Gas

[English assassin]

I know this is a well worn conundrum, but I've never seen a convincing answer to why gas has not been used as a weapon in a major conflict, and hardly used at all, after 1914-1918.

I've just finished Basil Liddell-Hart's history of the first world war (recommended), and its clear from that that gas was an effective weapon, at least in the seige like conditions of the western front. Its effect was not so much to cause casualties, but to degrade the efficiency of defending troops, who might have had to spend hours in masks before the attack came in, as well as to hinder greatly the movement of reserves, to prevent flank attacks from units not themselves being assaulted, and so on.

Now, I can easily see that in conditions of more mobile warfare, gas is likely to be more or less impossible to deploy effectively, (since the defender can just move) less effective at the tasks above, and a mixed blessing at best even if it is used. Its probably only really worthwhile as an element in seige warfare. But there seem to be at least some instances in WW11 when such conditions applied and where gas might have been very useful. Stalingrad would be the most obvious, but also the seige of Leningrad, the British assault at El Alamein, even the D day landings (gas being delivered by bomb rather than shell). Stalingrad in particular makes me wonder whether the Germans might not have cleared the Russians from the whole of the west bank of the Volga if, after the intial assaults had been checked, they had made an assault preceeded by a sudden and large scale use of gas. Unlike, possible, D day or el alamaien, they could certainly have waited until they had the right wind conditions, and they (the nazis, I should say) are hardly going to have been held back by considerations of humanity.

Does anyone have a definitive answer? Was it not worth diverting manufacturing capacity from HE shells (mind you at Stalingrad they could have used cylinders). Was it just too dangerous to handle gas munitions? Something else?

[InsaneApache]

I think the fact that Herr Schickelgruber himself was gassed in WWI had a lot to do with the fact that the Nazis didn't use it. Also that mixed results could come about from using gas as an offensive weapon, wind change and all that. Respirator technology had advanced sufficiently by the 1940's that it was no longer the terror weapon it had been two decades before. I can't recall where I read it but the fact that neither side used gas in WWII was a complicit, unwritten understanding on all sides during the conflict.

BTW Liddell-Hart is a must read for those interested in WWII.

[Kraxis]

Btw, despite it being more or less not an option really, all troops carried gas masks. That long round tube the German troops on their backs? Well that was for the gasmasks. So it wasn't as if they didn't fear it might be used.

The problem was just this. If one side bagan to use gas on troops, the result might be a retaliation against civilians. And they didn't have gasmasks.
That is also why I doubt the atomic bombs would be used against Germany. She would have responded with gas attacks on every major British city and in case that wasn't feasable then French/Dutch/Belgian/whatever cities. It would have been ugly to no end.

Japan couldn't respond like that, eventhough they had possibly the nastiest gasses around.

[Franconicus]

I think there were the two reasons already mentioned:

- Hitler had bad experience with gas during WW1
- Any strike with gas would have have led to a counterstrike. If Hitler attacked London they would have attacked Berlin ...

Germany had a lot of chemical weapons. They were thrown into lakes at the end of the war where you still can find some
The German troops were prepared to be attacked with gas.

[CBR]

Several nations did research as well as produce chemical weapons during WW2. Generally it was considered an inhumane weapon and the fear of retaliation attacks against cities also caused leaders to not use such weapons.

I guess we were lucky that WW1 saw the use of such weapons as the horrors of it was remembered during WW2. With WW2 being an even more total war than WW1 had ever been and with better capabilites for using them (long range bombers) it could have turned into a nightmare.


CBR

[English assassin]

The problem was just this. If one side bagan to use gas on troops, the result might be a retaliation against civilians. And they didn't have gasmasks.

Well, OK, but, leaving the Nazis out of it for a change, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of RAF Bomber command, would have had no problem with this. Dresden was deliberate. A man who can incinerate going on 100,000 civilians when the war was won is a man who could have gassed those civilians two years earlier. Curtis Lemay wasn't what you would call squeamish either.

I'm also not convinced by the argument that a tactical battlefield use would have provoked strategic use against civilians. That is, assuming that with bombing accuracy as it was it was actually possible to drop enough gas bombs in a small enough area from the height of a strategic bomber to acheive a fatal concentration, which I'm not sure about.

BTW Liddell-Hart is a must read for those interested in WWII.

He is indeed, the main pleasure of the book was that it was obviously written (in 1930) by a man with a genius for the theory of warfare. Shame we paid no attention to him and let Guderian read it all instead, really.

