But if it was a surprise attack the defenders would have had protective gear. I do not believe that the Allied troops had protective gear with them.
They thought that we, too, had discovered the nerve gases and were prepared to use them. In reality the nerve agents and the blood agents were unknown to the Allies and our anti-gas gear would have been of little or no use against them.
I can’t speak to all the Normandie beaches, but the ones I have seen were backed by cliffs, which would imply that they might have been good targets for gas attacks since mustard gas, in particular, is heavier than air.
AIUI, the storage of chemical weapon shells was/is a tricky task. And one that’s much easier to do in a home depot than a field depot. So there’d be some legitimate safety reasons to avoid wanting to have chemical weapons forward deployed unless one was absolutely, 100% certain that this was a no kidding target area. And due to the various Allied disinformation campaigns prior to D-Day the Germans and Hitler in particular had no idea that there was any reason to fortify Normandie that completely. And by the time that the extent of the landings was recognized, it was too late to try to put chemical munitions on the beaches to allow the troops above them to keep the Allies from securing a beachhead.
Yes, but how do you preserve surprise in this case? You’ve got to preposition the gas, you’ve got to equip your troops with protective gear, you’ve got to train them to use it. How do you keep this a secret from the allies?
I know that civilians in the UK had protective gear, at the start of the war most people expected massive gas attacks against cities and so air raid shelters were all stocked with gas masks and such.
But even if the landing soldiers had no protective gear, if you were an artilleryman would you rather drop an HE shell onto them or a gas shell? Gas shells were used in WWI because HE shells weren’t very effective against elaborately entrenched troops, of course if the troops have protective gear neither is gas. But the allied landing forces weren’t entrenched, they were charging across the beaches and climbing the cliffs. If you can deliver a gas shell against those troops you can deliver an HE shell, and against troops in the open an HE shell is going to be more effective.
To keep it handy, if the Axis uncorked chemical whoop-ass.
Lemur866, I wasn’t trying to say that I thought that a chemical weapon defense at Normandie would have been effective, just that it seems to me it could have been possible. And, from what I recall of my own long ago travels along the Normandie peninsula, the beaches were among the few areas (possibly the only areas) where one could expect the large number of troops to be bunched up in a geographical area favoring the use of chemical weapons.
I agree with you, HE would be more effective. FTM, leave the troops on the beach to the gunners in the pill boxes - finding some way to keep the landing craft from returning to the ships for another load would seem even more effective to hold the beaches. (Or get Hitler to release those four armor divisions in reserve around Calais at the first report of parachute landings, instead of a couple of days later. )
I just read a book set in France during WWI. It is stated by a character that even a small breath of it would prove fatal several months down the road. Nobody could be saved that had the smallest dose. Can anybody speak on this aspect?
That would be difficult. I honestly do not know if it was possible.
I am not military expert, but I think I would want to mix in poison against unprotected troops. But for all I know the gas attacks would be completely ineffective. Or it could be really effective. Just the terror that might create on the other side might be effective at breaking down their structure. I don’t know. I would want to know what the effect of uses chemical weapons and nerve agents would be.
If you’re talking about mustard gas that’s definitely not the case, Harmonious Discord. There were many WWI vets who had their health ruined by exposure to mustard gas, but who lived for years after the war.
I don’t know whether there are any chemical agents from WWI that were that fatal.
The other question to consider is how much support does the person who got a heavy, but non-fatal dose of mustard need before he can care for himself? It’s possible that at times the nursing resources just weren’t there to help the exposed over the hump, so to speak. Leaving the effect for the troops being what you’re reporting. At that time.
ETA: Here’s a VA report (Warning: .pdf) that discusses long-term effects of mustard gas exposure, including follow-up on the Bari incident that has been referenced upthread. Not too many details of what happened, but the details of what the survivors have been suffering are still there.
Small breath of what? There were several different gasses used during the Great War. Each had a different effect. Mustard gas was a blistering agent, for example. But all of the war gasses of this time period were survivable. Not pleasant, and crippling, but you could survive a brief or fractional exposure.
Honestly, this is the most effective use of chemical weapons…as a demoralizing agent.
I think the British Military ~1944 would be interested in Frostillicus’s OP - because they were afraid of it/asking it themselves
What General Marshall later claimed :
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that the chief reason [gas was not used against the Nazi’s in this period] was the opposition of the British, who feared that Germany, caught in the last weeks of war, might use the weapon in Europe. Marshall implied that Roosevelt might have repudiated his pledge and sanctioned America’s initiation of gas warfare. There are no records of any conversation with Roosevelt on this matter, however, and probably Britain’s fears sufficed to deter Marshall from raising the issue with FDR in the early spring of 1945.
