Syrian President Bashar Assad's chemical attack last week was particularly egregious because even Adolf Hitler didn't use chemical weapons in World War II, White House press secretary Sean Spicer inaccurately claimed on Tuesday.

"You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons," Spicer told reporters during the White House briefing in response to questions about the implications of Assad's chemical attacks.

Hitler used a chemical called Zyklon B to murder prisoners in Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

Spicer soon attempted to clean up his comments in response to a request for clarification from reporters.

"I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [sic] is doing … there was not in the — he brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that, but I'm saying in that the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down, to innocent, into the middle of towns, it was brought, the use of it," Spicer said. "I appreciate the clarification, that was not the intent."

"In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust," Spicer later said in a statement following the briefing. "I was trying to draw contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers."