The shotgun reprisals- WWI

Read a mil hist mag article yest bout the military use of shotguns- the use by US soldiers & marines on the Western Front of pump-action 'trench brooms', with the great amount of damage caused, infuriated the Germans enough that they threatened summary execution of any captured American soldier wielding a shotgun, on the basis that shotgun projectivles violated the hague Convention on weapons causing superfluous/unnecessary suffering. Of course, the US threatened reprisals against German POWs if the Germans carried out such a policy, so the matter was dropped, with no record of whether German soldiers did indeed carry out this threat. WI, however, such reprisals had indeed taken place over the use of shotguns ? Could this debate on the legality of 1 type of weapon on the Western front then resulted in allied offiers & soldiers deciding to also brand other similarly feared weapons as poison gas or flamethrowers as illegal, then sysematically executing captured Germans who were operators of these weapons systems ?
 
Not sure about WW I, but on the Eastern Front in WW II, the Soviets feared Germans with flamethrowers, and any German flamethrower operator who was captured could expect no mercy, and often were put to death with their own weapon....especially at Stalingrad.
 
Doesn't the US Military use them sometimes? In Urban operations and other confined spaces Shotguns have their uses, so in the trenches they would have avoided the close in melee if used as much wouldn't they? And why are they considered to cause "Unnessecerry Suffering?" They basically involve shooting lots of bullets instead of just one, although their sometimes smaller I suppose.
 
And why are they considered to cause "Unnessecerry Suffering?" They basically involve shooting lots of bullets instead of just one, although their sometimes smaller I suppose.

the affects of 'lots of bullets' as you so bluntly put it was that it was their Melee Firearm, there Trench clearer.
here, imagine you're on the western Frount, 1918, about to face the Americans who are charging at your lines. now imagine you're in a narrow trench with little room to manuver. Now imagine you're looking down a 12 gauge.

imagine what kind of damage that would do, incredibly devisating to Moral; the new troops walking past the Mutilated corpse, seeing your buddy through out the war getting his head blown off into a cloud of Blood and bone bits. you get the Idea?

as for if they followed Up and banned it in combat, maybe an increase in the production of Portable and light-weight Machine guns?
 
Doesn't the US Military use them sometimes? In Urban operations and other confined spaces Shotguns have their uses, so in the trenches they would have avoided the close in melee if used as much wouldn't they? And why are they considered to cause "Unnessecerry Suffering?" They basically involve shooting lots of bullets instead of just one, although their sometimes smaller I suppose.

Yes, the US military as well as many other militaries across the world use shotguns. They definitely have their uses in close-quarters battle situations, such as urban locations, trenches, and the like. They're also more adaptable than many assault rifles, with their capability of loading different types of ammunition.

The German opinion on the use of shotguns in WWI was partially a "they're not playing fair!" complaint and a honest objection. At least at the beginning of WWI and beforehand, warfare was supposed to be gentlemanly and proper. If you get shot by a rifle it can be gruesome but usually there's one hole in and maybe one out. Yet if you get hit by a blast from a shotgun, it's a physician's nightmare--innumerable pieces of shrapnel buried in flesh, huge potential for trauma and hemorrhage, plus the basic kinetic force of such an impact. When used up close and dirty, the shotgun is an awful weapon and that's why the Germans complained about it.

The OP does make an interesting point. I'm not so much interested in a tit-for-tat between the Germans and the Americans in WWI, but WI such an event leads to legislation against certain types of weapons much earlier than in OTL?
 

CalBear

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The stupidity of this complaint is stunning, even for an army losing a war.

So it is okay to:

Kill using poisons that sear the lungs and cause victims to literally drown on dry land with their own body fluids providing the liquids.

Blind people with poison gas designed to cause disabling (frequently permanent), but rarely instantly lethal effects like Mustard Gas.

Cause horrific burns with flamethrowers.

Slaughter men crossing No Man's Land with shrapnel from high explosive shells, with many of the victims surviving with loss of limbs and so much metal in their bodies that it was impossible to remove all of it.

Use hand grenades which kill and disable at short range with shrapnel effect.

But it is a war crime to use a 12 gauge with 00 buckshot?

