Did Nazi Germany use chemical weapons on the battlefield?

Upvote:6

Snopes has a short summary of the topic:

Sarin gas was developed under Hitler’s government and Nazi Gen. Hermann Ochsner, who led the German Army Weapons Office, called for it to be deployed via airstrikes, arguing: “There is no doubt that a city like London would be plunged into a state of unbearable turmoil that would bring enormous pressure to bear on the enemy government.” Nazis did not use chemical weapons against American and British troops in the field, though they reportedly employed them against Russian forces at various points. Snopes: Adolf Hitler Never Used Chemical Weapons?

Wikipedia has a short summary of reported cases where chemical weapons were used in battle:

The Nazis did use chemical weapons in combat on several occasions along the Black Sea, notably in Sevastopol, where they used toxic smoke to force Russian resistance fighters out of caverns below the city, in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.[61] The Nazis also used asphyxiating gas in the catacombs of Odessa in November 1941, following their capture of the city, and in late May 1942 during the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula in eastern Crimea.[62] [...] After the battle in mid-May 1942, roughly 3,000 Red Army soldiers and Soviet civilians not evacuated by sea were besieged in a series of caves and tunnels in the nearby Adzhimuskai quarry. After holding out for approximately three months, "poison gas was released into the tunnels, killing all but a few score of the Soviet defenders."[63]Wikipedia: Chemical Warfare

To summarize, Germany did produce large quantities of chemical weapons, but largely decided not to use them in battle - with a few exceptions.

Your last question is more a question of definition. If you consider disabled people, Jews, Roma, and others who were murdered via gas "his own people", then yes, otherwise no.

Upvote:10

The principal reason that Hitler did not use chemical weapons on any large scale on the battlefield was deterrence. By the time he accepted that Germany was losing the war, the Western Allies had air dominance over Germany, and could have attacked German cities with gas. They had the weapons available, were prepared to use them in response to German chemical attacks, and this was known to Hitler and the OKW.

By this stage, in late 1944, the Luftwaffe could not effectively resist the bomber fleets, and had no ability to attack Great Britain with gas in response. The V-2 wasn't suitable for gas warheads, simply because it lacked a proximity fuse.

Further, the Germans assumed that the Western Allies had discovered the family of organophosphorus nerve agents that includes sarin, tabun, etc. This was actually incorrect, but was perfectly plausible: they'd been discovered by the German chemical industry during insecticide research, and they knew the USA and UK had worked on that.

Source: Germany and the Second World War, Volume V/IIB, pp760-772.

There had been German military casualties from German use of gas during WWI -- with the limited protective equipment of the time, a few were inevitable.

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