievement. In simple terms, chemical defence equalled survival of the fittest.

Table of Contents

• Ahmet Üzümcü (Director-General Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons): Preface
• Jean Pascal Zanders: Introduction
• Jean Pascal Zanders: The Road to The Hague
• Olivier Lepick: Towards total war: Langemarck, 22 April 1915
• Luc Vandeweyer: The Belgian Army and the gas attack on 22 April 1915
• Dominiek Dendooven: 22 April 1915 – Eyewitness accounts of the first gas attack
• Julian Putkowski: Toxic Shock: The British Army’s reaction to German poison gas during the Second Battle of Ypres
• David Omissi: The Indian Army at the Second Battle of Ypres
• Bert Heyvaert: Phosgene in the Ypres Salient: 19 December 1915
• Gerard Oram: A War on Terror: Gas, British morale, and reporting the war in Wales
• Wolfgang Wietzker: Gas Warfare in 1915 and the German press
• Peter van den Dungen: Civil Resistance to chemical warfare in the 1st World War
• Leo van Bergen and Maartje Abbenhuis: Man-monkey, monkey-man: Neutrality and the discussions about the ‘inhumanity’ of poison gas in the Netherlands and International Committee of the Red Cross
• Jean Pascal Zanders: The road to Geneva