Chemical Warfare In World War I

World War I the battle between two powers known as the Allied Powers and the Central Powers. The Allied powers were made up of France, Japan, Russia, United States Serbia, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Britain and Greece. While the Central forces were Germany, Austro – Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Turkey, and Bulgaria. These countries, in their own way, played major parts in the war. Not only was it the First World War but it was a first for many things like Chemical Warfare, and the first time that the U.S. Army was exposed to Chemical Warfare. During my research I discovered that a topic of World War I is such a broad topic I narrowed down the research to the battle of Ypres, a city in Belgium, which I will discuss later on. Discussion will focus on a declaration that was signed in 1899 that explains use of projectiles and chemicals, about one of the first place that chemical gasses were used during the war, and identify some of the types of gasses used and the effects it had on the troops down in the trenches on that particular day.

So as the declaration stated “The Contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gasses”. (Heller, 1984, p. 3) The proposal of this came down to one vote and with the decision being on that of an American representative, Navy Capt. Alfred Mahan. By the passing of the declaration, having the signatures from both sides, it still did not stop nations from the discussions of using chemical weapons. France did, however, publicly experiment with gas while the Germans stuck by the declaration signed, but still remained optimistic on development of