If Nazi Germany used chemical weapons in Normandy, would it have affected the outcome of the war?

The Allies were mindful of the threat, and kept Chemical stockpiles on hand near the frontline for a swift retaliation. Thus the war would have turned chemical in days not weeks.

Others probably have better specialised knowledge here, but my understanding is that the Allied troops did have respirators available but probably underestimated the advances made by the Germans in developing new Chemical weapons. I am not sure how effective the allied equipment would have been.

In terms of delivery mechanisms the Allies had many more options and could use theirs to effectively target not just the frontline, but also the German infrastructure. My own view is that it would not have helped Germany to turn to Chemical weapons largely for this reason.
 
The Germans used chemical weapons in WWI and the Allies didn't lay waste to them after the war. The Japanese did the same during WWII, yet the allies didn't engaging in mass murder just to satiate some revenge driven bloodlust. Everyone on this board needs to step back from the doomsday fantasies and look at things in a more realistic fashion.
Yes, but the Allies will area bomb the Atlantic Wall with gas so the second wave will be unopposed.
 
The Germans used chemical weapons in WWI and the Allies didn't lay waste to them after the war. The Japanese did the same during WWII, yet the allies didn't engaging in mass murder just to satiate some revenge driven bloodlust. Everyone on this board needs to step back from the doomsday fantasies and look at things in a more realistic fashion.

Tho they came close. The British attempted to maintain the blockade, restricting food imports. That aggravated the shortages & malnutrition already underway. The US was uncooperative in this & the European Relief organization managed to get some food shipments to Germany. Later the Versailles treaty was aimed at destroying Germany economically. For a variety of reasons support for this faded & when France & Belgium attempted to enforce it in 1923 they found the former Entente members no longer supported the full articles of the treaty.

Had the Entente members been a little more united & vicious Germany of the winter of 1918-1919 would have been a large step closer to mass starvation. Later a properly enforced Versailles treaty could have ecomomically ruined Germany for many decades. Even as it fell out the effects of Entente actions post 1918 were worse on the Gemans than post 1945. ie: In the first case it was fifteen years before Germany attempted rearmament. In the second the western Allies encouraged Germany to start rearmament in a little over five years.
 
Hitler refused SS requests to use it in 1945 against the advancing Red Army. But, let's say he dies three weeks before D-Day and Himmler not the plotters take over and he orders gas used on D-Day.

Army Group B is not the best Army Group to give gas too for a couple reasons namely who was leading it and up and down they already knew they lost before the battle and were lapsing into US Civil War history to see what being occupied by America would be like while they were at that point only holding out that they might get some better under the table terms then what was being talked about in the American press.

I think you would need the Army Groups in the West purged first which is doable and in time happened OTL.

Still you might not believe this but even IKE kept in contact with the German generals to say let them know after a ship full of mustard gas was sunk and it rolled over Italy that America wasn't using. I think the tactical use of gas would stay tactical unless Himmler ordered they be put in planes and dropped over London.
 
The allies particulalrly the Western ones where far better equipped to resist and prevail in a chemical Battlefield than the Germans were.

As has been discussed - the Western Allies were near as dammit 100% Motorised - the Germans not even close and their animals would suffer.

Many of their 'fortification' divisions were of lower quality than the allied Divisions and I suspect a Chemical attack on the allies may do more harm than good to the defenders

Also with a far larger industry to draw on the Wallies would easily be able to 'out chemical attack' the Nazi's
 
You act as though Churchill is a discount General Ripper or some sort of a crazed lunatic.
I respect and love the hell out of Churchill, but many of the things the man wanted to enact against the German people and indeed against the people of the rest of Europe in the name of stopping Nazi Germany are horrifying. If the Germans use gas at D-day then Operation Vegetarian may not be the worst thing that Churchill unleashes upon the continent.
 
Army Group B is not the best Army Group to give gas too for a couple reasons namely who was leading it and up and down they already knew they lost before the battle and were lapsing into US Civil War history to see what being occupied by America would be like while they were at that point only holding out that they might get some better under the table terms then what was being talked about in the American press.

If that was true, then they did a poor job of it then. The WAllies encountered stiff resistance even from German units that had been shattered.
 
If that was true, then they did a poor job of it then. The WAllies encountered stiff resistance even from German units that had been shattered.

You seem to be unable to seperate the generals from the line soliders. The generals knew it was screwed and those that didn't go along were reassigned or those too close to the July Plot or the plot in Paris were purged.

The line soldiers and low level officers were given reading material that the Americans meant to starve the German population to death and that it was a fight for national survival.

General George Marshall complained to Morgenthau that German resistance had strengthened. Hoping to get Morgenthau to relent on his plan for Germany, President Roosevelt's son-in-law Lt. Colonel John Boettiger who worked in the War Departmentexplained to Morgenthau how the American troops who had had to fight for five weeks against fierce German resistance to capture the city of Aachen had complained to him that the Morgenthau Plan was "worth thirty divisions to the Germans." Morgenthau refused to relent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

The brilliance of the Soviet's were they put in the spy Harry Dexter White to provide and cajole Morgenthau on the plan which worked. History calls it the Morgenthau Plan, but it really should be called the Moscow Plan as it was a brilliant play by the Soviet's to keep the ordinary Germans fighting for months after it was clear they were beaten in the West.
 
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You seem to be unable to seperate the generals from the line soliders. The generals knew it was screwed and those that didn't go along were reassigned or those too close to the July Plot or the plot in Paris were purged.

The generals likewise attempted to effectively direct German resistance up until the very end. Even Rommel was doing his utmost to fight the WAllies right up until he was injured in that strafing attack.
 
The generals likewise attempted to effectively direct German resistance up until the very end. Even Rommel was doing his utmost to fight the WAllies right up until he was injured in that strafing attack.

Then frankly you don't know what Rommel and Von Kluge's deaths were really about. Not the crappy assed evidence that Berlin could find on them and the July Plot. It was that the much stronger evidence they intended to organize a surrender in the West upon Hitler's death.

And of course they wanted something to hand over which letting the Western Allies just walk though France first wouldn't do.

America was at war with Germany not the Nazi Party and in 1944 Washington wanted Germany to end as a unified state and a lot of their population to end in the post war process. FDR would have been much much harder on the Germans then Truman and Truman was pretty hard.
 

missouribob

Banned
Couldn't the Nazi's not use chemical weapons because their supply trains weren't mechanized meaning they didn't have mask for their horses?
 
Couldn't the Nazi's not use chemical weapons because their supply trains weren't mechanized meaning they didn't have mask for their horses?
this has probably been mentioned already, but the real reason the Nazis didn't use chemical weapons is, first and foremost, for fear that the Allies would respond in kind, and secondly because Hitler himself had reservations about using them because of his own personal experience with poison gas during WWI (not that it stopped them from using it on Holocaust victims and developing both sarin and tabun....)
 
By 1942 the British had come up with this plan to distribute anthrax-laced linseed cakes to be eaten by cattle and spread among the population, murdering millions.

They were tested in an island in Scotland - it remained a contaminated no-go area until 1990.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vegetarian

With a plan like this in the cards in OTL, would the Allies retaliate to chemical attacks? Hell yes they would. Certainly not with Operation Vegetarian itself, but at the very least with mustard gas or other type of chemical attacks on Nazi troops.

Hitler was insane but not insane enough to provoke the Allies in the field of WMDs, the Allies had far better capacities in this field, even before the Manhattan Project.
 
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