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00:30Tokyo, March 1995.
00:34The world's first terrorist attack using nerve gas.
00:40Twelve underground commuters were killed.
00:44Another 5,000 needed medical treatment.
00:52It was a sinister reminder that nerve gas remains a threat to us all.
00:57Our towns and cities are soft targets for one of this century's most lethal weapons,
01:03invented for the battlefield.
01:09The story of poison gas goes back to the carnage in the trenches of the First World War.
01:16It was here that chemical weapons were first introduced.
01:21I was vomiting.
01:24The effect of gas was similar to drowning.
01:28It took off the lining of the lung.
01:36And then, you know, it was a bomb.
01:40And then, you know, it was a bomb.
01:44And then, you know, it was a bomb.
02:04The first weapon of mass destruction, poison gas unleashed a new era in the grim history
02:10of war.
02:11It was the product of a perverse alliance that has shaped the century, the alliance of soldiers
02:17and scientists.
02:29When war broke out in 1914, the German High Command was confident that Britain and France
02:35would soon be defeated.
02:36It would all be over by Christmas.
02:41But by winter, a line of trenches stretched from the Channel to Switzerland.
02:46Total stalemate.
02:47Neither side could break through.
02:55One of Germany's leading scientists, Fritz Haber, offered the fatherland a way out of
03:00the impasse.
03:01My father was first and foremost a German.
03:08I think originally, probably, science was more important than Germany.
03:14But once you come to the first World War period, I think then it became Germany.
03:20You know, how do you defeat your enemies?
03:24What can you think of?
03:25What can you contribute?
03:27You as a scientist, what's your contribution going to be?
03:31What can you do if you do?
03:31You know, he was a great person, with this insane force and powerful energy.
03:36He was a spiritual force, a physical force that he didn't give back.
03:40and that's just because of his great motivation to explain his task, his duty, but very preußisch, to fulfill it.
03:51Of Jewish origin, Dr. Haber was an internationally respected scientist.
03:55He'd already invented a process for extracting nitrates from the atmosphere.
04:00Still famous today, the Haber-Bosch process was used by Germany's vast chemical industry
04:05to manufacture fertilizers, and later, explosives.
04:08Without it, Germany could not have gone to war.
04:13In 1902, Haber had renounced his Judaism and become a Christian.
04:18The fact that he was of Jewish origin plays a great part in his endeavor
04:24to show to the Germans that Jews can be as good citizens as non-Jews.
04:30Not only Fritz, but also other people who had left Judaism and converted to Christianity
04:38they wanted to show to the German people that there are more Germans than the Germans.
04:44Haber dedicated himself to his country in its hour of need.
04:48He was determined to use his scientific expertise to put an end to the military deadlock.
04:54He had the idea that the gas would destroy the enemies of the enemy,
04:59through the gräber, through other protection things,
05:03and it was his idea to break these fronts in a way,
05:08to bring the whole thing back into movement,
05:11and to set the war again in place.
05:17He possibly foresaw that it wouldn't be an easy war to win.
05:24I think the gas, this seemed an inexpensive way,
05:31in which you might damage or kill quite a number of enemy troops.
05:39Haber knew that each day the chemical industry produced tons of poison gas as a by-product.
05:45In his laboratory, he searched for ways to apply these gases to the battlefield.
06:08Haber set about testing like a man inspired.
06:12In his Berlin Institute, founded by Kaiser Wilhelm,
06:15he began to research an asphyxiating gas widely used in the dye industry, chlorine.
06:22Across the lawn at his home just opposite,
06:24he faced bitter opposition from an unexpected source.
06:28His wife, Clara, was also a chemist.
06:31She was convinced that science and war were morally incompatible,
06:35however noble the cause.
06:38For Clara, chemical warfare was a perversion of science.
06:42She had rendered her service, her oath on science, in 1900,
06:47as the first woman to get a PhD in chemistry at the Breslau University.
06:52And at that moment, she had sworn to use science only to the benevolence of mankind
06:59and not for the destruction of mankind.
07:04She, in fact, had very great moral doubts about the gas warfare,
07:10and he really didn't pay any attention.
07:14He did not believe that either children or wives should interfere too much
07:23with his life and his science.
07:29Aware of his wife's ethical objections,
07:32Harbour sought to keep his work a secret.
07:34But one day, in December 1914, he could conceal his activities no longer.
07:41To find out, of course, it was difficult to find out.
