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War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Studies in Environment and History)

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In War and Nature Edmund Russell, Associate Professor of Technology, Culture, and Communication at the University of Virginia, cleverly traces the interaction between chemical warfare and pest control from World War I to the Vietnam War. His central thesis is that war and control of nature have coevolved: "the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature" (p. 2). Following up on his dissertation (University of Michigan, 1993), which won the Rachel Carson Prize from the American Society for Environmental History, Russell culled a wide variety of recently declassified U.S. government documents, business publications, and contemporary books and articles. Russell finds that World Wars I and II and the Cold War forged close ties between military and scientific institutions, and efforts to maintain such links became hallmarks of the post-World War II era. Scientifically and technologically, pest control and chemical warfare each created knowledge and tools that reinforced the other (p. 4) For example, on the eve of World War I, there were few U.S. chemical companies. They manufactured primarily low-profit bulk chemicals. In contrast, Germany had the best chemical factories and schools and had the largest output of sophisticated products. Eight German companies made up almost 80 percent of the world's dyes (p. 18). However, the increased use of mustard and chlorine gas in the war boosted the demand by European allies for these chemicals from the United States. The "Chemical Warfare Service" was created within the U.S. Army to employ civilian chemists to conduct research on war gases. This research also stimulated the invention of new insecticides to deal with such menaces as the boll weevil (attacking cotton crops), house fly (spreading typhus), the San Jose scale (damaging fruit trees), and mosquitoes (spreading malaria).
The use of chemicals in warfare is not new. Interestingly, Russell points out that the first recorded use of poison gas was in 428 BC, when Spartans besieging Plataea attempted to kill its defenders by burning wood soaked in pitch and sulfur under city walls (p. 4). However, chemical warfare increased throughout the twentieth century. According to Russell, at least 90,000 people were killed in World War I by gas, and estimated 350,000 were killed by gas in World War II, not including all the victims in Hitler's gas chambers. Even these figures seem low. Russell skillfully shows through cartoons how federal entomologists and chemists used insects in their propaganda as metaphors for human enemies. One cartoon depicts a conversation between two worms, one of them exclaiming: "What! Me sabotage that guy's victory garden? What do you take me for-a Jap? (p. 100)."
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 sought to exclude gas from warfare and define the rights of combatants. Public outrage at the use of chemicals as weapons of war continued to mount. After World War II, the Chemical Warfare Service and other chemical companies lobbied Congress vigorously, stressing the need to develop war gases as insecticides, for which increased funding was required. Noted chemists testified before Congress, claiming also that chemical and biological warfare was "more humane" than conventional warfare. According to Russell, who interviewed several of these chemists, Chief Chemical Officer William Creasy inanely argued in 1958 that 25,000 American casualties on Iwo Jima could have been avoided had the U.S. military employed chemical weapons (p. 208). Miracle "psychochemicals" were promoted, such as LSD-25 that could temporarily incapacitate troops but not permanently harm them. Russell cites a US Army propaganda film produced in 1958 in which a cat chased and caught a mouse, inhaled an unnamed gas, and then cowered from another mouse (p. 208). This publicity campaign persuaded Pentagon authorities to increase the U.S. Army's budget to $80,000,000 for chemical research.
Research to fight insects increased simultaneously with the development of chemicals to fight humans. As thousands of families moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, gardening became a popular hobby and stimulated the desire for pest control. Pesticide manufacturers such as Du Pont and Dow increased their marketing to this group of consumers, while federal crop dusting programs using DDT were initiated.
Russell shows how Rachel Carson's publication of Silent Spring in 1962 galvanized the American environmental movement, leading eventually to the ban on DDT in 1972. This immediate bestseller detailed the noxious effects of DDT on plants and animals and characterized pest control as a self-defeating form of warfare (p. 229).
Reading this book, one is struck by the immense irony of the twentieth century and the causal interaction of peace and war. Never before have so many human lives been saved (thanks to pesticides killing disease-carrying insects and increasing crop yields) and so many destroyed (mostly due to incendiaries, but also chemical weapons). Americans got better at saving lives partly because they got better at taking them, and vice versa. While War and Nature is almost too dazzling in its rich detail and sometimes a bit careless in its logic (e.g. implying that human beings should not be considered part of nature), the book breaks new ground in its connection of two traditionally disparate fields of inquiry, environmental and military history. It should be required reading in college courses in both security studies and environmental science.---Johanna Granville, Ph.D. (Stanford University)

War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. By Edmund Russell. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 315 pp. ISBN 0-521-79937-6. Call no. QH 545. C48 R87 2001.)

