The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1948-11-12
| ADUN! ~- The Gas That Drives Men Mad

He decided to use Tabun himself, not
against the Allies, but against Hitler and his
encourage cooped up in the Fuehrerbunker.
He intended to introduce the gas into the
ventilating system. But the plan was
thwarted, for just as Speer moved to carry
it out, Hitler ordered the construction of a
protective chimney around the ventilating
funnel.
Albert Speer was one of the few men in
Germany who knew all about Tabun and
Sarin. He had known for long time that
they were being manufactured in three Ger
man chemical factories, but it was not until
November 1914 that he received detailed
report as to their true nature.
This particular report, in possession
of the Allies described a test in which
number of goats were exposed to Tabun in
its vaporized form. The gas used in
limited quantities and, at first, the expert
ment seemed a failure-the goats were vio-
lently i'll, but did not perish. Then, of
instant, they all went mad. They became
a rampant herd of maniacs, killing each
other in an uncomfortable fury of destruc-
ton Those that survived died in agony
shortly afterwards.
Post mortems revealed that the gas had
caused radical degeneration of certain parts
of the goats brains, developing in them MUIR
derous tendencies and other forms of danger
Gus mental disease. For the first time In
his life Speer told his judges, he decided to
defy Hitler. He ordered the immediate clos
ing of the three factories and the destruction
of those stock piles that had not yet been
turned over to the High Command.
Up to that time, it was the general i'm
preston in this country that with such stand
ard chemical agents mustard, phosgene,
and lewisite, chemical warfare had reached
re
chemically impossible to find new gases sat
isfactory for battlefield use. Major General
Alden H. Watt, director of the Chemical
Warfare Services research section, even de-
clared that the United States had "the most
powerful war gases known to science, better
than those possessed by the Germans and the
Japanese"
But by 1914 intelligence reports received
by the U. S. Armys' Chemical Warfare Serv-
ice spoke of a new German gas two to ten
times more toxic than anything the Allies had
1t was developed from exceptionally pow
erful insecticide which had fluorin COM
pound for its base. These reports empha-
sized the exceptional vaporicity and persist
ency of this new chemical agent. The area !
in which it was released said to remain
contaminated for long periods of time, the
invisible gas clinging to low lying regions and
wooded patches for days, weeks, even months.
Destroys Nervous System
The gas, according to reports, operated
by attacking and ''inhibiting'' nerve tissues
central and peripheral, afferent and efferent,
vertebrate and invertebrate, causing within
a limited period of time an rreversible aboli-
ton of the (nerve) action potential" In
language this means that it
destroyed nervous action, thus snuffing out
life.
In order to appreciate the fiendish nature
of this attack, one has to examine the mech
anism of nervous action. The brain and the
central nervous system occupy an absolute
ly dominant role in the body. The network
of nerves, like power lines, makes possible
the functoning of the organs and carries
messages from one point of the body to an
other Once its function is interrupted or
destroyed life instantly ceases. 1t was long