Poison Gas In WW2

The germans were more advanced than the Allies in the field of poison gas but, with the obvious exception of the death camps, they did not use it. Why was this ? The obvious answer would be that they feared retaliation in kind but I still find it hard to understand why such a despotic, evil leadership would have resited its use - particularly when their backs were against the wall near the end of the war. Any thoughts ?

 

there early AT rifle rounds had poison gas in them

FNG

 

Many people question it's effectiveness. Personally I think that if there was an appropriate time to use it it would have been against the Japanese dug into the Pacific islands and knowing their cause was lost yet determined to take as many American lives as possible. I can understand why most would argue that it would be wrong to open that Pandoras box yet if I were in the shoes of one of those Marines I would be wondering why is it immoral to kill them with gas but okay to have to go in and blast them with grenades and flamethrowers and get myself killed in the process? Especially since on many of the islands there were no civilians to be affected.

 

In that light it is perhaps also surprising that the Japanese themselves, not shy of cruel weaponry and methods, did not use poison gas.

 

As for the german, the answer will be laying with Hitler. He fought in the first world war and at the end was in a hospital after a gas attack. Logically answer would be, he was afraid of retalliation.

 

combat is horrible enough without being forced to wear a rubber mask all day...ever wear a gas mask ? ten minutes in a gas mask is an eternity ..once gas is used ,everyone gets to live in one

 

I heard that one reason Hitler did not use poison gas was because he had seen first-hand what it could do to people in the trenches of the first World War, and it horrified him

 

Some anti-tank rounds contained teargas, but I haven't heard of any containing poisenous gas. The teargas rounds were largely ineffective, though.

 

It was possible that if America invaded Japan the casualties could have been so high they would have to leave. The Japanese even had civilian kamikaze units.

That is exactly what I was going to say except, I was going to add that Hitler was blinded by gas in WWI.


BTW, Hitler was temporariely blinded by gas in WWII.

 

Just more evidence of the tragic miscalculations and stupid decisions of the militarist leaders of Japan. The US forces just deciding to pack it in, give up and go home while on the verge of the total defeat of Japan was not going to happen. Had they made it too costly to invade (unlikely) they would have been starved and bombed into submission and the suffering of the Japanese people would have been greater.

 

Hi.

The japanese army used frangible hydrocyanic acid handgrenades against british tanks in Burma. These grenades were used to force the crews to bail out because of the acidious effect on the eyes and lungs, not due to any poisonous effect as the agent used dissolved relatively fast after release.

The army also used mustard gas and few other agents against chinese troops in central China.

There were chemical and biological warfare test facilities in China which made also tests on POWs and local civillians.

I think the japanese command feared an allied bombardment using gas agents on japanese towns as retaliation for any use of gas against the western allied forces in higher amounts. The civil defence wasn´t able to cope with such a problem.

One general point:
A use of gas against trained troops would have been not very effective since allmost all armies involved in WW2 were trained in gas warfare after WW1.

Yours

tom!

 

But the Germans had developed nerve agents which could be lethal in contact with the skin - therefore gas masks of the era would have been inadequate.

 

That's not disimilar to how tear gas works - ie it produces an irresistable urge to escape from it.

 

Here's what Wiki says about it -

Though sarin, tabun and soman were incorporated into artillery shells, Germany ultimately decided not to use nerve agents against Allied targets. German intelligence was unaware that the Allies had not developed similar compounds, but they understood that unleashing these compounds would lead the Allies to develop and use chemical weapons of their own, and they were concerned that the Allies' ability to reach German targets would prove devastating in a chemical war

 

There is also the whole angle that gas, even powerful gas, is a pretty flakey weapon. Weather conditions can have an adverse condition on effectiveness, although it will kill people gas bombs will have no effect on infrastructure (homes, factories, etc) making it probably less effective than incensory and HE.

On the battlefield you have the whole problem of having to protect your own side as well plus if the wind blows in the wrong direction it might be completely useless. It’s just undependable.

 

Of course, most of these reasons did not apply under the conditions of say, Iwo Jima. The Japanese soldiers were mostly underground where the gas would likely sink and concentrate. There were no civilians to be affected. Most of the US troops could have remained aboard ship where they would be safe from the wind shifting and blowing gas towards them and finally if the Japanese had gas masks then since time wasn't a big factor they could have just kept applying the agent until the gas mask filters were saturated and no longer effective.
I'm certain all these factors were known and the decision not to use chemical agents was made at the highest level and for reasons other than questions of effectiveness.

 

Gas has a reputation well in excess of its actual effectiveness. WW1 where it did see large scale deployment it was pretty much down there with bayonet in terms of men killed.

Other factor the respective governments of the Yanks and the Brits would been on the receiving end of a lot of political earache if they had been the first to use it.

The Germans and Japanese knew that their enemies were better placed to gas them than vice-versa.

The Russian probably couldn't protect their own people enough to it worthwhile.

Bottom line it would have been a can of worms for any country to start the gas war, although for different reasons. Once one major power gassed another the gloves would have come off but give gases temperamental nature it wasn't worth it.

 

post subject

Not poison gas but we (the British) had an 'Anthrax' project on Gruinard Island off Scotland with a possible plan to drop thousands of 'cattle cakes' on Germany . The Island took many years to clean up, if it ever was.

 

While ficticious, I did read a novel that explored the possibility the Germans had developed an improved Sarin agent--from experiments against Jews and Russian POWs-- and planned to use it against Allied landings ie. Operation Overlord. (The Normandy Invasion.)

Another novel of fiction explored Operation Olympic--the expected invasion of the main islands of Japan--and what invading forces might have faced.
Frankly, I think the Japanese would have used ANY weapon at their disposal, and the novel describes where a P-61 nightfighter on night-patrol spots headlights, and strafes a column of IJA trucks carrying nerve-agent in bulk. The released gas kills all Japanese civilans in a wide range around the strike-zone.
You can bet the civilian population would have fought us with everything from pitch-forks to shovels in true Bushido-fashion. The United States military expected 1 million military casualties.

Tim

 

Coincidentally I'm reading that book this week: The Burning Mountain by Alfred Coppel :smok: