No bio-chemicals against Russia - why?

Hello guys,
I checked on the terms, Gas and Russia but found no result.
A question that has always been bugging me was why human live defying crazy Adi never used Gas or bio-chemicals in Russia.
Wind settings and the geographic situation were, should I say perfect? Hitler knew about England having gas or biological weapons, however I do tend to believe that despite Hitler ordering its use against Russia, England would have rather refrained from getting themselves directly involved with Germany on behalf of bio-chemical warfare.
Were Russian troops fitted as extensively as German troop’s with Gasmasks?

Please do not regard this as a what if, but as a why thread.

Regards
Kruska

 

Here is a section from the WW2 magazine that kind of addresses your question.

By the 1940s, just about any literate society could produce various forms of poison gas. Thus, there was no real advantage to Germany in introducing it into the war. Countermeasures would immediately follow, for which Germany had no more effective response than any other combatant. And that went equally for the vesicants like mustard gas as well as the new "nerve" agent just discovered in Germany's Wuppertal-Elberfeld lab in 1939–the deadly compound that we know as Sarin.

When it came down to it, Hitler was a man who knew no limits, and who made his decisions relatively free of moral considerations. Sarin didn't strike him as particularly inhumane or ghastly. It just seemed… ineffective.

See:

Why No Poison Gas? » HistoryNet

Now while Hitler might have been "tempted" to use gas against the USSR, he wasn’t and couldn’t be sure just what all had been shipped to the Soviets by the Lend-Lease plan. It could easily include poison gas in shells and bombs, he didn’t know. He also didn’t know if the Soviets had or didn’t have gas protection devices.

Also, using it against an Allied member would have opened his own nation up to gas attacks from the Americans and the British, and he knew we had Lewisite, phosgene, the "new and improved" mustard gas, as well as Sarin. He couldn't risk it, and as the other fellow mentioned, ineffective.

 

Hello brndirt1 and LRusso216,

thanks a lot for the link regarding Russian Gasmasks. I can't realy see those Russian gasmasks be used by combat-troops in action other then Tank or truck drivers and civilians.

I don't really buy this -we use it, they use it-so let's not use it, argument.

If you replace the word "poison gas" with "e.g aircraft or tank" would the below statement still make sense?

As a sidenote; quenching Nagasaki into a cloud of Lewisite, phosgene matter, would have resulted in the same outcome as an A-bomb - without Japan having any chance for retaliation.

I would actually be very interested in a historic protocol - where the usage of bio-chemical weapons was discussed.

Regards
Kruska

 

Kruska, the only thing keeping Hitler from using gas, or other chemical/biological weapon was knowing that the only thing keeping his enemies from using it was his not using it.

He knew we (allies) had everything he did, and in spades. It isn't that great a weapon anyway and even Hitler understood that.

 

Iam wondering if it was for a very personal reason he made the decision not to use gasses nor bio weapons . Maybe because of his own personal experiences with gas at the Somme front and later in the lazarett in ww1?? Have no biographical proof of it though ..

 

i'd heard rumours gas was used to flush out defenders during the seige of sebastapol, but don't hold me to that.

 

You might be correct, the use of non-lethal gases like a "tear gas" was legal. I think everybody used it, I know we Americans did in the PTO against our Japanese foes.

 

I agree there, but then again he was using that against "non-humans" in controlled conditions and they couldn't retaliate against the Nazis, whereas the allies most certainly could. I still think that was the deciding factor, not only was gas ineffective in the field, it opened up the possibility of retaliation against his own.

 

Hello brndirt1,

What makes you think that gas (Sarin and mustard Gas) are not effective on the Battlefield or towards cities ?
The Wehrmacht was in contra to the Soviets well, trained and equipped for gas warfare.
The usage of gas from the beginning of Barbarossa till maybe end of 1941 or maybe even till middle of 1942 would have killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of Russian soldiers and not to mention civilians.

Upon thousands and thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians dying horribly due to gas - I wouldn't know how Stalin should have comforted or persuaded them to keep up the fight. - since this would have been a fight way beyond the comprehension of civilians and their reaction towards a "normal" war.

