August 10, 2020 • 45 mins
Tear gasses, or lachrymator agents, are named for the lachrymal glands, which secrete tears. But tears are just one part of it. It was developed for WWI, but of course continues to be used today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I was
feeling like the episodes I had picked for the podcast,
(00:21):
not all of them, but a lot of them, we're
trending towards the heavier side. I went on a hunt
to try to find something that would be more fun.
And I really felt like I had seen something recently
at j Store Daily that had been that magical blend
of just like really interesting and really fun sounding, and
I went over there to look for it, and that
(00:42):
is where everything went awry, because what I clicked on
instead was an article about the use of tear gas
against the Two Bonus Army. Um. We are approaching the
end of July as we record this, and tear gas
has been in use and in the news a whole
whole lot. So that is not a fun topic. But
(01:06):
that is what wound up completely commandeering my attention. I
have been conscious that we have been doing a lot
of dark things, so I keep trying to pick light things,
and then when you were like I'm doing so, they
light and like the next day you were like tear
gases like welp, yeah, and you're you're one that we're
(01:26):
going to be recording next in this session. It's also
not one of the happier topics. We uh, we just
went down a path this week. It's a mix. It's
a mix of cookie and serious. There's for sure some
cookiness in your one. But here we are on tear gas.
So tear gases or lacrymator agents are named for the
(01:46):
lachrymal glands which secrete tears, but tears are really just
one small part of it. Exposure to most tear gases
affects the mucous membranes and the respiratory system, and it
also activates one of two pain receptors in the body.
In addition to causing the eyes to tear up, tear
gas can cause burning of the skin, eyes, mouth, and nose.
(02:09):
I think sometimes people don't realize that when they just
see it reported on the news. It also causes blurred vision,
drooling and difficulties swallowing, wheezing, shortness of breath, choking, and
chest tightness, rashes, as well as nausea and vomiting. Tear
Gas exposure is also associated with miscarriages, and in some
(02:31):
cases it can be lethal, especially in babies, elders, and
people with conditions like asthma. The devices that are used
to deploy tear gas can also cause injuries and deaths
if they or their pieces hit someone. Yeah, even when
that does not happen, it's it's like it's immediately incapacitating.
(02:52):
It's it's not just something that like, oh, your eyes
are tearing up and maybe you want to move to
fresh air. I'm uncomfortable, I should walk away. It's like
you're downed right, right. So all all of these substances
are grouped together and they're called tear gas. They're not
really gases. One of the ones that's most commonly used
today is CS or two chlorobenziladine mon nitral and it
(03:17):
is solid at room temperature. There's also CN or chloroacetophenone,
and that's also known as mace. That's a crystalline substance
that is propelled as a liquid or as a very
fine powder. Pepper spray or only a resin capsicum is
an oily resin that's extracted from hot peppers. To be clear,
(03:37):
it is not food. It's usually propelled as a pressurized liquid,
and then there are other ones as well, including CR
or diamond socks, a zeppine, and also refined versions of
CS known as CS two or C X. There are
also various canisters and grenades and other devices that disperse
these substances not as gases but as aris lies, liquids,
(04:00):
or powders, and those liquids and powders can remain on
the skin, clothing, and surfaces long after they have dispersed
from the air. Tear gases that are used for things
like riot control and crowd suppression today trace back to
chemical warfare in World War One, which is something that
was controversial from the beginning. Societies have made various efforts
(04:22):
to establish rules for warfare throughout history. In terms of
what we're talking about today. In the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, a series of multinational conventions led to
treaties that outlined various rules of war. One of the
first of these was in St. Petersburg, Russia, in eighteen
sixty eight, resulting in a declaration that started with the
(04:43):
idea quote that the progress of civilization should have the
effect of alleviating as much as possible the calamities of war.
More specifically, a declaration that was issued during the Hague
Convention of eight nodded back to the sentiment that Holly
just read from the Declaration of St. Petersburg. From there,
(05:04):
this new declaration required signatories to quote agree to abstain
from the use of projectiles the object of which is
the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases. Then, on October
eighteenth of nineteen oh seven, another Hague Convention stated that
it was forbidden to quote employ poison or poisoned weapons.
(05:26):
These directives grew out of a fear of chemical warfare
that had grown in tandem with the Industrial Revolution, and
an overall really long lasting taboo against poison and other
chemical weapons as basically unfair and uncivilized. These treaties didn't
stop nations from researching chemicals that could be used as
(05:47):
some kind of weapon, though France in particular had signed
the Hague declarations but also developed tear gases for use
in riot control. Then in World War One, France used
tear gas grenades to try to drive German troops out
of the trenches At the Battle of Frontiers In nineteen fourteen,
Germany which was also a signatory to these treaties, also
(06:09):
tried something similar against Allied troops that October. Neither of
these efforts was particularly effective, though, with the targeted troops
not even realizing that they were under attack, so some
sources do not count these as the first use of
chemical warfare in World War One. So these another early
efforts sort of danced around the Hague Convention. The gases
(06:30):
in question were meant to temporarily incapacitate people, not to
permanently injure or kill them. On the other hand, the
whole point of that temporary incapacitation was to leave the
targets vulnerable to attacks with more conventional weapons. In April
of nineteen fifteen, at the Second Battle of Ipra, Germany
moved in a different direction based on a strategy by
(06:52):
chemist Fritz Haber. We just rereleased our episode on Harbor
from the archive as a Saturday classic. Uh. This att
ac used to gas that was definitely deadly, but without
projectiles involved, so it was technically still within the limits
of at least the first Haig Convention. German troops waited
until the wind was blowing in the right direction and
(07:13):
then released nearly two hundred tons of chlorine gas to
be blown into Allied trenches. More than one thousand Algerian,
Moroccan and French soldiers were killed. Thousands more were wounded.
Both sides were just totally unprepared for this gas attack.
The Allied troops had no gas masks, no other defenses prepared.
(07:35):
I mean, why would they really? There had been some
knowledge that something was going on, but still like not
not something of this scale. The German troops also, we're
not ready to take advantage of how effective this attack
had been. So while the Allied death toll was high,
they didn't actually lose a lot of ground after this attack.
The international community reacted to this use of gas without rage.
(07:59):
The attack combined with germany sinking of the passenger ship
RMS Lusitania and its invasions of Belgium in Luxembourg, which
had been neutral, to solidify the idea that Germany's approach
to the war was particularly brutal. In spite of that
outrage and this overall perception that Germany's strategy was particularly
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nefarious in this war, Britain and France each started working
on chemical weapons of their own, and in tandem, the
warring nations in Europe developed new poison gas weapons, new
gas masks and other protective strategies, new methods for deploying
chemical weapons so that the targets would not be able
to don that protective gear, and new treatment protocols for
(08:43):
gas exposure. In spite of early efforts to sidestep the
Hague Conventions with some of these weapons, but pretty soon
the armies are just totally ignoring it. They were developing
projectiles for deploying gas, specifically deploying deadly gas and eating
artillery shells, mortars and livins projectors which remotely launched drums
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of gas. In addition to the injuries and deaths that
came from gas exposure, the use of chemical warfare in
World War One was demoralizing and also disorienting. Troops had
to remain in a perpetual state of fear and readiness.
Gas masks were uncomfortable, and they were not always effective,
and they blocked the wearer's peripheral vision. Sometimes the lenses
(09:30):
fogged over as well. The gases themselves were also terrifying
to experience as well as just to witness. By the
end of the war, attacks with chlorine fosterene and mustard
gases had caused at least ninety thousand deaths and more
than a million casualties. That's a small number compared to
the estimated twenty million civilian and military deaths in the
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war total, but the deaths from the gas attacks were
particularly horrifying. The United S eights was really a latecomer
to all of this. Although the US did start doing
some chemical warfare research before becoming directly involved in the war,
that was really a cobbled together effort. Much of the
nation's expertise with gas came from the Department of Mines,
(10:15):
which had experience dealing with poison gases. A Chemical Service
section was also established under the U S Corps of Engineers,
and a gas service section was established with the American
Expeditionary Forces. But in general, when American troops arrived in Europe,
they just had very little knowledge or experience with chemical weapons.
(10:35):
They had to rely on the other allies for information, training,
and protective equipment. It's not really clear how much of
this lack of preparedness stemmed from this overall taboo against
chemical weapons, and how much of it was because news
out of Europe was being censored before arriving in the US,
so American authorities might not have realized just how much
(10:57):
chemical warfare was really going on. In June of nine
teen eighteen, the Chemical Service Section became the Chemical Warfare Service,
and the Chemical Warfare Service played a huge role in
the development of tear gas for use in peacetime. We're
going to talk about that more after a sponsor break.