07:43Of course, there were the military secrets.
07:44But that happened to me.
07:46She looked out of the window and saw the Institute.
07:49Then, one day, there was a huge explosion,
07:52an unusual, loud explosion.
07:55And she found a circle of someone on the ground.
07:59And there was only skin and blood.
08:04And it was not to be able to recognize.
08:06And just Clara knitted her and said,
08:08she lived.
08:09She cut off her mouth.
08:10She didn't get water.
08:13There had been an explosion of poison gas in the lab.
08:17The dying man was Clara's great friend and former colleague,
08:20a chemist named Otto Secur.
08:22Clara had introduced him to her husband.
08:27From the moment she watched him die,
08:29her dislike of the research grew till it became total hatred.
08:36But her husband pressed on regardless.
08:42At the end of 1914, Harbour approached the military.
08:47He promised them chlorine gas would bring rapid victory.
08:50Germany was the only country that could produce it
08:53and the vast quantities required.
08:55But the high command was not convinced.
09:16The chiefs of staff agreed on the potential of chemical warfare.
09:20But it went against their military traditions.
09:23Germany had signed the Hague Convention banning the use of gas in war.
09:28This early in the conflict,
09:29they held back from breaking an international agreement.
09:33They were still clinging on to their chivalrous ideals.
09:37The officer, who is on the battlefield,
09:40with his pulled comb, his men,
09:43and the men,
09:44and the men,
09:46who leads to the war,
09:49that's the idea of the rich war.
09:52But the gas war was a completely different reality.
09:56The officer didn't specify the attack.
09:58The chemist had to have the tools.
10:04The chemist had to have the tools.
10:05site near Cologne, Haber showed the high command, the murderous power of his new invention.
10:12The first field tests happened to be here at this area where we are standing right now.
10:19Clara was with him and since her inner attitude was against these tests, I think that her
10:26desperation must have increased from day to day.
10:30Haber the Patriot was unmoved.
10:31He showed that if the wind blew in the right direction, gas from the cylinders would blow
10:36towards enemy lines, killing or maiming all in its path.
10:43The war dragged on.
10:45As more and more Germans were caught up, the generals set their scruples aside.
10:50Early in 1915, they decided to use Haber's new weapon.
10:57Assigned a military rank, Haber helped the high command supervise the gas corps.
11:06At Ypres, on April the 22nd, 1915, they opened the valves, releasing a cloud of chlorine five
11:13feet high.
11:16In the easterly breeze, it rolled gently towards the unsuspecting French and Algerian troops.
11:47There were 10,000 casualties.
11:51Terrified soldiers died where they fell as the cloud enveloped them.
11:56Corpses lay scattered along the trenches.
11:59Everything in the cloud's path turned green.
12:02Bayonets, watches, even human skin.
12:06War had changed forever.
12:10There'd been lots of dead in wars before, no doubt greater numbers than that, but as suddenly
12:15as that, and from one operation, this was the great change of chemical warfare.
12:20This showed what science, if mobilized to war, could actually do.
12:26The trend was set.
12:28There were other chemicals.
12:30There was biological weapons, radiological weapons, nuclear weapons.
12:33The whole progression of mass destruction was opened up on that day.
12:41But to Haber's disappointment, the horror at Ypres was only a fraction of what it could
12:46have been.
12:48The Germans wasted an opportunity.
12:50They had a weapon of great surprise.
12:52They didn't actually anticipate that this would be so effective.
12:57It was a largely diversionary attack because they were concentrating the Eastern Front at
13:02the time.
13:02They didn't have the follow-up forces ready, and so it was a missed golden opportunity.
13:07But German newspapers hailed the attack as a great victory.
13:11It was justified as humane, one writer claiming, the letting loose of smoke clouds is an extraordinarily
13:17mild way of waging war.
13:20At the age of 40, Haber became a national hero.
13:24He was promoted to captain, the first scientist to be embraced by the military.
13:51The night after his promotion, Captain Haber held a dinner party to celebrate.
13:58But for his wife, the first gas attack was no cause for rejoicing.
14:03Clara was mortified that her husband's scientific skill had been used to kill fellow humans.
14:11Disgusted at his pride in the work, she continued to protest.
14:18Clara had fought for the use of mass destruction, that she was responsible for the use of mass destruction.
14:27That she was responsible for the use of the use of mass destruction.
