When it comes to the First World War, anyone who has received a full nine years of compulsory education should not be unfamiliar. World War I, which is a compulsory chapter in junior high school history textbooks, its influence and historical significance are very important in the history of the whole world.
The outbreak of World War I was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. On July 28 of the same year, Austria-Hungary, with the support of Germany, used the incident as an excuse to declare war on Serbia. Then the situation became uncontrollable, Germany, Russia, France, Britain and other countries successively into the war, the First World War has since broken out in full swing, during which new countries and regions are constantly involved in the war. It was not until 1918 that US President Wilson issued the Fourteen Declarations of Peace and Germany and Austria announced their surrender, and the world war was officially over.
World War I lasted more than four years, and more than 30 people and nearly 1.5 billion people in the affected countries were involved in the war, causing 30 million casualties. Its material and economic losses were about $170 billion in the currency of the time, and the mental damage to people around the world was immeasurable.
War is always an inexhaustible topic, and there have been numerous publications of research and reminiscence books on the history of the First World War, which have emerged since the end of the First World War. People of different identities and different positions competed to study and analyze the war from different perspectives, and even the famous British Prime Minister Churchill once wrote a "Memoirs of the First World War" to record the first world war in human history.
History belongs to the liberal arts category according to the classification of disciplines, and it seems that it cannot be compared with pure science disciplines such as chemistry. However, there are inextricable relations between all things in this world, and there is no absolute unrelatedness. If someone looked at this war as a chemist from a chemical point of view, what kind of research spark would burst out?
Zhang Naiyan, a talented son of the Republic of China, has successively served as a professor in the Department of Chemistry of Peking University and Zhejiang University, and has authored a number of chemical research books. Under the chemist's job, he has another identity and has a lot of insights in historical research. The Complete History of the First World War is his research and analysis of the war as a chemist.
Like other books that tell the history of the First World War, the analysis of the pre-war world pattern, the causes, courses, and results of the war, the narration of representative historical events, and the evaluation of historical figures are indispensable. The author, Zhang Naiyan, is a science student, and brings the rigor and meticulousness of science to the creation of this book. Both the collection of literature and the analysis of historical development are very professional, and everywhere reflects the serious attitude of a scientist.
As the saying goes, what to sell is what to drink. In addition to the study of war history, Zhang Naiyan did not forget that his old profession was a "chemist", and he also made a profound analysis of the impact of science, especially chemistry on the military, in the First World War.
In this war, humanity used chemical weapons on a large scale for the first time. During the war, guns roared in the forward positions, and the chemical laboratories in the rear were also filled with smoke. In order to be able to develop the most lethal chemical weapons, more than 3,000 chemicals have become the research of chemists on both sides of the war. To a certain extent, these chemists also influenced the direction of the war, so some people called the First World War "the war of the chemists".
In short, the application of chemistry and war can now be called extreme. Or in this war, the scourge of chemical killing has not yet been severed, and if it is in the future, it will be trapped in an immeasurable calamity. However, the future disaster of war can be described as a cover!
This passage is Zhang Naiyan's analysis and summary of the First World War from the perspective of a chemist.
It is undeniable that, in a certain aspect, the First World War objectively promoted the development of science and technology, especially chemistry, but it also opened the "Pandora's box". This makes people worry, on the road of scientific development, is it really the higher and farther away the better?
Are they angels who benefit humanity? Or is it the devil who descends on the world? Perhaps it lies in the moment of human good and evil.
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