WWII history

Hitler and Chemical Weapons

German chemist Gerhard Schrader — sometimes called “father of the nerve agents” — is believed to have created the first organophosphorus nerve agents in 1936. Schrader’s discovery came inadvertently while suffering loss of vision and shortness of breath while developing pesticides, as Jonathan Tucker — a former biological weapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq — details in his book “War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda.”

The compound, later called tabun, was reported to the German military authorities given its chemical weapon significance, John Hart, the head of the Chemical and Biological Security Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told us via email.

The agents developed by Germany were tabun, soman and sarin, Hart said, though they were never used against other states during World War II in state-to-state armed conflict.

Germany did, however, stockpile chemical munitions (mainly sulphur mustard and tabun — as well as sarin and soman), Hart said.