14:45She reproached him that he uses science as a means of war and this is contrary to all humanitarian attitude.
14:55But for Fritz the fatherland Germany was of greater importance.
15:02He called her a traitor of Germany.
15:07That night they had a furious argument.
15:10Clara realized her husband would never change.
15:14But she too would not compromise.
15:16It was a matter of life and death.
15:39She had fought until the end.
15:42And she couldn't make him clear that this is a lack of responsibility.
15:50But she could say, if you do it without me.
16:03And the tragedy is that the next morning Fritz went to the Eastern Front.
16:09He didn't care about the corpse of his wife at all.
16:12He went to the Eastern Front and he led the next gas war attack.
16:19In Britain there had been outrage over the use of gas at Ypres.
16:26Initially it was called an atrocious weapon of war.
16:29It used to be called frightfulness by the British press.
16:32It was considered quite underhand and unsporting.
16:36But once it was used of course then there was desire to retaliate and to of course defend against it.
16:44British scientists had been caught totally unprepared.
16:47There was only makeshift protection.
16:50For want of anything better they recommended the use of cloths moistened with urine.
17:00There was a rush to produce gas masks.
17:03They were soon on sale but public pressure for retaliation was growing.
17:09The king himself took a personal interest.
17:14In May 1915 the cabinet gave the go-ahead for the development of gas.
17:23A special gas brigade was set up.
17:26The recruits included university professors.
17:31Within five months five and a half thousand cylinders of chlorine gas were moved to the Western Front.
17:41At Luz on September the 25th the British launched their first gas attack.
17:49It backfired badly.
17:51Halfway through the wind changed and blew the gas back on the Allies.
17:55Showing the new weapons biggest defect.
18:02To try and improve their poison gas and rival the Germans.
18:06The government set up a chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down near Salisbury.
18:12Well Porton was an experimental field.
18:17It was set up very soon after the cabinet had taken the decision to retaliate in kind against the German
18:25poison gas warfare.
18:27And people descended upon it and started to do experiments with chlorine and all these other things under conditions of
18:33vast urgency and stress.
18:37Gas was soon being used regularly by both sides.
18:42In 1916 15,000 tons of chlorine were discharged.
18:47Gas alerts became routine.
18:49But the soldiers hatred and fear of it never lessened.
18:53Breaking all the taboos of war gas was uniquely sinister.
18:58A grenade that explodes, you can see and hear it.
19:02And when you take your head into the grave, you have a certain security.
19:07And then the effect is over.
19:09But the gas is incredible because it is still.
19:12And because it can work forever.
19:14So even if you come out of the grave as a soldier,
19:17you have to be afraid that gas is still in the trees.
19:20You have to be afraid that there is still an industrial mass murder.
19:29Everything was done by both sides to protect their men.
19:32As the war went on, masks became more effective.
19:36So did the training.
19:39They issue you with these gas lights, which you carry with you all the time.
19:43And then they put you through a manoeuvre, put a gas mark on properly.
19:48They'd examine as to whether you got it on properly, no leaks on it.
19:51Then they put you through a gas hut full of gas, on purpose.
19:57Once you got past there, then you're past in gas,
20:00and you wore your gas marks all the time.
20:05In an early arms race, scientists developed new means of attack
20:10to break through improved enemy protection.
20:13At Porton Down, they replaced the unwieldy gas cylinders with shells.
20:21It carried the spirals that were in front.
20:26You tried to develop gases that you could know
20:30or accept that the enemy didn't know the enemy.
20:33First of all, they would break through the enemy's gas masks.
20:35That's why it was especially important
20:38from the enemy soldiers on the other side,
20:41to analyze the weapons.
20:43First of all, what can they, what can they,
20:45what have they already developed,
20:47to restore the new substances.
20:52In 1916, Harbour's laboratory trumped the Allies
20:56by producing a new, more noxious gas, phosgene,
21:0018 times more powerful than chlorine.
21:03Its effect soon horrified war-weary doctors
21:06who thought they'd seen everything.
21:09Victims drowned slowly in liquid produced by their own lungs.
21:17In Northern Italy, the potential of this new gas was seen
21:21when it was used against an unprotected enemy.
21:24At Caporetto, the Italians had built a strong line of defences
21:28against attack from Germany's ally, Austria.
21:32The hills on the border overlooking the Sochi River
21:35had become an impregnable position.
21:38For two years, the Italians had beaten back Austrian assaults.
