IF HITLER WAS SO CRAZY WHY DIDN'T HE USE CHEMICALS?

[subskipper]

What about the mustard-gas plant the Weimar regime set up in Russia? Was the gas stockpiled for future use or sold to the Russians?




~Henric Edwards

[war_dog2]

I read that in England we had millions of containers of gas ready to drop on all the cities in Germany if they started to use gas...

I have read this also, although I don't know exact comparisons it is said that by 1944 The nazi regime had built up enough stockpiles of Tabun to kill the population of London at that time! However we must remember that in 1944 the Combined allied bomber fleet outnumbered the Germans, meaning the Allies would almost certainly inflict greater damage than the Germans could ever hope to achieve. I am not sure how far the idea of making V1/V2 Rockets a way of delivering Chemical weapons/Nerve Gas.

[war_dog2]

I read that in England we had millions of containers of gas ready to drop on all the cities in Germany if they started to use gas...

I have read this also, although I don't know exact comparisons it is said that by 1944 The nazi regime had built up enough stockpiles of Tabun to kill the population of London at that time! However we must remember that in 1944 the Combined allied bomber fleet outnumbered the Germans, meaning the Allies would almost certainly inflict greater damage than the Germans could ever hope to achieve. I am not sure how far the idea of making V1/V2 Rockets a way of delivering Chemical weapons/Nerve Gas.

[Phaethon]

Zyklon B consisted of an inert carrier such as Diatomite (a porous mineral) or Erco (gypsum) into which was absorbed liquid hydrogen cyanide (HCN). HCN is very volatile at room temperature (boiling point 25.6 celcius) and rapidly evaporates from the carrier, hence zyklon was kept in tightly sealed cannisters until ready for use. As a pesticide zyklon also contained at least two irritating chemicals, one more voliatile than HCN - this would evaporate faster than the HCN and give advance warning of release - and another less volatile that would linger and disperse more slowly than the other two. What I don't know is what the irritant chemicals actually were - some form of chlorine or chlorine compound I suspect.

One damming piece of evidence that zyklon B was not being used for 'conventional' fumigation purposes was that the SS purchased huge quantities of the substance with the irritants omitted .

Cheers,

K.
--
Ken Cocker, London

[Redbaron1908]

very intresting polls all of you

Isn't Xyklon B a gas?

on a book i read about auschwitz a jewish doctor mentions that zilicon b was more of a pesteside used to kill lice i don t remeber the whole thing that he metioned but anyways he said that only one kind of zilicon b was a pestecide and that the other one was used to kill the victims

[Phaethon]

...on a book i read about auschwitz a jewish doctor mentions that zilicon b was more of a pesteside used to kill lice i don t remeber the whole thing that he metioned but anyways he said that only one kind of zilicon b was a pestecide and that the other one was used to kill the victims

Yes, it was used to delouse clothing and to fumigate equipment and even entire barracks. Clothing and equipment would be exposed to zyklon in fumigation chambers, either fixed or on specially adapted vans, and huts and barracks or ships' holds. The zyklon would be spread around the area to be fumigated by trained staff with special respirators and then the area sealed. The chamber or building would, after some time, be thoroughly ventilated until coloured test strips no longer indicated the presence of HCN. HCN is almost odourless - by the time you do detect the faint smell of almonds, it's probably too late given the qauntities used for these processes. Hence the need for irritating 'taints' to the zyklon to warn of its presence. These odourous markers were omitted from the SS version of zyklon.

Zyklon fumigation was a common, if dangerous, practice and was used worldwide until the Nazis found their own special use for it.

K.

[weiwensg]

Oops.. spelt "Zyklon" incorrectly. Anyway, what's the the meaning of "Zyklon" in English?

[Maple 01]

what's the the meaning of "Zyklon" in English?

Cyclone I think (kind of wind vortex)

Regards

-Nick

[MausPanzer]

all i wanted to know was why didnt hitler use chemicals and bio agents. and look what i started. this is cool thanks Marcus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Galahad]

This isn't specifically on why Germany didn't use chemicals, but it shows that worries that Germany might do so if the Allies did kept the Allies from using them, even though Churchill and Marshall, in particular, were deadly serious about wanting to use them.

