A German flamethrower

Hungarian Gábor Szakáts invented the flamethrower which was first used by the German army in WWI. Gábor Szakáts was the only Hungarian on the list of war criminals assembled by France after the war due to the invention of the flamethrower. Even his birthplace Budapest refused to bury Szakáts because of his invention.It was not until 1911 that the German Army accepted their first real flamethrowing device, creating a specialist regiment of twelve companies equipped with Flammenwerferapparaten. Despite this, use of fire in a World War I battle predated flamethrower use, with a petrol spray being ignited by an incendiary bomb in the Argonne-Meuse sector in October 1914. The flamethrower was first used in World War I on February 26, 1915, when it was briefly used against the French outside Verdun. On July 30, 1915, it was first used in a concerted action, against British trenches at Hooge, where the lines were 4.5 m (4.9 yd) apart—even there, the casualties were caused mainly by soldiers being flushed into the open and being shot by more conventional means rather than from the fire itself. The flamethrower had other limitations: it was cumbersome and difficult to operate and could only be safely fired from a trench, which limited its use to areas where the opposing trenches were less than the maximum range of the weapon, namely 18 m (20 yd) apart—which was not a common situation; the fuel would also only last for about 2 minutes. This German flamethrower was produced by Elastolin in 30s.