Politics

This battle over chemical warfare often involved larger political issues. Pacifist organizations, particularly prominent following the First World War, often pointed to the perceived barbarity of chemical weapons as evidence to support their political agenda. Chemical weapon advocates questioned the factual basis of the pacifists’ claims. One U.S. naval officer, Capt. J. M. Scammell of the Naval War College, writing in the North American Review argued that the real danger to democracy and world peace was not chemical weapons, but pacifism. He claimed that pacifists base their arguments on emotion, preying on the passions of the uninformed public. According to Scammell, pacifists do not make verifiable arguments because facts do not support their judgments.

Contrary to the arguments of the pacifists, Captain Scammell asserted that chemical weapons held the potential of making war less likely. Gas masks gave almost complete protection from gas, he reasoned, therefore chemical weapons would primarily be used to decrease the morale of soldiers who were forced to continually wear uncomfortable protective gear, and not as an effective injury-inducing weapon. This damage to morale, he argued, would make an army less likely to resist and fight, thus decreasing bloodshed on both sides. Scammell closed his article by restating the by now commonplace pro-chemical arguments of greater relative humaneness, difficulty of regulation, and improbability of treaty adherence.

Yet at the same time Scammell and other commentators were downplaying the danger and effectiveness of chemical weapons in combat, other military leaders were warning of the potential threat of gas weapons, especially when coupled with aircraft, on cities and unprotected civilians. Gen. P.R.C. Groves, the British Air Force Director of Air Operations during the First World War, warned that “the gas bomb is probably by far the most effective weapon for use from aircraft.” He stated that experts in chemical warfare agreed there was no foreseeable defense for cities from such attacks. Agreeing with Groves’s analysis, Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, commander of all American air combat units during World War I, testified before the House of Representatives Committee of Appropriations that the combination of chemical weapons and aircraft could effectively “kill every inhabitant” of New York City. Concurring with Groves and Mitchell, Gen. Donal Bradner, the Chief of Research of the Chemical Warfare Service of the U.S. Army, testified at a congressional hearing that one aircraft, carrying two tons of gas could kill everything in an area “100 feet wide and seven miles long.”

Many military leaders and chemical warfare advocates believed that such testimony would galvanize politicians and the American public towards more robust research and development of chemical weapons. The theoretical ability of gas to destroy large population centers and thousands of civilians, they hoped, would translate into greater stockpiling and promotion of chemical weapons as a defense against other nations. Proponents believed that the United States, with its superior chemical manufacturing industry, would dominate future warfare through the use of chemical weapons.

In reality, the tactic of instilling fear to lobby for increased chemical warfare capabilities was unsuccessful. In this ever-building climate of fear, the League of Nations queried various experts on the dangers of chemical weapons. Already building consensus against chemical warfare, the League questioned these experts in an attempt to increase awareness of the dangers of chemical weapons. The resulting report of 1923 stated that (1) “Poisonous gases marked the appearance of a terrible weapon”; (2) “chemical weapons gave an immense superiority to any power with hostile intentions”; and (3) “the possibilities of camouflaging chemical preparedness were very great.”

This report, along with the prior work of the 1921–22 Washington Naval Conference, provided the necessary momentum for the 1925 League of Nations Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. From this conference emerged the Protocol on the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, commonly known as the Geneva Protocol.