(11:20):
After the end of World War One, the US started
scaling back its military to peacetime levels, as of course
other nations did as well, and at first the plan
was to disband the Chemical Warfare Service entirely. There was
a perception, or maybe kind of a hope, that chemical
warfare had been developed for this specific war, and that
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it was going to disappear now that the war was over,
and that would make the CWS unnecessary. This general perception
even went so far as to include soldiers abandoning or
kind of fake losing their gas masks rather than turning
them in as they were released from service. This wasn't
just a matter of wishful thinking. Even though both the
(12:02):
Allied and Central Powers had used chemical weapons in the war,
their use was still really taboo, and much of the world,
and then these taboos were bolstered by firsthand accounts from
veterans about what the gas attacks during the war were like.
Not everyone agreed with the idea that chemical warfare was
inhumane or uncivilized, though. One supporter of chemical warfare was
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General Amos Freeze of the Chemical Warfare Service. He had
served with the Gas Service Section during the war, and
he had been awarded the French Legion of Honor, the
British Companion of St. Michael and Saint George, and the
American Distinguished Service Medal. Freeze thought that chemical weapons could
be more humane than conventional weapons, and he believed that
the United States would be unprepared again if it didn't
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continue to research and develop them. Of course, he also
wanted to protect the service that he was working for.
He thought that if he could convince the public that
chemical weapons had peacetime uses and that they were safe
and effective for those uses, that then it would destigmatize
their use in war. He hoped that with that stigma removed,
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the public would allow and even encourage chemical warfare. That
would mean that the Chemical Warfare Service would not just
survive the post war downsizing of the military, it would
also allow for chemical weapons and the CWS to become
a really central part of American military strategy. He imagined
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a military in which every unit had its own dedicated
chemical squad, with the most up to date advanced chemical weapons,
as well as tactics and protective equipment all at their disposal.
So Freeze successfully lobbied for the military to keep the CWUS.
The CWS started a trade publication called Chemical Warfare, which
(13:53):
published articles arguing that chemical weapons were less traumatic to
the body and less lethal than conventional weapons. But of
course this all glossed over the fact that many of
the chemical weapons that had been developed for use in
World War One were formulated specifically to kill people. Frees
rallied support from the American Chemical Society, professional chemistry journals,
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and various chemistry programs. He and his supporters also pushed
the idea that all war was terrible, but that a
lot of the resistance to chemical warfare specifically was just
that people were not used to it yet the way
that they were used to things like guns, artillery, and bombs.
The CWS also looked for other uses for the gases
that had been developed for the war, like home security
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systems that released to toxic gas when they were activated,
or the use of chemical weapons to fight agricultural pests.
After someone noticed that workers at a chlorine gas plant
had fewer cases of the nineteen eighteen pandemic flew, they
explored whether chlorine gas could prevent illness, especially lung infections.
This involved intentionally exposing people to low dose is of
(15:00):
chlorine gas. One of the test cases was President Calvin Coolidge,
who underwent three consecutive treatments from May twenty to twenty
second four. The President said that his cold got better
as a result, although it should be noted that cold
typically get better on their own. None of these proposed
(15:20):
peacetime uses for chemical weapons really took off. What did
take off, though, was tear gas. As we've talked about
in several other episodes of the show. The US and
other places went through major social and economic upheaval after
World War One. Strikes another labor disputes were widespread, which
we've covered on several previous episodes. So was mob violence,
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especially targeted against black people and their communities, which we
have also talked about in several episodes, including our episode
on Red Summer. Starting in early nineteen nineteen Freeze and
the Chemical Warfare Service started framing tear gas as the
ideals ution for these types of unrest. However, the Department
(16:03):
of War, which had been planning to dismantle the CWS,
was not in favor of this. In February of nineteen nineteen,
the War Department ordered the CWS not to provide any
type of chemical weapon, including tear gas, to any civilian
or military law enforcement personnel. But at the same time,
(16:24):
people and departments were petitioning the Department of War to
be allowed to use tear gas on civilians. This included
in October nineteen nineteen, request to use chemical devices on
striking steel workers in Gary, Indiana, and various requests from
law enforcement who wanted to use it or have it
on hand for so called race riots. We've talked about
(16:45):
why that phrase is problematic many times before. Even as
the Department of War maintained that it would not allow
chemical weapons to be used against residents of the United States,
the Chemical Warfare Service was designing and testing devices to
use chemical agents for crowd control. In the National Defense Act,
which was also known as the Second Army Reorganization Bill,
(17:08):
established a new organizational structure for the U. S. Army,
and in addition to other things, this act formalized the
Chemical Warfare Service as part of the Army. CWS Director
William L. Siebert was reassigned and he retired shortly after that.
This is something that a lot of people interpreted as
a punishment for the CWS having pushed back so hard
(17:29):
against the Department of War's efforts to dismantle it. Taking
his place was General Amos Freeze. To be clear, the
CWS was still doing military work, including advocating for training,
supplies and a gas company for each overseas garrison. Freeze
also continued to advocate for chemical warfare to be a
standard part of every unit, but there was still a
(17:52):
lot of focus on peacetime use of chemical weapons, as
we said earlier, to try to sway public opinion on
chemical weapons in general, and to protect the CWS from
being declared irrelevant in the face of that ongoing stigma
and the potential for international treaties banning their use. This
was in spite of the fact that the Department of
War still wouldn't approve the use of chemical weapons on civilians.
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That last part changed in nine one after Warren G.
Harding was sworn in as President of the US He
appointed John W. Weeks as Secretary of War. John J.
Pershing became Chief of Staff that July, and Pershing was
the person who had appointed Freeze to the Gas Service.
Back during the war, Freeze started advocating for changes to
(18:37):
how the Department of War was approaching chemical warfare, specifically
with civilians, and as part of this, Freeze arranged for
a demonstration outside of Philadelphia, and which about two hundred
police officers tried and failed to make their way through
a cloud of tear gas. In August of nine one,
Freeze conducted another demonstration, this time on a group of
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Girl Real Scouts from nearby Camp Bradley, one of whom
was his daughter Elizabeth. The scouts took a tour of
Edgewood Arsenal, during which they were exposed to tear gas.
This visit was written up in The Washington Post in
an article that read quote, the girls found that the
name tear gas was no misnomer, as all cried copiously
for a few seconds when the gas was released. They
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greatly enjoyed the trip and put it down as one
of the Red Letter events of the camp. There's a
lot that's not clear about this whole outing, but the
general sense seems to be that tear gas was both
effective and that it was safe enough to use on
girl scouts. This is the weirdest PR stunt. There's so
much in that whole thing. You know. I tweeted about him.
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People were like that, excuse me, what what? What? What
were they even thinking? And I was like they were
thinking that they were trying to show the public that, like, yeah,
it's totally okay to to tear gas little girls. Anyway,
the War Department lifted its prohibition on the use of
chemical weapons against civilians, but only for agents like tear
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gases that were not considered poisonous in August of nine one.
This was in response to a request from the governor
of West Virginia for help restoring order during an ongoing
series of labor disputes in its mining industry. These series
of disputes or something that we have covered previously in
our episode on the Battle of Blair Mountain. During the
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first week of September nineteen twenty one, the Chemical Warfare
Service deployed soldiers and prepared an assortment of c N
gas devices from Edgewood Arsenal, including a thousand grenades, three
fifty mortar shells, and a hundred nine one aerial drop bombs.
By this point, tear gas was also available from private manufacturers.
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The first of these was called Chemical Protection and was
established in ninety one. So while tear gas was used
against the miners in the Battle of Blair Mountain, it
wasn't by these federal trueops. It was by a force
rallied by mine operators and the local sheriff. The miners
mostly surrendered after the federal troops arrived, before the weapons
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from Edgewoard Arsenal were used. Freeze did take the opportunity
to test some of their tear gas weapons after this,
and the CWS used the results of those tests to
publish Provisional Instructions for the Control of Mobs by Chemical Warfare,
which came out in the Department of War reinstated that
prohibition on tear gas against civilians. Not long after this,
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Freeze and the CWS and various trade publications kept on
with their pr efforts to try to sway opinions about
tear gas. This included in November article in Gas Age Record,
which described Freeze as quote firmly convinced that as soon
as officers of the law and colonial administrators have familiarized
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themselves with gas as a means of maintaining order and power,
there will be such a diminution of violent social disorders
and savage uprisings to amount to their disappearance. H A
lot of the language in these pr efforts was racist.
Like a lot of it was about maintaining the power
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of colonial authorities over the people who had been colonized,
with the colonized people being like savage barbarians. It was gross.
The Chemical Warfare Service also cooperated with private businesses, giving
chemical manufacturers samples of gases the CWS had developed, and
allowing these manufacturers to test their products at Edgewood Arsenal.
