WI: The Axis uses gas against the Allies in Op. Husky

So, it is widely known (at least in this forum) that Churchill had plans to use mustard gas against the german army in case Operation S****** went through. So, what if Hitler had the german equivalent of this? What if he wanted to use every resource at his hand to defeat any Allied invasion of Europe, so the Axis could concentrate in the East? What if, as Churchill had planned, he intended to use gas on any Allied troops that set foot in Europe, just that instead of mjstard gas they were sarin and tabun? What would the Allies do, and what consequences would the Allies' and Axis' actions have?
(yeah, I know about those stories of how Hitler, having suffered a gas attack inthe Great War despised it, but I'm not asking about the plausibility of the scenario, just the consequences, so please refrain to say how he never would do that and all of it it's ASB)
 
A few months later a German air raid on a Italian port hit a US cargo ship loaded with chemical munitions. That might suggest what the Allies were prepared to do.
 
The Germans get to figure out how to do logistics without Horses, unless they spend a lot of effort in a crash program for gas capes and masks for them
 
Tabun has a superiority over the first generation weapons, but if the application is tactical, the question is if retaliation would extent beyond that.

If it did, the British obviously might try operation Vegetarian which would hurt german food-production, but then the germans would eventually deploy sarin/Tabun around he clock over British cities using V1s.

Its a very risky proposition and if it does escalate beyond the tactical scenario, it gets very ugly very fast.

Tactically, during operation Husky it would be a major blow to the Allies. If the preparation had been done in advance, I think Husky would fail with serious repercussions on the Eastern front. If it had not been done in advance, the deployment of the weapons would propably have been insufficient.
 
So, it is widely known (at least in this forum) that Churchill had plans to use mustard gas against the german army in case Operation S****** went through. So, what if Hitler had the german equivalent of this? What if he wanted to use every resource at his hand to defeat any Allied invasion of Europe, so the Axis could concentrate in the East? What if, as Churchill had planned, he intended to use gas on any Allied troops that set foot in Europe, just that instead of mjstard gas they were sarin and tabun? What would the Allies do, and what consequences would the Allies' and Axis' actions have?
(yeah, I know about those stories of how Hitler, having suffered a gas attack inthe Great War despised it, but I'm not asking about the plausibility of the scenario, just the consequences, so please refrain to say how he never would do that and all of it it's ASB)

That isn't actually why Hitler ruled it out. The reason why it was never done was because Germany's logistics were based heavily on horses and mules, to a far greater extent than the WAllies, and using chemical or biological weapons, even if deployment by both sides was proportional, would have hurt the Germans far worse than the WAllies. There are actually Tabletop Monologues and post-war interviews with Goering that talk about how the Nazis were never able to develop suitable gas protection for horses and how this affected their decisions.

Source

At the war trials at Nuremberg, Nazi leader Hermann Göring was asked why the Germans did not use “Gas Blau” to stop the Normandy invasion. Lovell paraphrases Göring’s explanation that it was because they could not create suitable gas masks for horses, which were critical for transporting supplies.

From “Of Spies and Stratagems,” by Stanley Lovell:

Q. We know you had Gas Blau [a name used for nerve gas] which would have stopped the Normandy invasion. Why didn’t you use it?

A. Die Pferde (the horses).

Q. What have horses to do with it?

A. Everything. A horse lies down in the shafts or between the thills as soon as his breathing is restricted. We never have had a gas mask a horse would tolerate.

Q. What has that to do with Normandy?

A. We did not have enough gasoline to adequately supply the German Air Force and the Panzer Divisions, so we used horse transport in all operations. You must have known that the first thing we did in Poland, France, everywhere, was to seize the horses. All our material was horse-drawn. Had we used gas you would have retaliated and you would have instantly immobilized us.

Q. Was it that serious, Marshal?

A. I tell you, you would have won the war years ago if you had used gas – not on our soldiers, but on our transportation system. Your intelligence men are asses!

Tabun has a superiority over the first generation weapons, but if the application is tactical, the question is if retaliation would extent beyond that.

If it did, the British obviously might try operation Vegetarian which would hurt german food-production, but then the germans would eventually deploy sarin/Tabun around he clock over British cities using V1s.

Its a very risky proposition and if it does escalate beyond the tactical scenario, it gets very ugly very fast.

Tactically, during operation Husky it would be a major blow to the Allies. If the preparation had been done in advance, I think Husky would fail with serious repercussions on the Eastern front. If it had not been done in advance, the deployment of the weapons would propably have been insufficient.

