University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer said Wednesday that the Nazis never used chemical weapons—ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people that Adolf Hitler gassed in concentration camps. As reported by Tablet Magazine:
I would like to point out that all of this discourse about chemical weapons being so special is, I think, wrong. I think it’s, again, regrettable that chemical weapons have been used. But chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction, like nuclear weapons are. The reason that chemical weapons were not used in World War II wasn’t because someone like Adolf Hitler was above using them for moral reasons.
They weren’t used because they have very little military utility. Anybody who has been in the Army knows that chemical weapons just don’t buy you much on the battlefield… I ask you, what’s the difference between killing somebody with shrapnel or bullets vs. killing them with chemical weapons? I don’t see any meaningful difference…
[T]he idea that chemical weapons have suddenly changed the nature of the game and therefore we should get involved now, I think, is a specious argument.
Mearsheimer, who authored the book The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy, has a long history of controversial statements about Israel and Jews, as detailed by Tablet.