Boll Weevils and Lice and Mosquitoes, oh my!
In the twentieth century insects and humans were common enemies. War and Nature is an exploration into the evolution of chemical warfare and pesticides from World War I to Rachel Carson's revolutionary book Silent Spring (1962). Russell explains how the cyclical nature of war and peace throughout the twentieth century developed a powerhouse of chemists who worked diligently to discover new formulas applicable in warfare and at home. He states, "war and the control of nature co-evolved: the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature. More specifically, the control of nature formed one root of total war, and total war helped expand the control of nature to the scale rued by modern environmentalists" (p. 2). He uses convincing economic and natural evidence to support his claims, proving his clear cut thesis. Modern warfare was fought mainly across the Atlantic Ocean, but Russell points out the ecological results were felt on all sides of the globe. Americans developed a love for pesticides in the chemical age; Russell proves their love was a product of large corporations and excellent propaganda advertisements used to erase the line between military and civilian terminology.
By the time U.S. troops were sent into the First World War, entomologists had discovered insects spread some infectious diseases. Their research was unable to produce a cheap and effective tool to avoid lice infestations carrying Typhus that eradicated 2-3 million Russians from 1917-1921 (p. 27). Russell claims Typhus and Germany's willingness to gas the Triple Entente inspired the United States government to get involved heavily into chemical exploration and the National Research Council was created to mobilize the chemists (p.36). By 1918 the United States had joined the War and Russell explains the Chemical Warfare Service (later to be called the Chemical Corps) and the U.S. Bureau of Entomology was researching fervently for new compounds effective to both kill insects and humans (p. 42). Russell proclaims the country had proved its manhood by, "marrying science and technology to war... industry and propaganda... link[ed] a variety of institutions- military and civilian, government and private... It thus changed American ideals... The U.S. would not be the same country exiting the war it had been going in" (p.50) The Author informs us the fight against Boll weevil's perplexed entomologists to a great extent, so much senators argued, even at a time of peace, the War Department should fund the research because cotton was required in times of war (p. 64). This is an example of what Russell later calls the "erased" lines of war and peace (p. 203) and an economic justification for chemical warfare had begun.
Reclassifying chemical warfare as pest control was a genius move, not only did it make chemicals a matter of public health it also allowed for new advertisements trivializing foreign enemies into bugs. Russell explains, by World War II, aerial spraying had been developed and new insects named the Japanese beetle and the Hessian fly became the headline enemies in the "War on Insects" (p.110). Cornelia Lambert in her Review of this book stated, "The insecticide and gas warfare industries grew in tandem, each sheltered by Uncle Sam and shielded by propaganda," (Lambert, 376). Her assessment of the situation Russell explains in War and Nature is correct; the propaganda made the use of chemicals patriotic. The advertisement this reviewer sees at the most clear example of propaganda is of a Japanese beetle and a Hessian fly with a gun in their (Hitler like and Emperor Tojo like) faces and it reads, "Speaking of annihilation- the odors created by our adept perfume-chemists for your insecticides, slay the killing agent, pronto and quietly depart the battle scene. No trace remains-perfumed or otherwise," (p. 121). This ad creates a war like attitude towards bugs, emphasizing the annihilation of all enemies, which is critical to support Russell's' argument.
DDT was/is capable of killing lice, roaches, termites, moths, bedbugs, Japanese beetles, flies and fleas. It wound up being proved (later) as the killer of birds, small mammals, fish and humans. Russell calls DDT's role in World War II, heroic like (p.129) but reminds the reader if its discovery had not been during a time of global war, the world wide application and discovery of its full uses could have been delayed or avoided because the need outweighed the known dangers at the time (p. 124). John Servos in his Review of War and Nature states Russell "revises the conventional wisdom in at least one instance, by showing that U.S. officials, public health experts, and entomologists harbored concerns about broad use of DDT even as it was first entering civilian markets" (Servos, 449) Russell claims companies were concerned about the possibility of future lawsuits over DDT because they knew so little of its long term effects, but they waived off these worries in light of the large profits they could obtain. The economic picture was all that mattered to the producers of the compound (25 different companies) in 1946 (p. 167), by 1952 Russell tells us "preventative entomology" was in play and the eradication of insects seemed possible (p, 185). The total war on nature took a turn towards annihilation after the public introduction of DDT. Now every house wife could spread the new poisons throughout the entire country and chemical companies could export millions of pounds to our allies for unmonitored agricultural applications to the peril of Mother Nature.
War and Nature is a sad tale, especially if the reader has never read Carson's Silent Spring. If you have read Carson's work, then this book unfortunately shines only a small light on new information. Where Russell breaks new ground is his correlation between the Cold War and the notion of peace. The author claims after the advent of the Cold War our nation never ceased in developing chemical research now farmed out to public Universities, but still under War Department funding. Russell clearly explains how military and civilian issues intersected into one another's field and by the 1950s the line was obliterated forever. The silver lining on this dark cloud is Rachel Carson and her amazing book. Russell states, "the book reflected a growing unease about the distribution and use of power in the United States... the book reversed the image of pesticides cultivated over the preceding years," (p. 223). Russell's epilogue at times seems to wander aimlessly; he continues the time-line up to the Persian Gulf War (1990s). The new information was to explain the continual misuse of chemicals by the Federal Government, demonstrating that civilians learned more from Carson's book and he hope the lines are being restored between military and public life once again.

Works Cited
Lambert, Cornelia. "Review." The British Journal for the History of Sciences 35 (2002): 375-376.
Servos, John W. "Review." Technology and Culture 43 (2002): 448-450.

World War I was just the beginning of an ongoing cultural and scientific process in which chemical based weapons were created and marketed for use against human and insect enemies. Russell reminds us that the cultural, institutional, and political evolution of twentieth century science and warfare in the United States began not with the J. Robert Oppenheimer and the physicists of Los Alamos but with chemists like James B. Conant and his colleagues at Harvard and American University, emergent corporations like Dupont and the Hooker Company, and government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and the United States Chemical Warfare Service. With an eye for detail and a witty and readable narrative style, the author assembles scientific papers, declassified governmental and military planning documents, trade journals, and propaganda and advertising literature to reshape our understanding not only of the role of chemistry in warfare, but more importantly the reflexive nature of our understanding and relation to both technology and nature during times of peace.