Seite - 543 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Poison Gas 543 September 1915, the progress report was submitted. It was, as expected, positive, and accordingly it could be assumed that poison gas would also be deployed shortly on the Imperial and Royal fronts. But then, Emperor Franz Joseph put a stop to this. He had his Military Chancellery inform the Army High Command on 15 September 1915 ‘that it is out of the question for the Army that a gas attack be carried out’.1280 Major General Marterer had spent an hour with the Emperor on this day, and it can be as- sumed that he argued in the interests of the Army High Command. But the Emperor decided against it. The ‘gas warriors’ now had to do a lot of persuading. From October 1915, the troops were informed about the possibilities of deploying poison gas. Reports were requested as to whether the Russians and the Italians were making preparations to deploy poison gas. Safeguard measures were prepared and, above all, work began to distribution gas masks. On 18 November the Emperor was ready to consent to the Imperial and Royal Army also using poison gas, ‘as soon as one of our enemies uses this weapon against us’. In February 1916, it was understood that the Italians had deployed ‘gas bombs’. And now the ‘gas warriors’ had Franz Joseph where they wanted him. He agreed to the deployment of poison gas. For the Emperor, it had evidently been an ethical problem. His entourage, however, who were plagued least of all by the question as to whether the deployment of poison gas contravened the norms of international law, could of course argue that Germans, British and French were using poison gas and that it had in this way become a normal weapon. Moreover, the use of poison gas was regarded as much less serious than the im- pact of artillery barrages. It was also expected that the Italians and Russians would also shortly deploy poison gas. In fact, on 4 June 1916, General Brusilov began his offensive with a gas attack against the Imperial and Royal 7th Army.1281 At this point in time, the Imperial and Royal Army was in the process of preparing on the Isonzo front its first gas-cylinder attack. The deployment area had been inspected on several occasions. The region east of the Isonzo, near Gradisca, was considered to be the most suitable. The aim was to hold Monte San Michele and to remove the danger to Gorizia, which was already serious. 6,000 steel bottles had been filled with chlorine and phosgene. The troops in the section, the 20th Honvéd Infantry Division and the Imperial and Royal 17th Infantry Division, had been left as far as possible in uniform, but had received 40,000 gas masks. From 18 to 25 June, the bottles of gas were brought to the prepared positions, dug in, connected with pipes and prepared for the cylinder attack. Then a favourable wind was awaited. In the event that the attack succeeded, a push should be made towards Sdraussina and over Monte San Michele. On 29 June, all requirements appeared to be fulfilled. The wind blew, at least in the southern part of the section, towards the Italians, the sapper special battalion (SSB) opened the valves, and the gas streamed out. The Italians were taken by surprise. They had too few gas masks ; there- fore, their losses of 6,000 men were primarily casualties of the gas attack. Yet around