21:43But in autumn 1917, Germany's specialist gas divisions were summoned
21:48in a desperate attempt to break the stalemate.
21:54That October, the German gas brigade bombarded the Italians with phosgene.
22:01Austrian and German generals watched the gas cloud
22:04drift off towards the enemy.
22:07Totally unprotected, the Italian troops were quickly overcome.
22:14I escaped, and I felt the death of now that I came here.
22:18And now I've seen me without mask.
22:21I've done it now to bring me out
22:24whenever I was at the sea.
22:26I thought I was at the sea.
22:28I thought I was at the end of my life.
22:32I thought I was at the end of my life.
22:55The bats were damaged
22:58and then in the battle of the soldiers lived.
23:01committing crimes or Ting Deswegen,
23:05the soldiers fought demons later on.
23:05If the soldiers were in the caverns, they were in the pool.
23:10They were in the pool.
23:13Everything was in the pool.
23:15We were in the pool, and we were also in the pool with the pool.
23:43It was the most lethal demonstration so far of the killing power of gas when victims had no protection.
23:53After years of gridlock, Fosgine had brought about one of the war's most dramatic breakthroughs.
24:10But on the Western Front, protection against chlorine and Fosgine soon became so effective that another, more lethal gas was
24:18called for.
24:21Fritz Harbour Institute set to work.
24:24His aim was to find a gas that would make gas masks useless by attacking the skin as well as
24:29the lungs.
24:30He soon came up with a new horror, mustard gas.
24:33Lost, or mustard gas, developed a new weapon that is selfless.
24:41The advantage was that it was not like the previously used, but it was a selfless weapon that was on
24:49the ground and on the clothing,
24:52that worked on the skin and that was impossible to protect the enemy.
25:00The vicious new gas assaulted the lungs and skin of its victims.
25:04Patches of skin affected erupted into massive yellow blisters.
25:11Harbour's new weapon was used as soon as it was ready.
25:13From July 1917, mustard gas tore into Allied troops.
25:20The mustard gas was worse than chlorine because the mustard gas ate away the body.
25:25It would take the warm parts of the body, under the arms and between the legs.
25:30It would take the skin off, you see.
25:32And I've heard men cry just like children.
25:40In the first three weeks of its use, mustard gas killed or injured 14,000 Allied men.
25:47The first sign of its approach was the stench, a nauseous mix of garlic and mustard.
25:54Birds in its path fell from trees.
25:57Rats and mice died in their thousands.
26:00Allied soldiers were stunned.
26:07Symptoms weren't always immediate.
26:09As well as ravaging the skin and lungs, it damaged the eyes and could cause blinding.
26:19You didn't know your gas until you came out in the daylight.
26:22Then you found that the sun was too bright and you didn't look at the daylight, so bright.
26:27You had to keep your eyes shut and you had to feel your way.
26:30Then they took you down to what they call first aid, holding the man's shoulder in front of you.
26:35It was about three miles behind the line.
26:37Then they tried to attend to you.
26:41They told me if I was lucky, if I gave up wine and women, I might live another ten years.
26:51As the war approached its climax, the Germans used mustard gas as a key weapon in their last campaign.
26:58150,000 shells were fired at the Allies.
27:05By September 1918, the British had produced their own version.
27:12That October on the Belgian front, they unleashed mustard gas on the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry.
27:19An obscure corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler was among the victims needing medical treatment.
27:26He later wrote that it was the horror of being gas that drove him out of the army and into
27:30politics.
27:33In November 1918, Germany surrendered.
27:37Gas had added to the horrors of war.
27:40But far from producing a rapid German victory, it had failed to prevent the fatherland's defeat.
27:49Fritz Harbour was devastated.
27:51A friend described him as 75% dead after his country's humiliation.
27:58I do remember going with him to see, I think it's Schiller's Joan of Arc.
28:08And he actually cried.
28:11I wept copiously.
28:14Because for some reason or other, that seemed to move him.
28:21Mainly, I think, because Joan of Arc, again, there was a figure that tried to defend her country against all
28:28the enemies, didn't she?
28:31Thanks to gas masks and the vagaries of the wind, the world's first weapon of mass destruction hadn't decided the
28:38war.
28:39But it had killed over 100,000 men.
28:42Over a million had been poisoned by it, and would bear its marks on their shattered lungs for years.
28:49Harbour himself continued to proclaim it was a superb terror weapon.
