Technology and science have let us kill people far more efficiently than we ever could before. The guillotine of the French Revolution allowed the socialists to use mechanical means to exterminate their class enemies, the aristocracy (and vastly more numbers of other people who fell foul of the these revolutionaries). The guillotine was the precursor of the far more efficient Nazi extermination camps that allowed the National Socialists to kill Jews (and other enemies) by the millions. Science also let people kill other people on the battlefield, and even off the battlefield, in far more horrible ways than ever before – with chemical weapons. This programme is about all of those chemical battlefield horrors and the surprising, and accidentally found, good that came from chemical warfare that has saved, and is still saving, millions of lives. You’ll be stunned by what I’m going to be talking about – there’s even a good chance that it’s your life, or that of a loved one, that’s been or is in the process of being saved right now thanks to an evil brought into the world by the killing fields of World War I.

Tag words: French Revolution; guillotine; socialists; Nazi extermination camps; National Socialists; chemical weapons; World War I; Tear gas; Dr Fritz Haber; James Bond; Ernst Stavro Blofeld; Mike Myers; Dr Evil; Haber Process; chlorine gas; Clara Immerwahr; phosgene; Mustard gas; IG Farben; Zyklon B; Adolf Hitler; Geneva Protocol; Chemical Weapons Convention; Saddam Hussein; Bashar Al-Assad; Rudolph Hoess; The Poisonous Cloud; World War 2; Castello Normanno Svevo; American Fifteenth Air Force; General Bernhard Montgomery; Major General James H “Jimmy’ Doolittle; Battle of Midway; American 8th Air Force; Messerschmitt Me-210; Oberleutnant Werner Hähn; Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham; Captain A.B. Jenks; Field Marshall Albert Kesselring; Rommel; Field Marshall Wolfram von Richthofen; Afrika Korps; Foggia; Bari; Ju-88; Duppel; Oberleutnant Gustave Teuber; John Wheeler; Liberty Ship; M47A1 mustard gas bombs; Lt Thomas H Richardson; 701st Chemical Maintenance Company; Lt. Col Dr Stewart Francis Alexander; Yale University; Louis S Goodman; Alfred Gilman; Mechlorethamine; Axis Sally;