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Reviewed VersionTo what extent Lloyd George's view of the importance…

- - - - Allies quickly began to use the same gases, and were quick to implement new methods of delivery, but were slow in developing new gases. Not very important to victory (land captured) as gas was usually only used in the opening stages of battle.
      - British
        
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention
        Page 100
        The ‘Special Companies’ (British) tasked with carrying out gas attacks were first active at the Battle of Loos. The attack was launched at 5:50 pm on 25th of September 1915.
        Page 101
        The primitive form of a Livens Projector was first used in September 1916, whereas the steel versions were first used at Arras in April 1917.
        The projectors had the advantage of being able to be used even when wind conditions were adverse, but still being able to achieve large concentrations of gas in the enemy lines.
        The British were also able to use the Stokes Mortar for a similar purpose, this mortar was particularly used in smoke bombs.
        Page 104
        Chloropicrin became available to the British in 1917. It was important because it was able to be fired in shells easily.
        
        Somehow make the point that despite these innovations, the British inflicted less casualties on the Germans then they did on them
      - French
        
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention
        
        Page 102
        During the winter of 1915-1916, the French decided to being making phosgene gas in bulk, also supplying the British
        Page 108
        The French were the first of the allies to use the gas (mustard gas) operationally in June 1918, the British came later.
    - - Didn't necessarily help with morale or in combat, but kept a low fatality rate
      - 9Diarmuid, Jeffreys
        On April 22nd 1915, chlorine gas was first used on the Western Front
        Page 70-1
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention
        Page 96-97
        The British and the French were both able to develop anti-gas meausres in a relatively short amount of time.
        Initially, measures were as rudimentary as covering the nose and mouth with a cloth or handkerchief soaked in a solution of bicarbonate.
        Then gauze pads soaked in castor oil tied by tapes round the head were used.
        So called hypo-helment was issues to all British troops by 6th July 1915, it was uncomvofrtably but it offered decent protection
        The German were much better with developing a mask.
        
        Page 103
        The hypo helmet is supeceded by the P helmet in the autumn of 1915. The PH helmet is introduced in January 1916.
        The small-box respirator, which was to become the standard for the British army begun to be manufactured in August 1916, but was only beginning to have widespread use by 1917
        
        Page 114
        BEF 186 000 4% Fatal
        French 130 000 17.5% Fatal
        German 107 000 5% Fatal
      - 7Hartcup, The War of Invention page96
        French had an inferior model to the British which was very uncomfortable. It clipped over the chin and it wasn't very safe, as seen in the proportion of French dead
        
        Make the point that the large number of French casualties indicates the effectiveness of other gas masks.
  - - - Shells were one of the areas in which the Allies had a lot of development, their use changed drastically due to advances made by the Allies.
        
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention, Page 57-8
        Powder fuzes (time fuzes?) were unsuitable for the destruction of emplacements and barbed wire.
        Cambrai 1917, Bryn Hammond, Page 29 "Bursting low at short range was impossible"
        
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention, Page 57-8
        A series of graze fuzes were introduced, but these quick-acting fuzes caused a large number of premature explosions in the bore. “An average of one in 16 000 to one in 32 000 rounds burst or otherwise damaged gun barrels, killing or injuring the gun crews.”
        The 44 fuze, introduced in winter of 1915, either failed to burst the shell or detonated after the shell had buried itself in the ground.
        Shell manufacturers also complained that the fuze was too complicated for mass production
        
        Initially the British used timed fuzes which were really difficult to utilize to destroy barbed wire.
        
        These shells were used in the battle of the Somme
        
        6Peter Hart - The Somme The Darkest Hour on the Western Front
        Page 119, With a five day bombardment, “…they had at least managed to cut the barbed wire along most of the 56th Division Front” Page 120 “The place was nothing but a mass of shell holes, some small, some huge. huge 9.2-in shells lay there unexploded…” Page 120-1, between the second and third lines on the 56th Division Front forces were delayed by uncut wire and Sergeant Donald Hawker talks about how his I/16th Battalion suffered many casualties there.
        11Technology in War – Kenneth Macksey – Page 75-6
        The result was nearly 60 000 casualties for only minimal gains on the first day of the offensive,…
        
        Furthermore, the inense bombardment created problems for tanks
        6Peter Hart - The Somme The Darkest Hour on the Western Front
        Page 376 Rifleman WJ Grey, “Before long they were in difficulties, as one caterpillar might go well down in a shell hole and the other remain on the level, but owing to its capabilities it would not capsize although it required extra power to get it into position, when after a struggle it would be ready to move off again.” The going was very slow. Planes were used to cover the noise of the tanks. In fact, the Germans mistook the sound of a tank for a plane.Page 377 Out of the 49 tanks meant to go into action, only 36 arrived at their ‘jumping off’ stations.
        
