Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare (2008) - The Black Vault

Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfarelacking compared to the stocks available to Germany,and Soviet gas masks had technical defects, whichmay explain Stalin’s no-first-use policy. 109 Duringthe war, the Soviets lacked chemical discipline andadequate protective equipment to instigate a chemicalwar. During retreats in 1941, many Soviet troopsdiscarded their gas masks and other equipment tolighten their loads. By the end of 1941 fighting hadreached a stalemate around Leningrad. Germanyplanned to breach the Soviet defenses by means of achemical attack along 20 kilometers near the city, buthad insufficient supplies of artillery and gas shells tocarry out the maneuver. 109In September and December of 1942 General HermannOchsner, chief of Germany’s chemical warfaredivision, carried out two attacks with a nonlethal gasto smoke out Soviet guerillas hiding in caves alongthe Kerch peninsula, a stretch of land forming theopening to the Sea of Azov. The Soviet governmentclaimed the German army was responsible for thousandsof deaths and had used chemical weapons inthe attack. 109Chemical weapons were not used by either sideduring fierce fighting at Moscow. After defeatingGerman troops at Moscow, Kursk, and Stalingrad,a change from defense to offense in Soviet militarystrategy renewed an interest in chemical weapons.Soviet intelligence before the Battle of Kursk warnedof German use of the chemical weapons. Chief of StaffAM Vasil’ev wrote this directive [translated]:The general staff possesses information to the effectthat the German command has recently heightenedthe preparedness of its forces for the use of chemicalweapons. . . . There are enough risk takers in theGerman command who, relying on the fact that theycould catch us by surprise, might decide on a desperategamble and use chemical weapons againstus. 112(p91)British Plans for GasPrime Minister Churchill’s position on gas warfareis evident in a four-page memo sent to his chief of staff,General Hastings Ismay:I urge you to think very seriously over the questionof poison gas. . . . It is absurd to consider moralityon this topic when everybody used it [gas] in the lastwar without a word of complaint from the moralistsor the Church. On the other hand, in the last war thebombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden.Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It issimply a question of fashion changing as she doesbetween long and short skirts for women. . . . I wanta cold-blooded calculation made as to how it wouldpay to use poison gas. . . . One really must not bebound within silly conventions of the mind whetherthey be those that ruled in the last war or those inreverse which rule in this. . . . We could drench thecities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germanyin such a way that most of the population would berequiring constant medical attention. . . . It may beseveral weeks or even months before I shall ask youto drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it,let us do it one hundred per cent. In the meantime,I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensiblepeople and not by the particular set of psalm-singinguniformed defeatists which one runs across now herenow here now there. 113(p501)US Policy and Plans for GasWhile planning for a traditional, European-stylewar, the CWS also monitored Japan’s use of chemicalweapons in China, which increased the US Army’sinterest in chemical warfare preparation. 114 The CWS,however, was still unprepared to fight a major chemicalwar on the level of World War I. Increased budgets andpersonnel helped with war planning, but to actuallyfield chemical weapons and build chemical stockpilesfirst required industrial mobilization and massiveproduction.President Roosevelt established a no-first-usepolicy for chemical weapons early in the war, whichwas reiterated in an official statement in 1943: “Weshall under no circumstances resort to the use ofsuch weapons [chemical] unless they are first usedby our enemies.” 115(p6) The policy was backed upby a statement of warning: “Any use of gas by anyaxis power, therefore, will immediately be followedby the fullest possible retaliation upon munitioncenters, seaports and other military objectivesthroughout the whole extent of the territory of suchaxis country.” 115(pp6–7)US plans for the final invasion of Japan, codenamedOperation Downfall, called for the invasionof Kyushu Island in the fall of 1945, followed by aninvasion of the main island of Japan in the springof 1946. Planners predicted that the attack wouldlead to a major chemical conflict because Japan hadalready used chemical weapons against China. TheArmy Air Force plans called for the use of persistent100-lb bombs (mustard gas) and nonpersistent 500-lb bombs (60% phosgene, 40% cyanogen chloride).After Germany’s surrender in May 1945, the CWScontemplated augmenting their current arsenal ofchemical bombs with captured stocks from Germanyto address shortages based on required estimates for52