The First World War was rich in technical innovations, but, perhaps, none of them acquired such an ominous aura as gas weapons. Chemical agents became a symbol of senseless slaughter, and all those who were under chemical attacks forever remembered the horror of the deadly clouds creeping into the trenches. The First World War became a real benefit of gas weapons: they managed to use 40 different types toxic substances that affected 1.2 million people and killed up to a hundred thousand.

By the beginning of the world war chemical weapon still almost did not exist in service. The French and British had already experimented with rifle grenades with tear gas, the Germans stuffed 105-mm howitzer shells with tear gas, but these innovations had no effect. Gas from German shells and even more so from French grenades instantly dissipated in the open air. The first chemical attacks of the First World War were not widely known, but soon combat chemistry had to be taken much more seriously.

At the end of March 1915, German soldiers captured by the French began to report: gas cylinders had been delivered to their positions. One of them even had a respirator taken from him. The reaction to this information was surprisingly nonchalant. The command simply shrugged its shoulders and did nothing to protect the troops. Moreover, the French general Edmond Ferry, who warned his neighbors about the threat and dispersed his subordinates, lost his position for panic. Meanwhile, the threat of chemical attacks became more and more real. The Germans were ahead of other countries in developing a new type of weapon. After experimenting with projectiles, the idea arose to use cylinders. The Germans planned a private offensive in the area of ​​the city of Ypres. The corps commander, to whose front the cylinders were delivered, was honestly informed that he must “exclusively test the new weapon.” The German command did not particularly believe in the serious effect of gas attacks. The attack was postponed several times: the wind stubbornly did not blow in the right direction.

On April 22, 1915, at 5 p.m., the Germans released chlorine from 5,700 cylinders at once. Observers saw two curious yellow-green clouds, which were pushed by a light wind towards the Entente trenches. German infantry was moving behind the clouds. Soon gas began to flow into the French trenches.

The effect of gas poisoning was terrifying. Chlorine affects the respiratory tract and mucous membranes, causes eye burns and, if inhaled excessively, leads to death from suffocation. However, the most powerful thing was the mental impact. French colonial troops that came under attack fled in droves.

Within a short time, more than 15 thousand people were out of action, of which 5 thousand lost their lives. The Germans, however, did not take full advantage of the devastating effect of the new weapons. For them it was just an experiment, and they were not preparing for a real breakthrough. In addition, the advancing German infantrymen themselves received poisoning. Finally, the resistance was never broken: the arriving Canadians soaked handkerchiefs, scarves, blankets in puddles - and breathed through them. If there was no puddle, they urinated themselves. The effect of chlorine was thus greatly weakened. Nevertheless, the Germans made significant progress on this section of the front - despite the fact that in a positional war, each step was usually given with enormous blood and great labor. In May, the French already received the first respirators, and the effectiveness of gas attacks decreased.

Soon chlorine was used on the Russian front near Bolimov. Here events also developed dramatically. Despite the chlorine flowing into the trenches, the Russians did not run, and although almost 300 people died from gas right at the position, and more than two thousand received poisoning of varying severity after the first attack, German offensive ran into stiff resistance and fell apart. A cruel irony of fate: the gas masks were ordered in Moscow and arrived at the positions just a few hours after the battle.

Soon a real “gas race” began: the parties constantly increased the number of chemical attacks and their power: they experimented with a variety of suspensions and methods of using them. At the same time, the mass introduction of gas masks into the troops began. The first gas masks were extremely imperfect: it was difficult to breathe in them, especially while running, and the glass quickly fogged up. Nevertheless, even under such conditions, even in clouds of gas with additionally limited visibility, hand-to-hand combat occurred. One of the English soldiers managed to kill or seriously injure a dozen German soldiers in a gas cloud, having made his way into a trench. He approached them from the side or behind, and the Germans simply did not see the attacker before the butt fell on their heads.

The gas mask became one of the key pieces of equipment. When leaving, he was thrown last. True, this did not always help: sometimes the gas concentration turned out to be too high and people died even in gas masks.

But unusual effective way The only defense was lighting fires: waves of hot air quite successfully dissipated clouds of gas. In September 1916, during a German gas attack, one Russian colonel took off his mask to command by telephone and lit a fire right at the entrance to his own dugout. As a result, he spent the entire battle shouting commands, at the cost of only mild poisoning.

The method of gas attack was most often quite simple. Liquid poison was sprayed through hoses from cylinders, passed into a gaseous state in the open air and, driven by the wind, crawled towards enemy positions. Troubles happened regularly: when the wind changed, their own soldiers were poisoned.

Often a gas attack was combined with conventional shelling. For example, during the Brusilov Offensive, the Russians silenced the Austrian batteries with a combination of chemical and conventional shells. From time to time, attempts were even made to attack with several gases at once: one was supposed to cause irritation through the gas mask and force the affected enemy to tear off the mask and expose himself to another cloud - a suffocating one.