        Link the survival of the barbed wire to the multitude of casualties.
        
        16Fuze
        The British designed a new fuze, taking inspiration from
        the 1915 French concept Fusée instantée allongée. It was designed to be very sensitive to landing impacts, so it was called a 'super-quick' direct action fuze.
        It was tested in 1916, and began usage in 1917.
        
        Guy Hartcup, the war of Invention Page 57-58
        It was first used at the Battle of Arras in April 1917.
        Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the BEF said, “enabled wire entanglements to be easily and quickly destroyed and so modified our method of attacking organized positions. By bursting the shell the instant it touched the ground and before it had become buried, the destructive affect of the explosion was greatly increased. It became possible to cut wire with a fare less expenditure of time and ammunition and the factor of surprise was given a larger part in operations.”
        
        These developments made it possible for a surprise shelling to be launched for the first time in Cambrai.
        5Hammond, Bryn. Cambrai 1917
        Page 117
        And also, “Second Lieutenant Edward Leigh-Jones, “I crossed the first line. The wire didn’t prove to be any obstacle at all. The artillery had done their job very well and the element of surprise - the heavy gas shelling, no preliminary bombardment at all - had made it almost like a cakewalk, one might say.”
        Page 59, Using newer tactics which doesn’t churn up the ground as much, lifting barrage
        Page 172 Tanks do begin to suffer more losses as German being to fire on them at shorter range. As the ground behind the line was less shell-damaged, the tanks left the infantry behind, making them somewhat exposed. At Flesquières Ridge in particular, 77mm field guns were used quite successfully.
  - - - Also use this as an illustration for lack of morale Tanks were undeniably the driving factor to this success, as they were particularly effective in destroying machine-gun batteries and artillery
- - - - Demonstrates Germany's need for these nitrates, they didn't have any other sources they could rely on.
        
        Page 64
        Diarmuid Jeffreys says after the Germans are defeated at the Marne and Ypres, “…a war that was meant to be over in weeks looked set to stretch into years. Germany had prepared meticulously, but it had manufactured and stockpiled only enough arms, ammunition, and equipment for a rapid campaign.”
        “But Britain’s Royal Navy controlled the sea routes and was already implementing a strategy used successfully against Napoleonic France a century earlier – a maritime blockade aimed at starving Germany of vital resources.”
        Chile’s GDP Data here Million Geary-Khamis Dollars
        1914 8632
        1915 8020 (a drop of approx. 7%)
        
        Illustrating the reasons for the shortage
        
        Page 65
        Much to the minister’s disquiet, Rathenau’s hastily assembled team uncovered a resource crisis even worse than anyone anticipated. The survey questioned almost a thousand businesses engaged in war production; they confirmed that the deficit in raw materials was a disaster waiting to happen. Within six months – perhaps even earlier if the fighting continue at its current level of intensity – strategic stocks would be completely depleted. Particularly worrying was the critical shortage of saltpetre and its precious nitrate, essential for the manufacture of gunpowder. It could only be obtained from Chile, now thousands of miles away across ocean controlled by the enemy.”
        
        Illustrating the scope of the shortage
        
        Page 67
        “In truth, some in the War Ministry also had doubts about the arrangement. Even as Bosch returned to Oppau to begin his one-man mission of saving the German high command from the consequences of its shortsightedness, they set about drawing up alternative plans for dealing with the munitions crisis.”
        “But it was becoming clear that the unprecedented ferocity of the fighting on the Western Front alone – which now stretched from the North Sea coast to the Swiss frontier – would soon exhaust these stocks.”
        
