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.
First: Zyklon B was mainly used in Auschwitz, many other camps did use CO or engine exhaust gases.
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
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.
30 to 40 minutes
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.
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.)
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?
Not exactly a powder but Zyklon B was liquid hydrocyanic acid (HCN) in a porous granulated Material https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B#/media/Datei%3ACyklonb.JPG
It did not need to be activated, however in winter gas Chambers needed to be heated to ensure the acid would go into its gaseous state fast enough.
oh, it looked like a powder in the video. thanks for the information!