The Age of the Gas Mask
How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War

Uncovers how a material object – the civilian gas mask – can reveal the power and limits of the modern state facing total war.

Susan R. Grayzel (Author)

9781108491273, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 August 2022

288 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'One of the most horrifying strategies of twentieth-century warfare involved poisoning the air. Grayzel's meticulous study of popular and political responses to this awful prospect opens out the meanings and the legacies of efforts to protect the civilian body and offers new ways of understanding modern war.' Penny Summerfield, author of Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War

The First World War introduced the widespread use of lethal chemical weapons. In its aftermath, the British government, like that of many states, had to prepare civilians to confront such weapons in a future war. Over the course of the interwar period, it developed individual anti-gas protection as a cornerstone of civil defence. Susan R. Grayzel traces the fascinating history of one object – the civilian gas mask – through the years 1915–1945 and, in so doing, reveals the reach of modern, total war and the limits of the state trying to safeguard civilian life in an extensive empire. Drawing on records from Britain's Colonial, Foreign, War and Home Offices and other archives alongside newspapers, journals, personal accounts and cultural sources, she connects the histories of the First and Second World Wars, combatants and civilians, men and women, metropole and colony, illuminating how new technologies of warfare shaped culture, politics, and society.

1. Introduction
2. Inventing an object for modern conflict: The gas mask in war and peace, 1915–1929
3. Defending civilians: Developing the gas mask in Britain and its empire, c. 1930–1936
4. Unveiling the gas mask: Designs and dissent, 1936–1938
5. Curating the good citizen: The gas mask goes to war, 1939–1941
6. Facing wartime: The civilian gas mask's rise and fall, 1941–1945
7. Conclusion
Epilogue: Five brief ways of looking at a gas mask.

Subject Areas: Warfare & defence [JW], Military history [HBW], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]