"Institute for Historical Review

Historical News and Comment

Churchill Wanted to 'Drench' Germany With Poison Gas

Mark Weber

In a secret wartime memorandum recently made public, Winston Churchill told his advisers that he wanted to "drench" Germany with poison gas. Churchill's July 1944 memo to his chief of staff Gen. Hastings Ismay was reproduced in the August-September 1985 issue of American Heritage magazine.

"I you to think very seriously over this question of poison gas," the four-page note began. Britain's wartime leader continued; "It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it [gas] in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war the bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women."

Churchill's directive bluntly stated: "I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay to use poison gas ... One really must not be bound within silly conventions of the mind whether they be those that ruled in the last war or those in reverse which rule in this." Specifically he proposed: "We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention ... It may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it one hundred per cent. In the meantime, I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by the particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now here now here now there."

Churchill's proposal, which would have meant violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol outlawing the use of poison gas, was never adopted. His military advisers argued that gas warfare would divert Allied war planes from the more effective strategy of bombing Germany's industries and cities. Gas attacks would not be decisive, they feared, and Germany would very probably retaliate with devastating effect against Britain. Churchill complained to an associate that he was "not at all convinced by this negative report," but he reluctantly gave in. "Clearly I cannot make head against the parsons and the warriors at the same time," he complained in private.

The American Heritage article, written by Stanford University history professor Barton J. Bernstein, also reported that top American military officials urged the U.S. to begin gas warfare against Japan. Maj. Gen. William N. Porter, chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, pleaded in mid- December 1943 with U.S. Army superiors to initiate gas warfare against the Japanese, and on several occasions in 1945 Gen. George C. Marshall, U.S. Army chief of staff, urged using gas in the Pacific. There was some popular support for this view. The New York Daily News declared "We Should Gas Japan," and Washington Times-Herald agreed, explaining "You Can Cook `Em Better with Gas." But this was a minority view. About 75 percent of Americans reportedly opposed initiating gas warfare. After the war Gen. Marshall said that the main reason that gas wasn't used was opposition from the British, who feared that a desperate German might then use it in Europe.

The United States produced about 135,000 tons of chemical warfare agents during the war, while Germany turned out about 70,000 tons, Britain about 40,000 and Japan only 7,500 tons. Although the Allies had larger stockpiles of traditional chemical agents, Germany developed far more advanced and lethal nerve gasses, most notably the devastating agents Tabun, Sarin and Soman. They were never used.

After the war a British Army chemical warfare expert concluded that Germany could have delayed the June 1944 Allied cross-channel invasion by six months if it had gas. "Such a delay," he noted, "could have given the Germans sufficient time to complete their new V-weapons, which would have made the Allies’s task all the harder and England's long range bombardment considerably worse." Even in March and April 1945, when German military resistance was rapidly collapsing, Germany kept to it’s pledge not to use gas. Hitler reportedly refused to consider using poison gas in part because of his recollection of the horror of his own gassing during the First World War, which temporarily blinded him.


Bibliographic information

Author:
Mark Weber

Title:
Churchill Wanted to 'Drench' Germany With Poison Gas

Source:
The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

Date:
Winter 1985-6

Issue:
Volume 6 number 4

Location:
p. 501

ISSN:
0195-6752

Attribution:
"Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $60 per year." "

[Phaethon]

It's rather like the cold war - both sides had weapons that they both knew, feared and loathed the consequences of their use and so they never were used. The parallel worked, insofar as the US and USSR were concerned, another parallel did not. In the case of mass bombing of civilian centres it only took one 'accidental' bombing of a city to precipitate an escalaiting series of retaliations that lead to Coventry and Dresden. I think it was more luck than sense that kept the chemical genie in the bottle.

K.

[gabriel pagliarani]

Thank you, Sir Galahad!
Another bit of truth about Churchill's worst attitude for war-crimes has been revealed. I have never read something about british gases in Italy: note that here in the harbour of Bari there is the only known evidence about the presence of gases among Allied weapons during WW2...