Originally Posted by Two and a Half Inches of Fun
What about using gas to stop the Allied invasion of France? Could a surprise gas attack have been effective at stopping the invasion? Germany knew it was coming and the general area. They could have held the beaches for as long as possible and let as many Allied troops get on the ground and then delivered massive gas attacks. Is there any reason this would not have been a devastating blow to the Allies?
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Shortly before the D-day invasion the British military chiefs began worrying that the decision by Gen. Dwight D. Elsenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, to use white phosphorus would violate the 1925 Geneva Protocol—which Britain, unlike the United States, was bound by—and might unleash German retaliatory gas attacks. “It is difficult,” the Ministry of Defense warned, “to draw a firm line between the use of white phosphorus for smoke and as an incendiary (which is legal) and its use primarily against personnel (which may be illegal).” Elsenhower refused to back down. By the time the issue percolated up to Churchill on June 21, the early assault on Normandy was over, and apparently the prime minister decided aeainst appealing the matter to Roosevelt.
After the war an Army chemical-warfare expert concluded that the use of gas by Germany could have delayed the Allied cross-Channel attack by six months. “Such a delay,” he noted, “could have given the Germans sufficient time to complete the new V-weapons, which would have made the Allies’ task all the harder and England’s long range bombardment considerably worse*
link2
I would add that the Allies felt that using conventional delivery systems (esp. air but artillery too) conventionally was more effective in the long run. Probably the Nazi’s did to.
Christy Mathewson, the pitcher for the New York Giants, was exposed to chemical weapons during a training exercise in WWI. He lived to age 45, although as a result of his exposure to the gas, he contracted tuberculosis.
Not germane to the OP, but the idea that Soviet POWs were simply “mistreated”, or that it was the fault of Stalin, is just blatantly inaccurate. Soviet POWs were treated atrociously by their German captors. To blame their horrendous treatment on Stalin is absurd. One major, but by far the only, reason for the prevalence of Germans willing to commit these atrocities was because of Nazi indoctrination and Hitler’s belief that the Slavic populations were there to be conquered and provide labor to the pure Aryan race. The initial German invasion of Soviet Russian and its subsequently occupation saw atrocities committed upon both civilians and military personnel in perfect accordance with Hitler’s vision.
It is true, however, that when the tides eventually turned in the Soviet’s favor they committed their own share of atrocities in the wake of their advance into German lands. Regardless, it must be remembered that these atrocities were committed after years of suffering under the treat of Nazi extermination. Though they cannot be entirely forgiven, you can mitigate them.
I was speaking of mustard gas. Thanks for the information dopers. I’ll take your word for it not always being fatal. I suspected it wasn’t always fatal, but just a common saying by solders discussing war.
In the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannia (published 1929), the article “Chemical Warfare” points out that the percentage of chemical warfare casualties killed or permenantly disabled during WW1 was actually lower than among overall casualties. (This is in a section that tries to refute notions that chemical warfare is inherently inhumane.) A German chemical attack would have probably been highly effective the first time out, but would have had much less effectiveness once troops were prepared.
Why is anyone giving Hitler the benefit of logical view? Based on his actions at the end of the war, destroying huge amounts of German infrastructure, when did logic or cause and effect ever really enter his mind and therefore German strategic planning?
I think it was pure fear on his part based on Hitler’s experience of getting gassed, coupled with the fact that at the beginning of the war they weren’t needed due to German victory, and when they could have been used somewhat effectively to rescue Germany from defeat (i.e. Normandy, perhaps loaded onto V-weapons) by then Germany lacked the industrial capability due to Allied bombing to actually create chemical weapons in any sort of quantity. I seriously doubt Allied retaliation was much of a consideration.
There is a pretty good book- dated now- called " A Higher Form of Killing".
But as has been said- it was a different situation from The Great War. Germany had some very lethal gas agents, but in what quantities I am not sure. And conventional methods of warfare were working until late 1942.
The Leavenworth Papers contains an article on WWI chemical warfare: Link. It’s paper number 10. I’d link directly but it’s broken up into a number of separate PDFs. It has a lot of info on the gas types, method of delivery, and tactical uses. The “killer” gas mentioned earlier may be a reference to Phosgene. It was lethal, but not immediately so. It apparently caused slow agonizing deaths after only a little exposure.
The D-day troops were equiped with some anti-chemical gear. Every soldier had a green paper brassard on his upper arm that changed color in the presence of certain chemical agents. Thus providing a little warning for the guy to don his gas mask.
This is exactly what led me to think of the question in the first place. I am curently reading Rick Atkinson’s book about the Sicily and Italy campaigns and this exact point was mentioned, along with the fact that the ship was bombed by the Germans, causing a serious loss of life.