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The CWS also lobbied against international treaties that jeopardized its work,
including the Treaty relating to the Use of Submarines and
Noxious Gases, which was signed by five nations but did
not become binding because France didn't ratify it. Yeah. I
think we've mentioned on the show before that with treatise
there's usually this two step process where like nations signed
(22:56):
the treaty, but then their individual governments have to ratify
the treaty UH and so this had been signed but
not ratified. Although that nineteen two treaty was worded in
a way that seemed to prohibit all chemical weapons, than
public opinion continued to be on the side of an
outright ban on all chemical weapons. Freeze and the CWS
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kept on making a case that tear gas and other
so called non toxic gases were an exception. In August
of ninety two, the War Department again lifted the prohibition
on the use of tear gas by federal troops and
civil disturbances. By this point, tear gas was also becoming
way more common in civilian law enforcement as well. As
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we mentioned earlier, the first private tear gas manufacturer had
started operations in nine By nineteen twenty three police were
equipped with tear gas and more than six hundred cities
around the United States. The Chemical Warfare Services ongoing efforts
to frame chemical weapons as humane also had another totally
different outcome. During these years, the US saw its first
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execution by gas chamber on February eighth, n In ninety five,
the Geneva Gas Protocol prohibited the use of chemical and
biological weapons in war. The US signed the protocol, but
didn't actually ratify it until nineteen seventy five. It wasn't
long before nations outside of the U S. We're also
(24:22):
using tear gases to disperse mobs and suppress descent. We'll
talk more about that after a sponsor break. Word of
American efforts with tear gas quickly spread to other parts
of the world. I mean, other parts of the world
had also been developing tear gasses, but the U S
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effort on this was was large. In nineteen twenty, British
authorities in India started lobbying to be allowed to use
tear gas against the Indian independence movement. They cited the
Jelly and Wallabag massacre, also known as the Ritzer massac or,
which took place on April thirteenth, nineteen nineteen. At least
(25:04):
three hundred seventy nine unarmed demonstrators were killed and more
than a thousand were injured after forces under Brigadier General
Reginald Dire opened fire on them. Advocates for tear gas
use in India framed this as a tragedy that might
not have happened if British colonial forces had less lethal
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weapons available to them as an option. The India Office,
on the other hand, insisted that since gas could not
be used in war, it could not be used in
peace either. Colonial authorities continued to request permission to use
tear gas, and the India Office continued to refuse into
the early nineteen thirties, at which point it allowed the
(25:46):
use of tear gas often called tear smoke because of
the ongoing associations with gas warfare in World War One.
That was only after announcements were made that it would
be used if the crowd didn't disperse. From there, the
use of tear gas started to spread to other British
territories as well. At this point. Palestine was under British
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control under a mandate from the League of Nations. British
authorities there started requesting tear gas in ninety nine after
riots and massacres that were connected to disputes over control
of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Finally, the High Commissioner
of Palestine got permission to use tear gas to control riots,
but only when it seemed as though the only other
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choice would be firearms. At first, this continued to be
the mindset as other countries adopted the use of tear gas,
that gas should only be used in circumstances where without
it the only choice would be lethal weapons. But over
time authorities began thinking of tear gas as the first response,
that it should be used to disperse crowds earlier rather
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than later. To return to the US for a moment.
By the nineteen thirties, tear gas was part of the
arsenals of police departments all over the country. But one
of the earliest uses of tear gas by federal troops
domestically in peacetime was on July twenty, nineteen thirty two.
And that's the Bonus Army that I mentioned up at
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the top of the episode. Congress had passed the World
War Adjusted Compensation Act in nineteen twenty four, and that
act would allow World War One veterans to be compensated
for wages that they had lost while serving in the war.
They were supposed to be paid a dollar per day
of state side service and a dollar in twenty five
cents per day overseas. People who were owed less than
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fifty dollars were paid immediately, and then for everybody else
that payout was scheduled with interest in nineteen forty five. However,
the Great Depression meant that people needed their money a
lot sooner than that. The Bonus Army, also called the
Bonus Expeditionary Force, was a group of about twenty thousand veterans,
many with their wives and children, who went to Washington
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to demand immediate payout. When a measure to do so
was defeated in the Senate, many of the Bonus Army
went home. Those who didn't held increasingly vocal protests over
the next few weeks, until federal troops dispersed them using
tanks and tear gas, burning down their encampment in the process.
Two of the demonstrators were killed, and a baby reportedly
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died from tear gas exposure. This incident was a blow
to the reputation of then President Herbert Hoover, and it's
been cited as one of the reasons he lost the
election against Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the Chemical Weapons Service
and Edgewood Arsenal called this clearing of the demonstrators a
practical field test, something that showed the power of tear
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gas to disperse even the most dedicated dissenters, with at
least in their view, minimal harm. Lake Erie Chemical even
used photos of the clearing of the Bonus Army as
part of its marketing materials. The popularity of tear gas
really spread from there, say else. Reps from American chemical
manufacturers visited places both domestically and internationally that we're experiencing
(29:06):
unrest to sell tear gas to private citizens, business owners,
and law enforcement. Various governments, businesses and organizations also started
stockpiling tear gas in case of future need. For example,
between nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty seven, one point
to five million dollars worth of tear and sickening gas
(29:27):
had been bought in the US in anticipation of labor strikes.
Of course, there were certainly times that tear gas was
used because of actual crime or violence that was happening,
but often it was really just focused on suppressing descent. Yeah.
Also that one point to five million dollars, that is
the nineteen thirties dollars that is not adjusted for modern currency.
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Chemical warfare degency nearly the kind of use during World
War Two that it had during World War One, although
chemical weapons were used in death camps under the Nazi regime.
In terms of combat use, it just was not present
in the same way. But after the war, tear gas
continued to be a primary tool for suppressing protests, dispersing
(30:13):
strikers and the like. Over the years, it also shifted
again in how it was used. Back in the nineteen thirties,
tear gas had started out mainly perceived as a last
resort when the only other option might be firearms or
other more lethal weapons, and then, as we noted, it
became more of a first line of defense, used early
to disperse and demoralize a mob or other crowd, but
(30:37):
by the civil rights movement in the nineteen fifties and
sixties it was being used as a precursor to other violence.
For example, on Bloody Sunday during the Selma to Montgomery
March in five State troopers deployed forty canisters of tear gas,
twelve smoke canisters, and eight canisters of nausea gas, before
then beating the marchers with their night sticks and other weapons.
(31:01):
This included fracturing the skull of the late John Lewis.
The nineteen sixties also saw some of the first uses
of tear gas as more of an offensive weapon, including
the use of a national Guard helicopter to spray demonstrators
at Berkeley with tear gas in nineteen sixty nine. This,
of course, also allowed the gas to drift two adjacent
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areas and affect people that had nothing to do with
the demonstration, including children at a nearby preschool and people
who were swimming in a university swimming pool. Obviously, this
is not a comprehensive list of every time tear gas
has ever been used, or every nuance and how it
has shifted like that's impossible in the scope of one podcast.
(31:43):
But in the book Tear Gas From the Battlefields of
World War One to the Streets of Today, it describes
the most recent shift in tear gas history as the
year twenty eleven, thanks to the combination of several things
happening simultaneously, including the Occupy movement in North America, uh
the Chilean student protests that started that year, the Egyptian
(32:04):
Revolution of twenty eleven, and the Arab Spring. All of
this included what was described as the weaponized use of
tear gas in Bahrain, which led to at least thirty
four gas related deaths and numerous injuries from people being
struck with the tear gas canister. Tear gas sales have
tripled since twenty eleven, with other high profile uses since
(32:26):
then being Turkeys occupied Gezi protests in the Umbrella movement
in Hong Kong, and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri after
police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown also in
and the ongoing protests against police brutality and racism in
the United States. In some parts of the world today,
(32:47):
people also described tear gas as an almost ever present
fact of life, including an occupied Palestine and parts of
Uganda and Nigeria. Proponents of tear gas generally maintained that
it is say when used correctly, and that it's less
deadly than other weapons, including firearms, but a lot of
research to back up as safety is spotty at best.
(33:10):
A lot of it was conducted by the military, and
the results of that research are classified. Some of this
research has also come from experiments that were done on
people without their consent, including experiments that were conducted at
Edgewood Arsenal in the US and at Porton Down in England.
One of the most cited reports on the safety of
tear gas is the Hymsworth Report, which followed an investigation
(33:33):
led by London doctor Sir Harold Hymsworth. This followed the
Battle of the bog Side, which took place during the
Troubles in Northern Ireland in nine During this incident, the
Royal Ulster Constabulary fired more than one thousand canisters of
tear gas and other gas weapons into a densely populated
Catholic neighborhood over the span of thirty six hours. Residents
(33:55):
fought back by throwing things like stones and Molotov cocktails. Yeah,
they also threw back the tear gas when they were
able to. After all this, a lot of people reported
things like vomiting and diarrhea and other physical effects, some
of them long lasting. But Hym'sworth really dismissed this testimony.
He relied mostly on hospital records, and he didn't really
(34:18):
take into account that most people would not fight their
way through tear gas to get to a hospital for
something like diarrhea or vomiting. He also didn't really factor
in the fact that the nearest hospital staff were primarily
Unionists while the neighborhood's residents were primarily nationalists. They were
on the opposite side of the troubles. That seems like
such a stupid thing to leave out of a data set.
