WI: the use of chemical, even biological, weapons during World War Two?

  I have seen a number of arguments for why the Germans didn't use chemical weapons, some of which are contradictory, including:

a)  Hitler's experience in WWI made him opposed to its use.

b)  That the Germans thought Britain also had nerve agents.

c)  That while the British took steps to protect their civilian population, with gas masks for all nothing like this was done for Germany.  Also from mid 41 onwards it was difficult for the Germans to realistically bomb Britain while Britain had a substaintial and steadily growing capacity to bomb virtually all Germany and if chemical weapons had been used, or the biological ones, it would have been devastating.

d)  That chemical weapons were best used for offensive operations so by the time Germany started to struggle that option was effectively gone.

e)  That because the western allied forces were fully motorised while the German army relied heavily on horses, which couldn't be protected against chemical agents with any real effectiveness a chemical exchange would cripple the German forces.  This is supposed to have been mentioned by Goring when he was asked this question by western officers after the German surrender.

f)  I did read once, a long while ago and without any reference source made, that in the final stages of the war Hitler did order use of chemical weapons.  However realising that the war was lost and that the allied retaliation would be crippling the officers ordered to do so simply ignored the orders.

  I have also read one suggestion, by a Soviet biological weapons expert who defected to the west, that the Soviets actually used such a weapon against the Germans in 1942 but managed to keep it secret.  Whether this is true I don't know but he made a fairly detailed case.  Apparently the Soviets drastically increased medical equipment for treating that particular infestation in the early stages of the campaign then saw a lot of troops affected and treated.

  In terms of a POD that triggers widespread use of chemical weapons possibly the most obvious would be the incident during the early stages of the Italian campaign.  Can't remember the exact battle but think it was Salerno.  Because there was the fear that the Axis would use chemical weapons the allied forces kept a retaliatory force available, in this case with weapons on ships near the beachhead.  One of those was hit by a German attack and gas leaked out towards the shore and German positions.  The allies were panicking about the Germans detecting it and retaliating and urgently informed them of the leak and that it wasn't an attack.  In that case it was accepted by the Germans but possibly some incident there or in another clash could have escalated into widespread use.

  Ah Bari does ring a bell.  I thought they did inform the Germans but probably remembering it wrong then.

  ep

  What are they please?  Some sort of fae [fuel air explosive] type weapon by the sound of it? 

  Of course if it gets to ~43 onwards then such weapons would have little effect on the war as they would have much chance to actually deploy them?  At least unless they can be ground fired. 

  Steve

  PS - Found it myself.  See coal dust bomb, for details.  Could have been very nasty, especially since it was launches via half-tracks.  Was thinking that would have had to have been air deployed, which would be a problem but obviously not.  Sounds like the initial version was used against bunkers in Sevastopol and if they had guessed rightly about where the D Day landings were it could have caused serious problems.  Depending on when/where its used and the area affected. - Some details in the wiki entry for the creator, Mario_Zippermayr - which mentions:

  which sound potentially very bad for any landing force.  Those larger figures are comparable to the early nuclear weapons in impact areas if those figures are accurate.  They seem very large for such a small explosive amount.

  Interesting.  Hadn't heard of Eisenhammer before but didn't realise how centralised the Soviet power generation capacity was.  Although from say 43/44 as the Germans were pushed back would they have the range?  Although I note from the Wiki entry for Mitel - the piggy-back fighter-bomber delivery system they thought they could hit Scapa so unless that was planned to be from Norway that would have suggested some range. 

  I'm not sure how successful such a rather cumbersome system would have been for penetrating Soviet air space or how accurate the bomber would have been in the final blind stage but even a 50% successful attack on the turbine stations could have put quite a dent into Soviet production for a while.  Not sure whether such a system could be used for delivery of a coal-air bomb but could add to its effectiveness in terms of hitting targets some way from the front.

  In terms of the coal-air bombs themselves their effectiveness against the Soviet bridgeheads seem to have been somewhat limited but that could have been in part because of the difficulties in getting anything done with the state of Germany, both material and political by that time.  If they could have been produced in relatively small numbers in 42 say it might have had a dramatic impact on both Leningrad and Stalingrad given that the sort of blast/over-pressure effect would have been very effective against dug in infantry and probably also local production capacities and units like AA guns and their crews, making conventional air attacks more successful.  Ditto if they could be applied to the allied bridgeheads in France or Italy.  Even with the probably more likely 400m radius rather than the 4km one. 

  Not sure what the allied response would have been if they encountered them.  Might have considered them as chemical weapons say in which case it could become very bloody for all of Europe once that genie was out of the bottle!   Otherwise it might have made operations in the east bloodier and those in the west virtually impossible until nuclear weapons end the conflict.  As such probably a very good thing that they were not developed in time.