A counter usage by the Soviets would have resulted far more in the death of Soviets then those of the Wehrmacht. The carrier ability in tonnage and precission of gas attacks was by far more advanced and deadly in 1941/42 then in WWI. Due to extreme long wind falls from West -East the Soviets couldn't have really counterstriked before October/November. Not to mention their more or less non existing airforce.

Taking Hitlers and his Nazi leadership ruthlessness into account - any attempt by the British to use chemicals would have indeed resulted in a German counterstrike - but would certainly have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousand of allied POW's - being the trumpcard by the Nazis- rather then just towards British cities.

So far I still tend to believe that it might have been due to Hitlers own experience and the fear that the public opinion in Germany (due to German casualties of gas attacks) might have gone aginst him and his warplans.

The word "GAS" still had a horrific impact on the Germans during WWII, due to the horrible experience in WWI.

But still I will try to find some historic German document, were the usage of gas was debated or forwarded amongst Hitler and his clique.

Regards
Kruska

 

true about use of the zyclon-B gas , but .. that was used for higher efficiency in numbers and purely chosen for costeffectiveness in a 'production' process .
They tried mass hangings and mass executions by machine gun but it simply took too long and involved too many people who were traumatized afterwards
(traumatized SS personnel offcourse , not victims) ..
(forgive me for the formulation ,its cruel, but it was simply looked upon like this).

Dont think germany was afraid of retalliation , they had more more experience in use and trained far better with the NBC stuff than any other country at the time , if it would have come to NBC warfare Germany would have had the best cards to play ..and still they didnt use it .. to me that can only mean there were explicit orders directly from the top not to use any ..

Remember reading somewhere about Ado's trauma's from the Somme ,dont remember wether in Mein kampf or in a diary about him by people who knew him in 14-18 .
(could have been extracted from the book "the Hitler I knew " ??)
Was about a period of blindness from gas he suffered while in the lazarett where he had some of his visions that he later used to write the manuscript for mein kampf in Landsberg in prison .
He describes his utter disgust there about the use of gasses as weapons ..

Hope you find anything about a possible personal motivated reason Kruska ,i think its a very interesting question but hard to answer factually .
(unless we find a fuhrer-order forbidding the use of such NBC weapons ..but its very possible such an order was given and was registered .)

 

Hello Heinrich,
I believe to have the answer. My assumption in regards to Hitler “having” Sarin and Tabun in 1941/42 was wrong.
I checked with a German Forum that had a similar topic.
Hitler was actually ecstatic in 1939/40 about the usage of the “new” nerve gases which had no equivalent amongst the allies, so was his Army command.
Hitler ordered in 1940 the setting up of two large Sarin and Tabun producing plants. It was not before end of 1943 and mid 1944 that the produced quantity was achieved in order to enable their ultimate military usage. By then however the allies had gained the air superiority and the Germans feared that the Allies had in the meantime achieved similar capabilities/progress in the development of similar “new” nerve gases (which actually they had not).
So Hitler did not use the “new” gas in 1941/42, because he simply didn’t have it.
Regards
Kruska

 

Some discussion from the past...

http://www.ww2f.com/what-if-other/11894-german-gas-weapon-saves-germany.html

 

Good discussion Kay .. but an answer to why it wasn't used cant come from a 'democratic' agreement of a handfull of forum members , it has to come out real staff doc's in this case .

A company like IG farben or Bayer would have been able to make enough Tabun in a couple weeks to kill half the planet if given highest priority , the production isnt that difficult . Asahara could do it with Sarin at a homelab in Japan in the 90íes too ..

Tabun was made already in '36 ,wich gave high command plenty of time to plan the use in strategic ways ..cant believe they waited till late '40 to actually start planning use of it while already planning for a weltkrieg way early in the thirties . Maybe its just me , but it doesnt make sense at all.. Besides they already had the knowledge from ww1 making mustard gas in large quantities also , just replace Tabun by mustard gas and the production argument would have been non existent ..

Just think of it , whole cities/ area's gassed and thus emptied , just for the taking with all buildings intact without firing a single shot , and after a few hours of waiting no immiment danger left for the own troops .. and then choosing for a massive conventional offensive for Barbarossa ..
There must be transcripts of some kind of the meetings were the use was discussed by the miltary top , black on white in archives .