(34:43):
It's really frost um. No, I don't know nobody came
in well, because they'd probably be arrested, among other things. Right, Yeah,
there's so many reasons not to go to the hospital
while your neighborhood is being like assaulted with tear gas.
In addition to these shortcomings in this research and the
lack of research into how tear gas affects people who
are exposed to it over a prolonged period, there is
(35:06):
so much footage from the last few years showing tear
gas being used incorrectly. This includes firing tear gas projectiles
directly at people, using large amounts of tear gas in
a small space, and firing tear gas at people who
do not have a path to escape from it. Yeah. Literally,
just this morning before coming in here, I saw video
(35:27):
from last night from like a bunch of officers in
protective gear restraining a protester in the cloud of tear gas. Uh.
In addition to all of those things not being researched
a lot, there's also just not a lot of research
into the environmental effects of all of these things, especially
when they're being used over a prolonged amount of time,
(35:48):
Like it's not a gas that just vanishes away, even
if it were. I mean, there's a long term cumulative
effect of using a lot of it, Like it's a
it's a powder or a liquid that's landing on surfaces
and washing into the you know, the storm drain system,
Like all of that is just not a lot of
research into the effect of any of that. To circle
back around though, to Freeze and the Chemical Warfare Service today,
(36:11):
that service is the Chemical Core. It is charged with
protection from weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, and
radiological and nuclear threats. And in spite of all of
his pr work, Freeze was really not successful in shifting
the general global opinion on chemical weapons. Chemical weapons in
(36:31):
warfare are still banned. They're still regarded as uncivilized or barbaric.
They're associated with terrorism. Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, production, stockpiling,
and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction has
a hundred and sixty five signatories. So far, it's been
ratified by sixty five states, which was the number needed
(36:52):
for it to become binding. The agents that are used
in tear gas are not included in its list of
prohibited toxic chemicals and their precursors though another nice uplifting topic.
I know, I know, I keep I keep doing it.
I'm sorry. I know a lot of people. There are
a lot of people that have been like, I always
(37:12):
want to learn from your podcast. Whatever you want to
talk about is fine with me. And then we also
hear from people who are like, I listened to your
podcast for fun. So like, if you listen to our
podcast for fun and you have been really brought down
by my choice of topics lately, Uh, I'm sorry, I don't.
I I feel like some of the stuff we've talked
about is really important. But I also totally understand when
(37:33):
your pleasure listening takes a turn into the more serious.
You know, Here's what I keep reminding myself when I'm like, wow,
we talked about a lot of heavy stuff lately, because
it is important. Listen Octobers on the horizon, people, and
I promise there's tons of sons coming. Yeah. Um, some
(37:54):
of the podcast I listened to for fun have understandably
like I mean, so many shows are like they have
been talking more about things that are related to the
pandemic for the protests, um, and I know that, like
with if it's my fun pleasure listening, sometimes I will
just like leave that one for a little bit and
come back to it later. Which we are not going
to be offended if folks do that, not even a little. Nope, UM,
(38:21):
do do what you do. I mean, I have mentioned
before I feel like I have so many advantages and
privileges in this moment that we are in, and it
is still incredibly hard for me to concentrate and get
through my day. So whatever people need to do to
keep themselves going in the midst of all that, I
don't judge you for it. I have listener mail. It
(38:43):
is from Kate, and Kate has written us about um,
something that a lot of people have written to us
about because I made a mistake, and I'm sorry, Kate says, Hi,
Tracy and Holly, I'm sure by now you're aware that
you made the classic Idaho, Ohio, Iowa mix up in
your Coincal pro Part two episode. Senator Frank Church, who
(39:04):
led the Church Committee investigating abuses by the intelligence community,
was a senator from the great state of Idaho, not Ohio.
I apologize if you have received more spirited responses informing
you of the classic mix up us. Idahoans are very
proud of our history and Frank Church in particular. During
Senator Church's long tenure in the Senate, he was a
(39:25):
vocal advocate for preserving America's wilderness. They played a pivotal
role in creating several protected wilderness areas across America, and
Idaho in particular, helped lobby for and established the Hell's
Canyon National Recreation Area, a canyon deeper than the Grand
Canyon and straddling the Idaho Oregon border. He also helped
establish the Saw Tooth Wilderness and National Recreation Areas, a
(39:49):
sharp and jagged topped mountainous area located close to Sun Valley,
Idaho's world famous ski resort. Finally, one of his biggest
projects was establishing the River of No Return Wilderness Area.
It was later renamed the Frank Church River of No
Return Wilderness Area in his honor. The area is the
largest wilderness area in the continental US, spanning two point
(40:10):
three six seven million acres in east central Idaho. Growing
up in Idaho, I was so blessed to have the
ability to explore all the public, state and federal land
open and available to me. I went to summer camps
in the saw Tooth whitewater rafting in the Frank Church
Wilderness area, and stayed very far away from the edge
of the cliffs in Hell's Canyon. It wasn't until I
was older that I realized how incredibly lucky I was,
(40:32):
and that many other states and their citizens didn't have
this kind of access to the great outdoors because the
lands are private and visitors are prohibited in many other states.
Idaho was special and unique, at least we think so.
Idaho is so lucky to have advocates like Senator Church,
who fought to keep public lands public for the enjoyment
of all. Idahoan's admiration for this may likely explain any
(40:53):
strongly pointed corrections you may have received. I'm sorry on
behalf of my fellow citizens. They are just as passionate
and uncontrolled. Um Kate has got on to send some
classic I Hadahoe pronunciation mix ups. I'm just gonna glass
over there because there's because I feel like if we
read them now, then three years from now, when I
have forgotten this exchange ever even happened, and we do
(41:16):
it wrong, uh, people will like be like, didn't you
read a thing about that before. It's tough so o.
Kate says, thanks for all the fun, sad, thoughtful, and
interesting podcasts you produced. They've brought me so much joy
and learning over the years. Feel free to do an
Idaho inspired podcast anytime in your future. Sincerely, Kate, thank
(41:36):
you so much for this note. Kate. We did get
um lots of notes about this, thankfully, most of them
have not been spirited or unkind. I did just mess
up the word in my head. I guess, I don't know.
I I messed it up in the outline. It wasn't
(41:57):
even a case where um it was right in the outline,
and it just came about out of our mouths wrong,
which also happens on just a continual basis. Um So anyway,
I am sorry. I messed that up. For what it's
words like. Uh. We discussed this, Tracy and I had
this come up in a completely different way on a
like a very casual chat call we were on a
(42:19):
few days ago, where they're just words. People's brains flip.
I will say April when I'm in August almost every
single time. Yeah, that's like the two a months just
flip for me. And sometimes this causes very startled and
panicked faces in meetings, but it's just because I never
my brain is really struggles with stuff like that, So
(42:39):
there are always instances of that for everybody. I always
try to just cut people slack because I know everyone's
brain has a weird little pecadillo that sometimes does stuffing
like that. I also cut people slack on like the
local pronunciations of things, because like, oh yeah, but like
the way those pronunciations work is they sort of they
(43:00):
signal to everybody whether you're from around here or not.
And if somebody's not from around here, I just let
it go. If somebody has just moved to around here,
I might very delicately let them know the right way
to say it so that they're not embarrassed in the future. Well,
and then there's a third category for me, which is that, um,
(43:21):
particularly in Atlanta, right, we have a street named after
an explorer, which in Atlanta we call constantly on and
when visitors come and they say it sounds so much
prettier that I don't want to correct them. Yeah yeah, um.
Recently I was listening to one of my favorite other podcasts.
(43:44):
I'm not going to say which podcast because I don't
want anybody to let go give them a hard time.
But they said the name of a Massachusetts town as
it is spelled, which is haver Hill. But the way
that Massachusetts town is pronounced is harl And when I
heard them say it, I was like, oh no, their
Twitter mentions, Uh, I think I would even want to
(44:07):
look their Twitter mentions. We're not too bad so anyway,
I only know that because I live here. Anyway, Thank
you again, Kate. I am sorry for just like my
total mess up in that particular thing. Um. Oh, what
other note I just wanted to note because I feel
like we've talked about our website a few times, but
(44:27):
one thing we have not specifically said is we don't
get any type of notification about comments that are left
on the website. So if you leave us a comment
on the website, there is a good chance we will
not see any timely manner we might never see it. Um.
Email is a much better way to uh to get
(44:47):
in touch with us, and our email address is History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. If you're going to
email us and say, why don't you just turn the
comments off, it's not in our power to do it. Unfortunately,
We did Ask So History podcast at i heeart radio
dot com. We're also all over social media at miss
in History, and that's where you'll find our Facebook and
Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram. And you can subscribe to
(45:09):
our show on Apple podcast and the I heart radio app,
but anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I was
feeling like the episodes I had picked for the podcast,
(00:21):
not all of them, but a lot of them, we're
trending towards the heavier side. I went on a hunt
to try to find something that would be more fun.
