I'm introducing a new concept to the forum here, [O/T] threads. Any thread marked [O/T] will indicate that it is "Off Topic." It will be used for anything not pertaining to politics or current events.

This one has my goat lately. I've often wondered how much more horrible WWII would have been if it had turned into a chemical war. By that, I'm referring to the sort that WWI was, a theater-wide gas and other chemical battlefield. When one considers the technological advancements in delivery methods from WWI to WWII it should become apparent how much more devastating a chemical WWII would have been. WWI was already fairly unpleasant, and the scope of chemical attacks was exclusively soldiers, to whom counter-measures could be distributed and fortified positioning was the norm. In WWII the advances of rocketry and aerial bombardment meant cities and civilian populations were targets; and counter-measures virtually non-existent.

This little document I came across not only puts into perspective just how devastating a full-scale chemical attack could have been, but how dreadfully close the war came to witnessing one:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p12_Weber.html