Why didn't Hitler authorise chemical weapons?

Something I was musing on the walk into work today.

It is well known the Nazis had a massive stockpile of chemical and biological weapons in storage, however they were never used despite the impending collapse of Germany and the Nazi regime.

Now I can understand why Hitler would have been against using them against the Western forces (Britain had its own moderate chemical weapons stock pile which it would have retaliated with, and Hitler was hoping for peace and reconciliation to a degree with the British people after the end of the war).

However, that doesn't explain why he didn't authorise their use against Soviet troops. Especially when the Soviet forces began turning the tide and approaching German soil, it seems inconsistent with what I know of Hitler that he wouldn't have used any weapon at his disposal to repulse the tide of Communism.

Ah, but I hear you scholars says "But Hitler was wounded during WW1 from a chemical attack and thus was against the use of chemical weapons."

This didn't stop him using gas chambers to cleanse those he considered 'undesirables'. Its not a big leap from gassing civilian undesirables to gassing enemy combatants, especially those in the East he considered an 'inferior race'.

Hitler was not a rational man and especially towards the end of the war became more and more unstable. He disagreed with his generals and had them removed or executed when they suggested organised retreats. I believe he ordered the destruction of the Eiffel Tower when it seemed like Paris was about to be liberated, so he wasn't beyond petty acts of revenge.

Given all this, even he didn't use them as part of his main campaign in the East, why didn't Hitler authorise the use of chemical weapons when the Eastern Front began collapsing, or even just as a revenge attack scattered anthrax or something over the Russian/Polish etc. countryside?
 
Churchill threatened to use them if they were used on the Eastern Front. And I suppose the gas would a certain amount of time and resources, both for the creation of canisters to hold it, the chemicals themselves, and the artillery and planes to deliver them. Perhaps he did not think they would be needed since he expected constant progress in the war wouldn't want his soldiers walking into poison gas or for the land he wanted to be wrecked By the time the tide turned their wouldn't be the time or resources to produce the stuff.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Any explanation has to get to why they weren't used even during the Gotterdammerung phase of the Third Reich - when there was nothing to lose, and arguably Hitler would have loved to see the nation which failed him destroyed spectacularly.
I think he may just have had a major psychological aversion to them.
 
Hitler ordered the Final Solution, but one thing that I don't think people understand too well is that he didn't actually micromanage the Final Solution nor did he want to know the particulars of how it was being carried out. Any of them... no stories of gassings or mass shootings of women and children. The reports from Himmler to Hitler (we have them) about the Final Solution always use euphemisms for mass murder, X number of Jews ready to be 'deported East' was the most common euphemism.

If you imaged them talking about, hay we are starving them to death at this camp and using Zyklon B on them at this camp, no, they never talked about the particulars of how it was being done anything like that. It was all crunched down to cold, unemotional numbers that were 'sent East' or 'ready to be sent East'. Hitler wanted to be able to sleep at night while he did something some part of him I believe knew was abhorrent, but he still ordered it in order to achieve his racial vision for Europe.

He ordered massive racial killing on a scale never before done and then insulated himself from the horrors of what he had ordered.

But, as for why he didn't use gas, he hated the stuff and it was a thing of nightmares to him. He also knew if he starts it, and he refused all requests to do so even to the end, it could be him choking in gas yet again.
 
Something I was musing on the walk into work today.

It is well known the Nazis had a massive stockpile of chemical and biological weapons in storage, however they were never used despite the impending collapse of Germany and the Nazi regime.

Now I can understand why Hitler would have been against using them against the Western forces (Britain had its own moderate chemical weapons stock pile which it would have retaliated with, and Hitler was hoping for peace and reconciliation to a degree with the British people after the end of the war).

However, that doesn't explain why he didn't authorise their use against Soviet troops. Especially when the Soviet forces began turning the tide and approaching German soil, it seems inconsistent with what I know of Hitler that he wouldn't have used any weapon at his disposal to repulse the tide of Communism.

Ah, but I hear you scholars says "But Hitler was wounded during WW1 from a chemical attack and thus was against the use of chemical weapons."

