D-Day: What Might Have Been

As the anniversary of D-Day approaches, Frank J. Dinan, PhD, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY, shares his insight as to what would have happened if Hitler had chosen to use the deadly nerve gas Tabun, that he alone possessed, to oppose the D-Day landings?

General Omar Bradley, commander of all of the American forces landing on D-Day, writing in his memoir, A Soldier’s Story, commented on how relieved he was that the Germans did not use gas as a weapon on D-Day.

“When D-Day finally ended without a whiff of gas, I was vastly relieved. For even a light sprinkling of a persistent gas could have forced a decision in one of history’s climactic battles.”

If General Bradley’s fears were correct, the Allies could have been forced back into the sea with enormous casualties. The political repercussions of a D-Day defeat for Roosevelt, Churchill and Eisenhower, the three men most responsible for the landings would have been devastating. Would another invasion attempt be made? Surely not soon. The war would have been prolonged and could have resulted in the Allies using their still developing atomic bombs against Germany rather than Japan.

Seeing Tabun’s effectiveness as a weapon and the lack of an Allied response, Hitler certainly would have used it against the Russians. Would Stalin then, frustrated by Tabun’s use and by the loss of a long promised Allied second front, have sued for a separate peace? Now confident that no nerve gas retaliatory attacks were forthcoming, it is likely that Hitler would have launched his rapidly improving V2 rockets now filled with Tabun against Allied targets with devastating effect.

The Tabun story began on December 23, 1936, when a single drop of that newly-made chemical fell to the floor of a laboratory in Germany. The two men working there immediately suffered diminished vision, labored breathing and a loss of muscle control. Ironically, Tabun was made to be an insecticide that was toxic to insects but harmless to humans.

The Nazis government required that all discoveries of potential military value be passed along to them. The men’s employer, the giant I.G. Farben Corporation, complied, and its representatives were soon called to Berlin to discuss Tabun with the military.

Demonstrations of Tabun’s lethal effects at extraordinarily low concentrations made its potential as a devastating weapon obvious. Everything about Tabun was immediately classified as top secret and few were aware of its existence.

A weapon oriented Tabun research program began and construction of a plant designed for its production soon started. By mid-1943 thousands of tons of Tabun had been produced, loaded into artillery shells and bombs that were moved to storage sites throughout Germany. The secrecy that surrounded Tabun was so effective that the Allies had no hint of its existence and had no comparable weapons to retaliate with if the Nazis used it.

Nerve agents such as Tabun, are among the deadliest chemicals ever devised and are now classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations. They exert their deadly effects by inhalation and absorption through the skin.

In the body they prevent the action of a key enzyme that regulates all nerve transmission processes. A nerve impulse is transmitted along a nerve pathway by a chemical called a neurotransmitter. Once it has done its job, the neurotransmitter must be immediately removed or the nerve transmission process repeats itself uncontrollably. Tabun prevents this removal and a victim’s ability to see, breathe and control bodily functions is rapidly lost. Death soon follows.

On D-Day, June 4, 1944, the largest invasion armada ever assembled assaulted the Normandy beaches of France. Allied troops stormed ashore and gradually overcame determined German resistance to establish narrow, tenuous beachheads. The invaders were tightly packed together and pinned on the beach with the sea at their backs and the German defenders before them. There was no going back; it was a clear case of advance or die. By nightfall, nearly 100,000 Allied troops had landed and about 10,000 of their comrades were either dead or wounded. Allied forces slowly fought their way inland. Within two weeks they had progressed far enough to allow a makeshift port to be built and soon 20,000 tons per day of supplies were being landed. At this point, although much fierce fighting and many casualties were still to come, the fate of Hitler’s Third Reich was effectively sealed. But did this have to be the case?

Allied confidence that Germany had not developed new war gasses of any significance was so great that General Bernard Montgomery, Commander of the British and Canadian D-Day forces, ordered that all gas protection equipment be left behind when his troops departed England on D-Day. American soldiers carried only a gas mask but no rubber protective gear to stop gasses from being absorbed through clothing and skin. They would have quickly become casualties to Tabun.

Earlier, in the summer of 1940, the British had formulated plans to use gas to repel what then seemed a likely cross Channel invasion of their island by Nazi forces. They recognized that gas would be a much more effective weapon than explosives to use against an invading army tightly packed together on a narrow invasion beach. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was so convinced that the use of mustard gas, much less effective than Tabun, would stop a German invasion and drive the invaders back into the sea that he urged the military to use its entire supply of mustard gas on the first day of an attack.

