First use of gas. Chemical weapon

In the early April morning of 1915, a light breeze blew from the side of the German positions that opposed the line of defense of the Entente troops twenty kilometers from the city of Ypres (Belgium). Together with him, a dense yellowish-green cloud suddenly appeared in the direction of the Allied trenches. At that moment, few people knew that it was the breath of death, and, in the stingy language of front-line reports, the first use of chemical weapons on Western front.

Tears before death

To be absolutely precise, the use of chemical weapons began in 1914, and the French came up with this disastrous initiative. But then ethyl bromoacetate, which belongs to the group of chemicals of an irritant effect, and not a lethal one, was put into use. They were filled with 26-mm grenades, which fired at the German trenches. When the supply of this gas came to an end, it was replaced with chloroacetone, similar in effect.

In response to this, the Germans, who also did not consider themselves obliged to comply with the generally accepted legal norms enshrined in the Hague Convention, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, held in October of the same year, fired at the British with shells filled with a chemical irritant. However, at that time they failed to reach its dangerous concentration.

Thus, in April 1915, there was not the first case of the use of chemical weapons, but, unlike the previous ones, the lethal chlorine gas was used to destroy enemy manpower. The result of the attack was stunning. One hundred and eighty tons of sprayed killed five thousand soldiers of the allied forces and another ten thousand became disabled as a result of the resulting poisoning. By the way, the Germans themselves suffered. The death-bearing cloud touched their position with its edge, the defenders of which were not fully provided with gas masks. In the history of the war, this episode was designated "a black day at Ypres."

Further use of chemical weapons in World War I

Wanting to build on their success, the Germans repeated a chemical attack in the Warsaw region a week later, this time against the Russian army. And here death got a plentiful harvest - more than a thousand two hundred killed and several thousand left crippled. Naturally, the Entente countries tried to protest against such a gross violation of the principles international law, but Berlin cynically stated that the 1896 Hague Convention only referred to poison projectiles, not gases per se. To them, to admit, they did not try to object - the war always crosses out the works of diplomats.

The specifics of that terrible war

As military historians have repeatedly emphasized, in the First World War wide application found a tactic of positional actions, in which solid front lines were clearly marked, distinguished by stability, density of troop concentration and high engineering and technical support.

This largely reduced the effectiveness of offensive operations, since both sides met with resistance from the powerful defense of the enemy. The only way out of the impasse could be an unconventional tactical solution, which was the first use of chemical weapons.

New war crimes page

The use of chemical weapons in World War I was a major innovation. The range of its influence on a person was very wide. As can be seen from the above episodes of the First World War, it ranged from harmful, which was caused by chloracetone, ethyl bromoacetate and a number of others that had an irritant effect, to deadly - phosgene, chlorine and mustard gas.

Despite the fact that statistics show the relatively limited lethal potential of the gas (of the total number of those affected - only 5% of deaths), the number of dead and maimed was enormous. This gives the right to assert that the first use of chemical weapons opened a new page of war crimes in the history of mankind.

In the later stages of the war, both sides were able to develop and put into use sufficiently effective means of protection against enemy chemical attacks. This made the use of poisonous substances less effective, and gradually led to the abandonment of their use. However, it was the period from 1914 to 1918 that went down in history as the "war of chemists", since the first use of chemical weapons in the world took place on its battlefields.

The tragedy of the defenders of the Osovets fortress

However, let us return to the chronicle of military operations of that period. At the beginning of May 1915, the Germans carried out a target against the Russian units defending the Osovets fortress, located fifty kilometers from Bialystok (present-day Poland). According to eyewitnesses, after a long shelling with deadly substances, among which several types of them were used at once, all living things at a considerable distance were poisoned.

Not only people and animals that fell into the shelling zone died, but all vegetation was destroyed. The leaves of the trees turned yellow and crumbled before our eyes, and the grass turned black and fell to the ground. The picture was truly apocalyptic and did not fit into the consciousness of a normal person.

But, of course, the defenders of the citadel suffered the most. Even those of them who escaped death, for the most part, received severe chemical burns and were terribly mutilated. It is no coincidence that their appearance terrified the enemy so much that the counterattack of the Russians, who eventually threw the enemy back from the fortress, entered the history of the war under the name “attack of the dead”.

Development and use of phosgene

The first use of chemical weapons revealed a significant number of their technical shortcomings, which were eliminated in 1915 by a group of French chemists led by Victor Grignard. The result of their research was a new generation of deadly gas - phosgene.

Absolutely colorless, in contrast to the greenish-yellow chlorine, it betrayed its presence only with a barely perceptible smell of moldy hay, which made it difficult to detect. Compared to its predecessor, the novelty had greater toxicity, but at the same time had certain disadvantages.

The symptoms of poisoning, and even the death of the victims, did not occur immediately, but a day after the gas entered the Airways. This allowed the poisoned and often doomed soldiers to long time participate in hostilities. In addition, phosgene was very heavy, and to increase mobility it had to be mixed with the same chlorine. This infernal mixture was called the "White Star" by the Allies, since it was with this sign that the cylinders containing it were marked.

Devilish novelty

On the night of July 13, 1917, in the area of ​​the Belgian city of Ypres, which had already won notoriety, the Germans made the first use of a chemical weapon of skin-blister action. In the place of its debut, it became known as mustard gas. Its carriers were mines, which sprayed a yellow oily liquid when they exploded.

The use of mustard gas, like the use of chemical weapons in World War I in general, was another diabolical innovation. This "achievement of civilization" was created to damage the skin, as well as the respiratory and digestive organs. Neither soldier's uniforms, nor any types of civilian clothing saved from its impact. It penetrated through any fabric.

In those years, any reliable means of protection against its contact with the body were not yet produced, which made the use of mustard gas quite effective until the end of the war. Already the first use of this substance disabled two and a half thousand enemy soldiers and officers, of which a significant number died.

Gas that does not creep on the ground

German chemists took up the development of mustard gas not by chance. The first use of chemical weapons on the Western Front showed that the substances used - chlorine and phosgene - had a common and very significant drawback. They were heavier than air, and therefore, in atomized form, they fell down, filling trenches and all kinds of depressions. The people who were in them were poisoned, but those who were on the hills at the time of the attack often remained unharmed.

It was necessary to invent a poison gas with a lower specific gravity and capable of hitting its victims at any level. They became mustard gas, which appeared in July 1917. It should be noted that British chemists quickly established its formula, and in 1918 they launched deadly weapon into production, but large-scale use was prevented by the truce that followed two months later. Europe breathed a sigh of relief - the First World War, which lasted four years, ended. The use of chemical weapons became irrelevant, and their development was temporarily stopped.

The beginning of the use of poisonous substances by the Russian army

The first case of the use of chemical weapons by the Russian army dates back to 1915, when, under the leadership of Lieutenant General V.N. Ipatiev, a program for the production of this type of weapon in Russia was successfully implemented. However, its use was then in the nature of technical tests and did not pursue tactical goals. Only a year later, as a result of work on the introduction into production of developments created in this area, it became possible to use them on the fronts.

The full-scale use of military developments that came out of domestic laboratories began in the summer of 1916 during the famous It is this event that makes it possible to determine the year of the first use of chemical weapons by the Russian army. It is known that during the military operation were used artillery shells, stuffed with asphyxiating gas chloropicrin and poisonous - vensinite and phosgene. As is clear from the report sent to the Main Artillery Directorate, the use of chemical weapons rendered "a great service to the army."

The grim statistics of war

The first use of the chemical was a disastrous precedent. In subsequent years, its use not only expanded, but also underwent qualitative changes. Summing up the sad statistics of the four war years, historians state that during this period the warring parties produced at least 180 thousand tons of chemical weapons, of which at least 125 thousand tons were used. On the battlefields, 40 types of various poisonous substances were tested, which brought death and injury to 1,300,000 military personnel and civilians who found themselves in the zone of their application.