Chlorine, phosgene and other asphyxiating gases had one fatal flaw as weapons: they required the enemy to inhale them.

In the summer of 1917, near long-suffering Ypres, a gas was used that was named after this city - mustard gas. Its peculiarity was the effect on the skin, bypassing the gas mask. If it came into contact with unprotected skin, mustard gas caused severe chemical burns, necrosis, and traces of it remained for life. For the first time, the Germans fired mustard gas shells at the British military who were concentrated before the attack. Thousands of people suffered terrible burns, and many soldiers did not even have gas masks. In addition, the gas turned out to be very persistent and for several days continued to poison everyone who entered its area of ​​​​action. Fortunately, the Germans did not have sufficient supplies of this gas, as well as protective clothing, to attack through the poisoned zone. During the attack on the city of Armentieres, the Germans filled it with mustard gas so that the gas literally flowed in rivers through the streets. The British retreated without a fight, but the Germans were unable to enter the town.

The Russian army marched in line: immediately after the first cases of gas use, the development of protective equipment began. At first, the protective equipment was not very diverse: gauze, rags soaked in hyposulfite solution.

However, already in June 1915, Nikolai Zelinsky developed a very successful gas mask based on activated carbon. Already in August, Zelinsky presented his invention - a full-fledged gas mask, complemented by a rubber helmet designed by Edmond Kummant. The gas mask protected the entire face and was made from a single piece of high-quality rubber. Its production began in March 1916. Zelinsky's gas mask protected not only the respiratory tract, but also the eyes and face from toxic substances.

The most famous incident involving the use of military gases on the Russian front refers precisely to the situation when Russian soldiers did not have gas masks. We are, of course, talking about the battle on August 6, 1915 in the Osovets fortress. During this period, Zelensky’s gas mask was still being tested, and the gases themselves were a fairly new type of weapon. Osovets was attacked already in September 1914, however, despite the fact that this fortress was small and not the most perfect, it stubbornly resisted. On August 6, the Germans used chlorine shells from gas batteries. A two-kilometer gas wall first killed the forward posts, then the cloud began to cover the main positions. Almost all of the garrison received poisoning of varying degrees of severity.

However, then something happened that no one could have expected. At first, the attacking German infantry was partially poisoned own cloud, and then the already dying people began to resist. One of the machine gunners, who had already swallowed gas, fired several belts at the attackers before he died. The culmination of the battle was a bayonet counterattack by a detachment of the Zemlyansky regiment. This group was not at the epicenter of the gas cloud, but everyone was poisoned. The Germans did not flee immediately, but they were psychologically unprepared to fight at a time when all their opponents, it would seem, should have already died under the gas attack. "Attack of the Dead" demonstrated that even in the absence of full protection, gas does not always give the expected effect.

As a means of killing, gas had obvious advantages, but by the end of the First World War it did not look like such a formidable weapon. Modern armies, already at the end of the war, seriously reduced losses from chemical attacks, often reducing them to almost zero. As a result, gases became exotic already during World War II.

Poison gas was first used by German troops in 1915 on the Western Front. It was later used in Abyssinia, China, Yemen, and also in Iraq. Hitler himself was a victim of a gas attack during the First World War.

Silent, invisible and in most cases deadly: poison gas is a terrible weapon - not only in a physical sense, as chemical warfare agents can kill huge numbers of soldiers and civilians, but perhaps even more so in a psychological sense, as fear facing the terrible threat contained in the inhaled air inevitably causes panic.

Since 1915, when poison gas was first used in modern warfare, it has been used to kill people in dozens of armed conflicts. However, precisely in the bloodiest war of the 20th century, in the struggle of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition against the Third Reich in Europe, both sides did not use these weapons mass destruction. But, nevertheless, in those years it was used, and occurred, in particular, during the Sino-Japanese War, which began already in 1937.

Poisonous substances have been used as weapons since ancient times - for example, warriors in ancient times rubbed arrowheads with irritating substances. However, systematic study chemical elements began only before the First World War. By this time the police in some European countries already used tear gas to disperse unwanted crowds of people. Therefore, there was only a small step left to take before using deadly poisonous gas.


1915 - first use

The first confirmed large-scale use of chemical warfare gas occurred on the Western Front in Flanders. Prior to this, attempts had been made several times - generally unsuccessful - to squeeze out using various chemical substances enemy soldiers from the trenches and thus complete the conquest of Flanders. On the eastern front, German gunners also used shells containing toxic chemicals - without much consequence.

Against the backdrop of such “unsatisfactory” results, chemist Fritz Haber, who later received Nobel Prize, suggested spraying chlorine gas if there is a suitable wind. More than 160 tons of this chemical by-product were used on April 22, 1915 in the Ypres area. The gas was released from approximately 6 thousand cylinders, and as a result, a poisonous cloud six kilometers long and one kilometer wide covered enemy positions.

