Figure 1.--The only country in Europe to have developed a substsantisal offensive capability to deliver chemical weapons at the onset of World War II was the Soviet Union. Here is a Russian boy wearing a gas mask. It was photographed in School 21- A Russian School in Dushanbe by a school friend of the boy wearing it during May 2008 when the school was celebrating the Great Patriotic War, an important annual event. I think the gas mask was World War II vintage. It is missing the filter which would have crewed onto the bask at the bottom. Russian boys and their fathers commonly collect war artifacts.

No country suffered more from gas warfare than Russia in World War I. The Germans extensively used gas on the Russians who were neither equipped with gas masks or had gas weapons of their own with which to retaliate. Thus after the War the Soviets launched an extensive chemial weapons program. This was aided by the Germans. The Germans were resricted by the Versailles Treaty. Thus they conducted research secretly in the Soviet Union as part of programs conducted under the Rapollo Treaty (1922). The only country in Europe to have developed a significant offensive capability to deliver chemical weapons at the onset of World War II was the Soviet Union (September 1939). [Dear and Foot] The Germans had a substantial stockpile (about 2,900 tons), but had not yet developed effective means of delivering them. Hitler had banned their offensive use and thus delivery methods had not been developed. The Germans when they overrun the western Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa (June 1941), encountered Soviet gas masks with filters for a new type of gas. The Germans were aware of the gas, but had rejected it for military use. As a result, the Germans added a new filter on their gas masks. [Rumpf, p. 175.]

World War I (1914-18)

No country suffered more from gas warfare than Russia in World War I. The Germans extensively used gas on the Russians who were neither equipped with gas masks or had gas weapons of their own with which to retaliate. We do not yet have any information on Tsarist efforts to produce chemical weapons. Presumably after chemical weapons were introduced (1915), the Tsarist Government began working on chemical weapons.

Russian Civil War (1919-21)

Bolshevik forces used poison gas during the Civil War. Mikhail Tukhachevsky used chemical weapons to suppress a peasant uprising around Tambov (1921). Red Army commanders Tukhachevsky and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko signed orders specifying "The forests where the bandits are hiding are to be cleared by the use of poison gas. This must be carefully calculated, so that the layer of gas penetrates the forests and kills everyone hiding there." [Werth, et. al.] We are not sure just where the Red Army got chemical weapons, perhaps Tsarist Wortld War I stock piles.

Rapollo (1922)

The Russians suffered terribly from German gas attacks during World War I. Some 0.5 million Russians are believed to havev been casuakties of German chenical weaouns, The Russians had ni chemical weaopons of their own. After the War, the Germans were prohibited from producing chemical weapons. Thus cooperation on chemical weapons between the Soviets and Germans was a natural development. The Germans secretly worked on chemical weapons in the Soviet Union. [Johnson] This was part of a much larger program of cooperation undertaken as part of the Rapallo Treaty (1922). Poison gas was manufactured by a German owned and staffed plant. [Rosenbaum] he German parner was Stolzenberg. Bersol was manufactured as a poison gas plant near Samara. The plant was disguised as a civilian plant. The German War Ministry provided the needed financing. The Yale Russian Archive Project has found a range of documents from the 1920s involving Gernan-Soviet cooperatiom on various aspects of chemical warfare, including aerial sprayers and gas masks.

Geneva Convention (1925)

The revulsion with the enormous casualties during World War I signigicantly saffected public thinking after the War. And no where was the public more horrified thsn with chemical weapons. This led to the Geneva Protocol (1925). These negotiatioins were initiated by the United States. The resultng protocol forbade the use of poison gas and bacteriological weapons in warfare. It did not prohibit their production and stockpiling, but it did prohibit the use of the weapons. The Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France ratified the protocol with the reservations that it would not be binding if other countries violated the agreement. Italy and (Weimar) Germany ratified without reservations. The United States and Japan did not. [Tucker]

Chemical Weapons Capability (1930s)

The Soviets with initial German assistance developed a massive cheical weapons industry. Much of the pre-War development was based on German-Soviet military Rapollo cooperation during the 1920s. Very limited information, however, is available on the Soviet industry. Unlike Western World War II archives, Soviet archives on many sensitive matters are still closed to researchers, especially Western researchers. The Soviet chemical weapon industry appears to have been based primarily on Yperite and Lewisite. Yperite was a World War I agent, named after the battle of Ypers where the Germans introduced the agent. Lewisite is an agent developed in America the end of the War. Thirty Soviet plants produced Yperite. They had the capacity to produce 35,000 tons annually. Thirteen plants produced Lewisite. {Note: We are not sure if the plant and capacity data is based on the situation before or after the German invasion.] We are not sure yet just where the plants were located. Nothing in the Soviet arsenal were nearly as potent as the Tabun and Sarin developed by the Germans. Much of the Soviet chemical weapon industry was built after German-Soviet cooperation was ended after Hitler seized power. The Soviet Union was the only country in Europe to have developed a significant offensive capability to deliver chemical weapons at the onset of World War II (September 1939). [Dear and Foot] The Red Air Force was the largest in the world. The Germans had a substantial stockpile of chemical agents (about 2,900 tons), but had not yet developed effective means of delivering the agents develioped. Hitler had banned their offensive use and thus delivery methods had not been developed. We do not know to what extent Sovier authorities ininiated civil defense precautions and planning.

