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One of Edward Jablonski's aviation histories, Flying Fortress, mentions in passing the lack of CW in World War II. It had in fact come up in public discussion right after the war.

There was more serious discussion and active consdieration of using it than most realize.

Everyone knows that the Germans developed Tabun as the first organophosphate nerve gas, and their standard, with Sarin and Soman in pilot production. Hitler had proposed first use against the Soviet advance late in the war, but his generals didn't advocate it and the Fuehrer did not return to the subject.

It's especially interesting when you remember Hitler wanted a scorched-earth policy for the loss of German territory; how much faith he put in various secret weapons; how he accused his generals of cowardice; how desperate the failing defense of the Reich; and how ill-tempered he was. It seemed like he would have used the one weapon the Allies had no defense against.

But there are other likely technical reasons. Tabun was loaded into artillery shells and aerial bombs, but by that time the Luftwaffe was far less able to make wide use of the latter. There may also be the relative lack of antidotes to the new gas which was not widely known to the Germans themselves. Today we have atropine-based muscle relaxants for this, but was this as available as the gas? There were a few terrible accidents at the Tabun factory at Dyrenfurth, near Silesia where nerve gas plant workers got hit with the stuff, and they died before they could be treated -- I think the bodies made for useful autopsies of casualties.

One of the creators of the nerve gases was Otto Ambros. He and a Dr Schraeder are the initials "S" and "A" in the name "Sarin". Reportedly he himself discouraged the first use of nerve gas because he thought the Allies had it too! This was said to be based on the finding that insecticide development had vanished from the Allies' scientific literature, and that was how nerve gases had begun in German research. In reality, the Allies had just meant to cover up the development of DDT.

It's also known that Hitler himself was a gas casualty late in World War I, and he had an instinctive dislike of this kind of warfare. Besides, his generals' blitzkrieg tactics were based on speed and avoidance of the deadlocked battlefront that gave gas its first chance.

I haven't seen it in print, but I fully expect also that the German generals simply did not want to be remembered as the ones who revived gas warfare. The Germans were hated enough for it in the first war. The officer corps had already plotted against Hitler's life; they had to worry about their own (surviving) necks for after the war. And even though war throws out gentleman's rules, there are still war-crimes trials -- and hangmen -- awaiting those who break some of them. Gas warfare was outlawed in the 1925 Geneva Protocols (little-known that Poland pushed to add Biological warfare to that, since they suspected the USSR of trying it on them).

Roosevelt also disliked chemical warfare. Iwo Jima was the most famous of the Pacific WW2 victories, but it's not widely-known that the original US plan was to gas the island by naval bombardment before invading. Most of his officers approved it, but FDR expressly turned it down and Iwo Jima was conventionally taken.

Japan also used chemical warfare as well as biological warfare in China. They had a secret CW arsenal on the island of Okunoshima, not far from Hiroshima. Only recently has there been some attention paid to this. The island is now a public park or attraction of some kind, and some displays there acknowledge what was done there during the war.

A few Japanese veterans have come forward about their roles in using chemical and bio warfare in China. It's one thing when the victors accuse them of doing it, but quite another when former Japanese troops admit to it. This is still very much a live issue in both China and Japan! because even today, abandoned Japanese CW munitions are still being found buried in China when they leak and injure people. Japan has been named responsible for it in world forums and I think they are quietly addressing the problem, but this doesn't change how much they are despised in Asia.

The infamous Unit 731 that conducted awful human BW experiments on many thousands of prisoners in Manchuria (mostly Chinese but some Allied) is also still a live issue. Just over a year ago Tokyo made its first official admission about it, although over time the Japanese people were already slowly learning what Unit 731 was. And like the CW munitions still being found, there were disease outbreaks where the Japanese released the agents before retreating. These outbreaks continued through 1947.

There's another dark side to Japanese BW. The Tokyo war crimes tribunal didn't try anyone for it, because MacArthur made a deal with the Japanese doctors responsible. Turn over your BW findings and we won't prosecute in return, nor hand you over to the Russians (who tried 12 BW soldiers in 1949).