There is no exact data on the number of victims of this attack, but they were very significant. In any case, the German army managed to break through on the “Day of Ypres” greater depth strengthening French and Canadian units.

The Entente countries actively protested against the use of poison gas. The German side responded to this by stating that the use of chemical munitions is not prohibited by the Hague Convention on the Conduct of Land War. Formally, this was correct, but the use of chlorine gas was contrary to the spirit of the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907.

The death toll was almost 50%

In the following weeks, poisonous gas was used several more times in an arc in the Ypres area. Moreover, on May 5, 1915, at Hill 60, 90 of the 320 soldiers there were killed in the British trenches. Another 207 people were taken to hospitals, but for 58 of them no help was needed. The death rate from the use of poisonous gases against unprotected soldiers was then approximately 50%.

The Germans' use of poisonous chemicals broke the taboo, and after that other participants in the war also began to use poisonous gases. The British first used chlorine gas in September 1915, while the French used phosgene. Another spiral of the arms race began: more and more new chemical warfare agents were developed, and our own soldiers received more and more advanced gas masks. In total, during the First World War, 18 different potentially lethal toxic substances and another 27 chemical compounds with “irritant” effects were used.

According to existing estimates, between 1914 and 1918, about 20 million gas shells were used, in addition, more than 10 thousand tons of chemical warfare agents were released from special containers. According to calculations by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, 91 thousand people died as a result of the use of chemical warfare agents, and 1.2 million were injured of varying degrees of severity.

Hitler's personal experience

Adolf Hitler was also among the victims. On October 14, 1918, during a French mustard gas attack, he temporarily lost his sight. In the book “My Struggle” (Mein Kampf), where Hitler sets out the foundations of his worldview, he describes this situation as follows: “Around midnight, some of the comrades were out of action, some of them forever. In the morning I also began to feel severe pain, increasing every minute. At about seven o'clock, stumbling and falling, I somehow made my way to the point. My eyes were burning with pain.” After a few hours, “my eyes turned into burning coals. Then I stopped seeing."

And after the First World War, the accumulated, but no longer needed in Europe, shells with poisonous gases were used. For example, Winston Churchill advocated their use against “savage” rebels in the colonies, but he made a reservation and added that it was not necessary to use lethal substances. In Iraq, the Royal Air Force also used chemical bombs.

Spain, which remained neutral during the First World War, used poison gas during the Rif War against the Berber tribes in its North African possessions. The Italian dictator Mussolini used these types of weapons in the Libyan and Abyssinian wars, and they were often used against civilians. Western public opinion reacted to this with indignation, but as a result it was possible to agree only on taking symbolic retaliatory actions.

An unequivocal ban

In 1925, the Geneva Protocol prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare, as well as their use against civilians. Nevertheless, almost all states of the world continued to prepare for future wars using chemical weapons.

After 1918, the largest use of chemical warfare agents occurred in 1937 during Japan's war of conquest against China. They were used in several thousand individual incidents and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians, but precise data from those theaters of operations is not available. Japan did not ratify the Geneva Protocol and was not formally bound by its provisions, but even at that time the use of chemical weapons was considered a war crime.

Thanks also to personal experience Hitler's threshold for using toxic chemicals during World War II was very high. However, this does not mean that both sides were not preparing for a possible gas war - in case the opposite side started it.

The Wehrmacht had several laboratories for the study of chemical warfare agents, and one of them was located in the Spandau Citadel, located in the western part of Berlin. Among other things, highly toxic poisonous gases sarin and soman were produced there in small quantities. And at the factories of I.G. Farben, several tons of the nerve gas tabun were even produced using phosphorus. However, it was not applied.

The First World War was going on. On the evening of April 22, 1915, opposing German and French troops were near the Belgian city of Ypres. They fought for the city for a long time and to no avail. But that evening the Germans wanted to test a new weapon - poison gas. They brought thousands of cylinders with them, and when the wind blew towards the enemy, they opened the taps, releasing 180 tons of chlorine into the air. The yellowish gas cloud was carried by the wind towards the enemy line.

The panic began. Immersed in the gas cloud, the French soldiers were blind, coughing and suffocating. Three thousand of them died from suffocation, another seven thousand received burns.

"At this point science lost its innocence," says science historian Ernst Peter Fischer. According to him, if before the goal of scientific research was to improve the living conditions of people, now science has created conditions that make it easier to kill a person.

"In war - for the fatherland"

A way to use chlorine for military purposes was developed by the German chemist Fritz Haber. He is considered the first scientist to subordinate scientific knowledge military needs. Fritz Haber discovered that chlorine is an extremely poisonous gas, which, due to its high density, concentrates low above the ground. He knew: this gas causes severe swelling of the mucous membranes, coughing, suffocation and ultimately leads to death. In addition, the poison was cheap: chlorine is found in waste from the chemical industry.

