by Mark Albertson

Created on: March 25, 2007   Last Updated: September 19, 2011

On June 6, 1944, the greatest amphibious assault in the history of war took place at Normandy. It was the beginning of the long awaited second front in the West. The landings coincided with the massive Soviet summer offensive in the East. Over 2,500 men were killed on the beaches of France. In human terms, the loss of so many men in so short a time was appalling. In terms of history, the loss was modest in relation to the objectives achieved. For instance, in 1916 the British lost nearly 20,000 dead on the first day of the Battle of the Somme River. On March 29, 1461, the forces of the House of Lancaster were crushed by those of the House of York to the tune of 33,000 killed. In the 13th century, Genghis Khan slaughtered 100,000 Turks in a single day, a mind-boggling total when one realizes that the Khan had none of today's weapons of mass destruction at his disposal.

Yet in 1944, the Germans possessed the weapon that could not only have equalled or surpassed such horrendous harvests of humanity, but would have stopped the invasion in its tracks. That weapon was nerve gas. The Germans invented it, unknowingly had the monopoly, and in quantities necessary to decide the issue on that memorable sixth of June.

Chemical and biological warfare dates back many centuries, to when armies first threw dead and diseased bodies into the enemy's water supply. In 431 B.C., Athens and Sparta produced sulphur dioxide by burning a mixture of pitch and brimstone (tar and sulphur). Centuries passed and man even learned to tailor certain diseases to certain races. For instance during the French and Indian War, the British traded smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians for beads and trinkets. At the time, smallpox was a European disease to which the Indians had no immunity. The result was a decimation of the tribes.

Yet the popular conception of CBW begins with World War I. Like so many of man's endeavors, the Industrial Revolution had raised the level of sophistication and efficiency of CBW weaponry.

On April 22, 1915, the Germans attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. They massed 500 cylinders before the Allied lines near Ypres, Beligum. After a preliminary bombardment, they opened the spigots on the tanks. Like a biblical angel of death, an eerie green cloud hugged the ground, rolling inexorably across no-man's land, through crevices, ditches and bunkers. In the ensuing panic, over 5,000 French troops were killed.

The Germans had unleashed

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