Chemical Warfare Service creation

In April 1942, Stimson recommended to President Franklin D. Roosevelt the creation of a civilian advisory group that would coordinate governmental and privately owned institutions in a biological warfare effort.2,3 (What he did not tell Roosevelt was that the Army Chemical Warfare Service had begun its own biological warfare research in 1941.)... 

As indicated earlier, the War Department set up a co-ordinating agency known as the Office of Gas Service in October 1917. This clearinghouse for chemical matters consisted of a director and representatives from the Ordnance and Medical Departments and from the Chemical Service Section of the National Army—a section established at the same time as the Gas Service with a principal mission of providing the AEF with a chemical laboratory. In February 1918 the Chemical Warfare Service and the Gas Division were joined in a move that failed to provide the administrative centralization and the prestige that could only come from the formation of an independent gas corps. This final step was taken bn 28 June 1918 with the creation of the Chemical Warfare Service, National Army, with Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert as director. 

Announcement of the creation of the Chemical Warfare Service in 1920 as a branch of the permanent Military Establishment presumably settled an issue that had been discussed heatedly and at length. Actually, debate over functions of the CWS was to continue for many years. This perennial controversy had its roots in two spheres. One was the policy of the United States on gas warfare. The other was the reaction within the War Department itself to gas warfare. 

In most respects, however, the Bureau of Mines and the military retained a division of labor until the creation of the Chemical Warfare Service. 

In late 1915 or early 1916, Schmidt, a cousin of Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, " ministerial director and later Prussian Kultusminister (Minister of Education), contacted Fritz Haber, whose Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (henceforth KWI) for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry had from late 1914 been converted into a centre for chemical warfare research. Schmidt proposed the creation of a foundation with an endowment of 250,000 marks to reward persons who have rendered a scientific or technical service to the war effort and who can use it . Schmidt envisaged that Captain Haber would manage the foundation and propose suitable individuals for honours. The documents do not show whether Schmidt was thinking of himself, but he did belong to the circle of possible candidates. He had developed a tear gas, as well as a method to produce artificial fog (so-called Hochst fog ), which was used in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. 

It will be remembered that in the fight for a permanent CWS, General Fries found support in Congress, industry, and civil servants— not in the Army. Generals Pershing and March both opposed the creation of a chemical service. There is no evidence to suggest that top commanders ever acquired much faith in gas warfare. In fact, it is hard to believe that the War Department in the period between the wars would have reduced CWS activities to those of a primarily defensive nature had it had faith in gas warfare. 

---