A lesson left unlearned

Did humanity learn a worthy lesson from the events of those years and did the date of the first use of chemical weapons become a black day in its history? Hardly. And today, despite international legal acts prohibiting the use of poisonous substances, the arsenals of most states of the world are full of their modern developments, and more and more often there are reports in the press about its use in various parts of the world. Humanity is stubbornly moving along the path of self-destruction, ignoring the bitter experience of previous generations.

The first gas attack in World War I was, in short, organized by the French. But poisonous substances were first used by the German military.
For various reasons, in particular the use of new types of weapons, the First World War, which was planned to end in a few months, quickly escalated into a positional, "trench" conflict. Such hostilities could continue for as long as you like. In order to somehow change the situation and lure the enemy out of the trenches and break through the front, all kinds of chemical weapons began to be used.
It was gases that became one of the reasons for the huge number of victims in the First World War.

First experience

Already in August 1914, almost in the first days of the war, the French in one of the battles used grenades filled with ethyl bromoacetate (tear gas). They did not cause poisoning, but for some time they were able to disorient the enemy. In fact, this was the first combat gas attack.
After the reserves of this gas were depleted, the French troops began to use chloroacetate.
The Germans, who very quickly adopted best practices and what could contribute to the implementation of their plans, took this method of fighting the enemy into service. In October of the same year, they tried to use chemical irritant shells against the British military near the village of Neuve Chapelle. But the low concentration of the substance in the shells did not give the expected effect.

From annoying to poisonous

April 22, 1915. This day, in short, went down in history as one of the darkest days of the First World War. It was then that the German troops carried out the first mass gas attack using not an irritant, but a poisonous substance. Now their goal was not to disorientate and immobilize the enemy, but to destroy him.
It happened on the banks of the river Ypres. 168 tons of chlorine were released by the German military into the air, towards the location of the French troops. A poisonous greenish cloud, followed by German soldiers in special gauze bandages, horrified the Franco-English army. Many fled, giving up their positions without a fight. Others, inhaling the poisoned air, fell dead. As a result, more than 15,000 people were injured that day, 5,000 of whom died, and a gap more than 3 km wide was formed in the front. True, the Germans could not take advantage of the advantage gained. Afraid to advance, having no reserves, they allowed the British and French to re-fill the gap.
After that, the Germans repeatedly tried to repeat their so successful first experience. However, none of the subsequent gas attacks brought such an effect and so many victims, since now all troops were supplied with personal protective equipment against gases.
In response to Germany's actions at Ypres, the entire world community immediately protested, but it was no longer possible to stop the use of gases.
On the Eastern Front, the Germans also did not fail to use their new weapons against the Russian army. It happened on the river Ravka. As a result gas attack about 8 thousand Russian soldiers were poisoned here imperial army, more than a quarter of them died from poisoning in the next day after the attack.
It is noteworthy that at first sharply condemning Germany, after some time almost all Entente countries began to use chemical poisonous substances.

One of the forgotten pages of the First World War is the so-called "attack of the dead" on July 24 (August 6, NS), 1915. This is an amazing story of how, 100 years ago, a handful of Russian soldiers miraculously surviving after a gas attack put several thousand advancing Germans to flight.

As you know, poisonous substances (S) were used in the First World War. They were first used by Germany: it is believed that in the area of ​​the city of Ypres on April 22, 1915, the 4th German Army used chemical weapons (chlorine) for the first time in the history of wars and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.
On the Eastern Front, the Germans for the first time carried out a gas balloon attack on May 18 (31), 1915 against the Russian 55th Infantry Division.

On August 6, 1915, the Germans used poisonous substances, which were compounds of chlorine and bromine, against the defenders of the Russian fortress Osovets. And then something unusual happened, which went down in history under the expressive name "attack of the dead"!

A little preliminary history.
The Osovets Fortress is a Russian defensive fortress built on the Beaver River near the town of Osovice (now the Polish city of Osovets-Krepost) 50 km from the city of Bialystok.

The fortress was built to defend the corridor between the rivers Neman and Vistula - Narew - Bug, with the most important strategic directions of St. Petersburg - Berlin and St. Petersburg - Vienna. The place for the construction of defensive structures was chosen so as to block the main main direction to the east. It was impossible to get around the fortress in this area - impenetrable swampy terrain was located to the north and south.

Osovets fortifications

Osovets was not considered a first-class fortress: before the war, the brick vaults of the casemates were reinforced with concrete, some additional fortifications were built, but they were not too impressive, and the Germans fired from 210 mm howitzers and super heavy guns. The strength of Osovets lay in his location: he stood on the high bank of the Bober River, among huge, impenetrable swamps. The Germans could not surround the fortress, and the valor of the Russian soldier did the rest.

The fortress garrison consisted of 1 infantry regiment, two artillery battalions, sapper unit and support units.
The garrison was armed with 200 guns of caliber from 57 to 203 mm. The infantry was armed with rifles, light heavy machine guns systems madsen model 1902 and 1903, heavy machine guns of the Maxim system model 1902 and 1910, as well as turret machine guns of the system Gatling.

By the beginning of World War I, the garrison of the fortress was headed by Lieutenant General A. A. Shulman. In January 1915, he was replaced by Major General N. A. Brzhozovsky, who commanded the fortress until the end of the active operations of the garrison in August 1915.

major general
Nikolai Alexandrovich Brzhozovsky

In September 1914, units of the 8th German Army approached the fortress - 40 infantry battalions, which almost immediately launched a massive attack. Already by September 21, 1914, having a multiple numerical superiority, the Germans managed to push the field defense of the Russian troops to the line, which allowed artillery shelling of the fortress.

At the same time, the German command transferred 60 guns of up to 203 mm caliber from Koenigsberg to the fortress. However, the shelling began only on September 26, 1914. Two days later, the Germans launched an attack on the fortress, but it was suppressed by heavy fire from Russian artillery. The next day, Russian troops carried out two flank counterattacks, which forced the Germans to stop shelling and retreat in a hurry, withdrawing artillery.

On February 3, 1915, German troops made a second attempt to storm the fortress. A hard, long battle ensued. Despite fierce attacks, the Russian units held the line.

The German artillery bombarded the forts using heavy siege guns of 100-420 mm caliber. The fire was fired in volleys of 360 shells, every four minutes - a volley. For a week of shelling, only 200-250 thousand heavy shells were fired at the fortress.
Also, especially for shelling the fortress, the Germans deployed 4 Skoda siege mortars of 305 mm caliber near Osovets. From above, the fortress was bombed by German airplanes.

Mortar "Skoda", 1911 (en: Skoda 305 mm Model 1911).

The European press in those days wrote: “The appearance of the fortress was terrible, the whole fortress was shrouded in smoke, through which, first in one place, then in another, huge fiery tongues escaped from the explosion of shells; pillars of earth, water and whole trees flew up; the earth trembled, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire. The impression was that not a single person would emerge unharmed from this hurricane of fire and iron.

The command of the general staff, believing that it was demanding the impossible, asked the garrison commander to hold out for at least 48 hours. The fortress stood for another six months ...

Moreover, a number of siege weapons, including two "Big Berts", were destroyed by the fire of Russian batteries. After several mortars of the largest caliber were damaged, the German command withdrew these guns outside the reach of the fortress's defenses.

In early July 1915, under the command of Field Marshal von Hindenburg, German troops launched a large-scale offensive. A new assault on the still unconquered Osovets fortress was part of it.

The 18th regiment of the 70th brigade of the 11th division of the landwehr participated in the assault on Osovets ( Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. eighteen . 70. Landwehr-Infanterie-Brigade. 11. Landwehr Division). The division commander from the moment of formation in February 1915 to November 1916 - Lieutenant General Rudolf von Freudenberg ( Rudolf von Freudenberg)

lieutenant general
Rudolf von Freudenberg

The Germans began to arrange gas batteries at the end of July. 30 gas batteries were installed in the amount of several thousand cylinders. For more than 10 days the Germans waited for a fair wind.

