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World War 1 Cause And Effect Essay

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It was April 22, 1915, the French and the Germans had been in the battle of Ypres on the Western front for almost seven months. Suddenly the French soldiers noticed that their comrades were falling one by one onto the ground gasping for breath. In just a matter of minutes, over one-thousand of the French soldiers had died, and another four-thousand were wounded. The sudden deaths of the Allied forces were caused by a special team of German military meteorologists who had just opened six-thousand steal cylinders releasing one hundred and sixty tons of chlorine gas (FritzGerard, 1). They let the clouds drift into the complex system of French and British trenches and when breathed in, it caused death in just several seconds. This battle in 1915 was the first of many successful chemical attacks used during World War One. World War One saw the rise of the use of chemical gas as one of the world most …show more content…

While the casualties were high on the French side, the war continued on for another three years. When news of this new weapon and it’s disastrous consequences reached the Allied forces, military leaders all over Europe began enlisting scientist from many well know colleges including Oxford and Cambridge to find a defense against the chemical attacks (FritzGerard, 1). The United States also started it’s own organization founded on June 25th, 1918 called the Chemical Warfare Service, or the “CWS,” a little over a year after joining The Great War on April 6th, 1917. “On June 25, 1918 President Wilson authorized the creation of the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS), and the Service came into being as an independent branch of the military of war department General order 82 . . . Major general William L. Sibert was appointed the first Director of the CWS . . . by the end of the year some 1,294 scientist and engineers were officers in the CWS” (Ede,

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This historical milestone came detrimental consequences. Around thirty million soldiers had suffered casualties during this war, with about ten million perishing on the battlefield and the other 20 million suffering severe injuries. Empires crumbled like a cookie under pressure in the hands of civilians. The robust giants of the Europe fell from their mighty towers shatter the picture perfect image of Europe forever. However, there is one question that still looms over the heads of historians as they try to pinpoint the underlying, or repressed, causes of World War I and the measures of prevention that could have been taken.

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