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A comment on Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’. Parent comment

Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by learc83 on Monday November 12, 2018 @02:43PM (#18435069)
The article is specifically talking about another "Great War", not limited conventional conflicts. All out, generation crippling war is a far cry from anything we've seen large industrialized countries engage in since World War II. I can't see how anything like another "Great War" could be possible without going nuclear.
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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by AnimalMuppet on Monday November 12, 2018 @03:35PM (#18435499)
Nobody brought out chemical weapons in World War II, though both sides had them. (Granted, chemical weapon defenses were practical in WWII, whereas nuclear weapon defenses are not today. Still, even in great wars, there have been weapons that were not used.)
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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by learc83 on Monday November 12, 2018 @03:48PM (#18435620)
That's a very good point. They weren't widely used. But Japan did use both chemical and biological weapons against the Chinese. We don't really know why Hitler didn't use them, but it's likely that his experience in WWI gave him a unique hatred of chemical warfare.

Regardless by the time Germany accepted that they were facing an existential threat, they couldn't have used Chemical weapons to completely decimate their enemy the way a losing country could with ICBMS (both land based and on submarines).

They had no way to reach America, or even Britain at the end of the war (with enough munitions), so chemical attacks would have been pointless by that time. If Hitler could have pressed a button completely destroy America, Britain, and Russia when he was in his bunker in Berlin, I'm willing to bet he would have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Changde#Use_of_chemi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...

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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by bdamm on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:27PM (#18437271)
He did of course use chemical weapons in his death camps.
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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by learc83 on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:34PM (#18437317)
Very true.
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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by CamperBob2 on Monday November 12, 2018 @06:15PM (#18436883)
Nobody brought out chemical weapons in World War II, though both sides had them.

Sure they did. They were just used on civilians instead of regular combatants. What was Zyklon-B, chopped liver?

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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by dsfyu404ed on Monday November 12, 2018 @03:38PM (#18435523)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare#World_War_II

Not exactly.

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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by AnimalMuppet on Monday November 12, 2018 @03:43PM (#18435585)
All right, not exactly, but close. Close enough that I think the point still stands - they had these weapons, but they were mostly not used, because of the fear of retaliation with the same weapon, even in the heat of a great war.
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Re:Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’ by Nomentatus on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:57PM (#18437464)
The Germans couldn't match the Allied expertise with biological weapons, and were warned that using chemical weapons would be responded to with far more effective biological weapons. I don't see anything "greater than nuclear" that would complete the analogy here.
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