 

He didn't have it before 1942, that is probably correct.

Speer, who was strongly opposed to the introduction of tabun, flew Otto Ambros ,I.G’s authority on poison gas as well as synthetic rubber, to the meeting. Hitler asked Ambros, "What is the other side doing about poison gas?" Ambros explained that the enemy, because of its greater access to ethylene, probably had a greater capacity to produce mustard gas than Germany did. Hitler interrupted to explain that he was not referring to traditional poison gases: "I understand that the countries with petroleum are in a position to make more [mustard gas], but Germany has a special gas, tabun. In this we have a monopoly in Germany." He specifically wanted to know whether the enemy had access to such a gas and what it was doing in this area. To Hitler's disappointment Ambros replied, "I have justified reasons to assume that tabun, too, is known abroad. I know that tabun was publicized as early as 1902, that Sarin was patented, and that these substances appeared in patents. (...) Ambros was informing Hitler of an extraordinary fact about one of Germany's most secret weapons. The essential nature of tabun and sarin had already been disclosed in the technical journals as far back as 1902, and I.G. had patented both products in 1937 and 1938. (emphasis mine)

Ambros then warned Hitler that if Germany used tabun, it must face the possibility that the Allies could produce this gas in much larger quantities. Upon receiving this discouraging report, Hitler abruptly left the meeting. The nerve gases would not be used, for the time being at least, although they would continue to be produced and tested. (The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben; Joseph Borkin)

(me again) It was after that meeting with Ambros that the proposed use of tabun against the Soviets was shelved. In one area Ambros was slightly wrong, the DuPont company had already begun production of tabun and according to their internal records had nearly 12,000 tons of the stuff in storage by the end of the war. The other nerve gases were Sarin and Soman.

Sarin was discovered in 1938 and is properly known as isopropyl methyl phosphoro-flouridate. Tabun is one of the easier chemical agents to make, and yet containment of the highly toxic hydrogen cyanide gas that is produced during the process is a technical challenge. Sarin was also found to be even more difficult to manufacture and was thus never mass produced by either the Allies nor the Axis. Only a pilot plant for sarin that had never gone into production existed when the war came to an end. And let’s not forget that tabun was isolated when I.G. Farben still had close ties and were sharing data with DuPont here in America.

I believe the DuPont family and the Thyssens held shares in each others companies, and Edsel Ford sat on the board of IG Farben America! Who knew what who knew?

Like mustard gas, all three nerve agents are oily liquids that take some time to dissipate and air temperature effects their dissipation rates, and all three can penetrate unprotected skin. However, Tabun is unstable and has a distinctive odor. In late 1938 the German researchers discovered Sarin, which is considerably more toxic than Tabun, it is more stable, and has almost no odor when purified. By spring of 1942 the Germans had put tabun into mass production and were working on production facilities for sarin. Production was limited by supplies of raw materials, such as phosphorus, which the Germans obtained from first the Soviets and then the phospate deposits in North Africa.

These sources became unavailable to the Germans as the result of both Operation BARBORSSA and Operation TORCH, and production fell far short of goals. Neither Sarin nor Soman were stockpiled in any quantities. Soman was discovered in 1944 and was the third and last of the German nerve gases. Known to science as pinacolyl methyl phosphoro-flouridate, this gas was never taken beyond the laboratory production.

Under the Nazi ten years of control of production at IG Farben amounted to "only" about (estimated) 17, to 70,000 tons of tabun were produced for Germany. The reason the total is vague is because the plant fell into Soviet hands and they were very reluctant to share that information with the west. That is neither here nor there as DuPont knew the "formula", and had vastly superior production abilities if called upon. Even though their (DuPont’s) internal records seem to indicate only 12,000 tons of the tabun agent were produced and stockpiled. The nerve agent sarin was developed while the two companies were "separated by war"; but chemists on both sides knew how good the others were.

They (Hitler and the Nazis) couldn’t risk that the DuPont chemists hadn’t already discovered sarin and with their massive production capabilities, also produced and stored sarin as well as tabun. And let’s not forget that the Nazis really only managed to manufacture several hundred pounds of sarin before the Allies ran them to ground and put the whole system to an end. Hitler was more or less positive the allies had retaliatory gas stockpiles, the Bari Italy bombing of '43 assured him he was correct. Now he couldn’t even be sure that the Soviets hadn’t also been receiving massive quantities of gas bombs and shells (of unknown content) in the Lend-Lease shipments; a large percentage of which made port or got into the USSR through Iran/Iraq and the Vladivistok port.

