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 ?