In recent years, severe smog has been raging in northern China, and various masks have become a common equipment for citizens to travel. What's more, some unconventional citizens put on gas masks to express their concerns about air quality in an exaggerated way.
2017 New Year's Day, Qingming Riverside Garden in Kaifeng, Henan, "Song Huizong" and "Queen" appeared wearing gas masks
Compared with Chinese people, people in Western countries have a deeper memory of gas masks. All this stems from the past two World War II. At that time, poisonous gas, a greater threat than smog, threatened the lives of people in all countries at any time. Therefore, gas masks have become an important part of the civil defense system.
During the First World War, chemical weapons escalated into a cruel means of fighting between the two sides. The Allies and the Entente both used poison gas during the war. Tens of thousands of soldiers died as a result, and millions of soldiers were left with lifelong disabilities. , even the future head of Nazi Germany Hitler was attacked by poison gas and almost blinded.
In World War I, soldiers who were attacked by poison gas bombs
British armed to the teeth
After the war, in the 1920s and 1930s, the air forces of various countries around the world rose up and dropped a large number of deadly poison gas bombs on enemy countries. Major cities, even capitals. In view of this, major European and American countries are sparing no effort to promote gas masks among the people. Among them, the British policy is the most thorough.
In 1940, a group of British soldiers were instructing civilians on how to wear gas masks correctly
After the end of World War I, the British were still deeply troubled by the psychological shadow of air raids. In their view, the enemy's increasingly developed bomber force is unstoppable. In the next war, they will overwhelmingly destroy the defense lines defending fighter jets and drop bombs on their own heads. Moreover, the bombs dropped by enemy planes are probably no longer high-explosive bombs, but poison gas bombs used on a large scale during the First World War on the Western Front! In view of this, the British government throughout the 1930s was looking for ways to avoid mass casualties among civilians due to poison gas bombings, which eventually led to the famous "Gas Mask Proposal".
After the gas mask proposal was implemented, painters wore gas masks to paint in the wild
The London showgirls who performed on stage still wore gas masks
Under the guidance of the "gas mask proposal", on July 9, 1938, the British The Air Defense Committee began to issue gas masks to every British person and required everyone to wear them at all times. With the outbreak of World War II, carrying gas masks became part of daily life for British civilians. Photographers at the time also captured the daily lives of many British civilians under the shadow of poison gas.
In 1938, on a British beach, a British family wearing gas masks was preparing to go into the water to play.
In 1941, British children in school were conducting air defense drills under the guidance of soldiers
A mother held her newborn child in her arms. In order to provide protection for the next generation, the British government even A gas mask specially designed for babies
A soldier is guiding the child and mother, both wearing gas masks
Strapped Germany
As Britain's old enemy, Nazi Germany developed sarin, cyclosarin, There are a large number of new poison gases such as Soman, Tabun, Zyklon, B and so on. However, the German army's poison gas air raids on large British cities were not carried out in the end. The reason for this is very simple: although the quality of British chemical weapons warehouses is not as high as that of German goods, the quantity is not inferior. More importantly, the Royal Air Force's strategic bomber power completely overwhelmed the German Air Force. Once chemical warfare was launched, it could pour deadly poison gas bombs more violently into the German mainland.
Under this premise, the comparison of the civil defense systems of the two warring parties is of decisive significance. Unlike the United Kingdom, Germany has no natural rubber production and consumes a large amount of rubber to manufacture tanks, cars, and airplanes. As a result, its domestic rubber supply is stretched, which directly affects the production of gas masks.
Before the outbreak of World War II, Germany had only 9 million sets of gas masks. In contrast, the United Kingdom across the Taiwan Strait stored 87 million sets of gas masks! If the two warring parties decide to fight each other to the death and carry out inhumane gas attacks, it will be clear who will end up worse. In the end, the chemical weapons that the Germans spent a lot of resources to create were not used on British civilians, but became a tool for the mass murder of Jews.
German children are playing tug-of-war wearing gas masks. In fact, Germany was very short of gas masks during World War II, which prevented them from using the new poison gas they developed to bomb British cities
Mickey Mouse masks that became collectibles
In the Atlantic Ocean On the other hand, the United States was also worried about being attacked by biological and chemical weapons, so the government learned from the British and began to issue gas masks to civilians. However, underage children in the United States are generally afraid of the appearance of gas masks and are unwilling to wear them. To this end, the U.S. military, together with the famous animation master Walt Disney, designed a "Mickey Mouse Mask" to eliminate children's fear of gas masks and let them regard wearing gas masks as a kind of game. However, only 1,000 sets of this rare mask were produced and have not been put into practical use. After the war, the "Mickey Mouse Mask" became a highly sought-after high-end collection in the collector's market.
Mickey Mouse gas mask designed by Walt Disney
A first draft of the Mickey Mouse mask drawn by Walt Disney. It can be seen that this gas mask is very cute and caters to the needs of children - they do not want a mask that looks like a ghost. scary mask!
Walt Disney is showing off the Mickey Mouse mask he designed for Major General William Porter
Americans' worries are not completely unreasonable. After all, they have to face a very ferocious enemy-the Japanese army. During the war of aggression against China, the Japanese discovered that Chinese soldiers and civilians lacked poison gas protection methods, so they frantically used poison gas on a large scale on the Chinese battlefield. At the end of the war, the desperate Japanese army even planned "Operation Yozakura" - using submarines to carry seaplanes to carry out biological and chemical warfare on the American mainland. This plan was ultimately not implemented due to Japan's surrender.
At the same time, the Japanese government was also worried about retaliatory poison gas bombing by the Allies. As a result, the Japanese had already begun distributing gas masks domestically before the war and also conducted gas warfare drills. In the end, the Allies carried out retaliatory actions, but the way they were implemented was far beyond the imagination of the Japanese - the US military dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The power of the equivalent of tens of thousands of tons of TNT was far from a simple That's all a rubber gas mask can handle!
In 1936, a poison gas bombing exercise was being held in a temple in Tokyo. The monks wore gas masks and evacuated in an orderly manner
In 1934, during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, a group of Japanese police officers were wearing gas masks and conducting air defense drills
To this day, ordinary people They no longer need to worry about gas bombs falling from the sky. For them, gas masks are a cultural symbol that expresses strong concern about air pollution. However, with the signing of the Paris Agreement, governments around the world have gradually begun to pay attention to the issue of air pollution. I believe that in the near future, with the advancement of science, humans will be able to find effective means to control air pollution, and smog and air pollution will be sealed in history like gas masks and chemical weapons.
(This article was originally published on the WeChat public account "Dianbingtang" (WeChat ID: WarriorSalon), and is reprinted by The Paper with permission)
