xiv | Chemical and Biological Warfare as Weapons of Mass Destruction released increases) and peace will be concluded only over the dead bodies of the enemy nation. Poison gas . . . is ideal for mass destruction. Mass destruction means you and me (emphasis added).3 Similar warnings also included those of Major Leon A. Fox, U.S. Army Medical Corps, who envisioned the potential combi- nation of air power with biological weapons (BW): “An airplane could carry enough of the botulinus toxin to destroy every living thing in the world if administration of the toxin were as simple a process as produc- tion and transportation.”4 As for the first coinage of the term “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), some point to a December 28, 1937, state- ment by the archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang. In the wake of the German Luftwaffe attack on Guernica (also eponymously depicted in Picasso’s famous painting), he bemoaned the use of such “weapons of mass destruction.”5 But we would note here that this was in reference to the terror bombing using conventional weaponry and not to the use of chemical or biological agents.6 As it happens, at least in the parlance of U.S. military and government agencies, it is relatively new that conventional explosives have been added to the category of WMD, that is, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE). Thus, the U.S. Department of Defense’s recent (and long-winded) definition of WMD includes “chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons or devices capable of a high order of destruction and/or causing mass casualties. This does not include the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such a means is separable and divisible part of the weapon.”7 World War II—Prepared for CBW Hitler will send no warning—so always carry your gas mask. —British Ministry of Home Security Poster During World War II, despite offensive and defensive preparations to do so by the Allied and German militaries, neither side used chemical or biological weapons in the Euro- pean theater. Although Japan employed chemical (and biological) weapons against Chinese troops and civilians in the Sino- Japanese War, it was careful to avoid such use against U.S. or British troops. Although having the most advanced CW capability among the World War II belliger- ents, Germany never employed chemical weapons. This was mostly because Hitler’s advisers were certain the United States and Great Britain were similarly armed and that a return to gas warfare would not be in Ger- many’s best strategic interests. As for BW, according to high-ranking German military staff, Hitler had received (false) reports that the Allies were looking to use ticks and bee- tles to attack Germany’s agriculture. Even in response to this purported threat, as well as what had been learned from initial French investigations in 1940, Hitler authorized appropriate (“extreme efforts”) in developing BW defenses in April 1942, but “the Führer . . . has ordered that no preparations for bacte- rial warfare are to be made by [Germany].”8 For its part, the United States was well pre- pared to use chemical weapons for the Pacific theater. Millions of chemical munitions, including land mines filled with mustard, had been produced by 1945, and many had been forward deployed to regions closer to Japan, including Australia, Hawaii, Luzon, and
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