Political History Commons^™

Britain Can Take It: Civil Defense And Chemical Warfare In Great Britain, 1915-1945, Jordan I. Malfoy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the origins of civil defense are to be found in pre-World War II Britain and that a driving force of this early civil defense scheme was fear of poison gas. Later iterations of civil defense, such as the Cold War system in America, built on already existing regimes that had proven their worth during WWII. This dissertation demonstrates not only that WWII civil defense served as a blueprint for later civil defense schemes, but also that poison gas anxiety served as a particular tool for the implementation and success of civil defense. The dissertation is organized …