And I really felt like I had seen something recently
at j Store Daily that had been that magical blend
of just like really interesting and really fun sounding, and
I went over there to look for it, and that
(00:42):
is where everything went awry, because what I clicked on
instead was an article about the use of tear gas
against the Two Bonus Army. Um. We are approaching the
end of July as we record this, and tear gas
has been in use and in the news a whole
whole lot. So that is not a fun topic. But
(01:06):
that is what wound up completely commandeering my attention. I
have been conscious that we have been doing a lot
of dark things, so I keep trying to pick light things,
and then when you were like I'm doing so, they
light and like the next day you were like tear
gases like welp, yeah, and you're you're one that we're
(01:26):
going to be recording next in this session. It's also
not one of the happier topics. We uh, we just
went down a path this week. It's a mix. It's
a mix of cookie and serious. There's for sure some
cookiness in your one. But here we are on tear gas.
So tear gases or lacrymator agents are named for the
(01:46):
lachrymal glands which secrete tears, but tears are really just
one small part of it. Exposure to most tear gases
affects the mucous membranes and the respiratory system, and it
also activates one of two pain receptors in the body.
In addition to causing the eyes to tear up, tear
gas can cause burning of the skin, eyes, mouth, and nose.
(02:09):
I think sometimes people don't realize that when they just
see it reported on the news. It also causes blurred vision,
drooling and difficulties swallowing, wheezing, shortness of breath, choking, and
chest tightness, rashes, as well as nausea and vomiting. Tear
Gas exposure is also associated with miscarriages, and in some
(02:31):
cases it can be lethal, especially in babies, elders, and
people with conditions like asthma. The devices that are used
to deploy tear gas can also cause injuries and deaths
if they or their pieces hit someone. Yeah, even when
that does not happen, it's it's like it's immediately incapacitating.
(02:52):
It's it's not just something that like, oh, your eyes
are tearing up and maybe you want to move to
fresh air. I'm uncomfortable, I should walk away. It's like
you're downed right, right. So all all of these substances
are grouped together and they're called tear gas. They're not
really gases. One of the ones that's most commonly used
today is CS or two chlorobenziladine mon nitral and it
(03:17):
is solid at room temperature. There's also CN or chloroacetophenone,
and that's also known as mace. That's a crystalline substance
that is propelled as a liquid or as a very
fine powder. Pepper spray or only a resin capsicum is
an oily resin that's extracted from hot peppers. To be clear,
(03:37):
it is not food. It's usually propelled as a pressurized liquid,
and then there are other ones as well, including CR
or diamond socks, a zeppine, and also refined versions of
CS known as CS two or C X. There are
also various canisters and grenades and other devices that disperse
these substances not as gases but as aris lies, liquids,
(04:00):
or powders, and those liquids and powders can remain on
the skin, clothing, and surfaces long after they have dispersed
from the air. Tear gases that are used for things
like riot control and crowd suppression today trace back to
chemical warfare in World War One, which is something that
was controversial from the beginning. Societies have made various efforts
(04:22):
to establish rules for warfare throughout history. In terms of
what we're talking about today. In the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, a series of multinational conventions led to
treaties that outlined various rules of war. One of the
first of these was in St. Petersburg, Russia, in eighteen
sixty eight, resulting in a declaration that started with the
(04:43):
idea quote that the progress of civilization should have the
effect of alleviating as much as possible the calamities of war.
More specifically, a declaration that was issued during the Hague
Convention of eight nodded back to the sentiment that Holly
just read from the Declaration of St. Petersburg. From there,
(05:04):
this new declaration required signatories to quote agree to abstain
from the use of projectiles the object of which is
the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases. Then, on October
eighteenth of nineteen oh seven, another Hague Convention stated that
it was forbidden to quote employ poison or poisoned weapons.
(05:26):
These directives grew out of a fear of chemical warfare
that had grown in tandem with the Industrial Revolution, and
an overall really long lasting taboo against poison and other
chemical weapons as basically unfair and uncivilized. These treaties didn't
stop nations from researching chemicals that could be used as
(05:47):
some kind of weapon, though France in particular had signed
the Hague declarations but also developed tear gases for use
in riot control. Then in World War One, France used
tear gas grenades to try to drive German troops out
of the trenches At the Battle of Frontiers In nineteen fourteen,
Germany which was also a signatory to these treaties, also
(06:09):
tried something similar against Allied troops that October. Neither of
these efforts was particularly effective, though, with the targeted troops
not even realizing that they were under attack, so some
sources do not count these as the first use of
chemical warfare in World War One. So these another early
efforts sort of danced around the Hague Convention. The gases
(06:30):
in question were meant to temporarily incapacitate people, not to
permanently injure or kill them. On the other hand, the
whole point of that temporary incapacitation was to leave the
targets vulnerable to attacks with more conventional weapons. In April
of nineteen fifteen, at the Second Battle of Ipra, Germany
moved in a different direction based on a strategy by
(06:52):
chemist Fritz Haber. We just rereleased our episode on Harbor
from the archive as a Saturday classic. Uh. This att
ac used to gas that was definitely deadly, but without
projectiles involved, so it was technically still within the limits
of at least the first Haig Convention. German troops waited
until the wind was blowing in the right direction and
(07:13):
then released nearly two hundred tons of chlorine gas to
be blown into Allied trenches. More than one thousand Algerian,
Moroccan and French soldiers were killed. Thousands more were wounded.
Both sides were just totally unprepared for this gas attack.
The Allied troops had no gas masks, no other defenses prepared.
(07:35):
I mean, why would they really? There had been some
knowledge that something was going on, but still like not
not something of this scale. The German troops also, we're
not ready to take advantage of how effective this attack
had been. So while the Allied death toll was high,
they didn't actually lose a lot of ground after this attack.
The international community reacted to this use of gas without rage.
(07:59):
The attack combined with germany sinking of the passenger ship
RMS Lusitania and its invasions of Belgium in Luxembourg, which
had been neutral, to solidify the idea that Germany's approach
to the war was particularly brutal. In spite of that
outrage and this overall perception that Germany's strategy was particularly
(08:20):
nefarious in this war, Britain and France each started working
on chemical weapons of their own, and in tandem, the
warring nations in Europe developed new poison gas weapons, new
gas masks and other protective strategies, new methods for deploying
chemical weapons so that the targets would not be able
to don that protective gear, and new treatment protocols for
(08:43):
gas exposure. In spite of early efforts to sidestep the
Hague Conventions with some of these weapons, but pretty soon
the armies are just totally ignoring it. They were developing
projectiles for deploying gas, specifically deploying deadly gas and eating
artillery shells, mortars and livins projectors which remotely launched drums
(09:06):
of gas. In addition to the injuries and deaths that
came from gas exposure, the use of chemical warfare in
World War One was demoralizing and also disorienting. Troops had
to remain in a perpetual state of fear and readiness.
Gas masks were uncomfortable, and they were not always effective,
and they blocked the wearer's peripheral vision. Sometimes the lenses
(09:30):
fogged over as well. The gases themselves were also terrifying
to experience as well as just to witness. By the
end of the war, attacks with chlorine fosterene and mustard
gases had caused at least ninety thousand deaths and more
than a million casualties. That's a small number compared to
the estimated twenty million civilian and military deaths in the
(09:53):
war total, but the deaths from the gas attacks were
particularly horrifying. The United S eights was really a latecomer
to all of this. Although the US did start doing
some chemical warfare research before becoming directly involved in the war,
that was really a cobbled together effort. Much of the
nation's expertise with gas came from the Department of Mines,
(10:15):
which had experience dealing with poison gases. A Chemical Service
section was also established under the U S Corps of Engineers,
and a gas service section was established with the American
Expeditionary Forces. But in general, when American troops arrived in Europe,
they just had very little knowledge or experience with chemical weapons.
(10:35):
They had to rely on the other allies for information, training,
and protective equipment. It's not really clear how much of
this lack of preparedness stemmed from this overall taboo against
chemical weapons, and how much of it was because news
out of Europe was being censored before arriving in the US,
so American authorities might not have realized just how much
(10:57):
chemical warfare was really going on. In June of nine
teen eighteen, the Chemical Service Section became the Chemical Warfare Service,
and the Chemical Warfare Service played a huge role in
the development of tear gas for use in peacetime. We're
going to talk about that more after a sponsor break.
(11:20):
After the end of World War One, the US started
scaling back its military to peacetime levels, as of course
other nations did as well, and at first the plan
was to disband the Chemical Warfare Service entirely. There was
a perception, or maybe kind of a hope, that chemical
warfare had been developed for this specific war, and that
(11:41):
it was going to disappear now that the war was over,
and that would make the CWS unnecessary. This general perception
even went so far as to include soldiers abandoning or
kind of fake losing their gas masks rather than turning
them in as they were released from service. This wasn't
just a matter of wishful thinking. Even though both the
(12:02):
Allied and Central Powers had used chemical weapons in the war,
their use was still really taboo, and much of the world,
and then these taboos were bolstered by firsthand accounts from
veterans about what the gas attacks during the war were like.