[Franconicus]

Maybe I am wrong but isn't gas usually lighter than air. Then it would not have had much effect during city bombing. You could not reach those in cellars. Those on the streets you can get with fire bombs anyway.

Do you think there would have been more death or even terror by using gas during the attacks on Tokio or Hamburg? I doubt that.

Regarding the field battles: I do not have a clue why the Germans did not use it in the end. In the beginning they surely thought they could do without and maybe they did not want to have bad propaganda in the US. But later

[CBR]

Well, OK, but, leaving the Nazis out of it for a change, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of RAF Bomber command, would have had no problem with this. Dresden was deliberate. A man who can incinerate going on 100,000 civilians when the war was won is a man who could have gassed those civilians two years earlier. Curtis Lemay wasn't what you would call squeamish either.

And fortunately they couldnt take the decision to use chemical weapons

I'm also not convinced by the argument that a tactical battlefield use would have provoked strategic use against civilians. That is, assuming that with bombing accuracy as it was it was actually possible to drop enough gas bombs in a small enough area from the height of a strategic bomber to acheive a fatal concentration, which I'm not sure about.

If they could firebomb a city they could hit a city with gas too and Im pretty sure wherever a bomb hits it will a have a fatal concentration in that area. A ton of gas would in general kill more people than a ton of TNT and cause a lot more panic too.

The enemy could also use it tactically so the advantage you might have got one place would be lost another place. If lots of chemical weapons are used on the front then no one really has an advantage and all you got is one big mess.


CBR

[CBR]

Maybe I am wrong but isn't gas usually lighter than air. Then it would not have had much effect during city bombing. You could not reach those in cellars. Those on the streets you can get with fire bombs anyway.

If it was lighter than air then it wouldnt have much use would it Phosgene is heavier than air and was IIRC widely used in WW1

Regarding the field battles: I do not have a clue why the Germans did not use it in the end. In the beginning they surely thought they could do without and maybe they did not want to have bad propaganda in the US. But later

Because late in the war they would have been at the mercy of the allies as the allies could have bombed any city they wanted. Plus their own troops could be hit too so where is the advantage in starting using such weapons? Only thing would be better chemical weapons but that would not have assured a victory.


CBR

[Sigurd]

As a former navy man and I suspect that anyone that has served in a branch of the military has had gas drills. In fact they were mandatory and quite regular.
I believe that gas attacks on military personnel would be non efficient. The time to get fully prepared for the oncoming chemical attack is minimal and would result in very few kills or injuries. I remember having several injectors in my chest pocket in case I would get exposed to nerve gas or other lethal chemical weapons. The type of gas we drilled with was something we called CS gas which is not a lethal gas. In fact I and a few others developed quite a resistance to the gas and could survive several minutes in a “gas shed” without getting too sick.
I do not think that we would have such ongoing drills if we didn’t suspect that gas would be used in an armed conflict. We know we are ready for such attacks and the enemy knows we are ready; hence gas would be a waste of time.
Civilians however would not be ready, something Saddam took advantage of.

[CBR]

I would say that blister gases like mustard gas would have caused lots of problems in WW2 as soldiers only had gas masks.

But all had such weapons so no one would have had an advantage, except perhaps a limited one for the side that started using them and that would only have been local.

WW1 is IMO a good example is it stayed a trenchwar with or without the gas weapons.


CBR

[English assassin]

But all had such weapons so no one would have had an advantage, except perhaps a limited one for the side that started using them and that would only have been local.

That can't be quite right, because on the same reasoning no one would have used tanks in WWII. And in response to the "if you did it first the other side would retaliate" argument, that would apply to strategic bombing too. And yet that was adopted with enthusiasm.

Sigurd must be closer to the truth, in that I don't really believe any possible reason other that (1) it would not have been effective and/or (2) for some reason the resources used to manufacture or use it were not worth it.

The trouble with (1) is that on the evidence of WW1 the gas available in WWII, even allowing for the gas masks also available then, ought to have been effective, at least in some situations. Not, again on the evidence of WW1, necessarily in causing mass casualties, but in reducing fighting efficiency and reducing mobility. (Eg both the German and Russian armies used a lot of horse drawn transport. None of that is moving in a gas attack. Troops can't eat, can't really drink, in a gas attack. I've never tried it but I can't help thinking what you can see and how readily you can carry out hard labour have to be reduced by gas masks, and so on.)

I'm guessing that because the necessary static conditions weren't predictable, and I imagine that gas munitions degrade and are hard to handle (as opposed to an HE shell which is pretty safe without its fuse), it simply wasn't worth manufacturing and holding large amounts of gas shells that you might use as opposed to HE that you certainly would.

