The introduction of chemical warfare to the battlefield on 22 April 1915 changed the face of total warfare. Not only did it bring science to combat, it was both the product of societal transformation and a shaper of the 20th century societies. This collaborative work in association with In Flanders Fields Museum, investigates the unfolding catastrophe that the unleashing of chlorine gas against the Allied positions meant for individual soldiers and civilians. It describes the hesitation on the German side about the effectiveness, and hence impact on combat operations of the weapon whilst reflecting on the lack of Allied response to the many intelligence pointers that something significant was afoot. It goes on to describe the massive transformation that societies were undergoing as a consequence of industrialisation, science and technology, and the impact these trends were to have on the emergence of what we know today as 'total war.' Chemical warfare pitted the brightest minds from the various belligerents against each other and in some ways this competition revealed early thinking about intellectual superiority that was to define the decades after the Armistice. The ability to survive in a chemically contaminated environment was proof of a higher level of achievement. In simple terms, chemical defence equalled survival of the fittest. -- From the back cover.

Foreword /by Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General, OPCW -- Introduction by / Jean Pascal Zanders -- The road to Hague / Jean Pascal Zanders -- Towards total war : Langemarck, 22 April 1915 / Olivier Lepick -- The Belgian Army and the gas attack on 22 April 2015 / Luc Vandeweyer -- 22 April 2015 : Eyewitness accounts of the first gas attack / Dominick Dendooven -- Toxic shock : the British Army's reaction to German poison gas during the Second Battle of Ypres / Julian Putkowski -- The Indian Army at the Second Battle of Ypres / David Omissi -- Phosphene in the Ypres Salient 19 December 1915 / Bert Heyvaert -- A war on terror : gas, British morale and reporting the war in Wales / Gerard Oram -- Gas warfare in 1915 and the German press / Wolfgang Wietzker -- Civil resistance to chemical warfare in the First World War / Peter van den Dungen -- Man-monkey, monkey-man : neutrality and the discussions about the 'inhumanity of poison gas in the Netherlands and International Committee of the Red Cross / Leo van Bergen and Maartje Abbenhuis -- The road to Geneva / Jean Pascal Zanders.