The following infantry forces were prepared to storm the fortress:
The 76th Landwehr Regiment attacks Sosnya and the Central Redoubt and advances along the rear of the Sosnenskaya position to the forester's house, which is at the beginning of the railway gat;
The 18th Landwehr Regiment and the 147th Reserve Battalion advance on both sides of the railway, break through to the forester's house and, together with the 76th Regiment, attack the Zarechnaya position;
The 5th Landwehr Regiment and the 41st Reserve Battalion attack Bialogrondy and, breaking through the position, storm the Zarechny Fort.
In reserve were the 75th Landwehr Regiment and two reserve battalions, which were to advance along the railway and reinforce the 18th Landwehr Regiment in the attack on the Zarechnaya position.

In total, the following forces were assembled to attack the Sosnenskaya and Zarechnaya positions:
13 - 14 infantry battalions,
1 battalion of sappers,
24 - 30 heavy siege weapons,
30 poison gas batteries.

The forward position of the Byalohrondy fortress - Pine was occupied by the following Russian forces:
Right flank (positions at Bialogronda):
1st Company of the Compatriot Regiment,
two companies of militia.
Center (positions from the Rudsky Canal to the central redoubt):
9th company of the Compatriot Regiment,
10th Company of the Compatriot Regiment,
12th Company of the Compatriot Regiment,
militia company.
Left flank (position at Sosnya) - 11th company of the Zemlyachinsky regiment,
General reserve (near the forester's house) - one company of militia.
Thus, the Sosnenskaya position was occupied by five companies of the 226th Infantry Zemlyansky Regiment and four companies of militia, a total of nine companies of infantry.
The infantry battalion sent every night to the front positions left at 3 o'clock for the Zarechny Fort to rest.

At 04:00 on August 6, the Germans opened heavy artillery fire on the railway gati, the Zarechnaya position, the communications of the Zarechny fort with the fortress and on the batteries of the bridgehead, after which, at the signal of the missiles, the enemy infantry launched an offensive.

gas attack

Having not achieved success with artillery fire and numerous attacks, on August 6, 1915 at 4 o'clock in the morning, having waited for the desired wind direction, the German units used poison gases consisting of chlorine and bromine compounds against the defenders of the fortress. The defenders of the fortress did not have gas masks ...

At that time, the Russian army had no idea what horror the scientific and technological progress of the 20th century would turn into.

As reported by V.S. Khmelkov, the gases released by the Germans on August 6 had a dark green color - it was chlorine with an admixture of bromine. The gas wave, which had about 3 km along the front when it was released, began to spread rapidly to the sides and, having traveled 10 km, was already about 8 km wide; the height of the gas wave above the bridgehead was about 10-15 m.

All living things in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress were poisoned to death, heavy losses were suffered during the firing of the fortress artillery; people not participating in the battle escaped in barracks, shelters, residential buildings, tightly locking the doors and windows, dousing them with plenty of water.

12 km from the place of gas release, in the villages of Ovechki, Zhodzi, Malaya Kramkovka, 18 people were seriously poisoned; known cases of poisoning of animals - horses and cows. No cases of poisoning were observed at the Monki station, located 18 km from the place where the gases were released.
Gas stagnated in the forest and near water ditches, a small grove 2 km from the fortress along the highway to Bialystok turned out to be impassable until 16:00. August 6th

All the greenery in the fortress and in the nearest area along the path of the gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground, the flower petals flew around.
All copper objects on the bridgehead of the fortress - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide; food items stored without hermetic sealing - meat, butter, lard, vegetables - turned out to be poisoned and unfit for consumption.

The half-poisoned wandered back, and, tormented by thirst, bent down to the sources of water, but here the gases lingered in low places, and secondary poisoning led to death ...

The gases inflicted huge losses on the defenders of the Sosnenskaya position - the 9th, 10th and 11th companies of the Zemlyachsky regiment were killed entirely, about 40 people remained from the 12th company with one machine gun; from the three companies that defended Bialogrondy, there were about 60 people with two machine guns.

The German artillery again opened a massive fire, and after the fire shaft and the gas cloud, believing that the garrison defending the positions of the fortress was dead, the German units went on the offensive. 14 Landwehr battalions went on the attack - and this is at least seven thousand infantrymen.
On the front line after the gas attack, hardly more than a hundred defenders remained alive. The doomed fortress, it seemed, was already in German hands...

But when German infantry approached the advanced fortifications of the fortress, the remaining defenders of the first line rose to meet them in a counterattack - the remnants of the 13th company of the 226th infantry Zemlyachensky regiment, a little more than 60 people. The counterattacks had a horrifying appearance - with faces mutilated by chemical burns, wrapped in rags, shaking from a terrible cough, literally spitting out pieces of the lungs on bloody tunics ...

The unexpected attack and the appearance of the attackers terrified the German units and turned them into a stampede. Several dozen half-dead Russian soldiers put to flight parts of the 18th Landwehr Regiment!
This attack of the “dead” plunged the enemy into such horror that the German infantrymen, not accepting the battle, rushed back, trampling each other and hanging on their own wire barriers. And then at them, from the Russian batteries shrouded in chlorine clubs, it would seem that the already dead Russian artillery began to hit ...

Professor A. S. Khmelkov described it this way:
Batteries of the fortress artillery, despite heavy losses in people poisoned, opened fire, and soon the fire of nine heavy and two light batteries slowed down the advance of the 18th Landwehr Regiment and cut off the general reserve (75th Landwehr Regiment) from the position. The head of the 2nd Defense Department sent the 8th, 13th and 14th companies of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment from the Zarechnaya position for a counterattack. The 13th and 8th companies, having lost up to 50% poisoned, turned around on both sides of the railway and launched an offensive; The 13th company, having met units of the 18th Landwehr Regiment, with a shout of "Hurrah" rushed to the bayonets. This attack of the "dead", as an eyewitness of the battle reports, so impressed the Germans that they did not accept the battle and rushed back, many Germans died on wire nets in front of the second line of trenches from the fire of fortress artillery. The concentrated fire of the fortress artillery on the trenches of the first line (Leonov's yard) was so strong that the Germans did not accept the attack and hastily retreated.

Several dozen half-dead Russian soldiers put three German infantry regiments to flight! Later, participants in the events from the German side and European journalists dubbed this counterattack as the "attack of the dead."

In the end, the heroic defense of the fortress came to an end.

The end of the defense of the fortress

At the end of April, the Germans delivered another powerful blow to East Prussia and in early May 1915 they broke through the Russian front in the area of ​​Memel-Libau. In May, the German-Austrian troops, having concentrated superior forces in the Gorlice region, managed to break through the Russian front (see: Gorlitsky breakthrough) in Galicia. After that, in order to avoid encirclement, a general strategic retreat of the Russian army from Galicia and Poland began. By August 1915, due to changes on the Western Front, the strategic need to defend the fortress lost all meaning. In connection with this, the supreme command of the Russian army decided to stop defensive battles and evacuate the garrison of the fortress. On August 18, 1915, the evacuation of the garrison began, which took place without panic, in accordance with the plans. Everything that could not be taken out, as well as the surviving fortifications, were blown up by sappers. In the process of retreat, the Russian troops, if possible, organized the evacuation of the civilian population. The withdrawal of troops from the fortress ended on August 22.

Major General Brzhozovsky was the last to leave the deserted Osovets. He approached a group of sappers located half a kilometer from the fortress and turned the handle of the explosive device himself - an electric current ran through the cable, a terrible roar was heard. Osovets flew into the air, but before that, absolutely everything was taken out of it.

On August 25, German troops entered the empty, ruined fortress. The Germans did not get a single cartridge, not a single can of canned food: they received only a pile of ruins.
The defense of Osovets came to an end, but Russia soon forgot it. There were terrible defeats and great upheavals ahead, Osovets turned out to be just an episode on the road to disaster ...

Ahead was a revolution: Nikolai Alexandrovich Brzhozovsky, who commanded the defense of Osovets, fought for the Whites, his soldiers and officers were divided by the front line.
Judging by fragmentary information, Lieutenant General Brzhozovsky was a member of the White movement in southern Russia, was in the reserve of the Volunteer Army. In the 20s. lived in Yugoslavia.