28:55Every change of sensation in the nose and mouth, he wrote, nags in the mind.
28:59It creates utter confusion, eroding the soldier's inner strength.
29:06But others saw gas as the most inhumane weapon of a conflict that had plumbed the depths of man's inhumanity
29:12to man.
29:36Fritz Harbour had feared he'd be tried as a war criminal. He did not have worried.
29:40In 1919, in honour of his pre-war work on nitrates, he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
29:49He continued his quest for new gas weapons, disguising it as research into pest control.
29:58The chemistry gives us the strongest weapons to this battle, the gas gas.
30:03The gas is still flowing in the bottles, but it's very fast.
30:07He also knew that the results, which he had won by the tests of weapons weapons,
30:13that he could also use them for military benefits.
30:20And he did this after the World War II,
30:24in the form of weapons weapons,
30:28which were used to be used as a trained military research facility.
30:35Gas! Gas!
30:39In the 1920s, Harbour developed another toxic gas, derived from hydrocyanic acid.
30:46A powerful insecticide in enclosed spaces could also kill humans with great efficiency.
30:53Its name, Zyklon B.
31:03Twenty years on, it would be used to commit mass murder in Nazi death camps.
31:12The tragic dimension is of course,
31:14that this Zyklon B during the Second World War II
31:17was then used to human beings in the concentration camps
31:22and used to kill the Jews,
31:24also from Harbours own people.
31:27I think that is really a dimension,
31:29which Harbour was not aware of.
31:40The new Nazi rulers were convinced,
31:43gas would be a vital weapon in future warfare.
31:46International law had forbidden its use,
31:49but Hitler had been deeply impressed by its effectiveness.
31:52Nazi leaders ordered secret research.
31:55Scientists were urged to help the fatherland.
31:59to all scientists,
32:01to all scientists,
32:03think about it,
32:05work,
32:06experiment,
32:07give us new suggestions,
32:09new discoveries,
32:10and new possibilities,
32:11and you have done great Germany.
32:15But this time, Fritz Harbour,
32:17who'd created the first real bond between the military and science,
32:21wasn't wanted.
32:22He had a letter to say that he, Fritz Harbour, could stay.
32:28But the Jewish collaborators' assistance would have to go.
32:36So Fritz Harbour answered this letter and said,
32:40in that case, you have my resignation.
32:44And that was the end, virtually.
32:48He was already a very sick man.
32:50I think the coming of the Nazis really, more or less, fixed him.
32:58Rejected by the fatherland he'd served so single-mindedly,
33:02Harbour left Germany forever.
33:03His health collapsed.
33:09He died in Switzerland in 1934.
33:12He was buried here in Basel.
33:15His last request,
33:16to be buried next to his wife Clara.
33:24Harbour's life has a tragic dimension.
33:26On the other hand,
33:27it's a particularly good example
33:28of how difficult the conversion
33:32is to civil-military conversion
33:34to civil-military.
33:36This is a point
33:38that is typical for modern science,
33:41because good and bad
33:42can't be removed from each other.
33:45The thin line between good and evil
33:48would soon be crossed again in 1936.
33:54Another German chemist, Gerhard Schrader,
33:57had been working on a new group of pesticides,
34:00organophosphates,
34:01when he stumbled across a poison
34:03with unparalleled power.
34:06He realized,
34:07what is this?
34:09That it's not a damage
34:11as a damage tool.
34:15It's much too dangerous.
34:17He said,
34:18here,
34:19we don't have anything to do with this.
34:23It's more a battle.
34:27Schrader had chanced upon the nerve gas Tabun,
34:30a gas which shatters the entire nervous system.
34:33He experimented on monkeys,
34:35making them touch or inhale minute amounts.
34:38They immediately had convulsions.
34:40They lost all muscular control
34:42and died of asphyxiation.
34:56Schrader obeyed a Nazi decree
34:58that any potential weapon
35:00be handed over to the military.
35:02He was very nice
35:03and very friendly.
35:05He was a faithful Christian.
35:08And that must have experienced
35:09a certain knowledge
35:10that he had to remove
35:12from his substance.
35:14But anyway,
35:17it was probably
35:18also in the form of
35:19military training.
35:22that's not a problem.
35:24Research he'd begun
35:25to help the growth of food
35:27was now hijacked
35:28to create another instrument of death.
