Chemical warfare WW2?

[Hierophant]

What would it take for chemical weapons to go into use during WW2, preferably after the fall of france. What Im thinking is massive air raids against German cities with gas. What would have been the effect on the outcome of the war?

My one idea on how to have gas used is for Germany to press on with sealion. Personally I believe that it was doomed from the start, but if they can land and scare the British into thinking they will win, the Brits use their gas stockpiles on the Germans at the beaches.

Thoughts?

 

[Mr.Bluenote]

Talking about gas, one thing I've allways wondered about. Considering how utterly insane old Adolf was, especially during the last two years of WWII, and how hard pressed the German Army was, why didn't they use chemical weapons on the Eastern Front? The German troops were trained in its use, how to protect themselves etc etc, and Germany produced some rather nasty stuff (nerve agents among other things), and which perhaps is equally important, thought nothing of the Slavs they were fighting.

Well, one things for certain the Allies should be VERY hard pressed to use gas or other similar weapons. One scenario is the invasion of Britain, yes, but mustard gas isn't all that effective, and as mentioned above the Germans knew how to handle that.

Mass gas bombings of cities? I can't see the Allies involved in something like that. Burn cities down, yes! But plaster them with gas, no? If they did however, it wouldn't be a nice experience, but he Germans would cope, I think. Mostly because ordinary gas (mustard etc etc) has very limited use and usually isn't worth the trouble. Nerve agents however... well, as long as it didn't rain to much or were very sunny...

Best regards!


- Bluenote.

 

[Tom_B]

Hitler and Gas

One thing to remember about Hitler was that he had a nasty experience with mustard gas (including temporary blindness) in the First World War. This made averse to using gas in the Second World War. On the other hand Churchill at various points in the war wanted to use gas (and maybe anthrax bombs as well). Training aircraft were modified to carry small gas bombs in the summer of 1940 as an antiinvasion measure. It is argued by some that gas is less useful as a weapon in a highly mobile war than it was in the positional warfare of World War One. Still there were periods were the Russian Front at least was relatively stable. Lastly the Americans had plans to use cyanide gas in the invasion of Japan because it penetrated Japanse gas masks but not the American ones.

 

[carlton_bach]

WE should not forget the place that gas, and chemical warfare in general, occupied in the imagination of the people in a pre-nuclear world. HItler had been blinded in a gas attack himself, albeit temporarily, and hundreds of thousands of men throughout the world had similar experiences. To veterans of WWI, and a generation having grown up on their stories, gas was the weapon that crossed the limit. If you were going to use gas, you would do anything. Therefore, many decisionmakers were averse to its use out of all proportion to its effectiveness.

Secondly (and this was the case with a lot of developments in WWII) the Germans who had developed nerve agents were shocked by their lethality. Whether this could have been exploited in battlefield use is another question, but they were terrified by what they had created. And they were firmly convinced the Allies had it, too. A major cornerstone of German strategy was a no-first-strike-policy on gas. There was too much fear it would be used in retaliation. The Allies largely duplicated the policy, though there were incidents where they came very close to launching first strikes.

By the time the Third Reich had its back to the wall, the government was fairly sure thast any gas attack on any Allied force would be met with wholesale gassing of German cities. The Luftschutz did not have the capacity to protect the population at that point. Plus, and this is my personal guess, the military apparatus would not have carried out the order if it had come. By late 1944, German generals had largely converted to selective obedience.

On a different note, Ken Alibek (who is in a position to know) claims that biological warfare was initiated in WWII in 1942/3 - by the Red Army. He points to a severe Tularemia outbreak among German troops of the Heeresgruppe Sued. Tularemia was one of the earliest germs to be weaponised, so it would be plausible. What if the Germans had suspected...?

 

[NHBL]

Gas by accident...

Both sides had gas stockpiled for use if the other side used it--or perhaps for repelling Sealion.
Suppose a raid on an airbase results in the destruction of a stockpile. The wind spreads the gas over the base and a nearby town. Someone who doesn't know that the stockpile is there concludes that the enemy has launched gas warfare. Even the most effective bureaucracys may not realize that something is stored in a particular base, or in transit to a new location)
The instant responce is to retaliate for the unprovoked gassing.
The situation escalates, as the other side sees an unprovoked gas attack, believing that the stories of the first one are lies to justify the action.
By the time anyone realized that it was a tragic mistake, it's too late. Nerve gas is falling on the Russian front, and perhaps also on Britain.
It would probably spread beyond that, to the Pacific as well.
World War Two just got uglier.

 

[wkwillis]

Goralski-Oil and War

Gas is a density weapon in air war. It is used against cities to prevent fire fighters from putting out fires. As far as city bombing is concerned, Germany was so short of oil that if they had had to evacuate their cities their economy would have collapsed and they would have lost the war. The UK had access to far more oil than Germany did and could have continued to operate factories that were distributed in the countryside and thus less susceptible to attack.

 

[tom]

Funny, the Austrian Artist had no qualms about gas chambers in the Camps, and he hated Slavs only a little less than he hated Jews...

 

[Melvin Loh]

I've read material re the fear by Allied planners for OVERLORD that the Germans would possibly launch poison gas strikes against the Normandy beach-heads and scatter radioactive dust on the beaches, which was why gas-masks were issued to all Allied personnel. The Americans were also considering the 1st use of mustard gas (IIRC) in the Pacific to saturate Jap island defences prior to US Marine landings and thereby reduce American casualties, but apparently this was opposed by FDR on the basis of his aversion to chemical weapons as a far too inhumane form of warfare.

On the biological warfare note- let's never forget the Japs with Unit 731, the Ping Fan bio weapons facility where atrocious experiments were conducted on live inmates and Manchuria and their definitive utilisation of diseases such as black plague and anthrax against the Chinese civilian population there and in other parts of China which they invaded.

 

[carlton_bach]

Funny, the Austrian Artist had no qualms about gas chambers in the Camps, and he hated Slavs only a little less than he hated Jews...

I think there's a different line of thinking at work here. Zyklon B was not a weapon of war. It would have made a lousy battlefield gas - takes very long to kill, does not cause injuries or lasting incapacitation if the victim is removed early enough, and gives very low yields in terms of weight-to-contaminated-volume. It was, in fact, marketed as a pesticide for de-lousing clothes pre-war.

Which mirrors quite closely what Hitler thought of the Jews.

 

[Melvin Loh]

SECRETS OF WAR

Hey guys, just saw a SECRETS OF WAR episode on Bio-Chem warfare, which stated that apparently just prior to the planning and organisation for D-Day, 1 Zionist lobby group proposed to Gen George Marshall to employ chemical warfare against the Germans if they didn't stop their mass gassings of Jews in the concentration camps. This request was ignored due to the Allies concentrating on other aspects of their overall invasion plan, but WI the 1st use of poison gas had been viably considered by the US chiefs-of-staff in response to the Final Solution ? Would the war have just spiralled even more out of control, with Hitler finally abandoning his moral qualms and ordering the fullscale utilisation of sarin and tabun ?

 

[Karlos]

Well, the germans had new nerve gases like Tabun and Sarin that could have been very effective on the eastern front -In Stalingrad, and against the defenders in Kurks- If only used in this front, the british and americans may have restrained the use of gas in order to avoid a retaliation against London -id est, the statu quo that really happened- In any case, war would have been very ugly.