In Soviet Russia, they tried to forget Osovets: there could not be great feats in the "imperialist war".

Who was the soldier whose machine gun pinned down the infantrymen of the 14th Landwehr division who broke into the Russian positions? Under artillery fire, his entire company perished, but by some miracle he survived, and, stunned by the explosions, almost alive, he released tape after tape - until the Germans threw grenades at him. The machine gunner saved the position, and possibly the entire fortress. No one will ever know his name...

God knows who the gassed lieutenant of the militia battalion was, who croaked through a cough: “follow me!” - got up from the trench and went to the Germans. He was immediately killed, but the militia got up and held out until the arrows arrived to help them ...

Osovets covered Bialystok: from there the road to Warsaw opened, and further - into the depths of Russia. In 1941, the Germans made this way swiftly, bypassing and surrounding entire armies, capturing hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Located not too far from Osovets Brest Fortress at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, it held on heroically, but its defense had no strategic importance: the front went far to the East, the remnants of the garrison were doomed.

Osovets was a different matter in August 1915: he chained large enemy forces to himself, his artillery methodically crushed the German infantry.
Then the Russian army did not scamper in disgrace to the Volga and to Moscow ...

School textbooks talk about "the rottenness of the tsarist regime, mediocre tsarist generals, about unpreparedness for war", which was not at all popular, because the soldiers who were forcibly called up did not want to fight ...
Now the facts: in 1914-1917, almost 16 million people were drafted into the Russian army - from all classes, almost all nationalities of the empire. Is this not a people's war?
And these "forcibly drafted" fought without commissars and political officers, without special security officers, without penal battalions. Without barriers. About one and a half million people were marked with the St. George's Cross, 33 thousand became full holders of the St. George's Crosses of all four degrees. By November 1916, more than one and a half million medals "For Courage" had been issued at the front. In the then army, crosses and medals were not simply hung up to anyone and they were not given for the protection of rear depots - only for specific military merits.

"Rotten tsarism" carried out the mobilization clearly and without a hint of transport chaos. The "unprepared for war" Russian army, led by "incompetent" tsarist generals, not only carried out timely deployment, but also inflicted a series of powerful blows on the enemy, carrying out a number of successful offensive operations on enemy territory. The army of the Russian Empire for three years held the blow of the military machine of three empires - German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman - on a huge front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The tsarist generals and their soldiers did not let the enemy deep into the Fatherland.

The generals had to retreat, but the army under their command retreated in a disciplined and organized manner, only by order. Yes, and they tried not to leave the civilian population to desecrate the enemy, evacuating if possible. The “anti-national tsarist regime” did not think of repressing the families of those who were captured, and the “oppressed peoples” were in no hurry to go over to the side of the enemy with entire armies. Prisoners were not enrolled in the legions in order to fight against their own country with weapons in their hands, just as hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers did this a quarter of a century later.
And on the side of the Kaiser, a million Russian volunteers did not fight, there were no Vlasovites.
In 1914, no one and in nightmare could not dream that the Cossacks fought in the German ranks ...

In the "imperialist" war, the Russian army did not leave its own on the battlefield, carrying out the wounded and burying the dead. Therefore, the bones of our soldiers and officers of the First World War do not roll on the battlefields. It is known about the Patriotic War: the 70th year since its end, and the number of humanly unburied people is in the millions ...

During the German War, there was a cemetery near the Church of All Saints in All Saints, where soldiers who died from wounds in hospitals were buried. The Soviet authorities destroyed the cemetery, like many others, when they methodically began to uproot the memory of the Great War. She was ordered to be considered unfair, lost, shameful.
In addition, deserters and saboteurs who carried out subversive work with enemy money became at the helm of the country in October 1917. It was inconvenient for the comrades from the sealed carriage, who stood up for the defeat of the fatherland, to conduct military-patriotic education on the examples of the imperialist war, which they turned into a civil one.
And in the 1920s, Germany became a tender friend and military-economic partner - why annoy her with a reminder of past discord?

True, some literature about the First World War was published, but utilitarian and for the mass consciousness. Another line is educational and applied: it was not on the materials of the campaigns of Hannibal and the First Cavalry that students of military academies were taught. And in the early 1930s, scientific interest in the war was indicated, voluminous collections of documents and studies appeared. But their theme is revealing: offensive operations. The last collection of documents was published in 1941, no more collections were issued. True, even in these editions there were no names or people - only numbers of parts and formations. Even after June 22, 1941, when the "great leader" decided to turn to historical analogies, remembering the names of Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov, he did not say a word about those who stood in the way of the Germans in 1914 ...

After the Second World War, the strictest ban was imposed not only on the study of the First World War, but in general on any memory of it. And for mentioning the heroes of the "imperialist" one could go to the camps as for anti-Soviet agitation and praising the White Guard ...

The history of the First World War knows two examples when fortresses and their garrisons completed their tasks to the end: the famous French fortress of Verdun and the small Russian fortress of Osovets.
The garrison of the fortress heroically withstood the siege of many times superior enemy troops for six months, and withdrew only by order of the command after the strategic expediency of further defense had disappeared.
The defense of the Osovets fortress during the First World War was a vivid example of the courage, steadfastness and valor of Russian soldiers.

Eternal memory to the fallen heroes!

Osovets. Fortress church. Parade on the occasion of the presentation of the St. George's Crosses.

Poison gas was first used by German troops in 1915 on the Western Front. It was later used in Abyssinia, China, Yemen and also in Iraq. Hitler himself was the victim of a gas attack during World War I.

Silent, invisible and in most cases deadly: poison gas is a terrible weapon - not only in the physical sense, since chemical warfare agents can destroy huge numbers of soldiers and civilians, but probably even more psychologically, since fear in front of a terrible threat contained in the inhaled air, inevitably causes panic.

Since 1915, when poison gas was first used in modern warfare, it has been used to kill people in dozens of armed conflicts. However, just in the bloodiest war of the 20th century, in the struggle of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition against the Third Reich in Europe, both sides did not use these weapons of mass destruction. But, nevertheless, in those years it was used, and took place, in particular, during the Sino-Japanese war, which began already in 1937.

Poisonous substances were used as weapons in ancient times - for example, warriors rubbed arrowheads with irritating substances in ancient times. However, the systematic study of chemical elements began only before the First World War. By this time, police in some European countries had already used tear gas to disperse unwanted crowds. Therefore, it remained only a small step before the use of deadly poisonous gas.

1915 - first application

The first confirmed large-scale use of military poison gas occurred on the western front in Flanders. Prior to this, attempts were repeatedly made - generally unsuccessful - to squeeze out with the help of various chemical substances enemy soldiers from the trenches and thus complete the conquest of Flanders. On the eastern front, the German gunners also used shells with poisonous chemicals - without much consequence.

Against the background of this kind of "unsatisfactory" results, the chemist Fritz Haber (Fritz Haber), who later received the Nobel Prize, proposed spraying chlorine gas in the presence of a suitable wind. More than 160 tons of this by-product of the chemical industry were used on April 22, 1915 in the Ypres region. The gas was released from about 6,000 cylinders, and as a result, a poisonous cloud six kilometers long and one kilometer wide covered the enemy positions.

There is no exact data on the number of victims of this attack, but they were very significant. In any case, the German army on the "Day of Ypres" managed to break through great depth fortifications of the French and Canadian units.

The Entente countries actively protested against the use of poison gas. The German side, in response, stated that the use of chemical munitions is not prohibited by the Hague Convention on Land Warfare. Formally, this was correct, but the use of chlorine gas was contrary to the spirit of the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907.

The death toll was almost 50%

In the following weeks, poisonous gas was used several more times on the arc in the Ypres region. At the same time, on May 5, 1915, at a height of 60 in the British trenches, 90 of the 320 soldiers who were there were killed. Another 207 people were taken to hospitals, but 58 of them did not need any help. The proportion of deaths from the use of poisonous gases against unprotected soldiers was then approximately 50%.

