West Germany planned to procure and even deploy chemical weapons in the 1960s. US and German military files, recently disclosed and evaluated by a team of journalists, run contrary to longstanding government denials.

War, Auschwitz, chemical weapons: never again. This was what the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany swore after the horrors of two World Wars. The German Empire had, after all, been responsible for the first ever use of poison gas during World War I, and the majority of chemical weapons were developed by German chemists — including Zyklon B, which the Nazi regime used until 1945  to commit mass murder during the Holocaust.

Yet less than 20 years later, the West German government planned to break this taboo. In 1961, West Germany initiated a debate in top-secret meetings with NATO. It called for the United States not to be the only country with the deterrent and retaliatory capability of chemical agents.