Why didn't the Germans use nerve gas at the battle of Berlin? I've read that Hitler had Sarin gas distributed to some of his soldier's at the battle with the instruction to only use it under a direct order from the Fuhrer. Everything written about him at the time seems to shoe that he wanted to bring down all of Germany with him if they were going to lose the war, so I doubt he had any moral qualms with it. After all he ordered a scorched earth policy within his own country during the retreat, called up the home guard and the Hitler youth into arms.
Why didn't the Germans use nerve gas at the battle of Berlin...
Oliver Peterson
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Joseph Torres
I just watched "Unsere Vaeter, Unsere Muetter". Based on this alone, I would be inclined to think that #notallNazis were fanatic enough, especially by the end of the war, to kill their own population. But maybe this is just revisionism.
Anyways, if they did use the gas, what then? They win? Surely not. I think Hitler was fighting an ideological war - his, or the 3rd Reich's physical destruction was not the end of Nazism.
Scorched earth can be healed.
Dylan Cooper
Is this Hwan Empire thread?
Logan Turner
The issue is that most of the nazi high command was fanatical enough to pull a move like this at the end of the war. Many of Hitler's generals were urging him to use it, and Hitler himself would write and talk about bringing Germany down with him. Yet no order was given out to use the gas which he supplued some SS units with. If Hitler had given an order and it has been ignored then it would have been heard about.
Josiah Rogers
>If Hitler had given an order and it has been ignored then it would have been heard about.
I don't think that's necessarily true, depending on how he was giving orders and who he was giving them to. It's not like Hitler was directly commanding troops. Some aide might have just decided not to pass it along.
Gavin Allen
Would it have actually helped? I'm far from studied up on the thrust and parry of the Battle of Berlin, but generally, gas as a weapon is only really effective against people in an enclosure, it disperses too quickly otherwise; and at that point you may as well lob conventional weapons.
I would have thought that it would be the Germans, not the Soviets, who are more burrowed in, making gas weapons largely counterproductive.
Ethan Morales
Because hitler was a ww1 veteran who experienced gas, and his personal horendous experiences kept him from using this 'cruel' weapon.
Most nazis were pretty softcore, soldiers were just soldiers, they got orders they had to carry out, amd they where human, my granddad was a german officer he incidentally defected to the russians during the battle of stalingrad. He was probably the best(as in good) man i have known
Austin Rivera
What has he told you of the Nazis and their ideology?
Was it really as racially driven as it's made out to be? Was lebensraum an actual thing?
Chase Jackson
Hitler knew firsthand the inhuman things poison gas can do, and so forbid it's military use.
Bentley Jenkins
No, pretty much jews did indeed fuck things up, especially in berlin, so germans hating them didn't come out of nothing, however all those jews had the money to move as soon as hitler came to power, the jews murdered in the camps were innocent, regarding the soviets, they were bassically told this:
youtube.com
They were told bolsheviks where satanic baby eaters, and they as good christians would defend europe against them by fighting them. Turns out, they where just as human, I think this was a big contributor to the germans losing, at first they were glad to kill russians, but once they found out about their hardships (there is a very nive poem from a soviet female soldier about that russia is shit they live im these nice houses what do they have to look for in russia or something) and what the german leaders ordered them to do against russians, they lost the will to shoot to kill.
Parker Jackson
>would it actually have helped
It could have made life hell for everyone inside the city, including the Soviets. Obviously it the Germans would still have lost, but Hitler's mindset at the time seemed to be that he would rather see Germany completely destroyed than fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks.
If that is the case then why was their accounts of boxes of sarin gas weapons bearing the inscription "Only to be opened under direct order of the fuhrer" being distributed to certain troops of the SS in the city?
Daniel Lee
If anyone was going to use gas during WWII besides the Japs, it was gonna be the Brits. Churchill had a hard on for the stuff.
Kayden Murphy
Read mein Kampf, dictated by the man himself, and you can see how racial it was.
Robert Mitchell
because Hitler was subjected to a gas attack in ww1
Ian Miller
Ideology is not what life is practically like. Most people are too pragmatic to let their lives be dictated by ideology and the Nazis too were subject to the imperatives of geo-strategy and the market.
Dylan King
it's an "in case of emergency, break glass" sort of thing
hitler never ordered their dispersal (and he wouldn't have in any case) so they were never used
Aiden Thomas
Maybe they aren't really that effective compared to conventional weapons?
Isaac Foster
Nazis were pretty ideological m8. Sure they were pragmatic in the pursuit of their ends but you just need to read a little to see that the higher ups had a comprehensive vision and even implementation of what they wanted, even if they couldn't always make what they wanted reality
Mason Nelson
>you just need to read a little to see that the higher ups had a comprehensive vision and even implementation of what they wanted
This.
The entire reason warfare on the Eastern front was so savage was because of the Nazi leadership. Many of the generals wanted to adhere to the Hague during Barbarossa but Hitler made it clear that he wanted a war of extermination on the eastern front. Stalin even sent a message early in the invasion asking the Germans to adhere to the Hague Conventions if the Soviets would as well and it was met with no response. Both sides committed some pretty atrocious acts, but Nazi leadership set the tone for the eastern front first. Had the leaders been less concerned with political ideology the Germans might have faired better.
Colton Campbell
German high command was pretty racial m8. Hitler gave this speech to 200 top generals on March 30th, 1941 a few months before Barbarossa.
>“The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies. I know that the necessity for such means of waging war is beyond the comprehension of you generals but . . . I insist absolutely that my orders be executed without contradiction.”
These orders included executing Commissaires on the spot, group executions for any village found to contain partisan activity, considering encircled Soviet units to be partisans, and more.
Eli Gray
Sarin and Soman gas would have been extremely effective, much more so than Mustard, Chlorine or any other gas in use in ww1. Nerve gasses are orders of magnitude deadlier than any other chemical weapons at the time, and can be absorbed through the skin. Gas masks would be almost useless without a full on CBRN suit.