This didn't stop him using gas chambers to cleanse those he considered 'undesirables'. Its not a big leap from gassing civilian undesirables to gassing enemy combatants, especially those in the East he considered an 'inferior race'.

Hitler was not a rational man and especially towards the end of the war became more and more unstable. He disagreed with his generals and had them removed or executed when they suggested organised retreats. I believe he ordered the destruction of the Eiffel Tower when it seemed like Paris was about to be liberated, so he wasn't beyond petty acts of revenge.

Given all this, even he didn't use them as part of his main campaign in the East, why didn't Hitler authorise the use of chemical weapons when the Eastern Front began collapsing, or even just as a revenge attack scattered anthrax or something over the Russian/Polish etc. countryside?


Part of the problem with chemical weapons is their deployment. Another part of the problem is countermeasures. The third part is retaliation.

Chemical weapons since the First World War have only been used when the user has the luxury of time, the target has no or limited access to counter measures and there is no chance of retaliation.

Essentially against fast moving and spread out military targets even nerve agents are typically not that effective. If the troops have gas masks then even a nerve agent will typically take hours to incapacitate them as the agents is slowly absorbed through clothing and then skin and only then slowly around the body to attack the nervous system.

Add in that rain or wind can disperse almost all such agents. Take into account that if you deny a region with a persistent agent it is also going to require your own troops to wear protective gear to enter it and the Germans were short of rubber with which to make full protective suits and the problems quickly mount up even before you launch the damn attack.

That is likely why there was no "Gas em all" type order at the end, the means to deploy the weapons were simply too incapacitated to enable an effective strike.

Before that as posted above the threat of retaliation in kind served to remove any potential gain.
 
The germans thought that the Allies had developed nerve gases too and therefore they possessed no competitive advantage. I am sure that had they known that they were the only ones sitting on the first mass destruction weapons ever developed by man they would have behaved quite differently.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The germans thought that the Allies had developed nerve gases too and therefore they possessed no competitive advantage. I am sure that had they known that they were the only ones sitting on the first mass destruction weapons ever developed by man they would have behaved quite differently.
Except that that doesn't necessarily hold water.
1) Nerve gases aren't magic kill-the-Allies buttons, they're much harder to employ effectively than nuclear weapons.
2) If they had been willing to use them except for the fear of retaliation, then Hitler would have authorized them for use in the Alpine Redoubt or similar. I mean, when Hitler wanted to bring Germany down around his ears in a Wagnerian apocalypse... why not use chemical weapons to do it?
 
Except that that doesn't necessarily hold water.
1) Nerve gases aren't magic kill-the-Allies buttons, they're much harder to employ effectively than nuclear weapons.
2) If they had been willing to use them except for the fear of retaliation, then Hitler would have authorized them for use in the Alpine Redoubt or similar. I mean, when Hitler wanted to bring Germany down around his ears in a Wagnerian apocalypse... why not use chemical weapons to do it?

By the time he was willing to use them, the ability to use them was gone.
 
I think I will create a thread about nerve gases in order to discuss their effects, why they are rightly considered weapons of mass destruction like nukes and what might have easily happened had Hitler had different data in his hands in summer 1940 (the right time to unleash hell on earth).
 
He was completely and utterly against the idea to even the very end due to his own personal beliefs about chemical weapons; a belief stemming from himself being the victim of a chemical attack in WWI
 
He was completely and utterly against the idea to even the very end due to his own personal beliefs about chemical weapons; a belief stemming from himself being the victim of a chemical attack in WWI

I think that's the key. He knew if they were used in any front, there was a good chance that it'd mean they'd be used against the Germans, and potentially even as a "deep strike" against Berlin itself. His total fear of being on the receiving end of chemical weapons stayed his hand. Essentially, it was a precursor of formal MAD doctrine.
 
iirc, the reason is because Hitler himself was gassed close to the end of World War I

I often hear this and I think it's poppycock, even if Hitler actually said it.

Hitler sanctioned the deliberate gassing of millions of people. Also, given what we know about Hitler's nature, I would imagine that if his decisions were based on his wartime experience, he would be more likely to demand the use of gas against the Allies. He would be driven not by empathy but revenge.