“Haber’s motto was “In peace for humanity, in war for the fatherland,” Ernst Peter Fischer quotes the then head of the chemical department of the Prussian War Ministry. “Times were different then. Everyone was trying to find a poison gas that they could use in war.” And only the Germans succeeded."

The attack at Ypres was a war crime - already in 1915. After all, the Hague Convention of 1907 prohibited the use of poison and poisoned weapons for military purposes.

Arms race

The "success" of Fritz Haber's military innovation became contagious, and not only for the Germans. Simultaneously with the war of states, the “war of chemists” began. Scientists were given the task of creating chemical weapons that would be ready for use as soon as possible. “People abroad looked at Haber with envy,” says Ernst Peter Fischer. “Many wanted to have such a scientist in their country.” In 1918, Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. True, not for the discovery of poisonous gas, but for his contribution to the implementation of ammonia synthesis.

The French and British also experimented with poisonous gases. The use of phosgene and mustard gas, often in combination with each other, became widespread in the war. And yet the poisonous gases did not play a role decisive role in the outcome of the war: this weapon could only be used in favorable weather.

Scary mechanism

However, in the first world war a terrible mechanism was launched, and Germany became its engine.

The chemist Fritz Haber not only laid the foundation for the use of chlorine for military purposes, but also, thanks to his good connections in the industrial sphere, contributed to the establishment of mass production of these chemical weapons. Thus, the German chemical concern BASF produced toxic substances in large quantities during the First World War.

After the war, with the creation of the IG Farben concern in 1925, Haber joined its supervisory board. Later, during National Socialism, a subsidiary of IG Farben produced the "Zyklon B" used in gas chambers concentration camps.

Context

Fritz Haber himself could not have foreseen this. "He's a tragic figure," says Fisher. In 1933, Haber, a Jew by birth, emigrated to England, exiled from his country, to the service of which he had put his scientific knowledge.

Red line

In total, more than 90 thousand soldiers died from the use of poisonous gases on the fronts of the First World War. Many died from complications several years after the end of the war. In 1905, members of the League of Nations, which included Germany, pledged under the Geneva Protocol not to use chemical weapons. Meanwhile Scientific research on the use of poisonous gases were continued, mainly under the guise of developing means to combat harmful insects.

"Cyclone B" - hydrocyanic acid - insecticidal agent. "Agent Orange" is a substance used to defoliate plants. Americans used defoliant during the Vietnam War to thin out dense vegetation. The consequence is poisoned soil, numerous diseases and genetic mutations among the population. The latest example of the use of chemical weapons is Syria.

“You can do whatever you want with poisonous gases, but they cannot be used as targeted weapons,” emphasizes science historian Fisher. “Everyone who is nearby becomes victims.” The fact that the use of poisonous gas today is “a red line that cannot be crossed,” he considers correct: “Otherwise the war becomes even more inhumane than it already is.”

One of the forgotten pages of the First World War is the so-called “attack of the dead” on July 24 (August 6, New Style) 1915. This amazing story, how 100 years ago a handful of Russian soldiers miraculously surviving a gas attack put several thousand advancing Germans to flight.

As you know, chemical agents (CA) were used in the First World War. Germany used them for the first time: it is believed that in the area of ​​the city of Ypres on April 22, 1915, the 4th German Army used chemical weapons (chlorine) for the first time in the history of wars and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.
On Eastern Front The Germans carried out a gas attack for the first time on May 18 (31), 1915 against the Russian 55th Infantry Division.

On August 6, 1915, the Germans used toxic substances consisting of chlorine and bromine compounds against the defenders of the Russian fortress of Osovets. And then something unusual happened, which went down in history under the expressive name “attack of the dead”!

A little preliminary history.
Osowiec Fortress is a Russian stronghold fortress built on the Bobry River near the town of Osowiec (now the Polish city of Osowiec-Fortress) 50 km from the city of Bialystok.

The fortress was built to defend the corridor between the Neman and Vistula - Narew - Bug rivers, with the most important strategic directions St. Petersburg - Berlin and St. Petersburg - Vienna. Construction site defensive structures was chosen to block the main highway to the east. It was impossible to bypass the fortress in this area - there was impassable swampy terrain to the north and south.

Osovets fortifications

Osovets was not considered a first-class fortress: the brick vaults of the casemates were reinforced with concrete before the war, some additional fortifications were built, but they were not too impressive, and the Germans fired from 210 mm howitzers and super-heavy guns. Osovets' strength lay in its location: it stood on the high bank of the Bober River, among huge, impassable swamps. The Germans could not surround the fortress, and the valor of the Russian soldier did the rest.

The fortress garrison consisted of 1 infantry regiment, two artillery battalions, an engineer unit and support units.
The garrison was armed with 200 guns of caliber from 57 to 203 mm. The infantry was armed with rifles, light machine guns Madsen model 1902 and 1903, heavy machine guns of the Maxim system of model 1902 and 1910, as well as turret machine guns of the system Gatling.