Yea... right.:rolleyes:

The U.S. military uses shot guns to this day, mostly for clearing doors during entry, but also for CQC where, as noted above, the weapon is frighteningly effective.
 

MrP

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The stupidity of this complaint is stunning, even for an army losing a war.

So it is okay to:

Kill using poisons that sear the lungs and cause victims to literally drown on dry land with their own body fluids providing the liquids.

Blind people with poison gas designed to cause disabling (frequently permanent), but rarely instantly lethal effects like Mustard Gas.

Cause horrific burns with flamethrowers.

Slaughter men crossing No Man's Land with shrapnel from high explosive shells, with many of the victims surviving with loss of limbs and so much metal in their bodies that it was impossible to remove all of it.

Use hand grenades which kill and disable at short range with shrapnel effect.

But it is a war crime to use a 12 gauge with 00 buckshot?

Yea... right.:rolleyes:

The U.S. military uses shot guns to this day, mostly for clearing doors during entry, but also for CQC where, as noted above, the weapon is frighteningly effective.
Also reminds me of saw bayonets, which, IIRC, when issued to German troops were generally filed flat by them, since Entente troops had an unofficial policy of never capturing any soldier so-equipped.
 

Markus

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Of course, the US threatened reprisals against German POWs if the Germans carried out such a policy, so the matter was dropped, ....

IIRC the US military layers just reminded the Germans that shotguns had been a part of the arsenal for centuries. Muzzleloaders often fired so called buck and ball. And shotgun ammo did not violated the Hague Convention. That clause refered to the so called dum-dum bullets and other expanding ammo, not solid but soft lead balls.
 
So it is okay to:

Kill using poisons that sear the lungs and cause victims to literally drown on dry land with their own body fluids providing the liquids.

Blind people with poison gas designed to cause disabling (frequently permanent), but rarely instantly lethal effects like Mustard Gas.

At the time, poison gas was often seen as a much more humane weapon than e.g. HE shells, because it mostly wounded, but rarely killed enemy soldiers; its often crippling long-term effects were not yet fully known.

Yes, today we consider poison gas to be inherently evil, but its image was quite different at the time of WWI.

The biggest ´fans´ of poison gas seem to have been the Americans; their plans for 1919 had the highest ratio of gas/HE shells IIRC.
 
At the time, poison gas was often seen as a much more humane weapon than e.g. HE shells, because it mostly wounded, but rarely killed enemy soldiers; its often crippling long-term effects were not yet fully known.

Yes, today we consider poison gas to be inherently evil, but its image was quite different at the time of WWI.

The biggest ´fans´ of poison gas seem to have been the Americans; their plans for 1919 had the highest ratio of gas/HE shells IIRC.

That may be true, but it doesn't address any of the other points. Your second paragraph appears to be saying "The Entente weren't saints either." That's the point. It was majorly stupid because the Germans hadn't just done much worse, they'd taken much worse.
 

CalBear

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At the time, poison gas was often seen as a much more humane weapon than e.g. HE shells, because it mostly wounded, but rarely killed enemy soldiers; its often crippling long-term effects were not yet fully known.

Yes, today we consider poison gas to be inherently evil, but its image was quite different at the time of WWI.

The biggest ´fans´ of poison gas seem to have been the Americans; their plans for 1919 had the highest ratio of gas/HE shells IIRC.


I fear that you have missed the point. I was not condemming the Germans use of any of the weapons I listed (if I had been going for that I would have pushed other, equally "improper" weapon use like unrestricted submarine warfare). Gas was used by all sides, with the opponents trading off development (the war ended before the U.S. could introduce Lewiste, a particularly nasty creation) and I am not judging the lethality or morality of the weapon.

I am simply noting that, in the greater scheme of things, citing shotguns as a weapon of particular note is like standing in the middle of a McDonald's and decrying the apple pies as being needless fattening.
 
Oh, I was not defending Germany. I have my doubts about the whole shotgun affair, as I cannot remember reading about it in old German law journals, but there are much more interesting legal issues in WWI.

I just remembered a rather obscure factoid - namely US fascination with poison gas in WWI and the early 1920´s - and mentioned it.

Sorry if this remark was too tangential.:eek:
 
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