Why then didn’t Hitler, certainly no humanitarian, use the far deadlier Tabun, that he alone possessed, to defeat the Allies on D-Day? The answer to this question centers on one fateful meeting and an event that occurred in the closing days of World War I when then corporal Adolph Hitler was temporally blinded by gas and was hospitalized at the war’s end. This experience gave Hitler a life-long aversion to poison gas warfare.

By 1943, the tide of war had turned against Germany and Hitler came under increasing pressure from fanatical Nazi leaders to use Tabun. He resisted, maintaining that it would only be used in response to a nerve gas attack on Germany. But their pressure was unrelenting, and in the Fall of 1943, Hitler agreed to discuss Tabun’s use with Otto Ambros, Germany’s leading expert on chemical warfare and Albert Speer, the Reich’s Minister for Armaments.

In his book, Inside the Third Reich, Speer relates that at that meeting Ambros told Hitler that he doubted that Germany had a monopoly on Tabun. He stated that Tabun had appeared in the chemical literature as early as 1902, that I.G. Farben had patented Tabun in 1937, and that since 1939, no mention of phosphorus insecticide chemistry had appeared in the scientific literature of the Allied nations. Ambros argued that these facts indicated that the Allies had nerve weapons and had imposed strict censorship on them to prevent Germany from realizing their deadly nature. After hearing Ambros’ arguments, Hitler never again seriously considered Tabun’s use.

We know now that Ambros was wrong. The Allies knew nothing about nerve weapons until the war ended. But what we can never know with certainty is whether Ambros deliberately mislead Hitler as a result of his own misgivings about Tabun’s use, or if he believed the information that he gave to Hitler was correct. However several facts indicate that, whatever the reason, Ambros may have deliberately misled Hitler.

Ambros was a Director of I.G. Farben Industries and knew that although Tabun had been patented, the patent was held in complete secrecy. It did not issue publicly until well after the war ended and was not available to the Allies. An extensive search of the scientific literature over the period 1896 to 1911 recently conducted by experts failed to reveal any report of Tabun’s existence or mention of any such highly toxic chemicals. Ambros’ claim that nothing about phosphorus chemicals appeared in Allies’ scientific literature was correct, but this was a result of their efforts to prevent Germany from considering the use of these materials as insecticides.

Disease has always been a major enemy of armies during wars and Allied policy dictated that all information on insecticides was classified as secret. This caused the lack of publication that Ambros reported to Hitler.

We can never be sure what might have happened if Tabun had been used but we know this: what the little known chemist, Otto Ambros told Adolph Hitler at their fateful 1943 meeting saved countless lives, shortened history’s most horrific war and may have prevented a tragic D-Day defeat.

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Postscript

Just before the outbreak of the war, a Belgian chemist at the university of Liege was researching similar organophosphorus compounds and in 1939 his and his team’s publications on the topic suddenly ceased. This led the Germans to assume that the Allies had also discovered the nerve agents. In reality, the Belgian researchers had concluded that their line of investigation was unlikely to lead to the desired results and had halted their work. The German concerns were (at least partially) rooted in observation, but, as we know from many cold war developments, misinterpretation of the facts through mirroring one’s own activities.

Imperial German Africa

A colonial Askari company ready to march in German East Africa (Deutsch-Ostafrika), 1914-1918.

A member of the German Schutztruppe in East Africa, more commonly referred to as askaris, pictured holding a German flag. The colonial force for German East Africa was established by an act of the Reichstag on 22 March 1891.

Within a matter of days of the loss of the SMS Königsberg, the cruiser's crew was back on board removing the ten Krupp guns and ammunition, together with any other useful items. In all there were eight 10.5cm guns and two smaller 8.8cm guns. The guns were taken to Dar es Salaam - during which journey this image was taken - where they were fitted with carriages and went on to see action against the Allies in East Africa over the next two years.

The con­flict which began as the Great European War rapidly spread around the globe to become a world-wide con­flagration. Africa, East and West, the Middle and Far East, all became theatres of war. In Europe itself, it was not just the Western Front that experienced the horrors of modern warfare, with bitter fighting taking place in Italy and Salonika. The confl­ict of 1914- 1918 was indeed a world war. 