By the beginning of the First World War, the garrison of the fortress was headed by Lieutenant General A. A. Shulman. In January 1915, he was replaced by Major General N.A. Brzhozovsky, who commanded the fortress until the end of active operations of the garrison in August 1915.

major general
Nikolai Alexandrovich Brzhozovsky

In September 1914, units of the 8th German Army approached the fortress - 40 infantry battalions, which almost immediately launched a massive attack. Already by September 21, 1914, having a multiple numerical superiority, the Germans managed to push back the field defense of the Russian troops to a line that allowed artillery shelling of the fortress.

At the same time, the German command transferred 60 guns of up to 203 mm caliber from Konigsberg to the fortress. However, the shelling began only on September 26, 1914. Two days later, the Germans launched an attack on the fortress, but it was suppressed by heavy fire from Russian artillery. The next day, Russian troops carried out two flank counterattacks, which forced the Germans to stop shelling and hastily retreat, withdrawing their artillery.

On February 3, 1915, German troops made a second attempt to storm the fortress. A heavy, lengthy battle ensued. Despite fierce attacks, Russian units held the line.

German artillery shelled the forts using heavy siege weapons of 100-420 mm caliber. The fire was carried out in volleys of 360 shells, a volley every four minutes. During the week of shelling, 200-250 thousand heavy shells alone were fired at the fortress.
Also, specifically for shelling the fortress, the Germans deployed 4 Skoda siege mortars of 305 mm caliber to Osovets. German airplanes bombed the fortress from above.

Mortar "Skoda", 1911 (en: Skoda 305 mm Model 1911).

The European press in those days wrote: “The appearance of the fortress was terrible, the entire fortress was shrouded in smoke, through which, in one place or another, huge tongues of fire burst out from the explosion of shells; pillars of earth, water and entire trees flew upward; the earth trembled, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire. The impression was that not a single person would emerge unscathed from this hurricane of fire and iron.”

Command General Staff, believing that he was demanding the impossible, asked the garrison commander to hold out for at least 48 hours. The fortress survived for another six months...

Moreover, a number of siege weapons were destroyed by the fire of Russian batteries, including two “Big Berthas”. After several mortars of the largest caliber were damaged, the German command withdrew these guns beyond the reach of the fortress defense.

At the beginning of July 1915, under the command of Field Marshal von Hindenburg, German troops launched a large-scale offensive. Part of it was a new assault on the still unconquered Osowiec fortress.

The 18th Regiment of the 70th Brigade of the 11th Landwehr Division took part in the assault on Osovets ( Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 18 . 70. Landwehr-Infanterie-Brigade. 11. Landwehr-Division). The division commander from its formation in February 1915 to November 1916 was Lieutenant General Rudolf von Freudenberg ( Rudolf von Freudenberg)

lieutenant general
Rudolf von Freudenberg

The Germans began setting up gas batteries at the end of July. 30 gas batteries totaling several thousand cylinders were installed. The Germans waited for more than 10 days for a fair wind.

The following infantry forces were prepared to storm the fortress:
The 76th Landwehr Regiment attacks Sosnya and the Central Redoubt and advances along the rear of the Sosnya position to the forester’s house, which is at the beginning of the railway road;
The 18th Landwehr Regiment and the 147th Reserve Battalion advance on either side railway, break through to the forester’s house and attack the Zarechnaya position together with the 76th Regiment;
The 5th Landwehr Regiment and the 41st Reserve Battalion attack Bialogrondy and, having broken through the position, storm the Zarechny Fort.
In reserve were the 75th Landwehr Regiment and two reserve battalions, which were supposed to advance along the railway and reinforce the 18th Landwehr Regiment when attacking the Zarechnaya position.

In total, the following forces were assembled to attack the Sosnenskaya and Zarechnaya positions:
13 - 14 infantry battalions,
1 battalion of sappers,
24 - 30 heavy siege weapons,
30 poison gas batteries.

The forward position of the Bialogrondy fortress - Sosnya was occupied by the following Russian forces:
Right flank (positions near Bialogronda):
1st company of the Countryman Regiment,
two companies of militia.
Center (positions from the Rudsky Canal to the central redoubt):
9th company of the Countryman Regiment,
10th company of the Countryman Regiment,
12th company of the Compatriot Regiment,
a company of militia.
Left flank (position near Sosnya) - 11th company of the Zemlyachensky regiment,
The general reserve (at the forester's house) is one company of militia.
Thus, the Sosnenskaya position was occupied by five companies of the 226th Zemlyansky Infantry Regiment and four companies of militia, for a total of nine companies of infantry.
The infantry battalion, sent every night to forward positions, left at 3 o'clock for the Zarechny fort to rest.

At 4 o'clock on August 6, the Germans opened heavy artillery fire on the railway road, the Zarechny position, communications between the Zarechny fort and the fortress, and on the batteries of the bridgehead, after which, at a signal from rockets, the enemy infantry began an offensive.

