Use of Gas

It seems that the point of this thread has been completely lost.

Regarding the use of poison gas. The line here is somewhat blurred. The first country to use gas was in fact France. They used a non-lethal tear gas on the Germans. Who then retaliated with a non-lethal gas of their own. It was then the Germans who escalated things by using the first poison or lethal gas.
However, despite the terror of a gas attack, it was an indiscriminate and poor weapon. A swift change of wind and you could kill your own troops. and it wasn't a very effective weapon.

As far as the American entry to the war (WW1) is concerned, the whens and whys and hows have been debated and argued on here already. One little known (or little publicised) fact that is many American manufacturers were, on the day of the declaration of war, still manufacturing war materiel for both the Allied & German forces.

Finally, regarding Dresden. Yes, the bombing of civilians was/is abhorrent. but it was a war. Dresden happened in 1945. Go back to 1937 - Guernica in Spain. 1939 - Warsaw. 1940 - London, Coventry, Manchester, Liverpool, Plymouth to name but a few cities. Bombing civilian targets was seen as a legitimate method of warfare. The reason that the scale of the bombing was worse in Dresden (and Hamburg & Berlin) was purely because of the available technology - 1937-1940 Luftwaffe raids were made by smaller planes, carrying a lighter bomb-load & in fewer numbers. Had they had enough planes that were an equivalent to the Lancaster & Stirling's that made up the bulk of Bomber Command, the Luftwaffe would have used them.