First off, I hope this question is not too offensive. Discussing technicalities of a genocide will certainly disgust some. I am in no way trying to condone nazi crimes. I am also not sure whether it makes sense to search for rational thought in genocide. Here goes anyway:

Nazi death camps used shower heads to introduce a gas into the gas chambers, thereby killing people. The gas used was Zyklon-B, an industrial product produced by a single supplier, and likely relatively expensive. It also meant that the gas chambers had to be aerated for a number of minutes before soldiers or forced laborers could enter the gas chambers to drag out the corpses.

Why didn’t they simply use CO2? It’s a byproduct of basically any fire. It’s cheap and could have been produced on-site trivially. It’s also part of normal air and only toxic in high concentrations, likely meaning less danger to soldiers.

  • Rayleigh@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    First: Zyklon B was mainly used in Auschwitz, many other camps did use CO or engine exhaust gases.

    Nazi death camps used shower heads to introduce a gas into the gas chambers

    No, the showers were simply fake. Zyklon B was inserted from above into metal pipes so it would fall down into the gas chamber. You can see an animation here: https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/terra-x/die-gaskammern-in-auschwitz-birkenau-creative-commons-100.html

    and likely relatively expensive

    It was widely used for killing insects for example on ships, cooling houses, mills or other in other storage facilities. In fact the overwhelming part of Zyklon B going to concentration camps was indeed used to kill fleas or lice and not for killing humans. The price was 4.55 RM in 1943 per kg which is roughly the same in Euros today.

    It also meant that the gas chambers had to be aerated for a number of minutes

    30 to 40 minutes

    Why didn’t they simply use CO2

    Zyklon B was again a mass product with the corresponding production capacities already there and not expensive. Also it is estimated that around 4kg of Zyklon B are able to kill 1000 people. It is also fast acting and thereby simply very effective in that sense. Plus it was also simple to transport and store as it came on a carrier material, so pressure gas bottles were not necessary but simple metal containers were used.

    • föderal umdrehen@feddit.deOP
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      1 year ago

      So, for the record, while I didn’t really write anything in here, I did read the entire thread and learned a little bit from each of the top-level comments (bar the downvoted one): Thank you for the responses and thank you for debunking me!

      (I guess I should have put a little more effort into research.)

    • snowe@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      I don’t speak German so I couldn’t understand the video, but it looks like it was just a powder? Did they have to activate it?