        Use this to show the futile attempts to find other sources of nitrates.
      - Talks of the provision of the Haber-Bosch process
        
        Page 57
        The solution to this was to come in the form of the Haber-Bosch process which allowed the synthetic production of ammonia. The process was developed in 1909 by Fritz Haber and turned into an industrial process by Carl Bosch by 1913. “By the winter of 1913 the complex was operational and, and Bosch’s huge double-skinned tubes were producing hundreds of tonnes of synthetic ammonia for use as fertilizer. Make the point that it was the development of technology for the plant that took a long time, not the actually construction, once the first was constructed, many more plants could be easily built.
        
        Even though only one plant was operational by 1913, the other would be relatively easy to build as all the technological issues had already sorted out
        
        Page 74
        “For on May 1, 1915, right on schedule, Carl Bosch was able to tell delighted War Ministry officials that he had succeeded against all odds in mass-producing synthetic nitric acid. The Kaiser’s army would be able to carry on fighting, its guns free at last from their fatal dependence of Chilean saltpetre. Bosch was lionized throughout Germany as a national hero…”
        
        Shows contemporary recognition for this achievement. Use this to make the point that these inventions had no direct impact on the war, but their indirectly had their impact through artillery and machine-guns
        
        Page 66
        Even so, ammonia could not be used in explosives, it first had to be turned into nitric acid. This was another task for Carl Bosch, as the process for turning ammonia into nitric acid was well-known but again “to adapt it to mass production would be huge undertaking”
        “The government would give the company the six million marks it needed to make the new plant; for its part BASF must promise to produce at least five thousand tonnes of nitric acid a month by May 1915.”
        
        Just a brief mention, use it to add greater significance to the German scientific industry, and also to indicate the scale of ammonia production
        
        7Guy Hartcup, the war of Invention Page 3
        Nitric acid, used to make nitrocellulose, which is an essential component of ballisitite, which became widely adopted by Germany“could be cut up into suitable portions for use in the projectiles of small arms, artillery and even for the recently invented machine-gun.”
        W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries. A History, Vol. I, The Forerunners, 1870-1920, Oxford University Press London, 1970, Chap 7.
      - What about other sources, are there any other views.
        Yes
    - - Page 107-108 Germany obtained 50 per cent of its nitrogen from Chile and the remainder as a by-product of the manufacture of coke and gas from coal. Germany produced more nitrogen as a by- product (ammonium sulphate) than any other power, but it could not increase the production of metallurgical coke and gas increase the supply of nitrogen.
        
        Use primarily to show a different perceptive, showing that Germany might not have been quite so weak, but still quite incapacitated.
  - - - Very effective in diminishing morale, caused a small number of deaths, but a large number of casualties.
      - Initially quite deadly
        
        On April 22nd 1915, chlorine gas was first used, method of delivery was 5000 cylinders of liquid chlorine. By sunset, an estimated 5000 Allied troops had died and another 10 000 were barely hanging onto life. BUT the Germans had neglected to amass enough troops to take advantage of a breakthrough, and as a result, their advance was checked and they were pushed back.
        Page 70-1, Diarmuid Jeffreys
        
        Make the point that gas was only deadly because it wasn't recognized and in such high concentrations, they did use 5000 botlles
      - Later, particularly when delivered in shells, it often did almost no harm
        
        1Hervey AllenAnd yet, “…I left mine [gas mask] off, and so did several of the other officers without any ill effects except a little choking sensation at the time.”
        
        Make the point that in order to make gas more controlled, shells were used, but it wasn't always deadly, sometimes it was quite harmless
        
        15Martin Middlebrook - The Kaiser’s Battle
        Page 171 Gefreiter Paul Kretschmer, 28th Pioneer Battalion described few adverse affects at talking off his mask in order to see better, “But I only coughed a couple of times and my eyes watered a little. That was all that I was affected by the gas.”
        PAGE 152
      - However, it was important as a phschological weapon, and it did causes a decent amount of casualties
        
        4American medical journal
        With men trained to believe that a light sniff of gas might mean death, and with nerves highly strung by being shelled for long periods and with the presence of not a few who really had been gassed, it is no wonder that the gas alarm went beyond all bounds. . . . Gas horns would be honked, empty brass shell-casings beaten, rifles emptied and the mad cry would be taken up. . . . For miles around, scared soldiers woke up in the midst of frightful pandemonium and put on their masks, only to hear a few minutes later the cry of "All safe." . . . Two or three alarms a night were common. Gas shock was as frequent as shellshock. 39
        Denis Winter, Death's Men: Soldiers in the Great War (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), 124; also cited in Joy, "Historical Aspects of Medical Defense," 92.
        39 Winter, Death's Men, 121.
        The average number of days an AEF gas victim spent recovering and away from the front was 60 days for chlorine and 45.5 days for phosgene.43
        
        Joy, "Historical Aspects of Medical Defense," 100.
        
