Book dossier

A higher form of killing

by Robert Harris

A higher form of killing begins with the First World War, when poison gas killed or maimed one and a half million men in the mud of Flanders. It tells of the Japanese use of mustard gas and biological weapons in the 1930s, the Nazis' discovery of nerve gas in 1937, and the huge arsenal of chemical weapons which Hitler, who used gas to kill millions in concentration camps, several times came close to using in battle. It tells of horrifying secret experiments with anthrax (in Great Britain in the 1940s), the development of the plague bacillus, and futuristic attempts to tinker with the genetic code. A higher form of killing reveals that Churchill planned to use gas in 1940; that the British stored two million cattle cakes impregnated with anthrax for dropping on Germany; that the Americans made millions of biological bombs and debated plans to drench German cities with germs; and that anti-crop agents were used against Germany and Japan, causing widespread starvation. The United States used tons of chemical defoliants in Vietnam; there is strong evidence that has been widely debated that the Russians used chemical warfare in Laos, Afghanistan, and Eritrea. Drawing extensively on American, British, European, and (where possible) Russian sources -- most of them previously classified or unavailable -- this timely book tells the secret history of chemical and germ warfare. Today the United States leads in the development of these weapons. Germ warfare has been outlawed, but the new and frightening prospect of a chemical weapons race is a subject of national and international concern. In writing this book, the authors have received wide support from soldiers and internationally renowned scientists.