The use of poisonous chemicals by the Germans destroyed the taboo, and after that, other participants in the hostilities also began to use poisonous gases. The British first used chlorine gas in September 1915, while the French used phosgene. Another spiral of the arms race began: more and more new chemical warfare agents were developed, and their own soldiers received more and more advanced gas masks. A total of 18 different potentially lethal poisons and 27 more were used during World War I. chemical compounds"annoying" action.

According to existing estimates, in the period from 1914 to 1918, about 20 million gas shells were used, in addition, more than 10 thousand tons of chemical warfare agents were released from special containers. According to calculations by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, 91,000 people died as a result of the use of chemical warfare agents, and 1.2 million were injured of varying severity.

Hitler's personal experience

Among the victims was also Adolf Hitler. On October 14, 1918, during a mustard gas attack by the French, he temporarily lost his sight. In the book “My Struggle” (Mein Kampf), where Hitler sets out the foundations of his worldview, he describes this situation as follows: “About midnight, some of the comrades were out of action, some of them forever. In the morning I also began to feel severe pain increasing every minute. About seven o'clock, stumbling and falling, I somehow wandered to the checkpoint. My eyes burned with pain." After a few hours, “my eyes turned into burning coals. Then I stopped seeing."

And after the First World War, the accumulated, but already unnecessary in Europe, shells with poisonous gases were used. For example, Winston Churchill advocated their use against "wild" rebels in the colonies, but at the same time he made a reservation and added that it was not necessary to use deadly substances. In Iraq Royal air Force chemical bombs were also used.

Spain, which remained neutral during the First World War, used poison gases during the Rif War against the Berber tribes in its North African possessions. The Italian dictator Mussolini used this kind of weapon in the Libyan and Abyssinian wars, and it was often used against the civilian population. Western public opinion reacted to this with indignation, but as a result, it was possible to agree only on the adoption of symbolic responses.

Unambiguous ban

In 1925, the Geneva Protocol banned the use of chemical and biological weapons in hostilities, as well as their use against civilians. Nevertheless, practically all states of the world continued to prepare for future wars with the use of chemical weapons.

After 1918, the largest use of chemical warfare agents occurred in 1937 during Japan's war of conquest against China. They have been used on several thousand isolated occasions, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians, but exact data from those theaters of war is not available. Japan did not ratify the Geneva Protocol and was not formally bound by its provisions, but even at that time the use of chemical weapons was considered a war crime.

Thanks also to personal experience Hitler's threshold for the use of poisonous chemicals during World War II was very high. However, this does not mean that both sides were not preparing for a possible gas war - in case the opposite side unleashed it.

The Wehrmacht had several laboratories for the study of chemical warfare agents, and one of them was located in the Spandau Citadel, located in the western part of Berlin. In particular, the highly toxic poison gases sarin and soman are produced there in small quantities. And at the plants of the I.G. Farben company, several tons of tabun nerve gas were even produced on a phosphorus basis. However, it was not applied.

dangerous incident

On the side of the Western Allies, the British, as well as the Americans, were planning a retaliatory strike using chemical warfare agents. However, none of these powers in any way wanted to be the first to use chemical weapons of mass destruction. The United States produced many thousands of chemical warfare bomb bodies, which had already been converted for use as liquid-filled incendiaries during the course of the war.

Despite the restrained attitude towards poisonous substances during the Second World War in Europe, victims from their use could not be avoided: on December 2, 1943, during a German raid on the port of Bari, a bomb hit an American cargo ship carrying shells filled with mustard gas . 628 soldiers ended up in the infirmary, and 83 of them died. The number of civilian casualties is unknown. For some time it seemed that this would be followed by a retaliatory attack with chemical weapons on one of the German cities, and this continued until it became clear that American munitions with poisonous filling were the sources of the defeat.

Although the Wehrmacht did not use chemical warfare agents, Germany was nonetheless responsible for the deaths of approximately three million people by gassing: in the Auschwitz concentration camp, since 1942, about a million people were victims of the use of the Zyklon B insecticide. Another two million died at the hands of the SS in the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, as well as in numerous mobile gas chambers as a result of the use of carbon monoxide. However, these were massacres, and not actually military operations using chemical warfare agents.

Poison gases during the Cold War

After 1945, both superpowers continued to build up their chemical arsenals, but they never came close. But poisonous substances were used by regimes in third world countries. There is evidence that during civil war Egyptian-made poisonous substances were used in Yemen in the 1960s. It is safe to say that two decades later, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein used various chemical warfare agents during the first Gulf War. During the massacre in the city of Halabja in 1988, about 5,000 Kurds were killed.

Before the war between Iraq and Kuwait in 1991, the United States gave the Iraqi dictator an unequivocal warning: if he used poisonous substances, then atomic bombs reduce to ashes targets in Iraq itself. Saddam did not then use chemical weapons. In 2005, he was accused of using poisonous substances in 1988, but he was eventually sentenced to death on other charges.

Today, the use of chemical weapons is strictly prohibited throughout the world. Corresponding signals are constantly sent to the Assad regime in Syria. Although the details of the alleged use of chemical warfare agents in the suburbs of Damascus are not yet known, the violation of the established border has already occurred.

February 14th, 2015

German gas attack. Aerial view. Photo: Imperial War Museums

According to rough estimates of historians, at least 1.3 million people suffered from chemical weapons during the First World War. All the main theaters of the Great War became, in fact, the largest testing ground in the history of mankind for testing weapons of mass destruction in real conditions. On the danger of such a development of events international community thought back at the end of the 19th century, trying to impose restrictions on the use of poisonous gases through a convention. But, as soon as one of the countries, namely Germany, violated this taboo, all the others, including Russia, joined the chemical arms race with no less zeal.

In the material of the "Russian Planet" I suggest you read about how it began and why the first gas attacks were never noticed by mankind.

The first gas lump

On October 27, 1914, at the very beginning of the First World War, near the village of Neuve Chapelle in the vicinity of Lille, the Germans fired at the French with improved shrapnel shells. In a glass of such a projectile, the space between the shrapnel bullets was filled with dianisidine sulfate, which irritates the mucous membranes of the eyes and nose. 3 thousand of these shells allowed the Germans to capture a small village on the northern border of France, but damaging effect what would now be called "tear gas" turned out to be small. As a result, the disappointed German generals decided to abandon the production of "innovative" shells with insufficient lethality, since even Germany's developed industry could not cope with the monstrous needs of the fronts for conventional ammunition.

In fact, humanity did not notice this first fact of the new “ chemical warfare". Against the background of unexpectedly high losses from conventional weapons, the tears from the soldiers' eyes did not seem dangerous.

German troops release gas from cylinders during a gas attack. Photo: Imperial War Museums

However, the leaders of the Second Reich did not stop experiments with military chemistry. Just three months later, on January 31, 1915, already on the Eastern Front, German troops, trying to break through to Warsaw, near the village of Bolimov, fired at Russian positions with improved gas ammunition. That day, 18,000 150-millimeter shells containing 63 tons of xylyl bromide hit the positions of the 6th Corps of the 2nd Russian Army. But this substance was more "tearful" than poisonous. Moreover, the severe frosts that prevailed in those days nullified its effectiveness - the liquid sprayed by exploding shells did not evaporate in the cold and did not turn into gas, its irritating effect was insufficient. The first chemical attack on Russian troops was also unsuccessful.

The Russian command, however, drew attention to her. On March 4, 1915, from the Main Artillery Directorate of the General Staff, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Imperial Army, received a proposal to begin experiments with shells equipped with toxic substances. A few days later, the secretaries of the Grand Duke replied that "the supreme commander has a negative attitude towards the use of chemical projectiles."

Formally, the uncle of the last tsar was right in this case - the Russian army was sorely lacking conventional shells to divert the already insufficient forces of industry into the manufacture of a new type of ammunition of dubious effectiveness. But military equipment during the Great years it developed rapidly. And by the spring of 1915, "gloomy Teutonic genius"revealed to the world a truly deadly chemistry that terrified everyone.

