![]() Total war methods such as the use of incendiaries and poison gas against civilians, including women and children, would be the new normal in mechanized warfare. The first is that the gas mask is a symbol for the changed character of war. Grayzel’s monograph has two main arguments. Government authorities sought a version of the gas mask for use during a national emergency rather than just by soldiers on the battlefield. Anxieties over the use of gas in a future conflict framed popular speculations about the “next war” and government plans in the 1920s and 1930s. Aerial war made the home front both a direct military target and an invaluable asset for British state authorities to protect. The author traces the beginnings of civilian gas protection with the first use of poison gas by Germany in April 1915 and aerial bombing attacks with high explosives on Allied civilians (first by Zeppelin and later airplane). Grayzel explores the cultural history of the British gas mask and the government’s efforts to prepare the public for chemical warfare in World War II. When we look at an old gas mask what do we see? Is it a grotesque melding of human and machine? Or is it simply a dusty curiosity, an object laden with different worries than our own? Susan Grayzel takes on this question in Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse) ![]() Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (February, 2023)Ĭommissioned by Penelope K. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terror of Total War.
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