Even though he was becoming a liability to Germany’s war effort by 1944, perhaps when it got to that point he had no way of instigating the use of gases he had control of against his foes, and that was another hindering factor. He was "commanding" phantom divisions by that time in his bunker near the end as well. Couple the uncertainty of Hitler’s knowledge of Allied production with his own experience with gas in WW1, and its use against anyone is unlikely. And believe it or not, neutralizing Tabun, Sarin, and Soman, isn’t that difficult since they hydrolyze rapidly in strongly alkaline or chlorinated solutions. Decontamination procedures for skin, equipment and material include active neutralizing chemicals (chloramine solutions, 5% bleach) or neutral adsorbing powders (Fullers earth). And I believe the antidote for tabun and sarin is atropine.

During the desperate days of 1940, when Britain was facing a German invasion, Churchill had energetically built up an arsenal of gas weapons to greet German troops landing on England's shores. Even after the threat of invasion faded away, the British continued heavy production of chemical weapons. American war production included chemical weapons, in large quantities. In fact, even before the US formally entered the war, the Americans were discreetly shipping phosgene to the British.

Once war was formally declared, the US Army's CWS received massive new funding, reaching a billion dollars in 1942. Huge new production facilities were built, most notably at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. The CWS also opened a huge test range in Utah, named the "Dugway Proving Ground", where there was plenty of space to test chemical and biological weapons on duplicates of German and Japanese buildings.

The US had signed but never ratified the Geneva Protocols, However President Roosevelt considered poison gas a barbarous weapon. He had no intention of authorizing its use, much to the disappointment of the CWS. The American chemical weapons program only thrived because of fear of Japanese CW efforts. Newspapers often printed reports of Japanese use of CW against the Chinese, and Roosevelt issued stiff public warnings that if that if any of the Axis nations used poison gas of any type on American troops, they could expect massive retaliation in kind.

Then there was the existing British "Operation Vegetarian", which had been in development since 1942, and was ready to go. It was held back because of the success of the Normandy landings. Britain had manufactured five million anthrax laced "cattle cakes" and planned to drop them on Germany in 1944. The aim of Churchill's "Operation Vegetarian" was to wipe out the German beef and dairy herds and then see the bacterium spread to the human population.

With people then having no access to antibiotics, this would have caused many thousands, perhaps even millions of German men, women and children to die. The anthrax cakes were tested on Gruinard Island, off Wester Ross, which was only finally cleared of contamination in 1990. "Operation Vegetarian" was planned for the summer of 1944 but it was abandoned as the Allies' Normandy invasion progressed successfully.

Details of the wartime secret operation are contained in a series of War Office files (WO 188) at the Public Record Office in Kew. Some of the files remain classified even yet. The man whose task was to carry out "Operation Vegetarian" was Dr. Paul Fildes, director of the biology department at Porton Down near Salisbury in Wiltshire. The British work on anthrax, or "N" as it was code-named, in the weapon form led (1943) to the design of an "N" bomb suitable for mass production by we Americans. Each particular set of munitions weighed 1.8 kilograms (4 pounds). 106 of these "bomblets" were to be packed into a 225 kilogram (500 pound) cluster-bomb canister and dropped over Nazi population and dairy production centers. There was a second delivery method which would have been even more effective. That was to separate the small "bomblets" out of the cluster bomb, and disperse them out of the flare tubes as the planes returned from normal bombing runs at night. This would insure wide distribution of the cakes, and save on time/weight, and possible discovery by the Nazis as an intentional attack.

The whole thing was protected by the highest level of secrecy; TOP SECRET:GUARD (which we Americans described jokingly as "DESTROY BEFORE READING"). An initial pilot batch of 5,000 "N bombs" was produced at Camp Dietrich in May 1944, and medium-scale production at a rate of about 50,000 bomblets a month followed. The bomblets were then turned over to the British, who stockpiled them. The plant at Vigo, Indiana, was designed for production of 500,000 anthrax bombs per month. The plant was never put into operation, partly because of extreme concerns over its safety to our own local populace, but also coupled with the success of the Normandy invasion a month later in June of 1944. By the end of the war, it had been converted into antibiotic production, though it could have easily been converted back to bio-weapons manufacture if the need had arisen.