Gas attack

Having failed to achieve success with artillery fire and numerous attacks, on August 6, 1915 at 4 a.m., after waiting for the desired wind direction, German units used poisonous gases consisting of chlorine and bromine compounds against the defenders of the fortress. The defenders of the fortress did not have gas masks...

The Russian army did not yet imagine how terrible the scientific and technological progress of the 20th century would turn out to be.

As reported by V.S. Khmelkov, the gases released by the Germans on August 6 were dark green in color - it was chlorine mixed with bromine. The gas wave, which had about 3 km along the front when released, began to quickly spread to the sides and, having traveled 10 km, was already about 8 km wide; the height of the gas wave above the bridgehead was about 10 - 15 m.

Every living thing in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress was poisoned to death; the fortress artillery suffered heavy losses during the shooting; people not participating in the battle were saved in barracks, shelters, residential buildings, tightly locking the doors and windows, pouring plenty of water on them.

12 km from the gas release site, in the villages of Ovechki, Zhodzi, Malaya Kramkovka, 18 people were seriously poisoned; There are known cases of poisoning of animals - horses and cows. At the Monki station, located 18 km from the gas release site, no cases of poisoning were observed.
The gas stagnated in the forest and near water ditches; a small grove 2 km from the fortress along the highway to Bialystok turned out to be impassable until 16:00. August 6.

All the greenery in the fortress and in the immediate area along the path of the gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground, the flower petals flew off.
All copper objects on the fortress bridgehead - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide; food items stored without hermetically sealed meat, butter, lard, vegetables turned out to be poisoned and unsuitable for consumption.

The half-poisoned ones wandered back and, tormented by thirst, bent down to sources of water, but here the gases lingered in low places, and secondary poisoning led to death...

The gases caused huge losses to the defenders of the Sosnenskaya position - the 9th, 10th and 11th companies of the Compatriot Regiment were killed entirely, about 40 people remained from the 12th company with one machine gun; from the three companies defending Bialogrondy, there were about 60 people left with two machine guns.

The German artillery again opened massive fire, and following the barrage of fire and the gas cloud, believing that the garrison defending the positions of the fortress was dead, the German units went on the offensive. 14 Landwehr battalions went on the attack - and that’s at least seven thousand infantry.
On the front line, after the gas attack, barely more than a hundred defenders remained alive. The doomed fortress, it seemed, was already in German hands...

But when the German infantry approached the forward fortifications of the fortress, the remaining defenders of the first line rose up to counterattack them - the remnants of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyachensky infantry regiment, a little more than 60 people. The counterattackers had a terrifying appearance - with faces mutilated by chemical burns, wrapped in rags, shaking with a terrible cough, literally spitting out pieces of lungs onto bloody tunics...

The unexpected attack and the sight of the attackers horrified the German units and sent them into a panicked flight. Several dozen half-dead Russian soldiers put units of the 18th Landwehr Regiment to flight!
This attack of the “dead men” plunged the enemy into such horror that the German infantrymen, not accepting the battle, rushed back, trampling each other and hanging on their own barbed wire barriers. And then, from the Russian batteries shrouded in chlorine clouds, the seemingly dead Russian artillery began to hit them...

Professor A.S. Khmelkov described it this way:
The fortress artillery batteries, despite heavy losses in poisoned people, opened fire, and soon the fire of nine heavy and two light batteries slowed the advance of the 18th Landwehr Regiment and cut off the general reserve (75th Landwehr Regiment) from the position. The head of the 2nd defense department sent the 8th, 13th and 14th companies of the 226th Zemlyansky regiment from the Zarechnaya position for a counterattack. The 13th and 8th companies, having lost up to 50% poisoned, turned around on both sides of the railway and began to attack; The 13th company, encountering units of the 18th Landwehr Regiment, shouted “Hurray” and rushed with bayonets. This attack of the “dead men,” as an eyewitness of the battle reports, amazed the Germans so much that they did not accept the battle and rushed back; many Germans died on the wire nets in front of the second line of trenches from the fire of the fortress artillery. The concentrated fire of the fortress artillery on the trenches of the first line (Leonov's yard) was so strong that the Germans did not accept the attack and hastily retreated.

Several dozen half-dead Russian soldiers put three German troops to flight. infantry regiment! Later, participants in the events on the German side and European journalists dubbed this counterattack as the “attack of the dead.”

In the end heroic defense the fortress came to an end.