The uni­fied state of Germany had only been in existence for forty-three years when war broke out in 1914. Like so many of the European nations, this new Germany sought the prestige of an empire and quickly began to acquire territory in Africa. In 1884 Germany seized Togoland and part of Ghana to form the West African Togoland Protectorate (Schutzgebiet Togo). At the same time as the Germans took control of Togoland, they also took control of parts of Nigeria, Gabon, the Congo and Cameroon, which became the Protectorate of Kamerun. When war was declared in 1914 Britain immediately planned to seize these colonies. 

The outbreak of war left the Togoland Protectorate unprepared, with less than 700 men, mostly natives, to defend the territory. Consequently, British and French troops occupied the Protectorate on 7 August 1914, without opposition. 

It was a different matter in Kamerun where the 1,855 German Schutztruppen were supplemented by around 6,000 locally-raised troops. On 8 August, a mounted detachment from the West African Frontier Force from Kano in northern Nigeria set out towards Kamerun; at the same time, French troops moved from French Equatorial Africa. This British force crossed the border into German territory on 25 August. Later that day it came into contact with German troops at the border station at Tepe on the Benue River. After the skirmish, which involved ­ fierce ­ fighting, the enemy forces withdrew and the British occupied the station. Few casualties were suffered by either side.

More ­fighting, and more battles, followed and it was not until 1916 that the Allied forces ­finally defeated the Germans. The conflict in Kamerun cost France and Britain almost 2,000 men.

The ­fighting in East Africa was on a far greater scale. Around a quarter of a million Allied troops served in the East African theatre, incurring some 10,000 casualties. The Allies employed approximately 600,000 bearers throughout the course of the campaign and it has been estimated that the ­fighting cost the lives of 365,000 civilians. 

Britain assumed that German East Africa would fall easily into their hands, attacking German outposts near Lake Victoria on 5 August 1914. Three days later, British warships bombarded Dar es Salaam from the sea. The Germans responded, with General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck leading an invasion of British East Africa. 

Von Lettow's early success prompted the Allies to mount a large-scale invasion of the German territory. Two Indian Expeditionary Forces (classi­fied as B and C, as the ­first Indian Expeditionary Force was sent to the Western Front), totalling 12,000 men, were assembled and despatched to East Africa. At the battles of Tanga and Kilamanjaro the two Expeditionary Forces were defeated by the numerically inferior German Army, resulting in what has been described as amongst "the most notable failures in British military history". 

The naval war in East Africa also saw the German light cruiser SMS Königsberg sink the cruiser HMS Pegasus before the German ship was destroyed by warships of the British Cape squadron.

Fighting even took place on Lake Tanganyika itself. It was the story that inspired the Humphrey Bogart ­ lm The African Queen; two British gunboats were dragged overland halfway across Africa in 1915 to oppose German vessels on Lake Tanganyika in 1915. 

Greater numbers of Allied troops were despatched to East Africa to try and end German resistance. Forces from South Africa and Rhodesia, led by General Smuts and including Belgian troops from the Belgian Congo, joined the Indian forces. Von Lettow continued to be successful, achieving a remarkable victory at the Battle of Mahiwa in October 1917, inflicting almost 3,000 casualties on a combined South African and Nigerian force for the loss of only around 500 men. When the First World War came to an end, von Lettow remained undefeated.

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TOGOLAND

As formidable as Germany's European-based army was, its ability to defend most of its colonial possessions was limited. The British planned to capture all of the German colonies throughout the world, ostensibly with the objectives of preventing German warships from gaining access to ports and of protecting Allied colonies from German aggression, but also of reaping the rewards of imperial expansion at the expense of Germany. In Africa, German colonies included Togoland, Cameroons, and German Southwest Africa on the continent's west coast, and German East Africa on the east.

On August 7, three days after England declared war, four companies of British-led native troops from the Gold Coast (Ghana) and a unit of French-led native troops from Dahomey (Benin) invaded Togoland on their own initiative. After 20 days of sporadic combat, German colonial officials surrendered the colony. The immediate dividend of this victory was the capture of wireless (radio) stations that regulated the operation of German surface vessels raiding in African waters. 

CAMEROONS

A combination of French, British, and Belgian colonial troops invaded Cameroons on August 20, 1914, from the south, the east, and the northwest. By sea, they also attacked in the west. German resistance was more formidable than it had been in Togoland. The German Cameroonian Army was a small but capable force of 12 companies. It withdrew to a stronghold at Mora and held out there against repeated attacks through February 18, 1916. With its defeat, Cameroons fell to the Allies. 