Not everyone agreed with the idea that chemical warfare was
inhumane or uncivilized, though. One supporter of chemical warfare was
(12:25):
General Amos Freeze of the Chemical Warfare Service. He had
served with the Gas Service Section during the war, and
he had been awarded the French Legion of Honor, the
British Companion of St. Michael and Saint George, and the
American Distinguished Service Medal. Freeze thought that chemical weapons could
be more humane than conventional weapons, and he believed that
the United States would be unprepared again if it didn't
(12:49):
continue to research and develop them. Of course, he also
wanted to protect the service that he was working for.
He thought that if he could convince the public that
chemical weapons had peacetime uses and that they were safe
and effective for those uses, that then it would destigmatize
their use in war. He hoped that with that stigma removed,
(13:10):
the public would allow and even encourage chemical warfare. That
would mean that the Chemical Warfare Service would not just
survive the post war downsizing of the military, it would
also allow for chemical weapons and the CWS to become
a really central part of American military strategy. He imagined
(13:31):
a military in which every unit had its own dedicated
chemical squad, with the most up to date advanced chemical weapons,
as well as tactics and protective equipment all at their disposal.
So Freeze successfully lobbied for the military to keep the CWUS.
The CWS started a trade publication called Chemical Warfare, which
(13:53):
published articles arguing that chemical weapons were less traumatic to
the body and less lethal than conventional weapons. But of
course this all glossed over the fact that many of
the chemical weapons that had been developed for use in
World War One were formulated specifically to kill people. Frees
rallied support from the American Chemical Society, professional chemistry journals,
(14:14):
and various chemistry programs. He and his supporters also pushed
the idea that all war was terrible, but that a
lot of the resistance to chemical warfare specifically was just
that people were not used to it yet the way
that they were used to things like guns, artillery, and bombs.
The CWS also looked for other uses for the gases
that had been developed for the war, like home security
(14:37):
systems that released to toxic gas when they were activated,
or the use of chemical weapons to fight agricultural pests.
After someone noticed that workers at a chlorine gas plant
had fewer cases of the nineteen eighteen pandemic flew, they
explored whether chlorine gas could prevent illness, especially lung infections.
This involved intentionally exposing people to low dose is of
(15:00):
chlorine gas. One of the test cases was President Calvin Coolidge,
who underwent three consecutive treatments from May twenty to twenty
second four. The President said that his cold got better
as a result, although it should be noted that cold
typically get better on their own. None of these proposed
(15:20):
peacetime uses for chemical weapons really took off. What did
take off, though, was tear gas. As we've talked about
in several other episodes of the show. The US and
other places went through major social and economic upheaval after
World War One. Strikes another labor disputes were widespread, which
we've covered on several previous episodes. So was mob violence,
(15:43):
especially targeted against black people and their communities, which we
have also talked about in several episodes, including our episode
on Red Summer. Starting in early nineteen nineteen Freeze and
the Chemical Warfare Service started framing tear gas as the
ideals ution for these types of unrest. However, the Department
(16:03):
of War, which had been planning to dismantle the CWS,
was not in favor of this. In February of nineteen nineteen,
the War Department ordered the CWS not to provide any
type of chemical weapon, including tear gas, to any civilian
or military law enforcement personnel. But at the same time,
(16:24):
people and departments were petitioning the Department of War to
be allowed to use tear gas on civilians. This included
in October nineteen nineteen, request to use chemical devices on
striking steel workers in Gary, Indiana, and various requests from
law enforcement who wanted to use it or have it
on hand for so called race riots. We've talked about
(16:45):
why that phrase is problematic many times before. Even as
the Department of War maintained that it would not allow
chemical weapons to be used against residents of the United States,
the Chemical Warfare Service was designing and testing devices to
use chemical agents for crowd control. In the National Defense Act,
which was also known as the Second Army Reorganization Bill,
(17:08):
established a new organizational structure for the U. S. Army,
and in addition to other things, this act formalized the
Chemical Warfare Service as part of the Army. CWS Director
William L. Siebert was reassigned and he retired shortly after that.
This is something that a lot of people interpreted as
a punishment for the CWS having pushed back so hard
(17:29):
against the Department of War's efforts to dismantle it. Taking
his place was General Amos Freeze. To be clear, the
CWS was still doing military work, including advocating for training,
supplies and a gas company for each overseas garrison. Freeze
also continued to advocate for chemical warfare to be a
standard part of every unit, but there was still a
(17:52):
lot of focus on peacetime use of chemical weapons, as
we said earlier, to try to sway public opinion on
chemical weapons in general, and to protect the CWS from
being declared irrelevant in the face of that ongoing stigma
and the potential for international treaties banning their use. This
was in spite of the fact that the Department of
War still wouldn't approve the use of chemical weapons on civilians.
(18:16):
That last part changed in nine one after Warren G.
Harding was sworn in as President of the US He
appointed John W. Weeks as Secretary of War. John J.
Pershing became Chief of Staff that July, and Pershing was
the person who had appointed Freeze to the Gas Service.
Back during the war, Freeze started advocating for changes to
(18:37):
how the Department of War was approaching chemical warfare, specifically
with civilians, and as part of this, Freeze arranged for
a demonstration outside of Philadelphia, and which about two hundred
police officers tried and failed to make their way through
a cloud of tear gas. In August of nine one,
Freeze conducted another demonstration, this time on a group of
(18:59):
Girl Real Scouts from nearby Camp Bradley, one of whom
was his daughter Elizabeth. The scouts took a tour of
Edgewood Arsenal, during which they were exposed to tear gas.
This visit was written up in The Washington Post in
an article that read quote, the girls found that the
name tear gas was no misnomer, as all cried copiously
for a few seconds when the gas was released. They
(19:22):
greatly enjoyed the trip and put it down as one
of the Red Letter events of the camp. There's a
lot that's not clear about this whole outing, but the
general sense seems to be that tear gas was both
effective and that it was safe enough to use on
girl scouts. This is the weirdest PR stunt. There's so
much in that whole thing. You know. I tweeted about him.
(19:46):
People were like that, excuse me, what what? What? What
were they even thinking? And I was like they were
thinking that they were trying to show the public that, like, yeah,
it's totally okay to to tear gas little girls. Anyway,
the War Department lifted its prohibition on the use of
chemical weapons against civilians, but only for agents like tear
(20:06):
gases that were not considered poisonous in August of nine one.
This was in response to a request from the governor
of West Virginia for help restoring order during an ongoing
series of labor disputes in its mining industry. These series
of disputes or something that we have covered previously in
our episode on the Battle of Blair Mountain. During the
(20:27):
first week of September nineteen twenty one, the Chemical Warfare
Service deployed soldiers and prepared an assortment of c N
gas devices from Edgewood Arsenal, including a thousand grenades, three
fifty mortar shells, and a hundred nine one aerial drop bombs.
By this point, tear gas was also available from private manufacturers.
(20:48):
The first of these was called Chemical Protection and was
established in ninety one. So while tear gas was used
against the miners in the Battle of Blair Mountain, it
wasn't by these federal trueops. It was by a force
rallied by mine operators and the local sheriff. The miners
mostly surrendered after the federal troops arrived, before the weapons
(21:09):
from Edgewoard Arsenal were used. Freeze did take the opportunity
to test some of their tear gas weapons after this,
and the CWS used the results of those tests to
publish Provisional Instructions for the Control of Mobs by Chemical Warfare,
which came out in the Department of War reinstated that
prohibition on tear gas against civilians. Not long after this,
(21:32):
Freeze and the CWS and various trade publications kept on
with their pr efforts to try to sway opinions about
tear gas. This included in November article in Gas Age Record,
which described Freeze as quote firmly convinced that as soon
as officers of the law and colonial administrators have familiarized
(21:53):
themselves with gas as a means of maintaining order and power,
there will be such a diminution of violent social disorders
and savage uprisings to amount to their disappearance. H A
lot of the language in these pr efforts was racist.
Like a lot of it was about maintaining the power
(22:13):
of colonial authorities over the people who had been colonized,
with the colonized people being like savage barbarians. It was gross.
The Chemical Warfare Service also cooperated with private businesses, giving
chemical manufacturers samples of gases the CWS had developed, and
allowing these manufacturers to test their products at Edgewood Arsenal.
