The Poison Gas Cloud That Blew Back on Its Makers
At Ypres in 1915, German troops released chlorine gas for the first time in modern war, opening a four-mile gap in the Allied line — then hesitated, unsure what they'd unleashed. This is the story of the weapon that terrified even the men who fired it, and how a shifting wind turned invention into a trap.
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German forces released one hundred sixty-eight tons of chlorine gas from six thousand buried steel cylinders.
The yellow-green gas cloud moved at walking speed and clung to the ground to fill trenches.
Allied intelligence received warnings of the chemical threat one week before the April twenty-second attack.
German troops failed to exploit a four-mile gap in the Allied line due to gas persistence fears.
Canadian soldiers used urine-soaked cloths to neutralize the acidic chlorine gas during the initial assault.
The Ypres attack violated the Hague Conventions and triggered the rapid institutionalization of chemical warfare.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Cloud Over Langemarck3 min
- 03Improvised Engineering2 min
- 04The Four-Mile Gap2 min
- 05Desperate Defenses and Moral Shock2 min
- 06Outro1 min
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