Nobel laureates kill near Ypres

The first effective gas attack was undertaken in April 1915 near the Belgian town of Ypres, where the Germans used chlorine released from cylinders against the British and French. On the attack front of 6 kilometers, 6,000 gas cylinders filled with 180 tons of gas were installed. It is curious that half of these cylinders were of civilian design - the German army collected them throughout Germany and captured Belgium.

The cylinders were placed in specially equipped trenches, combined into "gas-cylinder batteries" of 20 pieces each. Burying them and equipping all positions for a gas attack was completed on April 11, but the Germans had to wait more than a week for a favorable wind. In the right direction, he blew only at 5 pm on April 22, 1915.

Within 5 minutes, "gas-balloon batteries" released 168 tons of chlorine. A yellow-green cloud covered the French trenches, and the fighters of the “colored division” that had just arrived at the front from the French colonies in Africa fell under the action of the gas.

Chlorine caused spasms of the larynx and pulmonary edema. The troops did not yet have any means of protection against gas, no one even knew how to defend themselves and escape from such an attack. Therefore, the soldiers who remained in position suffered less than those who ran away, since each movement increased the effect of the gas. Since chlorine is heavier than air and accumulated near the ground, those soldiers who stood under fire suffered less than those who lay or sat at the bottom of the trench. The most injured were the wounded lying on the ground or on stretchers, and people moving to the rear along with a cloud of gas. In total, almost 15 thousand soldiers were poisoned, of which about 5 thousand died.

It is significant that the German infantry advancing after the chlorine cloud also suffered losses. And if the gas attack itself was a success, causing panic and even the flight of the French colonial units, then the actual German attack turned out to be almost a failure, and progress was minimal. The breakthrough of the front, which the German generals counted on, did not happen. The German infantrymen themselves were frankly afraid to go forward through the contaminated area. German soldiers who were captured in this area later told the British that the gas caused a sharp pain in their eyes when they occupied the trenches left by the fleeing French.

The impression of the tragedy at Ypres was aggravated by the fact that the Allied command was warned at the beginning of April 1915 about the use of new weapons - the defector said that the Germans were going to poison the enemy with a cloud of gas, and that "gas cylinders" had already been installed in the trenches. But the French and British generals then only brushed it aside - the information was included in the intelligence reports of the headquarters, but was classified as "information not credible."

Even greater was the psychological impact of the first effective chemical attack. The troops, who then had no protection against a new type of weapon, were struck by a real "gas fear", and the slightest rumor of the beginning of such an attack caused general panic.

Representatives of the Entente immediately accused the Germans of violating the Hague Convention, since Germany in 1899 in The Hague at the 1st Disarmament Conference, among other countries, signed a declaration “On the non-use of projectiles that have the sole purpose of spreading asphyxiating or harmful gases.” However, using the same wording, Berlin replied that the convention prohibited only gas projectiles, and not any use of gases for military purposes. After that, in fact, no one else remembered the convention.

Otto Hahn (right) in the laboratory. 1913 Photo: US Library of Congress

It is worth noting that it was chlorine that was chosen as the first chemical weapon for completely practical reasons. In civilian life, it was then widely used to obtain bleach, of hydrochloric acid, paints, medicines and masses of other products. The technology of its manufacture was well studied, so obtaining this gas in large quantities was not difficult.

The organization of the gas attack near Ypres was led by German chemists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin - Fritz Haber, James Frank, Gustav Hertz and Otto Hahn. The European civilization of the 20th century is best characterized by the fact that they all subsequently received Nobel Prizes for various scientific achievements of an exclusively peaceful nature. It is noteworthy that the creators of chemical weapons themselves did not consider that they were doing something terrible or even simply wrong. Fritz Haber, for example, claimed that he had always been an ideological opponent of the war, but when it began, he was forced to work for the good of his homeland. Gaber categorically denied accusations of creating inhumane weapons of mass destruction, considering such reasoning to be demagogy - in response, he usually stated that death is death in any case, regardless of what exactly caused it.

“Showed more curiosity than anxiety”

Immediately after the “success” near Ypres, the Germans in April-May 1915 carried out several more gas attacks on the Western Front. For the Eastern Front, the time for the first "gas balloon attack" came at the end of May. The operation was again carried out near Warsaw near the village of Bolimov, where in January the first unsuccessful experiment on the Russian front with chemical shells took place. This time, 12,000 cylinders of chlorine were prepared on a 12-kilometer stretch.

On the night of May 31, 1915, at 3:20 a.m., the Germans released chlorine. Parts of two Russian divisions - the 55th and 14th Siberian divisions - fell under the gas attack. Intelligence in this sector of the front was then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander De-Lazari, who later described that fateful morning as follows: “Complete surprise and unpreparedness led the soldiers to show more surprise and curiosity at the appearance of a gas cloud than anxiety. Mistaking the cloud of gas for a camouflage attack, the Russian troops reinforced the forward trenches and pulled up reserves. Soon the trenches were filled with corpses and dying people.

Almost 9,038 people were poisoned in two Russian divisions, of whom 1,183 died. The concentration of the gas was such that, as an eyewitness wrote, chlorine “formed gas swamps in the lowlands, destroying spring and clover seedlings on the way” - the grass and leaves from the gas changed color, turned yellow and died after people.

As at Ypres, despite the tactical success of the attack, the Germans failed to develop it into a breakthrough of the front. It is significant that the German soldiers near Bolimov were also very afraid of chlorine and even tried to object to its use. But the high command from Berlin was relentless.

No less significant is the fact that, just like the British and French near Ypres, the Russians were also aware of the impending gas attack. The Germans, with balloon batteries already placed in the advanced trenches, waited for a favorable wind for 10 days, and during this time the Russians took several "languages". Moreover, the command already knew the results of the use of chlorine near Ypres, but the soldiers and officers in the trenches still did not warn about anything. True, in connection with the threat of the use of chemistry, "gas masks" were issued from Moscow itself - the first, not yet perfect gas masks. But by an evil irony of fate, they were delivered to the divisions attacked by chlorine on May 31 in the evening, after the attack.

A month later, on the night of July 7, 1915, the Germans repeated a gas attack in the same area, not far from Bolimov near the village of Volya Shidlovskaya. “This time the attack was no longer as unexpected as on May 31,” wrote a participant in those battles. “However, the chemical discipline of the Russians was still very low, and the passage of the gas wave caused the abandonment of the first line of defense and significant losses.”

Despite the fact that the troops had already begun to supply primitive "gas masks", they still did not know how to properly respond to gas attacks. Instead of wearing masks and waiting for a cloud of chlorine to blow through the trenches, the soldiers fled in panic. It is impossible to overtake the wind by running, and they, in fact, ran in a gas cloud, which increased the time they spent in chlorine vapors, and fast running only aggravated the damage to the respiratory organs.

As a result, parts of the Russian army suffered heavy losses. The 218th Infantry Regiment lost 2,608 men. In the 21st Siberian Regiment, after the retreat in a cloud of chlorine, less than a company remained combat-ready, 97% of the soldiers and officers were poisoned. The troops also did not yet know how to carry out chemical reconnaissance, that is, to determine heavily contaminated areas of the terrain. Therefore, the Russian 220th Infantry Regiment went on a counterattack through the area contaminated with chlorine, and lost 6 officers and 1346 privates from gas poisoning.

"In view of the complete illegibility of the enemy in the means of struggle"

Already two days after the first gas attack against Russian troops, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich changed his mind about chemical weapons. On June 2, 1915, a telegram left him for Petrograd: “The Supreme Commander-in-Chief admits that, in view of our enemy’s complete indiscriminateness in the means of struggle, the only measure of influence on him is the use on our part of all the means used by the enemy. The Commander-in-Chief asks for orders to carry out the necessary tests and supply the armies with appropriate devices with a supply of poisonous gases.