(22:34):
The CWS also lobbied against international treaties that jeopardized its work,
including the Treaty relating to the Use of Submarines and
Noxious Gases, which was signed by five nations but did
not become binding because France didn't ratify it. Yeah. I
think we've mentioned on the show before that with treatise
there's usually this two step process where like nations signed
(22:56):
the treaty, but then their individual governments have to ratify
the treaty UH and so this had been signed but
not ratified. Although that nineteen two treaty was worded in
a way that seemed to prohibit all chemical weapons, than
public opinion continued to be on the side of an
outright ban on all chemical weapons. Freeze and the CWS
(23:17):
kept on making a case that tear gas and other
so called non toxic gases were an exception. In August
of ninety two, the War Department again lifted the prohibition
on the use of tear gas by federal troops and
civil disturbances. By this point, tear gas was also becoming
way more common in civilian law enforcement as well. As
(23:37):
we mentioned earlier, the first private tear gas manufacturer had
started operations in nine By nineteen twenty three police were
equipped with tear gas and more than six hundred cities
around the United States. The Chemical Warfare Services ongoing efforts
to frame chemical weapons as humane also had another totally
different outcome. During these years, the US saw its first
(24:01):
execution by gas chamber on February eighth, n In ninety five,
the Geneva Gas Protocol prohibited the use of chemical and
biological weapons in war. The US signed the protocol, but
didn't actually ratify it until nineteen seventy five. It wasn't
long before nations outside of the U S. We're also
(24:22):
using tear gases to disperse mobs and suppress descent. We'll
talk more about that after a sponsor break. Word of
American efforts with tear gas quickly spread to other parts
of the world. I mean, other parts of the world
had also been developing tear gasses, but the U S
(24:44):
effort on this was was large. In nineteen twenty, British
authorities in India started lobbying to be allowed to use
tear gas against the Indian independence movement. They cited the
Jelly and Wallabag massacre, also known as the Ritzer massac or,
which took place on April thirteenth, nineteen nineteen. At least
(25:04):
three hundred seventy nine unarmed demonstrators were killed and more
than a thousand were injured after forces under Brigadier General
Reginald Dire opened fire on them. Advocates for tear gas
use in India framed this as a tragedy that might
not have happened if British colonial forces had less lethal
(25:25):
weapons available to them as an option. The India Office,
on the other hand, insisted that since gas could not
be used in war, it could not be used in
peace either. Colonial authorities continued to request permission to use
tear gas, and the India Office continued to refuse into
the early nineteen thirties, at which point it allowed the
(25:46):
use of tear gas often called tear smoke because of
the ongoing associations with gas warfare in World War One.
That was only after announcements were made that it would
be used if the crowd didn't disperse. From there, the
use of tear gas started to spread to other British
territories as well. At this point. Palestine was under British
(26:07):
control under a mandate from the League of Nations. British
authorities there started requesting tear gas in ninety nine after
riots and massacres that were connected to disputes over control
of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Finally, the High Commissioner
of Palestine got permission to use tear gas to control riots,
but only when it seemed as though the only other
(26:28):
choice would be firearms. At first, this continued to be
the mindset as other countries adopted the use of tear gas,
that gas should only be used in circumstances where without
it the only choice would be lethal weapons. But over
time authorities began thinking of tear gas as the first response,
that it should be used to disperse crowds earlier rather
(26:51):
than later. To return to the US for a moment.
By the nineteen thirties, tear gas was part of the
arsenals of police departments all over the country. But one
of the earliest uses of tear gas by federal troops
domestically in peacetime was on July twenty, nineteen thirty two.
And that's the Bonus Army that I mentioned up at
(27:11):
the top of the episode. Congress had passed the World
War Adjusted Compensation Act in nineteen twenty four, and that
act would allow World War One veterans to be compensated
for wages that they had lost while serving in the war.
They were supposed to be paid a dollar per day
of state side service and a dollar in twenty five
cents per day overseas. People who were owed less than
(27:35):
fifty dollars were paid immediately, and then for everybody else
that payout was scheduled with interest in nineteen forty five. However,
the Great Depression meant that people needed their money a
lot sooner than that. The Bonus Army, also called the
Bonus Expeditionary Force, was a group of about twenty thousand veterans,
many with their wives and children, who went to Washington
(27:57):
to demand immediate payout. When a measure to do so
was defeated in the Senate, many of the Bonus Army
went home. Those who didn't held increasingly vocal protests over
the next few weeks, until federal troops dispersed them using
tanks and tear gas, burning down their encampment in the process.
Two of the demonstrators were killed, and a baby reportedly
(28:20):
died from tear gas exposure. This incident was a blow
to the reputation of then President Herbert Hoover, and it's
been cited as one of the reasons he lost the
election against Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the Chemical Weapons Service
and Edgewood Arsenal called this clearing of the demonstrators a
practical field test, something that showed the power of tear
(28:42):
gas to disperse even the most dedicated dissenters, with at
least in their view, minimal harm. Lake Erie Chemical even
used photos of the clearing of the Bonus Army as
part of its marketing materials. The popularity of tear gas
really spread from there, say else. Reps from American chemical
manufacturers visited places both domestically and internationally that we're experiencing
(29:06):
unrest to sell tear gas to private citizens, business owners,
and law enforcement. Various governments, businesses and organizations also started
stockpiling tear gas in case of future need. For example,
between nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty seven, one point
to five million dollars worth of tear and sickening gas
(29:27):
had been bought in the US in anticipation of labor strikes.
Of course, there were certainly times that tear gas was
used because of actual crime or violence that was happening,
but often it was really just focused on suppressing descent. Yeah.
Also that one point to five million dollars, that is
the nineteen thirties dollars that is not adjusted for modern currency.
(29:50):
Chemical warfare degency nearly the kind of use during World
War Two that it had during World War One, although
chemical weapons were used in death camps under the Nazi regime.
In terms of combat use, it just was not present
in the same way. But after the war, tear gas
continued to be a primary tool for suppressing protests, dispersing
(30:13):
strikers and the like. Over the years, it also shifted
again in how it was used. Back in the nineteen thirties,
tear gas had started out mainly perceived as a last
resort when the only other option might be firearms or
other more lethal weapons, and then, as we noted, it
became more of a first line of defense, used early
to disperse and demoralize a mob or other crowd, but
(30:37):
by the civil rights movement in the nineteen fifties and
sixties it was being used as a precursor to other violence.
For example, on Bloody Sunday during the Selma to Montgomery
March in five State troopers deployed forty canisters of tear gas,
twelve smoke canisters, and eight canisters of nausea gas, before
then beating the marchers with their night sticks and other weapons.
(31:01):
This included fracturing the skull of the late John Lewis.
The nineteen sixties also saw some of the first uses
of tear gas as more of an offensive weapon, including
the use of a national Guard helicopter to spray demonstrators
at Berkeley with tear gas in nineteen sixty nine. This,
of course, also allowed the gas to drift two adjacent
(31:21):
areas and affect people that had nothing to do with
the demonstration, including children at a nearby preschool and people
who were swimming in a university swimming pool. Obviously, this
is not a comprehensive list of every time tear gas
has ever been used, or every nuance and how it
has shifted like that's impossible in the scope of one podcast.
(31:43):
But in the book Tear Gas From the Battlefields of
World War One to the Streets of Today, it describes
the most recent shift in tear gas history as the
year twenty eleven, thanks to the combination of several things
happening simultaneously, including the Occupy movement in North America, uh
the Chilean student protests that started that year, the Egyptian
(32:04):
Revolution of twenty eleven, and the Arab Spring. All of
this included what was described as the weaponized use of
tear gas in Bahrain, which led to at least thirty
four gas related deaths and numerous injuries from people being
struck with the tear gas canister. Tear gas sales have
tripled since twenty eleven, with other high profile uses since
(32:26):
then being Turkeys occupied Gezi protests in the Umbrella movement
in Hong Kong, and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri after
police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown also in
and the ongoing protests against police brutality and racism in
the United States. In some parts of the world today,
(32:47):
people also described tear gas as an almost ever present
fact of life, including an occupied Palestine and parts of
Uganda and Nigeria. Proponents of tear gas generally maintained that
it is say when used correctly, and that it's less
deadly than other weapons, including firearms, but a lot of
research to back up as safety is spotty at best.
(33:10):
A lot of it was conducted by the military, and
the results of that research are classified. Some of this
research has also come from experiments that were done on
people without their consent, including experiments that were conducted at
Edgewood Arsenal in the US and at Porton Down in England.
One of the most cited reports on the safety of
tear gas is the Hymsworth Report, which followed an investigation
(33:33):
led by London doctor Sir Harold Hymsworth. This followed the
Battle of the bog Side, which took place during the
Troubles in Northern Ireland in nine During this incident, the
Royal Ulster Constabulary fired more than one thousand canisters of
tear gas and other gas weapons into a densely populated
Catholic neighborhood over the span of thirty six hours. Residents
(33:55):
fought back by throwing things like stones and Molotov cocktails. Yeah,
they also threw back the tear gas when they were
able to. After all this, a lot of people reported
things like vomiting and diarrhea and other physical effects, some
of them long lasting. But Hym'sworth really dismissed this testimony.
He relied mostly on hospital records, and he didn't really
(34:18):
take into account that most people would not fight their
way through tear gas to get to a hospital for
something like diarrhea or vomiting. He also didn't really factor
in the fact that the nearest hospital staff were primarily
Unionists while the neighborhood's residents were primarily nationalists. They were
on the opposite side of the troubles. That seems like
such a stupid thing to leave out of a data set.
