The genie and the bottle: Reflections on the fate of the Geneva protocol in the United States, 1918-1928

Abstract

For Americans serving in the First World War, the advent of chemical weapons made a deep impression. For chemists and soldiers, the experience of meeting-and then making-variants of "poison gas" bred both fear and deter- mination. The wartime creation and post-war struggles of the Chemical Warfare Service reveal the deep divisions these tensions caused, both during the war and through the 1920s, when the United States extensively debated, but failed to ratify, the Geneva Protocol. By the close of the 1920s, the popular optimism that greeted postwar science and invention was clouded by visions of science as a source of new and terrible weapons. In the case of chemical weapons, professional resolve to prepare for future wars competed with a desire to protect the ideals that science represented. In ways that now seem familiar, the profession of chemistry, the chemical industry and the military became powerful allies. This paper examines a subject neglected by historians, and considers how political and professional factors combined to frustrate and delay the early ratification of the Geneva Convention by the United States. As we shall see, our knowledge of these circumstances is far from complete, and will remain so until we have a deeper understanding of the history of America's complex relationship with this toxic legacy.