        Particularly talk about how this impacted on the morale of the soldiers
        
        1Hervey Allen
        Hervey Allen talks about the confusion, even in the lack of any other tactical activity, of the order to don gas masks, “Platoons and companies lost touch with each another, and there was great difficulty in giving order or having them understood.
        
        Make the point that this confusion would make it much easier to attack a formation of
        
        The bloody toll of mustard gas by war's end is indicative of its usefulness as an offensive weapon. Although approximately 30% of all war casualties were victims of gas exposure
        4American Journal
        
        Gas was also important in terms of sapping the morale of the opposition, “The poor eye-pieces restricted visibility and the laboured breathing through the filter sapped a man’s physical energy.” Martin Middlebrook - 15The Kaiser’s Battle Page 152
      - Continual German innovation sometimes helped the innovation of gas
        
        The bloody toll of mustard gas by war's end is indicative of its usefulness as an offensive weapon. Although approximately 30% of all war casualties were victims of gas exposure, more than 80% of the approximately 186 000 British chemical casualties were caused by mustard gas alone
        4American Journal
        
        14Martin Middlebrook - The Kaiser’s Battle Page 153
        Lachrymatory Gas was also used (smelled like pineapples) the aim was to forced men to take off their masks so they would inhale the more deadly gases, but this did not have the widespread affect it was thought that it would have.
        
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention
        
        Page 107
        Mustard Gas was first used by the Germans at the outset of the third battle of Ypres. In the first bombing in caused 2 100 casualties (50-60 fatalities) in the British sector. A week later, there were 2 300 causalities after a shelling at Nieuport.
        The small-box respirator was able to give adequate protection, but the blisters on the bodies of men exposed to the attack were extremely painful and took a long time to heal.
        Page 108
        The French were the first of the allies to use the gas operationally in June 1918, the British came later.
      - Ending remarks
        
        Even though it is true that the Allies were able to respond quite quickly there were still many more Allied casualties than German ones
        
        If gas was so effective, why didn't it allow the Germans to make plenty of advances, be the 'breakthrough weapon' they had hoped it would be?
        Because again, it was a primarily defensive weapon, it could be used to decimate a front-line, but was not easily adapted to be used in maintaining an advance.
        Also, the Allies simply had a larger amount of manpower available, so even though the gas caused many casualties, the Allies had men to replace
      - Put the gas sections back-to-back with the Allied gas sections. Conclusion, gas was important for defense, demoralizing and causing casualties, but it wasn't a super-effective offensive weapon
    - - Germans were quite quick in developing an adequate gas mask, but still had quite a large amount of casualties
        
        7Hartcup, The War of Invention
        Page 96-97
        The German were much better with developing a mask. By late 1915, they had developed a maks which would defend against cholrine, tear gas and phosgene, the filter contents could also be swapped out in response to new variants of gasses.
        
        Page 114
        BEF 186 000 4% Fatal
        French 130 000 17.5% Fatal
        German 107 000 5% Fatal
  - - - Germans saw artillery as being important
        
        18White Heat The New Warfare
        Page 208
        The statistics of the artillery war revel its destructive power, and are staggering. For their initial attack at Verdun the Germans brought up 2 500 000 shells, using for the purpose some 1 300 trains. By June the artillery of both sides had grown to about 2 000 guns, and it was calculated that in just over four months of battle 24 million shells had been pumped into this stretch of dedicated ground. The famous Fort Douaumont, captured by the Germans by surprise on 25 February, was finally retaken by the French on 24 October in an action which employed 711 guns (more than half of them heavies) on a front just over 3 miles. A notice in the fort informs us that 1 000 shells were used for every square meter of the Verdun battlefield by the time the battle ended in December. Casualties, by then, amounted to some 700 000, almost equally divided: the British Official History gives them as 362 000 French and 336 831 German.
        