But the formal decision to create chemical weapons in Russia was made a little earlier - on May 30, 1915, the order of the Ministry of War No. 4053 appeared, which stated that "organization of the procurement of gases and active use gases is entrusted to the Procurement Commission explosives". This commission was headed by two colonels of the guard, both Andrei Andreevich - specialists in artillery chemistry A.A. Solonin and A.A. Dzerzhkovich. The first was instructed to manage "gases, their procurement and use", the second - "to manage the business of equipping shells" with poisonous chemistry.

So since the summer of 1915, the Russian Empire took care of the creation and production of its own chemical weapons. And in this matter, the dependence of military affairs on the level of development of science and industry was especially clearly manifested.

On the one hand, by the end of the 19th century, a powerful scientific school in the field of chemistry existed in Russia, it is enough to recall the epoch-making name of Dmitri Mendeleev. But, on the other hand, the chemical industry of Russia in terms of the level and volume of production was seriously inferior to the leading powers of Western Europe, primarily Germany, which at that time was the leader in the world chemical market. For example, in 1913, 75,000 people worked in all chemical industries of the Russian Empire - from the production of acids to the production of matches, while in Germany over a quarter of a million workers were employed in this industry. In 1913, the value of the products of all chemical industries in Russia amounted to 375 million rubles, while in that year Germany only sold chemical products abroad for 428 million rubles (924 million marks).

By 1914, there were less than 600 people with a higher chemical education in Russia. There was not a single special chemical-technological university in the country, only eight institutes and seven universities of the country trained an insignificant number of chemists.

It should be noted here that the chemical industry in wartime is needed not only for the production of chemical weapons - first of all, its capacities are required for the production of gunpowder and other explosives, which are needed in gigantic quantities. Therefore, the state "state" factories that had free capacities for the production of military chemicals were no longer in Russia.

Attack of the German infantry in gas masks in the clouds of poison gas. Photo: Deutsches Bundesarchiv

Under these conditions, the first manufacturer of "suffocating gases" was the private manufacturer Gondurin, who proposed to produce phosgene gas at his plant in Ivanovo-Voznesensk - an extremely poisonous volatile substance with the smell of hay that affects the lungs. Merchants of Gondurins with XVIII century were engaged in the production of chintz, so by the beginning of the 20th century, their factories, thanks to the dyeing of fabrics, had some experience in chemical production. The Russian Empire concluded a contract with the merchant Gondurin for the supply of phosgene in an amount of at least 10 pounds (160 kg) per day.

In the meantime, on August 6, 1915, the Germans tried to carry out a large gas attack against the garrison of the Russian fortress of Osovets, which had been successfully holding the defense for several months. At 4 o'clock in the morning they released a huge cloud of chlorine. The gas wave, released along a front 3 kilometers wide, penetrated to a depth of 12 kilometers and spread to the sides up to 8 kilometers. The height of the gas wave rose to 15 meters, this time the gas clouds had a green color - it was chlorine with an admixture of bromine.

Caught in the epicenter of the attack, three Russian companies died completely. According to surviving eyewitnesses, the consequences of that gas attack looked like this: “All the greenery in the fortress and in the nearest area along the path of the gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground, the flower petals flew around. All copper objects in the fortress - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide.

However, this time the Germans were unable to build on the success of the gas attack. Their infantry attacked too early and suffered losses from the gas themselves. Then two Russian companies counterattacked the enemy through a cloud of gases, losing up to half of the soldiers poisoned - the survivors, with swollen veins on their faces affected by the gas, launched a bayonet attack, which brisk journalists in the world press would immediately call "attack of the dead."

Therefore, the warring armies began to use gases in increasing quantities - if in April the Germans released almost 180 tons of chlorine near Ypres, then by the autumn in one of the gas attacks in Champagne - already 500 tons. And in December 1915, the new, more toxic gas phosgene was first used. Its "advantage" over chlorine was that it was difficult to determine the gas attack - phosgene is transparent and invisible, has a faint smell of hay, and does not begin to act immediately after inhalation.

The widespread use of poison gases by Germany on the fronts of the Great War forced the Russian command to also enter the chemical arms race. At the same time, it was necessary to urgently solve two problems: firstly, to find a way to protect against new weapons, and secondly, "not to remain indebted to the Germans", and to answer them the same. The Russian army and industry coped with both more than successfully. Thanks to the outstanding Russian chemist Nikolai Zelinsky, already in 1915 the world's first effective universal gas mask was created. And in the spring of 1916, the Russian army carried out its first successful gas attack.
The empire needs poison

Before responding to the German gas attacks with the same weapon, the Russian army had to establish its production almost from scratch. Initially, the production of liquid chlorine was created, which was completely imported from abroad before the war.

This gas began to be supplied by existing before the war and converted production - four plants in Samara, several enterprises in Saratov, one plant each - near Vyatka and in the Donbass in Slavyansk. In August 1915, the army received the first 2 tons of chlorine, a year later, by the fall of 1916, the production of this gas reached 9 tons per day.

A significant story happened with the plant in Slavyansk. It was created at the very beginning of the 20th century for the production of bleach electrolytically from rock salt mined in local salt mines. That is why the plant was called "Russian Electron", although 90% of its shares belonged to French citizens.

In 1915, this was the only production located relatively close to the front and theoretically capable of quickly producing chlorine on an industrial scale. Having received subsidies from the Russian government, the plant did not give the front a ton of chlorine in the summer of 1915, and at the end of August the management of the plant was transferred to the military authorities.

Diplomats and newspapers of supposedly allied France immediately raised a fuss about the violation of the interests of French proprietors in Russia. The tsarist authorities were afraid of quarreling with the Entente allies, and in January 1916 the management of the plant was returned to the previous administration and even new loans were provided. But until the end of the war, the plant in Slavyansk did not reach the production of chlorine in the quantities stipulated by military contracts.
An attempt to obtain phosgene in Russia from private industry also failed - the Russian capitalists, despite all their patriotism, inflated prices and, due to the lack of sufficient industrial capacity, could not guarantee timely fulfillment of orders. For these needs, new state production facilities had to be created from scratch.

Already in July 1915, the construction of a “military chemical plant” began in the village of Globino on the territory of the current Poltava region of Ukraine. Initially, they planned to establish the production of chlorine there, but in the fall it was reoriented to new, more deadly gases - phosgene and chloropicrin. For the plant of military chemistry, the ready-made infrastructure of the local sugar factory, one of the largest in the Russian Empire, was used. Technical backwardness led to the fact that the enterprise was built more than a year, and the Globinsky Military Chemical Plant began the production of phosgene and chloropicrin only the day before February Revolution 1917.

The situation was similar with the construction of the second large state enterprise for the production of chemical weapons, which began to be built in March 1916 in Kazan. The first phosgene was produced by the Kazan Military Chemical Plant in 1917.

Initially, the Ministry of War expected to organize large chemical plants in Finland, where there was an industrial base for such production. But the bureaucratic correspondence on this issue with the Finnish Senate dragged on for many months, and by 1917 the "military chemical plants" in Varkaus and Kajaan were not ready.
In the meantime, state-owned factories were only being built, the War Ministry had to buy gases wherever possible. For example, on November 21, 1915, 60 thousand pounds of liquid chlorine was ordered from the Saratov city government.

"Chemical Committee"

Since October 1915, the first "special chemical teams" began to form in the Russian army to carry out gas balloon attacks. But due to the initial weakness of Russian industry, it was not possible to attack the Germans with a new "poison" weapon in 1915.

For better coordination of all efforts in the development and production of combat gases, in the spring of 1916, the Chemical Committee was created under the Main Artillery Directorate General Staff, often simply referred to as the "Chemical Committee". All existing and created chemical weapons plants and all other work in this area were subordinated to him.

The 48-year-old Major General Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatiev became the Chairman of the Chemical Committee. A prominent scientist, he had not only a military, but also a professorial rank, before the war he taught a course in chemistry at St. Petersburg University.