35:31Schrader reluctantly agreed
35:32to perfect Tabun,
35:34working in utter secrecy.
35:40soon, Hitler was on the verge of getting a new gas,
35:43far more powerful than the one
35:44that had poisoned him in the trenches.
35:54At the same time,
35:56Germany's new allies,
35:58the Italians,
35:58were showering mustard gas
36:00on the Abyssinians,
36:01a real-life demonstration
36:03that delivering gas by air
36:05could be truly lethal.
36:14In Britain,
36:15reports of the horrifying results
36:16led to terror
36:17about the nature
36:18of any future war.
36:25everyone assumed
36:26gas would be used
36:27in the conflict
36:28looming with Germany.
36:31Fictions of the 30s
36:33have many,
36:34many vivid accounts
36:36of what the future
36:36of chemical warfare
36:37is going to be like.
36:38The dew of death
36:40which would descend
36:40from one bomb
36:41and kill everybody
36:42between Regent's Park
36:43and the Thames
36:43was one image at that time.
36:46People were looking
36:47for ways
36:48never to repeat
36:49the carnage,
36:51the hideous events
36:52of the First World War.
36:57By 1938,
36:58governments throughout Europe
36:59were starting to prepare
37:01their citizens
37:01for chemical warfare.
37:04In Britain,
37:0530 million gas masks
37:06were handed out.
37:08To calm the public,
37:09newsreels stressed
37:10the lighter side
37:11of living with gas.
37:13Is my mask
37:13on the street, dear?
37:15They say that gossiping
37:17in one of these
37:17dinky new masks
37:18is quite an art.
37:21In parts of
37:22Czechoslovakia today
37:23they're training
37:24the young people
37:24in the use of the gas mask.
37:26And to get them
37:26accustomed to wearing
37:27the mask,
37:28they make a song
37:28and dance about it.
37:29Well, a dance anyway.
37:36Like his predecessors
37:37in the First War,
37:38Hitler formed
37:39a special gas corps,
37:40the naval trooper.
37:42Gas!
37:44Gas!
37:44As Taboune
37:45wasn't yet perfected,
37:46they practiced
37:46using mustard gas,
37:48defying the Versailles
37:49treaty to do so.
37:55Hans Haas
37:56and Alfred Stammwitz
37:57were recruited
37:58to the naval trooper
37:5960 years ago.
38:00I've tried to
38:02look at it
38:06here.
38:07Here is
38:08another
38:09narrowing
38:10to see.
38:11That's
38:11that's
38:12The naval trooper
38:12were
38:133 cm
38:14thick.
38:15Lost.
38:16Not because
38:18Hitler
38:19had to be
38:20slacked
38:20over the Versailles
38:22and then
38:23the research
38:24continued
38:24and everything
38:25was
38:25to do
38:26the weapon
38:28science.
38:29And then
38:31instead
38:33of
38:33metal grenades
38:35could have
38:36at the
38:37end.
38:45But when World War II broke out in 1939, it turned out to be a very different type of
38:51conflict from World War I. It was quite simply far faster. The early German advances and
38:58their later retreats were so rapid, gas wasn't an option. The naval trooper were never required
39:04at the front.
39:29Unable to use gas on the battlefield, the Germans still considered dropping it from
39:34the air on enemy towns and cities. Facing defeat at the front, and with German cities reeling
39:41under Allied air raids, Hitler's staff implored him to go ahead. His Minister of Labour urged,
39:48we have this new poison gas, the Führer must use it, he simply has to.
39:57The former World War I corporal had already ensured there were adequate stockpiles. In 1939,
40:04he'd ordered the building of a vast nerve gas factory at Durenfurt in Silesia. Naturally,
40:09it was top secret.
40:15This project Durenfurt had always been an absolute priority. There were no restrictions. It was
40:22the biggest German equipment.
40:283,000 workers had been sent to Durenfurt. It had been producing Tobun since early 1942. By 1944,
40:37Hitler had enough at his disposal to wipe out the population of London.
40:46The Allies knew nothing about the Tobun stockpiles. But from the outset, Churchill had warned Hitler
40:52against the use of chemical weapons, openly threatening to retaliate by bombarding German
40:58cities with killer gases.
41:01Churchill regarded gas as any other weapon. He did not see much point in distinguishing
41:08between one form and another. Indeed, he tended to regard that sort of reasoning as sentimental,
41:14squeamishness. He had seen the carnage of conventional weapons and regarded gas as just
41:21another of the rather horrible methods by which of inflicting injury and death on human beings.
