I spend way too much time in a bar but we do have some great discussions and occasionally come up with questions none of the local sages can answer. So I put it to you the elite: What fuel did Germany turn to after the allies cut off petroleum supplies?
As long as we are investigating gas, what was the gas used in the ovens? or were there actual ovens?
IIRC, the gas was called Zyclon-B. Not sure about the fuel, though.
Zyklon-B was used in the gas chambers, not the ovens (and yes, there were actual ovens). As for fuel, I think that Germany got some of it from oil fields in the countries they conquered (Ploesti in Romania is one that comes to mind), and I seem to remember reading somewhere that they made synthetic gasoline from coal. Very expensive, but better than no fuel at all.
Correct, the ovens were a method of disposing the bodies, although there were some reports that some were possibly burned alive. Eecch. The zyklonB was usually used in “showers” where people were gassed instead of cleaned.
The used a lot of synthetic oil from coal and such, in addition to captured oil fields. Oh, how Hitler wanted to get into Persia and get the oil there. I think they used a similar process to “make” oil that is used in the tar sands of northern alberta to make oil. Once again, I am not an expert and possible talking out of my ass.
Eric
headshok is right. What they couldn’t get from occupied areas, they produced from coal. One of the great debates on the allied side in WWII was the oil plan vs the transportation plan bombing campaigns. Would it be more effective to bomb the refineries (oil plan) or the railways (transportation)? The planners compromised and did both - which diluted the effects. After the war, they decided that they should have focused on the transportation plan. Their mistake was in looking at the output - it would have been easier to knock out the rairoads bringing the coal in to make the fuel.
Zyklon-B was a name for hydrogen cyanide adsorbed on some sort of solid carrier for ease of handling. Zyklon-B was originally developed as an insecticide. I haven’t been able to find out what the carrier in Zyklon-B was.
Hydrogen cyanide (aka prussic acid, aka hydrocyanic acid) is HCN. It is believed to be the chemical that was used in the Iraqi gas attacks on the Kurds in the early 1980s.
I recall seing a film from the post WWI and pre-Hitler days in which Zyklon B was used to fumigate a building (I suppose for termites). They sealed the building to keep the posion in and posted signs on the doors specifically identifying the stuff as Zyklon B. A guy then went in in a WWI surplus gas mask and somehow got the grains in the can to turn to gas —well, perhaps a smoke-type powder that got airborne. Once he got it to begin vaporizing, he ran like hell and closed the door from the outside. After a while, it was OK to crack the doors and windows to reduce the concentration of the agent and reoccupy the building.
I gather from the Holocaust museum that they’d put the poor folks in the chambers and then someone would go up on the roof and bust open cans of Zyklon B and pour the stuff down openings so that they fell onto the fake shower openings. Then the crystals or granules somehow converted themselves into the posion gas which would have to be somewhat heavier than air, or else the gas wouldn’t get to the victims. Therefore, it seems to me that whatever Zyklon B was made from was something that would change itself from solid to gas (or something like a gas) on contact with air.
Most of Hitler’s fuel supplies came from Romania. The bombing of the Romanian oil fields was mostly ineffective.
The questioner here mixes his gases: there is posion gas, and there is gas station gas(oline). I used to catch hell in flight school for refering to “fuel” for the airplanes as “gas”. They used to jump down my throat and tell me air is a gas, and you aren’t going anywhere with a fuel tank full of air. Then of course, later I’d hear everyone saying that if you were going X distance, you’d better have a “full bag of gas”.
And then there is “Hitler’s gas” from the thread title… We all know he was explosively flatulent.
True. Hitler was a vegetarian and as a result “blamed that dog” rather frequently.