SOUTH AFRICA

British regulars were withdrawn from South Africa for western front duty on August 10, 1914. To take their place, the white civilian residents of South Africa formed four irregular units and invaded German South West Africa (Namibia), beginning in September 1914. The British irregulars enjoyed a superiority of numbers that enabled them to gain control of all major ports; however, invasion of the interior was delayed by an uprising of pro- German South Africans, who had fought against the British during the Second (Great) BOER WAR (1899- 1902). It was not until January 1915, by which time the ranks of the British irregulars had grown to 50,000, that an offensive was launched to put down the rebellion. It was quelled by February-except in Cameroons, where many Germans continued to fight a guerrilla war of sporadic skirmishes. The Germans in South Africa surrendered on July 9, 1915.

GERMAN EAST AFRICA

Territory consisting of present-day Rwanda, Burundi, and continental Tanzania constituted German East Africa. In contrast to Germany's other colonial holdings, it was defended not only ably but also with genius and determination, by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (1870-1964). This officer possessed great skill in guerrilla warfare and commanded a force of askaris, superb European-trained native African troops. 

Lieutenant Colonel Lettow-Vorbeck was dispatched to German East Africa early in 1914. With limited supplies and a small army equipped with outmoded weapons, Lettow- Vorbeck nevertheless resolved to strike preemptively. As soon as war was declared in Europe, he staged a series of raids against the British railway in Kenya. Next, he attempted to capture Mombasa. Although he was driven back by September 1914, he successfully defended against a British amphibious attack on the port town of Tanga in northeastern Tanzania (then called Tanganyika) during November 2-3, 1914. Lettow-Vorbeck inflicted heavy losses on the British and also captured a large cache of badly needed arms and ammunition. He forced the British, themselves poorly supplied, into a defensive posture, which tied up a disproportionate number of men. Even after the Royal Navy sank in the Rufiji-River Delta the German cruiser Königsberg-the vessel on which Lettow- Vorbeck depended heavily for support-the German commander refused to give up. He put his men to work salvaging most of the stricken vessel's guns and even commandeered the Königsberg's crew as land troops. 

To deal with Lettow-Vorbeck, the British put a large force of British and colonial troops under the command of South African general Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950). The operations of this invasion army were coordinated with those of a Belgian invasion from the west and with those of an independent British invasion from Nyasaland in the south. Hopelessly outnumbered, Lettow-Vorbeck met this formidable threat with cool patience, employing delaying tactics to keep the invaders exposed to the merciless jungle. He made an ally of a hostile climate and terrain; in the end, tropical diseases caused far more Allied casualties than German bullets. Lettow-Vorbeck's askaris were accustomed to the climate and therefore less vulnerable to regional disease. 

Their losses notwithstanding, the British continued to pour men and resources into the invasion. Lettow- Vorbeck slowly yielded to the advance, ensuring that the invaders paid dearly for every mile they claimed. At frequent intervals, he turned on his pursuers with surprise counterattacks carried out with lightning speed. At Mahiwa, during October 15-18, 1917, although outnumbered four to one, he inflicted 1,500 casualties on the British, sustaining no more than 100 himself. Nevertheless, it was clear to Lettow-Vorbeck that the superior numbers of the British would ultimately drive him out of German East Africa. He decided not to make a useless stand in defense of a lost cause but instead invaded the Portuguese colony of Mozambique in December 1917. By looting Portuguese garrisons, Lettow-Vorbeck was able to supply his 4,000-man army sufficiently to enable him to raid as far south as Quelimane on the coast during July 1-3, 1918. Here, he turned back north and reentered German East Africa during September and October. By this time the war was all but over in Europe, but Lettow-Vorbeck, out of communication and isolated, had no knowledge of the fate of his countrymen on the western front. He launched an invasion of British-held Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and took the principal city of Kasama (in modern Zambia) on November 13, 1918-fully two days after the Armistice had officially ended the war. 

After taking Kasama, Lettow-Vorbeck began to hear and heed rumors of the German surrender in Europe. He opened negotiations with the British, and on November 23, 1918, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered his undefeated army at Abercorn (Mbala, Zambia). His was the last German force to lay down its arms in World War I. On the day of his surrender, Lettow-Vorbeck's entire army consisted of 155 Europeans, 1,168 African askari troops, and 3,000 other Africans.

Karameh

King Hussein after checking an abandoned Israeli tank. The battle of Karameh.

After years of operating as clandestine cells, on 1 January 1965, Fatah began sabotage activities against Israel, and this event is marked as Fatah Day. Following the June War of 1967, the group operated from Jordanian soil, and on 21 March 1968, it joined hands with the Jordanian army at the battle of Karameh against Israel.

