Who invented chemical weapons

In , the German military approved construction of an entirely new sarin factory at Falkenhagen, a site 70 km outside Berlin. Kuhn was an extraordinary chemist—he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his efforts to understand the structure and function of vitamin B and carotene compounds. They discovered that nerve agents block an enzyme called cholinesterase, which is responsible for breaking down acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that is released into the synapses that connect nerve cells to other nerve cells or muscle cells during electrical signaling.

When this enzyme is blocked, nerve cells in the brain and muscles are stuck in an overstimulated state, leading to a wide variety of symptoms including excessive sweating and salivation, pinpoint pupils, vomiting, seizures, and asphyxiation. As part of their research, Kuhn and colleagues synthesized a brand-new nerve agent, soman, which was twice as good as sarin at inhibiting cholinesterase. Why did Hitler veto their use? Some historians point to the fact that Hitler had been a victim of chemical weapons—probably mustard gas—during WWI.

As a result of this experience, Hitler believed using poison gas on the battlefield was unethical, an incredibly inconsistent position given his directive to use Zyklon B and other poisonous gases to kill millions of concentration camp prisoners. But it might not have been his personal experience that made Hitler stall on deploying nerve agents. The German Army had had enormous success with its Blitzkrieg strategy: fast and furious attacks using tanks and bombers, followed by foot soldiers.

So the use of nerve agents by bombers would have contaminated the very area the army would have then had to occupy. There was also concern that the Allies had discovered the potent chemical weapons and would retaliate. The Allies had no idea that the German military had discovered and was stockpiling a suite of extraordinarily toxic chemical weapons.

But they could, and should, have known. In May , after Germany lost a six-month battle in Tunisia, Allied forces took some , Axis soldiers prisoner. The page report filed by the interrogators was ignored. Furthermore, after WWII, many former Nazis told blatant lies about their past to improve their image, legitimize their actions, and avoid prosecution.

For example, Speer long claimed he knew nothing of the Holocaust, but documents discovered after his death reveal he was aware of what was happening at the Auschwitz concentration camp. But transporting these munitions to more secure areas was a challenge, in part because many railroad tracks had been bombed and the country was under frequent Allied air strike.

In one catastrophic event, U. In the end, thousands of tabun-filled bombs were transported for safekeeping primarily by barge, along rivers such as the Danube and Elbe. As the Red Army approached the tabun factory at Dyhernfurth, the German military marched thousands of forced laborers off the compounds with little protection from the winter temperatures.

Many who survived the exposure were murdered by the German secret police to prevent anyone who had participated in nerve gas production from spreading secrets. Still, the Russians discovered the tabun and sarin production plants, and once they found out about the new nerve agents, they disassembled the factory and reassembled it in Stalingrad.

As Allied scientists discovered that some German munitions contained a potent, unknown organophosphorus nerve agent that was much more toxic than anything they had in their own weapons inventory, they began to scramble to get their hands on the military spoils.

Soon the Americans and British pooled resources and began searching for and rounding up scientists involved in chemical weapons research: When they arrested tabun inventor Schrader at his home, he immediately handed over chemical formulas and other details of the nerve agents.

As tensions rose between the U. In the U. As a result, U. Army recruiters whitewashed the files to remove Nazi affiliations, wrote new biographies for the scientists, and issued them military security clearance and tickets to America. The most famous beneficiary of Operation Paperclip was Wernher von Braun, who headed Nazi missile research, was a Nazi Party member, and then went to work for the U. His expertise is widely cited as one reason U. Dozens of chemists were also recruited to work on chemical weapons at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland and on synthetic fuels with the U.

Bureau of Mines. The British Army had a similar program called Operation Matchbox. Working with other scientists, these former enemy chemists went on to help design, militarize, and stockpile next-generation nerve agents until the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force five decades later, in This history of nerve agents was assembled from Jonathan B.

Contact us to opt out anytime. Contact the reporter. To help us tell more stories, please consider becoming a Timeline member. Sign in. For the Jewish chemist who invented chemical weapons, the consequences were dire. The fallout with his wife and family was tragic. New Visions Follow. Timeline News in Context. Timeline Follow. Written by New Visions Follow. More From Medium. Week 4 Discussion. Zirui Fan. Jake Shillue in 5 Minute Dispatch. Have we changed much in 50k years? The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in Erick DuPree, Ph.

Paul Dettmann. How a north-western Kalahari Tribe exposes our obsession with scarcity and rapacity. Kareem Khalil. Raluca Enescu in The Daily Cuppa. Asaad Taha, PhD. After the war, he continued his work on chemical weapons, and as head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin oversaw the development of a new insecticide in the s, called Zyklon.

It was the precursor of the infamous Zyklon-B, the pesticide used to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Ironically, the Nazis also had plans for Haber. Despite protestations that he was a patriot and no longer a Jew, he fell foul of racial laws and was hounded out of Germany. He died of a heart attack in Switzerland in January , just a few years before several members of his family were gassed in Nazi death camps.

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