You would think there ought to have been some official papers and things released by now, after all each beligerents ministery of supply must have considered whether to manufacture the stuff or not.

[CBR]

That can't be quite right, because on the same reasoning no one would have used tanks in WWII. And in response to the "if you did it first the other side would retaliate" argument, that would apply to strategic bombing too. And yet that was adopted with enthusiasm.

And Im surprised how you can even compare the two. In 1925 the major powers agreed on not using gas weapons. War is generally horrible but gas takes it up one higher level. It didnt prevent the use of gas in the 30's like how Italy did in Ethiopia and Japan in China but even the militaristic fascist nations didnt dare to use it in WW2 as they knew the enemy could strike back.

Sigurd must be closer to the truth, in that I don't really believe any possible reason other that (1) it would not have been effective and/or (2) for some reason the resources used to manufacture or use it were not worth it.

Yes it would not have been effective because why break this moral limit and start using gas weapons when you knew the enemy could do the same to you and why use it when it could not ensure victory anyway. Gas might be horrible but its not a "who makes the first strike wins weapon" like the USA/USSR nuclear terror balance during the cold war.

The major powers did produce gas weapons and was ready to deploy them if needed, so the argument that it wasnt worth to produce doesnt hold water. Where do you think the nearly 300,000 tons of chemical munitions that was dumped in the Baltic Sea after WW2 came from?

A quick search brought this:

Australia during WW2
German nerve gases
Use of gas in WW1

The "incident" in Bari, Italy in 1943 where a US cargo ship carrying mustard gas got hit by German bombs shows that the Allies had chemical weapons nearby just in case it was needed.
http://www.rense.com/general16/WWIIluftwaffe.htm


CBR

[Seamus Fermanagh]

All of the major combatants had stocks of CW, notably Phosgene and Mustard Gass weapons.

As has been noted, their effectiveness on military targets would have been limited. All such attacks disapate, and nobody could have laid a permanent blanket of the stuff.

I think the most important limit was psychological. The memories of world war one horrors fixated on the gas attack because of the type of death and maiming it induced. Remember, this was in a pre-atomic era, so there was no more "horrific" tool of war to compare it with.

Would LeMay or Harris have used them? I think not. Both of them would have viewed the disapation and easy counter measures as a limitation. They preferred firestorms because of the virtual impossibility of anything surviving the ridiculous heat and localized oxygen deprivation. Both these chaps make W.T. Sherman look like a candy-ass.

[ah_dut]

I've just come back from a WWI battlefields tour (recommended btw) and apparantly there was the issue of a ''righteous'' war at least among the milatary people. There's also the obviously mentioned next level idea, as well as the perhaps non effectiveness of the actual stuff...

On the note of Stalingrad, I believe the low temperatures have an effect on the gas' potency (something I read about in WWI gas tests on the eastern front) so it wasn't all that effective in the freezing conditions

[CBR]

On the note of Stalingrad, I believe the low temperatures have an effect on the gas' potency (something I read about in WWI gas tests on the eastern front) so it wasn't all that effective in the freezing conditions

Apparently the Germans were aware of the problems with low temperatures and developed a new formula for mustard gas that could deal with the Russian winter. Most of this type of gas (contains 37% arsenic) is now at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.


CBR

[Kraxis]

Apparently the Germans were aware of the problems with low temperatures and developed a new formula for mustard gas that could deal with the Russian winter. Most of this type of gas (contains 37% arsenic) is now at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.


CBR

Yup and fishermen continually drag the canisters up... Nasty results of course.

But gassing a caity would be very easy. You wouldn't have to worry about anything but rain really. Windy? So what, every way the cloud goes there is yet more city. A hundred gasbombers could have done a Dresden in one single strike.
Remember that it was the wind that 'rescued' WWI soldiers from the gas. It simply passed on. In cities that would not happen, it would stick due to the buildings inhibiting the wind (we are not talking gales or anything above breezes). In fact windstill would be worse as the gas would then 'only' be able to affect the population inside its dropzone. A light wind would carry it to affect others as well. It simply wouldn't be pretty.

But it is interesting to think that Hitler didn't order it used against Britain. He did after all claim that the V-weapons were meant to terrorize the civilians. At least in the closing weeks when he decreed that Germany should be destroyed and its population be reduced as it didn't deserve to live. It would be win/win for him. Deal the Allies a deadly blow and then snicker with satisfaction as the Allies did the job he wanted done in Germany.