Exploring the history of the gas mask in Germany from 1915 to the eve of
the Second World War, Peter Thompson traces how chemical weapons and
protective technologies like the gas mask produced new relationships to
danger, risk, management and mastery in the modern age of mass
destruction. Recounting the apocalyptic visions of chemical death that
circulated in interwar Germany, he argues that while everyday encounters
with the gas mask tended to exacerbate fears, the gas mask also came to
symbolize debates about the development of military and chemical
technologies in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He underscores
how the gas mask was tied into the creation of an exclusionary national
community under the Nazis and the altered perception of environmental
danger in the second half of the twentieth century. As this innovative
new history shows, chemical warfare and protection technologies came to
represent poignant visions of the German future.