Nerve gas was not used.

Nerve gas was not used. Oct 31, 2021 4:47:46 GMT

Post by Tribunus Laticlavius on Oct 31, 2021 4:47:46 GMT

Nerve Gas WWII

Sarin, along with other nerve agents like Tabun and Soman, was first produced in Germany’s famous I.G. Farben factory in October 1938 by chemist Gerhard Schrader and his team—quite by accident. Schrader and company stumbled upon the agent in the process of trying to develop a pesticide that targeted an insect’s nervous system. When Schrader himself came into contact with the liquid, he and his team were incapacitated for nearly a month. (The word sarin is an acronym for the names of the four scientists who developed it.) Later, the Nazi government told Schrader to forget about insects and focus on weaponizing sarin as soon as possible. Despite the Nazis’ chemical-weapons advantage, Hitler decided not to use them against Allied forces, for reasons unclear.

There are numerous photos of people in the UK trained in the use of 'gas masks' during WWII; this is also true in the US.

This was in anticipation of the Germans using WWI gases such as chlorine; the UK or US had little concept of Nerve Agents for which gas masks would be useless; contact with the skin is enough to cause death.

Allegedly the Germans had no inhibition using deadly gas to murder a class of people in gas chambers, so why the inhibition against using the nerve gases against London or Moscow? The UK or Moscow would have been powerless against such a terrible possibility if unleashed.

The British had firebombed Hamburg, Dresden and Pforzheim with the deaths of thousands of civilians; one would think an "evil" government (as claimed the Nazis were) would have few scruples in the use of nerve agents.

If they used the Nerve Agents it is likely they would have forced the allies to surrender, similar to the Japanese surrender when the US dropped the atomic weapons.

Why did Adolf Hitler not authorize the use of these weapons of mass destruction?.

Nerve gas was not used. Nov 4, 2021 19:42:38 GMT Tribunus Laticlavius and been_there like this

Post by 𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐭𝐭 on Nov 4, 2021 19:42:38 GMT

Why did Adolf Hitler not authorize the use of these weapons of mass destruction?

The main reason was that poison gas had been heavily studied after the experience with it during World War I, and the German military was unimpressed with its potential. In short, gas attacks were never decisive on the battlefield.

Being a combat veteran, someone who had actually been wounded by gas during the war, Hitler understood more than most about the subject. However, this was not why he refused to use the new nerve gases developed in secret by Germany and stockpiled.

The Führer's experts were simply unable to guarantee that the enemy had not developed better chemical weapons in secret themselves.

For example, today it is known that the British at the Porton Down laboratories had weaponized Anthrax and could have delivered this biological weapon. Churchill in fact argued in favor of drenching Germany in poison gas. However, despite the U.S. Senate never ratifying the 1925 treaty banning the use of poison gas, the Americans during World War II declared that they would abide by the poison gas ban unless the enemy used it first.

What was known was that the Allies had overwhelmingly superior access to petrochemicals, namely ethylene, the precursor for producing mustard gas, which is a highly-effective blister agent used for area-denial that was stockpiled by both sides in World War II but not deliberately used.

In late 1943, after a Luftwaffe bombing attack against Allied transport ships at Bari, Italy, the Liberty ship John Harvey was sunk carrying 2000 mustard gas bombs, causing hundreds of chemical warfare casualties. However, the Allies were successfully able to keep knowledge of the Bari mustard gas disaster secret.

With the Allies known to have extensive stockpiles and unlimited production of mustard gas, Hitler probably made the right call NOT to use the new German nerve agents.

In 1952, after the war, Porton Down went on to develop an even more powerful nerve agent called VX.