The end of the defense of the fortress

At the end of April, the Germans struck another powerful blow in East Prussia and at the beginning of May 1915 they broke through the Russian front in the Memel-Libau region. In May, German-Austrian troops, who concentrated superior forces in the Gorlice area, managed to break through the Russian front (see: Gorlitsky breakthrough) in Galicia. After this, in order to avoid encirclement, a general strategic retreat of the Russian army from Galicia and Poland began. By August 1915, due to changes on the Western Front, the strategic need to defend the fortress lost all meaning. In connection with this, the high command of the Russian army decided to stop defensive battles and evacuate the fortress garrison. On August 18, 1915, the evacuation of the garrison began, which took place without panic, in accordance with plans. Everything that could not be removed, as well as the surviving fortifications, were blown up by sappers. During the retreat, Russian troops, if possible, organized the evacuation of civilians. The withdrawal of troops from the fortress ended on August 22.

Major General Brzozovsky was the last to leave the empty Osovets. He approached a group of sappers located half a kilometer from the fortress and himself turned the handle of the explosive device - an electric current ran through the cable, and a terrible roar was heard. Osovets flew into the air, but before that, absolutely everything was taken out of it.

On August 25, German troops entered the empty, destroyed fortress. The Germans did not get a single cartridge, not a single can of canned food: they received only a pile of ruins.
The defense of Osovets came to an end, but Russia soon forgot it. There were terrible defeats and great upheavals ahead; Osovets turned out to be just an episode on the road to disaster...

There was a revolution ahead: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Brzhozovsky, who commanded the defense of Osovets, fought for the whites, his soldiers and officers were divided by the front line.
Judging by fragmentary information, Lieutenant General Brzhozovsky was a participant White movement in the south of Russia, was in the reserve ranks of the Volunteer Army. In the 20s lived in Yugoslavia.

In Soviet Russia they tried to forget Osovets: there could be no great feats in the “imperialist war”.

Who was the soldier whose machine gun pinned the infantrymen of the 14th Landwehr Division to the ground when they burst into Russian positions? His entire company was killed under artillery fire, but by some miracle he survived, and, stunned by the explosions, barely alive, he fired ribbon after ribbon - until the Germans bombarded him with grenades. The machine gunner saved the position, and possibly the entire fortress. No one will ever know his name...

God knows who the gassed lieutenant of the militia battalion was who wheezed through his cough: “follow me!” - got up from the trench and went towards the Germans. He was killed immediately, but the militia rose up and held out until the riflemen came to their aid...

Osowiec covered Bialystok: from there the road to Warsaw opened, and further into the depths of Russia. In 1941, the Germans made this journey quickly, bypassing and encircling entire armies, capturing hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Located not too far from Osovets Brest Fortress at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War it held out heroically, but its defense had no strategic significance: the front went far to the East, the remnants of the garrison were doomed.

Osovets was a different matter in August 1915: he pinned down large enemy forces, his artillery methodically crushed the German infantry.
Then the Russian army did not scoot in shame to the Volga and to Moscow...

School textbooks talk about “the rottenness of the tsarist regime, the mediocre tsarist generals, the unpreparedness for war,” which was not at all popular, because the soldiers who were forcibly conscripted allegedly did not want to fight...
Now the facts: in 1914-1917, almost 16 million people were drafted into the Russian army - from all classes, almost all nationalities of the empire. Isn't this a people's war?
And these “forced conscripts” fought without commissars and political instructors, without special security officers, without penal battalions. No detachments. About one and a half million people were awarded the St. George Cross, 33 thousand became full holders of the St. George Cross of all four degrees. By November 1916, over one and a half million medals “For Bravery” had been issued at the front. In the army of that time, crosses and medals were not simply hung on anyone and they were not given for guarding rear depots - only for specific military merits.

“Rotten tsarism” carried out the mobilization clearly and without a hint of transport chaos. The Russian army, “unprepared for war,” under the leadership of “mediocre” tsarist generals, not only carried out a timely deployment, but also inflicted a series of powerful blows on the enemy, carrying out a number of successful offensive operations on enemy territory. Army Russian Empire held the blow for three years war machine three empires - German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman - on a huge front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The tsarist generals and their soldiers did not allow the enemy into the depths of the Fatherland.

The generals had to retreat, but the army under their command retreated in a disciplined and organized manner, only on orders. And they tried not to leave the civilian population to be desecrated by the enemy, evacuating them whenever possible. The “anti-people tsarist regime” did not think of repressing the families of those captured, and the “oppressed peoples” were in no hurry to go over to the side of the enemy with entire armies. Prisoners did not enroll in the legions to fight against their own country with arms in hand, just as hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers did a quarter of a century later.
And a million Russian volunteers did not fight on the side of the Kaiser, there were no Vlasovites.
In 1914, no one and nightmare I couldn’t have dreamed that Cossacks were fighting in the German ranks...

In the “imperialist” war, the Russian army did not leave its own on the battlefield, carrying out the wounded and burying the dead. That’s why the bones of our soldiers and officers of the First World War are not lying around on the battlefields. It is known about the Patriotic War: it is the 70th year since its end, and the number of people who are humanly still not buried is estimated in the millions...

