New Offensive Weaponry and Societal Shift

U.S. Nuclear Test 1954, Wikimedia Commons

Other new technologies emerged from work in chemical laboratories, and these include nuclear bombs, incendiary bombs, flamethrowers, and smoke screens. David Mindel explains that the invention of the incendiary bomb led to the creation of napalm, which was heavily used in the Vietnam War later in the twentieth century (6). Some of these inventions changed the way that each individual soldier perceived the battlefield. While artillery and explosives had been explored in previous battles, the implementation of incendiary bombs and flamethrowers introduced new methods for causing damage. No longer was the weapon’s charge expelled in an instant, but rather these weapons created fire which could then spread and continue plaguing other soldiers. This theme of weaponry with a long lasting impact was further explored with nuclear explosives, which leaves behind large traces of radiation for hundreds of years after detonation. While nuclear power did not change each soldier’s perception of the battlefield, its implementation and long-lasting impact does reveal a major shift in how countries determined the effectiveness of offensive weaponry. Also, the implementation of smokescreens reveals a collective understanding of technology’s power  to visually alter the battlefield. This is an incredibly useful expansion of the World War 1 tendency to alter the landscape through construction of trenches in that it was easier to implement, temporary, and did not restrict soldiers to subterranean trenches. These purely offensive technologies garner the most interest with World War II historians, with many not realizing that without the aid of defensive technology these would have been useless.

While the chemical factories were producing these items, many existing manufacturers converted from manufacturing consumer goods to manufacturing military goods. This can be seen with automobile factories making tanks and airplanes or with silverware manufacturers making surgical instruments, and this transition from making consumer goods to military goods led to domestic shortages of some consumer goods. Even so, this shift from consumer to military production indicates the perceived importance of new technology in the battlefield, which was so immense that it affected a total transformation of American industry. This shift shows that this recognition existed beyond just the political level, that it had influenced large swaths of the civilian societies involved in the war.