Uniform jacket of the fog troop, ca. 1936

This field suit of a Wehrmacht Oberwachtmeister belonged to the fog training and testing department set up in Bremen 88 years ago today. As the name suggests, their task was also to shoot fog to cover their own troops. However, the name was mainly used to disguise its main task: the use of its own and the defense against enemy chemical warfare agents.

The “Raubkammer” army test site was located on the Munster-Nord military training area, where the 1st battery of the fog training and testing department carried out firing tests and tested new fog-throwing devices, for example. The 2nd battery practiced the decontamination and poisoning of terrain. Here, for example, protective clothing and its decontamination were tested, soil, air and food analyses were carried out after artillery fire and bombing, and warfare agents were tested on animals. The chemical warfare agents used in the tests were also manufactured on site.

During the test firing in Munster, the Nebeltruppe also tested new rocket launchers. These were not as accurate as artillery shells, but the launchers were considerably lighter, had a higher rate of fire and a larger area could be hit with a multiple launcher. The rocket launchers were therefore to be used for chemical warfare agents and fog; from 1940 onwards, the fog sections began to be equipped with this “fog launcher”. The Nebeltruppe was fully motorized and used half-track vehicles to transport its armament.

Although the use of chemical warfare agents was repeatedly considered by various belligerent states on both sides during the course of the Second World War, it did not take place. On the German side, the head of the Nebeltruppen called for chemical attacks from the air on cities and industry even before the invasion of Poland in 1939. However, in the offensive war of movement in the first years of the war, the use of chemical weapons was neither necessary nor advantageous for the Wehrmacht for operational reasons, as its own troops would have had to fight in contaminated territory. But even after the invasion of the Soviet Union and when the Wehrmacht was already on the defensive, no use was made. There were many reasons for this, which are discussed in research – but it was not due to a lack of chemical weapons: by 1941, half of the German production of the First World War had already been achieved, and from 1942 production was even intensified and only stopped in March 1945 despite a shortage of raw materials. One reason for the German decision not to use chemical weapons was to avoid provoking the Allies into using them, which would have been devastating due to their air superiority and the lack of protection for German troops and the civilian population.

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(short) stories from the depot

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