        Note that even though the Germans had all this artillery, they still didn't have a significantly better casualty rate
        
        Page 116, Peter Hart - The Somme The Darkest Hour on the Western Front due to the insufficient counter-battery fire, German artillery remained largely intact and was able to devastate the British infantry
    - - 18White Heat The New Warfare 1914-1918 – John Terraine – Page 94
        “The war of 1914-1918 was an artillery war: artillery was the battle-winner, artillery was what caused the greatest loss of life, the most dreadful wounds, and the deepest fear.”
        Page 96
        “One statistic tells the grim true story: of all wound inflicted on British troops throughout the war, 58.51 per cent were by shell or trench mortar bomb; 38.98 per cent were by machine-gun or rifle bullet.
      - 15Martin Middlebrook - The Kaiser’s Battle
        Of the 100 000 men that would be manning the British defences, 2 500 were killed and 5000-6000 were wounded. Page 164 Martin Middlebrook - The Kaiser’s Battle
        The shelling was also important in terms of morale, which was a major problem in later offensives. Unteroffizier Erich Kubatzki said, “We were ourselves again and knew that it had come off all right…We laughed and looked happily at each other.” Page 148
        Page 171 Gefreiter Paul Kretschmer describes the affected on the shelling on the British front-lines, “Then we reached the barbed wire, our objective. But there is nothing for us to do. The wire is completely destroyed. There wasn’t really any trench left, just craters and craters.”
        Page 172. Author, “It would not be an exaggeration to say that nine tenths of the British front-line trench or outposts fell without much of a fight.”
        Page 204, one and a half hours in, the British had lost the equivalent of one-fifth of their fighting force
        Page 347 “The Germans had inflicted a huge reverse on the Allies, particularly on the British, but they had achieved neither their first objective - the capture of Arras and the rolling-up of the British Expeditionary Force to the north - nor their second - the capture of Amiens and the splitting of the British and the French armies,”
        Page 322 ——>Need to find what period this was concencrning
        Killed Wounded Prisoners Total
        German 10 851 28 778 300 39 929
        British 7512 10 000 21 000 38 512
        
        Note that intially the casualty count was in favour of the Germans, by the end of the day, more Germans had been killed than Allied soldiers, this demostrates the limitation of artillery.
    - - 5Hammond Bryn Cambrai
        German shells were also somewhat effective in the engagements around Cambrai in 1917. In this engagement, the British were able to more effectively disable German artillery batteries. But artillery was used later against the new British tanks to great affect. Bryn Hammond1 talks particularly about 77mm field guns on Flesquières ridge, knocking out 32 tanks, enabling the German counter-attacks which reclaimed almost all most territory.2
        Page 172 Tanks do begin to suffer more losses as German being to fire on them at shorter range. As the ground behind the line was less shell-damaged, the tanks left the infantry behind, making them somewhat exposed. At Flesquières Ridge in particular, 77mm field guns were used quite successfully.
        14Amiens
        Artillery were a lot less effective during this battle, due to even more effective Allied counter-battery work, although artillery was still the most effective weapon against the new British wonder-weapon, the tank.
        Page 135 of the 36 tanks of the 8th Battalion, 9 were put out of action by mechanical problems, one fell victim to a land mine and 13 were disabled by shell-fire
        Page 172
        5Hammond, Bryn. Cambrai 1917:
        German shells were also somewhat effective in the engagements around Cambrai in 1917. In this engagement, the British were able to more effectively disable German artillery batteries. But artillery was used later against the new British tanks to great affect. Bryn Hammond1 talks particularly about 77mm field guns on Flesquières ridge,
        22HewStrachan
        knocking out 32 tanks, enabling the German counter-attacks which reclaimed almost all most territory.2
    - - 15Martin Middlebrook - The Kaiser’s BattleThe shelling was also important in terms of morale, which was a major problem in later offensives. Unteroffizier Erich Kubatzki said, “We were ourselves again and knew that it had come off all right…We laughed and looked happily at each other.” Page 148
    - - Could use this to talk about the fact that machinery and technology were useless if tactics weren't appropriate