World War II (1939-45)

The Soviet Union entered World War II when shortly after the Germans, as antiipated in the NAZI-Soviet Pact, they invaded Poland from the east (September 1939). The British and French, however, did not declare war on the Soviet Union. The Soviets conducted several other aggresive actions, but except for Finland, the Red Army was not significantly tested. At the time the Siviet Union was the only countruy capable of delivering a chemical attack. The Red Auir Firce was th largest in the workld and poreoared to deliver chemical munitionsd. The German has nerve agents, but Hitle believed gas warfaee barbaric and refused ti authiorize a the fevelopmernt of delivery systems. The Red Arny was severely tested by the NAZI Barbarossa invasion (June 1941). The Luftwaffe As part of Operation Barbarossa (June 1941), focused on the Red Air Force and essebntially destroyed it during the first week of the campaign. What ever Soviet plans were, this left them without the capability of delivering chemical weapons in a meaningful way. The Germans when they overran the western Soviet Union), encountered Soviet gas masks with filters for a new type of gas. The Germans were aware of the gas, but had rejected it for military use. We think this may have been Lewisite, but can not confirm this yet. As a result, the Germans added a new filter on their gas masks. [Rumpf, p. 175.] We do not know to what extent the advancing Germans encountered stockpiles of chemical weapons. We notice that Prime-Minister Churchill, fearing German gas warfare against Russia, publicly warned Hitler that Britain would retaliate with gas on German cities (May 1942). [Bernstein] We are not sure what caused Churfchill's threat. It could have been promted by the Soviets, but it also may have been a British military assessment. At any rate, the Red Air Force was recoivering and by the end of the year was able to take on the Luftwaffe in tactical opertations. (Here the Allied Strategic Bombing offensive was a factor, forcing the Luftwaff to pul gighter swaafrins back froim the Osrkrieg to defend German citiies.) They did nit , however, haave a suignificant stratehic bomving caability. The Soviets increased production of chemical weapons during the War. We are unsure if these were some of the factories moved east or were already located in safe areas. The Soviets are believed to have produced at least 22,700 tons of Lewisite before and duruing the War. They also reportedly performed hundreds of tests with both Lewisite and Yperite, including both animal and human tests. We do not have details on these tests, but they presumably began before the War. Of course after the German invasion they also had German POWs. We do not know to what extent they were used as research subjects. The NKVD supervised testing on thousands of Soviet citizens who were were involuntarily subjects and readily available as a result of the Gulag. The tests included scientists at Sharashkas where researchers were part of the Gulag. (Sharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag.) We do not know if Stalin ever contemplasted using chemical weapons on the Germans during the War. When they were most needed, the Germans had destroyed the Red Air Force (June 1941). After the Red Air Force had been rebuilt (1943), the Red Army was winning without chemical weapons. We do not know if the Soviets knew of the deadly new agents developed by the Germans. Victory in World War II gave the Soviets access to German and Japanese research on chemnical as well as biological and nuclear research. Japanese scientists escaped the Soviet net, but many German scientists were captured or willingly worked for the Soviets.

Post-War Activity

The Soviets began large-scale production of sarin after the War. Presumably they used tecnology obtained from the Germans, but we hsve no details at this time. It is clear that the Soviet military leadership plasced considerable emphasis on chemical weapons and developed a very significant chemical weapoons capacity.

Disposal

Substantial quantities of Soviet World War II chemical ordinance was burried at various locations in the Soviet Union during the 1960s. TheSovies in the 1960s began developing a new generation og chemical and biological weapons. The military men who carried out this assignment had no knowledge or concern about whay would be the long term result. The chemicals were not deacivated. The sites are now ecological disasters. A forer Sivuet military man whoi has become an enviomentalist tool an Ameriucan reporter to one such site near Leonidovka, "In a verdant pine forest here, sprinkled with birch trees, the lush growth suddenly disappears. Underbrush gives way to a black ulcer on the earth. In the clearing nothing grows, not even grass. .... This hole in the middle of a Russian forest is an uncharted chemical weapons graveyard. Buried here are vintage World War II aerial bombs, filled with a mixture of deadly lewisite, a blistering poison gas, and yperite, a sulfur mustard gas. These abandoned bombs are a visible symbol of Russia's chemical weapons nightmare: It has more chemical bombs than any country, and it cannot get rid of them, or even find them all. Forty thousand tons of chemical weapons are stored in officially declared military depots. But thousands of other bombs lie in abandoned and uncharted weapons dumps, like this one. The Russian military, which created these undeclared dumps decades ago, still denies they exist." [Hoffman] The weapons are now deteriorating and the chemicals leaching out into the soil and water table and rivers from which city waters supplies are drawn. Rising levels of arsenic are being reported in areas where large numbers of people live. And the disposal pronlems associated with World war II ordiance is only aart of the problen faing Russia, which now has on its hands huge quantities of the much more toxic nerve agents produced during the Cold War.

Sources

Bernstein, Barton J. "Why we didn’t use poison gas in World War II," American Heritage Vol. 36, No. 5. (August/September 1985).

Dear, I.C.B. and M.R.D. Foot. "Chemical warfare." The Oxford Companion to World War II (Oxford University Press. 2001).

Hoffman, David. "Wastes of war: Russia's forgotten chemical weapons," Washington Post (August 16, 1998), p. A1. The Russian enviromentalit was Vladmir Pankratov.

Johnson, Ian. Faustian Brgain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World (Oxford University Press: 2021), 384p.

Posenbaum, Kurt. Community of Fate: German-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1922-28 (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1965), 325p.

Rumpf, Hans. The Bombing of Germany (Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, 1962), 256p.

Tucker, Jonathan B. War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to al-Qaeda (Pantheron: New York, 2006).

Werth, Nicolas, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, and Stéphane Courtois. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Harvard University Press, 1999), 858 pages.

Created: 6:02 AM 1/4/2010
Last updated: 4:52 AM 3/14/2023