Hitler (Nazi Germany) did not use gas in combat because of two reasons (1) gas is an unpredictable weapon more suited to offense than defense, and (2) the Allies would retaliate.
 
On a practical level, chemical weapons would have hurt the Nazis more than the Allies. The Nazis didn't have a fully mechanised force, whereas the UK and US (and alter USSR) did. Chemical weapons would wipe out the Nazis largely horse driven logistics network, whilst the Allies mechanised one, while suffering in terms its crews, would remain intact (and getting new trucks is easier than rearing new horses).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DnRn9hyFU
This always comes in handy when referring to Nazi logistics.
 
I often hear this and I think it's poppycock, even if Hitler actually said it.

Hitler sanctioned the deliberate gassing of millions of people.

Do you have a source for this? It's hard enough to find proof that Hitler personally ordered the Final Solution itself (it was Goering IOTL), let alone proof that he knew of and approved/ordered the specific method of gassing. I'd be interested in any material you have which proves the contrary.

(Moreover, it's rather tasteless to talk like a Nazi, but if - as we can assume Hitler did - one thinks Jews or other targets of extermination are subhuman vermin, it would be wrong to assume that what is fitting for them is acceptable on the battlefield against soldiers. However, we do then end up with the problem of why Hitler - if he did, and I don't think there's proof of this - ordered the gassing of Soviet POWs. It makes it more likely that fear of retaliation, and fear that German soldiers would suffer in a way he viewed to be beyond the pale, would stay his hand. Unless we want to get into the twisted psychology of the 'battlefield' being somehow noble [and therefore no place for gas, which is for the extermination of subhumans], which Hitler did indulge at times.)

Also, given what we know about Hitler's nature, I would imagine that if his decisions were based on his wartime experience, he would be more likely to demand the use of gas against the Allies. He would be driven not by empathy but revenge.

This feels like pop-psychology, and not particularly rooted in OTL's Hitler. This is a man who managed to maintain a real respect for the British when it was they, not the Russians, who shot at him. Hitler directed his rage and lust for revenge at targets that were not always those you would expect - if we want to stick to what we know of his WWI experiences, it was a Jewish officer recommended him for the Iron Cross.

Hitler (Nazi Germany) did not use gas in combat because of two reasons (1) gas is an unpredictable weapon more suited to offense than defense, and (2) the Allies would retaliate.

These are both valid reasons, but the so-called 'Gotterdammerung problem' still stops them in their tracks. In the absence of anything better, I myself come down on the 'he simply couldn't personally countenance it' side of the argument.

People are complicated. Monsters aren't real. Hitler hated cruelty to animals, so there was clearly some strand of empathy possible in his psyche - it's not impossible that the same strand, combined with the presumable psychological horror of being gassed oneself, would lead to him having some sort of irrational opposition to using gas under any circumstances.
 
There were this reasons

One: if Nazi start to use Gas on frontline, the allies will use Gas also and drop gas bombs during bomber raids over The Third Reich.

Two: Hitler him self was victim of mustard gas attack at end of WW1, He was blinded and damage his lungs.
 
I often hear this and I think it's poppycock, even if Hitler actually said it.

Hitler sanctioned the deliberate gassing of millions of people. Also, given what we know about Hitler's nature, I would imagine that if his decisions were based on his wartime experience, he would be more likely to demand the use of gas against the Allies. He would be driven not by empathy but revenge.

Hitler (Nazi Germany) did not use gas in combat because of two reasons (1) gas is an unpredictable weapon more suited to offense than defense, and (2) the Allies would retaliate.

No - Hitler didn't order the gassing of anyone directly, he gave vague orders to Lieutenant's like Himmler and Goering, who would then go on to organize and arrange the method of killing and the killing in general themselves; Hitler never wanted to or knew of the full details and always only talked about the matter in vague purely number terms with people like Himmler IIRC.

The man was a complicated one like any other - with many contradictions, he had experienced the horror of being gassed himself, it's not that far of a leap to believe that he was against the use of chemical weapons because of both that and a self-survival complex.
 
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