7. Nazi scientists were responsible for the discovery of several nerve agents, including Sarin, Soman, and Tabun, which would become staples of now-internationally outlawed chemical weapons
Among the inventions and discoveries by the Nazis, arguably the most destructive were several of the most powerful and horrific nerve agents ever synthesized including Sarin, Soman, and Tabun; all of the so-called G-Series nerve agents were discovered by a team of scientists at IG Farben, led by Dr. Gerhard Schrader who also identified Cyclosarin in 1949.
Tabun, the first nerve agent discovered, was the product of accident when in January 1936 Schrader identified the toxicity of the compound during tests of organophosphates to kill insects via the poison. During World War II, as part of the Grün 3 program, an estimated 12,500 tons of Tabun was manufactured before the plant at Dyhernfurth was captured by the Soviet Red Army. During the Nuremberg Trial, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production, declared he had intended to kill Hitler by introducing tabun into the ventilation system of the Führerbunker.
Sarin, the most toxic nerve agent in the world at the time of discovery, was identified in 1938 in an attempt to create stronger pesticides. Offered to the chemical warfare division of the German Army Weapons Office in mid-1939, mass productions plants were under construction at the end of the war and a total of up to 10 tons of sarin was manufactured between 1939 and 1945. Although incorporated into artillery shells, sarin was never militarily deployed during the Second World War; among its post-war uses, sarin has been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands during the Iran-Iraq War, in terrorist attacks, most notably by Aum Shinrikyo in 1994, and recently in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
Despite the attempted proscription of chemical warfare in the Geneva Protocols of 1925, restricting the use of mustard gas, among other chemical weapons, after the casualties of World War I, research into new weaponized chemical substances continued; with the discovery of Tabun and Sarin these efforts accelerated, resulting in the discovery of Soman in the summer of 1944. Even more toxic than sarin, only small quantities were able to be synthesized before the end of the war and it was never militarized by the Nazis.