Secret History of Chemical Weapons by Nick Mccamley

Author:Nick Mccamley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783409099
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

There can be little doubt that chemical weapons research in Germany throughout the mid-1930s was exclusively defensive in nature, such research being actively encouraged by the Reichswehr, particularly after the Soviet proving ground at Shikhani became available. The higher military authorities in Germany remained stolidly indifferent to the acquisition of an offensive chemical capability until at least 1934 when, under pressure from the Waffenampt, an overt programme of rearmament was instituted and chemical weapons research accelerated. Only a year earlier, however, in 1933, the Army Truppenamt, in a five-year plan that would establish procurement targets up until 1938, concluded that the acquisition of an offensive capability would not be worthwhile even as a precaution against possible enemy initiation. This decision was based largely upon the assumption that France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union had gained an unassailable fifteen-year lead in the field of chemical weapons research and that even the most concerted effort to gain ground would be a fruitless and wasteful diversion of resources. Flawed intelligence garnered by the notoriously inept German intelligence services during the years of faltering co-operation with the Soviets at Shikhani had grossly exaggerated the Soviet chemical arsenal, while similar inflated estimates of French and British capabilities provided further incentives for despondency.

Just as in the United Kingdom the RAF took a rather more proactive lead than the land or sea services in embracing the perceived benefits of chemical weapons, air force interests in Germany took the lead in promoting the advantages of a powerful offensive chemical arm. Within the Waffenampt a separate chemical warfare department, Waff Prufwesen 9, was formed in 1934, ostensibly to test anti-gas equipment but in fact to develop all aspects of chemical warfare. Waff Prufwesen 9 rapidly took control of the Heeresversuchzlaboratorien at Spandau, developed the Heeresversuchsstelle proving ground on Luneburg Heath, where work begun under the ‘Tomka’ project was resumed on a larger scale, and erected a pilot plant for the production of gas weapons at Munsterlager. A little later, a 120 km2 proving ground was laid out near Raubkammer.

Two years later, in 1936, the Army established its own independent Chemical Troops and Gas Inspectorate within the Army General Office and completed a new gas defence training establishment at Celle, near Hanover, in 1938.

Under a decree of 1935 all discoveries in academic or industrial laboratories of new chemical agents that might have warlike applications were to be reported to the chemical weapons research centre at Spandau for evaluation. The most far-reaching consequence of this decree, the accidental discovery and subsequent development of organo-phosphorous nerve gases, following upon the work of Dr Schrader in the Wuppertal-Elberfeld laboratories of I.G. Farben, is detailed in Chapter 7. Thereafter an increasing volume of work relating to chemical warfare was done in German industrial laboratories, particularly those of I.G. Farben at Leverkusen where much fundamental research was undertaken into the nature of activated charcoal for respirators and the synthesis of fluoroacetic acid, the halogen fluorides and the nerve gas precursors.

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