The Impact Of World War I: Chemical Warfare

Throughout history the advancement of weapons has changed the face of wartime. These new weapons provide safety for those who fire them and deadly reciprocation to those being fired at. Throughout World War 1 each side was always desperately looking the next way to get ahead.The first deadly chemicals were found in 1914 used by the Germans. These horrific gases had deadly side effects from extreme blistering, to intense coughing fits. Theses gases were as effective as a weapon could get, but are they humane? People died brutally immense pain because of these gasses. At the end of World War I chemical weapons had changed the face of the war and raise the death count by thousands. In August 1914, war changed when the french were the first
In 1925 the Geneva Protocol was instituted. Signed by 38 states initially the Geneva protocol banned the use of chemical gases. The protocol called banned the use of chemical warfare do to the inhumane side effects of the gases used. Chemical gases would not only affect the soldiers fighting, they would also affect the civilians in surrounding areas of where the chemical’s were used. There was between “100,000-260,000 casualties of civilians” (Abridge 14) during World War I. Ten’s of thousands of people died after the exposure, years later, due to scarring of the lungs, skin damage, and cerebral damage. The year 1920 alone there was more than 40,000 civilian deaths and 20,000 military death because of the chemical weapons. When the Treaty of Versailles was first placed into effect, it banned Germany from manufacturing or importing chemical weapons. But years later at the Geneva conference for the Supervision of the International Traffic in Arms, the French that they not allow the use of poisonous gases. The polish suggested that for the Supervision of the International Traffic in Arms the French suggested a protocol for non-use of poisonous gases. The Polish Republic suggested the ban of bacteriological weapons as well and it was signed in effect on 17 June, 1925. The Geneva Protocol prevented the loss of countless
Just ten year after the Geneva protocol was passed, In 1935 Mussolini took use of shells and bombs containing mustard gas against Ethiopia which result in tens of thousands of deaths. Another Example of this is during the Iran -Iraq war during the 1980s. As Iraq began losing the war, Saddam Hussein began to become more aggressive to develop a chemical and biological weapons programs. Mustard gas was the first to be used against the waves of Iranian infantry in 1980. By the mid-80’s Iraq began developing more sophisticated nerve agents like Sarin. It is estimated that Iranian casualties are in the tens of thousands. When the war was coming to an end Saddam used his chemical weapons in the town of Halabja in March 1988 which killed close to 5,000 people and injuring up to 10,000. All of the people in the town were civilians. The brutal use of these deadly weapons are why they were banned in the first place. Under horrific leaders chemical weapons are used in adombinale ways, backing up the reason that they were banned in the first