A number of versions of the Karameh battle exist. Many of these accounts are designed to present the battle in a manner that favors Israel, Jordan, or the Palestinians and some clearly meet the criteria for political mythology noted earlier. Other explanations are more objective. Retired US Army Colonel Trevor Dupuy has presented one of the best early accounts of this battle from the viewpoint of a military historian.' Journalist John Cooley has provided another useful description in his 1973 study of the Palestinian Arabs. 'Both of these authors based their evaluations on extensive interviews with witnesses and participants in the battle. In more recent years, a variety of Israeli participants have also presented their views of the fighting with a level of candor and self-criticism that did not characterize initial Israeli accounts. Most notable in this regard are works by Colonel Muki Betser and Colonel Eliezer "Cheetah" Cohen. These discussions of the battle contain aspects of Israeli self-criticism that challenge the more one-dimensional accounts of earlier Israeli authors. 

All serious descriptions of the battle agree that the operation began in the early morning hours of 21 March 1968 when an Israeli force of around 15,000 troops crossed the Jordan River and attacked the guerrilla base at Karameh. Dupuy describes this force as composed of an infantry brigade, an armored brigade equivalent, an airborne battalion, an engineer battalion, and probably up to five battalions of supporting artillery. Israeli jet aircraft and helicopters supported these troops. The Jordanian and Palestinian fighters, aware of the build-up of forces in Israeli staging areas, expected the attack and had prepared defensive positions and fortifications. 

The Israelis called the Karameh attack" Operation Inferno." Its purpose was to inflict a devastating and perhaps fatal blow against the Palestinian resistance. In order to do this, armor-heavy Israeli maneuver forces were to launch a frontal attack against lightly-armed guerrillas, making full use of Israeli tactical air support. Paratroopers would be deployed by helicopter behind Palestinian lines, in order to prevent a guerrilla retreat and thereby ensure the death or capture of all guerrillas operating from the Karameh base. Defeating Jordanian troops in the area was not the central objective of the strike, but the Israeli leadership may have recognized that any strike into Jordan risked involving them in the engagement. The Israelis, nevertheless, may have expected the Jordanians to limit their military response because of political differences and rivalry between the monarchy and the Palestinian guerrillas. This assessment was later proven to be mistaken. 

The Israelis faced the entire Jordanian First Infantry Division reinforced by a significant number of tanks, probably from the 60th Armored Brigade. Troops from the Royal Guard and two Saladin armored car regiments were also sent to the Karameh area prior to the battle, although it is uncertain that the latter saw any combat. In addition to perhaps 15,000 Jordanians, the attacking force faced around 300 Palestinian guerrillas. These guerrillas were equipped with light arms, some older mortars, and only a few anti-tank weapons, according to two Palestinian commando leaders cited in a recent scholarly study. Jordanian troops, by contrast, had modem M-48 Patton tanks, anti-tank weapons, and heavy artillery. The Jordanian Army, therefore, had at least as many troops as the Israelis available for this operation and were a quantitative match for Israeli forces in every military category except for air support. Jordan's air force had been almost totally wiped out in the 1967 War.

The Israeli attackers by all accounts ran into difficulties throughout the operation. The Jordanian Army carried out a well-prepared defense of the area around Karameh and provided artillery support to the guerillas at the Karameh base itself. Against this unexpectedly tough resistance, Israeli casualties were heavier than expected. Additionally, many of the Palestinians, after engaging in fierce resistance, were able to escape through the surrounding Israeli paratroopers who had been inserted by helicopter to help envelop the guerrillas. The Palestinian escape was made under an unexpectedly heavy curtain of ground fog. The Israelis began breaking off from the battle in the early afternoon after they had destroyed the Karameh base and all of the guerrillas had been killed, captured, or had withdrawn. The destruction of the base and infliction of a number of casualties was at least a partial accomplishment of the mission and, with higher than expected casualties of their own, withdrawal seemed the best option. All Israeli forces had returned to their bases in Israel and the West Bank by that evening. 

While these basic facts surrounding the Karameh battle are not usually subject to controversy, key differences nevertheless exist on many important issues. These differences include questions about (1) the full extent of Israeli goals involving Jordan as well as the Palestinians, (2) who planned and directed the Israeli attack (Defense Minister Moshe Dayan or a subordinate commander), (3) the combat effectiveness of all participants, and (4) the extent to which Jordan applied its available military strength to resist the Israelis. It is in the interpretation of each of these factors that the concept of political myth becomes relevant.

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