Gas mask with ducal monograms

The first gas attacks immediately required not only the creation of chemical weapons, but also means of protection against them. In April 1915, in preparation for the first use of chlorine near Ypres, the German command provided its soldiers with cotton pads soaked in sodium hyposulfite solution. They had to cover the nose and mouth during the release of gases.

By the summer of that year, all the soldiers of the German, French and British armies were equipped with cotton-gauze bandages soaked in various chlorine neutralizers. However, such primitive "gas masks" turned out to be uncomfortable and unreliable, besides softening the defeat with chlorine, they did not provide protection against the more toxic phosgene.

In Russia, such dressings in the summer of 1915 were called “stigma masks”. They were made for the front by various organizations and individuals. But as the German gas attacks showed, they almost did not save from the massive and prolonged use of toxic substances, and were extremely inconvenient to use - they quickly dried out, finally losing their protective properties.

In August 1915, Professor of Moscow University Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky suggested using activated charcoal as a means to absorb poisonous gases. Already in November, Zelinsky's first coal gas mask was tested for the first time complete with a rubber helmet with glass "eyes", which was made by Mikhail Kummant, an engineer from St. Petersburg.

Unlike previous designs, this one is reliable, easy to use and ready for immediate use for many months. The resulting protective device successfully passed all the tests and received the name "Zelinsky-Kummant gas mask". However, here the obstacles to the successful arming of the Russian army with them were not even the shortcomings of Russian industry, but the departmental interests and ambitions of officials. At that time, all work on protection against chemical weapons was entrusted to the Russian general and German prince Friedrich (Alexander Petrovich) of Oldenburg, a relative of the ruling Romanov dynasty, who held the position of Supreme Head of the sanitary and evacuation unit of the imperial army. By that time, the prince was almost 70 years old and he was remembered by Russian society as the founder of the resort in Gagra and a fighter against homosexuality in the guard. The prince actively lobbied for the adoption and production of a gas mask, which was designed by teachers from the Petrograd Mining Institute using experience in mines. This gas mask, called the "gas mask of the Mining Institute", as shown by the tests, protected less from asphyxiating gases and it was more difficult to breathe in it than in the Zelinsky-Kummant gas mask.

Despite this, the Prince of Oldenburg ordered to begin production of 6 million "gas masks of the Mining Institute", decorated with his personal monogram. As a result, the Russian industry spent several months producing a less perfect design. March 19, 1916 at a meeting of the Special Conference on Defense - the main body Russian empire management military industry- an alarming report was made about the situation at the front with “masks” (as gas masks were then called): “Masks of the simplest type poorly protect against chlorine, but do not protect at all from other gases. The masks of the Mining Institute are unusable. The production of Zelinsky masks, long recognized as the best, has not been established, which should be considered criminal negligence.

As a result, only the solidarity opinion of the military allowed the mass production of Zelinsky gas masks to begin. On March 25, the first state order for 3 million and the next day for another 800 thousand gas masks of this type appeared. By April 5, the first batch of 17 thousand had already been produced. However, until the summer of 1916, the production of gas masks remained extremely insufficient - in June, no more than 10 thousand pieces per day were delivered to the front, while millions were needed to reliably protect the army. Only the efforts of the "Chemical Commission" of the General Staff made it possible to radically improve the situation by the fall - by the beginning of October 1916, over 4 million various gas masks were sent to the front, including 2.7 million "Zelinsky-Kummant gas masks". In addition to gas masks for people during the First World War, special gas masks for horses, which then remained the main draft force of the army, not to mention the numerous cavalry, had to be taken care of. Until the end of 1916, 410 thousand horse gas masks of various designs were delivered to the front.

In total, during the years of the First World War, the Russian army received over 28 million gas masks different types, of which over 11 million are Zelinsky-Kummant systems. Since the spring of 1917, only they were used in combat units of the army, thanks to which the Germans abandoned "gas-balloon" attacks with chlorine on the Russian front due to their complete ineffectiveness against troops in such gas masks.

"The war has crossed the last line»

According to historians, during the years of the First World War, about 1.3 million people suffered from chemical weapons. The most famous of them, perhaps, was Adolf Hitler - on October 15, 1918, he was poisoned and temporarily lost his sight as a result of a close explosion of a chemical projectile. It is known that in 1918, from January to the end of the fighting in November, the British lost 115,764 soldiers from chemical weapons. Of these, less than one tenth of a percent died - 993. Such a small percentage of fatal losses from gases is associated with the complete equipping of troops with perfect types of gas masks. However a large number of the wounded, or rather the poisoned and lost their combat capability, left chemical weapons with formidable force on the fields of the First World War.

The US Army entered the war only in 1918, when the Germans brought the use of various chemical projectiles to their maximum and perfection. Therefore, among all the losses of the American army, more than a quarter accounted for chemical weapons. This weapon not only killed and wounded - with massive and prolonged use, it made entire divisions temporarily incapacitated. So, during the last offensive of the German army in March 1918, during artillery preparation against the 3rd British Army alone, 250 thousand shells with mustard gas were fired. British soldiers on the front line had to wear gas masks continuously for a week, which made them almost incapable of fighting. The losses of the Russian army from chemical weapons in the First World War are estimated with a wide spread. During the war, for obvious reasons, these figures were not made public, and two revolutions and the collapse of the front by the end of 1917 led to significant gaps in the statistics.

The first official figures were already published in Soviet Russia in 1920 - 58,890 non-fatally poisoned and 6,268 gas dead. In the 1920s and 1930s, studies in the West, which came out in hot pursuit, showed much larger numbers - over 56,000 killed and about 420,000 poisoned. Although the use of chemical weapons did not lead to strategic consequences, but its impact on the psyche of the soldiers was significant. The sociologist and philosopher Fyodor Stepun (by the way, himself of German origin, real name - Friedrich Steppuhn) served as a junior officer in the Russian artillery. Even during the war, in 1917, his book “From the Letters of an Artillery Ensign” was published, where he described the horror of people who survived a gas attack: “Night, darkness, howling above their heads, splashing shells and whistling heavy fragments. Breathing is so difficult that it seems that you are about to suffocate. The masked voices are almost inaudible, and in order for the battery to accept the command, the officer needs to shout it right into the ear of each gunner. At the same time, the terrible unrecognizability of the people around you, the loneliness of the damned tragic masquerade: white rubber skulls, square glass eyes, Long Green Trunks. And all in a fantastic red sparkle of explosions and shots. And above everything is the insane fear of a hard, disgusting death: the Germans shot for five hours, and the masks are designed for six.

You can't hide, you have to work. With each step, it pricks the lungs, knocks over backwards and the feeling of suffocation intensifies. And you have to not only walk, you have to run. Perhaps the horror of gases is not characterized by anything so clearly as by the fact that no one in the gas cloud paid any attention to the shelling, but the shelling was terrible - more than a thousand shells fell on our single battery ...
In the morning, after the shelling stopped, the view of the battery was terrible. In the dawn mist, people are like shadows: pale, with bloodshot eyes and gas-mask charcoal deposited on their eyelids and around their mouths; many are sick, many are fainting, the horses are all lying on the hitching post with cloudy eyes, with bloody foam at the mouth and nostrils, some are convulsing, some have already died.
Fyodor Stepun summarized these experiences and impressions of chemical weapons in the following way: “After the gas attack in the battery, everyone felt that the war had crossed the last line, that from now on everything was allowed and nothing was sacred.”
The total losses from chemical weapons in WWI are estimated at 1.3 million people, of which up to 100 thousand were fatal:

British Empire - 188,706 people suffered, of which 8109 died (according to other sources, on the Western Front - 5981 or 5899 out of 185,706 or 6062 out of 180,983 British soldiers);
France - 190,000, 9,000 died;
Russia - 475,340, 56,000 died (according to other sources - out of 65,000 victims, 6340 died);
USA - 72,807, died 1462;
Italy - 60,000, 4627 died;
Germany - 200,000, 9,000 died;
Austria–Hungary 100,000, 3,000 died.