During the German War, there was a cemetery near the Church of All Saints in All Saints, where soldiers who died of wounds in hospitals were buried. The Soviet government destroyed the cemetery, like many others, when it methodically began to uproot the memory of the Great War. She was ordered to be considered unfair, lost, shameful.
In addition, deserters and saboteurs who carried out subversive work with enemy money took the helm of the country in October 1917. It was inconvenient for the comrades from the sealed carriage, who advocated the defeat of the fatherland, to conduct military-patriotic education using the examples of the imperialist war, which they turned into a civil war.
And in the 1920s, Germany became a tender friend and military-economic partner - why irritate it with a reminder of the past discord?

True, some literature about the First World War was published, but it was utilitarian and for the mass consciousness. The other line is educational and applied: the materials of the campaigns of Hannibal and the First Cavalry should not be used to teach students of military academies. And in the early 1930s, scientific interest in the war began to appear, voluminous collections of documents and studies appeared. But their subject matter is indicative: offensive operations. The last collection of documents was published in 1941; no more collections were published. True, even in these publications there were no names or people - only numbers of units and formations. Even after June 22, 1941, when the “great leader” decided to turn to historical analogies, remembering the names of Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov, he did not say a word about those who stood in the way of the Germans in 1914...

After World War II the strictest ban was imposed not only on the study of the First World War, but in general on any memory of it. And for mentioning the heroes of the “imperialist” one could be sent to camps as for anti-Soviet agitation and praise of the White Guard...

The history of the First World War knows two examples when fortresses and their garrisons completed their assigned tasks to the end: the famous French fortress of Verdun and the small Russian fortress of Osovets.
The garrison of the fortress heroically withstood the siege of many times superior enemy troops for six months, and retreated only by order of the command after the strategic feasibility of further defense disappeared.
The defense of the Osovets fortress during the First World War was a striking example of the courage, perseverance and valor of Russian soldiers.

Eternal memory to the fallen heroes!

Osovets. Fortress church. Parade on the occasion of the presentation of the St. George Crosses.

By mid-spring 1915, each of the countries participating in the First World War sought to pull the advantage to its side. So Germany, which terrorized its enemies from the sky, from under water and on land, tried to find an optimal, but not entirely original solution, planning to use chemical weapons - chlorine - against the adversaries. The Germans borrowed this idea from the French, who at the beginning of 1914 tried to use tear gas as a weapon. At the beginning of 1915, the Germans also tried to do this, who quickly realized that irritating gases on the field were a very ineffective thing.

That's why german army resorted to the help of the future Nobel laureate in chemistry by Fritz Haber, who developed methods for using protection against such gases and methods for using them in combat.

Haber was a great patriot of Germany and even converted from Judaism to Christianity to show his love for the country.

The German army decided to use poisonous gas - chlorine - for the first time on April 22, 1915 during the battle near the Ypres River. Then the military sprayed about 168 tons of chlorine from 5,730 cylinders, each of which weighed about 40 kg. At the same time, Germany violated the Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed in 1907 in The Hague, one of the clauses of which stated that “it is prohibited to use poison or poisoned weapons against the enemy.” It is worth noting that Germany at that time tended to violate various international agreements and agreements: in 1915, it waged “unlimited submarine warfare” - German submarines were sunk civil ships contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions.

“We couldn't believe our eyes. The greenish-gray cloud, descending on them, turned yellow as it spread and scorched everything in its path that it touched, causing the plants to die. French soldiers staggered among us, blinded, coughing, breathing heavily, with faces dark purple, silent from suffering, and behind them in the gas-poisoned trenches remained, as we learned, hundreds of their dying comrades,” one recalled the incident. of the British soldiers who observed the mustard gas attack from the side.

As a result of the gas attack, about 6 thousand people were killed by the French and British. At the same time, the Germans also suffered, on whom, due to the changed wind, part of the gas they sprayed was blown away.

However, it was not possible to achieve the main goal and break through the German front line.

Among those who took part in the battle was the young corporal Adolf Hitler. True, he was located 10 km from the place where the gas was sprayed. On this day he saved his wounded comrade, for which he was subsequently awarded the Iron Cross. Moreover, he was only recently transferred from one regiment to another, which saved him from possible death.

Subsequently, Germany began using artillery shells containing phosgene, a gas for which there is no antidote and which, in sufficient concentration, causes death. Fritz Haber, whose wife committed suicide after receiving news from Ypres, continued to actively participate in the development: she could not bear the fact that her husband became the architect of so many deaths. Being a chemist by training, she appreciated the nightmare that her husband helped create.

The German scientist did not stop there: under his leadership, the toxic substance “Cyclone B” was created, which was subsequently used for massacres concentration camp prisoners during World War II.

In 1918, the researcher even received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, although he had a rather controversial reputation. However, he never hid the fact that he was absolutely confident in what he was doing. But Haber’s patriotism and his Jewish origin played a cruel joke on the scientist: in 1933, he was forced to flee Nazi Germany to Great Britain. A year later he died of a heart attack.