|
(1) The history of chemical weapons | The Shadow of Ypres; How a whole class of weaponry came to be seen as indecent.
http://www.economist.com/news/br ... decent-shadow-ypres
Quote: "in the first world war[:] At least 90,000 soldiers were killed by them, and more than ten times that number wounded. * * * They [chemical weapons, specifically poison gas] continued to be used in the 1930s, in the invasions of Ethiopia by Italy and of China by Japan. * * * in [the second world war] they were used only by Japan.
Note:
(a)
(i) Ypres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypres
Quote:
"Though Ieper is the Dutch and only official name, the city's French name Ypres is most commonly used in English due to its role in World War I, when only French was in official use in Belgian documents, including on maps.
"Their [German] use of poison gas for the first time on 22 April 1915 marked the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres, which continued until 25 May 1915. They captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers; including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as Senegalese and Algerian tirailleurs (light infantry) from French Africa. The gas used was chlorine. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this town, was also used for the first time near Ypres, in the autumn of 1917.
(ii) A History of Ypres (Ieper) to 1914. Great War 1914-1918, undated
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/town-ieper-history.htm
Quote: "The earliest record of the name of Ieper dates from 1066. * * * The name Ieper derives from the name of a stream * * * Along this small river there were numerous elm trees growing. The elm was a common native species in the region. It was called an 'Iep' in the language of the Belgae people, considered to be derived from the Germanic Frisian language. The river was known as the 'Ipre' or 'Iepere' after the elms that grew along it and the settlement on this river was subsequently named Ieper.
(b) “'CLEARLY,' wrote an exasperated Winston Churchill in the summer of 1944, 'I cannot make head against the parsons and the warriors at the same time.' * * * The joint chiefs [of UK armed forces] unanimously came down against the idea. Churchill grumpily acquiesced."
(i) "To make head, to make headway." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
http://dictionary.die.net/make
(ii) parson (n; Middle English persone, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin persona, literally, person):
"CLERGYMAN; especially : a Protestant pastor"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parson
(c) For "Hague convention of 1899" and "Geneva protocol of 1925,"
see Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907
(section 3 Hague Convention of 1899: proposed in "1898 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas and Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, his foreign minister, were instrumental in initiating the conference;" section 5 Geneva Protocol to Hague Conventions)
(d) Poison gas "continued to be used in the 1930s, in the invasions of Ethiopia by Italy and of China by Japan"
(i) Second Italo-Ethiopian War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War
(October 1935-May 1936; section 3.2.3 Use of Poison gas)
(ii) chemical warfare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare
(section 4.5.1 Use of blister agents in China by the Imperial Japanese Army since 1937)
(e) "Aerial bombardment and the ocean-going submarine, also introduced in the first world war"
submarine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine
(section 1.6 In Wrold War I)
(f) "Adolf Hitler too refrained from the use of chemical weapons in war, though not from the use of poison gases in concentration camps. This was in part because of a fear of reprisals in kind. It was probably also because Hitler, himself gassed in the first world war, had an active antipathy to the stuff. In their history of chemical weapons, 'A Higher Form of Killing,' two British journalists, Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, note that Raubkammer, where Germany tested its chemical weapons, was the only big military proving ground that Hitler never visited. Germany’s abnegation was triply welcome. A concerted chemical counterattack could, according to Omar Bradley, an American general, have made the difference between success and failure on the beaches of Normandy. Germany, though it did not know it, had a powerful edge over the allies in chemical weapons, having developed nerve gases far more lethal than any other chemical weapons then available."
(i) For Raubkammer, see
(A) Munster Training Area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munster_Training_Area
(section 3.1 First World War: "in the Raubkammer Forest;" section 3.2 Inter-war period: "Raubkammer Army Testing Facility")
IS a military training area in Germany, which is located at
(B) Munster, Lower Saxony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munster,_Lower_Saxony
(In 1935, the Third Reich reopened the site as an experimental research and production area as well as a bombing range for chemical ammunitions under the name Heeresnebelfüllstelle Raubkammer ("Army fog-filling plant, Raubkammer"), "fog" being used as a synonym for chemical agents)
(C) The German and Dutch names Munster/Münster are from "places called Munster or Münster, derived from Latin monasterium ‘monastery.’"
Dictionary of American Family Names, published by Oxford University Press.
(ii) Adolf Hitler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler
(section 1.4 World War I: On Oct 15, 1918, he was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk[, Germany]. While there, Hitler learnt of Germany's defeat)
(iii) Omar Bradley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bradley
(1893-1981; From the Normandy landings through the end of the war in Europe, Bradley had command of all US ground forces invading Germany from the west; the last of only nine people to hold five-star rank in the United States Armed Forces)
(iv) nerve agent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_agent
(section 4.1 The discovery of nerve agents)
(g)
(i) "United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997, and limits not just the use but the production and sale of chemical weapons"
Chemical Weapons Convention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention
(ii) Aum Shinrikyo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo
(iii) "The complex and contingent set of circumstances that led to the rejection suggests such generalisation will not be easy."
contingent (adj): "not necessitated : determined by free choice"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contingent |
发表于 9-1-2013 14:20:43
收藏
分享
支持
反对
楼主