Toxic: A History of Nerve Agents, From Nazi Germany to Putin’s Russia

There are few heroes and lots of villains in this history of chemical nerve agents 1931 to 2018. Arguably, one of the corporate heroes might be the pre-second world war German army. Thanks to deals with the chemical manufacturer IG Farben, it had stockpiled enormous quantities of lethal cyano- and fluoro-substituted phosphorus esters (commonly known as tabun and sarin). Perhaps surprisingly, its testing programme had largely been ethical, relying on paid volunteers rather than concentration camp inmates. Moreover, it kept its research and products well out of the hands of its less-principled, murderous SS colleagues. In the end, the Wehrmacht made no use of the compounds. Adolf Hitler had been incorrectly advised by IG Farben executives that the Allies would have had similar materials, and probably in greater amounts, and thus concluded a Nazi first-use would provoke a devastating retribution.