The German V-weapons were incredibly overrated. It would hurt, might even kill tens of thousands of people, but it would not significantly affected the war effort. WAllied retaliations via mass strategic bombing with chemicals and anthrax, one the other hand, would kill tens of millions and reduce Germany to a tattered hellscape.
 
The German V-weapons were incredibly overrated. It would hurt, might even kill tens of thousands of people, but it would not significantly affected the war effort. WAllied retaliations via mass strategic bombing with chemicals and anthrax, one the other hand, would kill tens of millions and reduce Germany to a tattered hellscape.
I agree it would not compensate for the disparity in delivery capability. I am just proposing a tiny consideration on whether the tactical use of Chemical weapons would automatically escalate into use of biologicals as terror weapons? I dont know the answer, but maybe someone knows from a long forgotten contingency plan?
 
I agree it would not compensate for the disparity in delivery capability. I am just proposing a tiny consideration on whether the tactical use of Chemical weapons would automatically escalate into use of biologicals as terror weapons? I dont know the answer, but maybe someone knows from a long forgotten contingency plan?

It would be such an obvious and grievous violation of international law that Germany was party to that I think massive retaliation is very likely. It would also be bombing of a civilian population center with chemical weapons, which would be extremely escalatory.
 
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The German V-weapons were incredibly overrated. It would hurt, might even kill tens of thousands of people, but it would not significantly affected the war effort. WAllied retaliations via mass strategic bombing with chemicals and anthrax, one the other hand, would kill tens of millions and reduce Germany to a tattered hellscape.

While I basically agree with you it would be a bad idea to use chemical weapons when the US has entered. Lets not get a head of ourselves here. "Kill tens of millions?" Supported how?

Look how many people actually were killed in WW1 due to poison gas and I rest my case. Even if its the United States doing it. I am unconvinced.

Now to anthrax. Even by wars end. And I think even some time after. The US anthrax factory was not ready.

And please tell me you dont think that Vegetarian can kill millions. Or "reduce Germany to a tattered hellscape". If you insist on this. Then by all means prove it.

And quite frankly. The US anthrax factory IMO very well might NOT be killing millions. not even close to a million in truth. The British and US did capture a Nazi chemist. But theyd never get nerve gas before US nukes appear in 1945 even if they knew anything as they didnt have the facilities of course. And those facilities arent easy to get.

Irrelevant anyways as even by this point using it on the Soviets or British and US changes nothing. Germany's fate is sealed.
 
While I basically agree with you it would be a bad idea to use chemical weapons when the US has entered. Lets not get a head of ourselves here. "Kill tens of millions?" Supported how?

Look how many people actually were killed in WW1 due to poison gas and I rest my case. Even if its the United States doing it. I am unconvinced.

Now to anthrax. Even by wars end. And I think even some time after. The US anthrax factory was not ready.

And please tell me you dont think that Vegetarian can kill millions. Or "reduce Germany to a tattered hellscape". If you insist on this. Then by all means prove it.

And quite frankly. The US anthrax factory IMO very well might NOT be killing millions. not even close to a million in truth. The British and US did capture a Nazi chemist. But theyd never get nerve gas before US nukes appear in 1945 even if they knew anything as they didnt have the facilities of course. And those facilities arent easy to get.

Irrelevant anyways as even by this point using it on the Soviets or British and US changes nothing. Germany's fate is sealed.

I meant more the biological aspect. The U.S.'s anthrax factory may not have been ready yet, but Britain's so very, very much was. If the WAllies used anthrax en masse, it would have quickly led to the collapse of the food supply and massive famine. The results can be predicted somewhat by looking at the Morgenthau Plan, which would have led to the death of 40% of the German population if implemented. That's tens of millions of people (about twenty four million people within Germany's 1937 borders). The death toll might not get that high because the WAllies would defeat them and would provide some level of aid to the remaining population, but it gives you an idea. Add that to the use of anthrax against major urban population centers, and yeah, tens of millions doesn't look at all impossible. Looking at the conventional air raids is also instructive. About 400,000-600,000 people in Germany were killed by the strategic bombing campaign, and that was with conventional munitions. If you start using chemical weapons (especially the heavier than air ones that can seep into air raid shelters) and biological weapons on an industrial scale against population centers, and combine it with the biological figures, those numbers could go up by that many orders of magnitude.
 
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