41:31Fearing retaliation, Hitler never used nerve gas. London was spared. But it soon faced an
41:38another new threat. Deprived of gas, Hitler ordered the rapid development and use of the flying bomb,
41:44the V-1.
41:4990-millimeter anti-aircraft guns, track the bombs as they carry more than a ton of explosives
41:54through the sky at pursuit plane speed.
41:58Doodle bug raids began in July 1944.
42:05Within a fortnight, there were 6,000 casualties. V-2 rocket attacks followed.
42:11Churchill called for the use of gas in retaliation.
42:15The V-1 weapon really was an indiscriminate weapon, in the view of Churchill, and therefore
42:19perhaps demanded special responses. So the chiefs of staff put the joint planning staff on to a study
42:25of whether gas should be used in retaliation against the doodle bugs.
42:30And in short order, the joint planning staff decided that really, no, it didn't make much sense.
42:37Which stimulated Churchill to write one of his most famous memoranda on the subject of chemical warfare.
42:44If the bombardment of London really became a serious nuisance, I should be prepared to do anything that would hit
42:50the enemy in a murderous place.
42:52It may be several weeks, or even months, before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas.
42:58And if we do it, let us do it 100%.
43:02And again, they reconsidered it, and the calculation showed that if you wanted to drench German cities with poison gas,
43:09you simply hadn't the capacity to do it.
43:12Even if you did use a 1,000 bomber air raid and used mustard gas in it, you would be
43:17wasting your effort.
43:19Much greater effects were available from conventional weapons.
43:26The British High Command rejected the use of gas, preferring the widespread destruction caused by mass incendiary bombing.
43:34Throughout the war, both sides had expected gas warfare, but it had never come.
43:46Fear of retaliation had saved the peoples of Europe from chemical bombardment.
43:59After Germany's defeat, the Allies uncovered the secret supplies of nerve gas.
44:04The unused shells from Durenfurt were found stockpiled in their thousands.
44:09One was taken to Porten down for analysis.
44:13Many of Germany's leading chemists were arrested.
44:17They wanted to know exactly what the product wanted to know.
44:20The product, the formula, the manufacturing process, the application, the application,
44:25the application, the application, the application,
44:26how it was made to be able to produce such a product,
44:29which had such a harmful effect.
44:32It had no more meaning to hold it from the ground.
44:36It was described exactly as it was described.
44:39And that was actually everything.
44:45After the war, Britain loaded 20 old merchant ships with German mustard gas shells.
44:50Many dated from the first war.
44:53Tens of thousands were consigned to the seabed.
45:00But the nerve gas shells were not sunk.
45:02Instead, Allied scientists investigated Tabun to develop their own supplies.
45:19In the Cold War, both the Soviets and the West produced enough nerve gas
45:24to kill everyone in the world several times over.
45:27But fear of retaliation again ensured they were never used.
45:33In 1993, all chemical weapons were outlawed again.
45:38Stock powers were treated and destroyed.
45:40It was no great loss for the nuclear powers of the West.
45:46Inject the agent.
45:48We in Britain obviously don't need nerve gas.
45:51We don't need it because we have plenty of other things that can do the military tasks,
45:54which nerve gas can do.
45:56We have conventional weapons of all sorts.
45:59We have nuclear weapons.
46:01We simply don't need nerve gas.
46:03No rich, industrialised, militarised country needs it.
46:06Other things.
46:10But in conflicts where the victim can't strike back in kind,
46:14mass murder by chemical weapons remains a very real threat.
46:25If you don't have access to protection, then the weapons look much more attractive to your enemies.
46:31That's no doubt why Iraq used chemical weapons during the war with Iran.
46:37Chemical weapons are political weapons.
46:39They can coerce populations.
46:41They can be weapons of terror.
46:42The most brutal instance was Saddam Hussein's use of nerve gas against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
46:49The surprise attack against unprotected people was devastating.
46:535,000 were killed outright.
46:56Fritz Haber once said,
46:57A scientist belongs to all mankind in times of peace, but to his country in times of war.
47:04But the weapon he devised for the fatherland has become the property of all mankind with horrific consequences.
47:17KERA encourages you to get ready for the digital television transition coming up on February 17, 2009.
47:25Visit our website at kera.org for more information.
47:44www.kera.org for more information on the channel.
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