(34:43):
It's really frost um. No, I don't know nobody came
in well, because they'd probably be arrested, among other things. Right, Yeah,
there's so many reasons not to go to the hospital
while your neighborhood is being like assaulted with tear gas.
In addition to these shortcomings in this research and the
lack of research into how tear gas affects people who
are exposed to it over a prolonged period, there is
(35:06):
so much footage from the last few years showing tear
gas being used incorrectly. This includes firing tear gas projectiles
directly at people, using large amounts of tear gas in
a small space, and firing tear gas at people who
do not have a path to escape from it. Yeah. Literally,
just this morning before coming in here, I saw video
(35:27):
from last night from like a bunch of officers in
protective gear restraining a protester in the cloud of tear gas. Uh.
In addition to all of those things not being researched
a lot, there's also just not a lot of research
into the environmental effects of all of these things, especially
when they're being used over a prolonged amount of time,
(35:48):
Like it's not a gas that just vanishes away, even
if it were. I mean, there's a long term cumulative
effect of using a lot of it, Like it's a
it's a powder or a liquid that's landing on surfaces
and washing into the you know, the storm drain system,
Like all of that is just not a lot of
research into the effect of any of that. To circle
back around though, to Freeze and the Chemical Warfare Service today,
(36:11):
that service is the Chemical Core. It is charged with
protection from weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, and
radiological and nuclear threats. And in spite of all of
his pr work, Freeze was really not successful in shifting
the general global opinion on chemical weapons. Chemical weapons in
(36:31):
warfare are still banned. They're still regarded as uncivilized or barbaric.
They're associated with terrorism. Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, production, stockpiling,
and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction has
a hundred and sixty five signatories. So far, it's been
ratified by sixty five states, which was the number needed
(36:52):
for it to become binding. The agents that are used
in tear gas are not included in its list of
prohibited toxic chemicals and their precursors though another nice uplifting topic.
I know, I know, I keep I keep doing it.
I'm sorry. I know a lot of people. There are
a lot of people that have been like, I always
(37:12):
want to learn from your podcast. Whatever you want to
talk about is fine with me. And then we also
hear from people who are like, I listened to your
podcast for fun. So like, if you listen to our
podcast for fun and you have been really brought down
by my choice of topics lately, Uh, I'm sorry, I don't.
I I feel like some of the stuff we've talked
about is really important. But I also totally understand when
(37:33):
your pleasure listening takes a turn into the more serious.
You know, Here's what I keep reminding myself when I'm like, wow,
we talked about a lot of heavy stuff lately, because
it is important. Listen Octobers on the horizon, people, and
I promise there's tons of sons coming. Yeah. Um, some
(37:54):
of the podcast I listened to for fun have understandably
like I mean, so many shows are like they have
been talking more about things that are related to the
pandemic for the protests, um, and I know that, like
with if it's my fun pleasure listening, sometimes I will
just like leave that one for a little bit and
come back to it later. Which we are not going
to be offended if folks do that, not even a little. Nope, UM,
(38:21):
do do what you do. I mean, I have mentioned
before I feel like I have so many advantages and
privileges in this moment that we are in, and it
is still incredibly hard for me to concentrate and get
through my day. So whatever people need to do to
keep themselves going in the midst of all that, I
don't judge you for it. I have listener mail. It
(38:43):
is from Kate, and Kate has written us about um,
something that a lot of people have written to us
about because I made a mistake, and I'm sorry, Kate says, Hi,
Tracy and Holly, I'm sure by now you're aware that
you made the classic Idaho, Ohio, Iowa mix up in
your Coincal pro Part two episode. Senator Frank Church, who
(39:04):
led the Church Committee investigating abuses by the intelligence community,
was a senator from the great state of Idaho, not Ohio.
I apologize if you have received more spirited responses informing
you of the classic mix up us. Idahoans are very
proud of our history and Frank Church in particular. During
Senator Church's long tenure in the Senate, he was a
(39:25):
vocal advocate for preserving America's wilderness. They played a pivotal
role in creating several protected wilderness areas across America, and
Idaho in particular, helped lobby for and established the Hell's
Canyon National Recreation Area, a canyon deeper than the Grand
Canyon and straddling the Idaho Oregon border. He also helped
establish the Saw Tooth Wilderness and National Recreation Areas, a
(39:49):
sharp and jagged topped mountainous area located close to Sun Valley,
Idaho's world famous ski resort. Finally, one of his biggest
projects was establishing the River of No Return Wilderness Area.
It was later renamed the Frank Church River of No
Return Wilderness Area in his honor. The area is the
largest wilderness area in the continental US, spanning two point
(40:10):
three six seven million acres in east central Idaho. Growing
up in Idaho, I was so blessed to have the
ability to explore all the public, state and federal land
open and available to me. I went to summer camps
in the saw Tooth whitewater rafting in the Frank Church
Wilderness area, and stayed very far away from the edge
of the cliffs in Hell's Canyon. It wasn't until I
was older that I realized how incredibly lucky I was,
(40:32):
and that many other states and their citizens didn't have
this kind of access to the great outdoors because the
lands are private and visitors are prohibited in many other states.
Idaho was special and unique, at least we think so.
Idaho is so lucky to have advocates like Senator Church,
who fought to keep public lands public for the enjoyment
of all. Idahoan's admiration for this may likely explain any
(40:53):
strongly pointed corrections you may have received. I'm sorry on
behalf of my fellow citizens. They are just as passionate
and uncontrolled. Um Kate has got on to send some
classic I Hadahoe pronunciation mix ups. I'm just gonna glass
over there because there's because I feel like if we
read them now, then three years from now, when I
have forgotten this exchange ever even happened, and we do
(41:16):
it wrong, uh, people will like be like, didn't you
read a thing about that before. It's tough so o.
Kate says, thanks for all the fun, sad, thoughtful, and
interesting podcasts you produced. They've brought me so much joy
and learning over the years. Feel free to do an
Idaho inspired podcast anytime in your future. Sincerely, Kate, thank
(41:36):
you so much for this note. Kate. We did get
um lots of notes about this, thankfully, most of them
have not been spirited or unkind. I did just mess
up the word in my head. I guess, I don't know.
I I messed it up in the outline. It wasn't
(41:57):
even a case where um it was right in the outline,
and it just came about out of our mouths wrong,
which also happens on just a continual basis. Um So anyway,
I am sorry. I messed that up. For what it's
words like. Uh. We discussed this, Tracy and I had
this come up in a completely different way on a
like a very casual chat call we were on a
(42:19):
few days ago, where they're just words. People's brains flip.
I will say April when I'm in August almost every
single time. Yeah, that's like the two a months just
flip for me. And sometimes this causes very startled and
panicked faces in meetings, but it's just because I never
my brain is really struggles with stuff like that, So
(42:39):
there are always instances of that for everybody. I always
try to just cut people slack because I know everyone's
brain has a weird little pecadillo that sometimes does stuffing
like that. I also cut people slack on like the
local pronunciations of things, because like, oh yeah, but like
the way those pronunciations work is they sort of they
(43:00):
signal to everybody whether you're from around here or not.
And if somebody's not from around here, I just let
it go. If somebody has just moved to around here,
I might very delicately let them know the right way
to say it so that they're not embarrassed in the future. Well,
and then there's a third category for me, which is that, um,
(43:21):
particularly in Atlanta, right, we have a street named after
an explorer, which in Atlanta we call constantly on and
when visitors come and they say it sounds so much
prettier that I don't want to correct them. Yeah yeah, um.
Recently I was listening to one of my favorite other podcasts.
(43:44):
I'm not going to say which podcast because I don't
want anybody to let go give them a hard time.
But they said the name of a Massachusetts town as
it is spelled, which is haver Hill. But the way
that Massachusetts town is pronounced is harl And when I
heard them say it, I was like, oh no, their
Twitter mentions, Uh, I think I would even want to
(44:07):
look their Twitter mentions. We're not too bad so anyway,
I only know that because I live here. Anyway, Thank
you again, Kate. I am sorry for just like my
total mess up in that particular thing. Um. Oh, what
other note I just wanted to note because I feel
like we've talked about our website a few times, but
(44:27):
one thing we have not specifically said is we don't
get any type of notification about comments that are left
on the website. So if you leave us a comment
on the website, there is a good chance we will
not see any timely manner we might never see it. Um.
Email is a much better way to uh to get
(44:47):
in touch with us, and our email address is History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. If you're going to
email us and say, why don't you just turn the
comments off, it's not in our power to do it. Unfortunately,
We did Ask So History podcast at i heeart radio
dot com. We're also all over social media at miss
in History, and that's where you'll find our Facebook and
Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram. And you can subscribe to
(45:09):
our show on Apple podcast and the I heart radio app,
but anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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