So it would seem that the position of FDR of "not using them unless they were used against we allies" was the determining factor as per we Americans. If the British Isles had been in serious jeopardy of invasion, or if Operation Overlord was bogging down I don't doubt the Churchill and the British might have used the biological anthrax cakes. But neither of those circumstances came to pass, so they were never used in "grand scale" during the war, only tested on that single island.

I do find it slightly amazing that chemical weapons weren't used more extensively in WW2. The only ones to employ it were Italy (against Abysinnia and Hali Salasi) and Japan against the Chinese. Both of the recipients of these horrors were known to NOT have a stockpile of their own. So fear of retaliation was surely a deterrent.

 

Hello Heinrich,

AFAIK the Germans had developed Tabun and Sarin but they did not have any viable production set up for generating safely the needed quantities of a nerve gas and transforming it onto a weapon carrier. The necessary deemed quantity, technology and carrier platforms were only available after 1943. The second plant (Sarin) had not been finished by the time the Russians took posesion of the plant in end of 44 or beginning of 1945.

Had Hitler not been missinformed he might have stepped up on the production and therfore Tabun could have been available earlier onwards.
But I wouldn't have the knowledge to indicate a probable earlier date.

Hello brndirt1,

Thanks for the post. It is understood that after the end of 1943 the usage of nerve gas or biological weapons such as anthrax would automatically generate a stalemate and therefore a NO USE policy by all parties.
Taking into account that all parties actually had such weapons.

The lucky error in history was Hitler being misinformed about this issue throughout the entire war period.

Due to this my question in regards to Russia was meant for the time of 1941 to 42.

As for Ambros:
To my information, the Germans suspected the allies having developed nerve gas or a similar gas such as Tabun due to the fact that these terms were not published by the allies. Hitler’s advisors in this matter therefore believed that a no mentioning meant the allies trying to keep their "sucessfull" research progress hidden.

About DuPont, would you have a source for this, since to my knowledge only the Germans knew about the composition of Tabun as a nerve gas.

DuPont France was taken over by IG Farben (Patents were robbed a mass) and the DuPont facillities produced whatever IG Farben had in mind.
So maybe also Tabun on behalf of IG Farben.

Hitler had certainly no remorse about using gas or nerve gas, certainly not because of his own implication during WWI. His order to produce Tabun and Sarin and his inquiries into the subject clearly shows this. Due to wrong information by his advisors in 1939/40? he backed away from using it - or let's rather say from stressing on its production.

Neither did Churchill and FDR have any scruples. It was just considered by everyone to be a weapon of last chance - and was in the end replaced by the A-bomb.
Any ideas about Stalin in this matter?

Tabun and Sarin are nerve gases whilst the allies had stockpiled "conventional respiratory gases". AFAIK the "BARI incident" proves this. Tabun has a factor of more than 70 compared to phosgene and Sarin a factor of about 100.
During WWII there would have been no protection against nerve gas such as Tabun or Sarin besides ABC suits.

Had Hitler not been (luckily) misinformed, he would certainly have used his "new" available nerve gases.
Since anthrax wasn't available before mid 1944 a retaliation by the allies could only have been the A-bomb - if England and Russia should not have given in before.
I do not believe that upon Britain being occupied by German troops that the US would have actually dared to use the A-bomb on Germany - they would have used it only in case of Germany bringing the war to their shores and independently off course as history shows against Japan who couldn't retaliate in August 1945.

Regards
Kruska

 

Kruska, the information about the DuPont stockpile records of tabun is mentioned in the book The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben.

There is a copy in my local college library, which is where I jotted down the information from. It is a rather expensive referrence book, I think I saw it on Amazon.com but the price was over a hundred bucks the last time I looked for it.

 

Hello brndirt1,

over a $100 dollores? Nope Hitler sure ain't worth that much to me.
Thanks for the reply

Regards
Kruska