War To End All Wars - Free Essay Example

World war 1 started on July 28,1914. World war 1 was the first war where everyone was included, where armies of mass scale collided against each other for the first time ever. Millions of dead. World war one was known as The Great War or War to end all Wars. One year into the war on April 22,1915, the German army introduced the first poison gas on the western front, they fired over 150 tons of chlorine gas into the French trenches. The French and German soldiers saw the devastation that the gas could do so both sides started mass producing the gas themselves and using it against each other. The first couple months that gas was used it was so devastating, it killed thousands of people and injured thousands more in only 3 months. Gas was one of the deadliest weapons that anyone had ever seen on the battlefield in world war 1. After French and Germany started using the gas both sides started making gas mask and other protective gear but the first stages of protective gear that they had was only a mask as our doctors wear now and was not protective at all, nor was it efficient. Soldiers didnt start seeing really good protective equipment for gas about a year later but still thousands of lives were taken every week because of the gas, even with good equipment. Even when gas was deployed it did not mean that you were going to kill the enemy on the other side, sometimes the gas would stay in the middle or it would come back to you because of the wind or how it was released/deployed. There have been many cases of which soldiers would shoot gas and it would come back and kill them. Gas was mainly used to immobilize, to clear, and get people out of trenches. Chlorine gas was not the only gas they used. Both side used hundreds of gasses. The two main gasses were chlorine and mustard gas. Chlorine would fill the lungs, and would not allow you to breath, while mustard gas would burn any sight of skin and blister the lungs. The Germans would put pipes filled with gas in their trenches so if they ever had to fall back or retreat they could go into another trench and when the allied soldiers would advance, the Germans would release the gas in that trench to kill them. When doctors would treat their gassed patients, the doctors would not be able to save them about 85% of the time because the soldiers were either coughing and choking on their own blood or there were just so badly injured that they would just die. Even if someone was in the gas fumes for a second you could have side-effects the next few days. When soldiers did survive the gas attacks they had long term and severe medical conditions with their lungs and other organs. When gas came in your trench your choices was to stay there in the trench ad die or take your chances and climb over the trench where your enemy will see and start shooting at you, which would and could lead to almost an entire squad that would be wiped out. Gasses could be and were released in a numerous amount of ways you can put the gas in a mortar and shoot it about 100-300 feet, yo u could put the gas in an artillery gun and shoot it very far, sometimes they would deploy gas from their airplanes over trenches in a strafing run which can go for miles. The Germans started to and tried to enhance their gas to where you could not filter out gas in your mask but the downside of using it meant they took the chance of killing themselves ever time it was used so neither side used it efficiently. At the end of gas warfare, the gas killed about 100,000 people and wounded 1.3 million people. The amount of chemicals and gas the Allied and the Axis powers shot and released was in the hundreds of thousands too millions. That lasted 4 years. The treaty of Geneva and the treaty of Versailles that was signed by all the Allied and Axis powers stated, that there will be no more use of chemical warfare in a battlefield in anymore wars that would come. The treaty was signed in Jan 21, 1920, At the End of World War 1.